Sea Point Promenade Is Hell On Wheels

Last weekend I was beginning to think there was nothing worth living for when it suddenly occurred to me that Monday marked the start of Transport Month.

Oh, what joy! Hurrah! Hurrah!

A chorus of angels sounded their trumpets, or whatever it is that angels play, and a squirrel darted through an open window and handed me a nut.

With a new lease on life, I sang like no one was listening and danced like no one was watching. It’s easy when you live alone. Startled, the squirrel ran across the road and got hit by a bus. It somehow seemed fitting, coming as it did at the start of Transport Month.

I refuse to let a bunch of surly mother-truckers spoil my mood with their selfish striking ways, clumsy dance moves and penchant for random homicides. This should be a happy time for all drivers, black or white, drunk or sober.

October is like Christmas for truckers because, after all, is not Santa Claus himself in the transport business? Yes, he is. And does he ever go on strike? Well, he did at my house. Three years in a row. Bastard.

Each province is celebrating Transport Month in its own unique way. In the Northern Cape, long-distance drivers have elected to wear condoms while entertaining their teenage guests in the tastefully decorated cubicles conveniently located behind the front seats.

In Gauteng, the Bombela Concession Company is allowing non-gay married couples to have a maximum of three minutes of sexual activity on the Gautrain. However, the chewing of gum will remain a criminal offence.

In the Eastern Cape, traffic police are waiving their usual Friday afternoon cash donations and will be accepting gifts of small livestock instead. If all you have on you is a sheep or a cow, the officer will, in keeping with the spirit of Transport Month, issue you with a chicken in lieu of change.

In Limpopo, truck drivers are being encouraged to enter win-a-tender raffles at the province’s many stop/go roadworks. With waits of up to three hours, ordinary motorists are invited to participate in the festivities by putting money into a hessian sack. The more you give to the Julius Malema Defence Fund, the more chance there is of getting to Polokwane alive. Fun for the whole family!

In KwaZulu-Natal, prizes will be given to truck drivers who can keep up with King Goodwill Zwelithini as he races between five star hotels and his palaces. In a gesture of, er, goodwill, the king has agreed to forfeit his regular blue lights, sirens and escorts. Instead, he will travel by helicopter. The first driver who beats the king to his secret destination will be taken away and questioned.

The Free State transport department will place koeksusters and nips of brandy along the N1. The first 500 truck drivers to make their way out of the province will be given assistance in emigrating. This is open to white truck drivers only. Black truck drivers can continue doing whatever they like.

And in the Western Cape, Her Royal Highness, Helen Zille, has decreed that the Sea Point promenade shall be opened to cyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers and other assorted riff-raff.

Previously, use of the promenade was restricted to wheelchairs, walkers, pram-pushers and drug-pushers who may well have been on wheels judging by the speed at which they disappeared on the rare occasion that a policeman hove into sight. Maybe that’s just how the Nigerians roll.

Brett Herron, the mayoral committee member for transport, roads and stormwater (in terms of incongruity, a poor second to Durban’s parks, recreation and cemeteries), said the move is part of the city’s efforts to “build an inclusive city”. Luckily, this excludes those who might otherwise spoil the whole inclusivity vibe for the rest of us. In other words, those who cannot afford a square meal, let alone a skateboard. And even if they could, they are so full of TB and tik that they wouldn’t make it to the edge of the Cape Flats, let alone all the way to Sea Point.

You’re not a proper Capetonian unless you use a bicycle like you use your drugs – for recreational purposes only. A drug stops being recreational when the gentleman to your left stabs you in the face because you didn’t leave any for him. This hardly ever happens in Constantia.

Releasing a statement into the wild, Herron said: “We will be monitoring the situation very closely during the trial phase. However, I am confident that the experience will allow us to overcome some of our misperceptions and prejudices around users of alternative transport methods, also known as Active Mobility.” What? This is how lawyers talk. I am astounded by the … oh, he is a lawyer. By the way, there is no such word as “misperception”.

Herron assures us that this revolutionary step, taking the DA even closer to governing the country, has the full backing of the Sea Point Residents’ Association. Without their approval, nothing but the sun goes down in Sea Point.

The accountants, attorneys, stockbrokers, human traffickers, crack whores, pimps and paedophiles are hostage to the whims of the association. Mossad takes instructions from them. They have access to an arsenal of weapons ranging from fragmentation bagels to self-detonating seagulls.

I’m serious. You trifle with the Sea Point Residents’ Association at your peril.

Herron points out that this is not an invitation to professional cyclists. That’s where he is wrong. If you’re training for the Tour de France on the Sea Point promenade, then you’re doing the right kind of drugs and deserve to be there. Anyway, I’d far rather they were on the prom than clogging up Chapman’s Peak or titillating the Camps Bay rent boys with their shrieking Spandex shorts and ululating calf muscles.

Herron also says skateboarding tricks will be frowned upon. So, kids, no turning pensioners into skateboards. The same goes for rollerblades. They are to be used for “leisurely transportation purposes”.

The DA simply cannot bring itself to use the f-word. Fun. And a good thing it is, too. Fun leads to early pregnancies, school dropouts, higher unemployment, service delivery protests, famine, madness and death. Somalia used to be a fun place. Look at it today.

Herron says: “We have consulted local representatives for the various types of non-motorised transport, who have offered to launch Twitter and Facebook campaigns to remind their members of the basic rules of etiquette expected from Active Mobility users on the promenade.”

Translation: “We made a skyf with a couple of okes with dreads and they said they’d hit the web and choon their chommies to chill on the strip.”

I do so enjoy it when white politicians talk of the basic rules of etiquette. It reminds me of Kenya before the Mau Mau came along and ruined everything.

We all need distractions from the murder and mayhem of everyday life, and it matters not whether it comes from the Fish Hoek Croquet Club or a gentle non-threatening perambulation along the Sea Point prom of a Sunday afternoon.

Herron also said that flooding the area with cyclists, skateboarders and rollerbladers would “have a slowing down effect on the general speed of traffic”. Indeed it would. The city has already tried traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, bergies and speed bumps. So why not try Active Mobility practitioners?

Nothing discourages speeding more than a stream of ambulances racing back and forth between Mouille Point and Bantry Bay.

The new signs going up on the promenade depict three figures engaged in Active Mobility. All, apart from cycling, are known as gateway pastimes that lead to far more dangerous activities such as unprotected sex, intravenous drug use and voting.

I congratulate the DA on taking this courageous step. And, when Transport Month is over and the smouldering wreckage has been removed, I will applaud them for returning the promenade to its rightful owners – decent Yahweh-fearing folk who seem harmless enough but who, if provoked, will not hesitate to call in an Israeli airstrike at the push of a panic button.

Dr Piazza’s School Of Conflict Resolution

I like Facebook. It’s full of cuddly animals, happy families and squirrelly sociopaths. Amidst this foul repository of inexcusable spelling errors and grammatical atrocities committed by people who received a superior education at the expense of the great unwashed and consequently have no excuse for their reckless abuse of the English language, one occasionally comes across a character interesting enough to warrant further investigation.

Dr Ignatius Piazza is among them. His name popped up on the newsfeed, presumably posted by someone who follows me. Much like Jesus, I am followed by some of the most rabidly disturbed people imaginable.

At first glance, it sounds as if he could be a gynaecologist from Rome. Or perhaps further south. Calabria, maybe. Dr Piazza will see you now, signorina. Grazie.

If not a gynaecologist, then an architect. The last in a long line of Piazzas who designed public squares across Italy. Or perhaps he is a venerable member of Sicilian society. While Dr Piazza is no longer with the Cosa Nostra, his opinion is highly valued by the next generation of mafioso.

In reality, if there is such a thing on Facebook, Dr Piazza is the founder and director of Front Sight Resorts. Excellent. A real estate company dealing in properties with sweeping sea views. I clicked on the link to his website, thinking I might put in a cheeky offer on something nice in the Bahamas. Not too close to where the locals live, obviously, but certainly close enough to score cheap weed.

His page popped up and right away he began talking to me. There was no mention of fabulous homes with ocean frontage. Instead, he said: “Welcome to Front Sight. Your firearms training starts right here.”

What? Wait! Where’s my gun? Brenda, where the hell is my gun? You’re kidding. This is no good at all. Apparently I don’t even own a gun. What the hell kind of South African am I? Being hopelessly unprepared for Dr Piazza’s training session, I did what all unarmed men do in times of crisis. I slipped my hand down my tracksuit pants and gripped my willy. I blame the SA Defence Force for this. Back in the good old days when older men gave teenagers automatic weapons and the freedom to kill strangers, we would be punished if we called our rifle a gun. We would have to stand in front of the rest of the troop, drop our brown trousers and giant Santa Maria undies, and chant: “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting (hold up rifle), this is for fun (point at willy).”

This is all I remember from two years in the army. Everything else was in Afrikaans, which was little more than gibberish to an 18-year-old from Durban. To this day I don’t know who the enemy was. He could walk up to me right now and I wouldn’t recognise him. Just a minute. Fill it up, please. Unleaded. Hey, I like your Swapo T-shirt! Were you part of the group? I heard you guys put on a great show at Covent Garden in the ’80s. Do you still dance?

So. Dr Piazza. Not so much property as weapons. He runs a “firearms training institute near Las Vegas”. The only thing near Las Vegas is the Mojave Desert, which contains more dismembered corpses than the Maitland Cemetery.

Still and all. If you are going to carry a piece of metal capable of exploding someone’s head using little more than a squint and a twitch of your index finger, it’s not a bad idea to get some training. Squinting can make your face unsightly if you don’t know how to do it properly. And then nobody will want to have sex with you. On the other hand, you do have a gun …

Dr Piazza, who I imagine has his PhD in humanitarian studies, posts videos lifted from security cameras. The one I saw involved four burly white men standing inside the lobby of a building somewhere in America. They had just returned from a night on the town. If it were four white South African men caught on CCTV in the early hours of the morning, they would be flashing their bottoms at the camera, vomiting down their shirts and playfully punching one another in the face. These guys were standing around chatting – right up until a scraggly black dude knocks on the glass door. One of the whiteys lets him in. The dude pulls a pistol out of his pocket and points it at them. You can’t hear what he is saying, but it’s probably something along the lines of: “Which one of you dumb motherfuckers stole my future? I want it back right now. Y’hear?”

The fratboy on the left suddenly tries to disarm the gunman. The other three pile in but nobody can get the weapon away from him. It’s four against one, but this dude was raised on blows to the head. As a kid, his stepdad would whack him upside the nut before school. He called it his breakfast punch. So he shoots two of the white boys and runs off into the night.

Like any doctor worth his degree, Dr Piazza says there are lessons to be learnt from this. He tells us about the Survival Triad. The Combat Mindset. Skill. Action. Nothing about not opening the door at 3am to an unidentified darkie with luminous red eyes and a Snoop doggish demeanour.

First, he says, you must have “the mental willingness to inflict incapacitating damage to your opponent through overwhelming violence with no regard for your opponent’s well-being”.

Second, you must have the ability to use “tools of defense to inflict immediate damage to your opponent”.

Third, you must move decisively to incapacitate your opponent and not stop “until he is vanquished”.

What worries me here is his use of the word “vanquished”. It’s Middle English with French and Latin roots and was last heard at the Battle of Bannockburn when Robert the Bruce whipped Edward II’s ass and secured Scottish independence. It was heard a few years later at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, when the English whipped King David Bruce’s ass. I don’t know if he was related to Robert. Feel free to look it up.

My point is, vanquished is not a word that should be used in polite company these days. Then I saw a photograph of Dr Piazza. He is Freddie Mercury, had Freddie ever bothered to use a condom. The moustache is pure gay biker bar, which is fine. Some of my best male friends like nothing more than riding powerful motorcycles into the hills and having wild animal sex with one another before pulling out their guns and killing themselves.

Dr Piazza is disappointed. Although the four citizens had the Combat Mindset and demonstrated Action, they lacked Skill.

“As a result … the fourth citizen who is hitting the armed criminal with the effectiveness of a junior high school girl ends up paying for his lack of skill with his life.”

Dr Piazza says this is unfortunate because these citizens “did what was right”. Out here in South Africa, where there is no violent crime at all, the experts advise us not to fight back. This doesn’t seem to be an option at Dr Piazza’s institute.

He says the citizens should rather have “used a thumb to gouge out an eye of the gunman, or smashed the lateral aspect of the gunman’s knee with a forceful kick, or crushed his windpipe with a directed punch”.

Or, I suppose, they could have handed over their wallets and not been shot at all. Or maybe invited him upstairs for a bit of racial bonding and a drink. And then gouged his eyes out.

The good doctor says the situation would have had a dramatically different outcome if even one of the citizens had been trained by Front Sight.

For a start, your “persona” is changed dramatically after spending time in Dr Piazza’s hands. I bet it is. He says your newly acquired “quiet confidence” will be sensed and “criminals will leave you alone and attack someone else”.

This is a far happier scenario. As a loyal Christian, I consider myself to be my brother’s keeper. But when it comes to taking a bullet, rather him than me any day. So I’m signing up.

I’m just a bit worried that our local criminals might lack the ability to pick up on my quiet confidence. Perhaps they could go for sensitivity training. This is something Dr Piazza might want to consider offering. Maybe slot it in between the Uzi submachine gun and the tactical shotgun courses.

The War Is Over – You Can Go Back To Germany Now

Camps Bay. The Riviera of the Western Cape. What was I thinking?

For a start I can’t speak German. I was marked from the outset and I never even saw it. All I saw was a sea view. I thought it was enough to be a white man with blue eyes. But it’s not. Not any more.

Somewhere between 1943 and now, wealth superseded genetics as the ticket to the ultimate golden circle of life.

My former landlord can’t even speak English. Living in a castle on the Rhine and supplying small African countries with guns, drugs and Uzbek prostitutes, he doesn’t have to. Apparently he doesn’t have to give my deposit back, either.

Apparently I left his house in such a shocking state that I should consider myself fortunate not to be extradited and taken in shackles to The Hague to face charges of general untidiness.

Rent from a South African and he’s happy to return your deposit in full because you have taken the trouble to clean the bloodstains off the walls and remove the bodies from inside the basement.

Rent from a German and he’s going to make you pay for a squad of imported lesbians in waterproof lederhosen to remove three leaves from the bottom of the pool.

He is going to want to replace the carpets because of a vomit stain in the corner of the spare room and he’s going to bring in a team of landscapers to deal with four weeds and a rock that shifted two centimetres to the left during the six months he so graciously allowed you to live in one of his schlosse.

Lebensraum, my ass.

That was the last time I rent from a German. I will never go to Germany. I will not watch any more German porn. If the Germans ever invade Africa again, I will join the army.

But I am not an unreasonable man. I will continue drinking Tafel lager, but only because Werner List spent so long in Windhoek that he is virtually one of us. And if Werner is dead, his beer lives on.

When the landlord sent word via the minion who controls his South African interests that he was upping our rent by 25%, I called an emergency family meeting and told Brenda and Clive that we could either move or swallow our pride and be slowly squashed beneath the brutal thumb of imperialism. They both went for the thumb. Fortunately, our society makes provision for men to overrule women and children so I instructed them to start packing at once.

And so began, once again, the long and terrible business of dealing with the capricious shape-shifters of the property underworld.

I cannot bring myself to recount the full horror of the process – one that was fraught with an unusually high quota of greed and treachery – but I can say that we have drifted, flotsam and jetsam-like, into the Deep South.

Our house lies on the fringe of a stinking, flyblown lagoon in Kommetjie. It has no off-street parking. We leave our cars across the road alongside the perlemoen poachers and crayfish hustlers. Some nights they dance naked in the street, disco hits from the ’80s pumping from the back of their Cortinas.

In the middle of writing this, the house was plunged into darkness. Brenda panicked and thought we were under attack. I moved quickly to reassure her but she had me in a stranglehold before I could even get her top off.

Clive found the fuse box and discovered we were on some kind of meter system.

“Nonsense!” I shouted. “This isn’t Khayelitsha!”

Brenda called me a filthy racist pig and told me to go to the shop and buy some electricity, as if it were a loaf of bread or a box of Rizlas.

I had never heard of such a thing.

What do I ask for? A thousand volts? A million? And what do I put them in? Can I go barefoot or should I wear rubber-soled shoes?

The surfer kid behind the counter was unfazed.

“How much do you want?” he asked.

“About three weeks worth, please,” I said. He looked puzzled.

“How much money’s worth?”

It was like one of those how-long-is-a-piece-of-string kind of Zen questions. How much is money worth? I couldn’t answer right away so I said I would be back shortly and walked outside to clear my head.

I crossed the road and sat underneath a milkwood tree. I hadn’t been there for more than an hour or so when a soft-spoken woman with dark eyes came up to me and asked if I needed help.

I told her that I was struggling to weigh up the cost of temporary power versus the consequences of eternal darkness and she took me by the hand and led me into what appeared to be some sort of guest house called Stepping Stones.

She sat me down in the lounge, brought me an orange juice, told me to take it easy. This never happened to me in Camps Bay. Nice people, the Kommetjeans.

I began wandering about the premises looking for a barman to liven up the orange juice when a young man with the eyes of a dead goat accosted me and asked if I had any drugs. I was outraged.

“Of course not,” I said. “Do you?”

He looked indignant, then asked if he could buy the rest of my orange juice for R12 because he was scheduled for a urine test in the morning and didn’t want to take any chances.

This was no guest house. I had been lured, under false pretences, into a rehab jam-packed with dangerous drug addicts.

I gave goatman my juice and fled for the exit.

Application For The Post Of CEO Of Armscor

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was alarmed to learn that Armscor does not currently have anyone in charge. With no pilots to fly the Gripens and our submarines up on bricks, our flanks are vulnerable to warmongering nations like Lesotho. There is already ominous assegai-rattling coming from Swaziland. As you know, their lunatic king is claiming a chunk of KwaZulu-Natal all the way down to the coast on the grounds that every country deserves a harbour.

But it is not only beyond the fringe where danger lurks. Our security forces must also be fully equipped and capable of subduing an increasingly violent section of our population. Their mood is ugly and right now they pose the biggest threat to this country’s internal stability.

I am talking about our police force.

With apparent free license to go on strike, form death squads or open fire on ordinary civilians, our men and women in blue are the new Tonton Macoutes.

Have you seen what is happening in Durban? The metro police have taken over the city and are running amok in the streets while the council cowers in its well-feathered nest. My first act as CEO of Armscor will be to despatch air and ground forces to eThekwini to help these officers understand, in the language of Rooivalk attack helicopters and G6 cannons, that their job is to maintain law and order.

Please inform the minister of defence that, in future, these decisions will be made by me. We cannot leave such critical matters in the hands of a woman. I am not being sexist (some of my best friends are transgendered bisexual paraphiliacs) but whether it’s quelling a civil insurrection or dressing for dinner, she is going to take forever to get ready. Our enemies will capitalise on this.

You fail to mention how much the position pays, but I am not a greedy man and will settle for half a million rand a month. I do not expect a company car. However, I will be needing a modified Centurion tank with a built-in bar fridge, water bed and three-person jacuzzi. And a stripper’s pole. And maybe a disco ball. War is hell and one must keep one’s spirits up.

You mention in the ad that you are looking for a visionary leader. In that case, you will be happy to know that visions are the one thing I have plenty of. Especially around 3am on a Sunday morning when the absinthe is finished and the goats have gone to bed. Admittedly, some of my visions are a little on the unrealistic side, but there is one that involves jet-propelled statues of the Virgin Mary fitted with concealed anthrax dispensers that I will discuss in greater detail with my team.

You say a strong political and commercial awareness is essential. I presume that means you don’t want some DA-supporting idiot who is going to be suckered into buying Uzis from Israel at a million shekels a piece.

Acquiring cheap weapons from the right sort of people will not be a problem for me. This is South Africa. I was in a shebeen the other day and the owner asked if I wanted a piece of artillery with my Black Label. It would have been rude to say no.

Having said that, I don’t think we should be fiddling about with conventional weapons. We are neither a conventional country, nor do we have a conventional government.

Until the exploding Virgin Marys are ready, we need to concentrate on our nuclear capability. Obviously I’m not talking Fat Man and Little Boy, here. I’m talking about pocket nukes, small enough to be fired with catapults at targets big enough to warrant that kind of lesson. Take Julius Malema, for example. Drop a very small atomic bomb down his trousers and he will be a changed person, I guarantee it.

I will also personally supervise the production of Agent Orange, except I will change it to blue because orange is gay. This fabulously toxic defoliant worked wonders for the Americans in Vietnam and there is no reason it won’t work when it comes to flushing no-good hippies out of the Knysna forest.

Your ad says you are looking for a person of influence boasting excellent communication skills. While I think boasting is vulgar, I should point out that I certainly know a thing or two about influence. When it comes to convincing people to agree with my point of view, I employ a combination of methods used by the legendary Dale Carnegie and Francesco “The Beast” Matrone of the Camorra group, masters of persuasion in their own right.

As for communication skills, well, I have always found that shouting and slapping are the most effective tools when it comes to getting one’s message across.

Since there is no reason not to believe the job is mine, you might as well begin refurbishing my office. Please model it on the Centurion tank I mentioned earlier.

You may also go ahead and hire a team of crack sangomas. Let us be clear on this. I do not want to get there and find the building overrun with sangomas on crack.

Why sangomas, you ask? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it. Don’t make me slap you. All but 34 of the striking mine workers at Marikana used muti before the police got medieval on their asses. This stuff clearly works. With our best and brightest sangomas working for Armscor, our troops will no longer need body armour. That’s a huge saving right there. We won’t be manufacturing armoured vehicles, either. Second-hand Toyotas and VW Jettas, painted with muti, will be indestructible in battle. Europe will be ours by Christmas.

You say a Bachelor’s degree is the minimum requirement? This is fantastic. I have spent most of my life as a bachelor and know all the tricks of the trade. I can’t imagine, though, why the head of Armscor would need to know how to maintain seven girlfriends without them finding out about each other.

I also have top security clearance from my wife, Brenda. She says I can’t remember anything as a result of years of alcohol abuse. I’m sure you agree this would be useful should I ever be tortured by foreign agents. In fact, in the morning I probably won’t even remember applying for this job.

A last request. I cannot relocate to Pretoria because I am allergic to the pollen and the people. Armscor will have to relocate to Umdloti. I will make space in the spare room.

Looking forward to contributing to the destruction of the human race!

Real Men Eat Meat And Die Young

On Sunday Brenda asked if she could take a picture of me. I agreed without a moment’s hesitation. Although I am not an exhibitionist by nature, I am one of those people who believe in flaunting their assets. And if there is one thing I have, it is assets in abundance.

Quickly stripping off, I went out into the garden and struck a number of exciting poses. The Greek man next door threatened to call the police.

I thought that was rich, coming from a man whose culture embraces a pantheon of drunken whore-mongering gods, two of whom spawned Priapus, an ugly little bastard possessed of an enormous penis who spent most of his life scaring the horses and wondering who his father was.

I flexed my thighs at the neighbour and said if he called the cops, I would transform myself into Pan and ravage his Alsatian dog with wild Hellenic abandon.

Then I pranced about all goat-like, willy a-flap in the southeaster, a sight that sent him scurrying indoors. And not a moment too soon, because I lost my balance and fell into the strelitzias.

Brenda recoiled like a startled mongoose when she saw me thrashing about naked in the shrubbery. Apparently she wanted to photograph me fully clothed. I couldn’t quite see the point of that and insisted on keeping my shirt off.

There is something noble about a well-toned male torso. Not so noble that I would want to wake up next to one, I hasten to add.

I put on my tough-yet-empathetic expression and prepared to be immortalised. Brenda told me to stop grimacing and suck my stomach in. I gave her the lazy eye and told her in no uncertain terms that I had no stomach to speak of. Then I inhaled deeply to enhance my rampant pectorals.

Tiny pinpricks of light erupted before my eyes and my chest emitted a high-pitched whining sound that caused Boris the cat to scramble for higher ground.

Brenda watched coldly as I wrestled with the possibility that my physique resembled not so much that of the Greek god Heracles as it did the Greek dog Cerberus.

“You’re fat,” she said.

I got up off my knees and adopted the Enraged Bull position. Brenda laughed harshly. I lowered my head and charged. Well, I would have charged had the sudden rush of blood to my head not incapacitated my legs.

I sat down unexpectedly and watched helplessly as my stomach unfolded like a terrible pink mudslide crushing millions of unsuspecting parasites and tiny defenceless mites who had set up home among my scraggly pubes.

Brenda averted her eyes and told me that my body mass index was higher than my IQ.

Struggling to my feet, I lost my centre of gravity and tried to grab hold of something that wasn’t there. “No more beer for you,” said Brenda.

“Fine,” I said. “Just help me inside and I won’t have any more today.”

She made a short, sharp sound that was part bark and part snort – a snark, I suppose – and said no more beer. Ever. From now on, it’s health foods.

I was deeply suspicious of her motives for wanting to keep me alive. This was virgin terrain and my instinct was to fight her with all the rotten teeth and splintered nails at my disposal.

But resistance was futile. Soon I was learning the difference between fruit and vegetables, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat and transsexual fat.

A few years ago I took some fatty acid in Barcelona and for six hours afterwards I was convinced my hands had swollen to ten times their normal size. It was no fun at all so I don’t mind not doing that again.

In the past I have avoided salads because they are very gay and Cape Town girls operate from the premise that all men are gay unless there is visible evidence to the contrary. For a long time I carried a T-bone steak in my jacket pocket that I would whip out and gnaw upon whenever a brazen hussy deigned to look my way. I can’t say it ever worked, but at least it kept the bandits at bay.

Brenda has now taken to bringing me plates of food clearly designed to render me impotent and get me writing poetry instead of reams of made-up filth.

“Tomatoes,” she says, “are good for you. Full of lycopene.”

That may be, but I have heard terrifying stories of what can happen if you mix lycopene with certain pharmaceuticals. Lycopene and heroin, for example, can cause tremendous harm to your health.

Brenda is also feeding me nuts because they are full of iron. I hate the word iron. It reminds me of a corporal who accused me of sleeping in my browns and then made me run around the parade ground with a big fat pig from Benoni on my back.

Eggs are on the list of banned substances. Not because they will clog my arteries, but because Brenda says if humans were oviparous instead of viviparous we wouldn’t like it one bit if a species much bigger than ours came along and turned our offspring into omelettes.

Liver I can have. Whoopee. I can hardly wait to get snout down in a plate full of internal organs that have filtrated all the toxins out of animals that died half-crazed with fear.

Ostrich is also okay, she says. Sure it is. Why don’t I just drive to Oudtshoorn and let one of those giant mutant birds sneeze avian flu right into my mouth?

And only this week federal authorities in America issued warnings that eating spinach, lettuce and bottled carrot juice from California’s Salinas Valley – the self-proclaimed “Salad Bowl to the World” – could lead to paralysis, respiratory failure and death. Charming.

Brenda doesn’t know it yet, but I have started a group called Vegephobes Anonymous. If you’re interested, let’s meat.

Spanking The Olympic Monkey

“The South African nation is today filled with pride and joy,” decreed presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj on Tuesday.

This was astounding news. The nation is usually filled with anger, resentment, remorse, guilt and wine.

What momentous event could have turned us, overnight, from a country of indolent, pilfering misanthropists into a country of back-slapping happy campers bubbling over with good cheer and self-love?

Had President Zuma done the right thing and fired his cabinet on the grounds of gross incompetence?

Had Winnie attended a session of parliament?

Had Bafana Bafana won a game?

No, nothing so implausible.

Instead, the nation was officially beside itself because a kid from Durban won a swimming race in London. I suppose when you’re coming off such a low base, it doesn’t take much to reach patriotic orgasm.

Anyway, I don’t believe Chad le Clos is the fastest in the world in the 200m butterfly. There are tribesmen deep in the Amazon who can do it in under twenty seconds. However, their times do drop off when the piranha fish head upriver to spawn.

So much for Tuesday. Then, on Wednesday, I pulled a muscle in my back while lying on the couch watching the Olympics. It happened while lunging for a fresh six-pack that Brenda had cruelly moved just beyond my reach. This shows the importance of stretching exercises for spectators.

I could have been a contender.

Look at le Clos. His father said he had been swimming since he was in nappies. My father also threw me into the pool when I was in nappies. Then he went to the kaya to check on his latest batch of home-brew and forgot all about me. By the time my mother came home from the casino, nine hours later, I was doing the 100m crawl in just under 45 minutes. She made my father fill in the pool and I was never allowed near water again.

Watching the Olympics, I was constantly amazed at what the human body is capable of. At one point, even with a sprained rhomboideus, I managed to go from a prostrate position to a conventional sitting position while simultaneously opening a beer, changing channels and wedging my big toe into Julius Seizure’s bottom to avoid further contamination of the atmosphere.

I think these games are overrated. There are several events in which I could easily win a medal. Skeet shooting is one. Most white South Africans of a certain age are excellent skeet shooters, although in those days we didn’t call them skeets – we called them terrorists.

I remember being on the border and shooting someone in the back from a distance of two kilometres. It turned out to be our radio operator, but still. When it comes to marksmanship, it’s important to give credit where it is due.

Common sense says it is easier to win a medal in a team sport, like hockey or genocide, because you can rely on your mates to do all the hard work. Take curling, for example. Right away, I would commandeer the comb and let my more talented colleagues wield the tongs and hairspray.

There was a time I felt myself drawn to archery, but then I watched Robin Hood – Men In Tights and realised this so-called sport had the potential to turn ordinary decent folk into dangerous homosexuals.

It’s a pity Olympic organisers don’t offer an alternative for athletes from the developing world, using human targets and pangas instead of bows and arrows. We’d get gold in that, for sure.

As for beach volleyball. Really? The way these women carry on after winning a point, why not just make lesbianism an Olympic sport?

Men play it, too. They use words like “spike” and “jungle ball” and “underhand serve” which is quite obviously code for activities of a deviant nature. And why not? After all, the Greeks started this business.

I think I would be good at judo. Most married men who haven’t yet been emasculated are experts in the art of pushing and slapping. My friend Ted says it was originally an elitist money-making sport started by Zionists who called it Jew Dough. I called him a filthy anti-Semite and beat him soundly with a leg of pork, which we later cooked and ate with relish and gusto.

As for that ridiculous business with the swords. A South African’s idea of fencing is to make a tidy profit from selling stolen goods. It makes far more sense than attempting to prod a stranger with a pointy stick. If you’re going to have a sword fight, then, for god’s sake, do it to the death.

I could also win a medal in dressage. It’s not even as if you have to be fit. All you have to do is sit on your horse while it goes through its dance routine, and maybe have a word with it if it gets over-excited and tries something from Michael Jackson’s repertoire. It’s best not to let your horse watch programmes like Strictly Come Dancing.

Cycling and rowing should only be Olympic sports once all modes of transport are included. Let’s see events where people have to catch buses and run for taxis.

Badminton is trapped in a mire of match-fixing, drugs and human trafficking and is clearly the sport of the devil. And it’s no good watching gymnastics to cleanse your soul, either. I tried, but halfway through the women’s floor exercise I came over all Humbert Humbert-like and had to switch to the women’s boxing. Rather a misogynist than a paedophile, I always say.

Should the ANC ever decide to stage its own games, here are a few categories they might want to consider: Running for office, rigging the ballot, deploying the cadre, looting the treasury, fleecing the taxpayer, riding the gravy train, playing the race card, watching the clock, hunting for witches, jumping the queue, pulling the wool, loading the dice, shooting the breeze, stalling for time, spinning the truth, spanking the monkey, palming the tender, fiddling the expenses, diving for cover, dropping the ball and passing the buck.

Helkom & The Big Whine

Please hold for the next available agent.”

Sound familiar? If not, then you are one of the blessed few who have never had to deal with Telkom and therefore may find it difficult to comprehend how seven simple words are capable of inspiring a hatred so powerful that the Israelis and Palestinians are blood brothers in comparison.

I have spent the last six weeks waiting for a phone line. I sit in the same place near the door day after day. I don’t go out for fear of missing a visit from Telkom. I can’t play music in case I don’t hear the doorbell. I keep a potty under my chair. I dare not move. I sit and I wait. Week after week.

I am afraid that if I ever have to hear those seven words again, I will be compelled, nay, beholden, to devote the rest of my life to torching Telkom vans and assassinating Telkom technicians.

I will have to go on the run, hiding by day and striking by night. I will sleep in parks and rely on the kindness of strangers so that I may eat. Being in Cape Town, I expect I will experience dramatic weight loss.

I will become a living legend, a hero to those whom Telkom has pushed into the eternal abyss of insanity. There are many of us. We are in our thousands. People will not turn me in. They will bring me more explosives, more bullets.

I will run out of technicians and move on to the clerks, the secretaries and the next available agent.

Then it will be on to management. I will plan something special for them, these men in powder blue shirts and white collars. It is they, after all, who are up to their lying eyeballs in Machiavellian machinations to prevent the introduction of anything that threatens to turn their golden goose into foie gras.

My cellphone rang late last week. I got so excited that I knocked my potty over, wetting my feet and scaring the cat.

“Is that Telkom?” I said, my voice breaking like a teenage boy about to score on his first date. Gnawing on my Taiwanese stress ball, I waited for the magic words. A chorus of angels gathered in the wings. Hallelujah, they would sing!

“Howzit,” said Ted. The angels burnt up as they entered the mesosphere.

Ted said he was worried about my mental state and insisted on taking me out. “Permanently?” I asked, hopefully. “No,” he said, “just for the evening.”

I needed a house full of crack whores and Jimi Hendrix resurrected. Instead, Ted offered me an informal tasting sponsored by the Cape Winemakers Guild. By the time he prised my hands from his throat, we were at the Rotunda in Camps Bay.

I am never wholly at ease at functions of this nature, possibly because I come from a family of common beer drunks. Ted told me to relax and passed me one of two glasses he picked up at the door.

The hall was packed with winos of every feather. Ringing the venue were the 37 members of the Guild.

Ted asked what I would like to try first.

“I quite fancy the ’76 Paarl Perlé,” I said, furrowing my brow in an intellectual fashion. Ted asked when last I had supped from this particular vine.

“1976,” I said. “Shortly before I invaded Angola.”

Ted excused himself and moments later a man in a beard and tweed jacket stepped up and projectile vomited into a bin right in front of me.

I was appalled. Where I come from, expectorating is a private affair. Ted must have been very drunk by the time I found him because he was about to drink a glass of wine through his nose.

I grabbed his arm, spilling Shiraz down his shirtfront. Instead of thanking me for saving him from drowning, he humiliated me by getting a winemaker to fill my glass with three millilitres of Chardonnay Reserve. I wanted a premier league wine, not some lame-duck hooch that’s been on the bench for the last three games. No wonder people were throwing up.

Scattered about the hall were tables laden with different breeds of cheese, almost all of which were more mature than me. I grabbed a fistful and started my rounds.

Wherever I went I heard people exchanging words like “bitter”, “tart” and “petulant”. Some couples can’t go anywhere without bickering.

While scoffing Gorgonzola and replenishing my glass every 17 seconds thanks to the tight-fisted tots, I watched photos of the Guild members and their estates flash up on an overhead screen.

What a relief it was to see that our wine industry had not yet been infiltrated by darkies, gays or women.

My favourite was “Niels Verburg – Luddite”. He must save a ton of money on machinery. I just hope he gets his workers to wash their feet before stomping season begins.

A Doomed Attempt To Narco-Load On Mandela Day

On Mandela Day, the entrance to Addington Hospital resembled the entrance to the municipal market in Maputo when a fresh shipment of cocaine arrives.

The doorway was jammed with hawkers, hustlers, malingerers, malcontents and at least one second-hand sardine salesman, making it almost impossible for me and Ted to get inside.

“Out of our way, you murderous troglodytes!” Ted shouted, swinging his mop. “We’re on a mission from God!”

That’s a bit strong, I thought. Mandela might be responsible for delivering South Africa unto democracy and saving our lily-white asses, but he’s not the ruler of heaven and earth. I am.

Earlier, we had agreed that this year we would do the 67 minutes of community service required of all red-blooded patriots.

It seemed a small enough sacrifice compared to what Mandela went through, although having seen this week’s pictures of him at 94, it does seem as if island life agreed with him.

I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but plenty of fresh sea air, simple meals and early nights do have their benefits. If you lack the discipline to stick with it, hire a baton-wielding white supremacist to keep you focused.

I suggested we spend 67 minutes on North Beach assisting the lifeguards but Ted had ideas of his own. He had heard people were being asked to report to Addington Hospital to help clean up this abysmal hell-hole. Having something of a history with this terrible place, I was less than enchanted.

As a 10-year-old, I spent Christmas Day there having my face stitched up after my uncle tried to kill me with a surfboard.

Then, a decade later, a couple of friends carried me in at 2am after a car ploughed into me. The driver was drunk, I was drunk, my friends were drunk, the doctors and nurses were drunk. It was one of those steamy summer nights when everyone in Durban is either drunk or stoned.

Anyway. I wasn’t wild about returning to a place that held such painful memories.

“What do you find in hospitals?” he said, trying to open a beer in my eye socket. I pushed him off. “Sick people,” I said, making the international sign for vomiting. “And drugs,” he said. “Lots and lots of them.”

Ted’s plan was that while hundreds of sanctimonious do-gooders were cleaning this pestilential bastion of squalor and disease, we would take advantage of the confusion and stock up on recreational pharmaceuticals.

It was a stupid plan fraught with such danger and potential for disaster that I thought it might just work.

So, he with his mop and me with my broom, we fought our way off the street and into the hospital. A security guard tried to stop us but we were too quick for him.

Before we could get into the elevator, a woman with hippopotamic hips and a face like a melted Frisbee escorted us to the volunteer registration station.

I was reluctant to register because once your name is on a government list, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. Once they know there are people out there who are prepared to work for free and don’t belong to a union, you will never sleep easily. The knock on your door could come at any time.

“Come quickly,” they will say. “A million Zimbabweans need to be processed.” Or, “Get dressed, you’re the commissioner of police this week.”

We were each handed a lurid orange bib and a bottle of window cleaner and strict instructions not to go above the second floor. Ted said if the plan failed, we could always become car guards. I warned him about self-fulfilling prophesies but he said I was being paranoid and referred me to the psychiatric ward.

We got into the lift and hit the button for the 15th floor. There wasn’t much up there apart from a view of the harbour and a chapel that looked like it was designed by a committee of German atheists.

Working our way down the stairwell, we stopped off at every floor and went into every ward. You can tell the difference between state and private hospitals by the smell. Private hospitals smell of disinfectant. Government hospitals smell of stasis. And overtime.

We walked through the tuberculosis ward and I held my breath for seven minutes. Ted seemed to think TB wasn’t contagious and offered to lick the wall to prove it.

His tongue was rubbing up against the peeling paint when a sister, who looked more like a brother, came around the corner and saw this monstrous act of depravity. In accordance with the government’s see-no-evil policy, she walked right on by.

Many of the wards showed no signs of life, let alone drugs.

The obstetrics and gynae department was unnaturally quiet. I was disappointed. There is no more exquisite sound than a woman in full throat during a natural birth.

Ted wandered off hoping to stumble across some kind of pre-parturition peep show while I studied a poster showing a range of labour positions. If Cosatu were that flexible this country’s unemployment crisis would be over.

The baby ward was sealed off with glass doors, presumably to keep the stench from permeating the entire building. It’s not working. They need the kind of doors that are fitted to the Large Hadron Collider.

We sniffed around the circumcision clinic but everything was locked up, which was fortuitous because at this point we would have gladly traded half our willies for a couple of hits of pethidine.

Out on the street, freshly absorbed pathogens incubating in our bodies, a man handed Ted R5 before getting into his car. Better than a kick in the teeth, I suppose.

A last word of advice. If you’re going to be a patient at Addington, you might want to bring your own drugs.

Welcome To Club Dead

From: bentrovato@mweb.co.za

To: hatemyavuz@superonline.com

Subject: For the attention of Mr Hatem Yavuz of the Hatem Yavuz Group, purveyors of fine pelts and furs

 

Dear Mr Yavuz,

I understand you are the last remaining buyer of Namibian seal skins. Well done! You deserve a medal for sticking to your guns (not to mention your fleshing knives) while everyone else has capitulated to the limp-wristed flower-sniffers.

The homosexual European Union has banned the sale of seal products and even the Canadian government, one of our staunchest allies in the fight against seals, is considering an end to culling.

If this happens, Namibia will be the only country in the world courageous enough to continue clubbing pups for their pelts and shooting bulls for their genitals.

Their president must have Turkish blood in him.

As you know, seals are nothing more than cold-blooded killers who wouldn’t think twice about tearing our throats out. It is only because of people like you that our children are able to play on the beach without fear of being attacked by marauding gangs of biker seals.

I am deeply concerned, however, that someone has got to you. I read somewhere that you are offering to sell your stake in the sealing industry to Francois Hugo, a dangerous man who lives beneath an upturned boat in Hout Bay harbour.

Are you aware that Hugo is a well-known seal hugger? If he buys you out, Namibia’s seals will never again be killed. They will spit in our faces and there won’t be a thing we can do about it.

The good news is that for Hugo to achieve his evil goal, he will have to cough up around $14-million.

From what I have heard, he can barely afford lunch.

However, we should not underestimate the wealth of those who foolishly think that seals were put on this earth for purposes other than providing our oriental brothers and sisters with aphrodisiacs and shiny coats.

I read your recent letter to Namibia’s New Era newspaper and was impressed to hear that you have been converting animals into fashion statements for more than 15 years.

So you’re Turkish? That would explain the name. Here’s an idea for a new slogan. “We hate ’em, You wear ’em.” Did you know hatem is Arabic for seal? What a coincidence.

Emigrating to Sydney was a smart move on your part. Kevin Rudd’s government is made up of a bunch of good old koala-bashers who love the Japanese for getting rid of those unsightly whales that loll about scoffing all the shrimp in Australia’s territorial waters.

I’m sure they treat you like a hero at your local pub.

As you said in your letter, if you don’t buy Namibia’s seal oil and skins, then the Chinese will. God forbid. These people already dominate the mink, fox, raccoon, chinchilla, rabbit, gerbil, weasel and Siberian husky industries. The least they can do is leave the seals for the Australian Turks.

The delicately-boned plant whisperers should also take note of your statement that, by putting seal fur on the market, you actually reduce the culling of American beavers.

At first the logic baffled me, but after a few beers it made sense. You are giving consumers more of a choice. Beaver or seal, madam? I can see how that might save a few. Personally, I have a thing for beaver, but that’s just me.

As you rightly pointed out, the fur and leather trade is almost dead in Europe, presumably because everyone is spending their money on whores, drugs and therapy.

The east, “the new world”, as you call it, has caught up to where the west was a century ago and now it is their turn to parade about in the skins of whatever species they please.

You also made the connection between Namibia’s seal problem and Australia’s kangaroo problem.

Both need to be killed if we hope to preserve our way of life. It must be said that you have chosen the best of the two. Imagine how long it would take to bludgeon 85 000 seal pups to death if they hopped about like kangaroos.

You’re right when you say Francois Hugo has his numbers wrong. He makes out that Namibia has four breeding pairs of seals left but I have been to Swakopmund and I have seen entire families of seals window-shopping, browsing in the markets and even having tea and cake at Café Anton. The shiny black bastards are everywhere.

Don’t waste your time waiting for Hugo to come up with the cash. The concessionaires are getting restless and they may start clubbing white people if you don’t move fast. Put your order in now before the Namibian government bends over for the Chinese.

And don’t worry that you were unable to sell most of last year’s stock. This year will be different. This year, everyone wants to look and smell like a seal.

See you at the club.

Ben Trovato

PS. If you can spare a few bull testicles, please send them my way. I suspect Brenda might rethink matters if I upsized my willy.

Thank You For Not Sharing

Much like alcohol and organised religion, Facebook can ruin your health, wreck your marriage and make you appear stupider than you are.

However, it brings great happiness and joy in so many other ways. Take brunch, for example. Too often we take this simple meal for granted. If brunch had feelings (and who is to say it doesn’t?) it would be hurt by our callous disregard for it.

“I am not a late breakfast, nor am I an early lunch!” it would cry, were it allowed a voice at this unholy buffet we call life.

Fortunately, there are kind people out there who, through postings on Facebook, remind us that brunch can be a deeply moving if not life-changing event.

“OMG! Just had most DIVINE brunch eva!!”

“Y u not invite me I thort I woz yr BFF?!!??”

“Sorri babe! Nxt time ROFL!!”

“Won’t be a nxt time coz am cuming round to cut yr hed off.”

The same goes for children. If it weren’t for some parents proudly posting pictures of their progeny, we would labour under the misapprehension that all of us were cursed with ugly, talentless offspring. Who would have thought that some are so bright and beautiful that one would require sunglasses to avoid being blinded by their coruscating countenances?

My very best, though, are the gut-churning parables and three-hankie homilies.

Flipping through Facebook’s news feed is like having a stream of Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing your doorbell while Paulo Coelho sits in your lounge spouting 20-word truisms dressed up as profundity.

The practice of posting platitudinous parables, ass-kissing aphorisms and hackneyed self-help clichés is not only monstrously offensive to the condemned and the cursed – among whom I count myself – but also an alarming indictment of the depths to which these meddling missionaries will stoop in their nugatory quest to help others see what they call “the light” but which I call moral bestiality.

I would wager that many of those who flood Facebook with these disposable sermons suffer from poor self-esteem and a pestilential smorgasbord of personality disorders.

If this is where you find redemption or look for lessons on how to live your life, you’re in a lot more trouble than you think.

Here is a sampling of esoteric excrescence which this week interfered with my search for amusing tales of stupid people in real trouble.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

The picture is of a child, perhaps mentally disturbed, standing in the rain. She doesn’t look happy, probably because she knows she’s in for a thrashing when she gets home. “What’s the hell is wrong with you?” her gin-soaked mother will shout. “Why didn’t you wait for the bloody storm to pass before going outside?”

“Dear God, thanks for this beautiful life and forgive me if I don’t love it enough.”

Forgive you? What kind of spineless God do you take me for? You will love your life – even if you have no legs and live in a cardboard box on the N2 – or you will burn for all eternity in the hellfires of damnation. Forgive you. I have never heard such rubbish. If I did it for you, everyone would get up to all sorts of crazy shit knowing that I was dishing out forgiveness to anyone who asked. In future, you can show how much you love your life by dancing in the rain. Naked. Then I want you to go to work and murder your boss. Don’t bother me again.

“The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.”

The picture is of an angry mob of very big trees posing aggressively for the camera. First, let’s me just say I don’t believe in spirits, unless it’s Klipdrift you’re talking about. In which case, make mine a double. Second, the kind of places that have not been rearranged by the hand of man (even though it is women who do most of the rearranging) are in such remote areas that you would have to be a damn fool to go there without a posse of heavily armed friends, one of whom should be a paramedic and another a lawyer.

Nature that has been spared the firm hand of man is nature that will tear your throat out as soon as look at you. It will crush you, drown you or just plain old snap your spine and leave you to rot. Don’t be an idiot. The human spirit can get whatever it needs off the internet.

“Being strong doesn’t always mean you have to fight the battle. True strength is being adult enough to walk away from the nonsense with your head held high.”

Bollocks. You must fight the battle, unless of course you started it, in which case it’s more fun to sneak off and watch from a safe distance. Still and all, I wouldn’t advise using that craven “adult enough” rationale while backing out of a bar fight in Hillbrow. Your head will be held high, alright. It just won’t be attached to your body.

“Even in the darkest of night there is hope. As the moon lights our path so does hope light our way.”

No, it doesn’t. Hope is the last refuge of the doomed. It smells of lavender and carries a concealed weapon. Hope will not hesitate to bludgeon you from behind, moon or no moon.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

This is the kind of paranoid, judgmental gibberish shouted by a right-wing redneck moments before he slaps his wife, drags a giant bag of ammonium nitrate into his bakkie and blows himself up outside a government building. Not always a bad idea.

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.”

Right, then. That’s my job and marriage out the window. Can I come and live with you?

“I have learned it is not what I have in my life but who I have in my life that counts.”

Really? Can you drive your husband along Chapman’s Peak on a Sunday morning with the roof down and a bottle of champagne between your legs? Has your Blackberry ever cheated on you? When you need to see a naked woman, do you reach for your iPad or your wife?

“God made the horse from the breath of the wind, the beauty of the earth and the soul of the angel.”

Whoever said this has never been stabbed in the face by a horse. He will pretend to be your friend right up until the moment you’re on his back, and then he won’t listen to a word you say. Sooner or later he will try to kill you.

So much for that.

Shops are full of this tawdry tat coyly posing as philosophy. You wouldn’t buy a tea-towel that said: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there”, but see it on Facebook and it’s, “OMG I love that!!!” and “So very TRUE!! Thank you!!!”

Were these people raised by wolves? Or do they genuinely have the intellectual capacity of a garden gnome? For the sake of humanity, I pray it’s the wolves.

Thank you for not sharing.