Anal Ysis.

IN THE SUBLIME COURT OF NO APPEAL:

PRESIDING INFINITE JUSTICE THE CREATOR

HEARING THE CASE OF JUDGE CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON v. SANITY

 

CREATOR: All right, clear out the courtroom and fill up my gin and tonic. Obviously it’s going to be a long one. Bailiff, where’s the accused?

BAILIFF: His Malignity declines to attend on the grounds that it might incriminate him.

CREATOR: No change there. Where’s my assessor who knows how to handle loonies? (The GHOST OF SIGMUND FREUD becomes momentarily visible on the rear bench.) Hokay, we can try him in absentia and ex cathedra, as usual. Summon the accused’s defense counsel! (The court-appointed lawyer, BONZO THE CLOWN, flops through the door of the courtroom on gigantic shoes.) Stick him in the box! (BONZO instinctively protects his genitals but is dragged to the packing-crate which makes do for an accused’s stand.) I’ll handle the prosecution myself. Saves money.

BAILIFF: Bailiff says, silence! Bailiff says, all rise. Bailiff says, all sit. All rise — caught you! You’re out!

CREATOR: You shaddup. You! Bonzo! Speak, Bonzo!

BONZO: Say what?

CREATOR: Do you have anything to say before sentence is passed? Like, maybe, some kind of defence?

BONZO: But there haven’t been any charges laid yet.

CREATOR: The charge is gross grotesquerie in the matter of the Pietermaritzburg High Court and Jacob Zuma v. Justice and Common Sense.

BONZO: Meaning?

CREATOR: Can you in any way justify letting that scumbag Zuma off the hook?

BONZO: Objection. My client is not a scumbag!

ENTIRE PLANET: Yes, he fucking is!

CREATOR: Objection overruled. Answer the question, my china.

BONZO: All right. My client found that the President of the ANC had been unfairly treated upon two substantive counts: number one, he ought to have been consulted before he was charged, and number two, he was the victim of a conspiracy against him by President Mbeki and his Cabinet.

CREATOR: And your client will claim that he was sober, and not on drugs, and in his right mind?

BONZO: I have here three blood-alcohol test results and the sworn testimony of my client’s therapist.

CREATOR (interested): What’s all this about an addiction to wearing women’s underwear?

BONZO: I submit that the files may have become confused.

CREATOR: All right. Now, do you have any evidence in mitigation of sentence?

BONZO: What the fuck? I mean, you can’t sentence my client without hearing whether he did anything wrong or not?

CREATOR: Well, your client did that to President Mbeki, but all right. Have you got anything to say about count number one?

BONZO: It stands to reason that President Zuma ought to have been consulted before he was charged.

FREUD’S GHOST: In our desire to suppress the phantasy of innocence arising out of our denial of the excrement emerging from our bodies, we are driven to embrace the belief that we control the whole world and can do as we please. Hence our unconscious desires to have sex with everybody, to murder everybody, and to declare that we cannot be judged for anything.

CREATOR: No fair, Zuma’s already been charged with rape. But maybe you have a point, assessor. What in the name of Ahriman do you mean, “ought to have been consulted”? You mean that every criminal should have a veto over whether he is charged or not?

BONZO: What about women?

CREATOR: Get on with it, you slavering sexist. Can criminals always decide if they get charged?

BONZO: No, but they should be consulted.

CREATOR: Why?

BONZO: In case there is some reason they shouldn’t be tried.

CREATOR: Such as what?

BONZO: I don’t think I have to give details.

CREATOR: I think that’s a load of pox-ridden bullshit. What do you make of it, assessor?

FREUD’S GHOST: Those who abandon their hold on life must fall prey to the death-instinct and become destroyers of all that they once held dear. It is a natural response to a fear of the physical world which is driven by a fear of the mirror-image of the self.

CREATOR: Sounds as if you agree with me.

FREUD’S GHOST: No shit.

CREATOR (produces whistle and blows it loudly): Foul! Mr. Justice Nicholson is guilty of sucking up to the ruling class and pretending rich and powerful people are above the law. Which is perfectly true but you aren’t s’posed to say it. (Bailiff refills glass.) Can I have the envelope please? (Rustling sounds.) Mr. Justice Nicholson, you are the winner of the Golden Toady Award, a fetching statuette of a platanna in gold-plated activated sludge. If you do not collect yours, one will be imposed on you. Thank you very much — I love you all, have a great weekend!

BAILIFF: Sorry, Your Infinity, but there’s still Count Number Two.

CREATOR: Bloody hell, do we have to be here all day? Get on with it, then. (Waves a straight Samurai sword at BONZO.)

BONZO: Very well. Count number two: the conspiracy against Zuma by President Mbeki. Which everybody knows is true. You can’t deny it.

FREUD’S GHOST: That which is undeniably accepted as true by all is a phantasy rooted in early childhood. The two men are both images of the father; both must be destroyed, the better to get at the mother’s nipple.

CREATOR: By which you mean, the state sugar-tit?

FREUD’S GHOST: It is not so simple, of course. Nothing is.

CREATOR: OK, let’s have it. What evidence have you got that there was a conspiracy against Zuma?

BONZO: The investigation into the arms deal was a conspiracy against Zuma.

CREATOR: Let’s be having the details. (Several armloads of documents are presented.) Hm. Looks as if the investigation into the arms deal started out with the Shaik who was chairing the committee on arms procurement and who had links with Zuma, then went off to his brother, the Shaik who was Zuma’s financial consultant, and then went off to investigate Zuma. And Zuma was the man coordinating the whole arms deal. What’s wrong with the investigation?

BONZO: It was all very conspiratorial.

CREATOR: Knickers. Anyway, it turned out that Shaik had been slipping Zuma bucks and then got the credit-card license contract, and then it turned out Thint had been slipping Zuma bucks too, and that Zuma and Shaik had been dealing with Thint. Doesn’t that all smell fishy to you?

BONZO: Only if you look at it from the viewpoint of the conspirators.

CREATOR: Watch it, sonny. Then they charged Shaik.

BONZO: Yes, and that was where the whole thing went wrong. They refused to charge Zuma too. As my client so rightly points out, this proves that President Mbeki and the Minister of Justice were in collusion against Mr. Zuma.

CREATOR: How come did Zuma benefit from not being charged? I wouldn’t like to be charged.

BONZO: You do not understand. Mr. Zuma was, thus, defamed without the opportunity to clear his name.

CREATOR: Well then, why didn’t he insist on appearing as a character witness for Shaik? He could have cleared himself there.

BONZO: Mr. Shaik chose not to accept that.

CREATOR: Oh, come on. Mr. Shaik wanted to go to jail? For no reason? Pull the other one, it has an anklet with bells on it. (The Creator tingles softly.) What do you make of that, assessor?

FREUD’S GHOST: It is important to recognise the difference between the excremental vision and the counter-excremental vision; that which rejects excrement on the command of the Mother, and that which embraces excrement in defiance of the Mother.

CREATOR: You saying it’s shit? (FREUD’S GHOST shimmers delicately.) All right. Shaik went to jail. Where was the conspiracy in that? Judge seemed to be pretty sharp to me.

BONZO: Yes, but then Mr. Zuma again was not charged and was denied the opportunity to clear his name.

CREATOR: He was eventually charged, wasn’t he?

BONZO: Aha, but the charges had to be dropped because the Scorpions hadn’t prepared them.

CREATOR: Well, fuck my old boots. How was that a conspiracy? Sounds like incompetence.

BONZO: It was a conspiracy because everybody knew that the Scorpions had a strong case against Zuma. As my client points out, the charges against Zuma were virtually identical to the charges against Shaik. But then somehow when it went to court, the charges weren’t prepared and the whole thing collapsed. Very suspicious, wouldn’t you say?

CREATOR: And that was under Vusi Pikoli?

BONZO: Oh, yes. It seems obvious that Vusi Pikoli and Mbeki and the Minister of Justice were all working together to ensure that Zuma was never charged.

CREATOR: Huh?

BONZO: So he could never clear his name.

CREATOR: Now wait a minute. (Two railway-carriages piled with documents are brought into the courtroom along with a cartload of video footage.) Here is the documentation from Zuma’s court cases thus far. It would appear that every single legal activity his lawyers undertook was aimed at preventing him from being charged, or preventing evidence from being led in case he ever was charged. Do you deny that, on peril of your soul, remember?

BONZO: Well, if you put it that way.

CREATOR: So if there was a conspiracy to ensure that Zuma was never charged, Zuma must have been part of that conspiracy?

BONZO: It was a very insidious conspiracy.

CREATOR: I’ll say. What do you make of that, assessor? (FREUD’S GHOST shifts on the back bench and farts noisily.) I’ll take that as it comes. All right. That takes us down to the end of 2007. All this time the Scorpions have been amassing evidence but not making any effort to use it against Zuma, although they are making efforts to enable themselves to use it if he is ever charged again. What do you say about that?

BONZO: All part of the conspiracy.

CREATOR: And you say — your client says — that Mbeki and Pikoli were conspiring together against Zuma.

BONZO: There can be no question about that.

CREATOR: Until Mbeki fired Pikoli.

BONZO: Yes. You could say that the conspirators fell out with each other.

CREATOR: Over what?

BONZO: Over Commissioner of Police Selebi. Pikoli tried to have him charged with defeating the ends of justice. Mbeki then fired Pikoli in order to protect Selebi, and appointed Mpshe in his place.

CREATOR: So then presumably Mbeki was conspiring with Mpshe. To protect Selebi, and to prevent Zuma from being charged.

BONZO: That is precisely my client’s position.

CREATOR: But then within a couple of weeks Mpshe had Selebi and Zuma both charged.

BONZO: That must have meant that the conspirators had fallen out again.

CREATOR: Although this time Mbeki did not fire Mpshe.

BONZO: Well, no. But the time was very significant. It was right before Polokwane. That was an obvious conspiracy —

CREATOR: Hang on, let me hold onto my head. You are saying that Mbeki and Pikoli conspired to prevent Zuma from going to trial, but then Pikoli was fired to prevent Selebi from going to trial and then Mpshe came in and decided to put Selebi and Zuma on trial, against the wishes of Mbeki, and somehow this is all a big plan by Mbeki to embarrass Zuma at Polokwane?

BONZO: How could it be anything else?

CREATOR: And now Zuma is so concerned to go on trial so as to clear his name, that he has managed to win a court battle ensuring that he will never go on trial, and this is also part of the Mbeki conspiracy?

BONZO: I don’t understand how you can even ask questions — it’s obvious.

CREATOR: Assessor, your opinion?

FREUD’S GHOST: I would not take on this case. It is completely hopeless. No amount of therapy can resolve certain psychoses. In fact I would recommend euthanasia before the patient does violence to others, or possibly to the entire country.

CREATOR: Get out of here, you maniac. And take that confounded cartoonist with you. Court! Nation! Attention. (Sound of a hundred million boots crashing together.) We, by the power of creativity and creationism not to speak of intelligent design (no, absolutely never) do hereby declare that this joker Judge Chris Nicholson is guilty of extreme and explicit grotesquerie to the point that he can never be taken seriously again. And in the afterlife, may it arrive very soon, he can expect to devote eternity orbiting the planet Saturn inside this. (An iron coffin with spikes on the inside is displayed.) Meanwhile, of course, matters proceed as before.

BAILIFF: Bailiff says, all rise. Bailiff says, all fall down. Bailiff says, ah what a fall was there, my countrymen.

(All exeunt to take various psychoactive drugs.)