Like Bester, Putin will walk free should he be arrested

The bizarre tale of Thabo Bester, the criminal who is alleged to have run a fake media company from his prison cell before enlisting authorities to help him fake his death and skedaddle, doesn’t seem to have much in common with geopolitics. But as Vladimir Putin considers a visit to SA, they may yet find absurd common ground.

At first reading, the Bester story confirmed two things: namely that it’s impossible to underestimate the quality of the cadres employed to protect us from the Besters of this world, and that if you have any spare money you should send it to GroundUp, the admirable not-forprofit news organisation that uncovered and pursued the story in the face of stiff denials from said cadres.

It also made me think about the practicalities of another manhunt mooted by the local press at the weekend: the possible arrest of Putin, lately charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for essentially kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children.

The issuing of an arrest warrant was met with ritualistic outrage in Russia, where Putin understudy Dmitry Medvedev made a strong case for the ICC’s existence by threatening the Hague with hypersonic missiles.

But Medvedev’s fury was no doubt dwarfed by the grief and rage of senior ANC apparatchiks as they prepare to host the Brics summit in August.

Until last week that summit was shaping up to be a perfectly pleasant revolutionary love-in, a chance for the leaders of the global south, and also Cyril Ramaphosa, to reaffirm their opposition to Western hegemony and remind us all that no country should ever find itself in the grip of foreign military or economic domination or occupation, unless they are Ukraine or Tibet or possibly Taiwan, which obviously aren’t real countries anyway, a fact that you running dogs of Western aggression would know if you stopped asking so-called Ukrainians and Tibetans their opinion instead of listening to the all-knowing patriots on state television.

However, since the arrest warrant was issued, the event is becoming an etiquette nightmare for the ANC government which, being a signatory to the ICC, will now have to spend dozens of minutes planning the best way not to arrest Putin, whether it be to recycle the old Bashir Method of simply going limp for the duration of the visit, or else claiming they thought ICC stood for International Cricket Council and they believed they were signing a treaty banning the licking of cricket balls for the purposes of generating reverse swing.

Luckily, they’re not the only ones on the job. Last week, still flushed with the victory of having shut down entire floors of the Sandton City shopping centre, Julius Malema declared that there was no way Putin would be arrested in SA.

Malema has said a great many things over the years, such as that

Jacob Zuma was worth killing for, and that Venezuela is a model to emulate, and the EFF would win more than 50% of the vote in the 2014 election, and Busisiwe Mkhwebane was a good choice for public protector, and Cyril Ramaphosa would never be president, and then, once he was, that he wouldn’t get a second term.

In this case though, Malema is absolutely right. If Putin comes to SA he will not be arrested because in SA almost nobody is arrested. Indeed, as gobsmacked journalists picked over Bester’s deceptions, none seemed to spot the most statistically unlikely event of all, namely that Bester had been arrested, convicted and sent to prison for a crime in Bheki Cele’s SA.

There’s also the practical matter of who’d be doing the arresting. Given the calibre of the officers the state allegedly dispatched to André de Ruyter to record his objections to being poisoned, we have to assume the ICC warrant would be carried by two constables who’d make Cele look like Hercule Poirot; an unwitting Abbott and Costello recreating classic comedy as they tried to fill in the docket: “Put in his name.” “What’s his name?” “Putin.” “I will, but what’s his name?” “Put in Putin.” “I’m trying to, but what must I put in?” “His name. Putin.” “Yes, what’s his name?” “Not Whatsisname. Putin”. “OK, so I put in ‘Not Whatsisname’?”

Of course, I can imagine local authorities trying to delay Putin in the country for a few days more, if only to pick his brain. It’s not every day that puppets get visited by a real live puppeteer in their little toy box, and politically connected godfathers are no doubt bursting with questions, such as the optimum height for throwing rivals out of hospital windows. I mean, is there a sweet spot somewhere between, say, the third and fifth floor, where it’s high enough to guarantee a kill but not so high it looks cartoonish? And what, exactly, are the shock-absorbing capabilities of ornamental hedges?

After that show-and-tell Putin, like Bester right now, would be free as a bird, ready to walk to his plane down an undulating red carpet of EFF supporters lying prostrate on the runway.

Yes, SA might be a dangerous place if you live here, haunted as it is by the likes of Bester and the scumbags who freed him. But if your name is Putin, or Ramaphosa, or Cele, it’s safe as safe can be.

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT PUPPETS GET VISITED BY A REAL LIVE PUPPETEER IN THEIR LITTLE TOY BOX

AND WHAT, EXACTLY, ARE THE SHOCK-ABSORBING CAPABILITIES OF ORNAMENTAL HEDGES?