Oom Krisjan’s favourite big smoke, the one near Sandton, has decided to change its image. On the advice of a marketing agency, as of September 1, Johannesburg decided to sexy up its name and market itself as … Joburg.
This, the city parents (”city fathers” being sexist) assure us, is not an official name change — it’s more in line with the way New York ”sells itself as NY”. The logic here escapes Lemmer, as New York is the Big Apple, not NY — so the South African equivalent should be the Big Naartjie, or something similar. Anyway, comparisons with New York — this week of all weeks — should be avoided, though the manne of the Dorsbult would not shed too many tears if an errant plane removed Ponte from the skyline.
On the positive side, Lemmer is grateful the city declined to become Egoli — and, therefore, just another TV series spin-off — but whatever happened to Jozi, my Jozi …
SMS SOS
Citizens of the United States like to regard themselves as being at the forefront of technological advances (at the forefront of everything, really), so Lemmer was puzzled by the number of Stars and Stripes-wavers wandering around Sandton staring curiously at their cellphones and looking mighty confused.
At first the manne decided it was the sudden name change — they thought they were coming to a summit in Johannesburg, after all — but it appears the nation that could put a man on the moon is defeated by the simple SMS.
Until recently it was impossible to send messages among US carriers, but interoperability has now arrived. Try tell that to the Yanks.
Hocus-pocus
On a reader’s suggestion, Oom Krisjan let MSWord’s spellchecker loose on the nutter up north. Without Bill Gates’s help Lemmer came up with ”be a mug” as an anagram of Uncle Bob’s surname and was a bit worried when Word wanted ”Mugabe” replaced by ”magus”.
Publish …
With all the stuff flying around via e-mail, most companies find it prudent to ensure a disclaimer goes out at the end of all messages to protect themselves against litigation.
The SABC is no exception: ”Everything in this e-mail and its attachments relating to the official business of the SABC is proprietary to the SABC. It is confidential, legally privileged and protected by law. The person addressed in the e-mail is the sole authorised recipient. Please notify the sender immediately if this e-mail and its attachments has unintentionally reached you, and do not read, copy or disseminate the content in any way.”
Besides the bemusement created by the admonition not to read the content — how many people start reading e-mails from the bottom? — this whole meshugas was about an ”urgent SABC1 schedule change”. Readers now know why the TV listings in these pages are much shorter than they used to be.
… and be spammed
Cosatu is again putting everyone’s nose out of joint. Not over its policies, but a serious case of spam e-mailing. For days e-mails from the trade union federation mailing lists are being sent to others on the list. As e-mails are being traded among the subscribers, Oom Krisjan got this interesting one: ”I’ve just called Cosatu’s Vukani Mde telephonically to get him to stop the spam e-mails, but he insists the union’s mail company is responsible and claims he’s too busy to chase them on the issue. He dropped the phone on me when asked for a number.” Viva!
When we were in
In a case of the messenger shooting himself in the foot, Democratic Alliance MP Tertius Delport twice referred to Zimbabwe as Rhodesia while announcing that a South African farmer with property interests in that part of Africa laid a complaint of crimes against humanity against Robert Mugabe. It appears Uncle Bob’s vitriolic rhetoric against the colonialists may have rubbed off in all the wrong ways!
Diplomatic drivel
Until recently South African drivers’ licences were not accepted in Belgium, contrary to those of almost all the other African countries, whose citizens could exchange their licences without problem. The reason for this anomaly, Oom Krisjan hears, is that the South African embassy in Brussels had not bothered to sign a bilateral protocol agreement with Belgium — despite numerous requests from citizens. The embassy did not regard this as a priority, needless to say, as diplomatic status allowed all who worked there to continue using their South African licences. Those without diplomatic immunity had to redo their tests and fork out nearly R6 000 for the privilege.
However, recently — and at her own initiative — Belgian Minister of Transport Isabelle Durand decreed that South African licences should be exchangeable after a month’s procedure to ensure that the documents have not been forged. Nice to see our tax rands working so hard for us.
Yes, master
Legend has it that the game Mark Twain described as ”a good walk spoiled” gets its name from the acronym of Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden. If that’s so, the august members of Augusta National were only keeping to tradition when they decided to forego millions in sponsorship and advertising revenue to keep women out of their golf club.
Lemmer thinks this is a mission for our own superhero, Ngconde ”Buffet” Balfour. Perhaps he could insist Tiger Woods boycott the United States Masters until this archaic rule is rescinded. More likely, he’ll force Ernie to give the major a miss.
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