The boys at the bar could not help chuckling at former SABC news head Snuki ”Moyo” Zikalala’s article on the Mail & Guardian in the Sowetan this week. Moyo wrote the article, he assures us, ”in his personal capacity as a journalist”. This is a very flattering self-assessment by a man who sees the Bulgarian Broadcasting Corporation as a model for the SABC, believes that new M&G owner Trevor Ncube should tell senior journalists what to write, and is capable of inaccuracies so fantastic they left the manne quite speechless. Spooky Swimming Gala is at least R190-million adrift in claiming that the M&G loses R200-million a year. Who does he think we are — e.tv?
Perhaps the oddest feature of Spooky’s article is his loud, xenophobic wail that the M&G has been allowed to fall into foreign hands (Ncube is Zimbabwean — geddit?). So much for African solidarity and the ”African renaissance”, which we mistakenly thought the ”journalist” in question supported …
Egg on your face
A couple of weeks ago Oom Krisjan pointed out that the spellchecker on Bill Gates’s MSWord was suggesting ”Kabul” for ”KwaZulu-Natal”. Wild Bill’s Hiccup comes up with quite a few lulus when faced with South African names, in fact. Take Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, for example. MSWord would like you to replace ”Moleketi” with ”Omelet”. On this side of the Atlantic it would be omelette, of course, but Lemmer would like to know whether the ministry makes the molekettie with one egg or two.
Hold fire
Lemmer would like to apologise to the Pan Africanist Congress (and readers) for the item about the gunfire on the PAC’s website last week. By the time this newspaper went to press the guns had already been silenced. Kom nou, Pacmen, you were meant to lead us all into a zanier future. Don’t go all coy on the cybersettlers, bring back the virtual bullets.
Keep it clean
In the lean period between the World Cup and when the Premier Soccer League begins again — and if many more teams get R8-million to fold that might be never — South African soccer fans have been getting a bit bored.
That can be the only reason for the scurrilous joke currently doing the rounds: why do Brazilian players make the world’s best lovers?
They can lob Seaman from 30m.
Essop’s foibles
The minister in the pocket of the president, Essop Pahad, seems to be taking instruction from a different president these days. There were shades of George ”Dubya” Bush in Pahad’s address at a Moroccan embassy function this week to celebrate the third anniversary of the ascension to the throne of King Mohammed VI. In a remarkably short speech our Essop managed to refer to the monarch as King Hassan — twice. Hassan was Mohammed’s father.
Yogi lightbearer
Character actor Ernest Borgnine once said his philosophy on life was encapsulated by a sign on the side of a roast chestnut vendor’s cart in New York: ”I don’t want to set the world on fire, I just want to keep my nuts warm.”
Such simple ambitions are not for His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, however. Fresh from a spectacular failure on July 10, when his nuttiness declared that he would create peace in the world without the participation of governments (can you spot the difference?), Maharishi has turned his attention to the Middle East. In a global news conference on Wednesday he announced that once ”the war-torn region has a ‘lighthouse of coherence’ — a group of 800 to 1 000 people practising Maharishi’s Vedic technologies of peace” all will be well.
Oddly, no one at the Dorsbult is holding his breath.
Tourist heaven
Oom Krisjan has obtained new insights into the difference between the City of Gold and the visdorpie courtesy of United States poet, actor and social commentator Sarah Jones, in the country for the Urban Voices spoken word festival.
In Jozi, Jones told an audience, people greet her ”Hey, sister …”, but in Cape Town she was asked: ”Where in the hotel do you work?”
Get with the program
MultiChoice, the friendly folk who bring you DStv, are trying to streamline their procedures by introducing e-mail statements rather than the snail mail bills we’ve been receiving in the past. However, confirming Lemmer’s suspicion that BG rather than GB (Bill Gates not Dubya) is the Great Satan, the little downloadable program cannot be opened if you have a Mac.
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