Kubi, Mr Mabe

 ANC's Mr Pule Mabe on salary payment challenges within the Party, as reported:

“A strange phenomenon has emerged now, especially because we have social media and all of that, when the ANC account and answer to staff, that it is unable to perform because of the challenges it faces. The expectation is that disciplined staff members would then rather ask for a platform with the ANC to understand how the problem is being resolved,” said Mabe.

Dear Mr Mabe

Discipline has gone to hell. How dare people go out on social media, complaining about not having been paid? 

Would you or I go publicizing family matters on social media? For example, an alcoholic uncle beating the daylights out of family members? No, sir, such sacred family issues must be kept within said family. We must keep a stiff, if somewhat bruised, upper lip. You are the quintessential example. I've not heard you complaining about not being paid.

One sometimes looks back with nostalgia to the disciplined days of strong leaders like Stalin, Kim Whatsisname and others.I know that decadent pinko liberals will go mad at this; but let's face it, the rack and the thumbscrew had their uses in maintaining discipline in the good old days.

That union bloke, Mr Mdala, reportedly said that management undertook to resolve some of the demands by the end of August.  Well, Mr Smart Alec Mdala, it's only the 28th of August. 

I think you quite rightly pointed out that this me..,pardon, challenge does not indicate that the Party cannot govern a country. Of course you can. And we'd love to find one somewhere for you to govern. Okay, so we have rampant crime, runaway corruption, incompetence, buffoonery, waste and inefficiency. Apart from that, you guys are doing fine. 

Yours in the struggle for discipline.

Richard

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Bean There, Done That, Mr Zuma

 Dear Mr Zuma

I am powerfully moved by your righteous anger and indignation at 'the law being used to target' you. 

I can relate. I was once targeted for doing a mere thirty kilometres above the arbitrary speed limit. What kind of law does not bend to accommodate me..., pardon,  I mean emergencies and special circumstances? For example, the imminent closing of my local KFC. 

Sir, it seems you are on the verge of spilling some long-promised beans. So moved was I that I had to borrow from the Langston Hughes poem, with a minor alteration or two. Apologies to the Hughes family, friends and poetry lovers.

What happens to beans deferred?

Do they dry up like biltong in the sun?

Or fester like a sore and then run?

Maybe they just sag

Like a heavy load

Or do they explode?

I suspect that we may be at the 'explode' stage. We all know what happens with bean-initiated explosions; the sound, the fury, the stench. 

Many South Africans may relate to the original, about a dream deferred. That's not the point. This is about you. After all, which came first: democracy or the ANC?

Sir, I am completely in tune with your implied 'what about others?' argument. During my last court appearance, I pointed out that Al Capone had done far worse. I also once referred my creditors to the national debt, and, for emphasis, the US national debt. To no avail. 'The law is a ass', said one learned gentleman. A soulless ass, some may add.

Sir, let us, like twin Samsons, grasp the pillars and bring the whole edifice down. With our beans.

Yours in the struggle for justice to be done, seen, heard and felt (and smelled?).

Richard 

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Crazy Stupid

Have you ever undergone the exquisite torture of desperately needing to laugh at a very inappropriate time? 

Happened to me at a meeting at a sister company. I excused myself, found the toilets and - blessed relief - bellowed with laughter. Someone walked out of one of the stalls. I tried to greet him but all I could manage was 'hahaha'. He looked frightened. He also didn't wash his hands.

I had a similar experience listening to the political woes of a friend from Kakistan. It was over a glass of President's Punch at the Saxonworld Shebeen. (Well within curfew and boozing hours, of course).

His president reshuffled his lame-duck  cabinet. The problem was that the shuffle resembled a before - and - after Taliban photo album. The new speaker had not only duffed up her previous portfolio but now had allegations hanging around her neck to rival the Ancient Mariner's albatross. Adding insult to injury, he said, was her speech about the joys of democracy. He quoted my own favourite Auden verses:

Exiled Thucydides knew

All a speech can say about democracy

And what dictators do 

The elderly rubbish they talk 

He paused angrily. 

"What are you laughing at? It's not funny at all."

"Actually it's a cross between Catch 22 and Nineteen Eighty -Four". I replied. "Darkly hilarious."

Getting up off the floor: "It's a miracle that you still have something vaguely resembling a country."

"Barely", he muttered. Then sombrely: "Well you may laugh. You'll never have to go through that."

"No", I replied. "In our country, we're not that stup.., I mean, crazy."

 

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Cinders: ANC Fairy Tale

From the province of Dr Ace, philosopher, comes this flash of brilliance.

'The ANC’s Free State branch has said that municipalities should intensify their programmes of naming and renaming as a way of speeding up service delivery.'

According to these thinkers, you were wrong, Mr President. There is a magical solution to our troubles. The magic is in the name. Renaming is the fairy godmother who will lift us from the grime of incompetence, indifference, slothfulness and corruption. Into the ball we will sweep, clothed in a shimmering ballgown of service excellence. But we seem to have missed the stroke of midnight and all we are left with are a couple of mice and some thoroughly rotten pumpkins. More correctly, we have swarms of diseased rats.

You need to smoke some incredibly strong, exotic stuff to make such an interstellar leap of logic. Even Durban poison won't do it. 

This story has elements of both a zol-induced fairy tale and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty - Four. 

Just keep calling incompetence, greed and bull..t something else. In South Africa, we have sufficient numbers of thoroughly dumb or gullible people for this to work better than Orwell ever dreamt. 

When reality bites, no problem. We'll find someone to blame it on. Here's a starter list for our Free State comrades. Please add as the spirit moves you:

apartheid, Gordhan, Rupert, Phoenix Indians, DA, WMC and media, counter-revolutionaries, all of the above. I apologize to the many third-force elements and capitalist running dogs that I have omitted.

We'd like to rename your branch but this blog is for family reading.

To quote a little - known Shakespeare line (not William, the other one): 'Manure, by any other name, still smells like s..t'.

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Loves To Dance

 Dear Fellow South Africans 

I would have sprung to the defence of Mr Zuma had I not injured my right calf proving some of the points below.

We all know that dancing makes strenuous demands on body and mind. We've seen pictures of the battered feet of ballet dancers. The Mshini dance, though a thing of beauty, punishes the muscles and joints quite severely. Before you nitpicking legal types yell 'calls for speculation', I'll expand. My Defence Of Msholozi (DOM) team and I applied the Mythbusters technique. Testing the dance out on the steps of various courtrooms, we confirmed that the possibility of injury is very real. 

Mr Zuma may also be suffering from the South African politician's scourge , atypical transient global amnesia, 

described in great detail in https://thescuffle.blogspot.com/2020/08/atypical-transient-global-amnesia.html

While ATGA is more a mental  / psychological ailment than a physical one, we also know of the mystic linkages between body, mind, soul and other bits.

I hear you say: "What about the suspicious timing?" Oh, the heart of man is inordinately suspicious. Mr Zuma has been looking forward to his day in court for a very long time. The ever-growing excitement as that day approached, must have taken a toll on his battered frame. It could have exacerbated any of the above conditions.

Give the man a break. 

Then again, a German lecturer made the profound observation that 'all of life is a break' (Das ganze Leben ist eine Pause).

Yours in the struggle for tolerance and understanding.

Richard

Subtle Rugby Racism

 Dear Fellow South Africans 

Stop.

Before you have another sip of Castle in celebration of the Springbok victory over the British Lions. 

We, in the Movement, are not easily moved by such things. Here's a deep, suitably sombre analysis of what really happened. I am sure that the CIC will issue a succinct, lucid, profound statement in due course. While you wait hungrily for the pearls of wisdom, here's my R200 rands worth (inflation). I speak as a staunch supporter of dialectical materialism and superior logic.

First, not one player of Indian descent was in the Springbok squad. I did not actually watch the match but I have friends in Phoenix who did. 

Second, the black players did all the hard work, as usual. Poor Cheslin Kolbe ran himself into a state of exhaustion. A brilliant try is scored. What happens then? A white guy steps up to put the boot in. The classic apartheid approach.

I could go on about the venue. We have a perfectly good ground in my area. We'd just need to move some stones. This would have enabled many of my comrades to attend the match. They don't like rugby but it's all about the principle.

I could also talk about the percentage of black players in the Lions squad. I will take that one up with the British embassy at a future march.

Do not be fooled. The racism is exquisitely subtle. But find it we will.

Yours in the struggle to leave no pebble unturned.

Richard 

Shuffle On

 Dear Fellow South Africans 

Being of a sensitive, tolerant disposition, I have some sympathy or empathy for the president.

It's not as if he had a barr.., I mean, bench of the sort the Springboks have. No doubt, he has some duckers and swervers in the Cheslin Kolbe mode. Some, though, don't seem to know which team they're playing for. Some, which game they're playing. Then there are those who couldn't hold on to the ball if their loo.., sorry, lives depended on it. 

Haven't we all hung onto stuff that we should have disposed of long ago? Hoping against hope that it might prove useful one day. Tough habit to break. I have a set of ANC, no, AMC Classic cookware that just never gets warm. 

I will certainly miss Mr Mboweni. I lived for his lessons on gourmet cooking with garlic and pilchards. He could have taught the comrades a great deal. Mainly that cooking belongs in the kitchen. Cook books and you get burned - or slapped on the wrist. 

One thing we all have to agree on: the president had to reshuffle. What with the pack missing an ace.

I'm relieved that our beaches remain safe under the redoubtable Mr Cele. I've been living in fear of ruthless camera crews and surfers. Now it's only the Great Whites one needs to watch out for. But Mr Malema and others have that in hand. 

The president knows that track record is important. The best one can say, for now: there seem to be tracks and records aplenty, some of the tracks a trifle muddy. 

One does want to be fair (as in impartial, Mr Malema. Not the other..) and give the new ministers space and time. Another 26 years, perhaps? 

Hope, it's been said, springs eternal in the human breast. I don't know. I'm still calling Chuck Norris.

Yours in the struggle to shuffle on.

Richard