The eponymous hero of Simon Gray’s brilliant 1971 play, Butley, was fond of quoting lines from children’s literature. The eternally popular Beatrix Potter characters — Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck and a host of other nursery favourites — said Butley, ”were engraved on the subcosnscious of a nation”.
Last week saw the birthday of another childhood ”celebrity” in Mickey Mouse, created 75 years ago by Walt Disney. Mickey must be engraved on the subconscious of a world. Where Potter’s characters did their engraving on their own, so at first did Mickey Mouse, in comics and cartoons. Latterly his fame was principally a result of the publicity and commercial exploitation of the Disney products, a truly vast spin-off industry run by hardheaded accountants and businessmen.
But the Mickey Mouse name was also to gain a sort of acerbic other-life. After the first ”Mickey Mouse watch” was marketed, a gaudy, oversized plastic thing that fell to pieces after a few months, the Mickey Mouse name found its way into popular usage as a quick dismissal of any piece of equipment that was cheap and nasty, a shoddy simulation of the real thing. ”This radio is really Mickey Mouse.” ”My Dad went and bought this Mickey Mouse lawnmower.”
In celebrating Mickey Mouse’s birthday it might be a good satirical idea to institute a sort of annual fools’ parade of the cheap and nasty in our lives. I’m sure some appropriate sponsors could be found. Matching the sponsor to the meaning of the award could be a neat marketing move. The Annual Spoornet Mickey Mouse Awards? Perhaps The South African Airways Mickey Mouse Poor Achievement and Abysmal Loss-Making Awards? Lots of contenders out there.
I mean for a start, a buoyant contender for the South African 2003 Mickey Mouse Floating Bronze Turd Award would be to our national rugby coach, Rudolf-The Dead-Brained Straeuli. He’d be in the front row, with Rian Oberholzer, Silas Nkanunu, the MD and president of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) as locks, manager Gideon Sam as the hooker and Corne Krige and sports ”psychologist” Adriaan Heijns as flanks. Louis Luyt could waddle in as eighth man — it’s his legacy. One thing you can say for Sarfu: it’s great collective noun for arseholes.
For a while I would have said that the Hefer commission would be a top challenger in the Mickey Mouse Official Commissions and Government Appointed Political Rectitude Category, but the legal counsel in Joos’s assemblage last week revealed some interesting teeth. Anyway, Judge Hefer’s lot has some serious competition from bodies like the parliamentary ethics committee, which recently totally exonerated Deputy President Jacob Zuma from charges of not registering the R1-million he received from one of the Shaik mob.
Things will be tightly fought in the Mickey Mouse Local Government and Associated Government Services category. When it comes to letting hideously dangerous criminals escape from their cells, the South African Police Service is definitely on the short list. But it’ll be facing tough competition from truly paralysing incompetent municipalities in Mpumalanga.
Competing for the prestigious Mickey Mouse Award For Government Departments and Parastatals, the list of possible winners is long and depressing. Among the top contenders would be the Department of Home Affairs. Its minister, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, has invested the experience of a lifetime in making his department as phenomenally unproductive, wasteful, futile and contemptuously arrogant as it is. Even under the inspired leadership of those two titans of the HIV/Aids delaying strategy: Nkosazana-Sarafina-Virodene-Dlamini-Zuma and Manto-Neverapine-African-Potato-Tshabalala-Msimang, the Department of Health has no real chance against the massed ineptitude of the Mangosuthu forces. If Isaac Newton had experienced South African Home Affairs he would have renamed them the Laws of Inertia.
We all have our favourites, but since I’m going to be on the judges panel, I can tell you now that the Overall Mickey Mouse Award For Shamefully South African Ineptitude will go to Telkom first, Telkom second, Telkom third, recurring. Now matter how depressingly stupid, self-bewildering, utterly without excuse; no matter how grossly overpriced, culpably inadequate, slop-headed, confused and disastrous, no one comes anywhere near the extraordinary collection of groggy boobies who run and ”maintain” our landline telephones.
Telkom recently upped the costs of its ”services”. These are now 5% more expensive. Which is Telkom policy. The cost goes up at twice the rate the Telkom services deteriorate.
I will give just one example. The phones in our valley and surrounds have been on the blink no less than seven times in the past week. That’s about 200 farms, a winery, 20 000 farm workers. We have been told by Telkom technicians that this has been because of ”too much sun”. Previously it was ”too much rain”, ”too much wind”, ”too much cold”, also recurring. When I complained about this to a senior Telkom official, I was told that if I wanted to be able to rely on my telephone, I should sign up for the new Telkom Space-Stream service. At R1 500 a month!
Telkom definitely needs a new boss. Mickey, where are you?