May 22, 2013 by 23thorns

24. The Spear.

Art isn’t really a big deal round here. Sure, the big cities have a gallery or two, and like every country we do have a community of both artists and art lovers, but the vast majority of us, even those who are better educated and better off, are about as likely to pop into a gallery over the weekend as we are to attempt the world naked backward-running record. We don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it, it just doesn’t occur to us. Except for last year. Last year, we all became rabid art critics for a month or two.

The whole of South Africa, May, 2012

There is an artist out here called Brett Murray. I had never heard of him before, but apparently he had had some success, both here and overseas. He had an exhibition, coincidentally round the corner from where I worked, called “Hail to the Thief”. As I have said before, I’m no art critic, but I didn’t think it was particularly good. It was basically just a series of visual jokes and digs at our ruling party.

There were ANC badges with “For Sale” Stickers attached. There were posters echoing South Africa’s struggle for liberation, but instead of demands for freedom and equality, there were demands for Chivas Regal, BMW’s, and bribes. Like I say, I wasn’t blown away. It was all too obvious. There was no subtlety to it. But up against one wall, in boldly contrasting black and red, there was a bombshell. It was called “The Spear”. It will seem familiar to you, because you’ve seen this;

There he is. Lenin. The man of the people. The great leader, thrusting himself boldly into the future. He is imposing. Defiant. Heroic. Even godlike.

Here was our version;

There he is. Zuma. The man of the people. The great leader, thrusting himself boldly into the future. He is imposing. Defiant. Heroic. Even godlike. And he has his dong out.

This should come as no surprise. The man is in danger of becoming a parody of himself. Despite being rather busy as the president, Zuma has a quite staggering after-hours programme. His sex-life would exhaust the average twenty-year-old. Zuma is seventy.

He has, as we speak, four wives. One would think that that would, at his age, seem like rather too much nocturnal company. It isn’t enough. He’s engaged to be married again. That isn’t enough either, it would seem. You see, our President has fourteen children by his wives. But he has over twenty two children. They keep popping out of the woodwork.

When he was charged with rape, the original judge had to recuse himself because it turned out Zuma had fathered a child by his sister. He had another two children with a businesswoman in Pietermaritzburg. And another three with a woman in Jo’burg. And another one with a woman in Richards Bay. And he’s just had another with the daughter of a famous football manager. At some point, people were going to start pointing and laughing. And point and laugh we did.

Come inside, kids! It’s time for supper.

That’s all this picture is. It’s a not particularly clever visual joke. He can’t seem to keep it in his pants.

But then something odd happened. The picture found its way out of the rarefied halls of the gallery and into the public domain. The response was fascinating.

South Africa has eleven official languages. There are black people, white people, Indian people, coloured people (that’s what mixed race people call themselves round here). We all think we know each other; that we get along. And for the most part we do. But every now and then, something happens that reminds us that we don’t really know each other at all. This picture was one of them.

Because the response was rage. We have grown accustomed to the ANC’s almost comically hyperbolic responses to minor slights and offences. But this was different. Something bigger lay underneath this. And at first, we didn’t see it.

The arty types began to make a bit of noise about the integrity of the message and the value of art as a form of protest. The rest of the educated classes mumbled that if he didn’t want people seeing his dick, he shouldn’t be showing it to quite so many people. And the masses were incandescent. This was no theatrical posturing by Zuma’s party. I spoke to quite a few people about this. Working class black people. They were genuinely angry. They were hurt. They began to mutter about racism. South Africa’s tired and battered old beast raised its ugly, battle-scarred head. It was about race . Again.

It was, they told me, about respect. And I think, in retrospect, it was. And it wasn’t about respect for Zuma the man. It was about a deeply ingrained tenet of African culture. You respect your elders. Always. Because they are your elders. You respect your leaders. Always. Because they are your leaders. You do not, no matter what they have done, draw pictures of them with their dongs hanging out.

Wisdom comes with age like assault comes with battery

It’s easy to forget that this is not an African thing. It’s universal. The words wise and old still fit comfortably together. Honour thy father and thy mother. There are those of us who have been freed, by education and comfort, to think more critically, to decide for ourselves who to respect or not. To feel that respect should be earned. But that is a new and radical idea. And most of the world doesn’t think like that.

And so we all stood at the brink of something nasty. Protests were organised. Threats were made. Threats of legal action. Threats of violence. The Film and Publications Board gave the picture an age restriction. The newspaper that printed the picture was threatened with a boycott. And then something wonderful happened. Something that could only happen here.

A young black man went into the gallery where the picture hung. He must have been nervous. He was a simple man, a taxi driver, not the sort who would have been into a gallery before. And he had a secret. He had a pot of black paint. He was going to sort it all out. He was going to destroy the cause of all this drama. He came to the offending picture and stood before it. His heart must have been in his mouth, his hands sweating. He had never done anything like this before. His hand gripped the pot under his coat and he began a tentative step forward. And then a fifty-year-old white man in a tweed coat stepped out of the crowd next to him and spray-painted a cross over the offending dong.

What’s gonna work? Teamwork.

It wasn’t a team effort. The two had never met. I have always wondered what the taxi driver must have thought. I suspect it was something like “Screw you! I wanted to do that!” But he was not put off for long. He hauled out his pot and got to work. And there they stood for one perfect moment, together, slaying the beast. And then the police took them away. But only after they had made us South Africa again.

When we woke up the next day, it was all over. The people who do that sort of thing for a living or a hobby kept up their posturing and postulating. Open letters were written. Interviews about artistic freedom and social commentary were conducted. There were denials, recriminations, criticisms. Some enterprising soul even found a Zuma dong painting done by a black person, to show that it wasn’t a race thing after all. Just a dong thing. But ugly edge was gone, and the rest of just heaved a sigh of relief and went on with our lives.

Viva South Africa, home of non-racist, non-sexist Zuma dong paintings. Viva!

I don’t think we even learned anything. We still happily laugh at the President’s dong and what he does with it. We still misunderstand each other sometimes. And the beast has not been slain. There are too many issues here that we have never really dealt with. But we kept it at bay for another day, and that has to be a good thing.

And maybe next time it comes roaring towards us we’ll take a deep breath and give each other a nod and a wink before we rush into the fray, and remember that we don’t need to know each other. We don’t need to understand each other. We just need to remember that the good things happen when, for just a second, we stand together to beat it back. Before the police take us away.

Together we can make something beautiful.

May 21, 2013 by 23thorns

23. Brother Jacob.

I am not a political animal. I vote my conscience at election time, but I’ve never joined a party or attended a meeting. And I’ve tried to avoid writing about politics on this blog. This has not been easy. While I’ve been tucked away writing about Aardvarks and two-minute noodles, things have been happening. Amazing things. Tragic things. Funny things. And I’ve set them on one side and soldiered on with the noodles.

I like to focus on the important things.

Why? Not because I’m sensitive about these things, or even because I think you would be bored. You wouldn’t. It’s just that every time I set out to do so, and I try to give the story some context, I find myself writing a book. And not a short one.

But no more. This week, I’m going to talk about politics. I’ve worked out how to do it. It’s actually pretty easy. All I have to do is get you to understand that you will never understand. And the easiest way to do that? I’m going to tell you a little about our president. No explanations, no examinations or analyses, just some facts. I’ll even number them for you.

While I do so, remember one thing. South Africa is a democracy. Not a dictatorship, or a banana republic, or a puppet state. This man has been chosen because he is the best of our leaders. Or so the theory goes.

No more chitchat. Here are 7 things you need to know about Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

1. He has no formal education.

And I don’t mean he doesn’t have a degree. I mean he did not finish school. His stepmother taught him to read and write. While you and I were sitting in a classroom, he was standing out in a field, looking after cattle. And now he leads a country.

Don’t take this to mean that his party, the ANC, is made up of ignorant farm boys, either. It is not. It is the country’s ruling elite, littered with degrees from some of the world’s most prestigious universities. Think, instead, of how smart this makes him.

2. He’s a spook.

Like Putin in Russia, Zuma was a spy boss. While the ANC was in exile in the 80’s, he became Head of Underground Structures and then Chief of the Intelligence Department.

Remember that the ANC was an underground revolutionary movement. They were at war. An underground war. Dodgy things happened. And Zuma knows about all of them. He knows where the bodies are buried.

3. He’s been married a few times.

Six. Zuma has been married six times. One of his wives committed suicide. Another divorced him. And the other four? He’s still married to them. He’s a polygamist.

Our President. And his wife. And his wife. And his wife. And his wife.

If you think four is a crazy number of wives for the president of a modern democracy, don’t worry. He’s engaged again. He’s seventy.

4. He’s a father.

An estimated 22 times over. And yes, I did say estimated. Our president, you see, is a rather virile man. Six wives have not proved equal to the task of keeping him satisfied. So he gets around a bit on the side. Every now and then, illegitimate children emerge from the shadows. The latest one being the daughter of one of the country’s top football coaches.

He no longer names them. He just gives them numbers.

If you haven’t started getting an idea of how different our political landscape is, maybe I can help you out here. Close your eyes and picture an American election. I know you’re not all American, but we all follow American elections on TV like we’re watching a game show.

Now picture one of those endless debates on CNN leading up to the election, with grey haired and patrician-looking pundits from both sides leaning forward on their elbows while one of them casually drops the sentence “We think Obama might have about twenty two children, but no-one is sure.”

5. He nearly went to jail for corruption.

This one gets complicated. But it boils down to this. While Zuma was deputy president, a man called Shabir Shaik was charged with, tried for, and found guilty of corruption. Specifically, he was found guilty of soliciting a bribe for Zuma. He went to jail for 15 years. And then the prosecutors turned on Zuma. There was much toing and froing, but to cut a long story short, the charges were dropped when it was found that there had been political interference. Zuma was made president soon after. Shaik stayed in jail though.

For two out of his fifteen years. He was paroled on medical grounds. It turned out the poor man was dying. Of high blood pressure. That was in 2009. He’s still dying. On a golf course in Durban. Luckily, for the integrity of our nation, no-one suspects for even a second that Zuma had anything to do with his release.

Crime doesn’t pay.

6. He’s been on trial for rape, too.

Soon before Zuma came into power, the daughter of a struggle comrade spent the night at his home (she was a friend of his daughter). The next day, she laid a rape charge against him. It went to trial. He was acquitted. It turned out the girl was emotionally unbalanced, so her testimony was unreliable. He was no rapist. He just had consensual sex with one of his daughter’s emotionally unbalanced friends while she was a guest in his house.

Just as an aside, the girl was HIV positive. Zuma knew this. She was a prominent AIDS activist. And he was head of the National AIDS council. He was careful, though. He didn’t wear a condom, but he made sure he had a shower when he was done.

Don’t even try to fit this into that CNN scenario. It will give you a headache;

“Sure, Romney boned his daughter’s friend in his living room. But the judge said she was into it. I don’t see what this has to do with the elections…”

7. His house has a very nice fence.

South Africa’s ministerial handbook says that ministers may make improvements to their private homes to the tune of R100 000 of taxpayers’ money. Zuma’s private home is in a place called Nkandla. It’s been improved. To the tune of R206 000 000. If that looks suspicious to you, don’t worry. Zuma’s home has been declared a National Key Point, under an old apartheid law that was never revoked. And the money was all spent on security.

That’s right. 24km down a dirt road from a tiny rural settlement is a collection of thatched huts surrounded by a R206 000 000 fence. We promise. Our government told us.

It is, you must admit, a very nice fence.

I have barely scratched the surface here. This is a complex, interesting, and many-facetted man. I find him terrifying. How do we find our way back to normal after this guy?

I haven’t given you much detail. But I hope you’ve seen enough to know that my land is nothing like your land. We follow our own set of rules here. They will make no sense to you, but they do have their own internal logic.

So If I tell you tomorrow that a provincial minister bought a R15 000 artwork in a Macdonald’s with his government credit card, and still has a job, go with it. If I tell you that the ruling party has a lucrative investment arm that is allowed to do business with the government, accept it. If I tell you that thirty billion rand goes missing in the hands of our government every year with no consequences, just smile and nod, and keep on reading.

There’s lots to see. It’s a madhouse. And you’ve seen who’s running the asylum.

May 20, 2013 by 23thorns

22. South African toilets and the Swazi Navy.

There was a lovely story doing the rounds this week. A report appeared in a few of our local papers saying that our neighbours, Swaziland, had enacted a new law making it a criminal offence for witches to fly their brooms at a height of over 150 metres. Should they do so, they could get arrested and fined up to R500 000.

It seems crazy at first. It isn’t. The law was announced by Civil Aviation Authority marketing and corporate affairs director Sabelo Dlamini. It is not some arbitrary assault on the rights of free flying witches. The law has been enacted for the protection of the country’s airspace. It also prohibits people flying radio controlled helicopters or children’s kites at 150 metres. See. It’s all very sensible. And fair. Witches are free to do whatever they please below the magical 150 metre cut off point. It might be prudent of them to get their broomsticks kitted out with altimeters though.

Do you think we should tell them about this guy?

This reminded me of a report that did the rounds a good few years back. I’m just going to cut and paste it, because it’s worth reading;

“The situation is absolutely under control,” Transport Minister Ephraem Magagula told the Swaziland Parliament in Mbabane. “Our nation’s merchant navy is perfectly safe. We just don’t know where it is, that’s all.” Replying to an MP’s question, Minister Magagula admitted that the landlocked country had completely lost track of its only ship, the Swazimar: “We believe it is in a sea somewhere. At one time, we sent a team of men to look for it, but there was a problem with drink and they failed to find it, and so, technically, yes, we’ve lost it a bit. But I categorically reject all suggestions of incompetence on the part of this government. The Swazimar is a big ship painted in the sort of nice bright colours you can see at night. Mark my words, it will turn up. The right honourable gentleman opposite is a very naughty man, and he will laugh on the other side of his face when my ship comes in.”

Funny, isn’t it? Here’s another funny thing. This is what a Swazi broom looks like;

Harry Potter’s friends all chipped in and got him a skateboard for Christmas.

Notice something missing? Like somewhere to sit, maybe? African witches don’t fly around on brooms. Swaziland does not have, and never has had, a navy. These stories are complete fabrications. The papers that print them do so with a bit of plausible deniability built in. The paper I read the witch story in started with the phrase “according to a report”. Which report? From where?

But print them they do. They are too funny to pass up. But they come from a pretty dodgy place. And they are there for a pretty dodgy reason. One of the apartheid government’s stock defences of the all-white government in South Africa was that black people were not yet ready to govern themselves. They were like children. Sweet and funny, and oh so cute when they acted all grown up, but only a madman would put them in charge of a country.

Cute. He thinks he’s big people!

Why am I telling you this? I want to write a little bit about South African politics this week. Some of the stories I am going to tell you may sound like they are coming from the same place as these stories. They aren’t. The leaders of my country aren’t children. They aren’t stupid. Those at the top are very smart indeed. Probably smarter than yours.

Democracy doesn’t always work the same way. Here in South Africa, we don’t vote for people. We vote for a party. And those parties choose the people who will lead us. You don’t get to the top in a system like that by shaking hands and kissing babies. You get there by playing god’s own version of Survivor. You make alliances. You betray them. You gather influence. You serve the rich and powerful at the same time as you court the masses. Your political life is spent playing a game that makes chess look like tic-tac-toe. It’s not a game that can be won by fools.

Chess. A game to be played with dignity and respect. It’s no accident these guys are all wearing their formal blue mankinis.

The rules of the game are different to those in other places. You don’t lose if you don’t do your job properly. You don’t lose when you are caught having an affair. You don’t even lose if you are caught with your hands in the till. You lose if you fail to read the subtle ebb and flow of power and influence. You lose if you back the wrong horse. You lose if you step on the wrong toes.

Relax. Take a deep breath. Now exhale. I’m not about to become a political commentator. My blog isn’t going to suddenly fill up with tales of political intrigue and social injustice. Those stories are out there. You can follow them up if you wish. They will make you sad. I’m going to tell you the fun stuff. A system like ours has some fairly bizarre consequences. Those are the stories I will tell you this week.

I will tell you about the Minister of Education’s panties. I will tell you about the President’s naked portrait, “The Spear”. I might tell you about the State Security Minister’s wife, who was convicted of drug smuggling. I might share with you the bizarre saga of the open air toilets, or the tale of the communist with the million rand car.

I finally pulled myself together and wrote that book!

But first, I will tell you about our President. Once you’ve met him, everything else I tell you will make sense. Or, at the very least, you will realise that nothing here makes sense.

May 19, 2013 by 23thorns

21. Three Weeks.

I’m trying to write a hundred posts in a hundred days. This is not a particularly dramatic thing to be doing. The whole of WordPress seems to be full of people doing things like Postaday or Post Every Day in May. If everyone is doing it, it can’t be that difficult, can it? It can.

First of all I set myself the target of getting 60 000 views in those hundred days. Hah! Secondly, I didn’t take into account quite how tricky it is to do something like this every single day. And do it properly. No “quote of the day” or single paragraph update. Five hundred words at the very least.

Except Sundays. On Sundays, I get to ramble on for a paragraph or two and pretend it’s some kind of progress report. And anyone interested gets to vote on important issues concerning my blog.

So how’s progress? Getting better. I covered the singles scene. And Aardvarks. I wrote about crocodile botherers. And the magic penis tree. I did a post on car guards. And one on unconventional love. Two weeks ago I was getting just under half the views I needed to achieve my arbitrary and unreachable target. Now I’m getting just over half. Basically all I have to do is double the number of views I get a day and I’m there. No worries.

An aardvark. Just because.

This week was tougher though. As I said, blogging every day can be tricky. My offspring have been ill, and since I happen to sleep closest to the door, night-time shenanigans are my duty. Also, my wife frightens me when she doesn’t get at least eight hours a night. The only night this week that my daughter has not come through and treated me to an extended rendition of “An Ode to an Asthmatic Walrus” in the middle of the night, my son rushed in to fill the gap. He ambled through to the lounge and turned on the TV at full volume. At three o’clock in the morning.

Funnily enough the lack of sleep has not made the writing any harder. It’s thinking up things to write about that has been a bit of an ordeal.

Thinking in general is an ordeal.

But fear not. I’ve got that covered for next week. I’ve decided to write a little about politics. I can hear you groaning already. Fear not! I will be writing about South African politics. South African politics is fun. I’ll tell you about our president. And his four wives. And his rape charge. I’ll tell you about our minister of education. And her panties. I’ll tell you about the leader of the communist party. And his million rand ($110 000) car bought with taxpayers’ money.

And that’s just about it for this week. I’m a fifth of the way there and going strong. ish. Chronologically. I’m a tenth of the way to hitting my arbitrary 60 000 views. Hope to see you next week. Bring a friend. Or twenty. Force your cheese of the month club to log on at gunpoint.

Oh. I forgot about the democracy thing. Here you go;

I kid you not. There really are naked pictures of the president involved.

May 18, 2013 by 23thorns

20. Some unpleasant creatures. And some wildlife.

When I was young, I used to love watching wildlife documentaries. My best were the ones narrated by Sir David Attenborough, but most of them followed a fairly similar formula. A large, dedicated team of wildlife photographers would go out and, with incredible patience, over a period a year or two, collect hundreds of hours of film. Film of nature in its natural state. This would be pared down to a few hours of incredible footage which would be clearly and exhaustively explained by Sir David in his sensible, well-modulated, and inimitable voice.

The wise old grandfather of wildlife documentaries

We watched and learned. We learned all sorts of interesting facts, but more importantly than that we learned an approach to nature. Be patient. Be still. If you wait long enough, and observe closely enough, you will see amazing things.

Things have changed. There’s a new approach to wildlife documentaries. It’s fresh. It’s exciting. Documentary makers are no longer happy to sit back and wait. They want to really get in there and be part of the story.

The dodgy uncle of wildlife documentaries

This is how it’s done. You need a cameraman, a sound guy, and an arsehole. You go out and find yourself a large, seemingly dangerous wild animal and set up your camera and microphone. Then you get the arsehole to jump on the wild animal, or at the very least poke it with a sharpened stick.

This is cutting edge documentary making. It’s quick and it’s cheap, and you don’t have to waste any time teaching your viewers any boring old facts. This is not wildlife seen from a detached point of view. This is Grand Theft Auto wildlife. This is getting in there with nature and kicking its ass. And then duct-taping it to a stick.

Nature in all its magnificent splendour

If this is sounding a little familiar to some of you, it’s because I’ve written about this before. But I’m revisiting it. Because something special happened this week. A new generation has come of age.

You see, just like me, the generation that followed me apparently also watched a documentary or two. They watched and learned. They learned absolutely no important facts. More importantly than that, they learned an approach to nature. Don’t sit around and wait. Get in there and grab nature by the throat. Kick its ass. Duct-tape it to a stick.

When I scrolled through the news this morning, I saw that two young Australians had put this valuable education to good use. They went off to a remote part of the outback to catch some fish. The fish obviously weren’t biting, because they spent the weekend filming themselves wrestling salt-water crocodiles and posting the pictures on YouTube.

Catch anything?

Typical. You can’t take an Australian anywhere. At least not if there is going to be beer there. I shook my head disapprovingly and scrolled on. To this. These are my people.

Typical. You can’t take a South African anywhere. At least not if there is going to be beer there.

There’s something a bit sad going on here. What these kids are doing seem wildly dangerous and risky. It makes them seem both stupid and brave. But actually it’s mostly just stupid. I don’t know many of the details of the Australian incident, but there is a reason that Steve Irwin, pioneer crocodile molester, could do what he did.

The saltwater crocodile is the world’s biggest and most dangerous. But it is a crocodile, and a crocodile is a fairly simple machine. It has a limited set of responses, and isn’t very smart. And it has a fatal flaw. Like all crocodiles, it can close its jaws with incredible force. What it can’t do with incredible force is open them again. The muscles that open the jaws are weak. So weak that if a drunken Australian youth gets his hands around them, those jaws are not going to open. And a crocodile without its teeth is a disarmed crocodile.

Harmless.

It is still however, a huge and powerful animal, and if those kids had made one tiny mistake, someone could have died.

I know a bit more about the South Africans. Believe it or not, those hooting, bellowing fools on that vehicle are all game rangers. Young, drunk game rangers, freed for once from the tedium of behaving nicely for their paying guests, and out for a party. As rangers, every day, twice a day, they take guests out to show them animals like elephants. They know elephants. They can read their body language and judge their moods.

I know a little bit about elephants myself. As big and frightening and threatening as that elephant seems, that is not a dangerous elephant. That is a nervous elephant. It’s making itself look bigger to try and get the rangers to back down. But it doesn’t want to hurt anyone. It just wants to be left alone. They knew that 99% of the time, if they ran at him, he would turn and flee. And 99% is good odds for drunken young men.

Nothing to worry about.

I have seen people do what that fool in the clip did before. But in very different circumstances. The people I saw do this were backing down an elephant that was about to stumble onto a bunch of hikers. They were protecting the people whose lives they had been entrusted with. Not like this asshat, who seems to be in dire need of some quality time up a sausage tree.

I’m sure that this is all sounding a little more ranty than my usual posts, but there’s a reason for that. When I was about eighteen or so, I went down to the bush by myself for a week or two, and I had a run in with an elephant. It didn’t look like the elephant in the clip. There was no posturing, or ear flapping, or slow advancing. The first I knew of it was the crack of a branch behind me. When I saw it, it was coming at me at speed. There was no trumpeting. Its ears were tucked back against its body. It didn’t want to frighten me away. It wanted to kill me.

Time, perhaps, for a little concern.

I put my foot down, but I was driving a thirty year old Land Rover, a car not well known for its breakneck acceleration. The elephant must have got within ten metres of me before I pulled away. But pull away I did, and drove straight up to the area ranger’s office to report it. Elephants aren’t supposed to do that. But soon I understood why it did.

A few days before this happened, an elephant had been shot a few kilometres away. Elephants are amazing creatures, and can communicate over huge distances. All the elephants in the area knew what had happened, and they were all jumpy.

And that’s the thing. You don’t want a four ton behemoth with sharpened stakes at one end to be jumpy. That elephant in the clip isn’t going to disappear into a vast empty wilderness. It lives in the Kruger Park. The Kruger Park is a pretty busy place. It gets visited by over a million people a year. Very few of whom are rangers. And one of those people is going to be the next person who runs into this elephant. And who knows what will happen then.

This guy might have a vague idea.

Certainly not that stupid little boy and his big brave friends.

May 17, 2013 by 23thorns

19. All The Single Ladies

I have never really mastered Facebook. There is an immediacy to it that isn’t suited to people like me. By the time I get around to checking it, my head filling with pithy retorts and interesting little snippets, the world has moved on, and everybody is busy with something else. So I don’t really check it too often. But I will do so more often in the future. Because when I logged on this morning, I made an interesting discovery. There are, apparently, some single girls in my area. And they are dying to meet me!

Literally. This one has already collapsed to the ground.

I have noticed a couple of women on the streets of my neighbourhood, but they don’t look at all like the ladies on my Facebook page. There’s the lady who comes jogging past every morning, red in the face and breathing like an emphysemic hippo running up a flight of stairs. She seems more intent on meeting her maker than meeting me. Then there are the two elderly ladies who walk their dog down the street in the evening, but there is a comfortable domesticity about them that would imply that they have not been single for years.

She’s dying to meet a cardiologist.

Women do occasionally drive past, but if they were dying to meet me wouldn’t they at least wave? No. I took another look at the message, and I think I know what’s happening. Winter is starting to bite round here, and on closer inspection, these ladies don’t seem to have many clothes. The poor dears are probably locked away inside, huddled over their electric heaters, and desperate for some company. And peeping out occasionally from behind the curtains, they would have seen me running up the road hurling abuse and small stones at the dog and decided that I was a friendly sort of person.

As I get older, this sort of thing happens to me more and more often. Years of scowling at my children have given me a network of fine lines around the corners of my eyes that look just like smile lines, and people think I look friendly and avuncular. I’m not. I don’t particularly dislike people; I just never learned the art of making friends.

Eat your damn vegetables!

I grew up with three sisters. My older sister is like a machine. Whenever we went away on holiday or off to a party full of strangers, she would sit back and survey the scene for a minute or two, and then simply wade in and take over. Within minutes, I would be a privileged insider at the centre of a brand new circle of friends. Which was wonderful. But it meant I never learnt those skills for myself. I tried to learn by example, by watching how she did it, but I could never work it out. She just made friends. And I borrowed them.

My son is like this. He has the EQ of a cult leader. He will walk into a room full of kids he has never met before, and soon they will all be dressed in tiny saffron robes and chanting his name as they follow him to their doom. I’ve tried to watch him, too. I still have no clue. He will spot a likely little knot of kids and walk up and stand near them, without forcing himself on them. He will begin to ape their moves, playing the same sort of games and laughing when they laugh. And fifteen minutes later they will have handed over their life’s savings and shaved their heads for him. It’s a little unnerving, but may prove useful when we get older and run out of cash.

They can even pop round to our house. As long as they swear to wear underwear.

Which brings me back to those poor single ladies. They must be pretty desperate for some company to be approaching strangers on the internet. To add to their woes, most of them seem to be from the Ukraine, so they must feel as isolated by the language barrier as they are by their lack of sturdy winter clothing. But for once, I’m going to stick my neck out and make some friends. I’m going to contact these ladies.
You see, the flip-side to hijacking my sister’s friend-making abilities is that when she wasn’t around, I tended to keep to myself. So I know what it’s like to feel lonely. Isolated. I’m going to invite those poor, lonely ladies over for a meet and greet. My wife likes meeting new people and has that same magical friend-making gift.

We can offer them a hearty slap-up meal (some of them look to be a little on the lean side, and Svetlana in particular looks like she could live with a steak or two), and maybe send each one of them home with a warm winter vest. And some pants. The expense doesn’t bother me- someone else on Facebook is going to teach me how to make piles of money by trading in forex, so I should be set up for life!

Me. Just as soon as I work out what a forex is.

Now that I think about it, we could even invite over some of our single guy friends. The more the merrier, I always say, and who knows, maybe the odd spark or two might fly. Stranger things have happened.

May 16, 2013 by 23thorns

18. The Sausage Tree.

I feel a little guilty. On Tuesday, I put up a post that claimed to be about magic. But it wasn’t. It was about car guards. So today, I’m going to write about real magic. Just as soon as I’m done telling you about Sausage Trees. This is a Sausage Tree.

Its proper name is kigelia africana. It grows down in the Lowveld. It’s one of the bigger trees down there, about twenty metres tall, with a spreading canopy of thick green leaves that provide a dense, cool spot of shade. It has bright red flowers that look like they should be carnivorous. They’re pollinated by bats.

They have been known to catch and eat small birds.

But that’s not why we are interested in the Sausage Tree. We are interested in the Sausage Tree because of these;

No-one knows where this tree got its common name from.

The fruits are huge. They can weigh up to 10kg. They don’t seem very appetising, but a few creatures do eat them, like elephants and bushpigs. And they’re quite popular with the locals. But not for eating. They are, as promised above, magic.

One of the oldest recorded forms of magic is sympathetic magic. You know all about it, because you know about voodoo dolls. The principle is simple. You find an object to represent the thing or person you want to perform your magic on. In the voodoo doll example, this would be the little doll. Then you magically imbue that object with the essence of your real target. For your voodoo doll, you would use fingernails or hair clippings. Then you perform a spell.

Your target is now in your power, because what happens to the object happens to the target. Go get yourself some pins. You have work to do.

The sausage tree is not used for evil. It is the traditional answer to a problem that has plagued mankind since the dawn of time and, judging by some of the spam I get in my inbox, plagues him still.

This is where things get delicate. I am a little embarrassed. But, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, I will press on. I read about the magic of the Sausage Tree in an interview with one Merriam Mdaka in the Daily Sun, a local paper, so perhaps the best path forward here is to let her explain;

“My brother’s girlfriends always complained about his small penis. He is a handsome man, always wearing expensive clothes, but his biggest problem was his small manhood and women kept away from him.”

An awful state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree. But fear not, gentle reader, help was at hand;

“After consulting some elderly people they referred him to the Mpfunguri tree. My brother applied all the methods he was given until his penis grew to the size he wanted. Today my brother is a happy man and his girlfriends no longer complain because he is now a real man.”

An Mpfunguri tree is, as I’m sure you have guessed, a Sausage Tree. Quite why the Sausage tree was singled out I cannot even begin to imagine.

The fruit. It’s because of the fruit.

It works like this; you climb up the tree in the dead of night and select yourself a suitable young fruit, with which you perform a rather unsavoury little ritual “while communicating with the tree that you want your manhood to grow bigger”. Then you go home without looking back.

And that’s just about it. As the fruit grows, so do you. And when you’re satisfied, all you do is cut down the fruit and destroy it. It may seem a little unorthodox, but it beats the hell out of surgery.

Magic is not something to be taken lightly, though. There are risks;

“The danger is when you forget where the tree is or when someone else cuts the fruit because then your penis will grow to the size of a belt or snake”

This, I’m sure you will agree, could be a little awkward in the showers down at the gym, and you would no longer be welcome at the public swimming pool. But the risks don’t end there;

“You don‘t tell your friends about your plans because they can cut the fruit and hide it. That will make the penis grow too big too quickly and it can lead to your death as you will not be able to walk.”

The standards of friendship are apparently a little different down in the Lowveld. As are the mechanics of death (“Cause of death, doctor?” “Not walking!”)

Before South Africa did away with capital punishment, we did not use the electric chair. We simply used “the chair”.

I don’t think we’re making the best of this situation. I read the other day about “cosmetic surgery holidays”. You nip off to a secluded and discrete hotel, where you can get yourself a nose job and some liposuction and then lounge around the pool for a few weeks, drinking Mojitos and shoving painkillers down your throat before going home and denying that you look any different.

Why not magic penis tree holidays? There’s an untapped market here. We could set up a few discrete guest houses where wealthy foreign tourists could stay while the sausage trees worked their magic. The days would be quiet, warm and peaceful. The nights would be a little noisy though, split by regular shrieks and curses as German stockbrokers and dentists from Texas came tumbling out of 20 metre tall trees, pants around their ankles, fingers stretched upward as if still reaching for the choicest fruit.

Gott im Himmel!

But that is all in the future. For now, we should just be happy with what we’ve got. The Sausage Tree could a blessing, and we should be happy to have it. I will leave the last word up to the good Ms Mdaka;

“In our country, most of the women divorce because their partners fail to satisfy them in bed. Men with small penises must try the Mpfunguri fruit and their problems will be solved forever.”

May 15, 2013 by 23thorns

17. Unconventional love

I woke up this morning at about 3 o’clock with a pounding head and a throat full of razor blades. We don’t really have the time for man-flu in our household. Children need to get taken to school, beds need to be made, dogs fed, dishes washed. Lying around groaning and talking like Yoda doesn’t get you sympathy. It gets you bitter resentment.

Tissues you will pass me, young padawan.

So I decided to deal with it there and then. I staggered through to the kitchen and rifled through the medicine cabinet (yes. We keep our medicines in the kitchen. Right next to the sweets. We like to keep our children on their toes.) to see what I could find. I considered drinking half a bottle of children’s painkiller, but then I found some Corenza C’s.

I don’t think that you get them anywhere else. They are about 50% vitamin C, 10% aspirin, and 40% medical grade heroin. And they work. They really do. But they have a kick like a mule. The wildlife guys use them as a tranquiliser when translocating rhinos. And I took two.

I couldn’t find any rhino translocation pictures. So here’s a picture of one bungi-jumping instead.

And so, when I awoke for the second time this morning, I was in a bit of a haze. I don’t remember taking the kids to school, but I must have, because they don’t seem to be here. Maybe I should go and make sure they’re not still sitting in the car. And then I sat down to write today’s post. I pulled out the list of potential topics I had written down, but that turned out to be a waste of time. Apparently I’ve forgotten how to read my own writing.

And so I began to cast around for ideas. I’m so glad I did. Because the first place I looked was on a WordPress site called The Daily Post. One of the things they do is put out The Daily Prompt; a daily topic for all us lost souls with no ideas of their own. I’ve never looked at it before, and I probably never will again, but today it was perfect. Today (which for most of you will be yesterday; I’m on the other side of the world), the prompt is “tell us about — or show us — the most unconventional love in your life.”

Done. Now what?

In 2006, Chevrolet launched an advertising campaign for the new Chevy Tahoe. It was cutting edge. Hip. It was cool. They set up a page on their website with a couple of clips of their sparkly new SUV lumbering through some wild wide-open spaces. The idea was that the public would write their own copy for the clips and post them back on the Chevrolet website. Brilliant! Apparently no-one from Chevrolet had ever actually been onto the internet before.

Chevrolet sat back and waited. And then slowly what they had done began to dawn on them. because their website started to get flooded with these.

That’ll get people talking! Our sales will be through the roof!

And these

And now WordPress has done the same thing. I don’t mean that they are going to be getting any hate-mail. WordPress is a nice organisation. It is run by nice people. They call themselves happiness engineers, for god’s sake. But they seem to have forgotten that they are on the internet. I don’t blame them.

It must be hard, sitting there year after year, having to come up with new topics every single day. “Tell us about — or show us — the most unconventional love in your life” must have seemed like a good one. They would draw out all those shy, reserved people out there with different, interesting passions; Victorian porcelain doll collectors; morris dancers; roller derby enthusiasts. It would be cool. Instead, I rather fear they are going to get these guys;

Miaouw

Or these guys.

eeeeeeik eeik eeeeik

Or these guys.

Waaah!

But not this guy. He has too much dingnity.

Boing!

And the happiness engineers, bless them, have even been so bold as to ask for pictures. By the end of today, the poor sausages are going to be trying to claw their own eyes out after watching thousands of overweight, middle aged computer engineers post pictures of the darkest corners of the human psyche, and tonight will always be remembered at the WordPress headquarters as “The Big Drink”.

Sadly, I couldn’t use the daily prompt. I don’t have any unconventional loves. I’m allergic to rubber and fake fur gives me hives. I do quite like honey badgers though. Here’s a picture.

Growl.

May 14, 2013 by 23thorns

16. Everyday magic.

Every now and then, I like to read a little bit of fantasy (no, not the Nancy Friday kind, you dirty buggers. The Tolkien kind). As in most genres, some of them are brilliantly original and compelling. And as in most genres, most of them are pretty formulaic. There are gruff dwarves with huge axes, grumpy magicians and elves in impractically tight tights. And magic, it always seems, is dying out in the land, a sad echo of a bygone golden age.

: Elf-girls don’t need tights because their bikini-armour is electrically heated.

Not round here. Magic is everywhere and it’s getting stronger. This is not the magic of the Northern hemisphere, where, from what I understand, real estate agents and data capturers can dance naked on the solstice to realign their chakras with ley lines so they can vibrate in sympathy with the universe (it’s a quantum thing) in order to make Deepak Chopra richer. I’m talking proper magic. Harry Potter magic. And you can see it. All you need is a car.

The best way to see it is to cut out all the background noise. Find yourself an isolated spot, like a graveyard. Wait until 2 o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, and drive yourself over there. Drive slowly around the block, making sure there is not a living soul in the area. Done? Stop the car and open the door. Standing next to you will be a man in a hat and a bright green dayglo vest. Always.

: Real magicians don’t look like Gandalf.

He is not a ghostly apparition. He is a living, breathing man. He will even talk to you. “Morning sir!” He will say. “I will watch your car.” As impressive as this feat may seem, the magic is not over. This man is called a car guard, for reasons which are not entirely clear, and he is not from some fabled, mythical realm.

He is probably, for reasons far too complex and tragic to go into here, from the Congo. But he is no ordinary man. He has conquered space and time, and uses this extraordinary gift to haunt parking lots, pretending to stop thieves from stealing your stuff while you go about your business. He is not really going to do this. Crime in Johannesburg can be terrifyingly violent, and this man is not stupid. Ready for some more magic?

Nod at the car guard and go into the graveyard. Hide behind a gravestone and carefully check out the area around your car. There will be no-one there. Not a soul. Stick around a while. Give it an hour or so. And then sneak back to your deserted car. Slip in behind the wheel and start the engine. Now check your rear view mirror. Three feet behind you will be the car guard, waving his arms around like a mime directing a landing helicopter. He is going to help you reverse out of your parking spot, whether you want him to or not.

: Shame on you for imagining the helicopter landing on him!

You may, having just seen a man blink into existence out of thin air, be feeling rather alarmed. Get it together. You are going to need your wits about you. You have just reached a crucial moment. This is the climax of the whole episode. There is a game afoot. You are locked in a deadly contest with this mysterious stranger. And the stakes are high.

The rules are simple. You may not make eye-contact with the car guard. To win, you need to reverse your car out of an otherwise deserted graveyard parking lot at two o’clock in the morning while giving absolutely no indication that you have seen the man in the dayglo vest waving frantically right behind you. If you manage to do so, you get to leave. If not, if you acknowledge him for even half a second, you lose, and you will have to give him all the change from your pockets and any loose coins you find lying around your car.

We don’t, of course, usually do this sort of thing in pre-dawn burial sites. But those of us who live in Johannesburg do this every day, several times a day. It is quite simply impossible to park your car in a public place without performing this little ritual. And I have just talked you through the basic version.

If you happen to be in a supermarket parking lot, there is a complex variation of the game with a special set of rules governing who has possession of the shopping-cart, and when. There’s also an entertaining game-within-the-game in which the car guard will walk towards your groceries with arms outstretched like Frankenstein’s monster. The challenge here is to pack all of your groceries into your car before the car-guard reaches you and tries to do it for you.

: “GROCERIES! GROOOCERIIIEEEESSS!”

So there you have it. If you are missing something in your life, or have grown bored with making Deepak Chopra rich, come over to Johannesburg and see some real magic. Instead of sticking bits of paper on your mirror telling yourself that you are a super person, and are going to be rich, you can watch Congolese men in dayglo vests wink in and out of existence, and, if you feel up to it, you can even engage them in a battle of wits.

Part of the reason magic disappears from those fantasy worlds I mentioned earlier is that no-one believes. And I can see that happening. I see you all sitting out there, shaking your heads and smiling to yourselves. “That silly 23thorns!” you say to yourselves. “Where does he come up with this stuff?” You shouldn’t do that. It makes you seem a little creepy. But what I am telling you here is the gospel truth. Unvarnished and unembellished. Ask anyone who has lived here. Except for one tiny detail. No-one drives around at 2 in the morning. We’re all too scared of the police.

: You don’t get the magic without the monsters. That’s just how it works.

May 13, 2013 by 23thorns

15. Creatures of the Night.

The night has always been a time of terror for us. We are not built for it. We can’t see. We swapped our night vision for the ability to see all the bright, shiny colours that fill our days. When we were new in this world, we must have spent our nights huddled together in frightened little groups, hiding from the monsters that haunted the dark, praying to see another dawn, wondering if it was all worth it just to be able to see a really vivid shade of blue.

Seems like a reasonable trade-off.

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