An Ordinary Day Read Free Page A

lovely wife. Eighty years with you and beyond!’
    She smiled and her hazel eyes sparkled.
    Durant knew there would be troubles in the future as there had been in the past, but that evening, life was great.
JULY 2002
    It was no coincidence that the African Union was launched in the African Century. The African Union was a vision which encapsulated the rebirth, revival and renewal of Africa, and which, it was envisaged, would empower the continent to free itself from a history characterised by economic and political hardship. New partnerships were being fashioned which were to be different from previous conditional and imposed ones. On their own terms, Africans would determine what was best for Africa. The African Union was a new baby, born to succeed its ageing predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, which had been founded in 1963 and which by the late nineties had become structurally and politically ineffective. The Ghanaian leader, Kwame Nkrumah, originally envisaged a united Africa along the lines of the United States of America, a dream which was doomed to failure in a continent where individual countries were torn apart by warring factions and territorial disputes in the postcolonial period. The OAU became nothing more than a club of African presidents who sat around large tables, drank expensive port, and blamed the colonialists for the legacy of failure in their countries.
    The launch of the African Union and the last meeting of the OAU brought delegates from all over the African continent to Durban’s International Convention Centre. The launch date was 9 July 2002, and preparatory and plenary meetings were planned for the preceding fortnight. Durban would become a gathering place for some of the most powerful and influential people in the world. And for spies.
    International events are the hunting ground of spies. Casual conversations in lobbies and at smokers’ corners become recruitment pitches. Agents of influence and compromise agents are born here. Business cards are swapped, money changes hands and deals are done. The event itself becomes a sideshow. The real actors are the case officers, the undeclared officers, the recruitment specialists, and the compromise functionaries who watch the diplomats succumb to human weakness and get lured by the dangles which are hung before them. The heads of state are merely supporting actors. The real work is done in the back rooms and at intelligence headquarters. Report-backs to principals cover who was successfully pitched, not who said what at the plenary.
    The launch, like all high-profile international events, was a challenge to the security services. Hundreds of presidents, ministers, delegates and other VIPS arrived in Durban, expecting not only South African hospitality, but also a high level of diplomatic protection. A large area around the International Convention Centre and Hilton Hotel was turned into a security island, to which access was prohibited without an accreditation card and where roads were closed and manhole covers welded shut. Advance teams of security and protocol officials started arriving from various countries, each with their own demands testing the patience of security officials. Tempers flared. Diplomats are known for their intolerance, and often the poorer the country, the more demanding its diplomats.
    The South African Department of Foreign Affairs received a late note verbale from the Libyan government requesting permission to bring a dozen presidential camels for President Gaddafi. South African health officials had a hard time explaining to diplomats that there was a mandatory period of quarantine for animals and that the president’s camels would be isolated until long after the launch was history.
    Further chaos erupted on 1 July, when an unscheduled Libyan aircraft arrived at the airport bringing an advance party of ninety-seven Libyan security officials. Their mission was to smooth the way for the Brother Leader, like the