President Cyril Ramaphosa is the Grinch who stole Christmas. What a disappointment he has been, this man we thought would save us and our beleaguered country after it was looted and plundered by the venal Jacob Zuma and his plucker friends.
When he was elected, we called him Ramaphoria and patted each other on the back as we congratulated each other. We had dodged a bullet. There were sighs of relief as we waited for markets to recover and house prices to rise.
We thought that it would bring change, and that there would be a respite from the captured state of us in the Zuma era. We place too much trust in the hands of a man who, while he certainly has not stolen from the state coffers, has let us down by being just as unreliable as his predecessor.
We South Africans have had a difficult year, but Ramaphosagate has been the biggest troublemaker of the festive season.
To be exact, it’s been going on since June, when former spymaster Arthur Fraser spilled the beans and filed a criminal complaint against the president, even though the money, claimed to amount to $4 million, was tucked into a couch in the Ramaphosa Phala game farm. Phala, was apparently stolen in 2019.
Sounds like the plot of the B-grade movie skop, skiet en donder.
When parliament heard that the press might have broken the law and the voices calling for his impeachment became more and more urgent, there was a moment when we were led to believe that he would resign. We sat on the edge of our seats, glued to the TV, biting our nails as we waited for the announcement.
The rand collapsed: a staggering 4% lost its value in one stage. Uncertainty, the motto of 2022, struck even more fear into our hearts.
Would go? It is not like this?
As we know, he did not resign in the end, but not before his possible departure alerted South Africans to the dearth of potential successors who would be acceptable to us, the world and the World Bank.
Anything that ruins this vacation is infuriating.
I love everything related to Christmas. I love the redness of it; the scintillation and brilliance of it. The canned jingles that sound in the malls: Boney M with Child of Maryinstrumental Christmas medleys by pianist Richard Clayderman, the joy of Michael Bublé.
I love the bonhomie and the HoHoHo-ness of things. I love excess, food, gifts, lights, trees, real and fake. I’m partial to Christmas cookies, even the ones that don’t explode when knocked off overloaded Christmas tables. I love guys who drink too much and grumpy teenagers who look down on Aunt Mabel’s knitted sweater. I love sentimental Christmas movies and watch and rewatch Love Actually and The Sound of Music and Notting Hill every year.
All of it. it’s exciting
There is a heightened vivacity at Christmas, a time that allows us to pause, take stock, sing carols out of tune, eat turkey, chipolata sausages, Figgy pudding (with or without the tickeys of my childhood) and meat pies made in House.
I love the midnight mass, the eager faces of the children glowing in the candlelight, the shadows falling inside the church, the smell of incense and candles. The chorister soloist singing Panis Angelicus; the choir turning its back to the Hail Mary in Latin.
We have the opportunity to shop, shop, shop, to wish ourselves well, and, full, to feel refreshed and renewed enough to start another year.
If these aren’t your traditions, I’m sure you have some other way to celebrate December 25 and the weeks leading up to it. Christmas is no longer exclusive to Christians, it seems to be a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon.
A few years ago, on Christmas Day in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I was amazed to see children on their way to school, dressed in Santa hats, it must be said.
Christmas! The most wonderful time of the year.
Not this year I’m afraid.
It is very distressing that the spirit of Christmas is missing this year with a lackluster run-up to my favorite holiday.
Missing?
Well, canned jingles in the malls.
And lights! I miss the Christmas lights of my childhood… the kind that used to be strung on the main streets. What excitement there was in Naidoo’s house as, bathed, fed and in our pajamas, we were loaded into the car to be driven through Ladysmith, staring in wonder at the twinkling Christmas lights: the white-bearded man, his sleigh and reindeer . Trees. Snowflakes.
What else is missing? Happiness.
Not much of that right now, and I don’t just mean the kind of desperation caused by loss of cargo and water shortages and rising gas costs. The world is in trouble. Ukraine is still locked in a war that began with Russia’s invasion of that sovereign state in February.
An old friend living in northern Germany tells the story of her Czech partner who witnessed the Russians enter Prague in September 1968. His family’s helplessness was revived by the invasion of the Ukraine, and it sparked feelings in him. so intense that he immediately put his name to house refugees. The first family arrived in July, a young mother with two small children whose men had stayed behind to fight.
This is a gloomy and lonely Christmas for the small and incomplete family. Thoughts of husbands, fathers and brothers, and those families who have not wanted or been able to leave, in Kiev struggling without electricity, a freezing tundra winter and the daily threat of death as missiles rain down on the country killing any attempt at good Courage.
Multiply that by the tens of thousands of families affected by the war.
I long for a happier time. We are in great need of good cheer.
As Jethro Tull sings in his Christmas Carol: “The Christmas spirit is not what you drink.”
