CARS AND LIONS

By a truly weird twist of fate both our cars are in the panel-beater's yard at the same time.  Sandra's got bitten by lions and mine got reversed into a donga.  Only in Africa.

I'm not kidding about the lions.  When the insurance person read the claim form I think she allocated bonus points for entertainment value.  She must hear tons of tall tales but this one, I'm pretty sure, stood out from the crowd.  And it's true.

What do you do with overseas friends who don't have time to go to a game park but want to see lions?  Lion Park.  It's ten minutes from our house and they have lions in various fenced camps.  I don't know where they go to from the camps, but I've heard it may be to Limpopo province for canned lion hunting.  I hope not.  But if that is their sad fate, it's at least less damaging than shooting male lions in the wild.

Wild lion prides are ruled by an alpha male. Shoot him, and a wanna-be alpha male is likely to replace him - either from within the pride or from another pride in an adjacent territory.  In order to ensure his gene dominance, one of the first things a new alpha male does is to kill all the cubs in the pride, along with any lioness who tries to defend her cubs.

So think about that next time you see a male lion head on some dick-head trophy hunter's wall: that one head equals about 15 deaths in the pride.

Anyway, there we were driving the tourists around showing them the lions:

These guys were pretty chilled.  Adults.  Seen it all before.

Then we drove into the camp where the young lions were being kept, and they literally mobbed our car.

I'm not sure if it was the branding on the car that made us look like an overgrown zebra, or whether someone in the car smelled like antelope, but we became an instant lion-magnet.

Then the car started rocking.  The buggers were chewing our tyres and tyre-fenders!  I think it was the branding.  'Dude, it looks like zebra - sorta - but it tastes kinda weird.'  'Ya, dude, I know - try chew here, man.  It's also weird, but in a different way, like, know what I mean?'  'Ya, dude.  Fully.'

I couldn't drive away because I didn't what to cut short their already short lives by running them over.  I hooted and all that did was make them attack with more spirit. 'Dude, it's bellowing.  I think we've finally got it.  Bite harder.'

Eventually through a gradual build up of speed we were able to thread our way through these delinquents, except for one whose forepaws were on our back bumper. 'It's trying to run dudes, but don't stress, I've got it's hindquarters.'

Our final dash out the camp was with a young lion in hot pursuit, clinging to our back bumper, sprinting human-like with his rear legs while his front paws and rather large jaws attacked our rear windscreen-wiper.  Eventually diesel power won out and he abandoned the chase.

Our foreign visitor had been permanently cured of any further desire to view lions, thanks to his rear seat position which had afforded him an extremely close encounter with lion claws and canines.

The other car's damage was not as interesting - we returned from filming baited shark dives off KZN, and we reversed into a donga when dropping off the cameraman at his house out in the bush at the end of a really long and bumpy driveway.  Shit happens.

So there we were, two cars in need of repair.  First one to go in was Sandra's and our insurance allows for the provision of a hired courtesy car.  She got a 1400 Toyota Corolla.  Not bad, but underpowered.  Really underpowered.  A few days later my car also went in and I got a 1400 Hyundai i20.  Car of the Year last year, and I could see why.  Now we both make a beeline for the i20.  Even though the Corolla is bigger, a sedan, and from the outside looks more upmarket.  It's just kak to drive compared to the i20, which I can't believe has the same capacity engine.  Far more power, a much more solid feel on the road, actually feels bigger inside, and much more efficient air-con, which in November in Joburg you really learn to appreciate.  My car's a gasoline guzzling 4.2 litre Chrysler.  I feel like asking the panel beater to hold onto it and let me keep the i20.

Moral of the story?  Beware of young lions if you drive stripey cars.  And don't judge a car by what it looks like.  Drive it first.  Sometimes the ugly duckling is the swan.

MILESTONES

I had a milestone experience recently that was poignant, sad, happy, and made a grown man cry tears.

Bloody hell.  Cowboys even cry now and then, but South African men?  Lash us with barbed wire and we'll laugh.  Apply shock treatment and we'll tell you it tickles.  Beat us at rugby and... okay okay we can get a bit choked up about that I'll admit, especially when it's done by those men in yellow from the nanny state down under.  But cry?  Come on man, that's for Manhattan metrosexuals and Los Angelinos trying to get in touch with their feminine side and Dallas Ole Boys at an Evangelical Rally.  Not us okes.  But I did.  Not as in buckets, but my cheeks were wet.

It's all about the passage of time, and suddenly realising an age has passed.  You'll never again see that unbridled joy when you hand over their first bicycle or full-size cricket bat.  You'll never again guide them as they try some new skill, see that awe as they gaze at some new wonder, watch them drive away in the bus on that first camp at the new school, console them as they fail and try again, celebrate and laugh with them as they make it through.

You look at parents with young kids and suddenly feel like you're lost.  That age with your kids has gone.

Don't get me wrong. I've got two extraordinarily awesome sons.  The one is a maverick entrepreneur networking genius.  The other is a really talented sportsman, scholar, also a helluva entrepreneur, a prankster and character of note.  They've got great values, amazing character and I could never be prouder of them.

St David's Marist Inanda recently held their Final Assembly for the Class of 2011.  Of which my younger son is a member.  My older son is a member of the class of 2009.  His Final Assembly was pretty emotional, but it didn't hit home then that this life would soon be over.  His younger brother still had another two years.

This time was different.  Suddenly we would no longer be sitting at the side of the rugby field or cricket pitch with the other parents.  We wouldn't be bellowing our lungs out as the boys in black and gold thundered towards the try-line.  We wouldn't be sharing wine and snacks at the oval and counting down the overs as they chased a score.  We wouldn't be going to the drama, cultural or fireworks events at the school.

So when the Class of 2011 stood on that stage and did Kalamazoomba for the last time as matrics, and their classmates in the hall returned the war-cry with equal vigour, I found myself with wet cheeks.

Next year both our boys will be in Cape Town and my wife and I will be doing what they call empty-nesting.

It will be a time of new challenges, new rhythms, and new opportunities.  But I will miss them.  No one quite prepares you for this.  I want them to go out there and make their way in the world.  Study.  Think.  Experience.  For them it's the next great adventure.

So why not for us?  Well, 'adventure' is a little over the top right now.  I'm still in the re-group phase.  But my mojo for the unfettered life is awaking and maybe 'adventure' won't be over the top in awhile.  Just give me awhile.  I've got to get used to this.

EPIPHANY AT STR.CRD

By the standards of anyone below the age of 25, I’m a different species.

I like Vivaldi, Haydn, Bach and Beethoven.   My idea of chilling is listening to BBC Radio4 podcasts with a good glass of red wine.

So I was grumpy when I had to go film str.crd 2011.   Last thing I need on a weekend is doef doef music and lots of people who start their sentences with the word “like”.  On top of that the client’s marketing woman had said the str.crd video team would be filming their stall, so why were we actually going?  We decided we loved the BOS brand so we were going anyway.  Which turned out to be a good thing because whoever they were, the str.crd video okes never arrived.

NOTE: Oops, they did arrive.  My bad.  And filmed a great piece for BOS.  My apologies to str.crd and BOS.  View their video at: http://vimeo.com/30725244

So anyway, I'm expecting a tortuous day.

What I got, was a mainline jab of pure street and undiluted youth culture.  

Some of the most gravity-defying, adrenalin-pumping, flavourful people on the planet!  All over 25s like me should have to do this kind of thing on a regular basis as prescribed medicine.  

I met a chick who designed miniature clay pendant sneakers, a guy who is resurrecting old stills cameras – Lomography - that shoot on – gasp – film!  I met Du Toit Botes from Zipz shoes who has a shoe where the upper unzips from the sole so you can have three shoes-styles in one, all on the same day.  I interviewed Darryl Coetzee, a breakdance dude, and then picked up my jaw from the floor when I saw the insane stuff him and other b-dancers could do.

Design student goes BOS against the BOS wall

This is stuff national gymnasts would find challenging.  When I used to do gym (before the Ark was built), there was this thing called a pommel-horse, and you swung around it.  Darryl’s dudes where doing sicker moves that those, on the floor – no horse!

Pommel-horse stuff without the pommel...

They were doing back somersaults off another dude’s stomach.

"Hey Frank, you need a new pair of sneakers, dude..."

They can spin on their heads, like forever.  Like.  Oh God, I’m being infected…

"I can do this all day if you like..."

It's called a jumping-up-and-down-on-one-hand handstand

It was a weekend of demolition.  Demolition of my predjudices and paradigms that young people are shallow, easily influenced and don’t understand the real world.  They understand.  Profoundly.

 

I talked to some of the sharpest minds I’d met in ages.  These young adults have a far deeper insight to complex issues than I’d ever believed.  They were cool, interesting, funny, perceptive and irreverent.  They were talented – my God.  Such talent.  And hey, colour, race, all that shit – it’s so irrelevant.  The leaders of tomorrow don’t see the world through those eyes.  Their take on many issues was so incisive, so well informed that, even if I disagreed, I came away with fresh hope for this country’s future. 

This is not kneejerk sociology.  These are young people with well-formed and well-debated opinions, keen to throw them into the pool of robust discussion, hear other perspectives and form their own view of their world and their future.

Case in point: Mark Ong.  

Mark Ong a.k.a SBTG and his wife, Sue-Anne Lin

When I was Mark’s age my parents wanted me to work for the SABC (I didn’t take their advice, by the way).  What’s Mark’s profession?  Get this.  He hand-designs sneakers.  For a living.  Travels the world, with his beautiful wife, Sue-Anne.  Job description on business card?  Sneakerhead.  Well, no, his business-card is an amended US$100 bill, featuring his website: www.royalefam.com.  But I digress. 

Mark epitomises the cultural and economic climate of his generation: with far fewer options in terms of permanent employment, armed only with an edgy attitude and some skill, he simply employed himself. 

He couldn’t afford to keep replacing his skateboard damaged sneakers, so painted over them with his own designs.  Someone noticed the skill in the designs and suggested he enter a competition.  He does.  He wins.  Globally.  Nike says, ‘Hello, will you customise Nike sneakers?  Like, on a retainer?’  Like, is the Pope a Catholic?  

So Mark and Sue-Anne get to travel all around the world and design sneakers.  Already he’s made shoes for celebs like James Lavelle, Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn from Linkin Park, and Q-tip.

He describes his works as “an unguided result of his life which depicts influences from skateboarding through the late 80’s to mid 90’s, military aesthetics and disciplines, and heavy metal and punk music from that era.”

So why sneakers?  (When I was small we just called them takkies).  Sneaker enthusiasm has a long history in youth culture.  Sneaker-wearers have blurred the lines between athletic gear and stylish streetwear, and sneaker manufacturers have responded by creating demand by producing limited-edition models, creating status out of scarcity and giving more control over what makes a product unique.  Custom sneakers is the logical outcome of that marketing strategy, and a pair of well-designed customised sneakers has big street cred.  One-of-a-kind, and massively cool. 

So what BOS Ice Tea did was hold a Sneaker Custom Workshop, hosted by Mark.  They threw in some highly talented students from the design faculties of Tuks, Wits and UJ, handed out a bunch of sneakers, gave them as much BOS tea as they could drink, and watched the magic unfold, as Mark and Sue-Anne showed them the basics and then drifted around giving hints and advice, as bland was transformed to bold, as cliché became cool, as mass-produced became personal design-manifesto. 

"You guys ready for this?"

"Ummm, is that the green paint or the fallout from my sneeze?"

Very clever marketing by BOS.  The brand gets major kudos with opinion-forming mavens and its legend continues to build in a highly credible storyline…

And thanks, everyone, for my personal epiphany.  James Joyce, go suck eggs.  This one’s mine.

Here's our video of str.crd.  Not edited by me - otherwise it would have had a Vivaldi sound track.  

No, I did the right thing and gave this to one of our very talented YOUNG editors here at TVPC Film and Media, whose short film, by the way, was nominated at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

TOYI TOYI, TENDERPRENEURS AND CONQUEST

"When you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favours; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than work and your laws no longer protect you against them but protect them against you, you may know that your society is doomed." Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

I’m not normally a fan of Ayn Rand, but if one examines that statement in the context of life under the current government in SA, I’d say we’re all well and truly stuffed.

What, you ask, brought us to this lamentable state of affairs?  Things were going so well in the nineties.  Madiba was not only our president but a true statesman.  We were the flavour of the month.  Then we got an Africanist, and if things couldn’t get worse, he was booted out and replaced by a Populist.  The slide has been both precipitous and ferocious in its erosion of human rights, freedom of expression, abuse of power, economic common-sense and social cohesion.

As a society we are verging on becoming more, not less fragmented than we were before democracy. 

The rich, which now include the new Platinum Class tenderpreneurs and BEE beneficiaries, the First Class new Black Diamond bourgeoisie, and the Business Class former-kasi-now-suburban entrepreneur, are getting richer, but the poor are not only staying poor: they’re getting poorer. 

You can’t say ‘a better life for all’ when ‘all’ refers only to that apple-skin thin layer of society that so visibly flaunt their new bling in the face of the poor as they flash past in their brand spanking Range Rovers.

I recently found myself behind one of the new money moguls in a queue at an iMac store.  His pink and yellow shirt with purple detail on the cuffs had a double-layered collar, triple cuffs and enough buttons to send an S&M fetishist into orgasm.  

His shoes blinded you with the combined reflection from patent leather and tiny inset mirrors.  The 18 carat gold hardware around his neck was heavy enough to fund a small country’s GDP.  His man-bag had Louis Vuitton logos on so large you could see them from the other side of the mall, and if you still didn’t get the message, his LV belt-buckle screamed it even louder from a midriff that threatened to swallow it whole, but for the fact that the buckle was the size of a frizbee.

But the final straw was what was on his wrists.  Not content with the two-tone Rolex on his left wrist, he also sported a gold Breitling on his right wrist!  Two watches?  What, one for cattle-class-time and the other for his fashionably-late-time?

It was this new consumerism that made me think about cultures and conquest, not only here in Africa but thousands of years ago, in Europe.  It’s got almost nothing to do with race, and a lot to do with power.  As a jeweller once told me, ‘You know the Golden Rule?  He who has the gold, rules.’

What happened to Africa under the colonialists had little or nothing to do with race.  The Scramble for Africa had everything to do with conquest and resources.  The colonials behaved no differently from oppressors over centuries of history.

Under the Caliphates, the Muslims did the same to most of North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East.  Before them, the Romans did exactly the same to the Goths, Gauls, Britons and the Middle East. Before them, Alexander the Great did it to most of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and bits of India. And before him, the Egyptians did it to the rest of the Middle East, and before them the Persians and Assyrians did it too.  (Remind me to avoid buying real estate in the Middle East...)

So please, let's forget about race.

And nothing's that black and white - if you'll excuse the pun.  Not everything the "oppressors" of history do is bad.

Take the Romans: mass crucifixions, gladiators, slavery, horrible abuses. But they also gave us: the most efficient road network ever built (you can still use Roman roads in parts of Europe), aqueducts, a well-regulated civil society, efficient schooling, water-plumbing, under-floor heating, and if you've been to Law School you still study Justinian's Institutes to this day: the Roman Law system.  And what about Virgil, Seneca and Ovid?  The Romans did more than any other global power to civilize Europe.

How things have changed.  To the Romans, the Goths were the most barbaric savages of the lot.  (Okay maybe the Picts (Scots) as well, but the Goths were on their northern border and therefore more of an imminent threat).  Nowadays, the Italians have become better known (I've got to be careful how I say this because I'm married to one) for their pursuit of la dolce vita than their ability to run a country, much less an empire.  Pasta, wine and curvy women are far more important to the average Italian male than efficient government.

It's the former Goths - those "barbarians" in the Bundesrepublik - whose work-ethic and organisational skills are keeping Europe afloat financially.

But I digress.  What has all this to do with South Africa?  Lots.

Empire builders leave a legacy.  Rome left predominantly usable stuff not because they were unbeatable militarily (which they were almost all of the time), but because once they had conquered a territory, they followed up conquest with governance - highly skilled bureaucrats and creators of infrastructure. 

They built roads, implemented Roman Law (and enforced it ruthlessly), created structure, kept peace - the famous "Pax Romana".  Their ability to govern created civil society in every territory they ruled.

The Nats weren’t Romans, but their system of oppression carried many similarities.  They even called their capital Pretoria, after the Praetorian Guard – bodyguards to Caesar.  But no matter what horrors the apartheid regime was guilty of - and there are plenty - the one thing you cannot accuse them of is inefficiency.  They were racists, but they were methodical, organised racists, who ran efficient bureaucracies and created efficient infrastructure.  That’s why they lasted so long, in the face of years of international sanctions and pressure.

While I celebrate the defeat of apartheid, I also deeply regret the current government's inability to take that particular leaf from the book of their former oppressors: ability to govern. 

Almost two decades into our fledgling democracy, they are doing more and more of the bad things the whiteys under apartheid did, and less and less of the good.

Particularly in terms of ability to govern, the ruling party is leaving chaos in its wake - infrastructure is collapsing and bureaucracy is now mired in corruption and inefficiency because of cadre deployment.  If they showed any inclination to replace cadres with people - I really don't care what colour - who are  capable of doing their jobs, there may be hope.  

But as things now stand, I'm afraid I have to agree with the acerbic Ms Rand.

It's this short sightedness that will cost us dearly in the long term. I don't see any real maturity in government - it's as if they still haven't graduated from struggle politics (all this "counter-revolutionary" “anti-imperialist" crap from the likes of ANCYL) to what it takes to run a country: boring stuff like good bureaucrats and efficient infrastructure-maintenance?. 

That's what builds empires. Not toyi-toyi and tenderpreneurs.

BEANCOUNTERS AND ARTISTS

There's an irritating ad on TV - I think it's Nedbank - that suggests that your investment is better off with them because they keep emotion and reason as far apart from each other as possible.

What unmitigated twaddle!  I'd trust this bunch less than I'd trust a donkey, and I'll tell you why:

The greatest scientists, philosophers, and dare I say, investment brokers, will tell you that their work is not a science.  It's a combination of having access to as many relevant facts as possible and acting logically in applying those facts, yes.

But it's ALSO, and often where the most noteworthy achievements happen, when you act on your gut.  Einstein had a dream.  Churchill got drunk.  And Coleridge - well yes he was a poet, I grant you, but we would never have had "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." if he hadn't been a regular imbiber of some pretty hallucinatory substances.

Not that I'm advocating that accountants, portfolio managers and financial advisers go out and toke on some weed (although their spouses might find them suddenly a lot more interesting), and not that I advocate getting high at all.  I don't do the stuff.

What I am trying to say is that life is not as black and white as the advert would have us think.  It's grey.  It's messy.  Intuition is an emotion.  And it functions in ways shrinks, brain surgeons and neurologists have been trying to understand for centuries - they still don't - and it still saves our butts in times of crisis in ways we will never consciously understand.  The last-minute cold-feet that saved you from marrying what would have been a wife from hell.  The hairs on the back of your neck that stopped you going in to business with someone who later turns out to be an unethical, dishonest cad.  The feeling (yes, I used the word) that stopped you from buying some shares the day before they tanked.

Read a book called "Steering by Starlight" by Martha Beck, and see how dreams affect reality.  All the time.  There are island communities that "dream" the fish to them.  And it works.

Wearing the blinkers of a logic-only world view will make you like a bipolar friend of a friend: he's impossibly rich, lonely, isolated, emotionless and unable to relate meaningfully to his spouse or children.  One part of his life is working.  The other parts that give meaning to that one part, are dysfunctional.

When we start to put our trust in purveyors of the "science" of life instead of in whole people who can flow between the science and the art of life, it's like asking Mr Bipolar to tell you how to repair your relationship with your family.  Ain't gonna happen.

The title of this blog comes from Hamlet (Act I Sc v), where the ghost of his father appears and asks Hamlet to avenge his death.  This is all too much for poor old Horatio.  Er ist total ausgeflippt, as they say in Munich.  He's been exposed to something outside his worldview and he's freaking out:

Horatio: "O day and night, this is wondrous strange!"

Hamlet?  He's chilled.  A ghost?  Cool.  Let's hear what it has to say:

Hamlet: "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

Hamlet is saying to Horatio that what you think you know is not what there is to know.  If something comes out of left field, don't freak out.  Suss it out.  Understand it, even though you may not agree with it.

Actuaries are really bright kids who hit varsities with a string of distinctions and then become responsible for making decisions that will impact billions of dollars, euros, etc.  So why are they so consistently wrong?  What's with the geniuses that they could not predict 2008?  That with the experience of 2008 they could not predict what's happening now, in 2011 - a recession, I believe, that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park and will probably be a lot closer to the 1931 Depression.  Hey, I'm not the expert - but then the experts seem to be missing it by a mile quite consistently nowdays.  I'm just acting on my gut.

God used a donkey (Numbers 22:28) when all else failed.  He did so because there was a deadline.  His message needed to be heard NOW, but everyone was too busy.  So He used a donkey.

I fear that in the case of bean-counters, financial advisers and their ilk, they may prove more of a challenge to Him than an ass.

SNOW and STUFF

Wow.  Now Juju wants to effect regime-change in Botswana.  Only months ago he was saying we cannot influence the affairs of another sovereign nation (Zimbabwe & Libya).  I guess that's only when you agree with them.  Hypocrisy?  Naah!

The real issue is Khama is offering the US a military base in sub-Saharan Africa.  Given what Juju has seen the US and Nato allies do to Brother Leader in Libya, the LAST thing Juju wants on our borders is a squadron of F22 Raptors and Cruise missiles.

Why?  Because, if he comes to power, he's going to do to SA exactly what Gadaffi did to Libya and Mugabe did to Zim.  (Which makes the prospect of a US base at Gaborone not such a bad idea.)

That's why Juju's elders need to tell him to shut up and sit down.  But they won't.  Sigh.  We need a new President.  Urgently.  Get thee to the polling booths, come 2012...

On to other matters.  Note to self: when filming in Lesotho in sub-zero temperatures, make sure you leave enough time for the camera to acclimatize when taking said camera out of blizzard and filming in warm interior.

Spent fifteen minutes frantically roasting camera in front of roaring log fire so lens wouldn't fog up ("Has your video thingy caught a cold, love?", said the plump mom from Manchester, sipping her gluhwein.).  Not great for the camera I know, but when you need to get the shot, you do tend to act a bit weird.

Opposite applies as well: the next day we moved from interior back to blizzard and I needed to use the long lens.  Fogged up the minute I took it out of its case.  Buried it in the snow for half an hour and it still didn't unfog in time.

So what did I do?  Intrepid camerman that I am, I slung the rig under one arm, caught the ski-lift up the slope with the other, and inserted myself between the uprights of one of the Giant Slalom gates, about half-way down the slope, just under a massive incline.  Skiers swore at me as they ripped past at about 100km/h, narrowly missing me and the gate.

Didn't make me the most popular person among the athletes, but the footage was terrific...

They don't know this, but seeing them do that at such close quarters gave me enormous respect for them.

You try coming down a slope at bone-breaking speeds, and clipping your turns to the minimum so your shins and arms hit those plastic gate-poles like a rifle-shot.  Yes, they have shin- and elbow-guards, but it's a bit like having a face-guard and being hit by Mike Tyson.  You're still going to feel it.

And yet you continue to hurl yourself at those gates all the way down...  That's a madness you have to admire.  Sheer aggro bullheadedness in the face of what to me seemed certain death.

And yet at the bottom, they're all humble and smiley and "yeah man I'm stoked - good run, I reckon."  Hats off to you, dudes.  Understated macho.  Bloomin' marvelous.

Promo for TV broadcast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-69F1g9oj4

Broadcast times:

Premier Broadcast:         Mon 15 Aug        21h30, Supersport Channel 7

Repeat Broadcasts:     Tue 16 Aug          15h00, Supersport Channel 7

                                       Wed 17 Aug        11h00, Supersport Channel 5

                                       Thu 18 Aug          22h30, Supersport Channel 6

                                        Fri 19 Aug           06h20, Supersport Channel 7

                                        Tue 23 Aug          08h30, Supersport Channel 6

                                        Thu 25 Aug          15h00, Supersport Channel 7

                                        Fri 26 Aug            20h30, Supersport Channel 6

MALEMA MORONISMS

This Malema idiot is getting away with way too much. On being questioned on where he is getting the money for his R16m bunker/mansion on a salary of R25,000 a month, the Mugabe-in-waiting's response is "I am not a pubically elected ofishool. I don't have to tell you where I get the money from."

O yeah? Let's apply something to which Malema is totally unaccustomed: logic.

Let's assume he has a number of patrons who are bankrolling his mansion - among other expenses. The logical question to ask is 'why would they do this?' In the cut and thrust of politics, no-one does anything for nothing. The patrons obviously believe Malema will one day become a publicly elected official. They are investing in that belief and expect to be recompensed by his largesse once that becomes a reality.

Another glaring piece of logic everyone is ignoring is that although he is not a public servant, he IS an elected official. As such, his electorate, the ANCYL, has every right to demand full disclosure of his income. The fact that they haven't shows just how easily they are beguiled by Melema's bullshit. Idiots.

But getting back to Malema's patrons. How do they stand to benefit? Tenders, of course. This country has a long history of 'tenderpreneurs' - Roux Shabangu and others - who ride the gravy train to Lamborghini bling-paradise through winning contracts via irregular and illegal means.

So, Malema is basically promising to assist his patrons by using his influence unconstituionally, and therefore illegally, IF he becomes a political kingpin. Note I said IF, not when. I live in hope.

As Roux Shabangu has recently found out, the patron's scenario doesn't always work out. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is making Shabangu's life a living hell, and even Shabangu's mate, General Bheki Cele can't dig him out. Cele should be unceremoniously fired for awarding the contract to Shabangu in the first place, but this is Zuma's ANC, so instead, Cele will be 'redeployed' to inflict untold damage on the hapless Japanese as SA Ambassador/Bull-in-a-china-shop.

How stupid are these patrons? Throw money at a fascist megalomaniac who counts Bob Mugabe and Brother Leader Gadaffi among his heroes, in the hope that he will become, erm, another Mugabe/Gadaffi. If, God forbid, that nightmare does come true, the country will be so fucked that the patrons will be the last things on Malema's mind as he goes into perpetual denial that the country is becoming ungovernable, while simultaneously siphoning billions off to his Swiss bank account. Talk about backing a lemon.

But this is Africa, and stranger things have happened.

WHEN GOD GETS YOU BACK

The day before my son went back to Cape Town, we went on a hike in the Magaliesberg. Well, it started out that way. It ended up by God getting me back for all the horrible things I've done to Him.

My nephew, who's done this before, warned us: "Don't go in the fast group. They're insane. Go in the middle group." So when the guide said "Leisure over there, Medium minus over there, medium plus over here," we went with medium plus. I thought there would be a fast group that followed. Big mistake. Medium plus is hike-speak for fast. These long, sinewy silent types that look sardonic even when they'e pissing into the wind. The tall woman's badges on her backpack said: "Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage Walk - 880km", and "Drakensberg Grand Traverse - 220km". These weren't poser-badges. She'd actually done them.

By the time my son and I realised that our group's cracking pace was not just a warm-up burst, it was too late. "Our friends seem to have lagged behind," I said to our guide during the twenty second drinks break. "We'll wait here for their group to catch up". "Oh no," he says, "They turned right about four kilometres back. They're slow." The last phrase was said dismissively, as one might disregard a lower species.

This posed a problem. "What time will we get back? We're all in the one car," I said. "The same time," he said, cheerily. "But this group is hiking 22km," I pointed out. "The middle group is only doing twelve."

"Exactly," he said, and walked/ran off to lead our group of sardonic former Reconnaisance Commandos. Then the penny dropped, and with it, my stomach. We would be hiking 22km in the same time my nephew and his friend - oh you lucky buggers - would be hiking twelve.

I don't know if you've ever hiked cross country before, but it's an entirely different experience from walking on even ground. There are no footpaths, roads or anything vaguely flat. There are thick, snagging tufts of grass which hide rocks just loose enough to deprive you of a firm foothold. For the inexperienced hiker trying to keep up with those who can read this terrain like a book, you don't walk so much as lurch. It's a fast-forward stumble, and it was due to continue for the balance of our 22kms.

It was about this time that I realised I was wearing the wrong shoes. Somewhere among our many moves my hiking boots had been nationalised by the cleaning staff, and I was wearing some very upmarket black suede ankle length boots. Not appropriate I grant you, but in my outdoor-challenged wardrobe, they were the best of a bad lot. Just how bad, my feet were now beginning to tell me. And the right boot was beginning to complain audibly. Step groan. Step groan. Please God, stay in one piece, I prayed. We were too far gone to be bootless. In this terrain, to be bootless was as good as being quadriplegic.

In addition to all the above, another reason hiking is one of the most character-building activities I've done, is that the hills in the Magaliesberg are cruelly dome-shaped. They're not honest. In the Drakensberg, the terrain is lest duplicitous. You can see the top of whatever mountain you're hiking toward. Not the Magaliesburg. What looked like the top of the hill turns out to be a nipple on a convex slope that teases you with one mock-summit after the next, all the while leading you inexorably upward. If the Magaliesburg was female she would be the ultimate tease.

Fortunately, unlike the female variety, the Magaliesburg is a tease that delivers. After about eleven kilometres of lurching up one side of innumerable domes and staggering down the other, we slotted into a ravine drenched with greenery and the clearest, coolest water I've ever seen.

The ravine sloped gently upward, and after a few easy rock-climbs we found ourselves at a place my sardonic colleagues called 'Dome Pools'. Six metre deep granite pools so clear you could make out the grains of sand at the bottom. Waterfalls and rapids so crisp and cool you could fill your water bottles from them. Evian and Perrier tasted like drain water by comparison. There was no road, footpath, contour path, cattle path - nothing to give away their existence.

They were literally in the middle of nowhere. We stretched out and unpacked our lunches from our backpacks. The silence was so complete that for awhile, talking felt like sacrilege. Just a forty minute drive from Joburg, and we were in a cathedral so gentle, calm and sacred just thinking about leaving filled you with regret.

Realizing we had to, and that we had eleven more kilometers to cover at the same pace we'd hiked the first eleven, filled me with undiluted terror.

But that was in fifteen minutes. Right now, my son and I looked at our reflections in the water, ate our sandwiches, and chatted about small, insignificant things. It was the best time I'd spent with him in months.

The journey back would be hellish (for me, not for him), and it was. The next day would be even worse. (It was. Getting out of bed felt like being tortured by a hundred gargoyles while walking on red-hot coals.)

But for those moments at Dome Pools, it was as if all our arguments turned into water and dissipated into the cold Magaliesburg granite, and all that was left was each other, stripped down to the silent basic essences of who we were.

And in that essential solitude, we saw and valued what was in the other. Like the hike home, there was a journey to come. It would not be easy. But now we knew each other. We were a team. And that made all the difference.

Yes, God got me back. He got me back like He always does - by giving me unexpected gifts I don't deserve.

PROF GUY BUTLER

I'd forgotten just what an exceptional man Guy Butler was.

Go to:
http://www.ru.ac.za/6246

Or if that's too much effort, just read this, one of his poems:

The Divine Underground

Souls in flagrante delicto or in extremis
stretched on the rack or Cleopatra’s bed,
you have no news for me,
me, not fit to tread
where hawk-sure men of the media
zoom lenses down on your limbs in spasm
or claw at your grunts or ululations
with glittering microphones.

No, I go hungrily slumming for those who wear
a habit of discipline on every gesture, armed
in still affection, steel-bright after years.

I find them poorly disguised as morons,
under distorting stars,
lost in their lands of birth, quite ousted by
smooth bastards or daughters in gorgeous gowns:
in the cold, in the shade,
like lepers, like untouchables, in whose eyes
our storms of guilt dissolve in their light of forgiveness:
they know what they have lost,
they guess at what they have gained;
divining an innocent justice, they endure
our grand and murderous razzmatazz
as if they were God’s spies.

The effect of Keats, Donne and Eliot on lady students

The Grahamstown Festival of the Arts is almost upon us again. Which always makes me think of Rhodes University back in the seventies, and of poetry and young ladies.

The thing is, I was a late starter. When my high school classmates at St Benedict's were boasting of their conquests with the opposite sex, I was so terrified of women I REALLY didn't even know how to talk to them. I probably put them up on a pedestal. Bit of a romantic twat.

It took a year of national service in the Navy to beat that out of me. In the seventies, national service - especially in the Army - did a lot of things to a lot of young men, so I am eternally grateful that all it really did to me was make me "cowboy up, cupcake", as they say in Arizona.

It happened on Navy shore-leave, with a very forward girl who started the evening as a friend's date and ended up as mine. Parked outside her parent's Kempton Park home, it happened in my mom's hand-me-down old Opel Kadett with the gear lever that came out of its socket every time you engaged third - a pretty apt description of the evening, come to think of it.

Things did improve after I left the Navy and became a student. Rhodes in the late seventies was a universe populated with the likes of Andrew and Janet Buckland, Ian Roberts, Jeremy Mansefield, Shaun Johnson, and many others who went on to achieve great heights.

I, like many of them, found myself studying English, Speech and Drama, Psychology and Journalism. Unlike them, instead of paying attention when demigods of literature like Andre P Brink and Guy Butler had the lectern, I was falling for a series of remarkable young women I really didn't deserve.

It never occurred to me until many years later that this was more due to simple availability than ability. I spent the vast majority of my time in the Drama faculty, where women heavily outnumbered men, and where straight men were few and far between. So the reality was simply a matter of statistics.

I remember I never went home in the July holidays. It was the Festival of the Arts, and I tended to be cast in the festival productions. Drama students from UCT, Wits, Natal, Stellenbosch, Tuks and other faculties descended on Grahamstown to perform their Festival productions.

There was a bakery opposite the main pub where one could buy raw dough (cheaper than bread, which meant more money to make gluhwein - it's really cold in Grahamstown in July).

In between productions, the drama students would meet at various digs, and the dough would be baked in strips on a fireplace (many student digs were in old Settler houses with massive hearths and yellowwood floors), and we would discuss Pirandello, Lorca, Ibsen, Brecht, Chekov, Sartre and God knows what else over copious amounts of gluhwein and hot bread.

Among other poems, I could recite 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by Keats, particularly when drunk, and it had a remarkable effect on young ladies.

I really did love Keats. And John Donne. And a good few Shakespearean sonnets. And if I was really far gone, then out would come a few quatrains of The Waste Land. The drunker I got, the more readily their poems tumbled from my lips. I couldn't help myself. An unanticipated side effect was it got me a fair bit of action.

Except T S Eliot.

Eliot's poems really turned girls off. Especially The Waste Land. With me, it was always a toss up between Eliot and Donne as my favourite poet of all time. It took a couple of disappointments that should have taught me to avoid Eliot, especially when la belle dame sans merci was a really interesting, bright, witty, gorgeous actress, touched by the muse with truly ridiculous amounts of onstage presence, and I ruined the moment by slurring out 'April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land...'. Idiot.

Start the evening with Donne, build up through a few of the Bard's sonnets and end with Keats. Avoid Eliot. Not difficult to remember. Except when you've had an entire bucket of gluhwein chased with couple of glasses of Tassies. Then out came Eliot, and good-bye la belle dame.

Is this what the Jews felt like before WWII?

In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, I've been resolutely optimistic about this beautiful country of my birth. I claim as much right to be an African as anyone else born on this continent and reject the label of settler with contempt. I have put down roots, worked hard, got married, had kids, bought property. This is my home. I cannot conceive of life without vermilion-sky sunsets, umbrella trees, cicadas, boerewors, the penny-whistle, the Hector Petersen Memorial, Table Mountain, Highveld electric storms, fresh mango, the Springboks and Kaizer Chiefs.

But as I was editing a debate by high school kids today, their incisive minds gave me pause. You would not expect to learn pessimism from the youth, but they made me think seriously about their and my future in this country.

The topic of the debate was, "This house would recommend the lifting of sanctions in Zimbabwe if that country gave unconditional access to the international press to monitor the next elections."

As the sides argued their points they reminded me that Zanu PF had actually lost the 2008 elections. They reminded me that in 2008 SADC and South Africa in particular had been tasked with the job of monitoring and enforcing the Global Political Agreement (GPA) between ZANU-PF and the two factions of the MDC.

And that got me thinking. Not only has our government been woefully remiss in its job of umpiring the GPA, allowing Mugabe and his military cabal to get away with one crime after another, but they also turned a blind eye to Juju's rock-star visit to Zim in April 2010 when Malema endorsed Mugabe's economic policies and talked of importing them to South Africa to nationalise white-owned farms and mines. Since then, he has been on trial for refusing to back down on a song that a judge admitted has racist consequences, he's called white opposition politicians cockroaches and madams, and their black colleagues tea girls. He's called white land-owners criminals.

The former mayor of Port Elizabeth, Nceba Faku, in the wake of the recent Municipal Elections urges ANC supporters to chase those who voted for the opposition into the sea - and goes un-reproached by the President.

Roux Shabangu is exposed by Thuli Madonsela, the Public Prosecutor, who also fingers shenanigans in the CCMA and others, for renting a building to the SAPS at inordinately inflated rates (a R500 million deal), and her findings are ignored, swept under the carpet or become the subject of protracted civil cases.

In the wake of mounting media criticism about its fielding of candidates for the Municipal Elections, reports on corruption, accusations of racism and criticism of its economic policies, the ANC threatens to steam-roll the Protection of Information Bill through parliament, which will substantially limit press freedom.

The ANC, in these and many other actions over the past few months, is becoming increasingly similar in style, policy and thinking to Mugabe's ZANU PF.

What, one wanders, would the ANC do if it ever got to the point where it may be in danger of losing an election? Based on what has transpired in the last year or so, I have no doubt they would resort to the same dictatorial tactics Mugabe has employed over the last decade in Zimbabwe.

My wife's family has roots back to Germany before and during the war. Her grandfather was killed by the Nazis. Her grandmother was Jewish. Her mother and aunts have talked of the decision to finally leave Europe. I am relating more and more to those conversations. I have two sons. What future will they have here?

I am starting to think about that parable of the frog who never knew he was being cooked because the water he was swimming in was heated up so slowly. By the time he realised things were too hot, it was too late.

A part of me would be eternally rootless for leaving this place. Am I being selfish, leaving others to a destiny they do not have the resources to escape from? I know there are thousands of township families with the same misgivings, who have fewer options than I.

But perhaps its time to cut those ties. I and the skilled South Africans of all races who can sell their labour overseas are looking at our options a little more closely. Putting out feelers. Looking into possibilities we would never have considered two years ago.

All this because our leaders show no signs of change. On the contrary, their rabid nationalist Africanism appears to be hardening and entrenching itself further. Which reminds me of another parable where the electorate can be compared to a tortoise and the ruling party to a scorpion.

There was once a land where greed, corruption and lies turned to water, and caused a flood, the like of which had never been seen before. Everything sweet and fertile was washed away by the relentless waters. The lone survivors were a scorpion, on the highest stone, and a tortoise, who could swim in the water. As the waters continued to rise, the scorpion knew that even his high stone would soon be covered. 'Carry me over the water so I don't drown', says the scorpion to the tortoise. The tortoise refuses, knowing that the scorpion has stung many of its fellows to death. But the scorpion insists, 'If I sting you when we are in the water, we will both die', so the tortoise relents and gives the scorpion a ride. Half way across the water, the scorpion scuttles up to the tortoises' neck and stings it to death. As it is dying, the tortoise says to the scorpion, 'Why did you do that? Now we will both die.' The scorpion replies, 'I couldn't help myself. It's in my nature.'