What do you do when you work in local government and you’ve been spending tax-payers’ money at the rate of R230 000 a day for four years without official authorisation? Option 1: You plead guilty, get a suspended sentence, and are back at work in six months. Option 2: You use the media to allege a media-fuelled conspiracy against you. Option 3: You retrospectively legalise the R346–million you’ve spent on unapproved projects. The Limpopo local government has opted for the third option, while preemptively denying that any corruption has taken place. Corruption? Who said anything about corruption? Lemmer thinks they do protest too much …
With friends like these
The website for the Friends of Jacob Zuma has been providing Lemmer with a real education since he found it last week. For one thing, it’s taught him what loyalty really means. Take Malume, for example, who writes in the message board, ”i will pray for you and stick with you till the end unless you are proven guilty then i will have to turn away from you Baba … i love you until you are proven guilty.” Until? Have a little faith, Malume!
Hell hath no fury
And then there’s Malusi Dlamini, an ardent fan of JZ, who seems to have missed the finer points of the current 16 Days of Activism — indeed, he’s apparently missed most of the past 2 000 years — when he urges South Africans to revisit the Bible to remember ”how deceiving women can be”. ”I can’t stop to remember what happened in the garden of eden, what Delaila did to Solomon, how many men have fallen at the hands of women. This is no insult to women of South Africa but merely a reminder that even though they are good they have traces of evil in them. To me JZ is another figure in statistics of men who have been toppled by greedy deceiptful devious unscrupulous women.” Somebody didn’t get enough hugs from his mommy …
Knickers in a twist
The Deeyay is fond of pointing out the ruling party’s penchant for conducting itself in a manner befitting a schoolyard; but this week’s fiasco on the Cape Flats will make it difficult for the opposition to keep the higher moral ground. After all, how do you retain your adult aloofness when you’ve managed to organise the biggest panty raid in history?
Hang ’em high
George W Bush says that as soon as he can spare the time, he’s going to do the jury duty he’s been summoned for. Presumably someone will explain the basic concept of justice to him first, to spare some hapless traffic offender from having her car carpet-bombed, her home occupied by the 101st Airborne Division, and her assets given to Dick Cheney …