The Wisdom of Collen Malatji

ANC Youth League leader Collen Malatji says “the ANC pays you for being born, pays you for living, pays you to go to school, pays you to go to university and gives your mother water and electricity”.

Dear Mr Malatji

I see that I have been horribly shortchanged. Could I please have my payment now for being born. I have checked my Capitec savings account several times since reading your uplifting message, but, so far, nothing, nada. dololo. Are you sure that you guys have the correct account details? I've included them below, just in case your database is not up to date. That would be a surprise as we all know that ANC spells efficiency.

As for being paid for living, had I known that, I would not have slaved to stay just over broke for so many years. I suppose that the large chunks that SARS hewed out of my salary were for that purpose. I'd like to collect now, please, having lived almost three score years and ten. Where do I sign up? Not Home Affairs or Labour, I hope, as I've also spent a goodly portion of those years queuing at those fine establishments. Often to no avail, as the staff have to go home sometime.

Yes, I'll be pleased to be paid for my school years. They were boring in the extreme and of little value in the real world. Bartholomew Diaz, his fascinating sea voyages notwithstanding, was not helpful in the acquisition of jobs, loans or anything really useful. Now had we been thoroughly schooled in technical skills, things would have been very different. I refer to the life skills that make the world go round. A practical, useful syllabus would have included:

* Strategies and tactics for life without water and electricity 

* How to make, keep, switch and discard friends in high, political places and low lucrative places

* Starting your own political party for profit

* Living off the fat of the land in lean times

And much more of the good stuff

Adding insult to injury, we did not have the benefit of being allowed to pass some subjects with a 30 percent score. I don't see why not. Some of the thirty percenters are managing our country quite efficiently - aren't they?

I paid back my university loan with interest.  Why did those cunning bankers not tell me that it had already been paid by the ANC? I plan to sue them just as soon as I can get hold of Mr Mpofu. I think he's done with that futil..., I mean, difficult case for Mr Zuma.

As for water and electricity for my mother, she has passed on, but I certainly could do with some water and electricity for myself. There's not been much of either, though you couldn't tell that from the  bills, which are remarkably regular and consistent.

I know that the ANC has itself had some trouble with bills (for wages, suppliers etc.) but I'm very pleased that they've not been tempted to dip into their fund that "pays you for being born, pays you for living, pays you to go to school, pays you to go to university and gives your mother water and electricity”. 

That's integrity.

Yours in the struggle to ensure that voters are grateful for ALL that the ANC does.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Vladimir, Well Done!

Dear Mr Putin

Congratulations on winning a tough, grinding election battle. That was close.

I am satisfied that your elections are as free and fair as the ones held in Zimbabwe. 

I understand that the other three candidates gave you a run for your money. Our ANC government is facing opposition from some two hundred or so parties (we don't play here). Fortunately, their supporters are just as blindly..., pardon, solidly, loyal as yours. It's something to see unforced loyalty based on affection, respect and recognition of a track record of integrity,  honourable behaviour and competence. 

It's admirable that you were able to soldier on despite the death of Mr Navalny, which must have weighed heavily on your mind. What with your being that rare creature  - the sensitive, caring statesman. You remind me so of our own Mr Zuma, who is all for corporal punishment and other enlightened reforms.

I noticed that a few people, carried away by the euphoria of participating in free and fair elections, ruined ballot boxes and set stuff on fire. I'm sure that this was all just in high election spirits. You know: voters will be voters. Suspended sentences and some meaningful community service should sort that out. I'm thinking, clearing snow and ice, healthy outdoors work - that sort of thing.

We, too, have had some high jinks by politicians and public figures that went too far. All the way to commissions of inquiry, for example. We elected not to take a primitive, punitive approach. (We're way past that sort of medieval thinking). Instead, we redeployed, promoted, supported, in a cutting edge approach to discouraging criminality and fostering responsibility and accountability. To my knowledge, it's been a stunning success. We have people alleged to have been villains, scoundrels and out and out rotters now in many positions of high responsibility. One should never write rotte..., I mean, people, off. Does one's heart good to see the most modern reform and correction initiatives in action. I have no doubt that we will soon taste the fruits of our reform initiatives. Perhaps just as soon as our parliamentary speaker returns from special leave and we defeat loadshedding (which should be anytime soon  - or just now, as we say in South Africa).

So, I trust, Mr Putin, that you will take a leaf out of our African book, just as we have often done with yours. After all, are we not both important, impactful actors on the global stage? There you are, striving to bring peace and harmony to various parts of the world, using every means at your disposal: diplomacy, drones, rockets, mercenaries. And here we are, er, doing our best. Incidentally, our minister of defence said that we supplied you with fokol when your ship docked here. With all the demands being made on your military and other personnel, you may be running low by now. Please know that we have an inexhaustible supply of fokol to give and your ships are welcome any dark night.

Yours in the struggle for free and fair elections, even when outcomes are pre-determined.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

 

Scuffle On, MK

How did I come to have dozens of MK followers on TikTok?

I was praised as a wise man, a legend and other honorifics that would have had me blushing, were I still able to blush.

The reason for this outpouring of praise? This excerpt from a blog post:

'Dear Mr Zuma

My heartfelt thanks for your wisdom and guidance.  I was on the verge of making a terrible mistake at the polling station. 

I understand that you said that a vote for the ANC is a vote for WMC.  Now, I mistakenly thought that a vote for the DA was a vote for WMC.  Ah,  but now I see it clearly. A vote for The DA is a vote for apartheid.  Thank you for making that clear distinction. It would be a terrible thing to think that one had made one's mark for WMC only to find later that it was actually a vote for apartheid...'

(The Scuffle Continues : Seeing The Light: https://thescuffle.blogspot.com/2023/12/seeing-light.html)

A (very) few readers did read between the bull and awarded me a 'fuseg' and 'msu@#$$' or two. These I promptly 'liked', as is my custom.

I expect many more fusegs and msu@#$$s once the realization dawns that the video was not exactly a paen of praise for the Dancing One. 

This raises some interesting questions and thoughts.

Do many South Africans simply cherry pick whatever suits their ideology or theology, without engaging 'drive' upstairs? This could explain the worship of political idols with feet of very fragile clay.

Are irony and satire lost on many of our people? That could explain why rogues and charlatans get so many rides on the merry- go-round. Particularly when they should have left the playground with tails firmly tucked between legs.

Yeats wrote that:

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.

In South Africa, Mr Yeats, we could cannabilise that to:

Heads with one thought alone

Through summer and winter seem

Enchanted to a block of wood

To trouble the living stream.

I quote, for the umpteenth time, because it seems proved time and again:

'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....'

(The Scuffle Continues : 2020: https://thescuffle.blogspot.com/2020/12/2020_21.html)

In South Africa, the satire not only writes itself, but, like good manure, grows richer, riper and darker daily.

Here's to my many temporary MK followers!

Viva comrades, viva!

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

The Land That Commonsense Forgot

 Dear Jeff

I read the draft of your book, as promised. Interesting title: The Land That Commonsense Forgot'.

You asked me to be brutally honest with you. 

The part about the liberation struggle and the triumph over oppression made good, inspirational reading. 

I also enjoyed your satirical treatment of the descent into chaotic corruption and decay. Echoes of Orwell's 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four', complete with the tortured reasoning and language of the Party. I think that your treatment of the liberation from commonsense of government, politicians and people was nothing short of brilliant. Corrupt politicians treated as heroes, buffoons feted like pop stars, incompetents promoted to the highest positions in the land - the humour is deliciously dark. It's also quite disturbing and I couldn't help wondering what benighted country you based this story on.

Here's the brutal part. Jeff, you can't expect readers to believe that a country was sold to a foreign family over a few curries. I know that there's suspension of disbelief, but that's asking too, too much. Then there are other really bizarre episodes that no publisher will let ride. Really - medicine carried by head, a trip to Geneva that somehow bypasses Switzerland, political parties that resemble rogues' galleries and circus troupes, the far-fetched slapstick around electricity and water supply! Above all, there are two aspects that I urge you to remove, if you don't want the book to sink without trace. Not even the worst buffoonocracy in the world would spend millions on a commission into treasonous corruption and racketeering and then allow the accused to frolic in high and low places. What on earth were you smoking when you cobbled that up? (I did warn you about Durban's finest). Then there's also the bit about the very senior parliamentarian swanning off on special leave in the midst of investigations into very serious allegations. That doesn't happen. People resign.

If you remove those bits, I believe that your book will do very well. It has to be believable. The odd stretching of the boundaries of credibility is to be expected in a fiction novel, but this.....

If you do not, your family may well buy your book and praise it to you. In all likelihood, they'll be saying privately: "What a load of unbelievable codswallop."

Harsh, I know, but that's the brutal truth.

Best of luck.

Yours in the struggle to publish.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

Reddy - Willing and Able

Dear Mr Visvin Reddy

People are so wicked and irresponsible.

But then you know that already, don't you?Apparently, devious persons unknown tampered with your speech, somehow editing the video.

I believe you. I do not know you but you look the sort of mature, reasonable type who wouldn't spew out that sort of horse manure. I don't know much about the law but it all sounded rather threatening and bordering on, or crossing over into, incitement to violence. Talk of civil war and preventing South Africans from voting! You do know, of course, that that makes less sense than a bout of flatulence. No, I don't see any grown man embarrassing himself and his family with such mindless gibberish. So clearly, someone tampered with your video.

They made your speech sound like a very badly dubbed version of something Mussolini would have done on a bad, babelas day. With some malemarisms thrown in. Or something that a would-be school bully, cum clown, with a juvenile craving for attention, would do. I just don't see you spewing out that vile stuff on a public platform. Especially not in the name of umKhonto weSisu...., sorry Sizwe. (By the by, I have an Afrikaans speaking friend who insists on pronouncing umKhonto quite differently. I don't know if it's a real word that he uses, or what it means. It just sounds rather odd).

You have my empathy. I was once in the same leaky boat. A very irritating fellow was running down that fine crime fighter,  Mr Cele. I responded that I would fix it up. Do you know what they did? They edited my speech and substituted a different f verb.

 Fortunately during my court appearance, (for threatening violence, of all things!) I had several character witnesses who testified.

that I never swear. WTF,  I was properly brought up. I am sure that you could call up a host of witnesses of unimpeachable character and integrity. Mr. Zuma and Dr Ace are but two examples. Incidentally, I know that Mr Cele himself would have responded with dignity and restraint. You wouldn't get him yelling out stuff like 'Sharrap, Sharrap!' Good heavens, the man's a cabinet minister.

I do hope that the people who did this are arrested and get their just deserts. Sir, I think that, in the meantime, you should lie really low. Perhaps lower than a snake's belly. Sinister persons are probably following you around, just waiting for you to say something innocent like: 'Have a nice day'. Just so that they can record you and twist it into something ugly or as stupid as that edited speech. I think stick to sign language in public (just watch out for ambiguous gestures).

I don't know who 'they' are - yet.  I'm sure that they are the same lot who edited Mr. Malema's 'die forZuma'  into 'kill for Zuma'. And messed with Mr Mbalula's speeches to make him sound silly. Which, of course, he isn't. A trifle peculiar at times, yes, but not silly. Certainly not a clown.

It's a wicked world that we live in. People who have no business opening their mouths in public, polluting the atmosphere. People who should know better, breathing fire and slaughter, when we most need common sense and sensible solutions to our challenges. Then we have some, running around, editing fine, inspirational speeches.  Making them sound like the garbage  dumped on the streets of Durban recently.  I would sue them dry.  You might want to contact MERDE (Mann Enterprise for Resolution of Dire Emergencies) for assistance in this regard. We have a BBBEE rating (Bloody Bad, Bold, Enterprising Etters). My banking details are below and you can contact me via EFT.

You started your speech with 'Hear me carefully'. Nice touch. Reminiscent of your great leader's venture into creative numeracy ('Listen carefully: seven hundred million thousand and twenty hundred thousand...). A wise man emulates other wise men.

Yours in the struggle against shadowy manipulators of video material. Onward to the ballot box! 

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

The Law is 'a Ass'

Dear Mr Zuma 

I am so glad that your star is on the rise - for now.

I paid rapt attention to your recent speech, which made Churchill look like a fumbling, primary school debater.

You manfully tackled the use of Roman Dutch law in South Africa. Look at what the Romans and the Dutch did in times past. Not exactly exemplary behaviour, looting, raiding. None of that ever happens here.

I find all that stuff about 'audi alterem partem' most unnecessary and irritating. Take the 'Nemo Judex in causa sua' principle.  Really! Who better to judge your cases than you yourself? Who knows you better? The commission and all that unpleasantness could have been avoided, and we would have been dwelling at ease in Eskom's pleasant light, universities, bridges,  cities and green mealies rising out of the good South African soil. If only we had jettisoned those unafrican, so-called legal principles.

It's all very petty and irritating, focusing on fraud, theft, corruption etc. All the while, serious crimes, such as teenage pregnancy, go unpunished. If I read correctly, you would banish the miscreants to Robben Island. Keeping them safely separated, I assume, to forestall any further breaches of the law.

I am delighted that you are leading the charge against immorality,  particularly of a sexual nature. Who better?  Set a thief to catch a thief. No, I am not saying you are a thief  (just a Roman Dutch proverb).  Nor am I implying that you ever wallowed in the muddy ditches  of sexually immoral shenanigans. I simply think that, in your long adventurous life, you have witnessed much of the seamy stuff. It must have grieved you profoundly. 

I understand that you are for corporal punishment.  I trust that it will be public, as a grand spectac...., I mean example. This should deter those involved in racketeering, fraud, money laundering and other forms of corruption, which I know your soul detests. Sir, have you considered stoning and similar stuff. I found some interesting and promising methods of deterrence in books on our past history. And I refer specifically to KZN. I trust that you will look into those (the methods, not the books).

You pointed out that if we were truly free, thirty years on, people would not be arrested during democracy, as they were during apartheid. I could not agree more. A friend used that very argument after being arrested for redeploying several luxury German vehicles. Where is our democratic right to piss on the rights of others? I say this Roman Dutch law is a proverbial ass. Let's stop with the arrests and allow people their democratic right to loo...., sorry live large in the quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and free stuff. 

You mentioned that MK was  deliberately not given an English name like "democracy or something that we don't know".  A little confusing, as you headed a democratic government for several long years. Perhaps that explains your "I know nothing, nothing' nothing!" and "what have I done?". It might be a little bewildering to head up a democratic government while being somewhat unsure of what democracy is. You said that, in the past, the 'Spear of the Nation' was used to resolve matters. A good point. Very sharp. What was wrong with the old feudal system? People knew their place. There were no teenage pregnancies, as far as I can gather. No Hollywood style arrests

 (See The Scuffle Continues : Bollywood- Style Arrest: https://thescuffle.blogspot.com/2020/10/bollywood-style-arrest.html.)

 

Sure, there was a bit of corporal punishment  - the odd beheading. But I never ever heard of anyone protesting or carrying on.

So inspired was I by your eloquent speech, pregnant with the possibility of a return to moral rectitude and timeless values, that I sang out a few verses of "umShini Wami" (Bring me my machine gun). Okay, so there's only one verse - I sang it several times. Just by the by, if I can't make it to a golf course for some physiotherapy, I find that this song, with accompanying dance steps, does wonders for any ailments that I have (gastric, colds, chronic or terminal stuff etc.).

That speech convinced me that, in your mshini-cradling hands lie the answers to the corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, disunity and aimlessness that so bedevil our nation. And we know who the devils are. I could have sworn at one point in the speech that I heard the music of the spheres. But it might have been my neighbour playing some gqom. That and the sugar free coke that I had in the spirit of the moment.

Bring me my ballot box.

Yours in the struggle for justice and a great leap forward in this century.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723

As You Sow / Vote

We know that voting in South Africa has nothing to do with common sense, reason or even previous experience.

It has even less to do with the survival of our country. Buggerall to do with national security. 

There's no point in talking sense when it comes to elections and voting. 

So here's the bizarre Alice in Wonderland truth.

If you want a government that has proven skills in stealing, blundering, exquisite BS and the ability to destroy a country faster than our Zimbabwean friends, then your choice is easy and clear.  The comrades are ready, willing and able to deliver. But don't despair. you have five long years to protest. It's worked over the last 30 years, hasn't it? so don't fix what isn't broken.  But then again, what isn't broken in South Africa?

If you want a government that has little to offer,  apart from noise and violence, then go with the boyz in the hood.  That is, Red Rioting Hood and friends. Unfair,  you say?. Well, of all the achievements of this particular party what else stands out? 

You know that they are also alleged to have dipped into various cookie jars .  I cannot prove that but it's common cause that they certainly wasted huge amounts of taxpayer money in Ethekwini and elsewhere. With a little help from their coalition friends. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but it's all there to read, if you really want to. And many don't want to, so let's move on.

In a normal country, a party with that record not only would have zero votes but would not exist within a year.  But then we established at the outset that our normal is a little different.  A bit more like the normal of Alice in Wonderland, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.  

If you want a government already tainted by having a figurehead who has managed to dodge trial for years for a dozen or more  charges, look east, young man, look east. If that's not exciting enough for you, scandals hang like several albatrosses around his honourable neck. 

As far as I can gather the manifesto of the particular party is to be found in  a popular song about a firearm. 

If on the other hand, you long for the return of sanity, law and order and the hope of progress then..... 

Ah, but we're not talking about such foreign concepts are we? How could we hope to decolonize our country if we hang on to such colonial notions? Promises of free stuff, dialectical materialism, revolutionary slogans - now that's the stuff of Leadership.  A bit of land and some state ownership to top it off.

Never bow before colonialists when you can have your fill of corruption, buffoonery, incompetence, indifference and all the other things that have made our country great. 

So there is no point in saying vote wisely, vote rationally, vote for the future of our country. 

Nothing will change your minds, so vote as you please. As the song says: 'there'll be time enough for counting, when the dealing's done'.

In other words, vote in haste, repent at leisure. In still other words, you will probably get the thoroughly shithole country that you deserve.

It is a great pity that your children deserve better, and so do their children. But what the heck. Nothing like clichés, slogans, song, dance and T-shirts to fill the empty belly and soothe the soul. 

Dear fellow South Africans, don't say we didn't tell you so.  

As you vote, so shall you reap. And, tragically, so shall we all.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723