Who’s who
So farewell then, Mondli Makhanya — and welcome, Mondli Makhanya. A long-time friend of the Dorsbult has drawn the Oom’s attention to the current edition of Fit, Virgin Active’s ”fun in training” magazine, which can be picked up (as can much else) at your friendly neighbourhood sweat club.
Billed the ”Hot and Sticky Issue”, the magazine features none other than one Mondli Makhanya. Excited staffers gathered around, gasping in admiration at the six-pack and pecs on display in the colour photo that accompanied the piece. Why, oh why, murmured the lust-struck journos as they gazed longingly at the Mondli Marvel now unveiled for all to survey, did our former editor hide his light so severely under a bushel?
Many a tense editorial meeting would have benefited immeasurably, they sighed, had the then editor peeled off periodically. ”He’d have had our undivided attention,” one drooled. The hacks and hackettes went on for a bit in similar regretful vein, and orders for reproductions of the photo were well into double figures before someone thought to raise a bloodshot gaze above the neckline, and discovered that the handsome visage there portrayed bears not the slightest resemblance to our former Supreme Leader.
This Makhanya, it turns out, is a ”male trauma nurse” (not a bad description of an editor’s function, now that Lemmer thinks about it). The Dorsbult‘s investigative unit is currently under urgent instructions to locate the nurse’s place of employment. Once that is done, Lemmer foresees an unprecedented flood of applications for sick leave.
Zuma the frog
‘I would rather play Zuma Deluxe than sleep,” says someone called Mog from Illinois in the United States. What’s he/she/it talking about, the Oom wondered, and sallied forth on to the Internet to find out more. Billed as ”the most addictive game ever”, Zuma Deluxe attracts participants with this tantalising inducement: ”As the stone frog of the ancient Zuma, you must explore and unearth the legendary temples. Fire colored balls to make groups of three or more, but don’t let them reach the golden skull or you’re history!” Do the Scorpions know about this? A Zuma who has to shoot fireballs out of his mouth to survive sounds like an apt description of the spot of bother the deputy pres continues to find himself in.
Far-sighted
There’s no asset like a deputy pres under the whip on the hustings. No one’s busier than Zuma these days, we hear from the manne in Pretoria. This week alone, we calculated over several Klipdrifts, the pres-in-waiting has criss-crossed five provinces, with most engagements in KwaZulu-Natal. What we’re taking bets on is this: is our man campaigning for 2004 or 2009? Watch this space.
Sies!
Take it whence it comes, and this scurrilous snippet derives from the visdorpie, so you have been warned. Whatever the excellent Judge Siraj Desai did or did not do in Mumbai, he is many a league behind one of his predecessors on the Cape bench, according to a distant acquaintance of Krisjan’s who might have smoked too much of the fynbos that infests the region by the time he relayed this to an incredulous Oom.
Under the strict Calvinist regime that preceded 1994, there was a judge who not only had three wives (though not all at once), but rejoiced in the company of a group affectionately known as the ”turd burglars of Burg Street”. (No, Krisjan didn’t understand this either. Now that it’s been explained to him, he doesn’t believe it — but his permanent alarm at the ways and days of the visdorpie make him suspend disbelief.)
Seems that one of this apparently numerous group dined lavishly off the claim that he had ”buggered the man” who sent his father to the gallows. The good judge was also alleged to have advised the law students at his alma mater of his own solution to what was then referred to as the Cape’s ”colour problem”: ”Naai hulle wit!”
Technopolitics
There were giggles and stumped looks when Cabinet ministers came face to face with Parliament’s new touch-screen interactive speaking and voting system. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel clearly adds a quick grasp of technology to his flair for budgets, and he teased his less adroit colleagues: ”You can never teach these technophobes anything.” Seeing his defence colleague Mosiuoa Lekota struggling Manuel quipped ”You have broken it already.” But Lekota proved to be a quick learner, and was soon lending a helping to Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Mango’s man in Japan
Could there be truth to the rumour that arts and culture chief Ben Ngubane (also an Inkatha Freedom Party senior) is about to commit political hara-kiri and leave the cantankerous chief from Ulundi? Is that why he is being parcelled off to Japan faster than you can say kimono?
But it’s a case of win some, lose some. The Ministry of Home Affairs’s spokesperson, Lesley Mashokwe, was back in office this week, (officially) cleared of various charges of dodginess. Or that’s what he said in a press release signed by … himself.