Storieland — Well, well, well. Why am I not surprised? He doesn’t read. Jip, he doesn’t read. Wie? Raai. The Prez. Jakop Regop. Onse Zuma.
Kyk, I never ever have been able to grasp why some people find it almost an achievement to brag about how they never have read a book or that they don’t like to read. Jislaaik, but the President!
And no, I am not making this up. (Although I wish I was …) According to an article based on an extract from his own book The Zuma years: South Africa’s changing face (um think constipation here) of power by associate professor of public law at UCT, Richard Calland, this alarming information was given to him by a ‘long standing member of the cabinet’. (Long standing? Must be one of the few then who are not ‘long sitting,’ sleeping their time away in parliament.)
Apparently Oom Thabo read everything. To the point where it was regarded as control ‘freakery’. (No, I don’t know the word either but it does sound like a good description of what passes for politicians in the Republiek!) The positive about Oom Pyp’s approach was that members of his cabinet ‘had to know their stuff’ and couldn’t ‘wing it’. (What!? And who says we are a third world country? With politicians thinking it is ok to, um, ‘wing it’! Ag regtig. First rate stuff. The Guptas surely knew where to wing it.) Now that was the intellectual face of power. Enter what I think only could be called the opposite of the intellectual face (I have to restrain myself from using words such as ‘dom’, ‘dof’ and ‘imbecilic’ here) – I’ll settle for anti-intellectual.
Apparently Prez Jakop Regop just scans documents and relies on ‘just listening to his ministers’ and then asking them when ‘it will be done’. Fêntêstiek Naas, Fêntêstiek. That has ‘accountability’ written all over it. No wonder everything is in such a mess!
Says the same informant, based on Oom Thabo’s favourite rhetorical question of ‘whether the centre will hold’, that in the new cabinet “It’s sweet anarchy. The centre doth not hold”. I don’t think my heart will handle anymore ‘surprises’ from our oh so Shakespearian leaders.
Goeie Genade. A president who doesn’t read. The results are clear, although obviously not read. Ministers who merely have to say that they’ll do something cause the prez can’t be bothered to read!? That must be why he got upset so quickly over Brett Murray’s controversial painting ‘The Spear’ where his watsenaam was showing! Hy verstaan prentjies beter! A picture SAYS a thousand words, nê prez!? First we had the glitterati now we are ruled by the illiterati, it seems.
Ag before we read too much into it and before we get to award time, a quick look at the DA’s cheap but funny in a ha-ha way billboard campaign (election year, you got to love it). At first the ANC huffed and puffed, admitting they do not want to be associated with something negative before the elections. Duh! If you don’t want to, then scrap e-tolling! Well they stopped their moaning after about three days when they realised putting up counter billboards that says ‘Isn’t, Isn’t’ will be infantile. Luckily the DA message was short and to the point, otherwise the Prez never might have read it!
And once again (come on guys, give someone else a chance) the Stupid People Shouldn’t Breed Award goes to the SAPS! From July to August they had to arrest 187 of their own on charges including drug possession, drunk driving, theft, assault, rape and hijacking. Arrested officers included everyone from constables to captains and colonels!
Until next week, sleep safe SA, you are in good hands.
