A teeny
bit of
history
IT'S 30 years now since FW de Klerk made that announcement in parliament that turned apartheid on its head. People have been revisiting the event and speculating. Was it a Damascene conversion or a combination of circumstances including the collapse of Soviet communism?
I'd say the latter, coupled with a bit of good old Dopper logic. If a thing ain't working, you ditch it.
Everyone was taken totally by surprise … er, well, not quite everyone. A couple of people were in the know.
Rob Haswell, at the time a Democratic Party MP from Pietermaritzburg, tells the story of how he got tipped off in advance. As a junior MP he was given an office in a building across the road from parliament, which was shared with drivers of the parliamentary car pool.
He was chatting to one of them outside on the pavement one morning when an official car went past with Minister of Justice Kobie Coetzee in it.
"He's on his way to see Nelson Mandela again," the driver remarked.
"What?"
Oh, it was a regular thing, the driver said. Coetzee went to see Mandela every week in prison at Paarl. Everyone in the car pool knew about it.
Agog with this information, Rob sought out his party leader, Dr Zach de Beer. But De Beer was strangely unshaken by the news.
"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to talk about this," he said.
So the Leader of the Opposition was also in on it!
Came the day and Rob was walking into parliament with a group of Nat MPs. What was this announcement they were going to hear?
"He's going to unban the ANC and release Nelson Mandela," Rob said.
They laughed derisively.
A teeny bit of history
Sauna rugby
A GREAT start for the Sharks. But rugby in January? They might as well have been playing in a sauna bath.
Typing techniques
READER Richard Isemonger, of Hillcrest, says last week's piece about one-finger and two-finger typing brought back some special memories.
"Some 60 years ago I joined the BSA Police (in today's Zimbabwe) for adventure and to learn to ride and shoot. Apart from cavalry training, we surprisingly found ourselves having to learn to type.
"We trained on ancient pre-1945 black heavy monsters with long keystroke movements much like the old cash machines. The common one was made by Imperial. They were indestructible.
"Whilst I still sport two crooked forefingers which no longer point north, I have to add that on the outposts in those days, one had to be a bush mechanic to attend to running repairs.
"The carriage was removable and gave access to the abdomen, jammed keys and wasps' nests. A bootlace fixed the springed return strap and boot polish revived a dry ribbon.
"Many old woodpeckers never forget the tinkle of the carriage bell at the end of a line in the middle of a committed word, needing a hyphen in the next line.
"Nor do we forget the finished article riddled with eye-catching black corrections caused by hammering a key over an error or carefully making things worse with an abrasive eraser shaped like a washer. No Tippex or copiers then. Carbon paper and flimsy paper could yield three copies."
Good heavens, wasps' nests in the typewriters. That could have been the old Mercury newsroom in days of yore.
Tailpiece
THEY met in the local bean restaurant. It was instant inflatulation.
Last word
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment