The guests were arriving for Christmas dinner in an hour, but the generators had been roaring all day, keeping the nightingale pâté at the required 17.2 degrees, and now Cyril Ramaphosa had an absolute banger of a headache.
He massaged his temples as he checked the presents one last time. Good. Yes. He’d chosen well, especially the Sherlock Holmes hat for Bheki Cele, embroidered with “Facts Don’t Matter: You ARE A Good Minister”, and the plastic crate for Fikile to sit in and go “Brrm brrm, look at me steering the ideological direction of the party!”
It used to be so much easier. Back when Ramaphoria was still a thing, he’d handed out fun, ironic lumps of coal to cadres who needed to pull up their socks. But then they started selling the lumps of coal to Eskom for R250,000 a pop, and ripping open each other’s presents looking for more lumps, and he’d had to find another sort of present that would disappoint and upset them, and so he’d started giving them economics textbooks.
The butler appeared in the doorway. There were people outside, he said; desperate, broken people clutching the bars of the gate and asking for money.
Damn, thought Ramaphosa: the ANC had finally figured out where he lived.
He told the butler to take something out of the couch — not the hard currency couch in the main lounge but perhaps the Rand couch in the guest wing — and throw it over the fence. The butler bowed and disappeared.
Perhaps a little lie-down would help. Some alone time, during which he could figure out what to say when people asked why his government had just excluded all the other bidders to make sure that Russia’s Gazprom got the R3.7bn gig to upgrade the Mossel Bay refinery ...
He startled awake. It was night, and there was a low moaning and clanking sound coming up from below. Bheki had probably got his hand caught in the garbage disposal again. But no — it was coming from inside the room; and there, at the foot of his bed, he saw a glowing apparition, holding out a long, accusatory finger.
“I am the Ghost of the Freedom Charter,” it said, “and tonight you will be visited by three spirits.”
It used to be so much easier. Back when Ramaphoria was still a thing, he’d handed out fun, ironic lumps of coal to cadres who needed to pull up their socks.
Ramaphosa’s stomach heaved. At the office party last week he’d been visited by seven or eight spirits — the Johnnie Walker Blue had been especially persistent — and he’d decided to avoid the stuff for the rest of the festive season.
But before he could speak, the apparition had vanished, and another one stood in its place; strong, bearded and handsome as hell, and wearing a Cosatu T-shirt.
It raised its fist and cried “Amandla!”; and now Ramaphosa was standing in soft evening light, and there was the sound of a joyful crowd, and he was on some kind of balcony, holding out a microphone — how strong his arm was, and how young and handsome he felt! — and he looked to see who he was holding the microphone for, and there was the great Mandela, and at Mandela’s right hand, Walter Sisulu.
“Remember?” asked the Ghost of ANC Past, and Ramaphosa did.
He wanted to ask the spirit if it had a mirror he could look at — that skin! That muscle tone! — but even as he thought it, Mandela and Sisulu melted away, and in their place was Thabo Mbeki, grumbling quietly about a footnote that made him feel personally attacked, and the microphone was now a bundle of vegetables — beetroot and garlic, it seemed — then Ramaphosa was floating, adrift, in a firepool, and over on the patio Jacob Zuma was sharing a joke with Des van Rooyen, and Nomvula Mokonyane was saying, “Let the Rand fall, we will pick it up,” but all she was picking up was braai packs and bottles of whisky, and somewhere someone was screaming “Life Esidimeni!” but nobody cared.
“Boss!” said a voice near him, and suddenly he was in his office, and it was Fikile who’d spoken, and there was Paul Mashatile, and Bheki, and Pravin, all looking blessedly normal.
“It’s me!” said Fikile. “The Ghost of ANC Present — whoopsie!” Fikile’s trousers had fallen down “Don’t worry,” he said, trying to pull them up. “It’s because we’re getting smaller all the time.”
It was true. They were shrinking, all of them, their clothes growing baggy around them, until they looked like children wearing their parents’ clothes; little nobodies dressing up as leaders.
Ramaphosa was gripped by a terrible fear. “No!” he cried. “Don’t show me the future! I can’t bear it!”
But Fikile took his hand and patted it, and said, “Don’t worry boss.” Fikile smiled happily. “I’m the future of the ANC,” he said, “which means it doesn’t have one. So, you know, problem solved!”
Ramaphosa surged awake, wide-eyed, aghast.
What a fool he’d been! How much time he’d wasted!
And yet, somehow, he had been offered a second chance. To redeem himself. To turn the whole thing back towards where it should have gone, all those years ago.
He knew what he had to do. He saw it so clearly he could almost touch it.
He would appoint a task team to carry out a feasibility study for the creation of a ministry of ghosts! Yes. That would do it.
Ramaphosa sighed a deep, contented sigh and went back to sleep.
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