HEIDI HOLLAND

Farce of a democratic Greece

Like South Africans, Greeks have only themselves to blame for voting for the same useless politicians

Even in the best of times, Greek people thrive on drama – a word they invented. Given their current financial woes, many seem on the verge of tears or insurrection most of the time.

During a glorious holiday on the Ionian island of Cephalonia recently, I chanced on an intense conversation with some such distraught Hellenics. It wasn't about the reasons for their catastrophic national debt, as you might expect, but ostensibly on the subject of Nelson Mandela.

I had been sitting in an internet café for a couple of hours, bashing out a story, when the chummy English owner brought me another frappe and enquired why I was working indoors when the rest of my party frolicked as usual on a nearby beach. Explaining that struggle veteran Amina Cachalia had asked me a few days before leaving South Africa to contribute to her soon-to-be-published memoir a section about my many meetings at her home with Madiba over the years, I told him I had no choice but to write the anecdotes on holiday as her deadline was imminent.

Typing on in the popular roadside venue - a pot of basil on the window-sill and hot-coloured geraniums everywhere - people drifted in and out, most of them talking in rapid Greek. It wasn't until a local man I vaguely knew approached me, removed his cap, and asked with exaggerated politeness if he could speak to me that I realized I had become something of a curiosity. "You a friend of Nelson Mandela and you talk to me about Nelson Mandela," he declared. "He is god on earth."

With that, several others who had been on the verandah twirling worry beads came into the café and waited expectantly. I didn't know what they wanted from me and thought of simply reading out aloud the words I'd written. I asked the owner if he might do so in Greek but by then the onlookers were blocking access to his counter and becoming rowdy so he told me a tad irritably to talk to them outside. In response to my baffled plea for guidance on what to talk about, he replied: "They loathe politicians but love Nelson Mandela."

It wasn't much to go on but the man from the shop next door, who had lived in Zimbabwe and spoke English, offered to translate. I started by telling the group that Mandela was indeed a wonderful one-off hero who embodied what used to be called Christian values, but he had been succeeded, alas, by leaders as ethically unimpressive as their own. This left them grumbling and talking ever more loudly over each other about their contempt for their own politicians.

Then I remembered an amusing part-Greek incident involving Amina Cachalia – who is a close friend of Mandela's – which I thought might distract them.

Amina once came with me to Cephalonia, I began. She and I travelled together on South African passports, both of which she hid under her bed for safe-keeping. Leaving for London a few days ahead of me, she went quickly through Greek officialdom and boarded the British plane. It was only on gathering her documents to ensure she had everything ready for UK immigration that the passport fell open and she realized to her horror that she'd taken mine by mistake.

Panic-stricken throughout the journey, Amina decided not to risk being apprehended by British authorities, so she sought out an appropriate official to confess the error that had escaped Greek notice. His reponse was dolefully delivered: she would be detained at the airport until the correct passport arrived from Greece.

Sari-clad Amina, the most elegant of border-jumpers, pleaded with him, of course. He asked again and again if she had any means of identification. She'd left her driver's license and ID at home, but she suddenly recalled some photographs taken shortly before her departure from South Africa, in which she was pictured arm-in-arm with Madiba. Digging in her hand luggage, she described the pictures without mentioning Mandela. "I have some photos of me with someone you might recognize," she explained with characteristic understatement. "I can give you his number but he is old and you mustn't call him now because he will be asleep."

As soon as the astonished passport policeman saw Amina with SA's famous prisoner-cum-president, he scurried upstairs, returning with a temporary travel document.

The Greeks did not laugh as most people do on hearing the tale, however. They started shouting angrily and waving their expressive hands in disbelief. "They're saying you've brought them proof of how lazy and inefficient their public servants are," the translator told me. "They blame their government for all Greece's problems, some of them having lost thirty percent of their income lately." One man, his eyes awash with sorrow, insisted that Greece would not be in its current mess if Madiba were its leader. "We have been shamed by Papandreou," he said bitterly.

I did not want to get into a scrap with agitated Greeks but, having read a lot about their culture of tax avoidance, low productivity and self-destructive labour disputes - and knowing first-hand how bureaucratically bungling they have been in taking seven years to register my half-Greek son's nationality - I reckon they are squarely to blame for their own tragic decline. Despite inventing democracy, they have allowed two powerful families to share their country's premiership for decades. How hypocritical they are to hold a handful of politicians rather than themselves to account.

Like most of us in South Africa, Greeks have voted for the same useless politicians time and time again. Like many of us here, they have supported socialist delusions that were never going to tally with their tiny tax base. And like all of us everywhere, they have not worked hard enough to win respect or honour, never mind to now suffer and triumph over adversity as their superhero and ours, Nelson Mandela, has done in his challenging lifetime.

Heidi Holland is a journalist and author.