ZUMA UNCONSTITUTIONAL SALARY SHUTDOWN IN ANTI-PHIRI 2014 ARMAGEDDON FUELLED BY THE VENDETTA OF ETHNIC BASTARD XHOSAMAN ERIC MAGOMA MABALANE

 VAST MAJORITY OF ETHNIC XHOSA PEOPLE HATE THEIR OWN XHOSA TRIBALISTS MATANZIMA, KULA, LATE MANDELA, LATE ANDREW LEKOTO MASONDO ETC. WHO ARE CURRENTLY RUINING SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS SANDF IN THEIR NAME

3.       South Africa under Mandela-Minion Jacob Zuma is daily get into a worse mess.  The once most beautiful city Capital Pretoria for example is as of this writing a pig sty and eyesore; and your go to the larger Tshwane where the capital is situated it’s uncollected refuse, water spewing in the streets alongside sewerage systems unattended to.

4.       It is a dark and darkening mega-city what with quixotic powercuts even amongst the most financially active malls of this once fastest-growing industrial areas of South Africa.

5.       Jacob Zuma has lost the plot.  In fact he never had one, except to sing praises parrot-like for his political creator, Nelson Mandela.

6.       That on its own would not have been a problem for me to write about.  After all, it is his own delusion as Mr Zuma if he thinks Mandela, rather than the people of South Africa, liberated this country from politics.

7.       It will become my problem though.  And here is my rationale.

8.       IN ALL THE FAILINGS OF JACOB ZUMA AS LEADER, YOU FIND NEXT TO HIM IN ALL DEPARTMENTS THAT MATTER LIKE DEFENCE NOBODY ELSE BUT RELATIVES OF NELSON MANDELA AND FELLOW-XHOSA-SPEAKER TRIBESMEN WHO WANT HIGH POSITION BY HOOK OR CROOK, FRAUD INCLUDED WITHOUT ANY PUNISHMENT FROM DEMIGOD-MANDELA’S PUPPET ZUMA.

9.       This is in any case, the situation in the SANDF and the people (like Eric Mabalane [and his maternal uncle Simon Mabalane of course the old Zuma henchman and militiaman who was from exile days in Angola, Tanzania and other countries active other individuals in the anti-human-rights-Zuma-1987-imbokodo-intelligence gendarmerie that was maiming and killing outspoken freedom fighters like Phiri], Norman Yengeni (another exile-era ruthless Mandelasque Xhosa tribalist now in SANDF general’s uniform still perpetrating similar tribalism against Phiri for writing to the presidency of South Africa about the corruption, fraud and black racism the Yengenis are to this moment still perpetrating in the good name of Xhosa) Temba Templeton Matanzima who 2012 uncharacteristically orders Phiri stay at homeand not come to work for good; and V.R. Masonda of the SANDF who charges Phiri, presumptively finds him guilty hence salary shutdown for NOT coming to work via AWOL and I, trailed by my helpless 4-year-old daughter Tamara, am here running the gauntlet between one Mandelasque Xhosa tribalist unleashed by Zuma on me and another Mandelasque Xhosa tribalist.Hence the Christmas-period salary shutdon on whistleblower Goodman Manyanya Phiri with the Amargeddon.

10.   The South African Natiotonal Defence Force is nowhere far to be found behind this mess; as the common factor

11.           WHY MY SOURCES ON ERIC MABALANE AND SIMON MABALNE CAN ONLY BE RIGHT OVER THE UNCONSTITUTIONALLY PRESUMPTIVE SALARY SHUTDOWN BY Mr MASONDA AGAINST PHIRI FOR ZUMA IN JULY 2014

12.           The Mabalanes I know

13.          The blessings of the mabalanes as Phiri’s fellow human race.

14.     The Lord God has since 1984 blessed me with a plethora of our our Tswana subject people called the Mabalanes.

15.   I call them a “subject people” because the area where the Mabalanes I know come from is traditionally ruled by no other Chief but Goodman Manyanya Phiri’s own clansman: a ‘Chief Phiri’.

16.   This fact alone is one of the reasons whenever I hear someone called “Mabalane” I quickly relate with him and treat him or her as a brother or sister since, if we forget about tribalism (“I am a Tswana Mabalane and that one is can’t be my clansman becaue he is a Xhosa Mabalane and Goodman is an ethnic-Malawian Phiri and therefore cannot be the same traditional chief who rules me back at my traditional home is very asinine indeed, to say the least.

17.   To cry out loud, Good people still wet behind your ears from apartheid retrogressive teachings: we are one people as African continentally,and we are one people as human beings peopleing the Planet Earth.

18.    

18.1.1.    Anti-constitutional Tribalists and squealers who want on this 2014 or even 2015 post-Apartheid South Africa to gain cheap promotions to ranks Zuma’s SANDF Brigadiers General (one too many of such tribalists has unfortunately already emerged for Phiri from the Mabalane extended family forget that most surnames on earth are older than the ethnicities or nationalities where such surnames are to be found are in most cases very much older than the nationalities or ethnicities where they are to be found.

19.   For that matter, Phiri is the classical example as no othe surname on earth will be found older than Phiri.  This is so because PHIRIS/PHARAOH/PEARYS (A clan name that means “Fire”, “Mound” “Mountain” “Wolf” or “Hyena”) long before the babel of toungues began and the globe was scattered with our species since speaking different languages. Phiris ruled the Earth long before exoduses of people from Africa began and long before skin colours changed  TO BLACK, BROWN, PINK, GREEN OR WHAT-HAVE-YOU as, because of geographical isolation and even some lives in caves of the world as a definition of some nationality or ethnicity.

19.1.And Phiri ruled the globe even longer before current African nationalities like Batswana, Zulu, etc came to the fore.

20.   As such, I totally fail to under stand how one of the Mabalanes I know find it within his or her conscience with the full consisteny of his godliness stemming from the Phiri clan that rules his or her soul to make it his or her duty to go and blurt out pure lies about hiw own traditional Prince Goodman Manyanya Phiri to the SANDF Mandelasque-Xhosa-tribalists these days marshalled by Mr Jacob Zuma previously Thabo Mbeki  previously Manela himself.

21.   I need to say though that from the day I first came to know a Mabalane from the same extended family that even on 2014 is on my case trying to gain promotion with Zuma SANDF with the lie Phiri walked into some SANDF office in 2014, WARNINGS ABOUNDED ABOUT THIS FAMILY AS BEING ALIVE WITH APARTHEID-ERA SPIES AGAINST THE ANC by 1984.  And comrades were telling me left right and centre never to befriend a Mabalane if I wanted to survive the anti-Apartheid struggle.

22.   However, it is never prudent intelligence work to avoid contact with those that you suspect of working for your enemy.  You have to eat with the devil and never allow the pusillanimous side take the better of you.  War by its own definition is not for cowards.

23.   As such, no clan name in South Africa today knows more than the collective Mabalanes about the most intimate details of my career as a soldier of APLA, MK, APLA and SANDF.  Chief among those in the know are

24.   Mr Eric Mabalane Eric is in the know because he works in the same corps as I.  He has been with me through a military college course or two and knows how my head works just as I know how his does.  Eric also knows the conditons of my suspensions in and out as well as how to manipulate them for my destruction or salvation, whatever his proclivity of the day is.

25.The exiled Simon mabalane a.k.a. Earl

26.   The other Mabalane who bears intimate knowledge of me is Eric’s uncle, Earl Mabalane, More officially known as Mr Simon Mabalane: Simon Sekgokgo Mabalane. Simon, at some stage available on +270795124384 was born Friday, 12 August 1955

27.   As of this Year 2014, Mr Jacob Zuma will not hold any serious state function without inviting the participation of Mr Simon Mabalane.  They got acquainted with each other during the years of exile both of them, like myself, operatives of the Intelligence Corps of the broad liberation movement the ANC and the PAC.

28.   Simon was one of the MK forces uncharitably known as imbokodo, which was some kind of counter-intelligence militia of the ANC.  They were used to root out Apartheid spies from the ANC but the problem was: they themselves were too highly infiltrated by real Apartheid spies to do anything better for the ANC save to murder their own if very patriotic comrades who dared stand for what the ANC itself in precepts (inclusive of the more non-partisan Freedom Charter) stood for e.g. the eradication of tribalism which was rampant in those camps in the form of Mandelasque-Xhosa Tribalism.

28.1.1.    When ordered by the Zumas, the Andrew Masondos etc, to kill you for your stand, to toruture you or simply to assault you with results of gross bodily harm, the Simons would have neither squaable quibble nor scruple in taking the order without asking the question why? what proof? or what rights does the intended victim have in international law prior to the drastic measures to be taken against him or her now?

29.   Except what I have been told of his personal excesses at the expense of human rights in ANC exile military camps, I do not know much about Simon’s personal involvement in those dastardly deeds, although I do see no reason why he would have otherwise have kept his job so closest with the Zumas and the Tambos (two of the to-the-death believers in the asinine theory of intellectual and political superiority of Xhosa-speakers as authored by Nelson Mandela) had he not been an exemplary member of the imbokodo.

30.   I had heard for an example that Simon was one of the Apartheid agents within imbokodo and a fact that the ANC ultimately discovered and wanted to punish him for it whereupon he escaped to the USA in order to avoid the said punishment. But on being confronted about this, my friend Mr Simon Mabalane was to tell me yes it is true that he ended up going to do privat work abroad.  Yes it is true he made enemies with the ANC in exile.  But the real reason for the enmity, he says: was because of his leniency towards discovered enemy agents. He did not believe in beating up people or killing them for participating in a war game which is what Umkhonto weSizwe and the SADF were all about.  You do not kill any enemy force, he says, when he surrenders or even confesses to having been sent by the enemy.  But many of such people were killed cruelly in the camps, says Simon. And he disapproved of that, which is why he ended up being persecuted by his own comrades and the resultant flight to the USA on this part.

31.   I know a lot of what Simon Mabalane talks about whenever he explains his past to me.  For an example, in the 1984 when I first made acquaintance with him, he used to work at an office called something like “The Castle”, “The Mansion” or some similar word in Portuguese.  This was a double- or triple-story WHITE building right in the middle of our Angolan military camp of Luanda, Viana.

32.   The Castle was the most conspicuous target for any enemy fire.  And there were countless enemy forces around the camp, what with Angola’s erstwhile Civil War fought by Unita’s Jonas Savimbi who was a well-known lackey of Pretoria against the ANC.

33.   “Why must these comrades enjoy sleeping in that tomb called The Castle?” I one day asked a Zulu-speaking comrade who was doing animal husbandry for our Viana Camp.

34.   His small eyes turned into a pair of  WWII buttons on the heavy jacket worn by Adolf Hitler.  His mouth, propelled by a jawbone somewhat dislocated ostensibly from previous assaults by imbokodo the soldier’s facial appearance left nothing between  reality and the imagination of watching the posterior of a bird answering back.

35.   “First I was assaulted over my face and other parts of the body for being a Zulu.  Your great buddy comrade, Earl, was part of the group that injured me.

36.   “Secondly, I was assaulted for that very question you are asking now Terence Qwabe: why a tall bulding right inside our camp should be allowed to stand on, and worse be painted white

37.   “So be very careful with your questions around here.  You are still too young to suffer the fate some of us have suffered”

38.   I was 23.  I did not understand why he though of me as a boy still.  I did not understand either how of all people, Earl Mabalane could have been part of a feeding frenzy among a pack of wild dogs attacking a man for no other reason than being his own ethnic self.

39.   But slowly and surely I finally discovered the truth. The Castle, just like many other similar structures in MK camps in many other areas in Africa, were said to be actually the safest areas should the enemy be targeting that camp!

40.   The enemy knew that own forces would be sleeping in those structures and would do its best not to hit such!

41.   Although I have asked my friend Simon Mabalane a lot of things about his past, I have nonetheless never asked him about his alleged panelbeating of that comrade.  He will be reading about it for the first time here.

42.   I must say Simon was very good to me, really.

42.1.1.    First, he was among the first camp officers who quickly spotted my knack for English and short of recommending me for a journalism course that I go work for MK’s and ANC’s Radio Freedom, said I should help Viana Camp with the preparation and analysis of Current news and events from South Africa.  The guerrillas simply swooned over my pronunciation in the English Language: they said it was deeply African, erudite but unaffected.

43.   Simon Mabalane then went to Comrade Chris Hani (he was MK Commissar) to suggest I was being talent wasted in Angola where Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania could make better use of stuff like my Queen and my analytical powers.  That is how I surprised everybody (most of whom had been to Angola for more than 10 years despite wishing otherwise) when within two years of being flown thereto by Mr Jacob Zuma, Comrade Chris Hani jetted me out for Tanzania.

44.   This is not all to say I was unaware of Simon’s company like a Zulu-speaking guy who went by the name of Sishi.  Sishi was the man who debriefed me on my arrival in Angola and he shared The Castle with the likes of Simon, of course.

45.   Sishi was roughshod, blank and directionless for every single interrogatory he held with me.

46.   “Yesterday I received information you were selling drugs in South Africa but you did not mention that fact in your biography will you now tell me why?”

47.   “What drugstore?” I asked surprised. “I’ve told you I’d been schoolteacher on farm schools called The Gem and Khutsala both of them neighbouring schools in the Transvaal.  Never worked at no dispensary in my whole life.”

48.   “Drugs!” bellowed the dark-brown lanky Sishi in his blue jeans, and pinstriped  white and blue shirt.  “I mean hardcore drugs…you wer selling cocaine and mandrax, Mr Terence Qwabe!  Just admit the fact and we forget about it”

49.   “OK,let me put it this way for you.” I said alarmed.  “I have never sold anything in my entire life except timber.  My father was a lumberjack and so I helped him every so often in his kind of business.  I guess the drugs they told you about were some kind of stuff some smart scientists might have extracted from the resin of those gumtrees and wattle trees.  But my last information was that the timber my father and I produced were destined for Johannesburg  where it helped in the mining sector.”

50.   “Resin extracted by smart scientist, you say?” Sishi said clearly infuriated.  From that first floor of The Castle he dragged me by the upper arm to the nearest window.  “Listen, Chum: we are not talking about smart scientists here.  We are talking about your smart ass.  See that ship container over there?”

51.   I saw it all right.  It was one of the containers said in hush hush tones to have kept a guerrilla incommunicado until he suffocated to death with neighther food nor water but quanta galore in their gazillions hitting the roof from the Sun enough to dissuade even the most spiritually-Spartan  Sharack, Meshack or  Abednego from daring the roof of that metal.

52.   And when the lifeless body of the man was removed from the shipping container, Simon Mabalane’s and Sishi’s Camp Commander Pro in full view of his lieutenants, put a slug into its brains prior to sending the body over for post-mortem by Angolan authorities.

53.   “The man was already dead…what did you do that for, Commander?” one of them asked in disbelief.

54.   Nonchalantly, the reply came: “The man did not suffocate.  He died in combat.  So,  can’t you see I am making post-morterm easier for the Angolan authorities?

55.   That, then, was for the Jacob  Zumas , the the Xhosa-speaking Andrew Masondos and the Simon Mabalanes,the meaning of putting a querulous soldier like Goodman Manyanya Phiri incommunicado  on the year Eric Arthur Blair futuristically,  dedicated an entire fictional masterpiece.

56.   I swear George Orwell (1903-1950) must have been there with me in that military camp of South Africans in Angola in 1984 when he ominously wrote the classical book: “1984”.

57.   Thirty years down the line, George Orwell is still among us South Africans here in Pretoria busy writing his other Classic “Animal Farm” where even though the South African constitution clearly stipulates that we are all of us equal and there is no racial superiority based on colour creed etc.  Jacob Zuma is still allowed by this nation to propagage the teachings he imbibed from Nelson Mandela that Mandela’s  fellow-Xhosa-speakers are innately superior (akekho ofana nabo ongeyena UmXhosa noma UmXhosakazi a smessage propagated in the Indoctrination Song: “Nelson Mandela Nelson Mandela akekho ofana naye”) to cher South Africans and anybody who exposes their misdeeds should be hunted down and persecuted for decades like this writer is.

58.   Even now, for the Jacob Zumas, the Xhosa-speaking Templeton Temba Matanzimas and the probably equally-Xhosa-speaking Snake in the 2014 SANDF grass, and and their indispensable Mabalanes STILL the meaning of putting a querulous soldier like Goodman Manyanya Phiri incommunicado  hence the shutdown of my salary in July in order to coerce me into coming over for the dastardly purpose.

59.   Sishi and I presently returned to our  respective seats with me rattled but not cowered. How could I get locked up incommunicado for saying what what I know for a fact which is I never sold contraband in South Africa?

60.   “Now, Terence.” He started.

61.   “Yes, Comrade.”

62.   “You are coming from 6-months’ detention in Mozambique where Comrade Zuma found you behind bars for crossing illegally into Mozambique, right?”

63.   “Right!”

64.   “And you said to the Mozambicans you were looking for the ANC.”

65.   “No, I was looking for the PAC, but if the PAC was nowhere to be found in my immediate exile the ANC was equally good since the two organizations in my view fought for the same goals.”

66.   “Do you know that the PAC was founded through CIA connivance and to this day is still being funded chiefly by the Americans?”

67.   “I am not in a position to answer you there.  I guess the same thing can be said about the ANC too, that it is a tool of this or that other superpower.  It is not for us soldiers to sit and unalyze such propaganda.  Ours in my view is to serve the people of South Africa through those organizations but not to serve the organizations per se.”

68.   Then Sishi hit me once again with one more of those banal qustions: “Who told you that the ANC, unlike the PAC, was to be found in Mozambique?”

69.   “I did not know that the PAC was banned in Mozambique, if that is what you are telling me now by implication. But the presence of ANC in Mozambique is common knowledge to anybody who listens to radio.  The ANC’s own Radio Freedom broadcasts to the entire South African nation the fact, especially after the Amatola Raid by the South African Air Force.  So why shouldn’t I know things known even by schoolchildren.”

70.   “Terence, I think you had better go for today coz I don’t think I’m am in a right mood to take the impudence with which you respond to my questions.”

71.   This interview was of course condacted in Zulu, a language in which both Sishi and I were proficient.  And as I stepped out of The Castle I remember feeling like a naked man garlanded several live eels fresh from the waters just when I said goodbye to my sauna.

72.   For that matter, as I entered my tent shared with members of my section with whom we had all flown in from Mozambique the question from every mouth was “Who?” “Who?” “Who?” “Who?” and “Who debriefed you so you look this awful?  Wasn’t your friend Earl around to soften matters a bit then?”

73.   “I am not aware if Earl is a recording officer, too. But I was with Comrade Sishi”

74.   “Yuck!” came the response.

75.   Ten years after that conversation I[1] was, coming from one of my regular broadcast recording on Radio Tanzania Dar es-Salaam for the Voice of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and its Military Wing the Azanian People’s Liberatin Army, I was to overhear a conversation led by one acquaintance of mine from Angola:

76.   “…And so the mother, fresh from South Africa visited him…the Boers have no problem these days allowing our parents to come and see us.  It was great for the man to meet his mother again and hug her and the other comrades joined in the merriment as well as in entertaining his old lady until the following day when she was due for return home.

77.   “However, the tragedy started to unfold when the mother was about to leave on the following morning and apparently somebody had apprised the mother of the dude’s doings in particularly Angola.

78.   “As he hugged him again goodbye, she threw the cat among the pigeons with the question: ‘What is this imbokodo my child said to be your organization within the ANC organization?  Whatever you do in that shit organization of yours, please you don’t personally get yourself killing innocent souls of South Africa and I am talking like your mother who knows the bad reputation imbokodo has earned in KwaMashu, Emlazi, Emdantsane, Soweto, Mamelodi and whatever other South African township as the slaughterhouse of our children in exile.’

79.   “The mother had been gone hardly 3 hours when a shot rang in his bedroom and when the comrades rushed in check, they found him bleeding to death from a bullet wound in the head.”

80.   I could not hold my curiosity: “Who?” I asked.

81.   “Who?” “Who?” “Who?” “Who?” everybody seemed to be saying that same word back to me, until a bosom friend of mine I had also been to tertiary with on my 1992 Diploma Course in journalism saved me from the misery and the mystery of that deja-vu

82.   “We are talking about one Sishi, here, my friend Mordecai King.  He tells us how and why Sishi committed suicide rather than face a slow process of personal atonement for having listened to the dirty politicians in our broad liberation movement who will use us to commit heinous crimes for them, and crimes that stay on our conscience till the day we die unless we are brave enough to recompense.  You knew him, Mordie?”

83.   “He knew him all right, Monde!  First I did not know that Terence Qwabe for the ANC is Mordecai King for the PAC.  But…” he said standing up to hug me in greeting. “Whatever you call Terence, he survived only by the skin of his teeth from being Sishi statistic Angola in 1984!”

84.The repatriated Simon Mabalane a.k.a. Earl AND HIS SISTER’S BASTARD OF A SON KNOWN AS ERIC MAGOMA MABALANE

85.   I had totally forgotten about the person of the Earl I had met in Angola in 1984 until I hit the military training area of Lohatla.  I was there for my All Arms Training a course in the SANDF done by Army Captain[2].

86.   For that matter, even though I knew a bit of the Mabalane history in general (other than from the Eric and Simon branch) I do not even recall having known that the Earl I had met in Angola  several years before was a Mabalane too, even though, he (having had access to my confidential records must have known I was Phiri ‘and therefore chief to his Mabalane clan’ not the Qwabe clan I was using for my nom de guerre).

87.   Here is how this realization hit me home.  The 35 or so students on that course could of course not have been captains only.  For starters, there was I whous was already a lieutenant colonel even from day one I in 1998 integrated with the SANDF. (I was there to fill up my lack of hard-core military training after a whopping 15 years lost in exile and back in South Africa because, among others, Oliver Tambo [ANC 1983-1987 in Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania), Clarence Makwetu [circa 1992-1998 in Tanzania and South Africa], and Nelson Mandela [1994-1998 in South Africa]) were clearly doing everything in their power to wish me away because of this sole aberration I was in their eyes: a man who could stand for his own cause even though he was no native Xhosa-speaker!  I think I simply frightened these leaders too much.

88.   Even as I write this I shudder to think I have no clue from the secular world what it is in me that sends big people wishing I did not exist.

89.   Like any other pedagogical centre, military schools and their classes elect monitors or committees to lead those students in order to facilitate communication between students and instructors.  However, the Army brings a complication in that matter because of rank.  The army would like to make officers under instructions (students) a.k.a  OUIs  know that while they are students at at an Army College, they are equal and devoid of ranks.  This is in practice bunkum[3].

90.   Now leading other students while you are naturally also studying is no mean matter.  Now I was on Day One fancied by the other students to become their Student Committee leader and I tendered an apology in advance because I wanted to concentrate on my military studies in which I knew I was very weak having not been given the Tambo-ANC’ opportunity to go study military in Russia, Germany or the many other countries; having been denied the Makwetu-PAC to go for military science study in China, HERE BACK IN MY MOTHERLAND SOUTH AFRICA WAS MY FIRST EVER SERIOUS CHANCE OF ACQUIRING MILIARY SCIENCE IN PRACTICE AND I WAS NOT GOING TO LET POPULARITY STAKES HINDER MY WAY.

91.   In any case, there were many other senior officers with us there.

92.   Examples a Lieutenant Colonel Mkhentane (ex-APLA like myself hailing probably from Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape why not pick him for your Course Chairman, Captains?)

93.   Lieutenant Colonel Lanti Mokgoatsane ₊₂₇728957371 of Atteridgeville Pretoria, born Saturday, 29 September 1956 (How about him for your Course Chairman, Captians?).

94.   There was even a full colonel on that course an ex-APLA gentleman like myself who previously, if many decades before, had been on one stage a bodyguard to exiled PAC Leader maverick Comrade Potlako Leballo (and so Come on, Captains, there is a real ‘terrost’ if you need one, but please leave Phiri out of the race.)

95.   I succeeded to stay off the leadership and the committee was well elected and started the onerous task of establishing itself and flexing a modicum of authority.

96.   But the ugliest of things started to happen on that course, if for a reason I will never probably to know.  But what irked me was the fact that classes were never respected, probably because the chief of that course was, if I have my records correct, a Colonel Johannes Jacobus Steyn (Jaap)+27829275890 born Wednesday, 13 June 1956.  Now Jaap Steyn was a no-nonsense kind of a guy, the old-time soldier who took his military service with pride and the earnest the calling deserves.  Unfortunately it came to cost Jaap dearly in later years in an SANDF politicized by Messrs Mandela, Mbeki and now Zuma who apparently think that “being loyal to the government of the day” which is an oath all of us soldiers have taken “means accepting anti constitutional practices like corruption, fraud and racism within the ranks of this state asset as practised by one too many relatives of Mandela’s or Mbeki’s  or Zuma’s in uniform.”

97.   On my last count Jaap Steyn was demoted two ranks down to a Major. Stated reason and the reason for which he was  ‘successfully’ prosecuted chiefly because financial strangulation was applied in the process pretty much as in 2014 Jacob Zuma is  prioritizing the shutting down of my salary before telling what ‘crime’ I could have committed afresh in the SANDF: it apparently was one of those crimes related to behaviour unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman; and if my memory serves me well, there was even a woman involved there.

98.   However, officer-to-officer conversation in the SANDF will reveal that Jaap was targeted for his Spartan behaviour in uniform, mainly; and secondarily, as a knowledgeable officer who also took his role as a respectful but fearless advisor to his new General Officer Commanding the Lohatla School.  How I wish I were that black brigadier general (ex-APLA) who had recently taken over command of the Training Camp!  I would by now have learnt an entire military encyclopaedia into my head and been a better officer by now by lacing a bit of humble pie my more experience Spartan of a junior seemed to contradict me.I mean, when your junior from the standing army seems to contradict you…I do not care you come from what guerrilla Army APLA, MK, Sendero Luminoso of South America or Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda IT SIMPLY THERE IS SOMETHING YOUR ARE NOT GETTING RIGHT FOR THE SOLE REASON THAT STANDING ARMIES OPERATE IN A DIFFERENT WAY FROM GUERILLA ARMIES AND YOU CANNOT TAKE GUERILLA ARMY ACTITIVITIES AS JACOB ZUMA IS TRYING IN 2014 WITH PHIRI SALARY UNCEREMONIOUS SHUTDOWN AND APPLY THEM TO A STANDING ARMY JUST LIKE YOU WILL BE OUT OF YOUR MIND TRYING TO RUN A GUERILLA FORCE VIA THE SCIENCE OF A STANDING ARMY.

98.1.1.     

99.   So, what do you doif you are ex-Guerilla Brigadier General of massive Lohatla which is one of the best live ammunition training schools in the world?  You get time, preferably non-office hours, and haul your junior to some coffee bar or similar place and say to him or her: Listen,Colonel, break that issue down for me more slowly than you did in the last meeting.  Where did your general go wrong there, Colonel?

100.            Ninety-nine point nine percent he or she will tell you the hard cold facts destined to improve you and improve the combat readiness of your new-found unitary army, in this instance,the SANDF.

101.            But alas, these political appointees relatives of Zuma-Mbeki-Mandela, have neither the acumen for thinking that way.  Rather they will search and find the smallest slipup you commit in order to charge you, get you out of the way and, after shooting that messenger, they hope to live happily thereafter irrespective if the SANDF combat capabilities sink or swim thereafter!

102.             

103.       HOW I MET LIFE SHORTCUT SEEKER AND 2014 ZUMA WEAPON FOR PHIRI SALARY SHUTDOWN: BASTARD ERIC MABALANE

104.             

105.            I have digressed too much to continue on Jaap Steyn. Suffice it to say that the Course Leader for own particular course for which I had been cajoled for chairmanship, was another white gentleman, tall, lanky, hard-working but a lot jollier than Jaap.  His name escapes me, but he was of lieutenant colonel rank about whom I later was to hear so much of the grapevine he was emigrating to Australia which got me wondering how does a member serving hiw own country emigrate to serve another one.  Maybe  I should work hard to consult him and find out how to do this legally now that Jacob Zuma has, even though most unconstitutionally, fired me from his Army via the August-15 2014 salary shutdown.

106.            I will nonetheless for ease of following this story about the Mabalane family refer to that white officer as “The Australian”, therefore.

107.            The were some four or five other intructors who assisted The Australian in instructing our course.  Even Jaap, the capo di tutti capi had a subject that he taught, too.

108.            Once when our course committee had been elected (The Chairmanship had since gone to a white Major Kuun, if I remember well, and he came from the same unit as I in Nelspruit where our General Officer Comanding had been one Mr Derrick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi b. Friday, 28 December 1956 and a good man who, unfortunately, because fo his Xhosa-speaking background, was to be dragged into the Xhosa-speaking camp of self-professed Mandela-Cousin Brigadier General Bobelo, in order to victimize me as still is most probably the case with this new 2014 round of salary-shutdown-victimization involving Jacob Zuma’s Mabalane or two).

109.            Major Kuun did a sterling job as course chairman.  But the problem never left him and his committee.  And here was the problem.

110.            Whereas Jaap Steyn a full colonel, never had problems instructing the course.

111.            Whereas Lieutenant Colonel The Australian, too, never faced any problem instructing the course, the rest of the instructor walked the gauntlet of a daily 5 to 10 minutes after entry of lecture room with students chatting with one another without considering if there was an instructor in front of them. The lecture room was like a bar, and precious time was daily lost as the poor white major (it was mostly the white instructor majors who were subjected to this kind of treatment it was like they were not being seen).  With black instructors it was a bit different and better, probably because they are more experience in dealing with laissez faeri side of us blacks, and on entry into lecture rooms the blacker instructors had a lot more humour than the white insructors who tended to wear dour faces.  But we had not come all the way from Cape Town, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Durban; come to expose ourselves to the inclement weather of Lohatla only to watch one Eddie Griffin after another making jokes or military science, had we?

112.            Now one of the best qualities of a military officer is leadership and the initiative presupposed thereby.

113.            Here we were, I think for two weeks already after the course election sub-merged in a beer-hall situation when we were supposed to be probably the most disciplined class in the Republic army people, soldier, and for that matter, OFFICERS.  Here we had the poor instructor major once again standing like a doll in front of us for minutes unable to speak because of the student captains’s nonchalance and comrade P.K  Leballo’s bodyguard never raised a finger as I would have expected from the most senior student by rank.

114.            Even whenever the bedlam had subsided, any task given, any exercise instructed by the poor Major to get a principle cemented in the mind of each student, would be met by a wholesale and very impudent public copying of the material from one student at the back to the one to the front of the class. The majors instruction that it all be individual task simply falling on deaf ears.  We are black captains.  It is a new South Africa.  And you white major shall not tell us how to pass this course without our Ubuntu cooperation!

115.            I watched this canker and failed to fathom the silence of my fellow senior officers in class with me.

116.            Of course, I could not blame my three to eight other lieutenant colonels for not acting under those situations.  I had better blame myself, rather.

117.            Major Kuun was not blameworthy, either. He was only a major and as I have already indicated, the assertion of being without rank when you are a military student is simply pie in the sky and there is no way a major will stand in a class where I am a student too only to shout me me down for making noise.  There is going to be chaos if that happened.

118.            The third week of bedlam in class was halfway through when I regretted my pre-course stance of not participating in the course because my greatest fear of losing qualitative learning  time at Lohatla was now worse a reality than if I were course chairman   If I were course chairman, I thought to myself, I would have over and above my rank have had more galvanic power to stop the decline of this course which if allowed down its slope would probably have only 10 out of the 35 passing at the end of this course.

119.            If I stood up now and said: “Guys, cut the shit and concentrate!” what leg would I be standing on? I wondered to myself.  But before I could answer myself, I was on my feet, my hand raised to the white major in front of us requesting to have a louder say over the countless powwows in the lecture room.

120.            “Yes, Colonel?” the instructor major said, breaking his own silence for the first time in the first 3 minutes of his entry into Lecture Room.

121.            I walked forward and stood to the right of the major, facing the course.  The lectue room went as silent as a grave as I began to speak.

122.            “I do not know about you, my fellow officers, but I came here to learn.  I have to tell yo this: I have a very poor military background, and I am sure many of you captains and my fellow officers under instructions will know more about the Army that Lieutenant Colonel Phiri.  For that matter some, if not most of you, are going to pass this course even if you hear nothing from this instructor here.

123.            “But guess what?  Even thogh I know next to nothing about military science as yet, save my basic military training that I did in Tanzania, there must be a good reason why a joint Board of SADF, APLA and Umkhonto WeSiZwe found me in 1998 fit to wear the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

124.            “And now, if any single one of you here is curious enough to find out what the thing is that makes me tick for all seasoned senior SANDF officers from those various and disparate armies YOU SHALL INDIVIDUALLY, EASILY BUT VERY RUEFULLY, FIND OUT THE FACT IF YOU ONCE AGAIN MAKE NOISE WHILE AN INSTRUCTOR IS STANDING IN FRONT OF US READY FOR THE DAY’S INSTRUCTION”.

125.            I do not know where those words came from; and writing this in 2014 I can’t remember what I would have done if another noise-making session had happened again.

126.            All I know are the two facts that Firstly

126.1.                  I never did that for the any reason I wanted to be this black fellow who had desired to to toady up to the predominantly white establishment of the Lohatla-based College the making of which today can (and should) to this day not show me even one benefit that came my way as a result.  Rather I did that out of principle and would have done the same if I were a whiteman and the College establishment was black while most of us students were white like me.

126.2.                  The second thing I know for fact is: there was never ever again any noise in that class for the rest of our schooling course.  And when all of us passed and reportedly passed very well, The Australian Course leader said for about three times in his speech during our graduation that the stellar performance of our course (where usually one to five students will fail for every course and be expected to supplement etc.) “was thanks to the discipline of our course as initiated by Lieutenant Colonel Goodman Manyanya Phiri.”

127.            I have lived my entire life filled with nothing but praises for what I do among fellow men.  And I am hard put trying to remember a situation where a community vilified me for my intervenions.  It is so that whenever I do good I never plan beforehand to reap kudos from it.  I will put my shoulder agaist the wheel of a stalled truck out sheer self-interest and the interest of my neighbours.

127.1.                  Hence, as The Australian spoke, what counted for my mirth was the fact that Officer Goodman Manyanya Phiri had succeeded in fighting for a class environment where Goodman Manyanya Phiri could stand proud and say: “I have earned my All Arms Course Certificate, never committed fraud in order to pass it like too many of Zuma’s Mandelasque Xhosa tribalists succeed to do with impunity to this day.  Phiri passed without any use of any theoretical  Uncle Thabo Mbeki, Cousin Jacob Zuma or Nelson Mandela or whomever else Senior Politician to coerce the SANDF give me the certificate even where I could have passed.  I succeeded to do that for myself and for the entirety of the class that passed without one failure.”

128.            After the course we naturallyreturned to our various units and I find my reader asking: “but where is the Mabalane element to this story?”

129.            “Espera um momento!” as they would have said in the  Portuguese spoken in the Mozambique and in particular the Angola where I got my smattering of not only this one of many Latin Languages (Portugues), but I met my first Mabalane set deep in the current saga.

130.       DISCIPLINARY MEMBER FOR WHAT DISCIPLINARY INFRACTIONS?

131.            Two days of my haranguing of the class for making unnecessary and disrespectful noice in front of the instructor and in many respects on behalf of Course Chairperson Student Major Kuun, I was approached by Mr Kuun.

132.            “Colonel.” he pleaded.  “I have sat with my committee and we cogitated over your words in class the other day.  I must say we appreciated it very much you were so bold; but it is going to be a drop in the ocean if we do not coopt you into the committee.

133.            “Now, coopt me in what sense?  You are a Major Mr Kuun and I a lieutenant colonel.  How is this going to work out on day-to-day committee deliberations.  Aren’t I going to be accused of pulling rank every time I want to differ with view put forward by my Chairman?  This is indeed an awkward situation, Major.  I shoud have agreed to be Course Chairman when you guys wanted me to but now we in this jam partly due of my earlier stance.”

134.            Major Kuun responde: “No, Colonel.  You don’t have to fear such.  For that matter, there is no shortcoming of talent for my committee right now.  All we require is that stentor of your voice full of morality and authority respected also by the full colonel or two we have with us in the course as students.  It was for me particularly noteworthy that neigher of them said a word in opposition to what you said essentially breathing fire down the necks of all of us, including the full colonels themselves.”

135.            “OK, Major.  You can coopt me… as what you said?”

136.            “Disciplinary Member: we will create that post even though it currently does not exist and I will shortly announce to the course.”

137.            We parted ways with the major: he to his dormitory which he shared with another white student.  And I remained in mine where I was on my own.  Told you so!  Rank counts even if you are a student under instruction!

138.            One other curios thing I find recounting these episondes that took place some 12 to 14 years ago is that I do remember attending even one meetng of that Committee, Probably because there was not one single incident calling for disciplinary action againt any of the student.

139.            The onlyone that came closest to such was the incident of Student Lieutenant Colonel Mkhentane who, over one weekend out with us succeeded to nearly capsize his white Toyota Camry which reportedly ended up in a ditch.

140.            None of us his fellow students were in the car with him when that happened.  And there was no adverse effect on the smooth continuance of lecture the following Monday.  If anything, Course Leader The Australian had great time naming some of the routes of Own Forces’Advance after words like “Route Camry”, “Route Toyota” or “Route Boitshoko”.

141.            It was his car he had damaged.

142.            I was his free time when he damaged it.

143.            I was his money that he used to get it back on the road again.

144.            Such was the smoothness of that course and I am sure if any single one of my former classmates read this, they would bear me out them that must as of this writing be for the majority standing ranked senior Army officers as of this writing.

145.            What they cannot vouchsafe  to is the how part of my leadership capabilities and today I am letting the public into one of my my hitherto closely-guarded life secrets

146.            It is a godsend via one of my greatest bodily assets.  And I want to explain this in detail because my asset has been baffling me since forever, and half of the time a blessing and the other time a bane.

147.       WHAT AN AUDITORY CUTIEPIE IN THE PHIRI WOLF!

148.            I first discovered this ‘blessing’ 23 years ago.  I was thirty, strolling some one hundred or two metres to my hotel room in theSwahili-speaking Ilala Dar es-Salaam when two women seated outside spotted my approach and started an inane conversationi.

149.            “He is a cutiepie, isn’t he?” one said.

150.            The other woman disagreed: “Always too preoccupied... with his threadlike  writing…atakua kichaa huyu!”.

151.            She was pointing out the fact of my absorption with Sir Isaac Pitman Shorthand as a sign that I was in her view, predestined for a lunatic asylum.”

152.            They talked so loudly that I was convinced they were coaxing my response, an occastion to which I rose when I arrived at the porch.

153.            In the Kiswahili language I accosted the second participant in the tête-à-tête and said: “Hey, Madwoman!” I said poking fun at the fact of what she had said about me go crazy on Isaac Pitmans’s shorthand system.

154.            “Does any of your relatives equally afflicted even remotely resemble me, huh?”

155.            And while she was dumbfounded for a response, I gunned for the Cutiepie: “Nawe hapa Kipenzi umesema nani libwana haswaa?  Basi njoo kwetu Afrika Kusini nitalipa mahali yako yote kwa wazazi wako!” I accosted the Cutiepie first. 

156.            Both women held their heads within both their palms in utter shame.  Just as well neither of them had, unlike Mr Eric Mabalane or some white military students decades later in South Africa would, said any thing evil.

157.            Like I would do for two people in their tete a tete some 50 to 150 metres away, I had heard every word they had said from that distance when they said it!

158.            I never thought much of that incident until some seven years later on my intake into the SANDF in 1998, the integration.

159.            “Now we are coming to your ears, Colonel Phiri.  And all you do is press this button every time you hear the beep sound, OK?”

160.            Quite OK, I responded.

161.            The machine firt smothered my eardrums with its beep sounds.  Thirty seconds later  the siren was degraded to the aforesaid beep fit for consumption by a civilized human being.

162.            As instructed,  I of course kept on pressing every time I heard the beep; but presently the sounds diminished but not without the lower lip of the technician descending commensurately.

163.            Sergeant Major! I asked alarmed:   What Is Wrong?

164.            “You are having a fantastic hearing capability, Colonel Phiri.” He said “Great asset for combat situations and Lots f congratulations I say!”

165.    MY OWN HEARING DESTINED TO KILL ME SLOWLY

166.            Naturally, it is always great news to hear you have some claim to supernatural powers; it gives you some foolproof edge over your fellow human beings?

167.            WRONG!

168.            I guess in this respect that the greatest disadvantage for this gift will be when I lie dead in my coffin and later, my grave after my clinical death,of course pending the many other deaths which who knows may occur another whole year after the clinical one.

169.            For an example, I have heard from some authority that of the five senses humans have, the sense of hearing is the last to cease functioning in the sense that where normal people might for example be still registering sounds in their brains five days after their death, Phri will probably need 10 more day, thus hearing every earthworm scratching my coffin for a piece of me down there dammit and the footsteps of every tomb raider up on the surface!  And so maybe I should weigh the pros and cons of cremation and once and for all hear the three (maybe five) expected pop sounds in succession for my two eyes and one big one for my tummy if I shall have escaped a disembowelment for my organs.  Nasty phenomenon this death thing!  Just like its cousin, Birth!

170.            But hear me tell you about the other bane direct from near-canine hearing capabilities.  It is because of my surperior hearing capability that you are reading my blogs all because I in 2002 overheard three or four senior white officers coup against some black course chairman in another course I attended, and incident I reported about and thereby courted something like 13 false charges in retaliation for my reportage.

171.            As my years advance I find it more and more impossible to sit at public bars particularly in the black townships where they love their sound volume better with a the boost. And if you want to make me angry, just stand a street down from where I sit and write and converse with someone up the street or whistle at each other across my ears!

172.             

173.       ERIC MABALANE FAILS TO BELIEVE PHIRI A FORMER FREEDOM FIGHTER WITH COUSIN SIMON FOR COOPERATING WITH WHITES POST-APARTHEID.

174.            Now to the much awaited Eric Mabalane element to this story.

175.            There is until this element one thing that I had never known:  It is the fact that  one or several captains were apparently peeved no end by that memorable haranguing I had given the class at the beginning.

176.            I was to discover that chief amongst them was one Army Captain Eric Mabalane (at some stage with contact +27782138166) Mr Eric Mabalane a.k.a.Magoma (middlename).  Magoma was born Thursday 21 January 1965.  And here is how I came to know the fact.

177.            On the first or second day’s attendance for our All Arms Couse in Lohatla, Northern Cape, were were given each, some 5 minutes to self-introduce.  And the first to do so was Student the Full Colonel whereupon us lieutenant colonels followed to be in turn followed by majors and the majority captains.

178.            During my presentation I mentioned among other things that I have worked extensively with APLA, for some time also with Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) of the venerable ANC ruling party fo South Africa particularly in 1984 till 1987 abroad when I was in the midst of the likes of Comrades Simon Sekgokgo Mabalane, Tshepo Welcome Cheela (born Tuesday 06 September 1960 and my Camp Commissar at Viana Luanda Angola), Moreti Johannes Mojo Motau (Tuesday, 10 March 1953 (all SANDF men already then except Mabalane) as well as, among many others, Jackie Malebo (T.E. Maleboborn Sunday, 26 August 1956) one of our Dakawa camp coordinators in Tanzania where Motau too used to coordinate prior to Malebo’s tenure.

179.            I must have blown my trumpet too loud for Eric Mabalane because, the more days passed on especially after my cooption as disciplinary member, the more I read an unmistakable frown of dislike every time I had occasin to bump into the occasin for some mundane task or duty as my fellow officer under instruction (OUI)

180.            Wrack my brain though I did, I could for several weeks not place the frown.  Nor could I confront him (for obvious reasons) and ask “Captain, why do you seem to dislike everything about me?” upon which he would be within his rights to respond: “I do not owe you any constitutional or military duty to like you, Colonel Phiri”.

181.            However, hardly a fortnight passed after my last wrestle with the conundrum when abracadabra and eureka I triumphed into the  correct placing of that perpetual scowl on Eric Mabalane’s face peculiar to his presences in the company of Manyanya Phiri! .

182.    SUDDENLY ORLANDO PIRATES SCORED A FUNERAL FOR ERIC MABALANE

183.            Eric Mabalane did not know of this asset on my part.  Nor had I too begun to  appreciate its full potential when I walk another one of my 100 metres or two towards this group of six captains arguing over a point that at first was unclear when Eric, even though he could see me approaching in Zulu clarified for all and sundry (including my self) to hear:  “You cannot be arguing that this puppet of the Boers Phiri is right when he does that, can you?  But the worst thing I hate about him is when he claims to know my cousin Earl from the Angolan exile. When was this man ever in exile, do you think?  This colonel is a charlatan and fraud of the Boers, I tell you.  For example, you tell me why he is so comfortable next to white people when we are all of us still so distrustful of these people?”

184.            “You will never know a man’s hearing capabilities, Folks.” One of them said prophetically.  “So start shutting up now and lets talk about more mundane things that will explain our raised eyebrows? A funeral OK?”

185.            “No!” Protested the other captain in collaboration.  “The goal that Chiefs scored against Pirates, last nigh!

”

186.            “What a goal!”  “I believe it was the goal of the year!” “My uncle says to me over the phone there is no goalkeeper today who could have stopped that goal.  And even in the past it was only Pirates’ Patson Kamuzu  Banda who could have done so; and on a good day, Chief’s Banks Setlodi too.” “Banks Setlodi not of Moroka Swallows, then?”  “What do you know about soccer to ask?”

187.            “How are you doing, My Captains?” I greeted as I passed the coterie.

188.            “Eh.. eh.. eh fine fine fine, Colonel!” responded  Captain Mabalane on behalf of all. I later on that evening lay on my bed pondering that revelation.

189.            How did exactly was I rubbing Eric Mabalane the wrong way?  Did Eric at his age think it was more proper to have chaos at College where there was supposed to be quiet and imbibition of knowledge?  Or did I court and hug too much limelight for my speaking the other day.

190.            As for my supposed over-relaxation in the midst of white people and my fondness of speaking Afrikaans when I am with them aint this part and parcel of my constitutional freedom of choice and association I fought for.  Is the growth of somebody Eric Mabalane (somewhere there in Lucas Mangope’s Batswana Bantustan of Bophuthatswana where not one white face lived for kilometres away) to be superimposed on my growth at Lion’s Glen farm where at four I was a favourite at playing with all other children including  the farmer’s boys’s like Byron Jacob and his younger brother while their grandmother, a kilometre away from our Phiri home, never stopped lionizing and entertaining me at their house.  Surely, if white skins will bite black skins, my parents would have warned me there and then to stay clear of the Jacobs.

191.            My parents did not.  I did it myself out fear.

192.            Fear not of the white people themselves.

193.            It is the goose and their ganders who, with my height, threatened to gulp me down eyeball by eyeball.  They are the only creatures I have in my entire infancy feared more than I feared the dogs the Jacobs kept.  Otherwise, even during the thick of the Apartheid system that I and many other South Africans hated I do not have even one single case where a group of white people out of their racial supremacy belief targeted me for my anti-apartheid stance that I at high school or during my teaching years never hid.  I remember being persecuted by neithr white group nor a black group in South Africa as I must have indicated somewhere in my writing that the first time I experience even tribalism existed in South Africa was during my exile in the camps run among others by Eric Mabalane cousin, the Earl I am today finding out it considered a crime to Eric if I said I knew the bloke.

194.            It is the first time, and I believe also the last with the Zumas hounding me for decades and persecuting me for exposing Mandelasque Xhosa tribalism in South Africa’s Army.  Is their source of political power then lying solely on that brand of theirs for Apartheid?  If not, why are they hounding me with their Mabalanes day and night?

195.            From that day on then, Eric Mabalane kept his vendetta against Phiri alive, unbeknown to him that I was fully aware thereof.  And here is how I knew he was never letting up talking about me.

196.            I never allowed that night of pondering leave me motionless over a captain two ranks lower than mine.  I would not be left transfixed even if he were a major general as I will never brook malicious gossip when it comes to my ear.

197.            So the following morning, I singled out one of the captains who had been in the mudsling discussion aganst me.  He was Xhosa-speaking…and as a rule I tend to get along very well with Xhosa-speakers at any work environment unless they be generals and colonels who have got their high positions through the ongoing Mandelasque Xhosa tribalism.  Once again, I make no apology for disliking these Zuma lowlifes in high positions as Generals of Zuma SANDF just because of the gratitude of the Zuma who himself was a lowlife when he left Robben Island to be made by Mandela and Tambo Chief Intelligence officer of the ANC only to murder in exile even his fellow Zulus who were, like most people who like writer love the ANC too much to shut up as Zuma ‘lowlifers’ in senior government positions are killing with corruption from Nkandla to the National Defence Force.

198.            Of course Jacob Zuma is no ‘lowlifer’.  He is the President of the ANC and the lowlifes who did upgrades in a corrupt way for his Nkandla homestead were neverordered by him.  Schabir Shaik was never order by Zuma to pop candy into his open and insantiable mouth in corrupt ways.  And the K.K. girls (Khuzwayo and Khoza) he had illicit sex with around Johannesburg are the ones who in a sense raped Zuma by dangling their vaginas too close to the man.  And so, let us leave Jacob Zuma in the SANDF corruption Mandelasque Xhosa black racism raging on and reducing the national asset into another African rag-tag army.

199.    ERIC MABALANE THE MANDELASQUE XHOSA TRIBALIST

199.1.                  I was careful here not to confide in one Mabalane fellow-Tswana speaker as it would be tempting my luck to do so.

199.2.                  “Mfondini!” I brought in IxiXhosa the attention of one of those captains to me.

199.3.                  “Colonel!”. he responded, saluting with boot hitting the Lohatla crimson ground ferrous dust flew.

199.4.                  “You are overdoing the salute, Mfondini Captain; and I can always tell an affected move, you know?  At ease then!”

199.5.                  He stood at ease and grinned widely, shaking his head in chuckles as he did so.

199.6.                  I smiled back at him.  And the rapport was firmer than the iron under the ground of Lohatla.

199.7.                  “Kha undixelele, Mfondini: yintoni le kade ithethwa nguMagoma Mabalane ngam kuni apha izolo?”

199.8.                  Taking him that way to the coteries anti-Phiri indaba made him laugh even some more.  It was the most genuine chuckle I had ever heard.  Powerful too.

199.9.                  I discovered I was levitating from it.  And while I was still amazed, my centre of gravity lost to his laughter, a powerful  hand grabbed grabbed my wrist pulled me towards the westward shadow of that morning.

199.10.               Smile wiped off, the round face of the stocky captain took on a more serious look about, but not serious enough to erode his charmingly chubby looks which succeeded to confine the seriousness to the knot between his eyebrows.

199.11.               “For a long time I had wished, Colonel” he responded in his native IsiXhosa. “To talk to you about how you are being perceived by most of us captains principally due to the things that Magoma Mabalane tells us about you.

199.12.               “Most of the captains believe him because he talks from authority.  But I do not believe his stories about you because I know him personally better than I know you to be able to judge your motives in all your utterances and actions, Colonel”

199.13.               “I guess I know already what the captain goes about saying about me” I said.

199.14.               “Do you?”

199.15.               “Yep! Heard everything yesterday as he was lecturing you, Guys”  I said.

199.16.               “Uzakuva njani kade ungekho apha kuthi sithetha ngawe? Hayi kalokhu!” marvelled the captain over my avowed distant-hearing capabilities.

199.17.               “What I had wanted from you is a confirmation of my suspicions that very many of your captains will take of what Magoma says about me as the drivel that it is.  And I am glad you served my inquiry well”

199.18.               “Colonel, there are things that you must know though, and I am sure you do not know them”

199.19.               “Such as?”

199.20.               “What is your mothers maiden name?  and if you must choose identity between that of your mother and that of your father where would you go?”

199.21.               “Obviously my fathers.  He is the one who asked for my mothers hand in marriage.  He is the one who paid the bride price.  He was the sole breadwinner for my home ever since I was born till I reached majority.  And this is how our culture holds it.  What a question, Captain!”

199.22.               What if your father was a playboy who never married your mother and you were as a result brought up by your mother and her people?  The Captain me further.

199.23.               “No doubt again!” I said.  “I will be my mother’s people’s child complete with my mother’s surname and I will not care about him when I am an adult too and he a jaded oldman.”

199.24.               “That is the ideal, Colonel. It is the ideal.  I am an embodiment of those ideals, particularly because  my mother was no ihenyukazi.”

199.25.               “Wench?” I said shocked.  “That is a strong word even in IsiXhosa, Captain”

199.26.               “Yes!” said the Captain stretching to bring his mouth closer to the ear I was giving him with tilted head.

199.27.               “Captain Magoma’s mother was a wench, Magoma has grown to know the fact too.  He is bitter about that fact and in our midst as Xhosa-speakers he does not hide the fact that his biological father was a Xhosa-speaking friend of Nelson Mandela’s and he feels more accepted among us Xhosas than his fellow-Tswanas.

199.28.               “I respect his feelings and his choices but I do not like when he goes about breaking your image for no cause, Colonel Phiri coz all you are seemingly doing is is to smoothen the course for all os us as without discipline too many of us are bound to fail this course .

199.29.               “So I am saying if there is anything you can learn from a captain today: STOP ASSUMING THE ETHNICITY OF A MAN FROM HEARING HIS SURNAME AND US XHOSAS HAVE THE MOST VERSATILE SURNAMES IN SOUTH AFRICA SO THAT THERE IS NO EUROPEAN SURNAME WE DO NOT FIELD, NOR ZULU, NOR PEDI, NO TSWANA AND NOW WELCOME TO A MABALANE XHOSA.”

199.30.               “Captain, we are late for class.” I said coming out of the stupor the short uniformed men had subdued me with.

199.31.               “I am marching to class now with the Committee’s Disciplinary member to my right and a whole lieutenant colonel nothing will touch us, Masiye and let’ go!”

200.            From that day I understood how, Eric Magoma Mabalane’s maternal uncle, Simon, was such a highly-prized counter-intelligence member for Xhosa-speaking leaders of the exiled ANC and their minions like Jacob Zuma.  Orders straight from Robben Island with a Mandela missing a concubine or friend’s concubine, to be more precise!

200.1.                  “Now, Colonel: I never told you this or else my fellow Xhosas will kill me.  But “

201.    Eric Mabalane and  Day One of his Post-Lohatla SCANDALIZATIONOF PHIRI

202.            When I went to the South African Army College where I was joined by self-professed Mandela-and-Matanzima-Cousin Brigadier General Winnie Ntombizodwa Bobelo only to ultimately inveigle with her College Sweetheart Lentsoe and many others, the first tell-tale signs of Eric Mabalane’s vendetta was when once again the course approached me informally to ask whether I was prepared to stand for election as their course chairman when the time for such election came.

203.            I was unsure.  I wa hoping that the reason for my my subsequent regrets for my refusal at the previous course (of captains like Eric Mabalane who were anyway junior officers) were no more valid seeng that Junior Command and Staff Duties Course I was in right now for which I was once more coaxed for leadership was stuff for majors who are the first rung of senior army officers in the SANDF.

204.    PHIRI AND THE FOOL’S PARADISE WHERE THE FOOLS NEVER GROW

205.            Surely, if I stood for no election, no chaos even remotely resembling Lohatla could erupt even if the course could elect donkeys to lead the mature senior officers we all of us were.  And so, for the same previous reasons of wanting to spend most of my tieme studyng rather than committee palavering, I had decided to stay namby pamby about my choices of standing or not standing for that election.  I guess my attitude was: let me first get a good look at this group and decide whether they will for their seniority promise to act like real senior or they will revert to the actions of the dolorous immaturity in the juniority of captains’course in Lohatla.

206.            Eric Mabalane , who was still a captain when I went to Pretoria Thabatswane for my (JCSD) course in 2001, was naturally not there with us.  But his telepathetic presence was felt when during the thick of campaigns..it was in fact a one-man campaign for one Major Matli who hailed from the favoured Xhosa-speaking province of Eastern Cape who was being campaigned for.one day I drove into the College..I was driving in from home for day’s learning when two male major approached me again: “Can we campaign for you, Colonel?  We think you can make a good Course Chairman for us, far better than the Major Matli who is making inroads he is going to be the Chairman ultimately unless challenged by one as you.”

207.            “Felow Officers.”  I said. “Though allowed, and perhaps encourage by the College, the idea of  campaigning for chairperson of the Committee does not sit well with my conscience.  This is the Army, and if you are fit for a position then you are fit because of your know-how in leadership of the Army and not because of your campaingn skills.”

208.            “That is exactly why we came to you,Colonel, because we have seen signs of pure politics in this campaign by the Matli group and even though you are not campaigning, they on their side see you as campaigning because your name is on the lips of every second major’s mouth for that position. And I, as an ANC member and former MK soldier am here to tell you the things said about you in those corridors are not felicitous at all.”

209.            “Like…?” I asked, interest piqued.

210.            “You are supposed to be a yesman to white people and that is why you should never be allwed to lead this course.” misconstruance

211.            “Didn’t know I have to be a naysayer to everything white people say, either.  And if that is what they think of me..I know my comes from a misconstrual for my leadership role in a previous course at Lohatla where I worked in harmony with everybody including the whites.  But if for them a true coexistence between black and white is one of eyeball to eyeball confrontation,maybe they do deserve their Major Matli for a course chairman and let’s see where it will take them.  I will stand for election to witn all right but please don’t go into any campaigning for me.  I is just well below me to campaingn, for that matter against a major.  Anything else they say, in the corridors, my majors?”

212.            The white guy found his voice: “Ker..Ker..Colonel! Whah whah what disturbed me were-words like ‘Th…th.. th…aht PAC ker..hah..nel Phiri can..ker..hennot be allowed to lead a course like this under an ANC guv..government.’”

213.            “Ah!” the black major filled him up.  “I heard that one too.  It is like people must have seniority just on the basis of being members of the ruling party.  What happens tomorrow if a different political party wins SouthAfrica’s elections? Must all the generals who got promoted by the ANC lose their positions?”

214.            Election day came our three names were proposed (Matli, Phiri and a white student whose name escapes me. Major Matli beat Lieutenant Colonel Phiri by about 10 votes).

215.            A motion was put to the house according to our vote we be be for Secretary (Phiri) and I think Diciplinary member (the white officer).

216.            I declined to serve for two reasons: the kind of false gossips and poor politicking o so misplaced in the Army used in the campaing to boost Matli’s chances at my expense.

217.            Secondly I was not going to be speaking my mind in that committee, for if I did, once again, I would be accused of pulling rank as Matli’s senior, the colonel getting even by rank from the loss he lost against the Course Chairman the Major.

218.            I nonetheless pledged to support the Committeee as an ordinary student and I did even though I found whatever advice I gave to Major Matli over the year fell on deaf ears as he moved from one political speech pro-one political party in South Africa  to the next speech all of which, mixed with the sleaze and sex for promotions those who had campaigned for Matli involved themselves in, let to the ignoble racial explosion that made South African national headlines only  hush-hushed by the 13 false charges fabricated against me now as contained in my other blog.

219.            Eric Mabalane had won that Day One of his Post-Lohatla Campaing against Phiri

220.    Eric Mabalane’s Day Two of his Post-Lohatla Campainng Against Phiri

221.            Then there was a second sign that Eric Mabalane had never forgiven me for what I said or had stood for during our course together back at Lohatla.

222.            This is how it unfolded: When around Year 2005 his cousin Earl Simon Sekgokgo Mabalane flew back from America to integrate with the SANDF, I found myself occupying on the second floor of our Headquarters office, an office adjacent to his.

223.            Accident? Design?

224.            I did not know.  I did not care.   I was just happy to rekindle our buddy-buddy relationship started in Angola some 20 years before.

225.            Rekindled too, were the warning I had heard those many years before in Angola about Earl:.“You are a man of many controversies, Colonel Phiri, what with the Court case intitiated against you at the South African Army College during your JCSD.” went one warning initially.

226.            “Stay out of Colonel Mabalane if you know what’s good for you for we see you chauffeuring him around in your own Toyota Corolla, chauffeuring even his mother in law and even his children like Danielle whenever they want to do shopping seeing that Colonel Mabalane has no car.  He is fresh from America where he escaped when we had wanted to kill him for his pro-Xhosa-tribalism activities once when you were already gone from the ANC back to your PAC in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

227.             

228.            This man is bad news, Phiri,  we tell you!”

229.            For previously-mentioned reasons, I did not listen to their advice.

230.            Besids,there were far too many things I like about Mr Simon Mabalane than those I hated, inclusive of his squealing habits, which I never doubted.  I will towards the tailend of this part, say some more abot my pros found in Simon Mabalane.

231.            Now I believe by now as reader you will not doubt any of my statements suggesting that I have as black friends as white ones, and that skin colour does not even a bit determine my chances for selecting one as a friend or otherwise.

232.            I am not colour blind as some observerers have dubbed me; rather I am largely colour blasé!  I do admit, though, that there is a great element of selectiveness even in my state of disinterestedness about people’s cultural identies.

233.            If I find a group of five Swazi-speakers huddled in one corner and anothr five of Xhosa-speaker in another.  I will join the Xhosa-speakers for the purpose of a greater of learning something new.  There is very little my mother’s people can in comparison teach me

234.            If I find a group of five Sotho, Tswana, Pedi-speakers huddled in one corner and anothr five of Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele and Swazi-speakers in another.  I will join the Sotho grouping.  There is just too little my mother’s fellow Ngunis can teach me.

235.            Five whites win the day for me over my fellow five blacks.

236.            Five women will eat the cake for me, while my fellow man eat humble pie.

237.            Five Chinese make better sense for me than five fellow South Africans and I guess the day ET come visit the planent if I will still be alive, I will prefer their company to Homo Sapiens.

238.             

239.       SIMON MABALANE PATRONIZES MANYANYA PHIRI

240.            Anybody who has studied my character even in the most casual of ways will tell you that my attitude towards other races or ethnic groups is never affected; it is like when I dislike an attitude by a member of any particular group, I NEVER BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH OVER MY OWN FEELINGS.

241.            Now before I proceed any further I need to put you up to speed how well-travelled Simon Mabalane is.  Over and bove the  Americas he has been to Asia, in particular Russia and its erstwhile USSR.

242.            I believe there is about no country in Europe he has not been to.  I is my belief that among his stints for the ANC he has also been bodyguard for Mr Oliver Reginald Tambo, erstwhile President of the ANC, with all the globe-trotting attendant with shadowing a diplomat of Tambo’s stature.

243.            One thing I am trying to drive home here is: Simon Mabalane can never be accused of harbouring any hangovers over white people at this stage of his life.

244.            He has lived with them whites abroad and even speaks fluent Russian, for my unaccustomed ears.

245.            So, I immediately saw the  propaganda working of his cousin Eric when on one occasion of me introducing introducing  him to one of my white friends when the rest of that day revealed  a streak totally out of place for his character and experience with peoples of the world.

246.            “Phiri.” he asked me as I drove him back to his place.  “How did you start to befriend a whitey in the first place?  Don’t you know that the only whiteman worthy for your trust is a dead one?”

247.            I smiled and drove on but sought the best response to make him see I knew he was coming from the corner of his Eric Mabalane’s I said: “You know, Colonel.  I am an intelligence officer like you.  Don’t you know that supping with the devil is considered a strength rather than a weakness? Or you are telling me when you were in Russia you never befriended even one whiteman?”

248.            Simon kept his silence thereafter.

249.       MABALANE SHOWS HIS AGE-OLD IMBOKODO HAND ONLY NOW MISPLACED IN DEMOCRAIC SOUTH AFRICA

250.            Then came the sad discovery of hundreds of  all-non-Xhosa CVs that I found scattered in the streets of Pretoria.

251.            These were people who were applying for a job in the Pretoria based Correctional Services point which, too, not surprisingly is chockfull of Zuma’s Mandela people WHO ONLY GOT IN BECAUSE OF NO OTHER REASON EXCEPT BEING MANDELA PEOPLE!

252.            I confided in Simon Mabalane about the CVs which were now piled on my office table, complee with ID photocopies and residential addresses of the poor people all the way from Cape Town to Polokwane, Durban to Port Nolloth with the DEAFENING ABSESENCE OF APPLICANTS WHO CAME FROM THE FAMOUS MECCA OF JACOB ZUMA KNOWN AS MANDELA’S EASTERN CAPE HOME PROVINCE.

253.            The following morning my imbokodo-Zuma-ANC-1987-intelligence-hoodlum confidante of Phiri’s  was nowhere to be found at work during Roll Call!

254.            He had in fact taken a day off in order to leave Army Headquarters for Defence Intelligence Headquarters on Madiba/Vermeulen street to go report his anti-Phiri scoop over the CVs.

255.            The fact hit home when at around 10 he behind dark James Bond glasses and under a black leather jacket sauntered into my office trailed by two toughies similarly dressed.

256.            I stood up from my desk as form of salute to my military senior, but he as usual, cordially  insisted me to be relaxed in his presence.

257.            He then said most extraordinarily: “Phiri, here they are at last”

258.            “Did I invite these gentlemen?” I aked.  “Hello, Sirs!” I said stretching my arm which they each gingerly held.  “Do we know one another?” I asked the two pairs of dark glasses”

259.            Presently Simon Mabalane said: “I don’t think you will know them Phiri because they are underground, but they are here for those CVs.  You know of course that if those CVs hit the mass media it’s bad news  for it will paint the Xhosa-speaking Mbeki government as suppressing non-Xhosas from government employ as all ethnic groups of South Africa are represented in those CVs, except Xhosa-speakers.”

260.            “I know.” I replied feeling like breaking his face with one good blow  of my hand.  “But why didn’t yu tell me yesterday that those CVs were of interest to you?

261.            I would have saved them from the shredding machine for your friends to have.  But please don’t use the word to me again of underground people.  Just say Counter-Intelligence officer is sounds more professional even though I miss the point why CVs of of civilians scattered in the streets should be of importance to Army Couner Inelligence officers.  Or is it my possession of them that makes it a sudden Army concern?”

262.            None responded.

263.            “Anyway, ” I said. If you are really desirous of seeing what kind of stuff it was we can drive back to the streets and I bet you will find scores more others.

264.            We hopped into the car and drove up Patriot Street towards the direction of the road where I had seen far more CVs still lying around.

265.            Along the way, Simon Mabalane poked fun at my Phiri surname in order to obviously please and entertain his friends and show he was “in command”.  I was not impressed at all when he said I must be a real Phiri=Wolf if I had the capability of sniffing out from my office CVs lyng miles away.

266.            Even as we arrived at the main site where those CVs still lay scattered along the street, the three men who were in civilian dress just sat in the car while I, in full military uniform had to walk all along the street picking the papers for them.

267.            I know for a fact that some of those hoodlums he was with could not have been of anry rank higher than Major.  I have got a feeling it was a captain and his lieutenant.  They should have come out of the car and picked the papers they desired themselves.

268.            They would have looked better than I did in uniform  squatting all along the road in order to haul this or that bundle  of paperwork to take to their car.

269.            Even they could not finish the paper that were lyng n the street.  When they were satisfied what they had got, they drove me back to my unit lines and went their way with their precious Simon Mabalane.

270.            Ordinarily I was supposed to distance Simon Mabalane from that day on.  But strangely I did not.  There was something about him tht made me feel he was vulnerable, did what he did squealing on such nonsense as he had, out of dispair rather than discipline.

271.            Simon was not inclined to doing military courses, I sensed, and even as I write this do doubt if there is any course he did since my effective suspension around 20-12.

272.            He was a man who seemed contented with what rank he had; also a man who believed he could one day be promoted to Brigadier General by means only of currying favour with politicians like Mr Jacob Zuma.

273.            It was also like indeed he had been given the task of keeping an eye over me; but he was implementing the task with great reluctance.

274.            For the most I pitied him more than I was seething  for him.

275.            The pity also thickened whenever he was commanded to perform this or that task a walk in the park for any other colonel who had been to at least 4 courses prior to his rank attainment.

276.            Sometimes I felt like his senior gave him those mundane task in order to humiliate him and show ‘his total lack of staff-work understanding’.

277.            You do not  abandon a one on mere account that that he came the previous day to demand CVs.

278.            And so my camaraderie with Mabalane resumed in earnest even though, I almost forgot, the whiteman of whom Simon had said tome he is best befriended dead did return a favour too. “That friend of yours, Phiri, that Colonel Mabalane is bad news.  One can see it from his eyes; and one wonders how you get to be friends with such a man.”

279.            Well, one of the things that make Simon Mabalane tick forme is his status as family man. We knew each other’s families so well that on my second marriage I invited him to be the bestman.

280.            On his part, he introduced me to his better half, a senior  airforce officer; to his mother-in-law, a Zuluwoman who apparently hails from Emgazini in KwaZuu Natal, a particular area of KZN famed for origins of the Ntshangase clan.

281.            Needless to say, I also got acquainted with his two beautiful daughters, Danielle and Sandra.

282.            It is on that score that Simon and I parted ways when I left around 2011 for suspension.  No hard feeling to  write about, even though we clearly stood for different agendas in terms of our worldview for the SANDF.

283.            There  will be one thing though that I would like Simon Mabalane to ponder as he with God’s Grace I sow wish him moves on to greet Year 2015 n the company of his daugheters Danielle and  Sandra.

284.            “How does it feel to enjoy Christamas and New Year’s day with your children, otherwise completely resident with their mothers, while Lieutenant Colonel Goodman Manyanya Phiri,a father of a daughter as much beloved to her father as Sandra and Danielle has had to be given off for adoption because single-parent Phiri’s salary has been shut down because of the doing of Eric Mabalane in July, or the doings of Eric Mabalane in collaboration with Eric’s uncle, who is Simon Mabalane?”

285.            Or am I too imaginative to think that Eric Mabalane did not walk alone to some SANDF Snake in the grass to seek his own quick promotion to becoming brigadier general at the expense of Phiri, but did in fact first report to Cousin Simon, who, too much used to reporting Phiri for even nonsensical CVs in the street so even greater opportunity for raising the Mabalane name at my expense and as such went with Eric to corroborate whatever fiction Eric reported first to Simon in the month of July?

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[1] Nom de plume was Mordecai King

[2] I must stress the point once again that neither is Lohatla a state scecret to state in writing; nor is it a secret that Captian cannot be promoted to Major rank in the Army prior to doing All Arms Course.

[3] You will hear the same nonsense when you are going to face a senior military judge ranked a colonel when they tell you it does not matter if you defence counsel is a major or a colonel as officers of Court are durng Court session treated as equal.  Just see one blog post where I was represented by a colonel in Court and get your own feel if a major iin the same position would have challenged with the same vigour the travesty of justice Thabo Mbeki and his second in command had initiated against me as a coverup of Nelson Mandela Cousin Bobelo-Zini’s fornication for promotion in theArmy College.