King Mazawattee the Jurassic, supreme monarch and Constitution incarnate of Swaziland, has stocked his Cabinet with seriously bright okes. In fact, the manne had their ears pinned back by the intellectual vigour of Mpumelelo Hlophe, the Swazi High Commissioner to South Africa, as he explained that democracy is the government of the person, by the person, for the person.
”I don’t understand when people say that Swaziland is not democratic,” he told the South African Broadcasting Corporation this week. ”Is it because we don’t have political parties? Do political parties necessarily mean you are democratic?”
The manne remembered ”elections” in South Africa featuring the National Party, the Herstigte Nationale Party, the Konserwatiewe Party, the Progressive Federal Party and the late Allan Hendrickse’s Laayber Pahdy, and had to concede that Hlope might have a point. In fact, they realised, but for being ruled by the whim of an absolute monarch for life, Swaziland is very democratic. Of hoe?
Take the money and run
Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. Teach a man to fish with dynamite, and you have Dorsbult’s rat-catcher, Rooimoer ”Grensvegter” Malan, and his forthcoming appearance before the magistrate.
But offer an unemployed man R1 000 to start a business, and you have a new initiative by Western Cape minister of finance Lynne Brown. Entry forms for the job-creation initiative appeared in the Weekend Argus, offering the thousand bokke to 1 000 successful applicants, which raised speculation in the DB over how far 1 000 jobless manne can get on R1 000. Lemmer reckons if they travel only at night, and drive with a light foot, they could get to Mombasa before anyone notices they’re gone.
The possibilities are endless
The manne are always bok for a clever TV ad, even though they acknowledge that nothing will ever come close to the Castrol ad in which Boet and Swaer saw off the flirtations of that bloody French Spaniard on the Dakar. But this week they were left confused by two Sasol ads. Wouldn’t it be great to have a milk bottle that could tell you when milk is off, asked the one. Ja, they agreed, it would be lekker. If only we still had milk bottles in South Africa.
Ten minutes later the second spot asked the manne to imagine clothes that could regulate your body temperature; but they couldn’t work out why such an ad would start with an image of a homeless person freezing on a cold park bench. After all, wouldn’t Sasol-engineered self-regulating garb be the exclusive preserve of the rich? And besides, doesn’t Sasol have more pressing concerns? For instance, wouldn’t it be great to have an oil refinery that didn’t burn its workers to death or leak toxic waste into the environment? We at Dorsbult always say, ”Why not?”