A Famous Grouse: June 4

Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD

TO Kampala, where our chap there, Jon Qwelane, may or may not be taking time out from the diplomatic swirl with diverse members of the Bagandan royalty and their obsequious courtiers to ponder his future in the service now that he has been found guilty of hate speech by the Johannesburg Equality Court.

There’s a rich irony here, something that won’t be lost on Qwelane, a former journalist who fell foul of the apartheid security establishment on several brutal occasions.

He may even find it amusing that he should be censured for some homophobic crap he penned almost three years ago -- especially now that he is ambassador to a country that until very recently was hell-bent on broadening the criminalisation of homosexuality by introducing the death penalty for such offences as being HIV-positive, or engaging in sexual acts with people of the same sex or with those under 18 years of age.

Compare that degree of homophobia with the sort found in Qwelane’s Sunday Sun column and you’d find it hard to believe we’re on the same planet as Uganda, let alone the same continent.

Which in no way excuses the blimpish gay-bashing exercise in which Qwelane railed at the “rapid degradation of values and traditions by the so-called liberal influences of nowadays”.

Everywhere he looked, Qwelane saw “men kissing other men in public, walking holding hands and shamelessly flaunting what are misleadingly termed their ‘lifestyle’ and ‘sexual preferences’.

“There could be a few things I could take issue with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, but his unflinching and unapologetic stance over homosexuals is definitely not among those,” he continued. “Why, only this very month -- you'd better believe this -- a man, in a homosexual relationship with another man, gave birth to a child!”

If, gentle reader, you feel that this last point strains credulity, you must remember that Qwelane was writing for a readership that is accustomed to seeing photographs of what appears to be large turnips or sweet potatoes on the front pages of their newspapers and being told that these were, in fact, the tokoloshe.

Qwelane concluded that he would be praying that the constitution would be rewritten to outlaw same-sex unions. “Otherwise, at this rate, how soon before some idiot demands to ‘marry’ an animal, and argues that this constitution ‘allows’ it?”

It is understandable that there are those who have welcomed the court’s ruling that Qwelane apologise unconditionally to gays and lesbians, and that he pay R100 000 to the SA Human Rights Commission for awareness and education of homosexual rights, and have urged the government to recall him from Kampala.

Government will probably do no such thing. This, after all, is a “personal matter”, according to the Department of International Relations and Co-operation.

Perhaps it’s best that Qwelane remains in Uganda, swanning about the cocktail parties in his pith helmet in search of drink. He’s doing no harm up there, and no good will come of hauling the lumpy-brained troglodyte back to Pretoria.

You’re not going to change his mind -- or the minds of those who support his views, and believe me, there are many, as I discovered by scrolling through the moronic comments posted under the online reports about the court’s ruling.

Some, like the outraged claims that the SAHRC would be using Qwelane’s hard-earned tom to actually train young people in “gayness”, are so gormless that you feel compelled to wash your eyes out after reading them lest your own mind be corrupted. Here, for the stout-hearted, is one such offering, verbatim: “Practitioners must not run to schools and convert our children. We have became imoral country and abomination filled country. Very soon the rath of God will befell.”

God, some readers may believe, has probably done more than enough in the making trouble department. In Uganda, the motion to introduce the harsh anti-gay laws was, according to news reports, inspired by a conference in which in which evangelical American Christians declared homosexuality a direct threat to the cohesion of African families.

But other postings include attacks on the court by those who suggest it only ever tried black people, Africans in particular -- it never heard cases involving white people -- and that it had no authority because it was “drunk” when it ruled against Qwelane in absentia.

The language, the racism and the attitude of obdurate ignorance is that of the ANC Youth League, in particular its brattish president, Julius Malema. It’s like PW Botha all over again, and the boorish bluster is finding currency as the lingua franca in every aspect of our public life. It’s very sad, the hatred of the new dumb.

A Famous Grouse: May 21

Better late than never, herewith, as submitted to the newspaper, my Weekend Argus column for that first Saturday after the elections. . .-- AD


WELL, that is that, then. All over bar the shouting. And it’s a big rousing, to-the-winner-not-always-the-spoils kind of consolatory cheer for the Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party who managed to get a couple of hundred votes in the Western Cape.

It’s not much, I know. But it’s a start. And who can say what the future holds for the people who think that revenue collection by governments is a Marxist invention and should be done away with?

The same could be said for the Dagga Party, which had hoped to win at least one ward somewhere in the province. Sadly nothing of the sort happened. Which is a pity, really. All jokes aside -- and there’ve been quite a few as far as the Dagga Party is concerned -- the case for the decriminalisation of marijuana is moral and just and should be taken up by the larger parties.

But that, as they say, is another story.

Right now, we’re concerned with a more probable future, not some weird stuff that happens when you smoke polio weed.

As far as the country’s smaller parties are concerned, it’s fair to say that anything can happen. Just look at the dramatic growth in support for the Democratic Alliance, and you’ll understand that our political landscape is in a constant state of flux, a great bowl of soup forever bubbling away on the back burner.

Well, about 40% of it anyway. The ruling party continues to rule most of the country’s metros and municipalities.

But not here, of course, and this evening at the Mahogany Ridge, we will no doubt be raising a consoling glass or two to big loser Tony Ehrenreich, the ANC’s mayoral candidate, and say, ag, shame, but then the campaign he chose to run had a bit too much in common with the general tenor of those thrown out with considerable tedium by that other Tony from a while ago, Tony Leon.

Unlike the former leader of the DA though, Ehrenreich came across as slightly more magnanimous in defeat than Leon. As a Ridge regular put it, he seemed like a decent sort, even quite ethical.

Perhaps, but the klap that Ehrenreich got at the polls was his first really big political defeat. We should remember that Leon was always losing, and was very good at it -- he could do that constantly trailing a distant second with the same flair that Danny DeVito brings to being short, he was that much a natural.

Should he become more accustomed to losing it could well be the case that Ehrenreich may find it expedient to ditch the valiant runner-up schtick in favour of a more convenient and perhaps comfortable surliness.

And it could be sooner than expected. If what I read in the newspapers is true, he has “hinted” that he may run for premier of the Western Cape as early as 2014.

This time, though, perhaps he’ll be nicer to voters before they cast their votes, and only once he’s safely seen Helen Zille’s goods carted out of Leeuwenhof should he start calling them racist and frightening them with talk of dumping the homeless in the leafy suburbs of the rich buggers and tearing up their bicycle paths.

But on to other matters as we must. We have been following with some interest the hate speech case against Julius Malema, about whom the less said at the moment, the better.

Malema’s lawyer, Vincent Maleka, has put forward an interesting suggestion about Dubula iBhunu, the controversial song that is at the heart of this tedious business. According to reports, the song doesn’t exhort its listeners to “shoot the boer”. That, Maleka has claimed, was a “media translation”.

Who or what exactly is now being identified as a target for shooting is not known. Maleka has apparently been dragging his feet in revealing this crucial aspect of his case in closing arguments before the Johannesburg High Court -- maybe he is being paid by the hour -- and such details, alas, were not available at the time of writing.

However I can reveal that considerable time and effort was spent in convincing the court that the meaning of “ibhunu” had, in fact, changed dramatically from 1994 to 1995. Quite how this happened has escaped me, and perhaps we shall learn more of this mysterious process in the days to come.

What is clear, though, is that, in a judgment in a separate case before the Johannesburg High Court this week, the publication and chanting of “Dubula iBhuna” was declared an incitement to murder. But who? That is the question. . .

* Anton Hammerl. Cheers, buddy. All strength, condolences and love to Penny and family.

A Famous Grouse: February 19

Saturday's Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD

IT is no small blessing that the rugby season is on us, and at Mahogany Ridge we can perhaps move on from the heated arguments about Bono, the Irish rock star who has taken time out from saving the world to sing us some tunes.

It’s not as if there weren’t more pressing matters to discuss. This week, for example, the village was threatened by fire and some homes had to be evacuated, the flames were that close.

Plus, there were the baboons who climbed through Wilma Bothma’s bathroom window and ate everything in the medicine cabinet, including her chocolate laxatives and anti-depressants. The mess was terrible, but the baboons seemed pretty chilled.

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the goiter on Jan Spoelstra’s neck has swollen to such an extent that it looks as if he’s got a second head. To which we could say, well, just as long as it doesn’t have a mouth as well, he speaks enough rubbish as it is.

So quite why we have instead continually moaned on about Bono and that silly news report last weekend that suggested he supported ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and the Kill the Boer song is a mystery. You’d have thought the man had screamed it from the rooftops: “Go on! Slaughter them all! In their beds!”

It was obvious that he had been horribly misquoted by sections of the media. Yet the hysteria continued, and the rivers were choked with U2 concert tickets.

Here at the Ridge we don’t do rock concerts. Our idea of fun is . . . well, for the past week it’s been retelling that chestnut about the concert where Bono clapped his hands together every few seconds, saying, “Every time I do this, a child in Africa dies.” To which a heckler responded, “Well, don’t do it then, you bastard!”

It’s an old joke -- it harks back to the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland and the anti-poverty campaign which focused on the claim that children in Africa were dying of preventable diseases at the rate of one every three seconds -- and I’m only repeating it here in case you have just landed on Earth after a long flight from Mars. And now that we can bait one another about the Stormers and the Sharks, it’s a joke that, hopefully, I will not hear again -- at least not this year. What does bear repeating, however, is this remark from the wonderfully mordant songwriter Randy Newman: “I used to be against world peace. But then Bono came out for it and the scales just fell from my eyes.”

And that brings us neatly to the other fool in this nonsense -- Steve Hofmeyr. As my friend Willem has suggested, it may be some time before Bono throws his Steve Hofmeyr concert tickets in the river.

A few years ago our Steve emerged as a social activist campaigning against the proposed renaming of Pretoria to Tshwane. He argued that there was no historical basis for the change, as Tshwane, a pre-colonial chief, never actually lived in the area, although, as he put it, he may have wandered through the Fountains Valley with a few goats, pausing only to urinate against the nearest thorn tree.

So outraged was he, that -- irony of ironies -- I dubbed him “the Boer Bono” in a newspaper article at the time, and the reference found its way into a dictionary of South African quotations.

I don’t think he was very happy -- perhaps I should have pointed out that it was Bono who was, in fact, the Irish Steve Hofmeyr -- and I rather dreaded running into him again.

He did confront me, one night, in Johannesburg. Instead of punching me in the mouth, though, he gave me a slab of chocolate. It was a puzzling and suspicious gesture, but I did accept the gift.

At the time, I had yet to up sticks and relocate to the village and knew nothing of Wilma Bothma’s medicine cabinet, but I was wary enough to throw the chocolate away. Who knows? It may have been drugged. You know what these musicians are like.

But now Steve has threatened to include “Afrikaans struggle words” in his recordings if the Kill the Boer song is legalised. 

He told a reporter: “There are lots of Afrikaans words which we’d like to use again and bring back into the Afrikaans dictionaries but, because they are hate speech, we are all trying very hard to avoid those words.”

That, presumably, is why they’re struggle words -- because of Steve’s difficulty in not uttering them.

But please, no more songs, Steve. Enough torture. You’ve done quite enough as it is, and we must all move on.