Romance, valour in Botswana
NEWS from Botswana. The President, Ian Khama, is 57 and not yet married. A bemedalled former military man, he says he does not have the time to look for a wife.
But the people are becoming restive, especially the majority Bamangwato ethnic group of whom he is Paramount Chief. Tradition requires that he take unto himself a wife. Medals on his chest are all very well, they say, but he now needs a ring on his finger.
The affable Khama, who trained at Sandhurst, says fair enough. But he still doesn't have the time to look around. So he's asked the women of Botswana to look for him.
He called a meeting of women and told them: "The best that you should do is to go out and look for the woman that you prefer for me as I hardly have time to hunt for a woman who will become my wife.
"I want to marry a woman who is slim, tall and beautiful."
Standing beside him as he spoke was a Mrs Botlhogile Tshreletso,assistant Minister of Local Government. President Khama used her to reinforce his preference.
"I don't want one like this one. She may fail to pass through the door, breaking furniture with her heavy weight and even break the vehicle's shock absorbers."
At which the women broke into ululation (though my correspondent does not say if Mrs Tshreletso joined them).
I say Ian Khama deserves another medal.
Later Mrs Angelinah Sengalo, chairwoman of the women's wing of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party, proposed Emma Wareus, a beauty queen who was first runner-up in a Miss World contest.
When Ian Khama gets hitched, remember where you read it first.
Glee club fun
READER Clive Jones, of Gillitts, is looking for extra verses to a popular glee club type song that he and his friends used to sing at Wits in the mid-50s, and which went:
It's a wonderful place is this Joburg
Where the liquorice lights always shine,
And the rickie tickey train runs by Fordsburg
And the mine hooters tell you the time.
"It was sung to a simple waltz time and always raised a laugh. This was in or just after the era of Cecil Wightman and Snoektown Calling. If I recall correctly, there were several verses.
"Do you or any of your other readers know the full lyrics or have a reference to them? I hope for a lead for nostalgia's sake."
As it happens, I can help with a couple of verses:
Oh, we have such wonderful railways,
With hundreds and hundreds of lines,
And hundreds and hundreds of platforms,
And trains what is never on time.
Oh, we have a wonderful police force,
With Japies and Gawies and such,
They don't speak a word of old English,
They only knows how to speak Dutch.
Anyone else out there with a misspent youth, who can add some more?
Kung-fu clincher
READER Eric Hodgson sends in the briskly-written introduction to a paper in an academic journal:
"In this essay, I defend an account of right action that I shall call 'asymmetrical virtue particularism.' An action, on this account, is right just insofar as it is overall virtuous. But the virtuousness of an action in any particular respect, X, is deontically variant; it can fail to be right-making, either because it is deontically irrelevant or because it is wrong-making. Finally, the account is asymmetrical insofar as the viciousness of actions is not deontically variant; if any action is vicious in some respect Y, then Y is always a wrong-making feature of any action whatever that has Y."
This is reproduced for the benefit of male readers, who should cut it out and keep the clipping in their wallet. In any argument in which the spouse/girlfriend challenges the virtuousness of an action (say a few pints with the boys) and starts citing the wrong-making feature of that action, it should be produced and read aloud.
She will have no answer. She will be flummoxed by deontical irrelevance. Asymmetrical virtue particularism is the clincher, the intellectual equivalent of kung-fu.
Tailpiece
A HOUSEWIFE opens her refrigerator to find a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves.
"What are you doing in there?"
"This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well I'm westing."
Last word
I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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