Revive and open on Apartheid!
Lemmer was under the impression that the Democratic Alliance’s Craig Morkel, son of the Cape Flats’s answer to Charles Bronson, had withdrawn from all political activity in late January after being linked to the travel voucher skandaal. He was therefore not a little surprised to find Bronsontjie on the party’s website this week, listed as DA parliamentary spokesperson on youth. And while on the site, Oom Krisjan was fascinated to read that the DA Youth (Lemmer assumes there’s more than one) is committed to the following objectives: “We should address issues that affects [sic] young people. Revive and open on Apartheid [sic] and emphasize the role played by Liberals and liberal Institutions in liberating this country.” A few lines down the party urged its youth to “associate yourself with positive people if you want to be successful inlife [sic]”. Surely the Deeyay’s first objective should be to find someone who is functionally literate to run its website?
Live, 365 days a year (ago)
Somebody needs to buy SABC3’s late-night anchorman Glenn Lewington a mug of boerekoffie, and maybe a rusk. The drowsy newsreader usually sleepwalks his way through his lines, but he hit rock bottom on Wednesday night as he celebrated the triumph of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. “Seems we’re on a winning streak after Charlize won her Oscar last week,” said poor Glenn. No, swaer, those were highlights, see? Now sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.
The R44-million question
Asked what they’d do with R44-million, the manne in the Dorsbult Bar split into two camps: those who would take out five-year subscriptions to Farmers Weekly and then put the rest in their Post Office books; and those who would travel to exotic and strange lands, such as Cape Town and the East Rand Mall. Of course if you’re Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, you could stage a two-day skills conference. Lemmer assumed the minister would have to answer a few questions, having spent taxpayers’ funds at the rate of R250 a second for 48-hours, but Mdladlana has beaten his interrogators to it by asking all the questions himself. In fact that’s all he does, as he told City Press (“I’m not an accounting officer, I’ve got nothing to do with money. I only ask questions”). And there were insightful questions galore on SABC news as he confronted the allegations about R9-million spent on videotaping the event. “The question is: What videos?” he asked. “Why are there these stories? Because the stories I hear is that these videos are not necessarily R9-million.” Ja nee: the videos he hasn’t heard about weren’t necessarily R9-million. Clear as mud.
Let them eat steak
They say ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan, and King Mswati the Anachronistic is no exception. It turns out the merry pastoral bigamist, living large in feudal Cloud Cuckooland, didn’t use public money to buy his lavish Maybach sedan earlier this year. No, according to the Times of Swaziland, the king sold cattle from his private herd to foot the bill, and who are we to doubt the word of a senior courtier quoted by a newspaper allowed to exist by the munificence of the king? So that’s all fine then. Still, Lemmer can’t help remembering that royal pates have a habit of being lopped off by starving masses, and given reports that 1 750 cattle were hawked, he has to wonder why Koning Mazawattee didn’t organise a huge braai for his subjects. As Vrot Snoek points out, a 540kg steer produces about 340kg of meat (a fact verified by Cattletoday.com), so 1 750 beasts would have provided 595 000kg of meat, or 3kgs for each of the 200 000 Swazis who live in poverty and rely on South African and Mozambique for food handouts.
Sorry?
The manne were willing to give rubber-necked typist Pamela Jooste the benefit of the doubt over January’s plagiarism foefie: perhaps, they reasoned, no one had ever told her that it’s wrong to pass off other people’s work as your own. But this week they could find no explanation for her extraordinary inability to understand the concept of an apology. In an interview on Naspers’s LitNet website, Jooste said she had given an immediate, unreserved and sincere apology. “But despite this,” wrote the clearly aggrieved authorescent, “I must say I feel myself to have been unfairly and harshly treated.” Huh? “The pieces I used were of minor descriptive nature only and had no impact on the book, the storyline or the character.” So let’s get this straight: she’s stolen chunks of Lindsay Bremner’s journalism, impugned it and its author as irrelevant in literary terms, and she feels unfairly treated? If that’s an apology, we’ll take a klap through the face any day.
Wave of support
According to Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi, any effort to prevent Jacob Zuma’s ascension to president would be like “trying to fight against the big wave of the tsunami”. Lemmer just hopes that if Schabir Shaik’s unregistered charity does become top dog, he won’t similarly kill 300Â 000 people and lay the entire region to waste.
Poison Ivy
This week Lemmer got an e-mail from Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, begging him to help her launder $25-million. She’ll have to get in line, though, because he first has to help an exiled Nigerian prince move $10-billion out of the country, and then there’s the harassed widow of a Senegalese civil-rights activist who is trying to make $20-million disappear. This new e-mail scam breaks new ground, though, using poor Ivy’s name and keeping spelling and language mistakes to a minimum. Lemmer especially liked the finishing touch, a final line that declared, “Honesty and transparency, they are my best work tools.” A quick check of the e-mail address took Oom Krisjan to Romania. As if there weren’t enough dof con men in Africa, now we have to sukkel with Eastern Europeans …
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