Your pages have been full of excellent advice urging SA to make nice with The Donald so he’ll smile benevolently on us and remove those nasty tariffs (“Trump tariffs ‘will kill any economic growth in SA’,” July 8).
A few Christmases ago my then almost three-year-old nephew was playing with a silver plastic car he’d secured from a Monopoly set. As is the nature of small boys, he was most intent on also keeping it away from his younger brother, who had inevitably decided that this cheap plastic doo-dad was an object of infinite fascination.
In the interests of preserving the peace I moved to intervene. Employing my loftiest rhetorical gifts, I beseeched him to embody the spirit of the season. I flattered and cajoled. I appealed to his reason, good nature and sense of justice in equal measure. For fully 15 minutes I pleaded my case, made extravagant promises and even resorted to outright bribery.
His response was to shove the toy so far up his nose that it got stuck. Then he cried so hard that he soiled himself, and we spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the fallout. Unfortunately, I have no wisdom to offer on how to deal with our tariff situation. I just thought you might enjoy the anecdote.
Simon Rhoades
Vredehoek
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