Strange days indeed
The election has been safely put to bed and we’re all gearing up to celebrate a Bulls win on foreign soil 10 years of democracy. In the general goodwill that surrounds such an event, there’s often a tendency for those in power to forgive and forget. Presidents let a whole bunch of felons out of prison, the owner of the Dorsbult writes off Oom Krisjan’s tab (that’s a hint) and newspaper editors recall disgraced columnists.
Besides ”decade of democracy” fever, Lemmer can’t find any explanation for the reappearance of not one but two of the hacks who’ve given the profession a bad name recently.
First of all, with the dust having only just resettled in Judge Joos Hefer’s chambers, Ranjeni Munusamy’s face is again smiling out from the front page of a daily newspaper. All piesangland politicians beware — your days (or lack of them) as an apartheid spy are soon to be the talk of the country’s sakekamers.
But that didn’t raise Lemmer’s eyebrows quite as high as they went when the Sunday Independent arrived on the Dorsbult counter. Oom Krisjan knew the Beanz group papers were struggling on very small staffs, but are times that bad that Darrell Bisto-Gravy’s the only one available?
Gutted
However, if the Pan Africanist Congress’s opinion held sway, perhaps the Mail & Guardian would be a suitable vehicle for our former brother Darrell. A dejected M&G hack came to the Dorsbult for a restorative Klippies and Coke or three last week, having been denied an interview by PAC president Motsoko Pheko, who refused to speak to the ”gutter press”.
Pheko did hold out a type of olive branch, however, giving the surprised hack a huge hug and offering to reconsider his position when the M&G improved its standards.
Optimistic Nats
Even though the Nats have suffered heavy losses in the Northern Cape, they still believe that their grand sum of two representatives in the legislature can both make it into the provincial cabinet. But you begin to see that this party has a history of optimism in the face of disappointment when you consider they predicted before the election that they could secure 25% of the votes in the province. In the end they got only 7,5%.
Save My Soul
When Oom Krisjan was a laaitie he and his mates used to annoy people by playing tok-tokkie (knocking on the neighbours’ door, ringing the doorbell and then running away before anyone answered). We later graduated to idiot phone calls: ”Hello, is your fridge running?” ”Yes.” ”Well, you’d better go and catch it!” We found it all very funny, but the recipients invariably didn’t.
The electronic age has multiplied modern life’s piss-off quotient by several thousand. Who needs to ring the neighbours’ doorbell when you could just send them tons of spam and SMS messages? This rumination was brought about by a prank SMS that did the rounds last weekend: ”I, Tony Leon, have changed my mind. Forget all the negative things I said about our country and the government. Trust me, I am a true patriot, hence I urge you to Vote ANC.” The manne would like to categorically deny that Princess Tony spent the evening of April 13 in the Dorsbult.
Get a shuttle’s worth
Among the deluge of spam e-mail received daily at the Dorsbult, there’s sometimes (sadly, very rarely) something that makes Lemmer LOL.
This time, instead of having millions to share from some nefarious oil deal, the 419-scammers at least got a little creative. Oom will forward this to Mark Shuttleworth.
”I am Dr Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z, to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humour, but wants to come home.
”In the 14 years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $15 000 000. This is held in a trust at the Lagos National Savings and Trust Association. If we can obtain access to this money, we can place a down-payment with the Russian Space Authorities for a Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this will cost $3 000 000. In order to access his trust fund, we need your assistance.”
Low blow
Lemmer is surprised that it hasn’t happened earlier, but the news that the porn industry in the United States has all but shut down this week will come as a blow to Debbie Does Dallas afficionados. Apparently two well-known stars of the US ”adult entertainment” industry, Darren James and Lara Roxx, have tested positive for HIV. So they aren’t really faking it.
Nommer asseblief
In the 10 years of democracy one of the parastatals that has done the most to move away from its jobsworth apartheid-era image is Telkom. So why, Oom Krisjan would like to know, is it impossible to get a Telkom branch telephone number from Telkom directory enquiries? The office numbers are unlisted. The woman who answered the 1023 query said she knew it was stupid, but, hey, what could she do?
What was that again?
And finally, just one more reason why Lemmer is happy to be living in South Africa. Sapa-DPA reports that a Cambodian reporter was charged with defamation and thrown into jail because he misspelled someone’s name.