Krisjan Lemmer
Sorry, wrong number
THE Alberton Magistrate’s Court this week hosted an inquest into a sterling example of South African detective work. On July 5 1994, a family from the Transkei were cruising along the Old Vereeniging Road in their white Toyota bakkie when they were pulled over by the police.
Minutes after being waved on again word went out on the police radio to watch for a white Toyota Hilux with false licence plates.
On seeing the bakkie, another police car signalled it to stop. As they pulled over a third police car belted towards them with guns blazing, pumping no less than 30 rounds into the bakkie. The driver was killed, two other adults and two children miraculously escaping injury.
After investigations police said: Sorry, wrong number.
Room service
* HUMPHREY HARRISON, the South African oil and mining industry expert, had time to reflect this week that, where hostelries are concerned, there is service and service. Harrison organises the annual sub- Saharan oil and minerals conference. Disappointed two years in a row by the standard of service at Johannesburg’s Carlton Hotel, he decided to relocate this year’s conference to a beach-front hotel in Mauritius.
After Harrison joked about the Mauritian prime minister’s tendency to oversleep, and had the audacity to query a R700 bill for a glass of orange juice, police arrived at the hotel to cart him away to prison for four days. Back to the Carlton?
Between a rock and bottled ketchup
* THE communications consultant for Sydney Mufamadi’s Department of Safety and Security, Jim Smith, has apparently tired of explaining away the inability of the department to provide safety and security. Seconded to the department by Independent Newspapers of tomato ketchup fame – presumably to demonstrate the public- spiritedness of Heinz 57 Varieties – Smith had asked if he could return to the newspaper fold.
The Independent Group declined to facilitate him. So Smith, a former Associated Press bureau chief, applied to the Los Angeles Times for their post as South African correspondent. The LA Times also refused – on the grounds he was too close to government here – but have given him a job in Mexico. “The further the better,” he is said to have been heard muttering.
Maidens
* AT a dinner for Ariel Dorfman in Johannesburg this week, the famous Chilean playwright (Death and the Maiden) told Helen Suzman that he wanted to make a film about her life and suggested the winsome Winona Ryder (Beetlejuice, Mermaids, Edward Scissorhands, Dracula, The Age of Innocence and Little Women) could play the title role. “I’d prefer myself,” retorted the doughty liberal with her legendary bluntness.
South African hearts also swelled with pride when Norma Heine, the beautiful wife of the Chilean ambassador, told how she had been in desperate search for a public convenience in Morocco recently when she spied a South African flag fluttering. Banging on the door underneath it, she exclaimed to the startled embassy staff: “I live in South Africa; can I use your toilet?”
The hospitality was such, she recounted, that when her plane touched down at Johannesburg airport she joined in the passengers’ applause. Welcome home, Norma.
Heady stuff
* IT used to be said of the assassination attempt upon Hendrik Verwoerd at the Rand Easter Show that he survived because he got shot in the head. Henk van de Graaf, editor of the Patriot, has trumped that by getting shot twice in the head with no apparent impairment of his intellectual faculties. “He was not hurt seriously, but his newspaper will appear two days late,” reported The Citizen. Hard-headed editor.
Shelling out
* SOMEONE has some faith in Johannesburg’s central business district, but seemingly it is not the African National Congress. Our rulers have decided to flog off their Shell House headquarters of massacre fame, outside which muggers queue for their turn in contributing to the redistribution of wealth. The brave purchasers are believed to be Thebe Investments.