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| Union Buildings |
By Andre Jaquet
At 08h00 sharp on my first day at the
South African Department of Foreign Affairs I knocked on a solid teak door and
stepped boldly into Room 221a in the West Wing of the imposing Union Buildings.
“Real life is beginning!” I said to
myself.
A grey, dour man seated behind a
large desk looked up as I entered and then carried on writing with an expensive
looking fountain pen. I had been instructed to report to him, having been
assigned to the Francophone Africa desk. I waited for about five minutes and
when he showed no signs of life other than his scribbles, I cleared my throat
and said in my best Afrikaans, “I can see that you are busy Sir. Shall I come a
bit later?” His pen stopped in mid sentence and giving me a sour glare, he spat
out “We don’t like eager beavers in this Department. You may go”. I watched,
dumbfounded, as his pen moved on, away from the blue blot it had by then made
on the cheap, government issue paper, before I beat a confused retreat to the
adjoining office.
There I sulked for an hour or so
and as I was putting the finishing touches to a vitriolic letter of
resignation, the grey man, looking somewhat less glum, instructed me to
accompany him to introduce me to my new colleagues. He knocked on the first
door and we entered the office of a dapper senior diplomat. At the same moment,
a pretty brunette flew off the lap of the seated envoy whose face was bright
red, not out of embarrassment but from a broad smudge of lipstick.
At that point I decided that my
letter of resignation was perhaps premature and that a diplomatic career might
after all deserve a trial run. That trial period lasted 34 years.
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