An open letter to Julius “Seizure” Malema

Dear Comrade Julius Malema the First, Commander-in-Chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Hero of the Poor, Prince of Pedis, the People’s Parliamentarian, Evader of Taxes and Creator of the Revolutionary Onesie.

Congratulations on getting your BA degree through Unisa. That’s quite an achievement, especially when you consider how difficult it is just to get through to them on the phone.

I see you’ve been very busy lately putting your qualifications into practice and exercising your superior intellect. For a start, you reminded the people of Soweto about their role in the struggle against apartheid. Well done. People have short attention spans these days and all too often we forget hair appointments, wedding anniversaries and crimes against humanity.

The real masterstroke, though, was when you reminded the crowd to continue reproducing. I often forget to reproduce, with the result that I have only one loinfruit. Pathetic, I know. But this is good for black people because, as you so accurately pointed out, “White people do not want us to give birth because they know we are more than them … The day they are more than us, they will take over our land.”

It’s a fascinating theory, right up there with Frantz Fanon’s theory of colonial identity and the parallels between racial and commodity-based fetishism. And, obviously, the theory that Tinky Winky is gay.

However, no matter how brilliant theories are, it is important that they be tested. Without testing we could all just go around saying things like, “The moon landing was fake.” And, “9/11 was an inside job.” Which it quite clearly was. I don’t believe the moon landing was faked, though, because there is no such thing as ‘the moon’. I know a hologram when I see one and this is up there with the best.

Anyway, I tested your theory that white people wanted to take over politically by out-breeding black people. My maths is about as good as your woodwork, so my figures might not be one hundred and ten percent accurate. There are 55 million people in this country, most of whom can be found in my local bottle store on a Friday afternoon. Of that, 44 million are black and 4.5 million white. Hang on. What’s this? There are 4.8 million coloureds? Are you aware of this? What if you’re wrong and it’s the coloureds, not the whites, who are out to win this breeding war? If that is the case, we’re in deep trouble, my brother, and blacks and whites need to stand together against the Bruin Gevaar.

But I assume you’re right because you have been right about everything so far … well, everything apart from your blind loyalty to President Zuma, which only ended when he pulled a Dr Frankenstein four years ago and inadvertently turned you into his monster. I use the word ‘his’ loosely.

So here are my calculations. For the white population to go top of the log, every last Caucasian would have to have ten babies. That includes pensioners, children and, indeed, babies themselves. That’s right, comrade. The babies would have to have babies. But that’s not all. The men as well as the women would need to breed, which is entirely possible because it’s a well-known fact that white men have ovaries tucked behind their livers.

Oh, no. My test just got a whole lot more complicated. Figures show that last year the black population grew by 7.3% while the white population declined by 4.2%. This means that … I don’t know what it means. This is one of those rare moments in my life where beer can’t help.

So, unless Statistics SA is part of the white supremacist conspiracy, I think it’s fairly safe to say that white South Africans are still breeding – they’re just doing it in Perth, London and Auckland.

I must say, though, that you are a bit of a natural contraception. I was lying in bed with a girlfriend watching you being all red and shouty in parliament and she got so depressed that she lost all interest in sex. Maybe it’s a white thing.

You also told the people of Soweto – a vast, sparsely populated area where you can sometimes travel for up to three or four metres without bumping into another living soul – that “to make children is a revolutionary duty‚ because children represent reproduction of society. And when you reproduce yourself you reproduce your ideas and legacy.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, you have spawned only one sproglodyte while your archenemy Jacob Zuma has 22 at last count. Soon we will find out who is the real revolutionary.

Inexplicably, not everyone recognises your genius. Jabu Mahlangu, spokesman for the SA National Civic Organisation, described your call to coitus as “illogical gibberish”. Well, that’s one less person you have to name a street after once you’re president.

Anyway, good luck with the launch of your manifesto next weekend. Did you know it comes from the Greek word ‘mani’ meaning ‘barefaced’ and ‘festo’ meaning ‘lies’? Of course you did.

Also, all the best for the municipal elections. When you win a municipality you absolutely must ride into town on a tank. It worked for the Americans when they liberated Paris and it can work for you when you liberate Parys. I’m happy to come in with my flamethrower and flush out the last of the ANC councillors.

By the way, I like your logo – a giant black fist dominating Africa and threatening South America with an assegai. Good for you. Those goddamn uppity Latinos need to learn that they aren’t the only ones who can cripple economies through poorly thought out socialist policies.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s all been a terrible mistake

Dear Schabir Shaik,

It’s a damn shame that you didn’t get Judge Willie Seriti in your trial ten years ago. For a start, you wouldn’t have got sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud and corruption because, as Seriti announced yesterday, there’s not a shred of evidence suggesting the arms deal was anything but squeaky clean.

What on earth did Judge Hilary Squires base his judgment on? That morning’s horoscope? Did he read the tea leaves? Throw the bones?

Thank god you fell terminally ill two years and four months into your sentence and were released on medical parole so that you could go home and die in your own bed. That was seven years ago. How’s the dying going? Slowly, it seems. I hear you’re seen out and about quite often. Good for you. Dying is a tiring business and you deserve a round of golf now and then.

If anyone belongs in jail, it’s Judge Hilary Squires. You must lay charges at once. And send word to the Guptas that you want a Cabinet position. Minister of Justice would fit you well.

Aluta continua.

Ben Trovato

 

Ben Trovato celebrates with Schabir Shaik after the arms deal commission found that everyone involved was completely innocent.

 

Real feminists stand by their men

Dear ANC Women’s League,

I apologise for addressing you as a league and not as an individual. Women are so much more than mere leagues these days. My non-sexist sensibilities are telling me – well, shrieking at me, really – that it would be highly inappropriate to continue referring to you as some sort of collective rather than a warm flesh and hot-blooded woman with big … I beg your pardon. That’s the medication talking.

My point is that I cannot find a name by which to address you. My limited capacity for research unearthed Lilian Ngoyi, although she appears to be more of a fisheries patrol vessel than a leader of sorts, so I shall call you Mary after one of my heroes. I’m not talking about the Mary who had a little lamb, although that was certainly a biological feat of note, but rather Queen Mary I of England. She got the nickname Bloody Mary after waging a brutal campaign against prostitutes. It’s my favourite morning-after drink. They might have been Protestants.

Anyway. Enough of that. I am writing to congratulate you for so resolutely standing by your man, Jacob Zuma. I have known women, biblically and otherwise, who do not seem to understand this concept at all. When the legendary women’s rights activist Tammy Wynette released her seminal protest anthem, Stand By Your Man, in 1968 in support of real men like Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski, we applauded her. We sang along and danced and fought like lions, then went home to our wives and god help them if dinner wasn’t ready. Just kidding. Not really.

I see you have been very busy issuing statements. Well done, Mary. I like a woman who can make a statement. In the old days, women were only good for making fashion statements. Sometimes they made fashion faux pas, but we forgave them. Or not. I have a friend who said your statements are a faux pas. Ignore him. He is one of those men who think women should automatically defend truth and justice. This should be rejected for the sexist filth it is. Women are nothing more than men without willies and they are entitled to act accordingly without being judged as traitors to their gender. Or, for that matter, their country.

A long queue is developing for the moral high ground and, much like you, I cannot abide queues. Especially when they come stacked with shiny eyed opportunists pretending they’re not desperate to suck on the hind tit of … whoops. Sorry about that. I was talking fiscal rather than physical. Let’s just move on.

You say you are critical of the Public Protector but respect her office? I know what you mean. I have worked for unimaginable arseholes over the years, but I have always been humbled by their offices. The counterfeit oil paintings, the crystal dolphins, the coke chopping boards made of Burmese teak. And while I was quite prepared to cut their throats during the tea break, you showed admirable restraint by demanding “a more objective and less populist person who will campaign against government and its people but defend principles of the structures”. Would those be ANC structures? Viva objectivity.

Quite frankly, the structures seem a bit wobbly right now, Mary. What the hell is wrong with the Gauteng branch that they want Mr Big to resign on the spurious grounds that he gives the appearance of being a semi-literate, corrupt scumbag dragging South Africa to the brink of disaster? Are they on drugs? I heard the Nigerians were bringing in some kind of truth serum. If that’s true, then Paul Mashatile seems to have made an early start.

Can you believe that the Public Protector said you should rather focus on fighting for gender equality and inclusive development? What the hell does that even mean? She also said “women should be fighting to make sure that South Africa was advancing everyone, because when the state fails, it’s women who pick up the burden”. This is a pack of lies and she ought to be jailed at once. I have had two wives and several girlfriends and the only thing any of them ever picked up was a knife or a bottle of gin. Sometimes both.

To be honest, Thuli Madonsela doesn’t bother me as much as she does you. Sure, she talks a little slowly for my liking, but she has the eyelashes of a camel and that’s all that really matters in these days of miracles and wonder.

In your statement on Wednesday you said you would “lead at the front to protect the ANC”. I like it. Everyone knows that Germany only lost the war because they sent men to the front. And let us not even speak of the Russians. You, Mary, have a weapon that men don’t have. I can’t imagine how and where you would use it to protect the ANC, but I’m sure you will find a way.

“For how long should we keep quiet?” you asked. I didn’t know the answer so I asked my so-called friend Ted. He said, “When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned. Only then will we realise that one cannot eat money.”

I deployed a stranglehold I learnt in the army and accused him of perpetuating a quite possibly fictitious Red Indian saying. He accused me of using outdated racist terminology and kneed me in the nuts. I was incapable of speech for an hour or two, something you wouldn’t have experienced in your life.

You also took the whip to ABSA, Anton Rupert, Trevor Manuel and his squeeze Maria Ramos, Thabo Mbeki, the Rothschilds, Barclays Bank, the Oppenheimers, the World Bank and the Easter Rabbit. Maybe not so much the rabbit.

Hang on. You’re not Mary at all. You’re someone called Meokgo Matuba. I can’t say I have ever heard of you. This is not my fault, even though I am a white man. You have been very quiet since getting the position. Well done. I like women who keep a low profile. The world doesn’t need more Angela Merkels or Margaret Thatchers, that’s for sure.

Bits of your statement are right up there with Martin Luther whathisname’s speech about a dream he once had. “We have forgiven our leader, Comrade President Jacob Zuma. We will not be shaken by songs of disrepute, clatter of confusion, misinformed quotes by the mainstream media, and its originators, false religious prophets and veterans who have been fed to their stomachs by our former oppressors. Our people are most welcome and liberated to derive their opinion, but we urge all not to be hasty, but rather search within the deepest of secrets to unravel the truth.”

Are these your own words or did you hire Thamsanqa Jantjie to translate from the original? It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you continue defending men at all costs. By men I obviously mean one man in particular. The mother of all patriarchs is a man who stands head and shoulders above other men, thanks to all the lawyers and cadres who moved in to break his fall when the Guptas ran away.

Listen, please don’t get involved in the uranium business. It’s very unladylike. If you really have a thing for mining, go for diamonds. They’re a girl’s best friend. Well, Zuma is a girl’s best friend. Then diamonds. And maybe a contract to build nuclear power stations.

So, anyway. All this fuss just because the Constitutional Court found that the president violated his mandate. So what? Boys will be boys. You can violate my mandate any day, baby.

President Zuma, you have mail

Greetings, Mosholozi, in the name of our patron saint Machiavelli and all those who follow the holy gospels of perfidy and artifice.

Well done on surviving yet another attack by the running dogs of … I don’t know what. Let’s just call them running dogs. They bark a lot, chase their own tails and eventually roll over and lie there panting, trying to look cute and pathetic, hoping someone will come along and vote for them.

The opposition treats parliament as if it’s some sort of clubhouse for over-achievers. For people with a conscience. People who care. Well, it’s not. It’s the headquarters of one of the most powerful gangs in the country.

How dare these shouty arrivistes come to your headquarters and demand you get impeached? When I was small I read a book called James and the Giant Impeachment. It gave me nightmares from which I have never recovered. Nobody deserves to be treated like that.

Cape Town has for years proudly hosted the 26s, 27s, 28s, the Americans, the Mongrels, the Hard Livings and the Sexy Boys, but yours is the only gang with its headquarters in a fancy building right in the middle of the city.

Sure, at something like 243 members, yours is one of the smaller gangs in the Cape Town precinct. But what you lack in numbers you compensate for in influence. The 28s might trade in crystal meth and crack whores, but your members, oh boy, your members get to make laws! That’s pretty wild stuff, my man. I apologise. That was disrespectful. You are nobody’s man. Well, that’s not strictly true. You are Atul Gupta’s man.

You should know, though, that any man of my man is my man, too. Whoops. That sounds a bit gay. I have never forgotten the time some years back when you said, “When I was growing up, unqingili (homosexuals) could not stand in front of me.” A lot of people can’t stand in front of me, too, but that’s mainly because they are journalists who struggle to get to their feet by 11am and are back on their knees twelve hours later.

What I’m saying is that I am not gay. However, if you have changed your position, so to speak, and your gang now embraces gayness, then I am with you. Not physically, of course. I lack the stamina to compete with your sturdily built wives. But if you need me to pay special attention to one of your top people, I shall grin and bare it for the cause of the national democratic revolution. And when I say top people, I obviously mean the top six. I am not a racist but I think I might be a bit classist.

Given a choice, I would rather not have to perform Catholic ministrations upon Gwede Mantashe or Squirrel Ramaphosa. They are hefty men and, despite my advanced age, I have managed to retain my snake-like hips and would prefer them not to be crushed.

Jessie Duarte frightens me, not least because she reminds me of a Lebanese biker who almost snapped my spine in a street fight 20 years ago.

And Baleka Mbete, your fighting general, is out of the question because she doesn’t recognise anyone these days and I fear that in mid-coitus she might mistake me for Steve Hofmeyr and sink her fangs into my throat.

That leaves Zweli Mkhize. He’s a bit of a dark horse, which I might rather fancy if it weren’t for his … I beg your pardon, Brother Leader. This was not what I wanted to write about. Things got away from me. You, of all people, know how easily this can happen. Oddly enough, the Guptas also got away. Late last night, I believe.

Do you have a name for your gang? Yes, I know the official name is the African National Congress. But it lacks the panache of, for instance, the Los Zetas or the Crisps. Wait, not the Crisps. That’s the posse who run the Simba operation. The Crips. And their rivals, the Bloods. Awesome names, awesome people.

Acronyms, like ANC, are not that popular in the field of organised crime. Unless, of course, you’re the IMF, a guileful gang specialising in high-octane extortion. How about something like the Aryan Brotherhood but for black people? I don’t know what’s the antonym for Aryan and, quite frankly, hazarding a guess is more than my job’s worth.

Shouting in parliament on Tuesday, Julius Malema, the leader of the EFF gang, called your gang Bloody Voting Cattle. It has a pastoral yet deadly ring to it. Cows and voting have always scared me and, quite frankly, as a vegetarian anarchist I want no part of either. That could be my gang name. Ben ‘Veggie-Boy’ Trovato.

“My biggest nephew has been named in the Panama Papers? Hehehe. Gwede, unleash Veggie-Boy.” Obviously I would need some sort of eco-friendly superhero outfit, possibly made from hemp with a high THC count so that I could really fly when push came to shove.

Even though everyone recognises you as the capo di tutti capi, the control you exerted over your members on Tuesday by doing nothing more than nodding off was breathtaking. Not one of them voted in favour of that treacherous business instigated by the gangbangers on the other side of the room. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty. Well, actually you can. And you have.

The Democratic Alliance is an even worse gang name than the African National Congress because nobody has ever been afraid of an alliance, apart from maybe a miscreant Francophobe sentenced to a thousand hours of French lessons at the Alliance Francaise.

As a patriot who hopes for great things for his country, but mainly for himself, I am very pleased that you refused to do what the enemy described as ‘the right thing’. Capitulation is for weaklings and quislings and maybe even ducklings.

Speaking of which, I see that Trevor Manuel – I’m not sure if you remember him – has asked you not to bother coming into work on Monday. Or any other day. He’s from the Cape Flats and knows his way around an Okapi knife, so you might want to be careful. Also, he’s the deputy chairman of Rothschild in South Africa, one of the richest gangs around. Watch his hands. He leads with his right and takes with his left. Go for his balls, if you must. He didn’t have any when he worked for you but it seems they might have grown back.

Comrade President, there is something that has been worrying me. Nothing to do with Nkandla – I have also used other people’s money to improve my quality of life and Comrade Jesus has always sent some of his angels to keep me out of prison, as he has done with you – but I read a report this week that said a rat carrying bubonic plague was found in Tembisa.

I don’t want to be alarmist, but my favourite book, the Bible, is full of plagues. I know it doesn’t sound like much of a fun read, and you’d probably be happier with something by Robin Sharma or some other monk who sold his Ferrari and bought a small country. Not that you’re a monk. Heaven forfend that rumour gets around town. You still have many more wives to collect.

Right now, rats are everywhere. The state broadcaster is infested with them. Even the Hawks, who actually eat rats, have been overrun. Some even made it all the way from Uttar Pradesh to 7 Saxonwold Drive, although they seem to have abandoned this particular sinking ship.

Funny things, plagues. They start with rats. Next thing you know, you’re waist-deep in locusts, covered in flies and choking on frogs. This is fine if you’re French but it’s not so pleasant for those of us accustomed to a certain standard of living.

The point is, have you done anything recently that might have offended God or any other of the multitude of supernatural deities? Think carefully. No? Nothing at all? Okay, then. It must be a coincidence.

Anyway, good luck for future brawls. Like you, I would also prefer disputes to be settled in the old ways – with pangas and knobkieries – but I guess we’re stuck with the courts. For now.

Viva the one-party democracy!