PETER BRUCE: How the People's Bae pulled the wool over my eyes
'While you're being asked a question like that your mind races. When did I say that? What do I say now? And then you have to speak'
EXTRACT
I was less than sparkling because it just didn't sound like me.
My mind was racing. I try not to generalise about racial groups. It's wrong. But there he was, reading the question to me. I ended the session poorly, nailed for speaking in the name of black people without a source nogal, and after the show the entire membership of the EFF sat on my Twitter account and did the same.
"Did I really say that?" I asked him during a commercial break.
"Yes," he said, "on March 4."
So, the television news channel eNCA decided recently to hold a week of programmes in which politicians could interview anyone they wanted to. Would I please be his guest on his evening, asked Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi of the EFF. Ndlozi is the happy, cherubic face of the EFF, the People's Bae (boyfriend). As I had been rude about them in some of the columns I write, I thought it would be equally rude to decline. But I knew it meant trouble for me, obviously, especially after Julius Malema rang to make sure we were on. Ndlozi is wildly popular. We met the week before the programme and had coffee on a pavement. Schoolgirls and their mothers kept stopping for selfies with him. The smile is instant and infectious. He's genuinely good company.Predictably, the night didn't really go well for me. I write about 12000 words for publication a month. When you're as far apart ideologically as I am from the EFF, they would have had more than 50000 words to pick from just this year alone. There were a...
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