Mutter Author

"There’s action, and then some. But when it’s drizzly springtime in Delft, with that familiar aroma of cheese, mildewed sheets and raw sewerage festering under a leaden sky, you know it’s time for world-class golfing action. Yes folks, welcome to the 400 Dutch Masters, live from crappy Holland! And a warm welcome to my co-anchor, Bob Weinberger.”

Apart from taking a flame-thrower to a cash-in-transit van, there are only a few truly effective ways of wasting money. Thank heavens, then, for the trained professionals on show this week in Pretoria, where our most incontinent squanderers gathered for an unrivalled display of fiscal profligacy to celebrate the final triumph of the people over the blue hair of Frene Ginwala.

Posh Spice was gutted when she discovered that Becks had snogged a slag. Posh said "Gosh!" at a posh thrash where she was splashing dosh about. She copped one at Becks, who sobbed. Posh blubbed, too. The dirty love-rat denied hot pash on the physio bench, but then came the Becks sex-text tester.

Negotiations over the granting of a grand prix to Bahrain were apparently as tough as a Saudi prince’s hands. The minister for state-sponsored decadence, reclining on a migrant labourer, gave Bernie Ecclestone his final offer. “Bernie, light of my eye and song of my heart, can I peel you another grape?”

It was Greta von Ribbentrop’s first Met, and as they drew nearer she could no longer contain her excitement and began to belabour her chauffeur around the head with an ornamental riding crop given her as a christening present. “Gustav! Look! Blacks! Stealing horses!”

Since it became illegal in most European countries to imply that black people or Middle Eastern immigrants are capable of anything other than vibrancy, euphemism has become integral to law-enforcement in the West. "Caribbean gun crime" is reportedly one of Jamaica’s busiest exports.

Despite its attempts to persuade us to the contrary, sport is intrinsically unglamorous, and it was a logical step to co-opt Oscar-style celebrations replete with triumphal muzak swirling from the orchestra pit and leggy apparitions in gownless evening straps.

National reconciliation is so much easier when one doesn’t have the capacity to vaporise one’s former oppressor at the touch of a button. No nukes has been good news for our little country. Which is why I was perturbed to receive a letter from a major insurance company informing me of a change to the terms of their policies.

There is a tranquility in soap opera that brings transcendence to its disciples. Which is why I was inconsolable this week when I tuned in to contemplate my Midwestern nirvana and found instead something called the Africa Cup of Nations. Lotus blossoms and incense flew across the room as sage-rage took hold.

The manner in which this newspaper wrote the news before it happened last week (“The day rape was raped”, or, as it turned out, “The day after rape might have been seduced”) had nothing on the frenzy of pre-emptive journalism in the press box at Newlands on Sunday night.

In a shocking blow to the local economy, authorities have announced that the petrol price is set to rise by R5,25 a litre in the first week of February. Diesel and household paraffin will rise by R4 and R6 a litre respectively. A contradictory but optimistic forecast for the new year shows how the economy is affected by everything and nothing at all.

The as yet unsubstantiated rumours that the so-called Old National Party is to be revived will be welcomed by those South Africans who believe that a return to “old values and standards” is not only urgently necessary, but something of a moral imperative as well. Despite the obvious misgivings, this newspaper has to agree.

There’s nothing like a big shiny trophy to give closet nationalists the sporting hots. The same shabby politicos who spent their days at Patrice Lumumba University struggling through the all-in-pictures version of <i>Das Kapital</i> now embrace victories as proof of their nation’s manifest destiny.

Belinda Silbert, the TV psychic, fits in somewhere between a psychotherapist and a faded hippie. But should it all go south for her, there will always be a need for her talents in South African sport. It’s nice work if you can get it, being a sport psychic. Two months ago Rian Oberholzer’s reading would have been a real eye-opener.

It seems there’s this dame, goes by the name of Fifa. Everybody knows Fifa. It seems Fifa is in town, just passing through on her way home to Europe. Dapper Danny Jordaan and Knuckles Balfour are trying to persuade the doll to come for a longer visit in 2010, but she is being coy and whispering sweet nothings to both .

At Café Solipsist on Hollywood Boulevard the climate-controlled atmosphere had turned sour, like scum on a forgotten halfcaf-decaf-mochaccino-frappe-latte. Bradley and Jennifer Pitt poked listlessly at their polyunsaturated salads and avoided eye contact, while over at the bar Nick Cage and Tom Cruise compared jaw clenches.

Girls aged between 14 and 18 start applying their minds to career and education choices, so this is a good age at which to prevent their choices from being influenced by gender stereotyping. This was the reason why, on May 8 this year, more than 2 500 girl children from schools in disadvantaged communities across the country were invited to participate in Cell C’s Take a Girl Child to Work Day.

You don’t have to be the chairperson of a multibillion-rand company with millions invested in a foundation or trust to get involved in corporate social investment (CSI). Employees earning a weekly wage can make as important a contribution as their bosses.

Ask a Capetonian to play “word association" with the name Community Chest, and the most likely responses will be “carnival" and “twilight team run". These two fun-filled events have become the public signature of the Community Chest of the Western Cape.

The term “triple bottom line”, also known as sustainability, refers to how business makes its money. It is about adopting balanced social, environmental and economic performance. This is where the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s Investing in the Future and its sister competition, Greening the Future, step in.

The Old Mutual Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI) network has more than 20 “champions”, affecting the lives of about 3,4-million people from 18 communities in six of the country’s nine provinces. The primary champions mentor hundreds of other champions and, in the process, more than 15 000 volunteers have been mobilised over the years.

The panel of judges for the Investing in the Future Awards 2003 comprised specialists in the field of corporate social investment. The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> thanks them for their hard work in choosing deserving finalists and winners from the 31 quality entries in this year’s competition. The judges were:

In March Croydon became the first London borough to gain fair trade status, paving the way for the rest of London. To gain fair trade status, Croydon had to reach a number of set goals, including increasing the availability of fair trade products in shops and cafés and forming a steering group.

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa (FTTSA) works with a variety of mainstream, emerging and community-based tourism enterprises that provide services directly to tourists. In order to receive the Fair Trade in Tourism Trademark, businesses must be able to show they are committed to fair and responsible practices.

I don’t have a problem with democracy. In fact some of my best friends are democrats. I think it’s lovely the way democracy boosts democratic values and nurtures the growth of, uh, good self-esteem. Democracy is so sublimely fart. Fair! I meant fair!

Research done by Nasa and the National Geographic Society reveals that the most plentiful things in the world are (in order) bits of sand, locusts, professional tennis tournaments, lemmings, dormice and Baldwins.

The blackout in New York and Ohio last week came as a timely reminder about the dangers of not pressing “save” on one’s PC every now and again. But electricity is the lifeblood of American sports.

For all the gory mud and compacted fractures, sport is fantasy, and a peculiar one at that. Why does Corné Krige continue to hurl himself under the cleats of galloping Antipodeans while blood seeps from all his original orifices and some new ones, too?