In a moment of madness in my reckless 30s, I was persuaded to buy a share in a racehorse. It was a teeny-weeny investment in which I barely owned the horse’s left hoof, which hardly qualified me for a say in its naming rights.
That’s somewhat unlike high-rollers like Durban security tycoon and close friend of the president, Roy Chockalingam Moodley, who is reputed to spend more than R30 million a year to stable the more than 100 thoroughbreds he owns. Look through the official race card on any given day and you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll find several horses called Roy’s something or other. There’s one for every occasion: Roy’s Rolls-Royce, Roy’s Hollyhocks, Roy’s Trombone or Roy’s Amazing Ash.
And to illustrate his lively sense of humour, he’s even gone for names like Roy’s Donkey and Roy’s Baboon. Oh, what fun the super-rich have in their moments of extravagant idleness.
All appeared to be going hunky-dory for the businessman until he bought a colt he ominously named Roy Had Enough.
That’s the day someone showed him a copy of investigative journalist Jacques Pauw’s sensational book, The President’s Keepers, which fingered him in the biggest political exposé to hit South Africa since the info scandal.
I’m not sure whether he read the actual book or the pirated online copy, but when he came across the damning allegation that he had paid President Zuma a R1 million a month salary during his first few months in office, Roy decided he had indeed had enough.
So he took to the stage last week to publicly denounce Pauw’s book as a sham and to accuse the author of using his good name and the names of Zuma and the notorious Guptas to pique the interest of South Africans.
How this whole tamasha will end is anybody’s guess, but I reckon Roy probably has a plausible explanation.
When tycoons like Roy have so many millions lying around, the chances of mislaying a black bag or two on the way to the bank are not beyond the realm of possibility. If the presidential blue light convoy happened to be driving past and Zuma caught sight of the mislaid bag on the pavement, the time-honoured principle of 'finders keepers' must apply.
Was there perhaps a hidden meaning behind the title of Pauw’s controversial best-seller?