A sanctioned Russian ship has crept into Simon’s Town naval base under cover of night and offloaded a mysterious cargo, presumably because the ANC has learnt its lesson and now sends consignments of dodgy wedding guests to DA strongholds rather than Waterkloof.
I’m joking, of course. The ANC is incapable of learning anything, and I have no doubt that our national key points are still used all the time for all sorts of unseemly comings and goings.
According to pundits interviewed by News24 and Daily Maverick, it’s possible that the ship was in some sort of “distress”.
I’m not sure whether they mean mechanical, political or existential, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the captain bounced off a reef while staring at his phone, transfixed by the recent clip on Russian state TV in which a propagandist insists that Ukrainians are being encouraged by the hyper-woke West to dabble in cannibalism. (I’m not making that up, by the way: as far back as May the Kremlin was flighting the idea that the rising cost of living in the UK would soon force British people to start eating each other.)
The notion that the ship was hauled in for repairs, however, is the only sensible theory being floated: neither the SA Navy nor the defence ministry are talking.
Of course, some questions answer themselves. For example, if you’re wondering how a foreign commercial vessel gained access to a South African military base, all you need do is remember that this is the same country that welcomed a whole wanted war criminal to Waterkloof Air Force Base. By the standards of the ANC and its friends, a few Russian sailors snoozing in the shade under a submarine up on bricks is as tame as it gets.
By the standards of the ANC and its friends, a few Russian sailors snoozing in the shade under a submarine up on bricks is as tame as it gets.
Other questions, however, such as why the ship’s electronic footprint had been turned off, sorry, “seemed to be offline”, or why, when News24 sent reporters to check it out, the “ship seemed to have been deserted”, are harder to answer.
Most curious of all is the question arising from a resident seeing “a convoy of trucks and offloaded cargo” inside the base: what was the ship carrying, and why was some or all of it offloaded?
Was it a fresh consignment of placebo sugar pills for David Mabuza’s imaginary poisoning ailment?
Was it Russian oil, bought at rock bottom prices so that Cyril Ramaphosa can keep the lights on for at least half of Christmas Day?
Whatever it was, I don’t think we need to worry that it’s being smuggled north. The new blue trains serving the southern Cape Town line are lovely but a very tough place to hide 10,000 barrels of crude, what with all the holidaymakers and umbrellas and cooler boxes; and anything travelling by road will take months to get through the traffic hellscape that stretches from Fish Hoek to the dreamcatcher-bedecked fleshpots of Kalk Bay.
No, much better to file this odd little story away with all the other odd little stories we’ve decided not to worry about, like why Mabuza keeps going to Russia, or who those journalists are who allegedly took money from the State Security Agency, or who, exactly, will replace Ramaphosa if he’s impeached; and go and plug in your phone before the power goes off for four hours.
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