Church hasn't been my thing for years. I went to a church school and when I left I thought that I'd pretty much done my church time. Alas the army was ridiculously insistent that you have a religion and that you go to church - thinking about it, we've come a long way as a country, there's no way any institution would insist that you head off to some place of worship when you don't want to. I had go through more church in my first year of the army, and a lot of that was at the NG Kerk too.
I arrived on the border in mid-December of 1986, pretty much the height of summer. Those who are familiar with Oshakati will know how hot it gets up there. For some reason I chose to go to the church service in the hall at Oshakati on Christmas Day. And here is where the story begins.
Sector 10 (as it was known then) was under the command of Brigadier Jakes Swart. I remember him as a big man with the obligatory mustache and cauliflower ears. He was also quite intimidating, I had met him a few times before because I was the only other officer at a specialist signals unit (513 Troop) and would sit in the intelligence briefings.
There we all were in the hall (my notes tell me it was known as the Askari Hall) in Oshakati on Christmas Day (a Thursday). The Askari Hall was just a tin roof - I don't seem to remember it having a ceiling - so it was hot inside there. There was some politician in the hall who had come to rev us up with Nationalist fervour , as well as the Brigadier. There was probably some sermon and a lot of bible reading and prayers - and there was definitely an out-of-tune piano and some poor bastard playing it whilst we went through the motions of a Christmas service. After the Nat had spoken to us the Brigadier got up on the stage and said
I have noticed that there is a distinct lack of Christmas spirit in this room. You will continue singing carols and hymns until you get it.
I remember him saying this in English with those r's being rolled - as only a PF could at the time. And so we sang hymns to an out-of-tune piano for another 45 minutes. I can't be sure whether the Christmas spirit was captured in the hall after that - but I am sure that I am still looking for it.
This is where bolshie bob comes into the picture. He's playing brigadier with South Africa's businesses - forcing us to adapt to his unreasonable transformation agenda. We are singing to an out-of-tune piano conducted by an out-of-touch commie. And the result is that whilst the desire to sing might still lurk, the complexity of the tunes is making the singing unpleasant and almost impossible. Perhaps if our tone-deaf choir master requested simpler songs and then allowed us to migrate to more complex ones in time then we'd see results. But he won't.
I have a client that is extraordinarily proud of their non-compliant BEE certificate, they haven't even bothered to submit a file to put any points on the scorecard because the result will be exactly the same.
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