It has been said in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court that KwaZulu-Natal motorists have no respect for VIP vehicles with flashing blue lights. What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they all high? Have the indestructible cockroaches, giant mosquitoes and relentless humidity driven them mad?

In decent God-fearing provinces like Mpumalanga, people only have to see a VIP vehicle parked outside, say, a bottle store, or a hit man’s house, and they fall to their knees and cross themselves. The braver ones may try to touch it in the belief that they will be blessed with a good harvest and 14 healthy sons. Perhaps a small tender on the side. Generally, though, the driver blesses them with a stun gun to the back of the neck. Many weep with gratitude.

But KZN is not Mpumalanga. Not by a long shot. In these parts, motorists inexplicably fail to veer off the road when a VIP convoy appears in their rearview mirror. Instead, they behave as if the VIP were some kind of rinky-dink gold leaf god from a pantheon in need of a paint job. The point is, it doesn’t matter if he is the god of laminate flooring and door hinges. You do the right thing and get out of his way, even if it means plunging off a bridge and into a river full of Shembe pilgrims being baptised by a man in a white dress.

As it transpired, the godlet in this case, Social Development MEC Meshack Radebe, was not even inside the VIP vehicle on that sultry November day back in 2008 when Constable Hlanganani Nxumalo whipped out his gun and opened fire on Anuvasen Moodley, an audacious counter-revolutionary brazenly taking a group of subversives to the beach. The godlet was waiting at his home in Hillcrest.

Moodley says he couldn’t move into the slow lane because of traffic. What a lame excuse. It’s like saying you can’t offer me a beer because you don’t have any.

Wishing to avoid a bullet in the head, Moodley took evasive action and collided with oncoming traffic. Several people were injured, two seriously. This is nothing but a scratch when one considers the carnage that would have taken place had the godlet been kept waiting.

The witness, who has done the country a great service by exposing KZN drivers for their wanton refusal to accept their position on the food chain, is an instructor attached to the VIP unit.

He told the court that he trains VIP drivers to use their vehicle as a weapon when in dangerous situations. He declined to elaborate, citing security considerations. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out that he also trains taxi drivers in his spare time.

And if the vehicular bludgeoning tactic fails, VIP bodyguards were expected to fire warning shots into the air. Given the circumstances, it might be a good idea to declare a no-fly zone over the province. Nobody wants to be hit by a chunk of flaming aircraft while watering the garden.

Nxumalo did indeed fire warning shots into the air – the air between his gun and Moodley’s Mazda. In his defence, he used his weapon only after allegedly being shown the middle finger. For those brave men and women involved in the VIP protection racket, this is their Bay of Pigs moment. In the face of the finger, do you stand down or take it up a notch and meet the enemy head-on? It’s never an easy decision, but unless you’re distracted by a naked Marilyn Monroe drinking champagne from a silver stiletto, there is no reason not to unleash the warships and stop those goddamn commie bastards from … oops. Wrong incident. Must be some kind of weird Splashy Fen acid reflux.

Although the trainer felt Nxumalo could have done more to eliminate the threat, possibly by calling in an air strike, he said VIP security officers were trained to stay alive. “They were rushing to pick up the minister. They could not leave him exposed and unprotected.”

All of this might have been avoided if the minister had remembered to put his pants on before going out into the street to wait for his lift. Nobody likes to see a minister exposed.

The story has attracted the usual suspects who squat online like stunted feral troglodytes. “Viper”, one of this country’s brightest political analysts, summed it up brilliantly: “Blacks poses a threat to me on a daily basis, I do not go out and shoot at everyone because of that, I do poses a brain and therefore think before I do.”

Given the choice, I would rather be shot by Constable Nxumalo than share a world with Viper and the multitude of mouth-breathers who conspire to debase the national discourse and contaminate our country’s already heavily polluted gene pool.