Your province needs you!
WHAT is the weather going to do tomorrow for the Currie Cup final? Three home games in a row now, the Sharks have had to play on a sponge (and they've won in fine style). If it clears, can they adjust?
The long-range forecast says early showers, then clearing; an 11-knot wind from the south. So that looks like a dampish start, conditions improving. But anything can happen these days. By the time they run on it could be raining frogs and lizards.
Mind you, the way the fellows have been performing they can play in anything. It's the spectators we worry about. Will we get a full stadium at King's Park for the first time this season? What's a bit of rain when the guys are about to lift the Currie Cup?
Come on, turn out! Do your bit for the black and white! Think of the after-party. You'll regret it if you weren't there. To adapt Lord Kitchener: Your province needs you!
Passports
DISCUSSION in recent days of the forging of passports during the apartheid era prompts Zoltan de Rosner, of Pennington, to send in his own passport.
It is issued by the "Republic of Hout Bay" (down in the Cape where Zoltan and his wife used to live) and was a fund-raising gimmick by the local Lions Club.
Border posts were set up once a year on the three roads into the village and visitors had to buy passports at R10 each. Great fun. And several locals managed to use these passports overseas and would proudly show off the entry and exit stamps when they returned.
Yes, something similar used to happen at the Ingeli Mountain Lodge, just before Kokstad. The lodge issued passports of the "Republic of Ingeli" – rather fancy documents with space in them for three photographs: "Your photograph"; "Your wife's photograph"; and "Your girlfriend's photograph".
This was at the time the Transkei was supposedly independent and border controls had been set up. Reps staying at Ingeli Mountain Lodge used to delight in using their Republic of Ingeli passports to travel in and out of the Republic of Transkei.
Sigh! Did nobody take Grand Apartheid seriously?
Comic opera
YES, GRAND apartheid provided some splendid comic opera. There was the occasion when the President of the independent nation of Bophuthatswana paid a state visit to the independent nation of Transkei.
My colleague, David Thomas – then stationed at Umtata – filed a classic report.
A 21-gun salute boomed out across the Transkei capital as the Bophuthatswana President arrived. This puzzled people because everyone knew the Transkei army had no artillery.
It turned out that the salvos came from a captured World War I German field gun, on display outside the Umtata town hall. A corporal was throwing thunderflashes down the barrel, carefully counting.
But the percussion was too much for the ancient wooden framework of the gun. It collapsed. But the 21-gun salute continued, the corporal continuing to throw thunderflashes down the barrel as it lay there on the ground.
Great stuff, worthy of an Evelyn Waugh.
Transkei navy
AND OF COURSE there was the time when the Transkei navy took delivery of a submarine. It was called the Oceanos.
Tailpiece
SISTER Mary-Ann is a nun who works with a home health agency in the Free State. While out on her rounds, she runs out of petrol. But fortunately she is near a filling station. She walks to it and asks if she can borrow a can to fill with petrol.
The attendant says he's just lent out his only can. But it should be back soon, if she can wait. She decides to go back to the car and look for another receptacle. There she spots the bedpan she was taking to a patient. She walks back to the filling station with it, gets it filled up with petrol, goes back to the car and starts pouring the petrol into the tank.
Koos van der Merwe and his brother are watching the operation with great interest from an adjacent field where they have been ploughing.
"Kleinboet," says Koos. "If that thing starts, I'm turning Catholic."
Last word
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
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