[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Erwin 'sabotage' denialism

[Patrick Bond]

(With everyone making a big deal about this, it seems like it's quite 
the mini-crisis of legitimacy for Erwin, eh. Can he ever be believed 
again, deep serious voice and all? Will people call 'SABOTAGE!' whenever 
he makes another pronouncement?)

www.mg.co.za
Alec in wonderland
Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON
25 August 2006 12:59

What brought the above headline to mind was whimsy, detecting a 
simi­larity between Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of the ridiculous and 
Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin’s tendency to inflate his 
fantasies to gigantic proportions. Remember when Alice eats the little 
cake and starts to grow enormously? Each time Alec Erwin lurches up in 
public and expounds on the nation’s need for his beloved Pebble Bed 
Nuclear Reactors, the predicted costs grow to whopping proportions. The 
Pebble Beds started out at about R549,99 each (loose generator bolts not 
included). Alec’s now saying they’re going to cost us billions.

Some reflection seems necessary on Alec Erwin’s latest statements on the 
intriguing subject of the Koeberg power station generator bolt and 
“human instrumentality”. This grotesque phrase is of Erwin’s invention, 
thought up in panic as an inane substitute for the word “sabotage”, 
which, despite his later denials, he had used to explain the damage to 
the generator at Koeberg.

Last week Erwin was up in Parliament trying to explain away the bolt 
episode. He was speaking within days of the publication of a report by 
the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa), a report which 
dumped all over Eskom’s lamentable security, inadequate protection 
systems, slack maintenance, breaches of licences, negligence and 
generally slovenly management at Koeberg -- all of which resulted in a 
series of power blackouts in the Western Cape earlier this year. Never 
mind the blackouts, what about the now conspicuous danger of another 
Chernobyl disaster just up the road from Cape Town? Koeberg is of the 
same vintage as Chernobyl and the latter went out of control because of 
exactly what Nersa recently diagnosed at Koeberg: lamentable security, 
inadequate protection systems, et cetera. You name them, Chernobyl had them.

Last week, Erwin proclaimed to Parliament on this appalling state of 
affairs. The failures at Koeberg were “being dealt with through internal 
disciplinary procedures”, he said in a prepared statement. In other 
words, what should be examined and analysed under the floodlights of 
public scrutiny, is now being held in secret.

Getting curiouser and curiouser, Erwin once again denied that he ever 
used the word “sabotage” when discussing the bolt in the generator. This 
time he abandoned his risible “human instrumentality” and fell back 
instead on low specific-gravity bilge. “It was also why I did not use 
the word sabotage, as we had to verify the existence or otherwise of a 
group before any such word was appropriate. The non-existence of such 
group has now been conclusively established.”

Explanations to Alice about arithmetic by the Mock Turtle spring to 
mind. With an argument like his, it seems Alec Erwin has indeed been 
reading Lewis Carroll -- not for the first time, either. It would be 
kind to write off his denials and explanations with such generosity. But 
he was addressing Parliament and that’s supposed to be a place where 
even politicians are enjoined by solemn oath to tell the truth.

However, it seems that lying, in Parliament or anywhere else, is a 
matter of specificity with Alec. At a press conference on March 1 this 
year, he referred to the generator accident and said: “Any interference 
with an electricity installation is an exceptionally serious crime. It 
is sabotage.” A day or so later, at another conference, the use of the 
word was raised, to which Erwin responded: “I didn’t use the term sabotage.”

A blatant lie? Of course not. After five months of painstaking analysis 
and contemplation, some poultry-level reasoning has been added to the 
meaning-of-sabotage mix. “The sentence and the minister’s statement are 
both very clear,” clucked Erwin’s spokeshen, Gaynor Kast. “What the 
minister said is that if one interferes deliberately with the 
installation of electricity, it is sabotage. He did not say that the 
bolt found in the generator in Unit 1 was sabotage.”

Seen in context, Kast’s proposition becomes even more feathery. If only 
the sentence immediately preceding the oft-quoted statement is attached, 
her explanation falls flat on its beak. Clearly Erwin was referring to 
the bolt when he said -- in full: “This is, in fact, not an accident. 
Any interference with an electricity installation is an exceptionally 
serious crime. It is sabotage.” Take out the middle, the qualifying 
sentence, and you are left with: “This is, in fact, not an accident. It 
is sabotage.” No amount of interpretative egg-rearrangement alters the 
meaning of what Erwin said and meant.

In a prepared statement, the composition of which has taken only five 
months to hatch, further clarification came from Erwin himself. It 
included an even more woeful alibi: “Of as much interest has been 
whether I said this was an act of sabotage. I did not say this and all 
attempts I made to our erudite media to say what I did say merely got me 
into deeper linguistic difficulties.”

Judging only by the intellectual tensile strength of his logic, I would 
say that papers like The People or The Sun probably register as erudite 
on the Erwin scale. Anyway, in getting himself into linguistic 
difficulties, Alec Erwin has never needed much help from the media.

Erwin denied to Parliament that he had used the word “sabotage”. I’ve 
suddenly realised why they are letting him get away with it. Coming from 
Alec, the denial was just a token white lie.