George Orwell wrote that “Political language -  and with variations this is true of all political parties… – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits.”

I don’t care whether Helen Zille thinks that the Western Cape is London, and the Eastern Cape is Rwanda. One insensitive politician (wow, didn’t see that one coming) isn’t going to make a difference to the fact that our government has not only failed to redress the evils that apartheid did to our education system, they’ve actually managed to cock it up even further.

Oh, my, there are SO many good reasons why our education system is failing. But cut through all the self-serving debate, the litany of obstacles apparently rendering our politicians impotent, and we’re left with one stark fact: we are destroying the children of our country. There have been hundreds of reports of violence against students in the last year, by teachers and fellow learners. What passes for a pass mark is so insultingly low, your average dolphin could matriculate, and still have time to taunt Japanese fishermen.

So shove it, you whining ninnies. What more could you possibly need to allow you to make it right? Fighting about whose fault it is might help pass the time while waiting for the gravy Gautrain to stop, but perhaps you could use the time a little more fruitfully and actually fix the damn problem.

And I’m sure there are huge and complicated reasons why our unemployment rate was roughly 25% in the fourth quarter of last year. That’s one in every four of our potential work force out of work. Again, so many good reasons why this is the case. And to be fair, many initiatives trying to address it. But when plainsong is your soundtrack, there’s only one chorus: we are going to be in severe trouble when the youth of our country decides it’s more fun to topple a government than starve at home.

Many will find this crude analysis offensive. Good. It’s time we got angry about injustice, and stopped taking excuses. The problem is not just of the politicians’ making. Sure, most of them are cowards trying to please everyone so that they can keep their jobs, and their first loyalty is to their party, their second to their stomach, and their country appears to come a very distant third. But we’re the idiots who voted them in, and who’d rather keep in the devils we know then allow the smug angels of the opposition any leeway.

It’s an exercise I recommend, this simplification of essential truths. In ten years time, South Africa’s children won’t even be able to spell refugee. They really won’t care how many points you scored off each other while furthering your petty party political agendas.

(First published in the M&G, March 2012)

So we don’t want to get too scary about this, but it’s true that numbers rule our lives. Even worse, those numbers are controlled by a secret society of stern faced men and women clad in implacably neat uniforms, who speak an arcane secret language and have an unimaginable higher purpose of which we wot not. Yes, I speak of the Accountants.

Ah, you thought I was talking about the Illuminati? Nah. There’s no mystery left there. By now we all know that they’re a bunch of clowns in funny robes chasing little boys. Possibly I’ve confused my clandestine organisations with my papal posses here, but it’s all the same thing from a certain perspective. I’m talking about a far more dangerous bunch, the people who really understand how numbers work, and can make them work against you.

Another guy in funny robes, St. Augustine of Hippo, who lived from CE 354 – 430, wrote that ‘Numbers are the universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth.’ This would mean that accountants are the only ones who walk among the living who are privy to the truth. And this is possibly why they often look depressed.

Incidentally, St Augustine is one of my favourite saints, and certainly one of the most pragmatic. His classic potboiler, “Confessions” of Augustine of Hippo (not, in fact a self-help diet book), is famous for his youthful prayer to God, “Grant me chastity and continence, only not yet.” Apparently, he was a victim of his own popularity as a young man, with many admirers (what we’d call ‘Facebook friends’ nowadays).

But enough of poking fun at accountants and saints, which is as foolhardy as poking a rabid snake with a rolled up balance sheet. Some of you reading this might be accountants, although very few will be saints. So you’re probably feeling the same irritation I feel when government officials start criticising ‘the media’. Not all of us are the same. In the same way that, conceivably, there’s a non-muckraking, honest, not-embittered journalist somewhere in the world, there’s probably an exciting, cool, gorgeously dressed accountant out there. The basic point is that numbers are what make the world go round, in all sorts of ways. According to those wacky lads over at the Numerology Church, the study of numbers can determine their influence on your life and future.

In ancient times, when calculators still had big red numbers, you’d take your average life expectancy (say 65), divide it by the average amount of times per meal you have to beg a Cape Town waiter to bring you your bill (5), add a randomly chosen number based on the chances of there being good news on the front page of the Sunday Times (the always mystical zero), and you’re left with, oh oh, 13. Then you consult an approved, paid-up member of the Numerology Church (say, your Aunt Dora, or a wise old sangoma smelling of beer), who will tell you the appropriate place to spend your month’s salary so that you can double it.

It was failsafe, really. Worked almost every time, if by ‘almost’ you mean never. But that was then, and this is now. And the only numbers that count now are how many friends you have on Facebook, and how many people are following you on Twitter. Yep, numbers aren’t secret anymore. Now, anyone can go to a website, do the basic maths of divination, and predict your future. Only 70 friends on Facebook, divided by only 30 followers on Twitter, equals no chance in hell of getting laid Saturday night. It’s the mathematics of loserdom. An Illuminati for people who aren’t the brightest lightbulbs in the chandelier, if you will. And it’s proof that numbers still determine our lives, and that Dan Brown is right. [Ominous pause.] About everything.

First published in Obrigado magazine.

But wait! What if the Apocalypse happens in South Africa? Things will be handled very differently. The obvious point is that many people in Johannesburg won’t notice.  Aki Anastasiou’s traffic report on 702 will be business as usual. “Burning petrol tanker overturned on William Nicol, and traffic lights out at twelve intersections. Oh, and angels with trumpets are causing rubbernecking on Jan Smuts, so budget an extra 30 mins for your journey.”

There’ll actually be an upside to the Apocalypse. Street vendors will start selling cheap “I’ve been Raptured” flags to fly from your car, and people in Soweto will finally have something to show deluded fans of District 9 who are on Prawn Safari. Pirates supporters will have a jolly old time exchanging crossed bones salutes with Death, who will be so seduced by his popularity that he’ll start a small assassination agency in Pretoria called Die@BlouBulle. Some fat guy in a gematric Beemer will make a fortune reselling his “Number of the Beast” numberplate (NDAZE 666 GP), and Nonhle Thema will star in a reality show called Mzansi Maggots (“They eat flesh! Superhot naked flesh!!”)

In Cape Town, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, War, Death and, in particular, Toyota Conquest, won’t be able to find parking. And if they do, they’ll find it impossible to actually get anyone interested in their specialist areas. Famine will feel increasingly inadequate and frustrated as he realises that starving yourself is actually a lifestyle choice in Camps Bay, not a blight. War won’t be able to get people to fight, because he’s not part of the right clique, and anyway all the cool kids already belong to the Armoury Boxing Club.

In the South African suburbs where the nouveau riche congregate, there’ll be a rash of cool parents naming their kids Nostradamus (“little Nossie is SO precocious! Don’t you just love the way his little head spins around!), and Beelzebub (“it’s not Billy, it’s BEELY! And if you even think about calling him Bubba…”). Let’s just hope the Apocalypse doesn’t start off in Durban, because then Francis Ford Coppola would have to make a movie called Apocalypse Later.

We’re making light of a serious topic, though. And we haven’t even started to worry about what we’ll do if there’s a Zombie Apocalypse, which is like the normal religious Apocalypse, just more humane. The four Zombies of the Apocalypse are Itchy, Scratchy, Vegan and Lauren Beukes, and if they stumble into town – well, let’s just say you’ll miss Famine and Death.

(Published in Obrigado magazine, December 2011)

Random apocalyptic graffiti, Buenos Aires.

Now you’d think people in those two cities would be tired of this us vs them nonsense by now, not to mention embarrassed that Durban and Bloemfontein never want to play. But apparently not. If you’re a person living in a third-world city on the arse end of Africa, how do you make yourself feel better about yourself? You try and find someone worse off. So instead of casting out the potholes in their own streets, they pick on the toilets in their enemies’ fields.

Readers of Obrigado will know that the word ‘hipster’ has become an insult hurled with abandon whenever someone badly dressed gets sneered at by someone in vintage Levi’s. It’s like a white version of ‘cappuccino’, which is the insult hurled by black kids with crap taste in recycled house, every time they get dissed by a black kid who listens to Kings of Leon.  You all know what a hipster is, right? It’s someone who isn’t you, even though she’s dressed in a 1930s straitjacket similar to the one you found under your mother’s bed. Your straitjacket is cool and ironic, hers is just an attempt to look different. Or possibly she’s actually insane. Your taste in obscure ukulele music of the 70s is clever, his collection of German electro is pathetic and pretentious.

The funny thing is, the term hipster comes from 1940s America, and was coined to describe white kids trying to act like black musicians. Now, in South Africa, it means rainbow people trying to act like cool Americans. The most fearful irony of all is when the inhabitants of Joburg and Cape Town start to insult each other about their various artisanal markets. I bet you thought ‘Art is Anal’ was the battle cry of your average unskilled performance artist from art school, but no. It refers to the practice of producing food in unhygienic conditions, and packaging it badly. Then it’s sold for an exorbitant amount of money to people who put it in the freezer and only bring it out to show off when guests come around for dinner.

For some reason, the Johannesburg/Cape Town rivalry has turned into a battle of the markets. So it’s not unusual to be walking through Market on Main in the Maboneng Precinct of Joburg, and overhear someone deriding the hipsters of Cape Town’s Neighbourgoods Market. The irony that the person doing the sneering is dressed in a small tutu and a pair of original 70s RayBans, and is sipping a macchiato made of of beans that have passed through the bowels of a Vodacom meerkat, appears entirely to pass everyone by.

Capetonian hipsters can often be found congregated in a small clump, huddling into the southeaster and making snide remarks about how Market on Main is a Johnny-come-lately, and how Joburg hipsters are pathetic losers who think it’s cool to listen to African jazz on audio cassettes. The sad truth is, hipsters are just the same as people in Supersport golf shirts who support Liverpool soccer club. And an even sadder truth is, Joburg hipsters and Cape Town hipsters are the same thing. The only reason they turn on each other is because nobody else gives a damn.

Image and text courtesty Obrigado magazine. Pick up a copy at Vida e Caffes, or go to Obrigado.co.za

We’ve all learnt a lot from the whole Jon Qwelane “manlove is for pigs” saga, and several of my readers have pointed out these object lessons to me. At some length. Many I agree with, some I vehemently don’t, but I’m going to run through the choice ones and let you make up your own minds.
The first thing readers have pointed out, is that the result of the inquiry into Qwelane’s alleged hate speech, which was effectively a slap on his aggressively non-limp wrist, shows that there are double standards at play.

They say that the fact that Jon Qwelane doesn’t get fired from the Sunday Sun for implying that gays are like animals, but David Bullard gets the boot from the Sunday Times for implying that black people are like animals, shows that it’s okay to be a black homophobe, but it’s not okay to be a white racist.
I say that’s rubbish – all it shows is that the Sunday Sun editor has guts, whereas the Sunday Times editor doesn’t. And for that matter, neither does the Rapport editor, for firing Deon Maas. His crime? Saying that people who practice alternative religions are NOT animals. Go figure. But that’s another story.
I absolutely disagree with public pressure being used to decide your editorial policy, not to mention your HR policy, and I think that firing David Bullard for writing unspeakable crap is a cowardly thing to do, although not as stupid as hiring him in the first place. And I wouldn’t want to see Jon Qwelane fired either.
However, I reserve the right to think that the Sunday Sun is run by conservative, homophobic, old-school South Africans pandering to the lowest common Christian denominator. But hey, if that’s their brand statement, fine by me. And as for the Sunday Times, the less said the better.

Although having said that, let me say a little more. It would be nice if the Sunday Times answered the two e-mails I sent them last week asking that they correct an error in one of their stories, where I’m referred to as writing on gay internet portal Mamba Online. Never mind, they apparently take the “Sunday” bit of their name seriously.
Which neatly leads me to the next thing I’ve learned, which is this: if you’re a white columnist writing about racism, nobody assumes you must be black. But if you’re a male columnist writing against homophobia, many people assume you must be gay. To put it more clearly – anti-racism seems to be one of the unquestioned pillars of our constitution, assumed (a big assumption) to be common to all, whereas other human rights, like the right to sexual orientation, is only on the B-list, and practiced by people who are non-heterosexual and non-Christian.
Why is this? I’m afraid it’s the fault of the usual enemy of freedom, Christianity. You’ll notice that this implies that Christianity is its own worst enemy, and I think that’s a truth that can be applied to all religions. If Islam was SA’s dominant religion, it would be guilty of the same thing, and ditto for Judaism, animism or, God forbid (that bit’s a joke), Satanism.
I’m writing this column on a BA flight to Joburg, so I’m not going to harp on about religion much more, just in case we crash and I get hauled up in front of the Pearly Gates for a harp to harp talk with St Peter. Why take chances? But I will say this: if you’re gay and you’re a Christian, you have more in common with Jon Qwelane than with me, which is an interesting little conundrum.

he other lesson we can take from the JQ story, is that only 5% of gay people have a sense of humour. I know, I know, an incredible, even shocking, statistic. But how else do you explain the fact that over 2000 people have joined the “Appalling homophobia in our midst!!” Facebook group, but only 100 have joined my “Jon Qwelane is so CUTE!!!!” group? And this despite the fact that I have double the number of exclamation marks in my group, which is a surefire drawcard for gay people, according to my Will & Grace research.
Still, I’m not going to be bitter about it, because we have bigger battles to fight. And the main one is this: representatives of the major South African religions, like loony Qwelane, are striving to strip our constitution of some of our staple human rights. On any given day, a Christian, Muslim or Jew somewhere is calling for the return of the death penalty, for an end to gay rights, for certain racial groups to be preferred above others, or for women to be classified as inferior to men.
That is the nature of those religions, and indeed, of every single religion I’ve ever heard of. Ironically, the people fighting against these reversals are most often members of those religions. I don’t know how they rationalise their fight, but I applaud it.
Because religious freedom is as precious as all those other human rights, which is why, despite the fact that I’d love to be the one squeezing Jon Qwelane through the eye of a needle, I’m glad he wasn’t fired. And here endeth the lessons.

I was reminded of this on a visit to Tanzania earlier this year, where one of our party was hugely excited to find Cape Malay Curry on the menu of an upscale restaurant in Dar. Needless to say, like a pizza from Dominoes, the actual dish bore no resemblance whatsoever to the genuine article, and the person eating it almost choked to death on the first fiery mouthful. Someone else asked what ‘Bowos’, the special of the day, was. A spicy sausage from South Africa, he was told. It tasted like crap.

All this by way of introducing my real topic – is there a South African music? This is slightly different to the food question, because I’m actually asking, is there ever going to be a cool genre that all South Africans, regardless of their background, can listen to? And is this even desirable? I confronted this question a while ago, while attending a gig under the Nelson Mandela bridge in Johannesburg.

It seemed to be the usual crowd of fragmented groups. Black Amakipkip kids – as unconscious of their conformity as a bunch of white kids in supermarket Ramones t-shirts at a Taxi Violence gig – danced and posed and got damp to Osibisa, and a few white kids in impossibly-skinny jeans sulkily gyrated for aKing. It was all very tribal, and reminded me of the way the music industry tends to divide young people into those useful euphemisms for race: urban, rock, pop and dance.

Urban is marketing speak for black, rock might as well mean white, pop is kind of coloured, and dance is a little bit of everything. These are uncomfortable categories in a country where tribalism is at one and the same time a divisive weapon in the hands of politicians, and a marketing spiel for the Spur chain of downmarket family restaurants.

It’s a mercenary, cold-hearted way to label young post-apartheid humans. If you think about it, it’s entirely at odds with the way most positive-minded South Africans would like the world to be. Many of us would have thought the young people of our land would be more integrated in their tastes, and less tribal in their affiliations than their parents’ generation. And here we are, selling them mobile phones, hamburgers and music based on apartheid-like categories.

But as I looked around at the crowd under the bridge, I started to notice some gratifying contradictions. There were many people dressed outside the norm, or at least what a cursory glance around would lead you to believe was the norm. A black kid with a preppy jumper, white Supergas and Clark Kent spectacles, and a white kid with dreads and Biko t-shirt, both bouncing to the dubreggaefunk of Mozambican expats 340ml, themselves a band that embodies some of the contradictions of life in Southern Africa.

A gaggle of Gucci knockoffs elegantly framing themselves against a VIP bar were pleasingly multiracial, if distressingly impervious to the music. And most tellingly, there were differences of class, courage and style that can be typed to different individuals, rather than adherence to a group ethic. So maybe we should be glad that we have no national cuisine, and that kids don’t actually care about trying to all listen to a music that defines them as ‘South African’. It’s kind of cool that they hold on to their different narrow identities. After all, it’s a short step from all loving cappucinokwaito, to all singing along to the Village People.

Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisroperza

This column was first published in the Obrigado magazine, January 2011

Recently, I came across a website called Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber, that features pictures of lesbians dressed and posed to mimic press shots of the apple-cheeked little pixie. Came across is an infelicitous choice of phrase, now that I look at it, but one that possibly sums up the question I’m about to pose: when did it once again become okay to view children as sexy?

I knew Justin Bieber’s name, of course, but I had to enquire as to who he actually is. It turns out he’s nobody. By nobody, I mean that he’s one of those internet phenomena destined to appear as a case study in the social media lectures I regularly have to give to try and drag marketing and advertising people kicking and screaming into the 20th Century (the 21st would be a bridge too far).

He’s also a 16-year-old who looks twelve, and who apparently has the magical gift of being able to make panties wet across a wide range of age groups and sexual predilections, from screaming “pre-teens”, as they’re mysteriously called, to whitebread lesbians and, I’m sure, many versions of masculinity.

I’m not sure what sort of category “pre-teen” is. It reminds me uncomfortably of classifications like Non-European, or Non-White, where people are defined not by what they are, but by what they’re not. Why is it important that kids under 13 be defined by the sales category  they’re about to become? Even worse, given the sexualisation of kids like Justin Bieber and a host of pre-teen idols, being defined as “pre-teen” is basically being defined as “almost ready to be legally molested.”

There was a time when it was apparently okay to be a pervert. The Doors’ Jim Morrison sang the Willie Dixon classic “Back Door Man” on their debut album in 1967, and it didn’t seem to strike any of their fans that the lyrics ” I am a back door man/Well the men don’t know, but the little girls understand” was in any way dodgy. Lewis Carroll wrote an entire Disney movie about his love for a little girl. And it’s not just girls, of course. There have been many famous boy-childs in fairy tales who have been eternally, suspiciously young, like Peter Pan and Tom Cruise.

But there came a moment in history when people said, hey, wait a minute. Maybe Serge Gainsbourg singing a song called “Lemon Incest,” with his 12-year-old daughter Charlotte panting about Papa, is just a little dirty.  The clue was probably the music video, featuring a  shirtless Serge, and Charlotte in a shirt and panties, lying on a bed.

Seems like we’ve come full circle, though. There’s a vigorous defense of the sexily clad 7-year-old contestants of The World of Dance Competition in America (, whose video of them dancing and lip-syncing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” (the sight of the cute little tots telling their ex-boyfriends “Don’t be mad once you see that he want it/If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it woo oh ooh” is incredibly creepy) has take the web by storm.

The parents of Japan’s T-Back Junior Idols (pre-teen girls posing in skimpy bikinis and thongs) also assert their kiddies’ right to be as sexy as they want. Although there’s no full nudity, “the scantily clad children are often pictured seductively blowing on the end of a flute or licking an ice cream cone”.

9-year-old Rei Asamizu, for example, features in Melty Pudding, “a photo book that includes shots of the little girl lying on a bed wet in a thong bikini.” After that description, it says a lot about modern society that – and I quote “This latest trend of preteen girls striking provocative poses in slinky bathing suits has some people questioning whether this is child pornography and if the parents are actually selling their children for sex.” There’s a question?

I blame Justin Bieber for all this. Which might be a little unfair, but you have to start somewhere.  Some people might assert that it’s healthy to allow young kids to inhabit adult paradigms, without having to worry about what they actually mean in the arena of adult sexuality. I say it’s a sick world where you have a Little Miss Pre-Teen Contest.

(First published in Obrigado magazine, October 2010)

Hey, they’re the experts. And also, it appears that the Catholics, the Jews, the Muslims, and all the Jesus-come-lately new religious cults (like the cutely named His People), hold the same views, very broadly speaking. So in this democratic world of ours, we’re going to have to face the facts – god does not like gay men.

Strangely enough, this relationship doesn’t seem to be reciprocal. There are actually gay men out there who still like god. This proves one thing, at least – no matter your sexual orientation, you can still make some silly relationship decisions.

Notice that I don’t say that god doesn’t love gay men. Most of the reputable religions seem to agree that, if god does love one thing, it’s a sinner. I’m not sure how much comfort this is to gay men, but there you have it.

In the cosmic scheme of things, according to the majority of religions, god loves you, but he won’t be taking you home to mom. You’re good enough to save, but not good enough to be a member of polite society.

Laurie Gaum’s story

The story we’re concerned with is this. Laurie Gaum, homosexual and dominee of St Stephen’s Church in Cape Town, is to be defrocked. That doesn’t mean that he has to throw away his cute Malcolm Kluk outfit, assuming he has one. It means he’s going to be stripped of priestly privileges and functions.

When the DRC’s council issued the statement firing the gay padre, they also said the following: “The church council prays for the blessings of the Lord on Dominee Gaum and trusts that his choices in the difficult periods in his life will be the best for the kingdom of God.”

Well put, Ring wraiths. Very well put. Of course, you could say it’s also slightly threatening. Gaum’s choices had better be the best for the kingdom of God, rather than for himself, or he won’t be ending up in Heaven. No, he’ll be rotting in Hell, which I believe is a small gay club in Green Point.

According to www.capegateway.gov.za, St Stephen’s church sits on Riebeek Square, and the building dates from 1801.

It was originally a theatre open to all races, but in 1829 slaves and “free blacks” were no longer allowed to attend. The theatre was later used as a mission church for freed slaves, but this caused a public outcry, and the windows of the church were broken by stone-throwing ex-theatre patrons.

Because of this, the church was named after one of Christendom’s original martyrs, a man who oddly enough was also of the Greek persuasion. Stephen first came into the spotlight when he was made a deacon to sort out some financial irregularities in the church’s distribution of alms to the poor (ah, the good old church never changes, does it?).

Eventually, Stephen was stoned to death (or “aggressively defrocked”, as the Church refers to it) for saying that the Church could possibly be a little kinder about who they let in to worship.

‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’

Chanting “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”, the holy people of the time dropped rocks on Stephen’s head. (This reconstruction is based on an actual true story, found in the Bible, in the Acts of the Apostles. Check if you don’t believe me.)

An appropriate saint, then, for the church that kicks out a Christian for loving his fellow man not wisely, but a little too well. By the way, Gaum’s lover, Douw Wessels, is the man who committed suicide after his story was splashed across the pages of that quality newspaper, Die Son. (The timing here is coincidental, of course.)

Can we hope that the Dutch Reformed Church changes its stance on homosexuality, and lets Gaum back in as a dominee? I guess it could happen. After all, it only took them until 1998 to decide that apartheid was maybe not such a viable theological standpoint for a church that needs to grow its Afrikaans-speaking membership. Not to mention being vaguely un-Christian.

But why on earth would a gay man even want to belong to a Christian church? The churches don’t want you. You’re just bothering them. They’ve told you over and over again, god doesn’t like gays. Of course, they said the same thing about women and blacks, and they eventually gave in on that.

Interestingly, St Paul, the famous hater of women, was one of the people who took part in the stoning of St Stephen. I don’t know, maybe it was professional jealousy.

But anyway, the point is, if I were gay I sure as hell wouldn’t bother trying to belong to a Christian church. You’re not wanted, apparently. Well, not as gay men, anyway. They won’t mind so much if you tie a knot in your penis and devote your life to feeling bad about yourself.

# Chris Roper has an internet diploma in Priesting for Profit, from the Billy Graham University of Lagos.

(First published on News24 2005-08-31 08:35)

And anyway, the answer is far, far shorter than the implied question. And that answer is: Russians. I’m joining the Taliban because of Russians.
The Afghans might have succeeded in getting the Russians out of Afghanistan in the 80s, but all that meant is that they are now all over countries like Thailand. Sure, this is a more benign invasion, but it’s still a ghastly one.
Having just spent a couple of weeks in Thailand, I’ve been treated (sob) to some intimate close encounters with Russians. Okay, not just Russians, also Bulgarians and Montenegrans, but I’m using Russian as a catch-all term.
Russians must be the worst tourists in the world. I was positively relieved to run across Americans, Australians and South Africans, who suddenly appear as quiet, meek, courteous people who actually say thank you when someone serves them a drink.
And who knew that P.W Botha’s constant warning to us that the Russians were so close to invading South Africa, they were under our beds, was so prescient? Except he didn’t go far enough.
They aren’t just under our beds, these rhinestone Cossacks are splayed out on loungers next to the pool, the women in skimpy g-strings, bloated botox, and life-preservers disguised as breasts, and the men in 50kgs of gold jewellery,  badly executed tattoos, and small leopard-print  knock-off Speedos with carefully sown pouches in front for their penises.
But bad dress sense and total lack of style is something I can handle. Hey, I live in South Africa, where you can’t even get a good loincloth to fit you, and where men actually have things called party jeans. It’s the rudeness and utter lack of regard for anyone around them that really got to me.
A prime example is the propensity for Russian women to walk around wearing only a g-string and a coating of coconut oil. This is a Buddhist country with a very fixed idea of decorum and dress, so it’s blatantly insulting to wave your breasts in front of the guy cleaning the pool.
Not that there weren’t other nationalities being rude to Thais. At the ticket office for the Grand Palace, a German woman was trying to get her hulking great 11-year-old son in at half price. But the Thai attendant was having none of it, assuming that the giant, overstuffed bratwurst of a kid must be at least 21.
“But he is only 11, this is not fair!” whined the German woman. “You Thai are too small! Even your men are smaller than him!” The Thai attendant wasn’t having any of it, though, and insising on being paid.
“This is not good system! This is not good system!” lamented the German woman. “You are too small! This is not good system!” I thought it was all a bit of a fuss considering how cheap the admission price was anyhow, even to a South African for whom the word Euro is something you say when you hop into a dinghy.
Yep, if the Taliban ever need to shoot a recruitment video (which they can’t, actually, as video is banned by the fun-loving little devils), they should do it in the tourist areas of Thailand. If ever you wanted a snapshot of the decadence of Western culture, this is it.
In fact, Thailand is pretty much the definition of pure evil for a Talibanny, or whatever they call themselves, given that a Taliban list of prohibitions I found on Wikipedia includes any of the following: “pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.”
And then there’s that pesky bit of Taliban Sharia interpretation which bans “employment, education and sports for women, movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and beard trimming.”
Since rural women appear to do all the work in South Africa, this kind of prohibition would spell disaster to the male South African way of life, best summed up as ‘Laziness.” So, alas, I’m not going to join the Taliban. If they allowed new recruits to mix and match their prohibitions, for example swap the ban on lobster for one that banned Russians, I might reconsider.

(First published on News24.com, this column was the subject to a complaint to the SA Human Rights Commission. Read the complaint, and my response.)

Imagine the following news report:

“London – Five people have died during this year’s Wimbledon Championships. Two ballboys were crushed beneath a Coke vending machine on Monday, and number 10 seed Wayne Ferreira died last Sunday of complications caused by choking on court. The latest death is a five-year-old girl who was struck by a ball accidentally smashed into her face by Tim Henman.

“Organisers said that the deaths were unfortunate. During the last 20 years, there have been more than 30 deaths at Wimbledon, but there are no plans to cancel the prestigious event.

“Carlos Moya said that there was no thought in his mind of not taking part. ‘It’s sad to hear that a competitor has died, but that’s the nature of this tournament. It pits man against the tennis ball, and it’s this unpredictability that makes it the exciting game that it is. It’s something that man has always done – pit himself against the unknown. It’s what makes us human.’”

Ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s the sort of drivel one has to read daily about the Barcelona-Dakar Rally, formerly known as the Paris-Dakar. This year [2005], the Dakar has claimed five lives. Two drivers, named as Fabrizio Meoni and José Manuel Perez, and three civilians, who nobody has bothered naming. One of them was a five-year-old girl, crushed under a lorry.

Mitsubishi driver Stephane Peterhansel, who won the car event this year [2005], is quoted as saying, “It’s always very sad to hear a competitor has died but this race is a trial and no one forces us to face this trial.”

Yes, Mr Peterhansel, that’s all very well. But who is forcing the civilians en route to face the trial? You are. And when they die, they don’t have the touching solace of becoming part of the pantheon of Dakar “heroes”, which I believe is the French word for “idiots”.

Nor do they have the satisfaction of having a bunch of lunatic petrolheads paying fitting tribute to them. According to news reports, “In the early morning before the final stage of the 2005 Dakar rally, the motorbike riders knelt on the beach and faced the Atlantic Ocean, holding a simple banner with the words ‘Ciao Fabrizio.”

Innocent bystanders

Frightfully touching stuff, but I’m unmoved, I’m afraid. The business of glorifying death by stupidity belongs to the Darwin Awards. My rule for extreme sports is, if you threaten only yourself, fine. But when you threaten innocent bystanders, you’ve moved from sport to assault.

Since the rally was first held in 1979, more than 40 people (some reports put the figure at 30) have died, including the race’s organiser, Thierry Sabine. In 1996 a three-year-old girl was killed by motorcyclist Marcel Pilet in Guinea, as he roared over a sand dune. Again, history records her killer’s name, but not hers.

But in all the news reports one reads, participants don’t seem to grasp the fact of civilian deaths, and none of them seem to be able to contemplate stopping the event.

Four-times Dakar winner Ari Vatanen is quoted as saying, “You might as well stop any human activity. Man has to always discover new things, has to risk things, has to jump into the unknown.”

Man, sure. But little girls? Why should they have to face the unknown of a thrill-seeking moron on a motorcycle landing on top of them?

If you want to sum up the ludicrous arrogance of the Dakar, it’s this – some of them race 11 ton trucks! Why on earth do you want to race massive trucks through Africa? What does it possibly prove? Well, if nothing else, it proves that Africans are just part of the landscape to these new colonials. And that excitement, sponsorships and sport stories mean more than a few innocent lives.