A pall of gloom has hung over the Dorsbult since last weekend when, by dint of a quick-fingered channel-hopping, the manne simultaneously watched the Bokke and Bafana Bafana lose horribly.
The third national sport, killing each other, took a back seat as Bob’s Warriors and Helen’s All Blacks knocked South Africa’s national pride for a burton.
But you just can’t keep a good scandal down, and the arms deal was soon back on the front pages of the koerante. First there was a judge telling Schabir Shaik that he had to answer the investigators’ questions. Then, in what he probably thought was a damage-control exercise, that self-confessed former arms trader, David Botha, penned an ”independent” hagiography of the arms deal, in an apparent effort to ingratiate himself with the new masters. Someone needs to tell the old-guarder that the lingo’s changed since he went around flogging meerkats or rooivalks (or other little beasties) when South Africa tried to make like it was an island.
Citing the big benefits, he said: ”[The arms deal] has dispelled notions of South Africa as a third world country.” In case he hasn’t noticed, we’re top dogs of the African Union, a self-identifying ”third world” affair. And Thabo Mbeki bought the arms because he wants to stay on top, David.
Bob Botha
Who said this? ”We are sick and tired of being represented as thugs. I want to warn those who continue to besmirch our public representatives that, if they continue in this way, they will unleash forces of which the end results cannot be foreseen.”
Robert Mugabe, right?
No, actually it was then prime minister PW Botha on December 7 1978 in the House of Assembly, regarding press reportage on the Erasmus Report and Info scandal.
Free for all
On the firm understanding that if you never enter anything you’re unlikely to lose, Lemmer seldom gets around to competitions. However, the experience of Freedom Park this week might change all that. The developers of the planned one-stop heritage site (otherwise known as Salvokop) outside Pretoria spent a fortune flying out international architects and other big-wigs to announce the winner of its international architectural competition. Small problem, no one won. That didn’t stop the judges from dishing out $60 000 in prize money to the losers — who’d designed terrible-looking UFO-type things. Freedom, they say, isn’t free, but mediocrity just cost us a fortune.
Dial S for Scam
For those readers who, like Oom Krisjan, are drowning under a flood of 419 e-mails, there is some light relief. Visit the site of the ”Third Annual Nigerian Email Conference” and have a laugh at a clever spoof of this irritating spam.
School for scandal
As the days start to get longer again, Lemmer awaits the first notification of what he has come to think of as South African education’s rites of spring. That’s the annual leaking of exam papers, a profitable enterprise that seems to be the training ground for most white-collar criminals. But the local secondary and tertiary crooks-in-training have nothing on the Mafia-like intrigues at Europe’s biggest university, La Sapienza in Rome.
Eighteen students, administrators, lecturers and professors were put under house arrest this week as Italian police probed a huge degree-selling racket in the law faculty. Italian universities’ system of oral exams is open to abuse and those involved allegedly sold the questions and answers to well-off students using a code based on the names of flowers. A ”bunch of roses” was a first-class pass in criminal law (and cost â,¬3 000), while a ”geranium” was a pass in the easier canon law.
Oom Krisjan is concerned that this isn’t the first time La Sapienza has been hit by a scandal. A few years ago a student was killed by a bullet fired from the law faculty building. Two junior lecturers were found guilty of the murder — they had apparently been trying to prove a theory about the perfect, motiveless crime.
Bombing out
Perhaps those two Italian lecturers once taught the Texas bank robber who this week handed a note to a bank cashier with the warning that he would explode a bomb unless they gave him money.
After he fled with his booty, the clerk turned the note over and found it had been written on the back of the robber’s CV, complete with name and address.
Powerful
Here at the Dorsbult, our shame over the pathetic displays of our sporting teams soon turned to pride in members of a team closer to our hearts.
Oom Krisjan and the manne raise our glasses to Eric Dhlodhlo and Power Sikhithi, the two security guards who foiled an attemped robbery at the Mail & Guardian early on Monday morning.
Corny
Which bright spark in Ulundi decided to allow King Goodwill Zwelithini’s birthday celebrations to be sponsored by King Korn?
For whom the toll….
A few weeks ago Lemmer recounted the story of the English ambulance driver who was rushing a liver needed across the country and was prosecuted for speeding by a county traffic department. It seems this jobsworth attitude to what the rest of us regard as emergency vehicles is not exclusive to rooinekland.
Officers of the police’s dog unit have been complaining about the toll gates on the N17 near Springs. When they are pursuing suspects they are not let through the gates. They have to stop and fill out a form, or pay toll money, or take a detour — by which time the suspects are long gone. Apparently official police vehicles with flashing lights are not enough to persuade toll gate officials to let them through.
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