SOB

My gorgeous daughter of 11 was given a hamster by a friend some months ago on the strict understanding that she would clean his/her cage and make certain he/she has water and hamster food. But you know how life works; you know what the youth are like.

I was told in mid-2008 that Julius "little Julie" Malema had been asked by the good folk on the ANC's national executive committee (NEC) to curb his tongue and generally behave in a more seemly manner. Did he? No, of course he didn't.

Similarly, who, with an aching back, mops the floor of the hamster's cage and gives him/her his/her grub-a-dubs? Not my daughter. It's Jimmy (aka Jeremy) here, yours truly, who does. But that's okay. Doting fathers are suckers for punishment - as presumably are (or, in the case of Malema, were) doting mothers.

Besides, I have never been especially keen on rodents or animals (say cats) that don't react to one's presence in the way that most humans and dogs do. I'm like Bishop Berkeley - you know, the Anglo-Irish prelate, "Esse est percipi", "To be is to be perceived" and all that. Like Patricia de Lille, if I am not acknowledged, I grow tetchy.

Notwithstanding all this, hamsters, it turns out, are crepuscular. Like the managements of newspaper companies, they are most active when it's shadowy - that is, in the twilight, at dawn or dusk.

I am half-crepuscular - I'm most active at dawn - which is when the hamster starts gnawing at the bars of his cage. I also know what it's like to spend a good deal of one's time gnawing at the bars of one's cage - and so, to cut a long story short, the hamster and I have bonded.

First of all, as you will have noticed, no one in the family knows the hamster's sex. I was going to ask some of the city's leading feminists if they would come around and maybe hold a gender seminar for the family. But, since the hamster is not involved in competitive sports and since no one in pursuit of power, money and fame is interested in him/her, his/her sex didn't seem such an issue and we decided he's a male and named him Hymie.

This used to be a disparaging term for a Jew but my children don't know that (yet) - some derogatory terms go out of fashion. Besides, in the new South Africa, though my children might be attacked with sticks and stones, or maybe a R5 rifle, they are less likely to be called names. And, if they are, they can always apply for political asylum in the Western Cape or Canada. So Hymie is the hamster's name. And, if it turns out that Hymie is a she hamster, we could call her Hymen.

So Hymie - who is, I think, a dwarf Russian hamster, sort of like Nikita Khrushchev - and I have a short chat at dawn on most dawns, though he doesn't say much. This is good; I like people who don't say much.

But Hymie does acknowledge me, not by banging the floor with his paw or claw (a la Khrushchev) but, as I have said, by gnawing at his bars and my finger. This is his signal that he's hungry - and while he eats, and I drink coffee, I can talk without fear of contradiction. This too is good; like politicians, ANC members, ministers of government, and my wife, I like to talk without fear of contradiction.

Actually I'm not as dogmatic (from the Greek - not to do with dogs) as the politicians et al. I ask more (non-rhetorical) questions. And one of the questions I posed, while having my early-morning talk with Hymie, was about the recent fracas at the presidential election of the South African Football Association (Safa).

I said to Hymie that I could not understand why those sweet fellows, Irvin Khoza and Danny Jordaan, could not work things out. Both men, as I'm sure readers know, give up their spare time to lecture in "trickle down" financial management and ethics at Wits University - and I'm certain they are above all interested in the well-being of soccer in the land and a smooth run-up to the 2010 world cup jamboree.

So why did both storm out of the Safa election, held in some hotel in the wilds of Kempton Park on Saturday, leaving an unknown by the name of Kirsten Nematandani to take control of the goose that laid - and keeps laying - the golden egg?

Clearly there were moments of high drama. The Sunday Times opined: "An irate-looking Khoza, accompanied by Peter Mancer, the Premier Soccer League's marketing guru ...refused to speak to journalists as he stormed out of the Southern Sun hotel, telling them ‘I'm coming back'."

Goodness me, shades of General Douglas Macarthur and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I don't know how the reporter could have said Khoza was irate. To me, Khoza always looks as impassive - no offence, Hymie - as a hamster.

"Anyway, this is a serious matter," I said to Hymie. "Percy Bysshe Shelley said that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. But, in South Africa, the unacknowledged legislators are, as you know, Hymie, taxi and soccer bosses. Jacob Zuma thinks he's the boss - and Helen Zille thinks she's the boss - but their positions are largely ceremonial. The true power, as I say, lies with the football and taxi okes.

"And," I continued, "I can't for the life of me work out what happened. I read both Sunday newspapers - or, rather, two of the plethora of Sunday newspapers. And I still don't know what happened. Was this Khoza's Polokwane? Why did he storm out - and why did Jordaan, whom I actually thought was his side-kick, also quit? Can't these bozos, who virtually run the country, run a decent democratic election?"

Dear readers, I hate to upset you, especially of you are reading this column close to a meal time. But I have to explain that hamsters are what are known as hindgut fermenters and must eat their own faeces in order to digest their food a second time. This practice is called coprophagy and is necessary for the hamster to obtain the proper nutrients from its food.

And all Hymie did by way of answering me on these very important issues was to carry on coprophaging.

I thought I heard Hymie say: "Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of rodents," but I must have been hallucinating (diabetes type 2 and all that).

I guess there are limitations to all friendships - mine with my daughter's hamster, Khoza's with Jordaan, and the nation's with Safa and all this football hullabaloo which is, heaven help us, only just beginning.

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