Bar Talk

This past week we have come to the unoriginal conclusion that God works in mysterious ways. Apparently, he does not only give his chosen ones miraculous powers and the ability to amass a lot of wealth. He also grants some of them the intelligence to swallow some performance enhancers and please seven women in one night.

So we established a long time ago that funerals have no concern with the dead — except the provision of the body, and everything to do with the living. But the circus that the world has created out of our dear neighbour’s long-awaited demise has really gone overboard.

Now people are complaining that our country delayed in sending their message of condolences. But that is because we heard the news of the death, reflected a bit, then condoled. Now the rest of the rest of the world composed their flowery messages and speeches last year,

appointed special aides to keep them updated then waited anxiously for the notification of death so that they could press the send button.
Never ones to miss an opportunity to further endow the Drinkers’ Eternal Slush Fund, we have discovered a grave need and we will hasten to fill it. Bra Gee has heard that a lot of world leaders and ordinary citizens were embarrassed because they never had a photo shoot with Madiba like the Bill Clinton one.

So we are offering everyone a chance for a live shoot with Madiba. Never mind that he is no longer of this world. A good computer programme will place your mug squarely behind the bars at Robben Island and you too can cry louder than the bereaved a la Obama, Ban Ki-moon and all the others. Of course, it will cost you plenty and you must move fast. The white Foundation people who have claimed the man as their personal property and goldmine may move in and close our shop before you get your live picture.

Moving on to the joyous comrade who really understood what independence and freedom are about, we salute him. It takes much bravery to brazenly feast while those around you starve. As the Shona say, as long as you are going to eat a dog, make it a huge and fat one. So the glad comrade decided to eat a whole St Bernard!

You know what they say about murder: Kill one person and you are just a boring murderer, kill a few more and you become a mass-murderer, a serial killer or a terrorist, depending on whether you kill them all at once, or one after the other and leave some weird clue for the cops, or citizens of certain countries. Order the killing of thousands while watching and enjoying the live footage and you are an American president. Too bad he was never a patron of the usual place otherwise we too could have eaten and drunk on behalf of the starving comrades. Such determined self-interest is surely the mark of a great personality.

Now Bra Gee would like to have a little talk with the dear comrade comrade’s hired help — those domestic workers on whose behalf he was getting enough money to pay six school teachers. How many servants are there? Do their total earnings equal the comrade’s allowance or was that part of his personal hard-won gains of the liberation struggle?

At the bar we know that when the blind get served delicious meals, those without visual impairments will have developed jaded palates after repeatedly feasting on rare, exquisite and very exorbitant delicacies.

The jovial comrade had employers that he was answerable to who approved this daily spend-fest. So the question we would like an urgent answer to is what were those employers scooping out of the cookie jar while the laughing comrade guffawed all the way to the bank? All this while his minions were tightening tattered belts over empty stomachs or getting fat on “toll-gates” for those wanting to be talking heads on the box. We have heard strong rumours that it was not peanuts either that the bosses of the boss were munching on.

Why, some know-it-alls even go so far as to infer that some high-ranking civil servant was on the payroll as a supernumerary executive. A car and a house in some green dale are also mentioned in the same breath, behind raised palms and beneath wildly flickering eyes, of course.

We do not set much store by such wild rumours, of course. It cannot be true. It simply cannot be, as the said high-ranking civil servant is strenuously insisting. But we still wonder what came out of the cookie jar all the same. Enough diesel to make Rotina’s rocky scam work for a year?

We must say we feel very sorry for the poor comrade and his family. What will they do this Christmas seeing as the regular holiday jaunt to favourite exotic lands with unlimited spending money seems to be out of question? We are assuming and hoping that it will not be a part of the paid forced rest.

At least they have a state-of-the-art entertainment centre to keep them from getting depressed over this latest result of the evil machinations of the Illuminati. But if their satellite dish subscription has been cut, will they cry or will they gladly enjoy the products from the place that used to be Daddy’s workplace?