This is the penultimate Out to Lunch column (I know that at least three of you are going to have to look that word up) and I thought I would try and futher enrage some of my readers by pointing out the obvious. The gallimaufry (you'll have to look that one up as well) of comments last week contained the usual quota of those who, when offered a stick, persist in grabbing the wrong end of it as well as the barmy army who genuinely believe that South Africa has nothing to learn from the rest of the world.
That's a view shared by people like Jimmy Manyi who also believes that the country is not suffering from a skills shortage and that the new head of BUSA is not male enough or black enough. If he were in the UK Manyi would just have just lost his deposit as a candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party. But he isn't. He's here, he's real, he means what he says and he has the ear of people who are dumb enough to think he is talking sense.
I frequently pour myself a large Lagavulin of a Thursday evening, light a Hoyo robusto, banish the servants to their chilly rooms and try and console myself that the more extreme comments under the Out to Lunch column are the work of people with very sad and lonely lives. After all, most of them are protected by pseudonyms.
That means sex, skin colour, ethnic background, religion and age can be disguised. Who knows on the internet if Chloe is a tantalizingly pneumatic Cape Town blonde of around 30 or the nom de guerre of a resentful black office worker dying to throw in a few racist comments to discredit all the Cape Town Chloe's.
And maybe Africais4Africans isn't what we all assume him/her to be. Maybe Ais4A is a white commentator keen to damage the reputation of South African blacks by presenting an offensive stereotype of the sort of person we all love to hate every week. If that's the case then he's doing a grand job of whipping up racial hatred. By I could be deluding myself. There is always the possibility that Africais4Africans really is as he appears; a genuine offensive stereotype and those threats against whites are for real.
The point is we just don't know and that means it's a little premature to be hoarding tins of baked beans and making sure we have enough ammunition for the inevitable civil war.