At Home & Abroad 40In Good Faith

at home & abroad by Justice Malalaat home & abroad by Justice Malala

C Y R I L’S MISSING LETTER TO SANTA

By some magic, our president hopes to get a belated spine implant

anta was bored. His collar was sticky, despite it being

Sthe North Pole. He was hot. It was all that climate change business. Humans, he grumbled. Can’t get them to do the right thing even when their lives depend on it. They’ll just continue to burn fossil fuels because that fellow Gwede Mantashe in South Africa told them they won’t make money any other way.

Santa harrumphed and glanced at his mail. Sticking out of the bag was a letter that looked tatty, as though it had travelled far. He pulled it out. Lo and behold, it was from the Land of Gwede and Cyril Ramaphosa.

Santa peered at the postmark. Ah, It was five years late. It had been posted in December 2017, when Mark Barnes was still CEO of the South African Post Office. Santa remembered Barnes. “I’ll fix it ,” Barnes had told his boss, Jacob Zuma, back in 2016 when he took the job. Five years later, letters to Santa still arrived late. Ahem.

“Ho, ho, ho! So it goes.” Santa opened the letter from 2017. He squinted and glanced at the bottom to see who had written it. “Enthusiastically, Cyril Ra m a p ho s a”, was scrawled at the bottom. Imagine that, muttered Santa.

“Dear Santa,” he read. “I have just been elected ANC president and, boy, things are going to change around here. I know that letters from kids across South Africa have not been reaching you, and that presents sent by grandmothers and relatives have disappeared into the clutches of thieving postal workers and the thieving syndicates that work at the post office. Don’t worry! I will fix it. I’ll get Eskom back on its feet and load-shedding will be a thing of the past. I’ll fix it all! The economy, the crime, the toxic politics — ev e r y t h i ng ! ”

The letter went on in that vein for a while, with many exclamation marks, until the last paragraph: “In conclusion, dear Santa, I want to ask for just one present this year: a backbone!”

Santa reeled. This letter had been sent five years ago. How had he not seen it before? What had this poor man done for five years without a backbone? Santa rushed to his time machine and punched in the name “Cyril Ramaphosa”. An image of a beaming billionaire entreating the country to sing Thuma Mina and break into a “new dawn” dance came up.

Then the picture took on a grey, ominous hue. The music changed to a slow, mournful dirge.

Santa saw the same man surrounded by a large group called a “c a bi net ”. There were all sorts of people Santa recognised among them — including the do-nothing ministers who had served Zuma loyally. Santa looked at Ramaphosa. The man was slumped in his chair. He did not have the backbone to fire the unfit members of his cabinet.

The video then showed a Barbie-like figure, hovering over a desk, instructing a man who looked uncannily like a fugitive from the law in the US, to write an op-ed piece for her. She called judges racist names, denigrated the constitution she served, and called Ramaphosa a liar. He did not fire her. He did not have the backbone he had sent for.

The images were changing swiftly now. They showed a discredited leader, a former jailbird, calling Ramaphosa names and laying charges against him to unseat him. The president smiled, unable to call the hypocrite out. Ramaphosa had not received his present, the backbone, in the post. Santa was sweating profusely now. The images on his time machine showed many opportunities when his letter writer could have displayed some spine but had not. Santa put his head in his hands in despair. He rushed to his emergency stocks, grabbed a backbone, wrapped it up, wrote the name and address on the parcel and added in bold that, by hook or by crook, it had to be delivered before Christmas 2022. “Now he will be able to crack the whip,” Santa said, putting the delicate present in the mail. Then he realised that he was at the mercy of the South African Post Office. He started weeping. Merry Christmas, dear reader, and a happy 2023. x