Next year the Olympics are in Athens, and the lords of the rings are doing their best to mess things up, as per usual. In an attempt to make the 2004 marathon as similar as possible to the original, and in order to fit in with global TV scheduling, the men’s marathon will be run in the late afternoon, not the early morning.
As the runners will have to battle the heat and the smog of that notoriously polluted city, the manne are already taking bets about which runner will do the closest impression of Phidippides (or Eukles, depending on your source), who ran the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce a Greek victory and then collapsed and died on the spot.
But it seems that next year in South Africa, where we will celebrate 10 years of democratically elected government, the powers that be will be drawing on a slightly different historical precedent.
In the middle ages, the lords and ladies didn’t wait for the messenger to keel over by himself: if the news was bad enough they often slew or imprisoned him, generating the phrase ”kill the messenger”.
It’s mildly safer being the bearer of good or bad tidings these days, but if stirrings in piesangland are anything to go by, several local journalists may prefer the heat of Athens to the heat of Ulundi next year.
In the KwaZulu-Natal legislature last week Radley Keys from the Democratic Alliance noted that the ”press is under increasing pressure in South Africa and in the majority of sub-Saharan countries” where government-owned media have to dance to their masters’ voices and those that are ”independent have to toe the governing party’s line or face harassment, intimidation or are forcibly closed”. He further noted that the SABC as ”the ANC puppets should be called SANBC” and called on the public broadcaster to break away from ”their political masters and provide South Africa with an unbiased quality information and news service”.
Not to be outdone, the African National Congress’s Dumisani Makhaye claimed that there were serious allegations that the DA has approached ”certain journalists and editors, especially within the print media, to become its propagandists in blemishing leaders of the ANC; that some editors have become part of drafters of DA press statements and speech writers; and that the DA and newly found travelers are intending to embark on a dirty campaign elections strategy”. Tsk tsk tsk…
Fired up
Lemmer, like other hacks this week, was directed by a gloating DA to its new website, www.firemanto.co.za, which calls for the dismissal of our beloved health minister. Although there’s little wrong with the sentiment, surely the official opposition has more direct methods of bringing matters to the president’s attention than by creating sites he might encounter on his nightly Internet trawl?
Real scary
These days Lemmer has as many bad hair days as Queen Betty van Britanje has bad heir days. (As the years go by you find your hair from the top of your head has a tendency to go south — to the nose and ears, mostly — enjoy the climate, and never return.) It could be one of those days — or a case of the galloping cynicisms that comments like those from Messrs Makhaye and Keys engender — but Oom Krisjan finds the choice of David Beckham’s number for Real Madrid a little on the curious side. Lemmer hopes that 23 was chosen as a tribute to basketball legend Michael Jordan, who wore that number during his glorious career at the Chicago Bulls, and not an unconscionable (note to Business Report subs: yes, that’s how you spell it) attempt to cash in on the Marc Vivien Foe tragedy. The Cameroon star, who died while playing in the Confederations Cup last week, wore number 23 at Manchester City, and the Mancunians have agreed to retire that shirt number as a mark of respect.
While on the topic of association football, why is a teabag better than Pirates?
A teabag stays in a cup much longer.
Hot air
This gem landed in Lemmer’s e-mail box, and sort of summed up the week.
A man in a hot-air balloon realises he is lost. He reduces altitude and spots a man below. He descends a bit more and shouts: ”Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man below replies, ”You’re in a hot-air balloon hovering approximately 10m above the ground. You’re between 40Þ and 41Þ North and between 59Þ and 60Þ West.”
”You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist.
”I am,” replied the man, ”How did you know?”
”Well,” answers the balloonist, ”everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”
The man below replies, ”You must be in management.”
”I am,” says the balloonist, ”but how did you know?”
”Well”, says the man, ”you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are thanks to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.ÂÂ
Living in Sin
Oom Krisjan can now reveal what motivated ex-MPs Tony Yengeni and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to stray from the straight and narrow. The secret is found in the parliamentary library. Both must have consulted A Companion to Ethics, by Peter Sin…
However, closer inspection shows someone with a wicked sense of humour: the library barcode tag has obscured the last letters of the author’s real surname, Singer.
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