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

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

The Freedom Charter – Rebooted!

We, the Connected People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: screw you. We know we once said that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, but that’s obviously a ridiculously naive position, so from here on South Africa belongs to anyone with enough

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 –

It’s the President on Line 1

A picture can paint a thousand words, but sometimes it also paints just one. Like “fokkoff”. On 28 September the UN held a luncheon during its 70th session (“luncheon” is rich person for “lunch”), and just after the first course of wild platitude poached in a jus of lightly broken promises, and just before the

Demons?! Protect the President!

Demons. They’re every secret service agent’s worst nightmare. One minute you’re standing at the president’s side, listening to the football on your earpiece, checking out the maidens in the front row. And the next – boom. The gibbering, leather-winged horde. Beelzebub’s army, getting all up in Number One’s grill. Of course we train for moments