It’s time to wheel out the guillotine and stop this game of Naughties and crosses

Ben Trovato 27 May, 2012

DEAR Comrade Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma the First, by the Grace of God President of the Republic of South Africa, Head of the Household, Defender of the Faith, Pastor of the Flock, Defeater of the Mbeki, Unifier of the Nation, Msholozi of Msholozis, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the Apartheid Regime and Owner of Property in Nkandla, I hereby greet you.

I am using your full title as I do not wish to be accused of disrespecting you. Please do not think all white people are the same as Brett Murray. Did you know that Brett Murray is an anagram of Merry But Rat? How appropriate. Point this out to your lawyer.

And did you also know that he has a master’s of fine arts degree from that bastion of white supremacy, the University of Cape Town? The title of his dissertation was A Group of Satirical Sculptures Examining Social and Political Paradoxes in the South African Context. I don’t know what this means but I know it can’t be good. That was in 1989, which means he was trying to destroy our fragile democracy five years before we got it.

The Merry Rat has also won two Irma Stern scholarships. As you know, Irma Stern was an Imperial Wizard of the Schweizer-Reneke chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Furthermore, Murray’s so-called art is harboured in countries like Austria (Hitler, anyone?) and Angola. If I were you, I would call up Lindiwe Sisulu right now and tell her that we march on Luanda at dawn.

Murray also won the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award in 2002. This is the same bank that summarily put a Fica freeze on my account last week. Say no more.

All you have to do, my liege, is join the dots and the picture will emerge. It is not a picture like The Spear, or, as my wife Brenda calls it, Mr Happy Pants. It is a picture of anarchy in the making.

Things are spiralling out of control and I urge you to impose martial law at once. Impose dusk-to-dawn curfews in our cities so that we may flush out the vermin who would roam the streets at night reciting dangerous poetry rather than stay home and procreate like patriots. Send your men into the bars. That’s where you will find the artists and the writers. Raid the brothels and arrest the intellectuals. Take them away and lock them up as they did in Bangladesh, Armenia and Cambodia. And let us not forget our comrades in the Catholic Church, who did such a sterling job during the Inquisition. We could also learn from China and Russia, here.

Anyone who does not pay you the respect you deserve must be executed. How are our relations with France? We should be able to pick up a second-hand guillotine for next to nothing. We could have beheadings in Sandton Square every first Sunday of the month. Actually, best we make that Saturday or the Christians won’t be able to come. But then the Jews will feel left out. How about Fridays? No, that won’t work either. The Muslims would be upset. Mondays, perhaps, when the unemployed need cheering up the most.

I see it was a Christian who obliterated Murray’s notion of what your honourable member might look like were it not sheathed in the royal trousers while out and about on public business. This is good. The National Party ran this country on strict Christian principles and there was very little misbehaviour in that time. There was also very little democracy, but Christianity has taught us that we cannot have everything we want. Capitalism, on the other hand, teaches us that we can. Sadly, this religion has fallen out of favour with working-class heroes like Zwelinzima Viva, although it remains popular among the communists.

Something troubles me, though. When God’s little helper, Barend la Grange, painted a red cross across the facsimile of the majestic member, why did he then proceed to do the same to your face? It was almost as if he found both equally offensive.

What you need to do right now, Your Most Excellent Excellency, is scrap the constitution and replace it with the Bible. The constitution is overloaded with rights for devil-worshipping artists, whereas Exodus 20:4 makes it pretty clear what the position is when it comes to creating craven images like Mr Happy Pants.

You might also want to give some thought to Enoch Mthembu’s suggestion. It seems the Nazareth Baptist Church supports the stoning of artists who dare portray the emperor with no clothes on. Murray may think he knows what it feels like to be stoned, as do most of South Africa’s degenerate paintmongers, but there is nothing like a half-brick to the head to encourage a new way of thinking.

There is also the Socrates option. In the first-ever recorded case of censorship, he was sentenced to drink poison in 399 BC for encouraging people to think for themselves. An outrageous notion, you will agree. Murray is an artist. He will drink anything you put before him.

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe made some very valid points about hanging racist genitals from the roof of the White House. I think that’s what he said. Many of us non-blacks can’t understand a lot of what he says. If he becomes president one day, he will either have to get sub-titles or we will have to move to Australia. The man looks more like Lenin by the day. Be careful of him.

There is one last thing you should know, Supreme Commander of all Roads and Traffic Lights: after the vandals had had their way with Mr Happy Pants, it looked to me just like a Rorschach blotch and I am ashamed to say that I saw a vagina where your head was meant to be.

Please send someone to deface the defacement.