A festive farce of ironies

NATHAN'S Pier frames Umhlanga Beach in yuletide festivity as visibly working class families nibble fried chicken and quaff fizzy drinks that match the effervescent sprays of the restless ocean. The jolly scene is crowned by a striking whalebone carcass artistically oxidizing in the salty wind and carefully cradling in its bowels teeming crowds seeking respite from the scorching sands and blistering sun.

Excited chatter in Sesotho cuts through the air. The first sight of the sea for the excited infants, perhaps? The melodious northern tongue is unfamiliar in these parts save for Christmas when Jo'burg descends on Durban like an invasion of merry ants. A smile is enough to trigger a conversation. "Jozi people, welcome to the kingdom."

The ice is broken and there's more in the ubiquitous cooler box. The pleasantries quickly shift to Jacob Zuma and Monday's fracas in the chamber. "Yoh, yoh, yoh," takes the place of Santa's "Ho, ho, ho." The visitors whip out mobile phones to show frame by frame, the MK Party defending democracy with their buttocks against the nuisance of a swarm of policemen and a rulebook-thumping Speaker of the House.

The motion of no confidence failed as Kwazulu-Natal premier, Thami Ntuli, clung to his government of provincial unity (GPU) with fingernails gnawed to the bone. Zuma had earlier sauntered into the public gallery in almost Caesarean expectation of crossing the Rubicon and triumphantly marching into Rome. He left early.

The sleeper cells in the ANC could not stiffen sufficient backbone to show their hand by voting with the opposition. They sat. The smack had all the subtlety of a fruitcake to the face. "What will Zuma be doing for Christmas?" one among our supine visitors enquired. There will of course be the traditional Nkandla party for the community's children.

Toys and treats galore. Lurking among the children's benefactors one suspects might be families cocooned in tax havens out of Interpol's reach, slicing turkey from feeding scheme funds. The consummate irony of charity.

Our visitors cackle: "And Ramaphosa?" He too is holding on for dear life. The government of national unity (GNU) is a contradiction in terms but the best of a bad roll of the dice. Fresh from the global spotlight of Johannesburg's successful G20, Ramaphosa will sit out Miami. He reduced a petulant and vendetta-basted Donald Trump to a minor character in world affairs during that fateful November weekend.

As the gavel came crashing down to announce the close of the summit, it was the sternest rebuke of a waning superpower imaginable. In yet another self-inflicted absurdity, Trump was not going to be inviting Ramaphosa to his party under the palms. And with that, the holiday season descended like a badly timed punchline, transforming international diplomacy into a grotesque holiday pageant.

Christmas, once a humble tale of humility in a manger, now serves as the backdrop for ironic spectacles that would make even Khanyi Mbau blush with embarrassment. It's a global comedy of errors. The epicentre of this yuletide irony has to be Trump's boorish unpredictability. Imagine the scene of a nativity re-enactment where the stable is gilded in garish faux gold and the shepherds are played by Secret Service agents wielding Uzis. Trump vows to "gift" Ukraine a peace deal by December 25th. He insists Volodymyr Zelenskyy surrender swathes of sovereign soil as if it were overstocked Mar-a-Largo villas.

Not to be outdone in the irony stakes, across the pond, King Charles's royal Christmas tree "sustainably sourced" from his vast estates stands as a monument to green hypocrisy. The bum-in-butter monarch who has spent decades lecturing on climate catastrophe from the comfort of his fleet of gas-guzzling Bentleys and the carbon emissions of his world tours will likely again warble his annual broadcast extolling stewardship of our precious planet.

Across the channel, France's philosopher-king, Emmanuel Macron, has added his bauble to the carbon emissions Christmas tree after a jaunt in Beijing, where he courted his counterpart over noodles and a few deals. Macron being out of town is relief to the perpetual French cynic who believes that the best leadership is no leadership at all. Pity that Paris has axed its annual open-air New Year's Eve concert on the Champs-Élysées due to heightened security risks and crowd control concerns amid what it calls a "very high" terror threat level.

A little further east where there's daily terror, Ukraine's  beleaguered Zelenskyy navigates the holidays like a tightrope walker over a minefield. With Trump's peace by Christmas edict dangling like a poisoned candy cane, Zelenskyy shuttled for truce talks to Berlin, only to be met by Vladimir Putin's icy rebuff. What is Putin's gift to the world this Christmas? A reminder that in geopolitics, "goodwill toward men" often translates to goodwill toward my territorial ambitions. Putin postures that Russia's goals will be achieved by diplomacy or by force.

The world is a reckless place. Law and order seems only to zero in on the festive beach party whose cooler box attracts a fine stiffer than its contents.

Kiru Naidoo is an occasional columnist.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Sunday Tribune or IOL.