I am not really sure that anything needs to be added to this article - clearly it says it all!
Regards
Nikki
December 31 2006 at 10:57AM
From the moment the Johannesburg high court heard that Jacob Zuma had called his rape accuser "delicious", it was clear that 2006 was going to be a gastro-political disaster for the ruling party.
With this phrase the trial took on a culinary element, with unsavoury personal and political implications for us all.
But it didn't stop there. In the past 12 months, the ANC kitchen cabinet has dished up a veritable smorgasbord of unappetising offerings.
Clearly the bitterness surrounding the beetroot, garlic and HIV debacle must top the menu. A range of scientific studies have shown that these foodstuffs are ineffective not only in the fight against Aids, but can be harmful to those with impaired immune systems
The raspberry foule that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, made of herself at the Toronto International Aids Conference in August was merely garnish for a much larger culinary catastrophe that has been stewing for some time.
In her obsession with garlic, onions, olive oil, beetroot and the African potato, the minister is playing, not only with her food but with the lives of other people. Clearly, there is plenty of reason to cry over the milk that has been spilt throughout this putrid debate, and the lives that have been lost while the milk in the pot was boiling over unobserved.
Wastage is always a key consideration in kitchen management. In June, the nation was served the unsavoury spectacle of the R96 000 epicurean extravaganza at Auberge Michel of Paul Mashatile, the Gauteng finance MEC. Mashatile told Justice Malala in the Financial Mail that this taxpayer-funded food fest was intended "to celebrate" the completion of the 2006 budget speech. Since it is his job to give such a speech, it is unclear why he felt the need to celebrate in such a spectacular fashion. And what was he celebrating when The Star reported his having spent R17 183,50 in two previous visits to this five-star Sandton restaurant? In a country where the most recent Statistics SA figures indicate that 4,4 million people are actively looking for work, it might be argued that Mashatile should consider going easy on the amuse bouche for a while. Perhaps he should follow the example of the deputy president.
We have recently been treated to a second helping of opposition outrage care of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka's curious preference for ridiculously extravagant "gravy plane" jaunts. Endless column inches have been devoted to jet fuel costs, but I think everyone is missing the central gastro-political point. Of course it is outrageous to spend taxpayers' money on a shopping spree to Dubai, but the woman went all that way and didn't dine at Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant, Verre, at the Hilton Dubai Creek Hotel. This shows an astonishing degree of gastronomic restraint.
I have no idea whether she looked at cranes, but I do know that there was calf's liver with fried polenta and fig vinaigrette on offer, yet The Star reported that she ate takeaways in her room. To follow that up with a second private gravy-plane trip to Edinburgh and not report back to the nation on the glorious Michelin-starred Restaurant Martin Wishart, makes her a model of gustatory self-control. Food and food-based analogies have dominated the political scene over the past 12 months. The food critic MKF Fisher once argued that "food, security and love are so mixed and mingled that we cannot think of one without the other". However, any society that has come to associate food with the withholding of essential medicines, sexual assault and extremes of material inequality is in deep trouble.
If anyone needs to contact me, they should call the George V in Paris, where I will be following the example of the Gauteng finance MEC and celebrating the completion of this article. Happy cooking in 2007!
This article was originally published on page 12 of Sunday Independent on December 31, 2006
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