Crocodile tears
WHAT kind of ill luck and heartache can cause a man to abandon his crocodile? Staff at Warsaw Zoo found a four-foot croc dumped on their doorstep in a crate with a note: "My name is Gustav. I am a crocodile. My daddy loves me very much, but I need a new home."
However, the zoo are having none of it. They say they don't have enough room for Gustav and they're searching their CCTV footage to try to identify the man who dumped him and dump him back again.
It's so sad that, just as he enters his impressionable teenage years, an innocent foundling crocodile should be subjected to this kind of rejection and emotional turmoil.
Maybe the Polish courts will step in and find Gustav a foster home.
Deon du Plessis
I AM SADDENED to learn of the death of my old friend and colleague, Deon du Plessis. Deon was a giant of the South African newspaper world, both physically – a huge man – and metaphorically.
I worked with him on the old Argus Africa News Service, a highly professional outfit with a network across the continent and staffers based in Johannesburg, Salisbury (as it then was), Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Accra. Our main focus in those days was the withdrawal of the Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique and the chaos that ensued. Also the resulting pressure on Ian Smith's Rhodesia and the collapse of UDI.
Deon was very much part of that scramble coverage. He went on to hold various executive positions in the old Argus company and its successor, Independent Newspapers, but he always hankered after launching a robust tabloid.
This he achieved when he broke away to launch The Sun, which is a huge success nationwide. Its content is not to everyone's taste but Deon's instinct was sound. There is a basic demand for a newspaper that caters to the tastes and interests of that vast category of people who have urbanised but not quite lost touch with their rural and traditional values. The Sun focuses on that market. The reports it publishes are vivid, frequently bizarre and often seemingly outrageous. And it sells.
A few years ago I hired a house painter. He arrived every day with a copy of The Sun under his arm. Then he would ask our domestic lady to translate the content into Zulu for him. That's what I call a committed reader – brand loyalty. He bought the paper for its content, even though he couldn't read (or for that matter speak) English.
Deon was larger than life. He often projected himself - I presume for his own private amusement – as some kind of clodhopping backvelder. Nothing could have been further from the truth. He was astute, finely attuned to every nuance of politics and of the newspaper world.
He was also delightful company, treating everything he did as an adventure, whether some journalistic sortie or one of the convivial lunches he so often presided over. He will be missed by all of us who worked with him.
Tangled telexes
THE DRAMA of life as a foreign correspondent. There was a time when I was on the desk of the Africa Service, in Johannesburg. Deon du Plessis was in Lourenzo Marques (as present-day Maputo was then called) in Mozambique. There was no such thing as e-mail. The communications technology of those days was the telex and the landline machine for photographs.
Things were popping in Mozambique. Deon desperately needed a landline machine. One was available from the Cape Argus. By telex I negotiated for this machine to be railed to LM. The Argus informed me by telex that it was on its way.
What I didn't know was that a manager on The Star had arranged for the Argus to rail him a crate of smoked snoek for a company function.
Yes, you've guessed. The Star manager got a landline machine. Deon got a crate of smoked snoek. Next thing a girl from head office was haring across to Komatipoort by car to hand over the landline machine at the border post.
I hope Deon enjoyed the smoked snoek.
Tailpiece
A TRUCK carrying copies of Roget's Thesaurus overturned on the highway. Onlookers were stunned, overwhelmed, astonished, bewildered and dumbfounded.
Last word
I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them.
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