Waiting for Godnows: A Tragi-Comedy in One Act

The smoking ruins of a collapsed building. Two loyal comrades, STEADFAST and VICTORIOUS, sit in the rubble. They are on fire. VICTORIOUS: Comrade, I am beginning to suspect that the building may not be structurally sound. STEADFAST: I understand that you are in shock, but we do not air such views in public. Take your

Would the Comrades make it past Polly Graph?

“They’ve jogged past Mangaung! They’ve slogged through Polokwane! They’ve sidestepped Nkandla! And now it’s the final sprint towards the Union Buildings! Bob, incredible drama here in the closing stages of the 2017 Comrades’ Marathon!” “Steve, absolutely. “What a race it’s been this – ” “Sorry, Bob, a correction: the Comrades have asked us not to

Another beautiful day. Damn.

The woman at reception was apologetic. “I’m afraid there might be some bad weather on the way,” she said, peering out at a distant wisp of cloud. We understood why she’d said it. Most of the people who stayed at her establishment were tourists from the northern hemisphere. To them, rain is bad weather and

“It’s not sinking, it’s a submarine!”

Had Angie Motshekga been the owner of the White Star shipping line on the morning of April 15, 1912, history might have sounded quite different. As flashbulbs popped and journalists shouted questions, she and her team would have shuffled into place behind a table. An appeal for quiet; and then the big news, delivered with

I bought a Kreepy Krauly for the firepool

I used to enjoy paying tax. Really, I did. It started when I realised that I wasn’t rich enough to avoid paying tax and that I therefore had two options. My first was to get angry. I could seethe at having to hand over a large chunk of my earnings to a state that veers

Time to call things by their name

“Student leader”. That’s what the journalist called Mcebo Dlamini. I reread the paragraph to check if I’d missed a line somewhere, perhaps one in which Dlamini was described as a fantasist who admired Hitler, who called Jews “devils”, who claimed that Wits had head-hunted him to do a “secret” degree in nuclear physics, and who

We demand better lies!

Do you know what’s really gone to hell in the new South Africa? The quality of the lies we get told by our government. Yes sir, the lies were way better in the old days I grew up listening to the fictions of the Nats and, by God, those hillbillies had the gift of the

A country of no consequence

As I watched David Cameron resign, I wondered: what would it take for Jacob Zuma to stand on Plein Street outside parliament and resign? Most of us have asked a similar question but I’m not sure how many have pushed for an answer. In this increasingly gloomy society it’s not so much a question as

They’ll send your mom a telegram when you die

The Americans counted their bullets, pressed their backs against the stack of Tintin books, and waited. The Japanese army was everywhere. Half a dozen sappers were already crawling through the scattering of Lego blocks on the western perimeter, and there were rumours of a sniper up on the book shelf. Sarge bellowed into his radio

Dying for Zuma to leave

You know people who know people who can get things done. Like rigging a roulette table at a casino. You don’t know who or how, and you don’t want to know. Plausible deniability. All you know is that it’s Saturday night, the booze is flowing and you’re winning. Not all the time, of course –