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By Cliff Buchler

Editor/Journalist


What’s wrong? I’m having nightmares about the ANC

The nightmare takes me to Luthuli House where Carl Niehaus is doing reception.


Have been having a series of nightmares lately. Shrinks would probably have some discombobulated explanations.

My Heidi puts it down to brain cells that over the years have been filled with literary garbage stressing the macabre initiated by humans.

I’m seated at my reserved table at my favourite coffee bar of a popular barista. In real life, I neither go near a coffee bar, nor have I ever known the real meaning of “barista”.

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But both feature in this nightmare. Oh, I’m also reading my favourite morning tabloid while sipping a steaming mug of café au lait (another unfamiliar item).

While concentrating on the lead story of a horny and costly bull, I sense a shadow looming over the page.

A huge, suited gorilla plonks himself across from me, handing me a brown envelope. “You know what gives,” he wheezes and disappears.

I’m gobsmacked. Who was gorilla and what gives with the envelope without a name or address?

Suddenly my cellphone rings and a familiar woman’s voice spits out, “You got it? Now deliver it pronto”.

My mind flips to the spy thrillers churned out by David Baldacci and sense I’m one of his characters, specifically the shady oke doing a “drop”.

“Listen here,” I manage, “where do I drop and for whom?”

“Not much of a spy, are you. A clue. Think of poker and the strongest card in the pack. Place? His old headquarters. Savvy?”

“What’s in it?”

“Don’t you know what brown envelopes are used for? Where have you been?”

The nightmare takes me to Luthuli House where Carl Niehaus is doing reception.

He’s reading an old copy of New Age, ignoring me completely.

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I slip past him and find a line of post boxes. All have numbers, except one: an Ace of Spades stuck to it. As I insert the envelope there’s commotion outside.

A black van with white signage of a hawk on its panels had stopped and six burly guys in black uniform carrying rifles emerge.

On entering, I spot Carl pointing them to me. One guy forces my arms around my back and I cry out in pain.

“What’s wrong?” asks Heidi.

“Another nightmare?”

I reckon these nightmares are symptomatic of our despondency putting up with pseudo rulers far too long.

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