South Africa's Brightest and Best

Fellow South Africans, we are spoiled for choice. 

In the red corner, a fiery orator who makes the Austrian guy look like a speaker at one of those  women's temperance meetings of old. 

In the yellow, a man who allegedly showed his contempt for America's bullying ways by parking his backside on the almighty dollar.

In the far corner, back from reluctant retirement, the man who claimed to know "nothing, nothing, nothing" and is setting out to prove that yet again.

Difficult choices. Some of their major achievements to date:

Mr Zuma would have transformed South Africa into a Nando's-chicken-in-every-pot country. Nine years of valiant struggle against the forces of WMC, Abelungu, the CIA, George Soros, van Riebeeck, Apartheid and others even more wicked, took a toll on his delicate health. Betrayed by spies and treacherous comrades (Et tu Cyril?), he remains Lord of the Dance.

Mr Zuma apparently cannot stand for a third term, says our constitution. A small obstacle for a man who is said to have already voided his bladder on said constitution. One who, some say, is demonstrating that the law can be an assho..., sorry, ass.

It may be that Mr Zuma is there to support two other candidates.

 One is Dr Ace Magashule, philosopher (honorary doctorate in philosophy from Turkish university, which obviously saw in him what we all missed). Dr Ace fought the good fight to free the Free State from the twin scourges of corruption and asbestos. I have no idea how much success he had with asbestos. The 'Acebestos' nickname is probably in recognition of his efforts.

This speech, to rival anything from William or Dr Martin Luther King, should reassure doubters that Dr Ace earned that PhD:

. "I met with Zuma but I did not intend on meeting with Zuma as a meeting is not necessarily a meeting to meet individuals but rather a meeting intended to meet with him in a capacity that we had already met."

The clarity, the homespun wisdom, the alliteration: this man is presidential material.

When a former chief justice,  with years of Solomonic judgements behind him, decides that MK represents the best and brightest in South African politics, who am I to argue? My membership form is signed and ready to go via Pep's courier service. Mr Mogoeng would apparently lose pension and benefits if he stood. So what? Mr Zuma and others have ably demonstrated that the South African presidency offers many opportunities to....contribute.

I admire Mr Malema most for backing the first South African bank to take the bold step of distributing product samples to selected customers. Mr Malema's flexibility and open-mindedness are often characterized by the ignorant as flip-flopping. One must keep an open mind, even if it means not allowing brain matter to obstruct the passage of whatever passes through. With great taste in branded clothing, a thirst for peace, joy and brotherly love across open borders and a sure grasp of scrotal politics, this is your renaissance man.

Mr Ramaphosa painted a bright picture of a Wakanda with smart cities and bullet trains. He's had mixed reults. Cities are smarting from years of municipal buffoonery. Bullets fly in trains, taxis and your friendly neighborhood dens for thugs, zamas and izinkabi. Give the man a chance. Frogs are not boiled in a day.

Donald, we in Africa are as ready and intellectually equipped as you are, to grasp the scrotum of a future, complex, challenging and dangerous.

Who is a sh..hole country now?

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Tymebank , South Africa  

51090259373

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

The Sound and the Fury

Dear Mr Malema 

I am sorely disappointed in your latest, rather pedestrian speech in support of Hamas.

As the Churchill of revolutionary, populist oratory,  one had hoped that your inspirational speeches would grow in fiery luminosity over time. 

Your latest effort was no different from what you have done in the past. Where was the gloriously gory stuff about disembowelment, severing heads and the other truly violent stuff that one expects from a revolutionary such as yourself?  I think that your Hamas comrades would have been disappointed.  As would your idol,  Chè Guevara,  had he lived to witness  this dismal performance.

Is it not time that you joined the older folk from umKhonto weSisu?  (I hope I got that right). I think that is more your speed. Perhaps it is time to hand over to the younger,  more practical revolutionaries like Floyd. He, at least is a man of action. Who can forget the classic chokehold that he put on that impertinent  journalist some time ago?

You mentioned that you will support Hamas with arms when you ascend the presidential podium. As that will probably be 30 years from now, you need to consider whether it might be somewhat late. I vaguely remember that you also promised to supply Russia With arms when you become president. Of course this will be quite possible, as the economy is bound to flourish under your capable leadership.  One remembers your support  for the brilliant VBS initiative. My,  how that took off! I so wish that the WMC banks would have learned from that glorious experiment.

I see our deserts bloom under your leadership  (guided, of course, by the tenets of dialectical materialism). I cannot wait to see you take the economy by the scrotum, as you once took our parliamentarians (by your own account).

But sir,  you really need to turn up the fire and the fury if you are to keep and hold the attention and interest  of this generation of followers. Remember that you face serious opposition in the form of MK,  whose leader  not only has a track record of  brilliant statesmanship  but also the kind of comic performance that has audiences in stitches.  It seems the best that you can do in the humour  department is to talk of kissing the enemy. Sir, that is not funny but rather vaguely creepy. 

A friend suggested that there is a different path you could follow, if you really want to build a worthwhile  legacy in the life of South Africa. He rambled on about wisdom and humility, instead of the frenzied ravings of a hormonally imbalanced teenager. I was aghast when he opined that humility is essential in healthy leadership. It is impossible, he said, to cultivate understanding and a spirit of real service without humility. How Uncle Tommish, white tendencied and counterrevolutionary! After all, you yourself quoted the piece of wisdom that a revolutionary is a walking, killing machine. Quite so. After laughing long and hard, I rebuked him soundly. 

Why on earth would a world famous CIC want to do anything so absurd?

Yours in the struggle to fan the flames of revolution with the fiery breath of flaming oratory.

Richard 

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Tymebank , South Africa  

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O Tichmann 

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Sly Way

Enough of depressing politics. Some music.

To the tune of My Way

And now the time is here 

We've got your vote and that's for certain 

My friends we'll light the braais,and you can eat until you're hurtin'

We've filled your ears with bulI, took you down each and every byway

And more, much more than this,  we took the sly way

Regrets, well just a few

But then again too few to mention 

We did what we could do, took what we could, without exemption

 We planned each charted course

 Each blue light dash along the highway

 And more, much more than this

 We took the sly way 

You've moaned, protested, cried

But haven't had your fill of losing 

You'll never turn the tide

It's so bizarre and so amusing

To think we did all that

And may we say, not in a shy way

Oh no, not ANC, we took the sly way.

 Yes, there were times I'm sure you knew

 When we got into deep doodoo

 But through it all, when there was doubt we made stuff  up and spat it out 

You ate it up, some took the fall

We took the sly way

 For what is this land, what has it got? 

We've looted some, there's still a lot

To tempt the heart of one who steals

 And at the trough of gravy kneels

 No record shows

 Away it blows

We took the sly way 

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O Tichmann 

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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Ice Cream Businesses

 Dear Mr Ramaphosa 

My comrades, (real comrades), and I took careful note of your threat.. pardon, warning, about the possible disappearance of NSFAS and social grants, should the ANC receive a deserved bollocking at the polls 

We love it when campaigning politicians lay out bold, inspirational plans and visions for the future: life, liberty and the pursuit of ice cream businesses. We got to thinking about what else could disappear if you and the comrades rode off into the sunset, fat pensions tucked into your saddle bags. 

We would probably miss the gobbledygook and the balderdash that is poured out daily. I recently learned a new word while playing the Balderdash board game.  Bumbilation refers to buzzing and humming noises.  We would, of course, miss your unceasing bumbilation and your admirably consistent bumbling. 

I suppose that we would have to rely more on the EFF, MK and assorted splinter parties and proxies for our daily ration of humour. 

Would corruption disappear? I don't know. It seems to be so embedded in our South African Souls. We have been accustomed to having it with our breakfast cereal,  morning tea and every meal thereafter. A friend once said that she actually feels dirty driving through South Africa. Perhaps a bit extreme but graphic enough.  That is the thing about wading through horse manure and the ordure of bulls daily. 

As a child, I and my other real comrades had the rare treat of attending a circus for the first time in our rural area. The circus was a complete fraud,  as we discovered later when the fire eater,   equestrian, tightrope walker and others turned out to be the same multitasking  man  in various disguises.  What's more he was a local fellow who swore in fluent  isiZulu when a hammer was dropped on his toe, while he went through his 'Mustapha, The Amazing Egyptian Magician' act.  Angry folk trashed the big top and even the lone horse and a few goats took flight. The next morning there was not even the slightest trace to tell that the circus had come to town. One hopes most sincerely that the disappearance of your circus will be as complete and final.

We too,  are weary  of the sloppy performances. The ring master who drones on but never says anything of consequence. Whose promises inevitably fall as flat  as the tightrope walker who made his tentative, timid walk on a disappointingly low wire. The equestrian who might as well have been flogging a long dead horse. The magician whose best contribution was the string of curses that he uttered when hammer met toe. 

We are utterly weary of being defrauded in this inept,  sham circus show.  We have had far more patience than the angry citizens who chased the ring master and multitasking performer into the night. We too want a refund on our exorbitantly expensive tickets. 

If you think this harsh, it's not as harsh as the reality that after almost thirty years of freedom and democracy, we ruminate and regurgitate, like slow oxen, the same cliches, slogans and elusive promises as at the beginning. We sit in the same real darkness of Eskom and the almost equally palpable darkness of a society compassed about by anger, hatred,horrific crime, hopelessness and corruption. There must be something deeply wrong with freedom and democracy,  then. Oh wait. Does it perhaps have anything to do with the people that we naively trusted to lead us fearlessly into the New Dawn of freedom and democracy? 

Comrades, you could redeem yourselves  by performing one really  good circus trick  - disappearing completely.

Yours in the struggle for life, liberty, the pursuit of ice cream businesses  and the removal of bumbilating politicians.

Richard 

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Capitec Bank, South Africa  

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How to Win Voters and Influence People

Dear ANC

You never disappoint. I've been concerned that you may not be able to top 'smallanyana skeletons', ruling till Jesus returns and other unforgettable, immortal quotes.

But you have again reminded us never to underestimate your genius for the truly bizarre. Apartheid runs amok through the land, burning buildings, stuffing up everything that can be stuffed up.  And even some things that, in a normal world,  cannot be stuffed up with the best will. 

You have topped all of that. Not even swart gevaar of days gone by could set people on a tremble like the prospect of losing student grants and social grants. Bravo! Perhaps we learned this brilliant electioneering tactic from our maste..., pardon, friends in Moscow. Or are we at the exalted place where we could teach them a thing or two? In addition, that is, to training them in the use of the nighttime fokol that we loaded onto their ship.

I believe that you need to turn up the volume on threats, sorry, warnings of this kind. For always at my back I hear, the polling day approaching near. Apologies to T S Eliot. 

You really need to work this apartheid thing. You've got to get it to the sinister, scary heights of the White Walkers legend in Game of Thrones. I don't want to be rude, but given your, er, dismal, comical performance in government, what else can you take to the voters?

A friend called it dirty, dishonest, fear-mongering electioneering. (So serious, my 'clever black' and 'colonial clerk' friends).  I would not go that far. It's pit toilet grade stuff but there are those who would drink sulphuric acid if the Great Leaders called it kool aid. This is as brilliant as anything vomit..., sorry, churned out by great strategists like Stalin and the North Korean bloke with the Afrikaans name - Jong something.

Viva ANC. Viva!

Yours in the struggle to renew the great Liberation Movement.

Richard 

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Capitec Bank, South Africa  

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O Tichmann 

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Confessions of a Colonial Clerk

Dear Aunt Betty 

 

 I am in desperate need of your advice.  I have endured such scorn and abuse as is usually reserved for those who suggest that Mr Zuma so much as glanced sideways at dirty money.

The thing is: I don't know why. You see, I penned a perfectly harmless tweet and signed it 'Colonial Clerk'. I am indeed a clerk in an Eastern Cape municipality. As some of us still call the Eastern Cape 'eKoloni' (the Colony), I thought this a mildly witty effort. An avalanche of vitriol descended on me from supporters of the ANC, EFF and a dozen other abbreviated organisations. I had no idea that clerical work was so despised. Some accused me of being in league with the Oppressors. 

So depressed was I by the negativity and naked hatred that I began seeing a psychiatrist. We have been dating now for six months. That is going well except for when she frequently asks: "How does that make you feel?" The other problem still remains. I still get angry and sarcastic questions about Johan Rupert

(whom I have never met), the CIA and my 'handlers'. I thought that being in the company of such well-known people as Redi Tlabi, Thuli Madonsela and Phumlani Majozi might help, but despair weighs me down like a smallanyana, but weighty, skeleton in the cupboard.

Should I resign my position or request a name change to my job title? That seems to have worked very well for various cities and streets on South Africa. Many of them are still impoverished and filthy but there's something about a new name. Like wearing one's new Christmas clothes for a day, before getting back into one's grubby shorts and party t-shirt.

Perhaps I should join the new Mkhonto party. It seems to have given Mr Zuma a new lease on life. I am already a card-carrying EFF member (aside from my Pick 'n Pay and Shoprite cards). I feel that it is time for change, as my psychiatrist friend keeps reminding me. Perhaps being in a party that scores above ten percent in by-elections will revive my flagging spirits. Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy singing jolly songs about killing people, while marching on an assortment of despicable organisations. I just have a hunch that this new party may well represent the noblest, purest aspirations of our people.

Aunt Betty, I treasure your advice as Mr Ramaphosa treasures ANC unity, love and peace. And the preservation of their good name and reputation for competence and integrity. I hope to hear from you soon. I'll listen on the radio, loadshedding permitting.

Yours in the struggle for restored respectability.

Richard 

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Tymebank , South Africa  

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O Tichmann 

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Delusions and Hallucinations

The input that I get from assorted learned people on X gives me great hope for South Africa. 

The sparkling repartee, the cool,  thoughtful comment -  I grow with each encounter.  A gentleman once suggested that I f&%k myself.  Intriguing though the proposal was from a perspective of scientific enquiry, I declined. My counter-proposal was that he perform the action on himself, as he was unlikely to experience any other intimacy, given his quaint attitude  and limited communication skills.

Someone kindly advised me that I was delusional, after I quoted some of Mr Zuma's more interesting utterances. I carefully noted that for discussion with my analyst at our next session. Now I could have sworn that Mr Zuma did indeed make those utterances. But I suppose that's the nature of delusion. Who knows where it may lead? 

Admittedly, some.. sorry, many,  of the utterances and delightful shenanigans of Mr Zuma and  comrades are so bizarre that they may well be the product of severe delusion. 

More recently I was advised that I am hallucinating. This followed some comment on some of Malema's  intriguing statements and actions. Now to go from delusion to hallucination has to be a serious matter. I suppose that I ought to be concerned.

I noted that input as well and brought forward my meeting with my analyst Dr von Schollenhofen von Eltern unter den Tannenbàmen. We will have, I imagine, much to discuss and I am grateful to the aforementioned Twitterati  for their concern for my mental and emotional health. And for their diagnoses. It's difficult in South Africa and one can use all the help one gets. They have also  saved me a few thousand rands in psychoanalysis.  Like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire,  I have come to rely on the kindness of strangers. 

Of course, these exchanges do lead one down a rabbit warren of Alice-like proportions (she of Wonderland). Could it be that these exchanges on X were themselves but the offspring of delusion and hallucination. If I responded with 'gaan krap in die mielies', would the phantoms of my fevered imagination respond? How would I know where reality ends and fantasy begins? Or vice-versa? 

What if Mr Zuma and Mr Malema are themselves but the stuff of delusion and hallucination joined in unholy matrimony?  Their surreal adventures suggest such a possibility. A book on their exploits would be rejected out of hand by any publisher worthy of the name. Also by readers. Even if nestled between Star Trek and the Harry Potter books. What would destroy suspension of disbelief would be the notion that people in South Africa actually took them seriously.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Tymebank , South Africa  

51090259373

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723