The saga of the runaway lovers, 15-year-old Sussex schoolgirl Megan Stammers and her teacher Jeremy Forrest, 30, has not gone unnoticed at the Mahogany Ridge and there has been fevered discussion on their giddy adventure ever since the pair boarded a ferry for France ten days ago.

Quite why we should get excited by this is a mystery. This sort of thing, after all, is not entirely unfamiliar to us. In June, for example, this year, the KwaZulu-Natal education MEC Senzo Mchunu announced that almost 13 000 schoolgirls in the province fell pregnant in 2010 and 2011 and that, in most cases, the men to blame were their teachers. 

That's a lot of extra-curricular activity, and we know the teachers petting is not confined to KZN. In fact, in January Mpumalanga education authorities laid charges of misconduct against a 38-year-old teacher who had, in the words of the Sowetan newspaper, "allegedly caused a 16-year-old not to write matric examinations last year". 

Her parents had refused to lay criminal charges against the teacher who, it seemed, had slept with a number of pupils. As one of his colleagues put it, "Many people have been complaining about his love for minors but we feel that this time he has really crossed the line by preventing a child from writing exams."

But back to the runaways and their amour fou. Some months ago, Forrest, a married man, wrote about his "moral dilemma" in a blog, and revealed that it had left him questioning how to define what is right and what is wrong, but concluded, "At the end of the day, I was satisfied that if you can look in the mirror and know that, under all the front, that you are a good person, that should have faith in your judgement."

True, it is a clumsy sentence - Forrest teaches maths, not English - but we get the drift. As one of the Ridge regulars remarked, "Is it not endlessly fascinating how capable we are of persuading ourselves that certain moral norms do not apply to us? And still manage to keep a positive self-image as we act unethically?"

Then she added, "I wonder if Julius Malema thinks he's a money launderer? Or if he thinks he's basically a good person?"

Good question, and who can say what's on Jelly Tsotsi's mind these days. Besides the loathing for Jacob Zuma, that is. Shame, I almost feel sorry for the big chief. It is one thing to witness one's chances of re-election as party president come Mangaung grow more tenuous with each passing day, but quite another to have to endure the donkey-like braying from the 100% former acolyte at the same time. And the arrest and court appearance has only made him louder, hasn't it?

Money-laundering charges aside, the R16-million tax fine is no laughing matter, although it is not a sanction without some irony, given the self-appointed role role as leader of the economic liberation struggle - that is a lot of money that's about to released from bondage. 

Jelly's compadre in that struggle, Floyd Shivambu, has meanwhile being saying some rather interesting things about the ANC's national spokesman: 

". . . one drunkard called Jackson Mthembu went all over the media channels and platforms to rubbish and question the integrity of the Commander in Chief for Economic Freedom Fighters, President Julius Malema. The drunkard went to the extent of calling President Julius Malea a ‘menace and a monster' in a very childish and intoxicated inspired fashion."

This from a statement Shivambu released on Thursday, the contents of which make it rather clear that he was not bothered by his teachers - romantically or otherwise - during his school years.

"If there are people who are Monsters and Menace in South Africa," Shivambu continued, "it is those who abuse alcohol and drugs, and Jackson Mthembu is not only one of them, but produces more from his home and cannot even manage to keep them there. We will never take drunkard and Manufacturers of drug addicts seriously, so the sooner Jackson Mthembu shuts up, the better."

The taunts of drunkenness obviously refer to the incident in March 2010 when Mthembu was pulled over by police on the N2 near Pinelands and arrested for driving for driving three sheets to the wind. It was 8am on a Thursday morning -- a strange time to be drunk, but there you have it.

Shivambu's aside about the ANC spokesman being a "manufacturer" of drug addicts is, however, a particularly nasty insult, referring as it does to the personal problems suffered by Mthembu's eldest son. It is low and unbecoming, even for a politician.

This is an adapted version of an article that first appeared in the Weekend Argus. 

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