Every little crook and nanny
Hell hath no fury like a Mugabe minion maddened, judging by an official outburst in Zimbabwe’s government-owned media last weekend.
In his vituperative column in the Herald newspaper, columnist ”Nathaniel Manheru” — who expresses views not far removed from those of Information Minister Jonathan Nathaniel Moyo — was in a particularly unforgiving mood about outgoing Zimbabwe Independent editor Iden Wetherell, whose paper has been an unrelenting critic of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
Wetherell, who became group projects editor for the Independent and Standard at the beginning of the month, was merely being ”deployed” by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of next year’s general election, Manheru declared. But he won’t get away with it, vowed the columnist.
”Iden represents leftover white supremacist thought that must be expurgated and extirpated from our body politic,” Manheru spat in the menacing language of the regime’s mouthpieces.
”For as long as he is in our country, on our soil, he remains fair game that shall be hunted in every nook and cranny, darted with the sharpest of arrows, pursued by the fastest of hounds.”
Zimbabwe’s election thus promises to be completely free and fair — minus, of course, the odd darted and mauled journalist!
The same frenzied commentator described the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights’ damning report on rights abuses in Zimbabwe, circulated at the African Union’s Addis Ababa summit last week, as ”the worst fraud in living memory”.
Presumably excluding himself!
Serendipity (n)
Oom presumes it was just pure coincidence that Bill Clinton’s book-signing at Waterstone’s book store in Piccadilly, London, was held in front of the erotica and true crime sections.
Tom tom
An equally odd juxtapositioning took place a day later when the Black Economic Empowerment Scorecard Process was launched at Uncle Tom’s Hall in Soweto on Tuesday. Lemmer has been labouring under the misapprehension that being empowered meant not being an Uncle Tom — but perhaps the fact that the launch was attended by Kortbroek had some bearing on the choice of venue.
Schumi über alles
The manne of the Dorsbult were quite surprised to see Michael Schumacher playing football during a charity match on television this week. As is expected during this type of match, none of the players took it too seriously and a jolly old time was had by all.
This perhaps explains why those who put together the Cape Argus TV guide used a photo of Schumacher to illustrate an item on the Euro 2004 soccer final and (on the same page) used the same photo for an item on an American comedy series.
Ja, nee
This arrived on the Dorsbult bar counter with a ”Made in Iraq” sticker on the bottom … underneath … whatever.
Discomfort zone
But it is behind the wheel of a fast car that Schumacher really excels. On Sunday the manne were duly watching the British Grand Prix on SABC3 and were intrigued not just by Schumi’s tactics, but by a ”competition” organised by one of the broadcast sponsors. This, for the uninitiated, involves two contestants battling it out over formula one questions — and the obligatory promotional question about the sponsor’s product, the Bic Comfort Three. The big prize is a trip to a grand prix in Italy.
It was hardly thrilling stuff, but Lemmer was rather curious about one of the contestants, a Rupesh Mallgee. Why? Well, the ad (for that’s what the competition really is) is produced by Ignition Advertising. And a Rupesh Mallgee is listed on Ignition Advertising’s website as its creative director. To his credit, he did do a plausible imitation of someone who knew nothing about the product.
Word crime
It seems no one escapes the reach of the Microsoft spellchecker. The version used on Outlook insists that Albie Sachs become Alibi Sashes.
And Bill Gates’s abomination has now incurred the wrath of a power far greater than Lemmer: the Oxford University Press (OUP). Research for the new Concise Oxford English Dictionary showed that the most common spelling mistake of the past 30 years, the unnecessary, misplaced or omitted apostrophe, was now a problem among only about 8% of people. According to the OUP’s 300-million-word database, the ”grocer’s apostrophe” has been replaced by misuse of ”diffuse” and ”defuse” — an error among 50% of examples on the database — as the most common mistake in the language. Second comes confusion between ”rein” and ”reign”, and third using ”tow” instead of ”toe” in terms of a line.
What has surprised the researchers is that such errors are prevalent among otherwise literate people. Angus Stevenson, of OUP dictionaries, told The Guardian: ”These errors are occurring in texts that are otherwise quite well spelt, possibly because of the increasing use of spellcheckers. Spellcheckers can tell you whether a word is correctly spelt — but not whether it is properly used.” Hoor, hoor.