Not the Mail & Guardian is Robert Kirby’s startling and savagely satirical parody of the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Any similarity between real people and characters portrayed here is anything but coincidental
The Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, this week revealed his plans for ‘an innovative new initiative” to attract the growing numbers of ‘theme tourists” to South Africa.
He pointed out that many ‘theme tourists” arrived each year to visit Boer War battle sites and to explore the dungeons of Cape Town Castle. He said tourists all over the world flocked to sites of human suffering, like the terrible Nazi concentration camps and the killing fields of the American South.
A spokesboer said the department was putting in place similar provisions and services. ‘The horrors of apartheid have a lot of mileage left. After all it was the social engineers of Van Schalkwyk’s very own political party that invented apartheid,” the spokesboer added with a self-deprecating smile. ‘The minister feels that as a member of the still proud New National Party, he can speak for apartheid in all its malicious history.”
The spokesboer refused to be drawn on details of Apartheid Theme Tourism, but an official in the tourism ministry did reveal some of the details.
One of the top attractions would be a model quarry complete with glaring lights and truncheon-wielding prison warders. (This would also offer excellent opportunities for micro-traders dealing in fake RayBans.)
Apartheid Xtreme, a Disney-like speciality where visitors could try out genital electric shock equipment and edge-of-the-chair torture techniques, is also in the pipeline.
Ex-security policemen would demonstrate wet-sack suffocation methods and braver visitors could play the death-defying game of Open the Parcel, invented by Craig Williamson. If they manage to defuse one of these without loss of limbs, they would qualify for a free weekend blindfolded and gang-sodomised at Vlakplaas Lodge.
The market of symbolic souvenirs would create many new jobs in factories manufacturing inflatable life-size Mandela cells and in printing concerns producing apartheid era keepsakes such as genuine-looking pass books.
Asked whether the ministry would be seeking advice on apartheid marketing from acknowledged experts, the Krok brothers — former manufacturers and distributors of carcinogenic skin-lightening cream and owners and operators of Gauteng’s Apartheid Museum — the spokesboer said that he would pass on the tip to Van Schalkwyk.
New legislation introducing the plans for Apartheid Theme Tourism is expected to be introduced during the next parliamentary session. —