Learn From South Africa, Mr Putin

 Dear Mr Putin

I am dismayed at the rather dismal performance of your mighty army. 

Trains are still running in Ukraine. They have electricity more often than we do here in South Africa. Most railway stations have not been destroyed. There is no cable theft or rampant looting. I mean no disrespect but you guys have done a piss-poor job.

Then there's your propagand..., I .mean communication. It's crude, unsubtle and humourless. Our national broadcaster slips in jolly chunks of Party doggerel and Party shenanigans regularly and everyone here thinks it's regular news.  It's done with subtlety and style. You could learn something.  

Our politicians can talk the most bizarre gobbledygook  under the sun to rapturous applause and acclaim. Add some rhythmic dancing and a thrown bone of a t-shirt, a food parcel, a braai, and they are feted like rock stars of Southern African politics. One of them once tweeted about having landed, not on, but in the moon. The sort of utterance  that lands people in  institutions for  long spells. He's still in his ministerial job of covering up potholes in the roads or something. True story. Another displayed alarming ignorance of the differences between killing and dying. That would disqualify anybody from a job as a dog-walker, let alone a member of parliament. Our hero is field marshall, (or some equally absurd title) of a populist party, where his acolytes revere him as the Vikings did the Norse gods. Mr Putin, you have a lot to learn.

What's really noteworthy, for your circumstance, is that our lot destroyed an entire country without firing a single shot in anger. 

Sir, you really should get in touch with our chaps. I'm sure they'll be delighted to help. You are held in warm regard in some quarters  - I think it's your bubbly personality and keen sense of humour. Some, I suspect, think of you as The Great White Father Across The Sea.

Yours in the struggle for military and political ascendancy.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Black Hole

Dear Mr President 

It's so unfair that so many people made fun of your pothole closing ceremony. I was inspired. I see it as symbolic of your covering up..., I mean, covering the yawning chasms into which our taxes have been tumbling these past twenty-eight years or so. 

I experienced a similar, if slightly less electrifying thrill, when I saw Mr Cele confiscate liquor from a desperado at a roadblock during lockdown. People do not understand the long game. Liquor here, a surfer there, a gqom music aficionado.... all building up to the day when he proudly parades a crestfallen  gang of mass murderers. And they shrink at the lash of his tongue.

Similarly, sir, it begins with a pothole ceremony, a community tap unveiling, a toilet ribbon-cutting ceremony, a flag monument... You were at the wheel of a piece of pothole repair machinery. I looked beyond that moment to the day that you will be seated in the caboose of a bullet train, bright smart-city lights  winking in the distance. Loadshedding permitting.

Sir, you may not be moering the ball out of the park, as in a twenty-twenty game. This is a five day (read thirty year) contest. A block here, a leave there, a stroll down the wicket to chat..the game drags..., sorry, goes on.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one filled pothole. Some people complain that you should be spending your time on really important things. What could be more important than a glorious photo opportunity? There have been so few. As the 2024 elections approach, can we expect Time Magazine quality photos of MPs and cabinet ministers helping senior citizens across the street? 

Yours in the struggle against potholes and, er, ass ....

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

 

The Skinny On Hospital Jeans

Dear Tembisa Hospital Executives

I, like the president and many South Africans, was shocked at the news of the alleged skinny jeans purchase.

 An excerpt from a news report:

' Last year, ahead of the third coronavirus wave in June, the hospital reportedly spent R500,000 on skinny jeans.'

Skinny jeans are a vast improvement on those almost indecent hospital gowns currently in vogue. I salute you for your bold, innovative approach to hospital couture. However, skinny jeans are notoriously difficult to get on and off. I'd hate to expire in the operating theatre because I couldn't get the jeans off in time. And what about blood circulation?

 One story is that each pair cost R2500. I could have sourced them at a fraction of the price. How big or small a fraction to be negotiated. (Remember that nine tenths is also a fraction). With my Cuban contacts, I can churn out thousands of pairs of jeans in no time. The MERDE brand is big in Africa and even on other continents, particularly with fashion-conscious politicians, tenderpreneurs and their ilk.

Instead of proudly taking credit for the imaginative move, someone modestly attributed it to a typing error:

'Mthunzi has now said that the money was actually for sutures required by surgeons: “They actually punched the wrong material code when they were buying”. (ewn.co.za).

Perfectly understandable. I tested the theory. On typing the word 'sutures' one hundred times at speed, i found that in five instances I had actually typed "skinny jeans". Damn these QWERTY  keyboards!

Dear executive, despite all the fuss, I would not entirely abandon the foray into hospital haute couture. Remember that they laughed at Galileo.

Yours in the struggle for medical advances.

Richard  

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Dinosaur Prints In South Africa

 Dear Texans 

TV news tells us that large dinosaur prints have been found in the Lone Star State. 

We are tired of hearing how everything is bigger and better in Texas. Let me tell you that we discovered massive  dinosaur prints in South Africa years ago. You don't hear us going on about it. We call them potholes. You can see them on most South African roads.

What's more, the dinosaurs responsible for those prints are alive and well. Visit our parliament, provincial governments,  municipalities and various political parties. You will see these ponderous beasts at work and play. Be warned that, because of their gargantuan appetites, dinosaur flatulence is a very real problem.

Dinosaur dung covers vast areas of the country. Close examination of the dung tells the story of the typical diet of these behemoths. You will find, among others:

Clear evidence of a prodigious intake and  excretion of cliçhes, slogans and delusions. 

Dried stalks of revolutionary fervour and dreams of a socialist paradise, mixed with chunks of conspicuous capitalist consumption.

A glutinous mess of utopian, Pan-African dreams.

Mushy bits impossible to identify by any means known to human beings.

A favourite food is a herb similar in appearance to lucerne. Our beasts gorge on it and regurgitate great heaps regularly. Here it goes by the isiZulu name of 'Amanga'.

You can tell Governor Abbott that though he may have a bigger fleet of buses than we do, we have him soundly beaten in the dinosaur stakes.

Yours in the struggle to be the biggest and the best.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Madam Public Protector

 Dear Madam Public Protector 

I am disappointed that, (if reports are to be believed), you expected your staff to address you as 'Madam".  What's wrong with 'Your Grace'?  Having watched Game Of Thrones (no, not the KZN version), that form of address strikes me as eminently suitable.

Respect and discipline have gone to hell. Bring back flogging and the rack, I say. The gallows too. How can you be expected to serve the great South African public effectively when people are flinging your first name about with gay abandon? That would distract the most focused Public Protector from the epidemic of corruption plaguing South Africa. I would certainly have trouble deciding what to investigate and what to leave alone. Which Bosasa issues to leave alone, for example.

This is how it all starts, Your Gr..., I mean, Madam Public Protector. First names, familiarity, then disrespect and the collapse of discipline. I think the disintegration of the Roman empire  began with such casual, disrespectful stuff as: "How's it hanging Jules?", instead of "Hail Caesar!".  

You may be experiencing some minor problems but no-one can deny that you run a tight ship. Captain Bligh would probably have approved.

Yours in the struggle for order and discipline.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

ANC And Orwell

 Dear Mr Mashatile

In a horrible nightmare, I was viewing a month old corpse at a morgue, when the undertaker intoned: "His recovery is underway". Bizarre. Then I read the tweet below:

The Treasurer-General of the ANC, Paul Mashatile, has written an article on Business Day, and argues that South Africa’s recovery is underway. He writes, “it is not all gloomy on the economic front”. Touts Operation Vulindlela.

Whatever you are smoking would have been described in the old Western novels as 'heap powerful medicine'. The purveyors of Durban Poison would be green with envy.  Yes, all is not gloomy. It's pitch dark, and not courtesy of Eskom only. Rampant crime, rolling corruption, blackouts, blunders, neglect, incompetence, buffoonery...that not gloomy enough for you? I've read that the Chinese word for 'crisis' has an implied meaning of 'opportunity' also. The only opportunity that your Party seems to have grasped is the opportunity to bugger up whatever has remained unbuggered to date. 

I don't think that you are on hallucinogens, surreal though your utterances are. I think that your Party makes liberal use of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four as a handbook. I sympathize. What else can one do, when the mess is beyond explanation or justification,  but create a new reality? And hope that 'proles' and Party members will guzzle  it like fine wine at a budget speech function.

Some quotes for you:

"All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'"

There are many useful and intriguing concepts in Orwell's book that I'm sure you are familiar with. Apart from that, I liked the song:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you, and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we,...

I leave you with a quote from an earlier post:

If George Orwell had written 2020 in South Africa:

The party's ever-present slogans fluttered proudly from deserted dairy farms, vandalized railway stations and scorched public buildings:

INCOMPETENCE IS HEROISM

DECAY IS PROGRESS

BULLSHIT IS TRUTH

Yours in the struggle with the elusive truth.

Richard

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Hatman

 Dear Mr Cele 

Your once soaring popularity seems to be plummeting. 

I think it grossly unfair that your many stellar achievements in the war against crime are so soon forgotten.

Let me remind South Africans:

You made the startling discovery that alcohol, not money, is the root of all evil. Nobel prize-winning stuff. 

You have made it easy for us to identify villains and potential villains. Those tattoos are a dead giveaway. Crime fighting made simple.

You arrested thousands of puffing and swilling degenerates during lockdown. Who knows how many lives were saved by that bold stroke?

You warned us against loud Gqom music. I'm not sure what it does, but it must be horrific.

You warned us to expect more horrific crime statistics in future. Sir, how did you come to that brilliant conclusion? Sherlock would applaud.

You have racked up a record number of air miles, flitting around the country to crime scenes, like the ever-belated cavalry, dispensing words of wisdom and warning. Who can forget your words, profound as an excerpt from a great Shakespearean tragedy:

"I cannot picture a zama zama (illegal miner) with a pretty girl."

Sir, neither can I. I have been pondering the layers of meaning and the implications for law and order for weeks now.  You do say the most thought-provoking things.

People say that you don't have a strategy for fighting crime. Nonsense! I'm sure that, even now, your police are staking out tattoo parlours. And dens of iniquity where the Tattooed Ones gather, consume alcohol and plan heinous criminal activity. 

When this strategy comes together and your many pithy, wise and witty quotes are remembered, you will surely be hailed as the Batman, or perhaps, Hatman, of South Africa. 

Local television has served us sparse fare of late. I suggest a series based on your thrilling exploits: 'Hatman, The Daf..., sorry,  Dark Crusader'.

Yours in the grim struggle against tattoos, alcohol, Gqom music and more.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723