It's the cabriolet election
EVERY election has its theme, its dominating issue. This time it's the cabriolet toilet. Has there ever, anywhere in the world, been an electoral contest where cartoonists depict senior political figures sitting on the throne?
But there is a slight echo from the past. It never actually became a hot election issue, but there was another time when the government's provision of toilets provoked a lot of anger, mixed with hilarity.
Reader Ernie Robbertse reminds us of the bad old days when apartheid tenderpreneurs (yes, they were around then too) delivered toilets by the hundreds and thousands for township developments. They were properly built, it has to be said, and properly enclosed. Nothing shoddy about the toilet broeders.
The problem is, the apartheid planners often got it wrong. They forgot to organise with the builder broeders for the houses to be supplied. Stretches of otherwise bare veld had row upon row of toilets – "like beehives", as an incredulous judge once said when the matter came before him – but nobody to use them.
"It was amazing," says Ernie. "Thousands of toilets standing there in the veld. Not a single house built. The pictures were all over the newspapers. People forget those bad old days."
The issue is, of course, slightly different today. People yearn for the staid old sedan toilet. The cabriolet is just a little too sporty.
Official stamp
Various readers have sent in a warning, that has been going round by e-mail, that voters must be sure their ballot papers are stamped on the back with the official IEC imprimatur. If they are not stamped they will be disallowed. It comes, apparently, from somebody who worked at the ballot count in a previous election.
A senior IEC official confirmed on the radio that this is the case, the e-mails make a valid point.
So before you make your "X", check for that stamp. Then double-check before you slip the ballot paper into the box. Otherwise you could be just wasting your time – and your vote.
Here today ...
AS THEY used to say in the bad old days: "Stem vroeg! Stem Nat! Stem dikwels!"
And where are the Nats today?
Dreadful virus
NEWS arrives by e-mail of yet another of these dreadful computer viruses. Even the most advanced programs from McAfee and Norton can do nothing about it. This one causes you to:
· Send the same e-mail twice. Done that!
· Send a blank e-mail. That too!
· Send e-mail to the wrong person. Yep!
· Send it back to the person who sent it to you. Aha!
· Forget to attach the attachment. Well darn!
· Hit "Send" before you've finished. Oh no, not again!
· Hit "Delete" instead of "Send." I just hate that!
· Hit "Send" when you should "Delete." Oh No!
It's known as the C-Nile virus. My informant asks if he's already sent this information to me – or did I perhaps send it to him?
Lekker, cool
CERTAIN academics have objected to use of the expression bunny chow to describe a Durban delicacy. It seems the term offends some obscure code of animal ethics because it suggests bunny rabbits are being devoured whole.
Sally Bosch puts them in their place.
Bunny chows are lekker,
Bunny chows are cool.
Bunny chows give Durbanites
The right to say we rule!
If you want to change the name
To something more banal,
You'd better have a brilliant plan,
Or leave it be, my pal.
It's in our constitution,
It is our ethnic right.
We love to chow our bunnies,
Mutton, beans - allright?
Why pay?
MICROSOFT has bid $5 billion for Skype, according to this news snippet. Obviously nobody has told them they can download it for free.
SABC bias
IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, responds to complaints that SABC coverage of the municipal elections has been biased in favour of the ruling party.
What to do about the SABC,
With its strong bias for the ANC?
Switch to e-News,
For more balanced views,
Or to any other service you fancy!
Tailpiece
THE IRISH have joined the Nato operation in Libya. They've sent in three ships – two laden with sand and one with cement. It's for a mortar attack.
Last word
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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