Lemmer wonders, sometimes, if there aren’t a few local academics who look back wistfully to the halcyon days of the Eighties, when students were forever protesting, boycotting lectures and generally taking the spotlight away from the shenanigans of the staff. Unisa, it seems, is not the only institution of higher learning having a hard time with its officials. Recently, the principal of the University of Cape Town refused to accept a senate voting decision that rejected Martin Hall as the new deputy vice-chancellor. He made them re-vote until Hall was elected.
Jump to the left
Visitors to the Pan Africanist Congress’s website (www.paca.org.za) are in for a big surprise. All the manne in the Dorsbult Bar dived for cover — and Oom Krisjan even spilled his brandewyn — when we ventured to the site and were greeted by the sound of sub-machine gun fire. A case of one cybersettler, several bullets? Besides the virtual fusillade there’s very little else as yet on the site — except for a stern reminder that all the material is copyright Pan Africanist Congress Inc. Come to think of it, Lemmer is also getting nostalgic for the Eighties.
Step to the right
Just how slippery political smears are in South Africa was underlined this week by KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Housing Dumisani Makhaye. In a typically crazy broadside, Makhaye described senior communist Jeremy Cronin as ”an ultra-leftist”. Of course, for an ultra-rightwinger like Makhaye, who thinks the Zimbabwe bird sings out of Robert Mugabe’s bottom, Cronin is so extreme that he’s almost off the horizon. How would Makhaye describe real members of the fruitcake left, like Dale McKinley and Patrick (Call me ”James”) Bond?
In any case, Oom Krisjan suggests onse Jeremy adopt a new nickname after daring to question the African National Congress’s tactic of marginalising him. Cronin the Barbarian has a nice ring to it. Quite a change from three years ago when Ferial Haffajee recorded in the Financial Mail the comment of a black comrade businessman: ”These days I just have to look at Jeremy Cronin and I feel tired.”
Hands on your hips
The defection row in KwaZulu-Natal continues breeding lots of verbal sniping between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The latest snide remark comes from the ANC’s Mtholephi Mthimkhulu: ”The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has learnt with regret of the collapse of marquees [apparently caused by a storm] at the IFP conference presently held at Ulundi. We thank God that no casualties have been reported. The ANC hopes that there will be no unauthorised use of state resources when sorting out the havoc that has been caused by this unfortunate incident.”
Knees in tight
After that example of the new South Africa, Oom Krisjan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he visited the Department of Health’s website (www.doh.gov.za). (Ja, Lemmer might be in danger of becoming too much like our president, trawling the Internet at all hours.) Curious to find out how Doc Manto was going about enforcing various court edicts on providing anti-retrovirals to those who need them, he opened up the section labelled ”Ministry”.
Under ”Vision” it states: ”To protect, profile and package the minister”, and the ministry’s ”Mission” is ”To provide a comprehensive support service to the minister of health in her political, parliamentary and private activities.”
The section ”Duties” expands on the first two items … arranging the minister’s travel, dealing with the media, and so on. And that’s all she wrote. Not a word about Aids, or any other aspect of health. Now you know.
A pelvic thrust
Nostalgia is one thing, but sometimes the SABC makes Oom Krisjan believe we’re still living in the Eighties. The corporation has just banned Pieter-Dirk Uys’s message, in Afrikaans, to parents to speak to their children about sex. What has got the tannies in a tizz is that PDU uses direct language to get across the message: ”Afrikaanse mense dink MIV/Vigs kan nie met ‘ons’ mense gebeur nie. Hulle is verkeerd. Afrikaanse kinders naai ook … [Afrikaans people think HIV/Aids can’t happen to ‘our’ people. They’re wrong. Afrikaans children also fuck …]”
Kom nou mense, word wakker and smell the Koffiehuis. The children aren’t just naai-ing, they’re dying.
Riff-raff
Businessman Moletsi Mbeki has been complaining to City Press about foreigners taking control of the Mail & Guardian. Now was that because Mbeki had also made a bid for the paper and failed? His comments reveal all as he went on to say that the ”British” would not hand the paper to ANC sympathisers. And what of Mbeki’s interests in Zimbabwe? In the same piece, however, publisher Thami Mazwai welcomes African ownership of the paper, but prays that the new ownership will do something about the content, which was an ”insult” to the continent. That caused one of the manne to remark that Mazwai is an insult to the continent.
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