Swart- en rooigevaar tactics have taken a new twist with the red and black posters strung up by the Democratic Whatever on lamp-posts throughout Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats. ”The NNP is with the ANC” is the DW’s message specifically for residents of one of the largest coaloured communities in the Western Cape.
Elsewhere in the visdorpie, residents are treated to the ”normal” blue and yellow DW posters, many featuring the face of Tony Leon over the slogan ”South Africa Deserves Better”. (The manne agree, we do deserve better than Princess Tony.)
But a DW newspaper advert with similar wording to the Mitchells Plain posters —
”The NNP is giving power in the Western Cape to the ANC” — is now the subject of an official complaint by the New Nats.
In turn, the DW has laid criminal charges against the Freedom Front for the alleged theft of DW posters in the contest for the Afrikaner vote. The charge is denied.
Well, Oom Krisjan has decided to take refuge in a dop as the most hotly contested issue in this election fight so far has been posters and ads. And it’s not as if these are even interesting. Delegates to the Mother City’s Design Indaba have slammed the posters as uninspiring — and that was the polite verdict!
Trouser snake
It seems The Sun’s proprietor is unashamedly embracing a return to the days when newspapers for the black market focused on sex, soccer and witchcraft. The Sun this week ran several front page stories on a Thokoza man accused of ”sexual assault with a snake”. A young woman alleged that while she was having sex with him his penis turned into a giant snake. Now, the manne have to admit they’ve been trying to confuse generations of women by insisting that something tiny really measures nine inches — but really!
Roll up, roll out
Lemmer’s been around hacks for a long time now, and one thing he’s learned from his esteemed colleagues is that no number of phone calls or faxes can get a government department to react quite as quickly as a front page story can.
This proved to be the case with the Department of Health (and its provincial sidekicks), which had been studiously ignoring the Mail’s wails for weeks.
But, lo and behold, after last week’s headline story about the ”Roll-out or cop-out on Aids drugs”, the department schlepped its whole HIV/Aids directorate to the Milpark Holiday Inn this week. It’s an unlikely venue for the department — but within spitting distance of the M&G offices. The minister, unfor-
tunately, could not make the time to squeeze into a small room to share chicken legs and ham sandwiches (but no African potatoes, surprisingly) with the hacks — she was off to India.
Alias Smith & Minder
Oom is sure readers are au fait with the phrase ”only in America …” — a catch-all that expresses the rest of the world’s amazement at what goes on in the United States. Lemmer’s favourite concerns Michael Jackson: only in America could a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman. But that is by the by.
A story in The Guardian caught Oom’s eye this week and, when he shared it with the manne, we could only agree: only in America could an armed robber become head of the country’s oldest gun-making firm.
This particular tale concerns James Joseph Minder (74), who has had to resign as chairperson of Smith & Wesson after the Arizona Republic newspaper exposed his rather chequered past.
Apparently Jimmy the Kid, as he might have termed himself, used a sawn-off shotgun to commit eight hold-ups wearing a trademark hat, white scarf and trench coat. Some of the crimes took place while he was a student at the University of Michigan.
According to The Guardian: ”He said he did not disclose his nefarious past to other board members because ‘nobody asked’, insisting that since his release from prison 30 years ago, he had turned his life around.”
After a couple of Klippies and Cokes, the manne decided, however, that this did not qualify as a pure ”only in America” yarn. There have been some strange parallels in South Africa over the past few years…
Theron-ron-wrong
Lemmer hates to be a wet blanket about onse Charlize’s triumph, though, but — as Oom Deon points out — although she might have been the first boeremeisie to win the little golden statuette, Victor Maclaglen (best actor for The Informers in 1935) was the first person from the Southern tip of Africa to take home an Academy Award. Maclaglen was born in England in 1886 but came to the visdorpie when he was net twee jaar oud (his father was the Bishop of Claremont) and always proclaimed he was a South African.
After doing a bit of research Lemmer discovers that Maclaglen was a very interesting oke. He ran away from home and fought on the side of the rooinekke in the Boer War, then became a professional boxer, wrestler and circus strongman. He also had spells as a prospector in Canada and as a policeman before finding his niche in the movies. That’s almost as exciting as escaping Benoni.
He’s pictured above (with Bette Davis), being handed his Oscar by DW Griffith. No huggy-kissy stuff in 1936, you’ll notice.
Hats off
To Guardian website columnist James Richardson, commenting on Inter Milan’s woeful season: ”Like a man chewing a millipede … they’ve tasted defeat over and over again.” Lemmer wishes he’d written that.