Dumisani Makhaye must be feeling that sometimes his words can come back to haunt him. The African National Congress national executive committee member has been going around telling disgruntled Eastern Cape ANC members to accept the national leadership’s decision to dissolve the provincial structures. ”Comrades, you must accept!” is what Makhaye has been telling the guys. So the comrades have retaliated saying that Makhaye too ”must accept” the decision by his leader — KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali — to fire him from the KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive.
Dead duck
News that President Thabo Mbeki is taking up golf reminds Oom Krisjan of an old adage: ”Golf is an easy game played by difficult people.”
It’s also a game much concerned with our feathered friends, or so you’d think to judge by the termi-nology — it abounds with birdies, eagles and even the occasional albatross. But try telling that to the Egyptian geese of Erinvale Golf Club near Somerset West — if there are any of them left.
Members of the exclusive residential resort course, venue for last week’s South African Airways Open, were so incensed by the birds ”soiling their course” that they embarked on a wild goose chase — literally.
Nearby residents were alarmed when early one Saturday morning in November they were awoken to the sounds of gunfire. On investigation they were confronted by the sight of golf carts, loaded with armed men, cruising the course — and to the sounds of distressed geese fleeing their egged nests (read the story that appeared in the local Districtmail).
But Cape Nature Conservation is not sure whether this turkey shoot was up to scratch, so to speak. According to officials, investigations are under way to see whether the Erinvale golfers had permits to shoot the geese, whether all involved had appropriate hunting licences and whether the action contravened any by-laws concerning discharging firearms in urban areas.
This whole twis got not a millimetre of coverage in the sports media while the big guns were in town, though.
Cops robbed
Every now and again, Lemmer comes across a story that so beggars belief that he can but share the information. According to an item in Beeld, millions of rands’ worth of Mandrax tablets have been stolen from a police storage room in Alberton after the robbers incapacitated two private security guards.
Central issue
Another item that sent Lemmer scuttling to the bar for a few more klippies and cokes to calm his addled mind concerned recent goings-on in piesangland. Apparently several newspapers in Durbs-by-the-sea were rather scathing in their reports about plans to close the Phoenix police station and move all of its staff to the KwaMashu station to ”improve service delivery”.
Mike Sutcliffe, grootbaas of the Durban Metro, then wrote to The Independent on Saturday to correct public perceptions: ”It is erroneous to state that there will be a centralised police station in KwaMashu, rather the forces from four stations will be deployed centrally.”
Where? At KwaMashu police station, of course.
On the march
We’ve got a strange way of doing things in this country. Apparently the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) is planning marches before January 30, to protest against the ban on Cosas marches in the Gauteng area, because of rioting at its previous marches.
Hand it to them
It’s hard to find any humour in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the wit displayed by members of Black Laundry, a gay and lesbian protest group in Israel, is worthy of Oom Krisjan’s respect. They began as a loose grouping who opposed the commercialism and non-political stance of Israel’s Gay Pride movement and now bring a unique brand of activism to the Middle East, with slogans such as ”Free Condoms. Free Palestine”.
At the recent Pride festival Black Laundry (the name gives a nod to the Women in Black movement) wanted to protest against the event’s commercialism, where just about anything becomes a saleable ”souvenir of Pride”. So members asked the Palestinian contingent to gather up empty tear-gas grenades — plentiful in the West Bank, thanks to the Israeli army — and bring them along. Each canister was decorated with a pink sticker. During the march, however, the police confiscated the empty grenades, saying they were ”dangerous objects”.
”Why then,” the Black Laundry people asked them, ”do you throw them at people?”
If you can’t beat ’em
The Australians rule supreme in cricket and rugby, so it’s appropriate that their South African counterparts look Down Under for some tips. But Lemmer thinks
SA Rugby’s communications office might be taking this a bit far.
When Oom Krisjan had cause to phone to check the spelling of a player’s name this week — to settle a bar bet, if you really want to know — he was rather surprised to be connected to an answering machine, which greeted Oom in an Australian accent.
Stormin’ Norma
A sign for the University of the Witwatersrand — just down Empire Road from the Jan Smuts Avenue interchange — has been appropriately amended to TWITS, no doubt in response to the colonic irrigation of that august institution’s former vice-chancellor, one Norma Reid Birley.
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