After Sunday’s commitment wobble, I was just beginning to sense a growing confidence that I was getting on top of this working from home lark. Then to my horror, I realised that this is only a three-day working week. Well, it used to be, anyway.
Of course it’s Good Friday and the Easter weekend coming up, but for those with long memories, 6 April is also Jan van Riebeeck Day. So suddenly I’m under timeline pressure. It hasn’t, to the best of my knowledge, happened as yet, but it can surely only be a matter of time before Big Jannie cops the wrap for this whole COVID-19 thing.
How he must weary of it all.
Not to make too light of it though, because for many South Africans Jan van Riebeeck had a heart of darkness.
Speaking of which, I did my English thesis on the Relationship between Political and Private Morality in works of Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is set in Africa during the period of that other great pandemic, often referred to as The Scramble for Africa, which has decimated the peoples of Africa. Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed film Apocalypse Now gives image to the depravity of it all, albeit on another continent during a different conflict.
Humankind is arguably the greatest disease the Earth has ever had to face.
As Kurtz articulates it in his final words: The Horror! The Horror!
Against that benchmark, somehow the horror of Lockdown2020 seems relatively mild, particularly if you’re a “have” (read Lockdown Chronicle #6). So in South Africa we are not shocked to find that in KZN a bride and her husband were arrested at their wedding, along with 53 other guests, for defying the clampdown on social gatherings over the weekend.
In fairness to the police, they did allow the minister to complete the ceremony, and so hopefully the bride and groom got to spend their wedding night together, albeit in a police station.
There’s a movie in there somewhere. No Weddings and No Funeral.
Compare that to Sky News reporting the extreme brutality of British police who tried valiantly to “move-along” a pair of ne’er-do-wells on a beach in England. A blatant case of braaibery!
It’s no wonder Her Majesty had to intervene on Sunday evening.
The Horror! The Horror.
Gordon Muller is Africa’s oldest surviving media strategist. Author of Media Planning – Art or Science. Mostly harmless! Read his Khulumaedia Blog here.
