The hectic round of party conferences is in full swing, with branch committees going out on a limb, as it were, to prove they have the requisite number of members to justify their continued existence.
There was much shock and horror at a report this week on the provincial congress of the African National Congress in Limpopo. It was discovered that enterprising comrades had drawn up lists of people they claimed were ANC members — but those people actually belonged to the Democratic Alliance.
”A lot of these people did not even know that they were members of the ANC and in some cases members of the DA appeared on our lists as members. This was clearly a case of comrades drawing up list (sic) and paying money from their own conference (sic),” frowned the ANC coordinator’s report.
Get a gimmick
Ster Kinekor has launched a new campaign to attract moviegoers: kosher popcorn. Adverts carrying the Beth Din logo alongside that of the cinema chain appeared in the weekend press. At least, Lemmer hopes, once a year — at Passover — the machines will be cleaned out.
Harksen’s lark
On hearing that Princess Tony Leon’s pal, Jurgen Harksen, has been extradited, an unworthy thought crossed Oom Krisjan’s mind: on his flight back to Germany was he upgraded to first class on frequent fleer miles?
School daze
Tertiary education institution mergers, new school curriculums and all that proved simply too much for Minister of Education Kader Asmal. Forty winks were in order as Deputy President Jacob Zuma spoke on moral regeneration, floor-crossing and other such weighty matters in the National Assembly.
Kader briefly opened his eyes, looked up at Zuma — now speaking on HIV/Aids — and closed his eyes again. Ag shame!
Cock-up
Most big companies have an electronic Mother Grundy that tries to ensure that their employees neither send nor receive pornographic, blasphemous or racially offensive e-mails. Lemmer does not agree with these policies, and a recent example shows why.
A friend trying to contact Nedcor about a classical music evening with Richard Cock was surprised to find the e-mail never got through.
MailMarshal (Nedcor’s self-proclaimed ”content monitoring gateway”) prissily insisted she rephrase the e-mail as it regarded Cock’s name as ”unacceptable language”, with a weighting of five on its scale of outrage. Lemmer hopes the conductor does not refer to himself with the diminutive ”Dick” when he e-mails people at Nedcor.
Grovel
Last week Lemmer’s column included an item entitled ”black flag” about the South African Y-front painted on the new multimillion-rand presidential jet. It castigated the powers that be for not noticing that the national flag was upside down and back to front. Here! Oom Krisjan was soon to get his own black flag (the one motor-racing drivers are shown when they are being expelled from a race) as he wrote that the blue streep of the flag was incorrectly at the bottom. That, of course, was absolute crap. The Nats always warned that if they lost control, the reds would be on top — and the red streep should be on top on the flag.
Lemmer is less willing to apologise for the back-to-front bit as he has difficulty swallowing the government’s line about this being how the flag will be seen when Inkwazi/Visarend is speeding through the skies. Kom nou, can’t you guys admit you made a blaps?
Foot in mouth
Having feasted on humble pie all week, Oom Krisjan thought carefully about bringing to readers’ attention a howler from the national Department of Agriculture. However, after several of those wonderful new ”all in one” Klippies-en-cola drinks, Lemmer realised that he might as well retire from these pages if he couldn’t take the mickey out of his and other people’s mistakes.
The department, in a media release trumpeting the tabling of its 2001/02 annual report in Parliament, had this to say: ”Other outstanding achievements of [the department] during the year in review include final confirmation of the successful eradication of the Mad Cow Disease also known as Food and Mouth Disease (FMD).”
There are several disturbing aspects to that statement — besides the typing error that turned ”foot” into ”food”. Firstly (as any Groot Marico boer will tell you), Mad Cow Disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) has nothing in common with FMD, although both can devastate livestock populations. Secondly, altough there was a BSE-related human death in the Eastern Cape earlier this year, the department has steadfastly denied that BSE exists among South African cattle.
Gored
The Dorsbult was a very happy bar last weekend as the Bulle continued to be the Lions’s nemesis. It was not long before the manne got to hear this one:
How do they know the Lions supporters were the ones who started the Mexican wave at Ellis Park on Saturday?
It was the only time they got to stand up.
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