(*P.O.E.S. – Person Of Extreme Stupidity)

This pre-empts Time’s Person of the Year by 10 months.  If Time is still around to award it then, I predict that Putin will be the winner, hands down.  It’s going to take an awful lot to displace him.  TS Eliot’s 1925 poem, The Hollow Men, ended with the lines:  This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.

Wrong, but then again, they hadn’t discovered the neutron yet, let alone the nuclear bomb, and it was to be 27 years before the unfortunate Mrs Putin would carry the spawn of the devil to term.  This single Horseman of the Apocalypse made the Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2007 when he completed his first term of office.  Time was rather presentient as they stated in the accompanying article, “If Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century.”  Perhaps they should have said, “If Putin fails, …”  After the drunken and chaotic Yeltsin years, Russia hankered for stability, order and the respect of being a superpower, even if it was oppressive dictatorships that provided it.  Cometh the hour, cometh the maniac – Putin.  Using all the techniques from the Communist playbook, he has taken complete control of the country until 2036 and has stopped all forms of opposition by assassinations and secret trials on trumped up charges – ask Novalny.

Using extensive false flag techniques, outright lying that the West was the aggressor and peddling false historical facts concerning the Ukraine, Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine in his and his coterie’s warped minds.  Unfortunately for his troops this wasn’t Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 when a column of tanks could reinstall a puppet regime.  The Ukrainians have fought back.  As his triumphant invasion has stalled, the rhetoric has increasingly become unhinged to the point that he is effectively threatening nuclear Armageddon in the West. 

The West: I raise you 5 sanctions.  Putin: I raise you 2000 nuclear warheads.

How do you begin to negotiate with a P.O.E.S.? 

In mid-1940 with the atavistic German hordes rampaging though Western Europe with little hinderance and staring down the barrels of multiple guns of multiple calibres, the French generals indicated their readiness to cravenly surrender to Hitler.  Churchill demurred and stated that Britain was going fight on.  Having stubbed his cigar in the eye of Gallic pride, the French generals, with their Gallic noses distinctly out of joint, replied that Britain would ‘have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ 

Having seen off the Germans in the Battle of Britain and just about surviving in the Mediterranean, Churchill was on a tour in Canada 18 months later when he related the story and added, “Some chicken! Some neck!”

Fast forward 81 years and we find Ukraine under the cosh of the Putinic forces intent on establishing a buffer state against Western Imperialisim – good old Communist knee-jerk paranoia.  According to some reports, the going has been slower than the Russians planned and Kiev seems be a tough old bird.

Chicken Kiev – Some chicken! Some neck!

In an early act of cultural appropriation, circa 1900, Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, borrowed the West African proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”  Since then, this has become the cornerstone of American diplomacy and countless John Wayne-style westerns.

The West’s response to Putin’s blatant aggressive and posturing, like a dog on heat, has been decidedly tepid.  Their big stick has been more of a hoary old divining rod that twitches every so often, hopefully indicating a way forward. 

Hanging over the European nations, particularly Germany, is that fact that they have supped with the devil in seeking cheap gas supplied via a pipeline direct from Russia.  The result has been a few threatening statements and the flying in of a few extra weapons.  Oh yes, America did send a lightly armed battalion into Poland, more than 1000km away from any frontline.  The main weapon in the West’s response arsenal has been the threat of sanctions.

Sanctions never stopped Hugo Chavez nationalising the filthy rich Venezuela into economic oblivion.

Sanctions never gave a moment’s pause to Mugabe and his thugs as he stole elections through mass killings and intimidation and drove his country into miserable irrelevance, sucking off the desiccated hind tit of SA to survive.

Sanctions never stopped the Ayatollahs of Iran from spewing jihadist bile and continuing their nuclear weapons program.

Sanctions never stopped the young un of the hermit kingdom from growing fat on the backs of his people’s starvation while playing Solitaire Megalomania with his nuclear program and ICBM’s in his private bunker.

Sanctions never diverted the course of destructive socialism during the nigh-on 60 years of the Castro family’s ideological rule.

Closer to home, sanctions never caused the old Nationalist government to waver in the least in their racial beliefs and, in fact, served as a useful propaganda tool at election time.  Their kragdadigheid (forcefulness or hard-arsed attitude) in the face of international opprobrium served to drive all the fence sitters into their camp to deliver the largest majority that the Nationalist Party had ever seen.

Sanctimonious sanctions don’t work.  All they do is to provide those governments with a fig leaf to hide the embarrassment of their shrivelled-up impotence.  They are as irrelevant to the course of history as that flimsy piece of paper that Chamberlain waved when he claimed a “peace for our time” after a meeting with Hitler in 1938.

Mandela promised us a Rainbow Nation colourfully and charismatically led by the Arch in his purple daze.

Mbeki next foresaw an African Renaissance which became a Dream Deferred until further notice when the historical library in Mali that SA helped refurbish was trashed by jihadists.

Zuma actually delivered a New Age, except it was a SOE funded newspaper written by his Gupta gabbas.

Cyril tossed his hat into the ring when he dared to dream of a New Dawn during his inauguration in 2018.

He doubled down on that idea in 2019 with an “I had a dream” moment.  He described inspirational, sangoma-like visons of bullet trains linking smart mega-cities, some of which didn’t exist yet (and never will).

Covid put grand dreams and schemes on hold except for people like Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma who had visions of a smoke and alcohol-free future which she could order by fiat.  For a brief period she wielded more power than all the previous presidents.  The Nationalist Party gave us Dr No (Dr AP Treurnicht) and the ANC gave us Dr Party Pooper with her mirthless, glum visage.  At a stroke of her poison administrative pen, she entrenched low-life criminal gangs in our society with their bootleg smokes and alcohol to the tjoon of 10s of billions of Rands, tax free. 

Covid also engendered visions of SA becoming a vaccination hub as a shot on the arm of the economy.  This pipe dream took root particularly after the developed world stuck it to us, not that we’ve done much with the vaccines now that they’re freely available.

Fast forward to the 2022 SONA. Cyril foretold of an end to the SOD (State of Disaster).  Unfortunately, he wasn’t talking about the resurrection of the country into a winning nation after 27 years of devastation caused by state capture, racist socialist policies and ideologies, incompetent and corrupt SOE Boards and executives, general corruption at every level and in every national, provincial and local department, overstaffing with overpaid, unmotivated and largely underqualified government employees, political and trade union violence and intransigence, political assassinations, pie-in-the-sky theoretical dreams like outcomes-based education, …. 

No, he was talking about something much easier.  At the stroke of an administrative pen, his war council will lift most of the remaining restrictions of our confinement.  Is it going to make much difference?  No, it just means that we can get mugged by people not wearing masks and sanitising beforehand.  Hopefully though, it will mean an end to the hugely overpriced and largely unnecessary deep cleaning of schools and government buildings on the nearest whiff of a Covid case – a small win in the junkyard of shattered dreams.

All I have to say is – SOD them and SOD off.

There are two standout features of a SONA (State of the Nation) address. 

The first is the outlandish and expensive garb of the ANC members, predominately.  Who could ever forget the wholly unsuitable yellow confection that one lady MP had poured herself into in and pulled poses for the cameras like it was the red carpet at the Oscars?  And then, of course, there was Lucy Gigaba, newly minted head of Pubic Enterprises, who took time off from videoing himself masturbating to nattily strut the catwalk looking like a debonair pilot flashing tons of pearly whites in a Peter Stuyvesant advert.  These are Marie Antoinette moments.

In recent years, these displays of self-aggrandisement and self-deception have been toned down but the self-aggrandisement and self-deception of the address and promises have not.  If things go according to script tonight, the Precedent will cherry pick some minor achievements and statistics to show that the government actually works for you.  He will then proceed to make vague promises about improving our lot and will unflinchingly look straight into the heart of the video camera while he claims that the government will clamp down on corruption – pinky promise.

With SA reeling under the impact of two years of Covid and four years of Zondo, Squirrel will have a tough time trying to hide his nuts.  Nevertheless, he will, and I predict that, once stripped of its banal rhetoric, tonight’s address will be same old, same old.  I will not be listening and all I can say is –

SONA SE MOER!