Great news via Fin24 that the EU restrictions imposed on South African citrus exports last month have seemingly been overcome – at least temporarily. This means that most of the containers stuck at ports in the EU have now been released.
As I was informed by an insider from the local citrus business, this new legislation was simply put in place to protect give an unfair advantage to EU (Spanish) citrus farmers, anyway. And the SA citrus business is a kinda big deal, so it’s great that things have moved on from this wholly unnecessary impoundment.
Excellent, then. But this post still wouldn’t be happening were it not for one line in the press release from the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, who have, by all accounts, done a surprisingly spectacular job of negotiating this deal. And having achieved that, spokesperson Reggie Ncgobo then dropped this absolute belter of an adjective into his statement:
Sure, he could have gone with “productive”, “constructive”, “useful”, “beneficial”, “rewarding” or “worthwhile”, ALL OF WHICH WOULD HAVE WORKED JUST FINE but no. He’s not messed around with anything so disconnected from the subject of the consultation, and he’s hit us all with “fruitful” when describing their meeting. It’s funny, because the meeting was about fruit.
Boom! Mic drop!
Not since the Department of Basic Education told us that putting new equipment into school yards was more difficult than many people realised and “wasn’t child’s play” has there been such a witty, on-the-ball Government spokesperson. And that even includes Sputnik Ratau (crazy name, crazy guy).
Well done, Reggie.