Come to the cabaret ...
IT'S THE season for reminiscence about the AWB. Most of us recall, I'm sure, the arresting closing shots of Liza Minnelli's hit musical, Cabaret (also starring Michael York and Joel Grey), in which the camera pans to a mirror showing a proliferation of swastika armbands in the audience. It was set in the 1930s and the Nazis were on the up and up.
Those shots came vividly to mind as duties took me in the late 1980s to an AWB rally on the East Rand (where I narrowly avoided being recruited to the Wenkommando). It was a bitterly cold highveld evening in midwinter. The scene was a bar opposite the Brakpan town hall.
AWB heavies lounged about the place with their swastika armbands. Moving admiringly among them, cadging drinks and cigarettes, were white down-and-outs in thin shirts, shorts and bare feet, in spite of the freezing weather.
It was somewhat disturbing – even more than the pseudo-Nazi histrionics in the town hall.
Come to the cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret ...
Street theatre
THE AWB, of course, never was more than a minuscule movement with a strong instinct for street theatre. The career of its leader, Eugene Terreblanche – even before its grisly and ghastly end – makes for sobering reflection.
Instead of leading his volk to liberation, he ended up in jail for badly beating up a petrol pump attendant and a security guard. There was the phase of embarrassing burlesque when columnist Jani Allen unsuccessfully sued for libel in a London court.
Then the awful finale, that could have involved a R600 wage dispute and could have involved something rather more squalid.
You couldn't wish it on your worst enemy.
Attack cat
DOG BITES postman – there's no news value in that, as apprentice hacks are always taught in journalism school. Postman bites dog – now you're onto something.
But what do we make of this story from Leeds, Yorkshire, where postmen have been attacked in recent weeks by a 19-year-old black and white cat named Tiger.
The Royal Mail has suspended deliveries to the address since Tiger started pouncing on postmen as they walk up the garden path, clawing and biting and inflicting some painful lacerations.
What could be behind this? Does Tiger's eyesight fail him? Does he believe the postmen to be mice? Does he, in a state of senile confusion, believe he actually is a tiger?
Maybe he's just sick of all the junk mail.
Depths of love
ORLANDO Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs went to a penalty shoot-out at Moses Mabhida stadium last week after they were still on a goalless draw after extra time.
In the shoot-out, Pirates missed the goalmouth twice and had one shot saved. Chiefs won 3-0.
On East Coast Radio, a DJ used it to express the depths of love: "I miss you Baby, like Pirates miss a goal."
Sports jokes can be very cruel.
Super-brat
IAN GILMOUR, poet laureate of Hillcrest, turns his pen to consideration of South Africa's super-brat:
Is it the end of the road for young Julius,
Having made the whole world so furious?
His trip to see Bob,
Could cost him his job,
And his BBC spat's made him ludicrous!
Tailpiece
A duck walks into a pub and orders a pint of beer and a ham sandwich.
The barman says: "Hang on! You're a duck."
"That's right."
"And you talk."
"Right again. Now can I have my beer and my sandwich?"
"We don't get many ducks in here," says the barman as he pulls the pint.
"Well, you've got me for the next few weeks. I've got a plastering job at the building site across the road."
The circus comes to town. The ringmaster drops in at the pub and the barman tells him about the amazing talking duck. He's interested: "Tell him to get in touch. I'll hire him."
Later the duck drops in for his beer and sandwich.
Barman: "Great news. The circus want to hire you. Your fortune's made."
Duck: "Circus? You mean that thingy with the big tent and all the animals in cages and the people living in caravans?"
Barman: "That's it."
Duck (shaking his head in amazement): "What would they want with a plasterer?"
Last word
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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