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‘Ah, Mgedlisto, fancy meeting you here.”
“Ah, City. That is what we do now. We meet only at funerals.”
“That is true. But I am talking about meeting at the toilet.”
“Hehehe! So you also don’t bring your bodyguards to the toilet.”
“How are you, Mgedlisto? I hear Mthiyane said you didn’t appear at the commission because you’ve been sick.”
“Ah, it’s old age, City, pains and aches you can’t explain.”
“No, Mgedlisto … let me wash my hands so we can have a proper handshake.”
“Hehehe! Yours is a presidential thing, City. If you shake my hand after washing it, then I don’t have to ever wash my hand, hehehe!”
“Eish, Mgedlisto, you never stop. We must have coffee, man. We can’t meet in the toilets like this.”
“That is what you guys from Joburg always say – ‘let’s meet for coffee’ – but you never do.”
“I’m serious, Mgedlisto. I do want to talk to you.”
“You let me know and I will look at my schedule. I am supposed to be a pensioner, but I am so busy going to court like I am a lawyer.”
“That is what I want to talk to you about, Mgedlisto.”
He opens the bathroom’s stall doors to see if there is anyone inside who may want to listen to high-office gossip.
“Look, Mgedlisto, contrary to popular belief, I don’t want you to go to jail. It’s going to cause problems for me. Already my peers in Africa are laughing at me, calling me the boardroom president. If you went to jail, my enemies would use that to instigate riots all over the country and make no-go areas for me.”
“Not in my name, I hope.”
“Mgedlisto, that sounds like a mortician crying because a rich man has died.”
“Your situation makes me sad, and I find your concern for my wellbeing very touching. Let’s go back to the service before they send people to come and fetch us.”
“Mgedlisto. Let’s make a deal.”
“A what? I don’t sell anything, City.”
“Presidents are about dealmaking. Vladimir Putin made a deal with Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was as corrupt as the drain. Putin had to decide whether or not to send him to prison forever, but he understood that the trial would create unnecessary bad publicity. His rivals would then stand behind Yeltsin.”
“So what do you want?”
“You bring a bad stink to my government, Mgedlisto.”
“How? I have never said anything about you, City.”
“Every time I try to do something good, you clear your throat, you tweet, you get sick, you go to court, you take the oxygen away from my programme.”
“What do you want me to do, City? Stop clearing my throat?”
“I want you to disappear from the face of the earth, like Yeltsin and Ronald Reagan. The bloody racist sold arms to Iran and paid for them with drug money when he was president. But George Bush shielded him because he did not want a burst sewerage pipe smelling while he was at the dinner table.”
“Are you calling me sewage, City?”
“Maybe your perfume is too subtle, Mgedlisto. But right now it is just you and me here, and I can tell you that I am not the one who passed the wind.”
“Then let me have my day in court, and the judge will decide if I am indeed the one who passed the wind or not.”
“You keep saying that, but you are avoiding your day in court. You went to Mthiyane and, instead of speaking, all you did was clear your throat the whole bloody day.”
“I thought we were friends, City, which is why I made you my number two.”
“Mgedlisto, I need space to rebuild the economy. If I fail, my enemies will come for my head. Do like Reagan and Yeltsin …”
“Shhh, wait. There is someone coming …”
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency
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