ON THE WATER: The favours Steve and Julius do us
IN TIME, the annals will reflect that in 2014 professional Afrikaans-language performer and amateur agitator Steve Hofmeyr rendered a heroic and timely service to his country; you could say he saved us from ourselves. Seriously.
For openers, Steve is one of only two fellows in the public eye who is on first-name terms with the entire nation. Everybody knows Steve, and for many it is knowledge in the biblical sense. In the flesh, so to speak.
The other first-name-only fellow, of course, is professional agitator and amateur multilingual performer Julius Malema, MP.
And the coincidences do not end there. You might say it is uncanny that two parties seemingly as far apart as the two ends of an intestinal parasite would each have a large following of people of exactly the same mentality which, in another breathtaking synergy, match their own.
Take their shared dislike of our president, esteemed as he is in his own lunchtime. If the member (of the Upper Jukskei Flyfishing Collective) were less wary of the sarcastic remarks that conspiracy theories attract at the braai, he would have said out aloud that the very cabal who got President Jacob Zuma into power has now deployed Steve and Julius to undermine the presidential puissance.
No one knows who plain old Jacob is any more, not with South Africa’s most popular double act on the national stage. And what a good thing it is, too.
Clearly, we have the leaders we deserve. But just when all would seem to be lost, the Steve-and-Julius duo, bless them, would step up to remind us what a joke it all is. At least, that is how things have been shaping up until this year, when young Julius got into a heap of classic celebrity-style trouble of his own making that could only be salvaged through elected office.
He got to be squeaky clean, his red parliamentary onesie notwithstanding, but it left poor Steve out in the cold.
For a lesser man, being left in the gutter all on his own would have been a disaster, but not our Steve. He is a real Boerseun, tough as they come, and when the opportunity arose, he took it.
Beeld reports that Steve’s planned performance at the Namaqua Festival at Vredendal caused such a quarrel in the community that the show has been cancelled. Now that is heroic.
Our Steve singlehandedly demonstrated that he would not be bested by Julius’s antics and prove once and for all to the recalcitrant nation that buffoonery is an equal-opportunity employer.
According to Beeld’s report, a council official referred to Steve’s acknowledged proclivity for racist agitation and suggested to Events 24, the festival organisers, that they rethink their invitation to the performer.
Events 24 then decided to cancel the festival altogether. Bravely, Steve also quit and said he would seek legal advice.
Not for a moment during his selfless act did Steve consider to refrain from rabble-rousing or at least lie to Vredendal’s council and make a promise he could not keep. Steve would not lie, would he?
Besides, he could not let the act down and do the right thing for a change. Julius would be furious. The show must go on.
Thanks to Steve and Julius there can no longer be any doubt that ours is a society free of the racist divisions of the past. Not even Jacob the Spear of the Nation has the power to unite the people the way these two can.
It seems that whenever the nation hits rock bottom, our favourite pair will be there to remind us how insignificant we are as citizens, how unworthy of our sacred constitutional undertakings we are, how our aspirations for public health and education and safety and security and clean water and fresh air and electricity and shelter of some sort are unreasonable in light of our national character.