LOCAL GOVERNMENT
TIM COHEN: Now and Zen: why Port Elizabeth’s new mayor is no safe bet
The ousting of the DA’s Nelson Mandela Bay mayor, Athol Trollip, reminds me of this story
There is a scene in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War about a little boy, a Zen master and a horse. The movie was about the background role played by a notorious playboy US congressman in surreptitiously helping the mujahideen defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, partly by secretly issuing them with the FIM-92 Stinger, which nullified the Soviet dominance of the air. The scene was a party held for Wilson after watching the last Soviet tank leave Afghanistan, and the mood among the small group of Americans who helped in this process was ecstatic. The Soviet Union had had its Vietnam experience, which would contribute to its collapse soon afterwards. At the party, a canny CIA operative told the half-drunk Wilson the story of the boy and the Zen master: on his 14th birthday a boy is given a horse, and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful! The boy got a horse." The Zen master says, "We’ll see." Two years later the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg. Everybody in th...
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