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Friends & Friction: Give Mbeki and all those Safa guys a Bell’s

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If it is true that former president Thabo Mbeki approved $10 million for South Africa to get the 2010 Soccer World Cup, I’d say give that man a Bell’s, because for a good four years, his team and the members of Safa put this country on the map and subsequently grew our tourism industry.

If it is indeed true that we paid money to host the World Cup, then Mbeki and his team are rare men indeed, and should be rewarded with gifts that are as rare as they are.

I include Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma among them. She’s got balls, that lady. The house in which she was born must be turned into a national monument because God has since stopped making people like her.

These days, you meet creatures who look like men, with long beards and firm handshakes, only to find they are eunuchs castrated by political correctness and fear.

So, no, don’t give Mbeki and his team a Bell’s, give them a new benchmark for the finer things in life. If you’re going to give them a whisky, pass on that Macallan M also, even though it fetched R7.2 million last year.

First, find a master glass maker to create a special decanter. A round decanter would be the ultimate insult. It must be crystal, and it must be multifaceted. No, don’t go to Lalique. The company botched up its 100-year-heritage with the Constantine, a decanter they named after the Roman emperor. It took a mob of 17 glass makers to kill their craft in just 50 hours. In the process, they made and destroyed 40 imperfect decanters before they found the right one. That is not craftsmanship, it is pollution.

A decent decanter is not just a container. It is a work of art; a sculpture with a name. It has a soul blown into it by its creator, which lives there long after the contents have been consumed. Dale Chihuly would be the most appropriate man to create a decanter for Mbeki and the rest of the local organising committee.

Of course, there are richer glass makers, such as Britain’s richest living artist, Damian Hirst, who is reported to be worth £215 million (R4.1 billion). There is also the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid. But nah, they don’t make the grade. Hirst is a marketing machine who makes his living by peddling death as art. Hadid is a mercenary and, like all mercenaries, she can’t hold any territory of her own. So she dabbles.

Chihuly is the master glass maker. Period.

As for the content, leave out Macallan distillery. It is gasping on the bronze end of the podium behind its other single malt competitors, Glenfiddich and Glenlivet, respectively. They’ve become stunt masters, trying to appeal to pockets of the nouveau riche rather than the palate of the knowledgeable.

Market leaders are the antithesis of bespoke. They are peddled to the aspirant classes whose tongues have lost all sense of taste due to imbibing 20-year-old accidents that mediocre whisky makers hoped time would cure. These men can hardly smell rotten broccoli in their own kitchens, so how can their noses know a good whisky? Since they cannot smell deception, they believe commissioned salesmen and endorsements on the packages. Poor souls. They are void of confidence and their comfort is only in the shifting shadows of the throngs.

Save the Duke of Dutywa from industrial-scale insipidness. Protect him from the evil of whisky whose quality was determined by accountants. Find him a good distillery.

It takes an hour and a half by ferry to get to the Isle of Arran in Scotland. This is where you’ll find Arran distillery. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. Arran is new. It is only 18 years old and, unlike Macallan, it doesn’t have a 64-year-old Scotch. In the bespoke world, the best whiskies aren’t necessarily the oldest, but the produce of the rarest casks in the hands of a brilliant whisky maker. Why wait until the chef is dead to enjoy his dish? Is it because the dead are safe from the criticism of the living?

We enjoyed the World Cup in our lifetime and, for that, we should all be truly grateful to Mbeki and the rest of Safa, and say this while they are still alive.

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