THE TOTAL UNDOING OF SOMBER DIPLOMATIC ETIQUETTE - BUCHIZYA MUTEPA KAUNDA’S OUTBURST!

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama So, did that really qualify as a befitting tribute in your books? It was to me the worst affront to the magnanimous memory of our Khosa Brother, U yoyange Rohlihlahla Madida. Whichever way you choose to look at it calling, an Afrikaner a Boer (Farmer) in this day and age is a form of derogation which for all intent and purposes was utterly uncalled for. This was supposed to be a time when people should have been healing. Which healing was being completed by the passing of an individual who epitomized the struggle and was himself one of the architects of the reconciliation process and the eventual emergence of what we have come to endearingly refer to as The Rainbow Nation. It was not too much to ask that true and genuine seasoned statesmen ought to have adopted a more reconciliatory posture. The other time it was again the man from the Highlands of Scotland ranting on about something so misplaced and not in keeping with the spirit of good neighborliness. One day, just one day soon my brother, the regional giant will roar to reassert its position on certain pertinent matters and heads will most certainly turn and the Geo-political landscape of Southern Africa never shall be the same. When this happens you will remember that I was not such a Nostra-Dumb-Arse after all! What we saw done was the scratching of a healing wound, the cicatrix covering years of emotional anguish was being painfully peeled off. To me, it was just as bad as a white person calling a person of colour a Nigga (of course not in the manner it is now glorified in this incoherent racket laced with vulgarities they call music) or a Melon in The Deep South or The Bronx. Then you turn around and call them Hillbillies back and see how the men hooded in Bed sheets would get back at you. If you are in Birmingham and you are originally from Uttar Pradesh and you are called a curry-muncher it is really not cool at all. I reckon it is even worse than a southern European (Spanish or Italian being called a Dago twit in New York. So listen people, these are ethnic slurs that are commonly accepted as impolite to use and it had to come from your inspirational leader! Gosh! Did not they teach the very basic tenets of Diplomatic Etiquette and International Relations at Lubwa Mission even as an elective? The other unsung hero of the attainment of majority rule in Azania is Fredrick De Klerk. Granted, that this is highly debatable but it is my opinion nonetheless. Even when the world felt there was way too much pressure weighing in on the Apartheid regime to release Madida , I strongly feel If they so wished, they could have easily chosen to hang onto Madida just a little bit longer to simply prove to the world that they could in a show of revulsive defiance. I do not really mean to demean people’s eternal icons but that ‘speech’ did not really cut it for some of us I may not be a Northern Rhodesian but I empathetically felt like burying meself in the sand from utter shame and embarrassment. It was not exactly the type of witty defiant rhetoric, if that was the delivery that was intended, you know, like one you would have heard from say Mahmoud Armedinajad, Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi , Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Malcolm El Malik Shabbaz X, The Right Honouraboe Minister Louis Farrakhan or H.I.M Emperor Haile Sellasie I et al . It does therefore go without saying that thank heavens for the adept time keeper, after that nebulous rant, I was gripped with an overpowering sense of ennui. And for the record, I will let you in on a little diplomatic state secret; the ‘speech’ time was not really up at all! It had more to do with the taste, choice of words, tone, general timing and to be honest downright shocking sense of occasion. But then, in retrospect, what exactly did you expect? You were well represented by the best right? How I so miss The Gaffer, starring Bill Maynard, the very best of ITV British situation comedy. He was definitely outdone!