JOHANNESBURG - Things can be as tough for the coloniser as the colonised. For example, my learned colleague, friend and captive, Hymie the Hamster, has been acting a little strangely. He's been emerging from his nest much more frequently, climbing to the top of his cage and then, using his front paws only, has been swinging across the top bars - looking like a Navy SEAL, albeit a furry one with a twitching nose, doing basic training.
Sometimes, however, he misses a handhold and plummets to the cage floor. This upsets me. But he doesn't seem to give a damn.
Other times, Hymie spends long minutes gnawing at the bars of his cage - a surprisingly noisy business and one which reminds me, sadly, of people who have been in so-called relationships with me over the decades.
... I think Hymie is merely reflecting my mood and the mood in general. For this is - is it not? - a hiatus period. A bleak and odd period of transition ...
We are waiting for that organised crime syndicate, FIFA, led by that creepy Swiss cheese, Sepp "Blats" Blatter, to get moving. Simultaneously, a senior medical official appears on national TV, to talk about dead infants, wearing bizarre, soccer-related, headgear. What about respect for the dead?
Eishkom has a new plan for saving energy: we shut off everything except the TV set and the refrigerator (where the beer is). Bakkies "the enforcer" Botha has been sidelined for dirty play; well, blow me down with a feather. Jacob Zuma, the president, has discovered that some Seffricans live in shitty conditions.
Advocate Barbie is off to chookie with her pillows and teddy bears. The winter chill makes my bones creak in the early morning. The Freedom Front Plus is worried about the state of Afrikaans; I'm worried about Yiddish.
The Sunday Independent reads like City Press mk. II. City Press reads like the Mail&Guardian Lite. And the Mail&Guardian has been bereft and mournful ever since the arms deal was replaced on the national agenda by Little Julie Malema.
Bring back Sam Sole, Stefaans Brummer and Adrian Basson, I say. At the end of one of their convoluted magna opera, one didn't necessarily know who took the loot, but what the hell.
All in all, there is precious little to read in the newspapers. It's become more exciting to read Noam Chomsky or Michel Foucault. Even that arts bozo on the M&G, Shaun de Waal, has disappeared up his own rectitude. Imagine being snooty and self-righteous about a good skop, skiet ‘n donner like the new Robin Hood flick.
I was going to write about Malema versus Zuma and all that stuff. But it's old hat and, besides, as I just said, most people are interested in the world cup right now, not JGZ and Little Julie. But, if I had written about Little Julie and JZ, I'd have said that Zuma had done pretty well - in a very Zumaesque way.
Little Julie had to have a sock stuck into it. But no one wanted to be the one who would do it. So the ANC did a lot of fancy soft-shoe shuffling, using a boertjie, Derek Hanekom, ostensibly to carry the can, and Zuma snuck off in his oblique manner to the sidelines to giggle ... and well, you know the rest. Thing is Malema has been put on a short leash; and that's what was required.
But someone who would disagree very forcefully with me is a fellow called Raymond Suttner. He has a piece on p 17 of The Times (daily) of yesterday, under a heading "The Big Read" (see here). Anything more than 33 words in The Times is a big read, you understand. You should read the piece. This is stirring stuff, a big read.
I don't know much about Suttner except that he wrote a fine book with Jeremy Cronin, 30 Years of the Freedom Charter, was in chookie, is one of the fine minds that gives Wits University's law school its high reputation, has been a card-carrying ANC intemellectual for years, wrote another book recently that - judging by a couple of excerpts that I struggled through - was pretty incomprehensible, and is apparently now a professor at Unisa and "is preparing a book on the Zuma era" (he better move it - for so, I believe, is Mark Gevisser).
Now, our Ray is angry - he is livid - he is breathing fire and brimstone. He likes Zuma and Zuma's boys, fokŏl.
You thought Paul Trewhela was disdainful? Eish; try this oke for size. You thought Bill what's-his-name was pompous? You thought that, besides being able to bore for England, Phillip Dexter had a huge carrot's worth of indignation up the posterior? Yo, try this oke. Politicsweb readers are gonna love him - Plutarch and Voortrekker and all the other old fascists ... he's right up their alley.
"As the last days of Jacob Zuma as ANC and state president draw near ..." begins Suttner - this with only one year of Zuma's reign past. Get the picture?
As for Zuma's followers, well, Suttner explains, they're all just a bunch of crooks obviously, with dubious backgrounds... Not much proof proffered, but you can't have everything.
Then there's the rude, ignorant and uncouth youth, Little Julie. Then my old china Mazibuko Jara suddenly appears as a sort of modern struggle hero - he who tried to withstand that horrible man, Blade Nzimande. (You better check out the circumstances of this one a little more carefully, Ray.)
And so it goes on ...The ship of state is drifting aimlessly on the seas .... But do not fear. Suttner not going to give up nor is he going to bewail his fate like Justice "the sky is falling" Malala or Mondli "centre of excellence" Makhanya.
No sir. Suttner has a "platform" on which we can join him.
It's - wait for it - "non-sectarian, non-racist, transformatory, non-violent, nonsexist and anti-patriarchal, pluralist, and environmentally friendly." (Environmentally friendly? Where'd that come from?) It will also focus on "renewable energy sources" (got to have those these days) and lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered [sic] rights as well - and maybe even heterosexual ones too.
And I'll you what; this little booger will cure your asthma and diabetes too.
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