GHOSTS OF VERWOERD
WITH the new “rainbow parliament” firmly ensconced in the parliament buildings in Cape Town and all likenesses of Hendrik Verwoerd banished from the premises, it would appear that every trace of the apartheid era has been obliterated from the country’s supreme governing body. But things may not be quite what they seem: parliamentary staff were recently issued with pagers which use the prefix “Nat” in their code numbers.
A ministerial press secretary who occasionally shows his face in the Dorsbult bar was in the parliamentary office building at 120 Plein Street (formerly the Hendrik Verwoerd Building) and was pondering the significance of the “Nat” pagers when he noticed a workman carrying a ladder emblazoned with the slogan “Elect Verwoerd”.
Fortunately, before the press secretary could whip up a storm about broedertwis and Nationalist conspiracies, someone pointed out that the workman was the building’s electrician and the slogan on the ladder was merely an abbreviation identifying its ownership.
NO BALLS
* OOM KRISJAN notices that the Department of Transport has decided that political correctness is the order of the day in this new South Africa. In its annual report released this week, it tries to lighten the burden of guilt on pedestrians who get run over by saying that most accidents involving pedestrians occur because of their “incorrect position on the road”.
But that is not all: in an effort to avoid race or gender-sensitive terminology, it has completely dehumanised its staff. The report refers to department employees as “units”. Which led Oupa van Tonder to wonder: “Why didn’t they just call them eunuchs?”
DIG THIS
* ANYONE who watched the election coverage on TV will remember occasional commentaries by Saths Cooper (formerly of Azapo) and political analyst Eugene Nyati. Well, Oom Krisjan notices that these brief TV appearances seem to have gone to their heads — the pair recently applied to host SABC’s premier talk show, to be called Deep Focus.
In their proposal, Cooper and Nyathi refer to Deep Focus as being “conceived as a racy, hard-hitting, no-holes-barred show”, which had the manne at the Dorsbult wondering what they were talking about.
“Perhaps,” suggested At Naude, “they want to use the show to dig up dirt.” “Or maybe,” added Oupa van Tonder, “the show will be a mine of information.”
MYSTERY MINISTERS
* THE manne at the Dorsbult bar have recently been discussing the state of government in Lesotho. We hear that the broadcasting minister and the justice minister have gone awol and nobody knows where they are. Apparently both of them were last seen in Cape Town in June asking the Southern African heads of state meeting for help in their ongoing problems with the Lesotho army.
The plot thickens, though, because rumour surfacing in the Dorsbult suggests that the justice minister, Kelebone Maope, subsequently went to Johannesburg to recruit Azanian People’s Liberation Army cadres for his government’s fight against the army, for which he was arrested by the South African Police.
The SAP and the Department of Foreign Affairs both deny the arrest story, but the two Lesotho ministers are still missing.
A spokesman for the Lesotho Justice Ministry, when asked about the whereabouts of the minister, said: “He is out of the country at the moment. We do not know where he is. He left two months ago and we don’t know if he is coming back.”
LIFE ON THE SOUTHERN TIP
A FREE State man who slaughtered and ate a rare imported cat worth R3 000 … was this week convicted of malicious damage to property.
James Rammereki (45), a father of four of Vredesfontein near Henneman, did not deny having made a meal of the expensive cat on April 17 this year.
The court heard that the rare animal was like a child to Mandy van Hees, its childless owner.
Responding earlier to the prosecutor’s questions, Rammereki said he had eaten the cat because he was hungry. Asked how the cat’s meat tasted, Rammereki said it was delicious and tasted like chicken.
During the trial Rammereki, a Mosotho to the core, told the court amid giggles from the gallery, that he did not know that the “Maine Coon Cat” was expensive, imported or a rare species.
To him it was just meat, the best relish for his porridge. He told the court that eating cats was normal practice for Basotho, and he did not check if this particular one was well cared for or neglected. — City Press