JOHANNESBURG. In a development that has sent tremors through the stained-glass windows of Commonwealth headquarters, South African authorities are investigating the grim demise of two Mozambican gentlemen, whose unfortunate departure from the mortal coil has cast a shadow over the organisation’s structural integrity. This, readers, is the sort of international incident that gets gin sales soaring in diplomatic circles.
The two men, reportedly full of hopes and dreams and other expendable commodities, were found in a state that suggests someone took the phrase 'disgruntled customer' far too literally. South African police, a force not unaccustomed to such mysteries, have launched an inquiry. Their task is Herculean: to locate a needle of justice in a haystack of bureaucratic indifference.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth, that grand old club of former colonial dependants, is suddenly questioning its own stability. Yes, you heard that right. A murder of two individuals in a member state has the entire organisation wobbling like a startled jelly. One cannot help but wonder if the Commonwealth has any actual scaffolding, or if it's just a house of cards held together by tea and nostalgia.
But let us not be churlish. The Commonwealth has many fine attributes, not least its ability to produce communiques of such breathtaking banality that they could cure insomnia in a charging rhino. Yet here, in the steamy heart of Johannesburg, two men have lost their lives, and the stability of an entire intergovernmental organisation is apparently at stake. One wonders if the Queen's portrait in Marlborough House is weeping, or perhaps just got some dust in its eye.
The investigation into this double homicide will, no doubt, be thorough, exhaustive, and probably culminate in a report that gathers dust while the perpetrators go about their business, possibly even attending the next Commonwealth summit. But let us not be cynical. There is always hope that justice will prevail, even if it must do so through a labyrinth of red tape and diplomatic immunity.
As for the Commonwealth's stability: it has survived the Suez Crisis, apartheid, and the UK's periodic bouts of Europhilia. A double homicide in one of its member states is unlikely to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. But it does make for a cracking headline, doesn't it? And in the world of gonzo journalism, a cracking headline is worth its weight in gin.
Until next time, keep your wits about you and your gin within arm's reach. The world is a circus, and we are all just clowns in ill-fitting shoes.
