The question looked simple and I answered it. Less than five minutes later, I knew that some things that appeared simple were complex.
The South African Airways flight attendant on the double-deck Boeing plane had asked me: ‘Red wine or white wine.’
‘White wine, please,’ the uninitiated me answered with the assumption that white wine was another name for fruit juice and as such non-alcoholic.
Minutes after taking the white wine, my eyes began to close, not because it was midnight but because of the alcoholic content of the wine. That was the moment I made the major discovery that alcohol worked like a sleeping pill on me.
I soon fell asleep.
During this journey from Lagos to Johannesburg, I got in and out of consciousness, but I didn’t properly wake up until the plane taxied at the runway of the O Thambo Airport. I could still feel a hangover.
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Passing Immigration in Johannesburg was as chaotic as receiving a South African visa. Getting a date for an appointment took longer than I envisaged. When I eventually appeared for the interview, I sat under a tree with others on the embassy’s premises in Victoria Island where the consular queried us. The bone of contention was seeing to it that we returned to Nigeria after the Conference of Parties (COP 3) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
Those of us who arrived from Nigeria were bombarded with questions obviously aimed at ensuring we planned to return home. Our Yellow Cards were scrutinised and one of us was made to pay for another Yellow Card because he didn’t have a valid one. No test was conducted. What was important was the money. Though my visa was valid for six months, an inscription showing that I couldn’t use it after that trip was stamped on it.
We left the airport on the road trip to Durban and on this about eight-hour journey saw stunning mountainous regions. We had to endure the hustle and bustle of Johannesburg to link the green rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal. We drove through Intabazwe, Newcastle, Estcourt, Ladysmith, Pietermaritzburg, Nambiti Hills, Drakensberg Mountains, and the Midlands Meander on this 630-kilometre trip. We were blessed by the cityscape of Johannesburg and the stunning coasts of the Indian Ocean in Durban. At some points, it looked like the clouds wanted hugs from the mountains. We didn’t have the luxury of stopping to take pictures on these beautiful sites. We were told that had we not been racing to Durban directly, we could have seen wild animals, including lions, leopards, black rhinoceroses, African bush elephants and African buffalo, all known as South Africa’s Big 5.
What awaited us in Durban was more beauty, beauty so damning it almost blinded me. It was here I noticed the right-hand drive pattern that made me confuse the front-seat passenger for the driver. Nigeria had on April 2, 1972, abandoned this British driving style for the one common among Germans, Americans and French. South Africa has chosen to remain with the colonial masters which held it by the jugular through Apartheid.
Durban radiates all the features of a very beautiful and carefully planned city. This city, which hosts many South Africans of Indian descent and is home to the Kwazulu Natal, is also home to the Blue Waters Hotel on Marine Parade, where I stayed for my one-week trip. It is surrounded by other hotels and the architecture of each of them seemed to have taken the other into consideration in such a way that they form a synergy, a synergy of beauty and grace. Looking at them from the Marina showed patterns that couldn’t have been accidental.
My room had two single beds and another inner room, which a friend, Tosin Orogun, who didn’t book his room ahead, took over. I took turns sleeping on each of the beds day after day. I wanted to enjoy it all.
My room also had an ocean view and outdoor balcony.
The hotel, located on Durban’s Golden Mile, the hub of the city’s entertainment district, was minutes away from the Suncoast Casino and Entertainment Complex, the Kings Park Sporting precinct, Kingsmead Cricket stadium, Cyril Geoghegan Cycling Track, and Greyville Race Course and the International Conference Centre (ICC), where the partners met. The complex is composed of an arena, hotel, convention and exhibition centre.
On my only Sunday in the city, politicians decided to flex muscles. I had thought political violence was a Nigerian exclusive but darling Rainbow nation insisted on a slot. Jacob Zuma was yet to be president but was primed to replace Thabo Mbeki. That Sunday, the Congress of the People (COPE), then South Africa’s new political party, was to hold a meeting at a school hall in Durban. But before the meeting could start, some men clad in T-shirts with the face of Zuma, who was at the time the African National Congress (ANC) president, invaded the venue. They were however, after some efforts, turned back by the police. That notwithstanding, the COPE shifted its meeting to the Bayview Community hall, Chatsworth.
That was not the first time the meeting of the COPE would be interrupted by people believed to be Zuma supporters. Before then a series of disruptions of its meetings in KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and Gauteng had been recorded. The COPE is a product of schism within the ANC caused by Zuma’s accession to the ANC leadership in 2007 and Mr. Thabo Mbeki’s resignation as president in 2008.
Back to the COP 3, which was attended by Nigeria and over 150 other nations, the parties agreed that cigarette packs should now bear graphic health warning labels.
This week-long third Conference of Parties to the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control agreed that pictorial warnings should cover 50 percent or more, and not less than 30 percent, of tobacco packaging and feature graphic images of health conditions caused by tobacco.
They also adopted standards to protect tobacco control public health policies from tobacco industry interests. Governments were also urged to implement bans on all tobacco advertising, promotions and sponsorships.
The parties also called for the banning of the usage of false, misleading and deceptive terms or labels that give the impression that a tobacco product is less harmful than any other tobacco product. This includes terms such as “low tar”, “light” and “mild” that have been proven to be meaningless.
The parties forbade any partnerships with the tobacco industry in any initiatives linked to public health policy. “These so-called responsible actions are no more than a marketing tactic by the tobacco industry to project a positive image of itself despite the deadly nature of its products,” said WHO.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids commended the parties to the treaty for taking these important steps to address the global tobacco epidemic.
Akinbode Oluwafemi of Environmental Rights Action (ERA) said that “the conference has produced the tool to rein-in tobacco industry interference across the entire African region. The global community has finally said no to tobacco industry so-called ‘corporate social responsibility’ and no to dubious government-industry partnerships. Now, tobacco control in Africa will be fast-tracked.”
According to the international policy director of Corporate Accountability International, Mr. Kathy Mulvey, “the tobacco industry has long exploited every opening to perpetuate a preventable epidemic.”
Ironically, every nook of the city teemed with smokers of all ages and genders.
In between the conference, we went hunting for what is known in Durban as factory shops, where we bought new clothes and shoes for next to nothing. I also had the chance to go to dinner with a friend’s friend. He had just moved from Unilever’s Nigerian operation to Durban and had to struggle through Google maps to get us to the restaurant and back to Blue Waters. He took me to a beautiful seaside restaurant and a major menu on offer was shushi. It was the first time I heard of this meal, this raw meat that was strange to my Yoruba brain. I declined and opted for something familiar: Some rice and chicken and some non-alcoholic wine.
My final take: By the time we returned home, the good things I saw in South Africa, including the factory shops where we bought new clothes and shoes for next to nothing, were overshadowed by the treatment at the airport and the ‘mess’ at the embassy and I’ve since then not looked forward to returning to the Rainbow Nation.
