Jerald Vedan about to pluck a lemon from a tree at his office's parking lot. He says as the local elections loom, the smooth talkers will emerge like frogs after rain. Their words will be sweet, lemon-blossom sweet. But the fruit? Often impossible to eat.
EVERY morning, I walk past a lemon tree in our office parking lot. It’s a brave little thing, the only green in a sea of concrete, tar, and cars baking in the Durban sun. And yet, come season, it explodes with fruit. You could take an axe to it, and it would probably thank you by producing twice as much next year.
The monkeys that raid our yard regularly? They won’t touch these lemons. Too sour, even for them. That’s when you know something is aggressively unpalatable.
An old song drifts through my head: “Lemon tree, very pretty… but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.”
And that, dear reader, is politics in a nutshell.
