Brendan Seery.
The White Elephant and the Dead Duck (A tragicomedy in multiple acts) With acknowledgement to Monty Python’s Dead Parrot skit.
Scene: A government office in the City Formerly Known As Pretoria
Enter, stage left, a minister.
(We know he is a minister because he has designer spectacles, fashionable skinny trousers, shiny pointy black leather shoes and two lackeys carrying his briefcases.)
Civil Society: Good morning, minister. Our meeting should have been two hours ago…
Minister: Heh, heh, heh. African time, you know…
CS: We wish to register a complaint…
M: A complaint? Why me? I am nice to everybody. Don’t you read my Twitter feed?
CS: But you say you are going to fix transport in 100 days. And e-tolls is dead.
M: No it’s not. It’s just resting…
CS: Resting? Look, minister, we know a dead duck when we see one. Most people are not paying the tolls, so the debt is going up. That’s dead, if you ask us.
M: No, it’s not. It’s just a pause for democratic debate. And no one asked you.
CS: Exactly. You never had a democratic debate. If you did, you would have heard the people telling you to take this ANC money-making scheme and piss off.
M: Nazir Alli told me he talked to people.
CS: With respect minister, his family, the construction industry cartels and the ANC NEC are not “people”.
M: Anyway, how can something be dead when it looks so beautiful? Look at those pretty gantries. Look at the lovely light at night. Look at the lovely orange, white and blue signs. Those make me nostalgic for something but I can’t think of what at the moment.
CS: Colours will not raise this thing from the dead, minister!
M: It’s not dead. It’s hibernating. Our Austrian electronic collection friends tell us that, in any normal toll road situation, there is a period of hibernation when things are quiet. Then it all wakes up and the money pours towards Vienna.
CS: It’s not a bloody brown bear, minister! It’s a white elephant!
M: Make up your mind. First it’s a duck, now it’s a white elephant. I will not even dignify your reference to racial stereotypes with a response. But, see, you admit it. It’s not a dead white elephant…
CS: What?
M: You know nothing about white elephants. We in the ANC are experts in rearing them and caring for them…
CS: What do you mean?
M: We have a herd of 300-plus and we keep them in Cape Town.
CS: Where in Cape Town?
M: In the National Assembly. And sometimes they get depressed, like when you take away their free air tickets. But they get over it because we make threats and never carry them out.
CS: E-tolls are not suffering from depression. The whole country is.
M: Exactly. So, to cheer everyone up, we have decreed people will pay 10 cents a gantry and a maximum of R100 a month.
CS: That’s like trying to jump-start the heart of a person who has been dead for a month, minister. E-tolls is beyond resuscitation.
M: No, it isn’t.
CS: Yes, it is. Just scrap the system already.
M: They don’t call me Mr Fixit it for fokol … I will show you e-tolls is alive.
CS: How?
M: I will pay all the motorists to use it. Now that is intelligence which is alive! That is why I am the minister and you are not!
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