When I was growing up in Umtata in the 1950s and '60s, travelling shows used to come to town. A magician, a circus. Once Cliff Drysdale, Gordon Forbes, Abe Segal and Frew McMillan played exhibition matches on the same courts I played on. What a thrill. Drysdale reached the final of the US Open in 1965. Forbes once beat the best tennis player in history, Rod Laver.
But the best entertainment was always the hypnotist. What was good about the hypnotist if you were a kid was that he always got some difficult adult you had to deal with onto the stage and made a fool of them. It was very satisfying. He'd have the butcher behaving like a baby, or the sanctimonious librarian pretending she was a cocktail waitress.
Is hypnotism still a form of entertainment? Look into my eyes. You're feeling very sleepy. When I touch your forehead it'll be January 9 2018. Next year. There, open! Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma not only won the race to lead the ANC last month, but yesterday, delivering her inaugural January 8 ANC birthday statement, she forcefully committed the party to radical economic transformation, although again without going into any detail.In the end she comfortably beat Cyril Ramaphosa after both former KwaZulu-Natal premier Zweli Mkhize and former Mpumalanga premier DD Mabuza backed her. They are now chairman and deputy president of the ANC respectively.
Yes, the worst happened, although the rand has clawed its way back a bit from its post-Nasrec low of R19.09/$. Cyril is in talks to lead a breakaway from the ANC but lacks conviction. Nkosazana has persuaded her former husband, President Jacob Zuma, to leave office early. Reports say he'll be gone by April. She will contest next year's election as a sitting president.
Nkosazana knows she needs business in her corner to make the economy do anything before the election but she has to be seen to be doing something to clear the decks to get them on side. So she has begun to speak of the end of corruption, and in her speech yesterday proposed convening a version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but this time into state capture.
You tell the truth about what you did and you pay back the money and you don't get prosecuted. It's an amnesty. Trials would be too messy and take too long. And, by pure coincidence, the amnesty attached to the commission on state capture is the only way she can protect the father of her children from being put on trial and sent to jail for fraud and racketeering.
But he has to own up.
As do the Gupta brothers. Word is that should the commission be formed, it would have the power to restrict the Guptas' movements, preventing them from leaving South Africa until they have satisfactorily testified to their role in state capture.
Naturally we, the public, are agog. On the edge of our seats. Popcorn everywhere...