by Ben Trovato on 21 May 2012
My face could have been ripped off when the bank decided to freeze my account.
Let us, for argument’s sake, agree that I was having a business lunch at, say, Teazers on Tuesday. I am speaking hypothetically, of course.
Where I come from, business is best conducted late at night among rogues and reprobates and the eternally discreet Mr Jack Daniels.
Imagine, if you will, that I spent the evening sampling a range of imported beverages, while appreciating the assets of several fecund fillies fresh from the Balkans.
The bill is presented in a manner befitting the lickerish milieu. Perhaps it is written in curlicue on a pair of lace panties, or rolled up and constrained by a scarlet garter.
I produce my credit card with a flourish and a doe-eyed Ukrainian virgin takes the card away to be cloned so that her family in Sevastopol may survive another month, but then returns two minutes later with a gentleman who is 3m tall and has metal hooks for hands. He is there to explain that my credit card has been declined.
Even though he speaks Russian, I get the message, because he has me by the throat and is apparently planning to perform a rudimentary tracheotomy with the sharp edge of my card.
From my bed in the casualty ward, I use my one unbroken finger to e-mail my bank to find out what the hell happened. The reply is quick: “I have done an investigation and noticed that the account is placed on a Fica freeze.”
by Stuart on 17 May 2012
His latest column in the Sunday Times:
Sometimes the worst crime is getting caught. The international war against drugs is possibly the worst waste of resources on the planet next to the so-called war on terror.
The fact of the matter is that human beings like to sniff, shoot up or imbibe substances that suspend their reality for a while. Even in countries such as Malaysia that are notorious for their lack of tolerance for any drug use, I bet the citizens have discovered that if you dry goat droppings, grind the pellets into powder, and add some turmeric in just the right proportions, you get a really good buzz. (Do not try this at home.)
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Is it Cos I’m Black?
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Some of My Best Friends are White
by Ben Trovato on 16 May 2012
Many of you have been sending cards, flowers and even boxes of African spitting scorpions in the wake of the brutal murder of my beloved Hyundai.
Thank you for your condolences, but that’s enough now.
For those with benzodiazepine addictions, let me refresh your impaired memory.
Two months ago I took my car to the tyre experts in Fish Hoek to have its wheels balanced ahead of an urgent trip to Durban. They offered to service it as well. Having been repeatedly dropped on my head as a child, I accepted.
To cut a long journey short, the engine blew up before I had even reached the N2.
An industry specialist (not a relative) subsequently found that if the garage had done its job properly, this tragedy could have been averted.
President Zuma is partly responsible for what happened next. He is our role model when it comes to the rejection of culpability under any circumstances and he set the bar pretty damn high in 2009. Or low. Never underestimate the power of denial. It wozzen me. I didden do it. You godda problem? Squeak to my lawyer. Many of our citizens continue to follow his example.
by Stuart on 14 May 2012
From garnering acclaim as the ‘Accidental Academic’ to working the newsrooms of Al Jazeera in the exotic location of Doha, Azad Essa’s latest venture is set to see him break into the Indian subcontinent market. His book,
Zuma’s Bastard, has been adapted by HarperCollins India.
When Azad first released Zuma’s Bastard, we knew that it was bound to get people talking, if not in the president’s bedroom then at least in the SA book industry. With controversial subject matter, brash and insightful opinions, a foreword by Ferial Haffajee and an innovative underground marketing campaign to back it up (with 3,000 members and counting on the Facebook page), Zuma’s Bastard sounded the welcome call of a critical voice of the next generation.
The Moslems Are Coming is a series of adapted writings from his award-winning Accidental Academic Thought Leader blog, tackling race and religion head-on, giving fresh insight into the Israel-Palestine conflict, casting new light on old sterotypes, venting the frustrations and fears of the next generation – and ultimately offering us all hope for the future.
The cover for The Moslems Are Coming contains the same edgy, raw and brazen feel that made the Zuma’s Bastard cover such a visual success. Azad looks set to break boundaries with his latest publication. Follow all the discussions around Azad’s new book with the Twitter hashtag #MoslemsAreComing.
About the author:
Azad Essa is a journalist, columnist and aspiring filmmaker. He completed a multinational Global Studies MA in 2005 and spent several years in South African academia before launching his journalism career. He calls Durban home, but is currently working for the Al Jazeera Network in Doha, Qatar.
Praise for Zuma’s Bastard:
“Azad is a journalist for the 21st century. He is at the beginning of a professional life of activism, action and a whole lot of fun. I have no doubt that this will be the first book of many. I am honoured to be associated with it” – Ferial Haffajee, City Press editor-in-chief
“At once tjatjarag and lyrical, the digitally compressed and accelerated voice of a South Africa that no media tribunal could ever silence” – Nic Dawes, editor-in-chief Mail & Guardian
“Azad manages to weave the uncomfortable contradictions and truths of our fractured society into easy flowing, fast-paced prose… [His] writing shows sensitivity and depth, hooking you from the first paragraph and leaving you wanting more. This is insight. It’s a fresh, youthful take on one of the most complex, frustrating and interesting countries in the world. The book pays homage to its roots as a blog – showing a rich mix of strong opinion with breezy and accessible writing” – Matthew Buckland, Thought Leader founder and publisher of Memeburn.com
“The real power in this collection lies in its author’s age: the book is a missive from the generation who don’t remember apartheid, and it’s got a lot to say to those of us who do. If Essa is any indication, the next crop of writers is exactly what South Africa needs – the man is abrasive, engaged, uncowed” – Kevin Bloom, journalist and author of Ways of Staying
“Zuma’s Bastard compellingly offers fresh ideas to tired problems with a keenness and engagement that, I think, makes Azad one of the most lucid voices of our generation” – Khadija Patel, Khadijapatel.co.za
“Azad Essa, a Bollywood-soaked, Indian-battered, black South African-tinged, accidental academic and incidental journalist – who has seen India and Kashmir, India better, in Kashmir, Pakistan, the so-called Middle East and Europe – leaves no holy cows untaunted – nay he even imagines them as beefburgers… His popularity is catching but the moral questions he asks of us cannot be sidestepped. Read this book, buy the T-shirt, be with it and get angry because the author takes his jokes (often us) seriously” – Professor Ari Sitas, Head of Sociology, UCT
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by Kate Sidley on 13 May 2012
There used to be two types of people in the world – Encyclopaedia Britannica people and World Book people. Well, three types, really, if you count the vast majority of humanity, for whom this is a completely meaningless topic for discussion, as type three. Having been in continuous print since 1768, Encyclopaedia Britannica recently announced that it will no longer be offering a print edition. There will be an online version and various apps, ranging in price, depending on bells, whistles, and the amount of dreadful online advertising you are prepared to stomach. For $70 a year, you get the full Monty. The print version would have set you back over $1300 and, by the time you cracked the spine of the “A” volume, it would have been dated. No matter how much we bookish types like to wax romantic about the smell of paper etc etc, there are some things that digital indisputably does better – encyclopaeidiaing, f’rinstance.
Back in the day, when I was a kid, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was the trusted arbiter of all knowledge and to own it was a marker of success and prestige. To have a set lining your bookshelves showed you as someone with intellectual standing or pretensions and social cache (even more so than World Book owners, it seems). I can’t quite think of what today’s equivalent would be – not quite the flat screen tv, because the underlying impulse behind the purchase was to either be or look smarter. Maybe some sort of combination of children’s violin lessons and the flat screen tv.
It’s hard to imagine, now, families paying off over many months, a set of books. But they did. If ever there was a dispute about the length of the Nile, the causes of the Napoleonic Wars, or the name of some ancient Egyptian god, one could turn to the shelf of encyclopaedias (leather-spined, if you had really made it, and gold-lettered) and turn the strangely thin paper pages, allowing the voice of all knowledge to speak on the subject, in rather tiny text. My school projects were generally compiled with reference to the library’s set of EB (we didn’t have our own set) and elderly copies of National Geographic. There was no cut-and-paste, which the fortunate youf of today so revel in – we were subject to the inestimable hardship of copying chunks of source materials out by hand.
In its heyday, the company sold 120 000 sets in the US. Many, at least in the 70s, were sold by individuals schlepping samples around the suburbs. The door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman has been the butt of jokes, skits and barbs. They’ve been portrayed fast-talking their way into homes; suckering parents, keen to give their children the best start in school, into buying sets of books they didn’t need and couldn’t afford; seducing bored housewives.
One salesman interviewed for his recollections of those days gone by, tells how he memorized his 90 minute spiel about the books, how to use the index, other products in the range, so that he could reproduce it flawlessly. Can you imagine (a) letting a stranger into your house and (b) allowing him to waffle on for an hour and a half? It’s inconceivable.
Try wandering around the suburbs of Johannesburg in the late afternoon, when even the broom sellers and the mielie ladies have left, hefting a heavy suitcase through the streets, with nothing but a smile and a positive attitude to see you through. If you made it to your destination without being mugged by a passing tsotsi (who would be very disappointed to find a bunch of boring old books in your nice briefcase) or bounced by a private security company, you’d find a gate and a 2-metre wall between you and the homeowner. Pressing the intercom, you’d be met with the customary South African greeting “No thank you”, uttered against the barking of attack-trained Rottweiler and depressed panic buttons. And forget the 90 minute spiel. We are a generation trained to cut off estate agents, bank representatives, cell phone company upgraders and the like with the tersest of responses before they get to sentence three.
So, goodbye door-to-door salesmen and to bookshelves full of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instead, embrace an ever-updated, up-to-the-minute, hyper-linked, multi-media, reader-accessible Wiki world. Right now, on a cell phone near you.
by Izak on 11 May 2012
Philip de Vos sien sy nuwe boek, Kop op ‘n blok, nie heeltemal as ‘n outobiografie nie, maar hierdie versameling bloginskrywings, wat oorspronklik op Versindaba verskyn het, verwys wel telkens na sy persoonlike verlede.
“Ek is nie seker nie, maar ek het gehoor dat hoe ouer ‘n mens raak, hoe helderder is jou verlede, terwyl jou hede nie meer vir jou so belangrik is nie,” het De Vos in ‘n onderhoud met Joan Hambidge op die RSG-program Skrywers en Boeke gesê. “Maar onthou ek dit altyd presies soos dit werklik gebeur het? Ek weet nie…”
Hambidge en De Vos gesels in die volgende potgooi oor die nostalgiese elemente in Kop op ‘n blok, insluitende die herinneringe aan verskeie bekendes, soos Cecilia Wessels en Anna Neethling-Pohl. De Vos lees ook sy essay oor Karel Schoeman uit Kop op ‘n blok voor.
Die onderhoud begin ongeveer op die 25 minute merk:
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