Making a move

So as I was saying last week, this cute little blog has grown up, left home and become a website currently residing at https://bentrovato.co.za

I didn’t want to make it a subscription site as suggested by some, like Bhekisisa, who was generous enough to write, “Put this behind a paywall. I am prepared to pay per article”. I gave it some thought but decided that when it comes to walls, the world could do with fewer of them.

Some of you offered to motivate me financially in return for making you laugh. Since I am now writing exclusively for you, the people, that seems fair enough. So there’s a button somewhere on the site where you can do just that. Think of it as a fun-raising campaign.

I’m taking all of you with me to my lovely new home. If you were following me here, you should get automatically redirected to the new site when I post something. That’s the theory, anyway.

Oh, yes. And you will also be able to download my books at charity shop prices.

Here it is again https://bentrovato.co.za

South Africa suffers from truth decay

The latest crime statistics were released into the wild this week. That’s where the good news ends. But it’s not all bad news. Residential robberies are down 0.4%, thanks to the moron across the road finally remembering to close his windows at night. Carjacking, arson and the theft of cars and motorbikes is also down, which probably has more to do with petrol prices than anything else.

Murder is more popular than ever and even old school crimes like bank robberies are making a comeback. If nobody actually gets hurt, I think bank robberies are kind of cool. When it comes to wrist-slittingly dull and depressing places, banks are right up there with the worst of them. I can think of nothing better to liven up proceedings than a couple of guys in balaclavas shouting at everyone to get down on the ground. Banks are heavily insured. The robbers get what they came for, the bank gets it back from the insurance company, and your money is safe. Everyone wins.

Stock theft is up, which is good news for farm animals that enjoy visiting new places. Goats probably more than sheep or cows. Goats love to travel. Drunk driving is on the increase although it’s not really. What’s happening here is that roadblocks are on the increase. Fewer roadblocks would see a dramatic decrease in this statistic. Anyway, most of us regularly drive under the influence of all manner of dangerous things, like love and religion and resentment.
“What have I done, officer?”
“I saw the way you looked at that Porsche Cayenne. You were driving under the influence of envy.”

There seem to be ten main categories of crimes. And, if you know your Bible, you will also know there are Ten Commandments. Coincidence? Yes, of course. When god gave the tablets to Moses – who almost certainly didn’t have a prescription – he made it clear there was no room for ambiguity. No wiggle room. No grey areas. No divine prosecutor who could make dockets disappear, which is a bit of a pity. If one of the disciples had slipped a few shekels to a bent clerk in the law firm Pontius Pilate & Sons, the world might be a very different place today.

But we’re not in Mount Sinai any more, Toto.

We could be, though. Our legal system is, after all, based on Roman-Dutch law. We can forget about the Dutch part. They’re a lawless mob who smoke weed and shag openly on houseboats, buses and even bicycles. There are parts of Amsterdam where you can barely move for stoned, copulating couples. You don’t even want to know what’s happening with the dykes.

Which brings me back to the Roman part of our law. Basically, it’s Roman law that killed Jesus. It’s also the same law that will quite feasibly see the resurrection of Jacob Zuma.

So, yes. When it comes to law, the Romans and the Dutch can just fuck right off. The Criminal Procedures Act is so long-winded and convoluted that nobody has ever read the entire document. Lawyers are cherry-pickers of the first order. They take the bits that suit them and fling them at a judge who is so punch-drunk from years of people crying and lying that the only thing keeping him upright is the knowledge that at the end of this long and tortuous road lies a pension of substance.

Speaking of lies, isn’t that one of the commandments? Thou shalt lie. No, wait. That’s one of the ANC top six’s ten commandments. Or one of the ANC top ten’s six commandments. Like Easter, it’s a moveable feast of subterfuge and greed. Hide the eggs in an offshore account.

My doctor gave me a 12.7% chance of having a stroke or heart attack in the next ten years, so I don’t have time to fuck about with all ten commandments. Let me just take the one about lying.

Our leaders have come up with some top-notch ones in the last few days. I’m not talking about little white lies that little white people tell. We’re talking premier league whoppers the size of sperm whales, here. Respect. If you’re taking the road that leads away from the truth, make sure you own that damn road. Hide in plain sight. Implausible deniability. Speak to my lawyer.

Let’s start with Jacob Zuma. A couple of nights ago he delivered the key note address at a Sasco event at the Walter Sisulu University. I don’t know what Sasco stands for or where the university is located. I could find out but since I’m not getting paid for this I have even less reason to do research. Do your own goddamn research. During his speech, made entirely in English, he said, “I don’t know English.” He asked students to help explain what is a state. Nobody put their hand up. They did laugh, though. With him? At him? Hard to say. He took a stab at it and, with a bit of prompting from what might have been a politics student too wasted to find his way back to the dorm, came up with the executive, legislature and judiciary.

“What is this thing called state capture?” he said. Students in the front row cried out and an usher came around and squirted milk into their eyes. “Does it mean these three arms have been captured?” he said, spreading his arms wide.
A couple of stoned journalism students giggled at Zuma’s inability to count the number of arms he has. Maybe they were picturing him with three arms. We’ll never know.
“Is it true? Just explain the truth about it.” A weird shuffling swept through the auditorium, as if the students knew the wrong answer might see them being forced at gunpoint to change to the humanities, condemning them to a lifetime of poverty.

Calling state capture a “politically decorative expression”, he said there was no state that was captured. “There are some people doing things with other people. Individuals,” he said. He’s right, of course. This applies to everyone throughout history who has ever done things with anyone else.

“Not a single one of the three is captured,” Zuma said, to a deafening round of uneasy murmuring.

Moving on.

In parliament the other day, Deputy President David Mabuza had to answer a question about a flight on a Gupta-owned jet to Moscow three years ago. The DA wanted to know if he was accompanied by Ruslan Gorring, a man who negotiates mining deals between Russia and foreign governments.

Mabuza said he had been on painkillers and couldn’t recall who was on the flight. There were only five other people on the plane. “I was taken to Moscow in a very terrible condition,” he said. He may well be telling the truth. I once tried to board a flight to Atlanta in a very terrible condition and three men in suits and dark glasses removed me from the queue at he boarding gate in front of all the other passengers. I can barely remember anything, either.

Moving on.

A Sunday Times journalist reported that a bunch of top ANC people had met Jacob Zuma at the Maharani Hotel in Durban to discuss the dethronement of President Cyril Ramaphosa. The denials ranged from there was no meeting to there was a meeting but it had nothing to do with anything to I was just passing by when I saw some comrades at the bar and joined them.

Also pictured at Schrödinger’s meeting was ANC Women’s League secretary general Meokgo Matuba. By way of commenting, she sent the reporter a picture of a handgun. Except she didn’t, because she “shares her phone with many people”. She might be telling the truth. I once left my phone … no, I didn’t. I can’t even be bothered to make something up.
Matuba told one reporter, “Actually no, I didn’t send a gun to Qaanitah. If it’s her take that I sent the gun to intimidate her, my sincere apologies.” You have to be a 9th-level Ninja of Duplicity to be able to deny culpability while simultaneously expressing remorse with such brazen panache.

There’s gold in them thar seminars

It might just be because I’m freshly unemployed and the algorithms are sensing my fear, but I have started noticing more and more Facebook ads from people who have a burning, selfless desire to make us all fabulously wealthy.

They plan on doing this by holding free seminars. That’s right. Free. These people are so generous that they want nothing in return. All they ask is to be given the opportunity to explain to us how to turn our miserable lives around and become massively successful in no time at all. It’s astounding. I had no idea there were such good people in the world today.

Over five days this month, 22 seminars titled ‘Think and Grow Rich’ will be held in Durban, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Polokwane. Obviously I’ve been doing the wrong kind of thinking. Or more likely, given the state of my bank account, not thinking at all.

Their banner promises “A lifetime of riches in property.” Ah, that explains why Cape Town’s not on their list. Thanks to a shameless feeding frenzy sparked by predatory foreign buyers and fuelled by rapacious estate agents, everyone in the last staging post for white people has already made millions through property.

According to their website, the seminars are “inspired by Napoleon Hill’s original teachings”. Napoleon won’t be making an appearance at the Lombardy Boutique Hotel in Pretoria East or anywhere else for that matter because he be long dead. Napoleon’s life is littered with failed business ventures. In fact, he only ever made money from writing books on how to make money. Also, he heard ‘spirit voices’ which he said helped him write the books.

The website implores us to “Imagine a lifetime of financial freedom!” You see, they shouldn’t do that. A lot of people use their imaginations to make a living. These are the ones who never have money. If you tell them to imagine being so rich that they’d never have to work again, there’s a very good chance you’d find us, I mean them, weeks later sitting in a forest laughing and talking to the trees.

Those blessed without imaginations will race ahead. They will be assured that Napoleon “has helped transform millions of lives, turning budding entrepreneurs around the world into focused business achievers”. Here’s a fun fact. More than 90% of people who decide to become an entrepreneur would struggle to spell the word correctly. I don’t know if that is a fact. It’s just something I heard. In my head. Right now. Damn voices always telling me rubbish that has nothing to do with making money.

Sylvia from Ga-Rankuwa seems to be their poster girl. Thanks to the tools she received from Think and Grow Rich (not tools like automatic weapons and plastic explosives) she went from “negative yielding properties to being a specialist in buying distressed properties from auctions and distressed sellers, refurbishing them and flipping to raise capital”. Not knowing what this means makes me feel pretty fucking distressed, too.

I won’t say anything more about Sylvia because her surname is Milosevic and the last thing I need is some tough guy from Pretoria getting Serbian on my ass.

But, hey. They promise that in just two hours your life will never be the same again. It’s not impossible. My life certainly changed in the two hours it took to conclude both my marriages. I have since managed to wrestle it back under control. Sort of.

What if you live under an upturned boat at the harbour and you’re too poor to invest in a mutton bunny chow, let alone property? No problem. You should still attend the seminar because “part of what you’ll learn is how to creatively acquire and raise finance towards your property investment”. They don’t suggest ways to get past seminar security if you’re bleeding from an open head wound and smell like a rotten snoek. To be fair, people do creatively acquire finance all the time in this country. Mostly through cash-n-transit heists, but each to his own.

You are encouraged to bring guests to the seminar because “building a personal fortune is more fun and rewarding when you have a friend or family member to share the experience”. The experience, sure. But the profits? There will be blood. I can guarantee it.

Another question people frequently ask is, Will I have to buy anything? This is, after all, a free seminar and you don’t want to come all the way down here, bribe the pigs at the roadblock, hassle for parking, pay a car guard, maybe get mugged, find you can’t smoke or buy a drink, sit on a cheap plastic chair wedged between people reeking of desperation and still have to buy something at the end of it.

Of course not. “You are not required to purchase anything,” says the website in a soothing voice. However. “We do offer additional educational products and services at our workshops.”

They also offer people a free gift for attending the seminar. Quite likely the same kind of free gift that guarantees you safe passage out of a timeshare presentation.

Then there’s another one coming up in Durban and Cape Town. The Secret to Business and Financial Success! The secret, as far as I can make out, is to use the word Secret. You mean there’s a secret to making money? I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. All journalists are. Mention that something is secret and we’d kill to find out what it is and then tell as many people as possible about it.

This seminar is an interminable four hours and might explain why presenter Anne Wilson is pictured clutching her temples. Co-presenter Brian Walsh is seen in a more relaxed pose. Maybe a bit too relaxed. They both look a bit mad, to be honest.

In their short blurb, they use the word ‘secret’ thirteen times. There’s a reason Frodo Baggins didn’t tell everyone who passed by that he was on a mission to destroy the One Ring at the Crack of Doom in Mordor before Sauron could get his filthy hands on it. That’s because it was a secret. If you tell too many people that you know something they don’t, they’re going to start thinking there’s something wrong with you mentally and in all likelihood will stop inviting you to their parties.

Brian name-drops Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. He ponders if they became successful because they know “the secret”. Brian can confirm that, after thirteen years of research at The REAL Entrepreneur Institute, there is indeed such a secret. Judging by the number of people who attend their seminars, there can’t be that many who know the secret. Perhaps it really is only Richard, Elon, Jeff and Brian.

Brian is “super excited” that a “very special lady” will join him to share the second secret. Yeah, there’s a second secret. It doesn’t get better than this. The second secret “involves our habits and management of money”. I can’t remember what the first secret was. I’m not that kind of journalist.

The very special lady is Ann Wilson. She looks thirty years younger in her second picture. That must be one of the benefits of financial success. Brian and Ann are “super excited” to share their life-changing secrets with us.

Perhaps anticipating an existential crisis, there is a section that introduces “People who have seen Ann and Brian together”.

Marlene Visser thanks them for an amazing seminar filled with laughter, information and food for thought. Being a free seminar, I imagine that’s the only food you’ll get. Christopher Ndohlo said, “Each presenter did way more than i expected and thank you for the invite it was a moment i dont intend forgetting,.” I don’t know, Chris. I expect there’s more chance of success if you work on your grammar and punctuation.

Anyway. Fuck it. We’re all hustling to stay alive. Some preachers get their flock to swallow snakes and petrol. It’s up to you what you want to swallow. But I just can’t work out why Brian and Ann and Napoleon’s people do this kind of thing for free. Come to think of it, I can’t even work out why I’m doing this for free. Until recently, this would have appeared in the next Sunday Tribune.

Release the tapeworm, not the tape

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

No, I haven’t had a stroke, although if I were to have one my first choice would be for it to happen right now on a Sunday night. Apart from waking up dead, I can’t think of a better way to start the week than in a private hospital in a private ward with around the clock access to Netflix, pethidine and a night nurse who understands that the bed bath is an art and not a duty.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes is a Latin phrase written by Virgil while bumming around Italy committing unspeakable acts upon doe-eyed slave boys and writing poetry before Jesus was born.

It means “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Why would he say that? He should have kept his little rosebud mouth shut. The little ponce had no idea how many housewarming parties he ruined over the next two thousand years.

“Go see who’s at the door, babe.”

“Ah, fuck. It’s that dreadful Agamemnon.”

“Don’t let him in!”

“But he seems to have brought a gift.”

“What is it?”

“Some kind of wooden horse.”

“I already have a ceramic horse. Pretend we’re not home.”

…

“Okay, he’s gone.”

“Thank god.”

“He left his gift.”

“The horse? Quickly, bring it in.”

And with that I come to Adam Catzavelos. More of a Greek bearing gifs. Yes, I am aware that this segue belongs in calipers but statistics show that people are far more likely to kill themselves or a loved one on any given Sunday and I need to prepare for all eventualities.

In a thirty second selfie video shot on a beach in Greece, Adam Catzavelos changed his life forever and reduced the national tolerance level for white people by 39.4%. In fact, he did it in only five seconds. That has to be some kind of record. Many of us would leap at the chance to say half a dozen words and magically lose our horrible families and boring jobs. It wasn’t even half a dozen words. It was one word.

It wasn’t Avada Kedavra, the killing curse.

It wasn’t Crucio, the torturing curse.

Not was it Imperio, the controlling curse.

This was K***ir, the Motherfucker of Curses – so named because once the word passes your lips, it is your life and not the life of the target of the curse that is destroyed. It’s a very weird curse, made weirder by the fact that black people can utter it with no negative consequences whatsoever apart from perhaps being invited to make up a four-ball with the managing director the weekend after next.

Here’s the thing, though. And it’s something that nobody seems to have considered. What if – and this is a very real possibility – it wan’t Adam Catzavelos who uttered that ugly racial slur? What if his brain had been taken over by, say, a tapeworm? It wouldn’t be the first time this sort of thing had happened.

On 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed and killed Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd during a session in parliament. During his trial – which in a normal country might have been a ticker-tape parade – his lawyer said that Tsafendas had been acting on the instructions of a giant tapeworm which dwelt within his client.

The court, headed by a judge who failed to recognise the rights of tapeworms, sentenced South Africa’s first Greek hero to be detained “at the pleasure of the State President”. This happened to be a man named Charles Roberts Swart. Without a hint of irony, his nickname was “Blackie”. Judging by his photograph, he looks like a man who would derive tremendous pleasure from the detention of evil-doers, especially if they had impaled his prime minister on the advice of a tapeworm.

There are good people and bad people. There is good bacteria and bad bacteria. And there is no scientific reason to think that tapeworms are any different. I’m not for one minute suggesting that all Greeks are dictated to by tapeworms. That would be Greekist.

But given the history of Greeks and tapeworms – and who among us will ever forget the sight of Maria Callas eating bowls of tapeworms to control her weight – it is quite clear that there are at least two types of tapeworms that are attracted to Greeks. Or at least two types of Greeks who are attracted to tapeworms.

There are plenty of statues of horses in this country. What the fuck did a horse ever do to change anything in South Africa? I think it’s appalling that there isn’t a single sculpture of Tsafendas’s tapeworm in any park or garden in this country.

Problem is, it might look just like Catzavelos’s tapeworm.

 

A letter to the American President

Dear President Trump,

Thank you so much for your recent tweet in which you threatened to invade my country if the government didn’t stop killing all our white farmers and stealing their land. I live in a very violent country and we need all the help we can get from civilised countries like yours. Did you know that fifty people die violently every day in South Africa? Then again, none of them are farmers. Also, they are black. Forget I mentioned it.

This was your very first tweet in which you mention Africa and we are honoured that you chose to single us out among all the other covfefe countries like Nambia and Zimbopaloowop.

I fell in love with that tweet, sir. So much so that I have to reproduce it here so that even more people can be exposed to your intellectual prowess and unique insight into global foreign affairs.

“I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.”

And you fired this dramatic shot across my government’s bows without even needing to consult anyone in your administration! I suppose that’s what Fox News is there for. Barack Obama would have definitely made some kind of spineless attempt to ascertain the so-called ‘facts’. I get the feeling that you might have had a bit of a chat with one of the boys, though. They’ve been out here, right? Of course they have. They killed a bunch of our animals. I think it was Eric who was photographed holding up a knife and an elephant’s tail. If anyone knows anything about South Africa, it’s Eric and the other one. The throwback. You know who I mean.

Not everyone here is thrilled about your tweet. For a start, my government is terribly upset. They say they haven’t actually seized any land from white farmers. That’s an appalling argument. Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean you can’t condemn it. As a graduate of the Lewis Carroll School of Political Philosophy, you understand this better than most.

Some homeless loser called Patrick Gaspard – probably an alias – accused you of “needing political distractions to turn our gaze away from his criminal cabal”. This desperate drug fiend had the gall to claim that you have never visited Africa and have no discernible Africa policy. Fake news! Your tweet showed the world that you do have a policy on Africa. Well, Fox news host Fucker Carlson does, and that’s good enough for me. Anyway, why on earth would you need a policy longer than 280 characters for a continent that you recently described as a shithole?

Oh dear. I’ve just googled this Gaspard character. It turns out that he’s a Columbia University graduate and was the American ambassador to South Africa from 2013 to 2016. It doesn’t matter! The point is that he was born in the Congo to Haitian parents! That’s two strikes right there. Three, if you consider that the traitor is probably fluent in French. You can’t trust anyone who knows a second language.

Julius Malema (you won’t recognise the name) said his party of Economic Freedom Fighters aren’t afraid of you. He doesn’t seem to realise that he’s joining the back of a long line of people with similar sentiments and it will be decades before he gets to you. Nothing to fear there, Mr President.

A lot of other people in South Africa implied that they will fight you on the beaches. This is what happens when you allow black people onto the beaches. In the good old days, the US Marine Corps would have been able to come ashore at Addington Beach and Camps Bay without a problem. Then again, there would have been no need because back then we had a government which understood that white and right rhyme for a reason.

But you do have allies on these hostile shores, Mr President. There is a group called AfriForum mandated by none other than God to protect the rights of minorities. When I say minorities, please don’t think I am talking about the Bushmen. They had their chance and blew it. Too much time spent sitting around fires communicating with the ancestors instead of forming armies. Africa is not for pussies. You can’t just grab and kiss.

I should warn you that AfriForum is trying to claim credit for your tweet. The group’s CEO, Kallie Kriel, who would probably be the equivalent of your Imperial Wizard in the KKK, said this in a statement: “I think our lobbying has certainly had an impact because we have spoken with a lot of people who have had contact with President Trump and we have spoken with many think tanks, one of them for example the Cato Institute, which has taken a very strong stance shortly before this statement now by President Trump.”

Be careful of these people. You might think they are allies but they cannot be trusted. Their once glorious National Party folded like a pack of cards and many of their members joined something called the Democratic Alliance. As you know all too well, the very word Democratic is a scourge and a curse.

I must admit that I and many of my countrymen know very little about farming, let alone farm seizures. I had an epileptic dog called Julius Seizure once but that doesn’t really help. So when you asked Secretary Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures”, my heart was filled with hope. Please ask Pompeo to share his findings with us because nobody here really knows what is going on. Also, if you do get the chance, please ask Pompeo to change his name. Out here, a Pomp is a sexual act and we find it hard to take him seriously.

Anyway, Mr President. It’s getting dark and I have to unleash the hounds, feed the crocodiles, activate the landmines and make sure the perimeter guards have enough bullets for the night. I can only imagine it’s worse for the farmers.

If our government gives you any more guff, send in the troops. They will be met by some of our finest men, including Oberstgruppenführer Steve Hofmeyr and his loyal sidekick Sturmbannführer Adam Catzavelos. If they are on holiday, we have many others to take their place.

Good luck with the impeachment.

So, anyway.

I just wanted to thank everyone who emailed me and wrote to the Sunday Tribune expressing their outrage/condolences/relief after the newspaper gave me the boot. I find it a bit odd that the paper chose to use a few of the letters. It’s almost as if they were saying, “Yes, we were idiots to get rid of him, but if you don’t believe us here are some of our readers who feel the same way.”

So far, none of the fake mainstream media has offered me a home for my column. The Big Issue in Cape Town seems keen and at this rate I may well become the magazine’s first vendor/columnist.

I was so traumatized by being “let go” for reasons that still make no sense that I immediately went to Sri Lanka on a surfing trip. If I had a paying column, I’d tell you all about it.

 

 

 

 

Skeletons in the closet

Dear Comrade Edna Molewa, Minister of Environmental Affairs, Apex Predator of the Civil Service, Trader of Bones and Nemesis of Big Cats Everywhere.

Well done on your decision to allow fifteen hundred lion skeletons to be shipped out of the country over the next twelve months. That’ll teach them. They became insufferable after finding out that we call them the king of the jungle and their attitude has only worsened over the years.

You can’t go to the Kruger Park these days without coming across flocks of lions copulating openly on the roads. This is a terrible thing for our children to see. And if they’re not shagging they’re trying to bite a tourist’s head off. This is not the kind of behaviour we expect from our lions. During apartheid, yes. But not now.

Fifteen hundred skeletons. That means on average the bones of 4.2 lions will leave the country every day for a year. Since the lions are being broken up into pieces, it is technically possible to get .2 of a lion. You probably wouldn’t need much more than a shoebox for that bit. I suppose not everyone wants a whole skeleton. Smaller families might be happy with just a couple of scapula and a bag of vertebrae. If they’re lucky they might even find some tiger in among their lion.

It was a smart move not letting anyone know that you were doubling the quota and then making it retroactive to avoid upsetting our limp-wristed lion lovers while also preempting protests at the CITES meeting in Geneva where trophy hunting management with special focus on leopards and lions is being discussed. I don’t know what there is to discuss. Breed ’em, shoot ’em, skin ’em, sell ’em. If that’s not already your ministry’s motto, it should be. Take it, it’s yours. My gift to you.

South Africa has 3 500 lions in the wild and killing 1 500 a year will barely make a dent. Okay, maybe a small dent. But lions recover quickly. Maybe not from death, but certainly from sex. I once stumbled upon some kind of lion orgy where they were all going at it at once, boys on boys, girls on girls, it was terribly exciting to be honest. When we returned to our rondavel I pounced on my wife and attempted to take her roughly from behind, the preferred position of the Panthera leo, but it ended badly and medical assistance was required.

I assume at some point we will run out of wild lions. It’s a good thing, then, that we have so many kind-hearted people devoting their lives to raising lions in captivity. There are currently around seven thousand domesticated cats living in facilities which I am told are little more than luxurious feline brothels where they fornicate to their heart’s content. Not a bad life at all. I wouldn’t mind it for myself, even if it did mean waking up one morning and getting shot in the face, beheaded and deboned.

There is something I’m a little curious about. When I wake up in the morning (or sometimes afternoon) I often say to myself, “I could really do with scrambled eggs and a Bloody Mary right now.” But are there people somewhere in the world who say, “What a lovely day for a picnic. Have we got any lion bones left over?” Or however you’d say it in Mandarin.

As your Southeast Asian market knows, lion bones (licked, chewed or crushed and snorted) give you the strength, hairstyle and sexual prowess of a lion and you should be commended for encouraging this enlightened way of thinking. Just don’t let South African men get wind of this! They’d give up beer and switch to lion bone wine and there wouldn’t be enough lions in the world to satisfy that market.

Anyway, I’d be surprised if the United Nations didn’t want to award you some sort of medal for promoting the magical properties of big cat bones. Did you know that you can also get oil from snakes? We should totally be selling that, too.

I like the way you think, comrade. You said if the supply of lion skeletons from breeding facilities was restricted, dealers and addicts would simply get their fix through poaching or robbing the stockpile. And that would mean depriving a lot of people of the traditional kickbacks and bribes, the backbone of our economy.

Supply and demand feed off one another with all the enthusiasm of Hanoi villagers enjoying a rhino horn and lion bone blowout during the Tet festival. This is why it’s important that people like you keep dem bones coming. The government makes money, you make interesting new friends in the animal trade and our captive-bred lions are spared the indignity of growing old.

Speaking of dem bones, do you remember that song? The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the Xaysavang Network, the Xaysavang Network’s connected to the Vannaseng Trading Company, the Vannaseng Trading Company’s connected to DKC Trading, DKC Trading’s connected to the Department of Environmental Affairs and so on.

While we’re getting nostalgic, I remember a time you could take the kids to the circus and they’d all want to be lion tamers when they grew up. Now they’re all going to want to be lion farmers. Or even taxidermists, like the adorable mom-and-son outfit Sandra Linde Taksidermie in the Free State province which has been shipping the bones of big cats to mainly Vietnam since at least 2009.

Have you heard that China has begun issuing permits for trade in leopard bones? Of course you have. You’re a woman who knows her business and it’s unlikely that you’d miss a chance to turn our wildlife into hard currency. So captive-bred leopards soon? Excellent. They’ve had it coming for a long time. Leopards are narcissistic and belligerent and they make almost no effort to be spotted by tourists who have paid a lot of money to tick them off the Big Five list. Get their bones out. Once they’re all gone, we can offer visitors the Big Four. Or maybe promote hippos into the premier league. Sure, they are overweight and not very bright, but in South Africa this is often all that’s required to be given a position of power.

Needless to say, a lot of people from vegetarian countries won’t want to come here once they realise our government is encouraging international trade in wild animal body parts while playing footsie with smugglers and syndicates, but that’s their problem. We don’t need their filthy euros.

Have you been to the Golden Triangle, by the way? I believe the pangolin pies, tiger skull soup and bear bile shooters are on special at this time of year. You can get anything you want in Laos. A lot of it will have been harvested from our very own animals, of course, but that’s no reason not to support the local traders.

With your commitment to conservation, comrade, you must have been awarded plenty of trophies. I bet your favourite is the buffalo.

The buck stops here

 

Dear Tess Thompson Talley,

I had no idea someone as beautiful and brave as you existed in America until you posted that picture of yourself moments after executing an African giraffe. I don’t even care if you aren’t a real blonde. But if you are, praise the Lord! Which is exactly what you seem to be doing in one of the photos – thanking the Almighty for having guided this cloven-hoofed beast from hell into your crosshairs.

Your caption was so inspiring that it’s worth repeating. “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite a while. I knew it was the one. He was over 15 years old, 4000lbs, and was blessed to be able to get 2000lbs of meat from him.”

On behalf of Africa, thank you for ridding us of another giraffe. They are violent, arrogant creatures who strut about the bush looking down on all the other animals. It’s no wonder so many of the little ones, like warthogs, suffer from self-esteem issues.

Stalking a giraffe isn’t for the faint-hearted. They move so slowly that even an experienced hunter like yourself runs the risk of falling asleep and being unexpectedly eaten by a passing lion.

If it weren’t for people like you, the giraffe population would spiral out of control and it wouldn’t be long before they started moving into our neighbourhoods and sending their kids to our schools. That your giraffe was black is obviously a sign. Or bonus. Whatever.

As you say, these ones are rare. But rare only means there are others like him still out there. Thanks to your fearless efforts, his kind will soon be extinct and we will all sleep a little more soundly in our beds at night. Unless, of course, you mean that you cooked him rare.

Love the picture of you and the dead kangaroo. It can’t be easy shooting one of those brutes, what with all their bouncing up and down. And you got to do it on your birthday! It must be every little girl’s dream to shoot a kangaroo in the face when they turn 35.

Did you convert one of its front legs into a backscratcher like your buddy Dustin suggested? Here’s another cool idea. Use his pouch to store your ammunition in! You said your roo was going to make a great mount. Don’t you use husband Andrew for that sort of thing? I’m not judging. If you want to get jiggy with a dead kangaroo, that’s your business. The French do worse things.

I see hubby has a pic of himself kneeling next to a dead sheep. Bravery seems to run in the family. It’s a good thing he was wearing full camo. There’s no telling what a sheep is capable of doing if it sees you coming.

And you’ve been redecorating your new home! Love the pic of nineteen decapitated heads scattered on the floor. I spent a fun few minutes spotting game in your living room. I saw a warthog, wildebeest, plenty of buck, an animal that looks like someone’s dog and even a turkey. And you still had eight more coming from South Africa?

I can almost hear Andrew from here. “Hun, we’re gonna need a bigger house!” You ain’t gonna stop killing so, yeah, maybe you should build a second house just for the heads. That way you can visit them without having their glass eyes staring coldly at you the whole time. I hate the way dead animals always seem to judge you. Do you ever get the urge to shoot them a second time?

I didn’t see the portrait of your awesome president on the lounge wall. Maybe you hadn’t unpacked it yet. Or is it in the bedroom? Of course it is. I bet you get really turned on having Donald Trump watching you undress. Or is that more hubby’s thing?

I loved the picture of the cookies you baked. Little doughy deer, each with its own bleeding bullet wound. What a fantastic idea for a kid’s birthday party. You should bring out a compilation of your recipes. Call it The Psychopath’s Cookbook. Guaranteed bestseller. In West Texas, anyway.

So you were in our very own Limpopo province not long ago. A place called Marken? Never heard of it. Judging by the carnage, you and Andrew must have been on your second honeymoon. There’s nothing more romantic than a woman and her man walking through the African bush while gunning down animals side by side.

Great pic of you with your dead Vervet monkey and Andrew with his baboon. Tabatha asked what you’re going to do with them and you said, “Full body mounts. These ya don’t eat.” There are animals you don’t eat? What’s happening, darlin’? Don’t get soft on us. You turn your nose up at monkey and the next thing you know you’re one of them snowflake vegan chicks driving a Prius and treating Mexicans like they’re real people.

Stephenia asked if your monkey had blue balls. For a moment I thought she was talking about Andrew but then you said, “Such a pretty color huh lol.” Glad you can still appreciate the beauty in nature lol.

You told Regina that the US don’t allow you to bring none of that meat home, not even the giraffe even though he had such a yummy sweet taste. “But everything piece of meat gets ate,” you reassured her in your own special ex-cheerleader way. How do you stay so thin after putting away 2000lbs of giraffe?

So, anyway. If my government ever starts taking conservation seriously and bans trophy hunting, you could always stalk the children of illegal immigrants right there in Texas. Trump will probably move the kids out of cages now and into open-air enclosures where they at least have a sporting chance of survival. It could be fun. Anyone who makes it to 18 without getting shot is given a Green Card. You can’t get more humanitarian than that.

Odessa must be so proud of you, Tess. Not only does does your town have the highest rate of violent crime in Texas, but they also have the cutest killer in the whole damn state.

Yeehaa, baby.

Daft bats, fraidy cats and expats

While Mark Zuckerberg is almost certainly the antichrist and his creation a thing of great evil, Facebook does toss up some interesting things as we snuffle about like derelict bottom feeders sifting through the blighted viscera of humanity.

I was, for instance, surprised to find myself a member of a group called The Lekker Old Days. It’s a closed group, as one might expect, with an impressive 134 000 members. The South African military has 78 000 members. Just saying. Someone must have added me without my knowing.

A lot of my friends from back then have emigrated over the years. I’ve never tried to find out why but I expect it was for one or other of the usual reasons. We all know what they are. Less crime, more job opportunities, a future for the kids, better pubs, stronger weed etc.

South Africans are probably not unique in getting all melancholy and misty-eyed about a time when their country was regarded as the red-headed stepchild of the international family of nations, but I can’t help finding it all a bit strange.

It’s unlikely that you’d walk into a bar in Berlin today and overhear a conversation about how Germany was such a cool place to live when Hitler was in charge. Or go to a Kigali shebeen and retired members of the Interahamwe would be reminiscing about that glorious autumn in 1994 when any old Hutu off the streets could lop off as many Tutsi limbs as he wished.

So, since I was a member of the group, I thought I’d see how the okes were doing in their new homes there by the overseas.

First up was Julie suggesting a get-together for ex-South Africans now living in the UK. “Could take a lot of planning but could be worth it just to know there are other people just as homesick as I am! Maybe a braai, a few Castles, a couple of brandies and a bit of the old biltong!” she squealed excitedly.

Quick to mansplain that she was homesick for something that no longer existed, miserable old codger John said, “If you returned to SA for a few days, you would find very little that would be familiar to you and be glad to board a plane and get back to your new home.”

That’s right, Julie. You’d be horribly disappointed. Black people are allowed on the beaches now. You’d be frightfully confused and think you had landed in Nigeria by mistake. There’s nothing more terrifying than the familiar being rendered unfamiliar by the brutal imposition of human rights and I expect you’d want to return to the airport immediately.

I was prepared to give Julie the benefit of the doubt in that perhaps she really did miss nothing more than making salads while the okes braaied, but then she ruined it with a subsequent comment. “I would love to go back to see my dear friends, who were family to me, and hopefully come back to the UK thinking ‘thank God I don’t live there any more’.” Hopefully? That’s your best case scenario, Julie? That you’d hate the new South Africa? What’s the worst case? That you’d find it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as you imagined it? That you might not want to go back to bleak, insular England and its rude people with their ugly clothes, bad teeth and vile children? Their indoor heating and overpriced everything? You’re screwed then, Julie. It’s probably best you don’t come back. You don’t want to risk finding out that home is nowhere near as bad as you thought it was.

Jeanne-Mari asks Julie where she’s living and reassures her that “there is loads off get together and sokkies all around the UK”. Shudder.

Turns out that our Julie lives in the charming seaside town of Morecombe. It’s a blot on the landscape with no pier and  mudflats for a beach. There is no fairground or swimming pool. In December a doctor warned that local kids were suffering from malnourishment and developing rickets.

On the other hand, the town is fairly well known for its potted shrimps. Oh, and there’s a statue of comedian Eric Morecombe, described the other day on TripAdvisor as “the only thing worth visiting in Morecombe”. The West End of the town has been called one of the most deprived areas in England. Suddenly I feel desperately sorry for Julie.

Craig suggests Julie joins another expat forum which promises lots of events with “lots from all over SA wanting to speak about the lekker old days”. I would have thought the Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have been a more appropriate forum for that sort of thing.

Barry tells the group about a get-together at a caravan park near Derby a few years ago where “over 100 people from the Vanderbijlpark/Vereeniging area met for three amazing days (despite the torrential rain).” It sounds more than amazing. I’m so sorry I missed it. Also, the same place has a braai this July where not only South Africans but also “Rhodesians” will gather. I can’t imagine a party I’d rather go to than one that’s awash in drunk South African and Rhodesian expats. Well, apart from maybe a lynching party in Alabama.

Eileen ruins the mood a bit when she shyly admits to still being in SA. “I just can’t get the South African bush out of me,” she admits. Given our propensity for falling down on weekends, she might well be talking literally.

Glynnis, who is clearly drunk, has an outrageous suggestion. “Why don’t you all just come home?” After an awkward silence, Rob says, “For what? To be in the same boat as everyone else?” Rob has clearly been misinformed. Not every white person owns a boat. He must be thinking of the lekker old days.

Justin, who might well have been dropped on his head as a baby, suggests a get-together for South Africans still in South Africa to “remember the good old South Africa”. Give AfriForum a call, my boy. They’ll find some nice new friends for you.

In a separate thread this week, John asked the group what they’d like to have back from the good old days. A lot of people said their mothers or fathers, which I don’t think John meant at all. Dawn and Peter said they’d like their virginity back.

Yuri said, “Law and order the way it used to be.” Akkedis said, “To be free again without you know what.” And Neels said, “The 21:00 curfew.” I grew up in the good old days so it’s easy for me to crack this code. The lads are referring to a time when the suburbs were white-by-night. The maids had to be in their kayas and the men back in the townships. It wasn’t easy to be a housebreaker in the good old days, let me tell you.

Wilhelm misses the days when there was no TV and they built treehouses and formed gangs to fight against the English. S’oraait, pel. The good old days can also mean the Anglo-Boer War, mos.

Dezray doesn’t give a damn and comes right out with it. “White government, NOT de Klerk,” she says. While she doesn’t give her preference a name, I imagine it’s somewhere in the vicinity of Steve Hofmeyr. But only until the Boeremag leadership gets out of jail. Wilhelm likes her comment.

Hannelie misses her farm. “In those days it was so safe. We played outside till late, walked in the road safe and sound. We could leave on holiday for 2 weeks, come back and nothing was wrong.” Ag shame, man. I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, skattie, but there were a couple of things wrong.

Faried misses pre-1994 South Africa “but without petty apartheid”. Faried is obviously on drugs and has lost his way. Everyone ignores him.

Errol strays into existentialism and says he misses himself, Sharon misses decent bread and Esme misses the death penalty.

Marie misses being able to walk outside without being murdered. Marie, sweetie, I don’t know how long you’ve been inside, but it’s time to come out. The odds of you not being murdered are heavily in your favour. If, however, you do come out and get murdered, I apologise. Thoughts and prayers.

Rob misses homemade bacon cut a quarter of an inch thick. I don’t remember there even being homemade pigs where I grew up.

Johan says South Africa came closest to being a first world country prior to 1994. But then “the doom happened”. I think it’s only right that our history books should in future refer to South Africa’s transition to a democracy as “The Doom”.

As for the rest of it, well, it’s an innocuous mélange of homegrown nostalgia mostly free of malice and racism. I’m sure the administrators have their work cut out for them when it comes to comments by expats still suffering from the master race syndrome, though.

A lot of South Africans who have emigrated don’t like to be reminded of the fact that the lives and lifestyles of ordinary white people who chose to stay have remained almost entirely unchanged. Sure, we’ve lost our automatic entry to the job market but otherwise it’s all still braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Porsche Cayennes.

 

Raiding the municipal piggy bank

Our shiny new president is so far proving a much safer bet than the previous model, which was about as trustworthy as a Ford Kuga on a hot day. Jacob Zuma’s tendency to burst into song rather than flames disappointed many South Africans over the years.

This week, Squirrel Ramaphosa announced in parliament that he would be donating half his salary to a fund managed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. People who are too mean to even tip car guards are asking why only half. Why not his entire salary. Be reasonable. The man has a net worth of R6.4-billion. That’s pathetic compared to Nicky Oppenheimer’s R92-billion.

In other happy news, cadre deployment has proved to be a massive success as councillors and mayors around the country outdo themselves once again. Two years ago, irregular expenditure by municipalities increased by over 50% to R16-billion. However, rising to the challenge in the last financial year, they managed to boost irregular expenditure by an impressive 75%. They probably had outside assistance, but still, it couldn’t have been easy. You don’t just squander and loot that much money overnight. It takes … well, it takes a year, apparently.

I remember having friends who worked for the Durban municipality. While it was nothing to be terribly proud of, it wasn’t anything to be deeply ashamed of either. It was a way to earn beer money and stay out of trouble during the day. None of them ever rocked up at the jol in a new Ferrari or went from living in a bachelor flat to a five-bedroomed house overnight. I’m sure there was corruption at the municipality back then, but none of my mates ever benefitted from it. Too honest? Too stupid? Hard to say.

Come 2018 and auditor-general Kimi Makwetu says in the past year there’s been R28-billion in irregular expenditure among the 257 municipalities assessed by his office. Few people reading this will be able to grasp the concept of R28-billion. Think of it this way – for that kind of money, you’d be able to fill 400 swimming pools with Johnnie Walker Black. That’s enough to keep every man, woman and child drunk for three straight months.

Every year for the last five years the auditor-general has called a press conference and begged municipalities to take action. And every year they take this as a challenge to squander and steal even more money than they did the previous year.

The Eastern Cape, that glittering jewel in the provincial firmament, once again did the expected and walked away with R13.5-billion of the total amount wasted. That’s a solid 35% of the province’s budget. Taking the individual title was the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, incurring an impressive R8.1-billion in irregular expenditure. Another Eastern Cape municipality‚ OR Tambo District, put in a sterling effort but had to settle for second best with R3-billion wasted, lost and stolen.

Fifteen Eastern Cape municipalities are in “distress”, whatever that means. I get distressed if I run out of beer on a Sunday. Eighty municipalities in the Free State are on the brink of collapse. Me too, if I get to the shebeen before it closes.

Third to ninth positions on the roll of dishonour were filled by the city of Tshwane, the hellholes of Rustenburg and Ngaka Modiri Molema District in the North West, the eternally appalling Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Buffalo City Metro and the scintillating metropolis of Madibeng.

Rounding out the list of most not-wanted municipalities and squeaking into the top ten was tiny Moretele in the North West province, punching above its weight with a cheeky R557-million worth of irregular expenditure.

All ten have made the list for the last three years running. If employees had shown that kind of commitment and dedication in their day jobs, who knows … ah, hell. What’s the point.

Meanwhile, refusing to be outdone, not a single municipality in the Free State, North West and Limpopo received a clean audit. Not one. It was probably orchestrated. That way nobody could be held up as a shining example to the others. No one likes a shining example. It just makes the rest of us look bad.

Standing upwind from the others, awkwardly shuffling their shiny goody two-shoes and trying not to look overly righteous, are the 33 municipalities that got clean audits. Coming as a surprise to exactly nobody, most of them are in the Western Cape. The other 224 rotting municipalities remain curled up in the foetal position whimpering, “Go away. It wasn’t me.”

Here’s another fun fact. Almost two out of three municipalities filed financial statements and performance reports so unintelligible and flawed that they might as well have been written in Aramaic on Wimpy serviettes.

And two out of three municipalities are dysfunctional while 87 need “urgent intervention”. They also need bigger cars, more overseas travel and better quality chicken wings, but time is money and both are running out fast.

The auditor-general must loathe his job. Every year since 2013 he gets up and repeats the same sad story and issues the same old warnings and taxpayers murmur and mutter darkly while the minister du jour says something really must be done and that’s it for another year.

Makwetu said that in 2015/16, 61% of municipalities made no attempt to even investigate his reports of wholesale malfeasance and mayhem. I’m not especially surprised by this. If my mates were robbing the company and giving me a cut and someone came along and said something’s not right and asked me to look into it, I’d stare him in the eye, shake his hand firmly and, once he’d gone, get the lads around to my house for a whiskey and tell them to step up the pace.

Makwetu also said the “audit environment” in which teams had to work had become more hostile. Yes, I expect it would in provinces where whistle-blowers and political adversaries are routinely found in remote areas suffering from an unexpected shortness of life.

Meanwhile, my hometown Durban took Worst Transgressor honours in the dodgy tender department after it was found that eThekwini municipality had awarded contracts to 377 fraudulent suppliers. This, compared to Johannesburg’s 80 and Cape Town’s paltry 68.

The audit was interrupted when the auditor-general’s team received death threats from someone who has clearly been using the supply chain department as his private ATM.

This is why I love Durban. There’s no beating around the bush, and god knows there’s plenty of bush and no shortage of beatings. But we don’t just kill people if we don’t like what they’re doing. We’re not animals, you know. We threaten to kill them first. It’s the Christian thing to do. If they don’t listen, then we kill them. Fair play to us, mate.

Durban mayor Zandile Gumede said the city was committed to clean governance and promised to find out who has been threatening who with what. Two days later, Gumede declined to comment on reports that the Hawks are investigating her for fraud, corruption and money laundering.

Thuma mina. With a baseball bat.