The Great Impersonation

The mayor and the village clerk were both away when sleek, dark-suited Willem Johannes Janse van Rensburg rolled importantly into dusty Hennenman in a big car marked with the official Gs of government service. But Rensburg was not one to wait on protocol. With one stern glance about the little (pop. 1,146) Orange Free State village, he commandeered a likely office, announced to the assembled villagers that he was the new government health inspector and asked for complaints.

In no time, Rensburg's office was full of villagers protesting against dilapidated hovels, noisome shops and tumbledown factories. Rensburg took scrupulous notes on each report. Then he went to investigate. He gave some storekeepers 24 hours to close down their businesses. He revoked licenses right & left. He condemned some buildings as unsafe and ordered immediate structural repairs on the local butcher shop. Butcher Sam Wiseman was so frightened that he promptly called a contractor and begged him to work over the weekend.

By the time the village clerk returned, Rensburg was the talk of the town and all Hennenman was scrubbing itself clean. The town clerk called the provincial health department, just to make sure that everything was all right. It wasn't: the health department knew of no such man as Rensburg. Neither did any other government department. The clerk called the cops.

Last week Hennenman was cleaner and safer than it had been for years, but Willem van Rensburg, the self-appointed health commissioner, was in a mental hospital for observation. Said one Hennenman shopkeeper: "Some say he's off his rocker, but I think he's all there. He did a fine job for the town."

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