Who’s a Lucky Star, then?*

As the air riffled through the mountains and plantations of Magoebaskloof, it disturbed the clouds of smoke rising from the group of bodyguards as they smoked, maskless, next to the Range Rovers and a Merc G-Wagen.

Inside the sprawling, seized-from-the-white-robbers farmhouse, kindly renovated and upgraded by the Department of Public Works (thanks, Pat! Knew there was a reason we gave you a Cabinet Post), the four men sat slugging down doubles of Blue Label in lead glass snifters.

Tito put his battered velskoens up on the Boer wooden kist (he bought it off a Nat MP way back then, after being convinced it was Piet Retief’s mom’s).

“Hey! Home boys! These people are so stupid. They see my old shoes and they go ‘Hey, that guy is modest. We can trust him with our money!’…”

The other three chuckled and refilled their glasses – it’s thirsty work being a politician, after all.

Julius held up his hand: “Tito, you are so right. And they are too stupid to see that Limpopo will one day rule this place!”

Tito grinned: “Julius, it was such a good trick by the NEC all those years ago to kick you out of the ANC. Everybody thought you were our enemy – but you did the dirty work we couldn’t be seen to be doing. You are our plausible deniability as the CIA says!”

Floyd chipped in: “And, many thanks, Com Tito, for threatening to cut off funding from Wits unless they gave me and Mbuyiseni our degrees … so we can insult John Steenhuisen. Which reminds me – thanks also for being on standby when we need to understand what that DA white thief is talking about.”

Tito noticed that the glasses were getting low: “Mbuyiseni! Jump around! Why do they think we call you ‘Ice boy’?”

To the clink of ice cubes, Tito said: “Let’s go into the kitchen. I do my best thinking in there. And today, it’s putu and pilchards on the menu …”

As Juju grimaced, Tito reminded him: “Comrade, you have to keep up the pretence that you are a man of the people and you need to practice. Surely you can do without caviar for one meal? And these are Lucky Star!”

Julius muttered and mumbled and suddenly brightened up, remembering that the VBS prosecutions were, deliberately, going nowhere.

“Tito, haven’t we done a brilliant undercover job this year for the ANC?”

As the pilchards hissed in the frying pan, Tito answered: “Comrade, it was more than we could have hoped for.”

“The campaign against Clicks was brilliant: it showed how racist business is and how black people are being exploited – but it also allowed us to make a little bit of operational funds for the organisation because we forced them to buy our range of black hair care products. It was not difficult, either, to put the new labels on the TreSemme bottles.”

Juju added: “The Senekal campaign by our ground forces managed to push the land expropriation narrative for the ANC without you having to get your hands dirty …”

“Indeed!” said Tito, “But now I have another mission for you. Those white racist DA people are causing trouble by saying we never paid the deposit for the Covid vaccines. It embarrassed us.

“So, I want you to hit the Cape Town beaches and close them down. Bheki’s already laid the ground work … for the ground forces!”

*WARNING: This may not be satire.

Brendan Seery

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