Having confirmed her ambitions to be Dr Dolittle by wearing his hat to the opening of Parliament, Minister of Potions Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang now says people with Aids are welcome to try their luck with traditional healers. The manne are incensed that she should be passing the buck once again, but Lemmer disagrees. After all, passing the buck is deeply entrenched in traditional medicine: ”Shoot buck. Pass it to sangoma who will boil it in mystical Marmite and Zambuck. Apply to affected area to be cured of Aids, bad luck and low salary. Pass many bucks to sangoma’s secretary on your way out. Cash only. Today.”
It’s good to be the king
The manne would like to extend hearty congratulations to the Masvingo provincial fund-raising committee in Zimbabwe for their magnificent achievement of raising $2,5-billion for Robert Mugabe’s birthday party next week. That should more than pay for the streamers, the Oros and the Barbie-themed ice-cream cake. However Lemmer doesn’t understand why they didn’t delay their announcement for a few more days: Zimbabwean inflation being what it is, by next week they could have claimed to have raised $1-trillion, which would almost certainly have earned them the title deed to somebody else’s farm.
You can’t handle the truth
President Thabo Mbeki says Zimbabwe’s opposition agreed to discuss a draft Constitution with the Zanu-PF and hand it to him. The Movement for Democratic Change denies everything. Politics as usual, as far as Oom Krisjan can tell. But what got him scratching his head was the statement by Oom Thabo’s spokesperson, Murphy Morobe, which appeared in last week’s Mail & Guardian. ”The president would never lie about an issue as important as this.” Now tell us, Murphy ou swaer, does that imply there are less important issues that he would lie about?
Draw, pardner!
When Vrot Snoek broke the news of Dick Cheney’s hunting ”accident”, the manne in the Dorsbult Bar were beside themselves with joy. With a single stroke (or two, if Cheney emptied both barrels) it seemed that justice had finally prevailed and that one Republican vice-president was going to fry for the murder of another Republican vice-president. But it all fizzled when Dok Rabie explained that Cheney had been hunting quail and not Dan Quayle.