The best ideas are ours
Esteemed Aids dissident comrade Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang opened the Biovac Institute (a new public-private partnership initiative to package and make human vaccines in South Africa) in the visdorpie on Monday. But Oom Krisjan hears she departed from the prepared press release that the hacks were given. Contrary to the press release that said the idea of semi-privatising the old State Vaccine Institute (SVI) dated from 1995, Tshabalala-Msimang said the African National Congress had in fact had such a policy in mind since the days of exile. She reiterated this in different ways a number of times, to the visible bemusement of the new CEO, Selwyn Kahanowitz, and the previous director of the SVI, Dr Woolf Katz. Neither could recall that they were obviously members of the ANC, and in exile, when the idea originated.
When given a gift from Biovac to mark the occasion, Tannie Manto asked if it cost more than R300 (which would require her reporting it to Parliament). It was fortunate that, she didn’t hear someone from the audience say: ”It’s free anti-retrovirals.”
In their own words
The publicity given to the p-word through the transcribing exploits of Darrel Bristow-Bovey and Elle editor Cynthia Vongai (who at least had the grace to fall on her sword) has had one happy spin-off. Hacks at Sapa say those colleagues in the daily press who used to reproduce chunks of agency copy, and even whole stories, under their own bylines, appear to have turned over a new leaf. But Lemmer’s more cynical side suggests that reformed morals aren’t the cause. Telkom cable theft near Sapa’s offices, which prevented the news agency distributing copy earlier this week, was probably just as likely to be the reason for the reduction in plagiarism.
Off Track
According to a Reuters report thousands of London Underground commuters were delayed recently when a trainee driver fell out of his cab after fainting when colleagues described the vasectomy one of their mates had undergone.
Flying high
Remember the brouhaha surrounding President Thabo Mbeki’s presidential jet, the Inkwazi, which cost R550-million? The same little birdie that cost taxpayers R13,5-million for 32 domestic and international trips in the first six months this year?
One of the manne has found a newspaper article from January 1994, which shows that former president FW de Klerk had his own flying troubles.
After one Falcon jet was purchased for R90-million, the lack of spare parts led to the acquisition of another Falcon for another R90-million. When it was discovered that the particular model did not have the necessary range to fly to Europe a third, better model Falcon, was bought at R129-million.
Now it is perhaps understandable why the New National Party has come out softly-softly on the cost issue, saying the use of presidential jets was nothing new. Indeed, most of the Bantustan leaders had their own planes — and the KwaZulu-Natal premier still has his own official aeroplane!
Teddy bear’s picnic
Lemmer is all for the preservation of wildlife, but he’s sometimes a little sceptical about the anthropomorphic tendencies enthusiasts ascribe to their favourite critters. So when Oom read this week about what has happened to Californian filmmaker and author Timothy Treadwell, he couldn’t help but smile.
Treadwell was in a remote region of Alaska, trying to show the world that brown bears are not as dangerous as they’re made out to be. According to a Sapa-DPA report, ”Treadwell was known for his close-up shots of the bears, during which he often sang to the bears and told them ‘I love you.”’
The bears showed how much they loved him by having him and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, for lunch.
Bokking the trend
Police in Perth suspect that expatriate South Africans may be behind a new type of mugging. The modus operandi has been consistent — tourists are gently knocked down and held to the ground while pieces of paper are stuck in their pockets.
After the muggers’ rapid disappearance, the pieces of paper are found to be tickets for the Springbok World Cup games.
Rise of the machine
Oom didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger had been voted in as governor of California. You’d think that after Ronald Reagan they’d have learnt their lesson. Arnie’s movies appear, in retrospect, to have been chosen with the governor’s mansion in mind, if you take the titles into account. Hacks the world over (and Lemmer is no exception) have been having a field day playing with titles like True Lies, Total Recall and the Terminator series to describe the gubernatorial race. But on his first day in office the serial groper turned out more (Conan the) Barbarian than Hercules, expressing surprise at the size of the state’s deficit — one of the main reasons for the recall. Considering he’s made quite a career out of playing demi-humans, maybe what’s going on is similar to the plot of The Sixth Day: the clones taking over the world.