Thanks, I’ll Have Some Absurd with That.

You know how every now and again it feels as if there are so many (too many) currents and dark undertows that swirl about the contemporary world to really make sense of anything?

Athletes who cheat, bankers who steal, the trafficking of human beings sold into slavery, famine, corruption, lies, senseless wars over rich men’s interests, terrible cruelty and violence..

And then there’s the banal stuff…people who steal dreadlocks off pedestrians, men who are killed for not knocking on a door, donkeys in the boerwors…the over 1 BILLION views of Gangnam style on Youtube signalling a new interpretation of what might, in all honesty, represent a true new “global consciousness”.

Trying to fashion some sort of understanding and meaningful tapestry of it all at times seems impossible. Perhaps better to just distract with a You or Heat magazine….the new opium of the masses…

In a baffled retreat Achille Mbembe’s “On the postcolony” offers a place to land and to think. An intellectual runway….

It is a dense and demanding but totally exhilarating read on so many levels and layers. While essentially about Africa and how the continent and its events are “fathomed”, it is about so much more – the intersection of the past and the present, the alchemy of fantasy, dreams, ritual, theatre, the delirium of politics.

Mbembe’s writing does not allow for easy reading…you have to work at it…read some parts over and over again…but then you slip into his frame and it all begins to take form and shape…and to make sense.

At the end of it today…Mbembe’s parting paragraphs helped to snap back mental roller blinds…letting in a thin shard of light….

“Beyond this word (postcolony), we have been interested in the experience of a period that is far from being uniform and absolutely cannot be reduced to a succession of moments and events, but in which instants moments, and events are, as it were, on top of one another, inside one another.

“In this sense, we must say that the postcolony is a period of embedding, a space of proliferation that is not solely disorder, chance, and madness, but emerges from a sort of violent gust, with its languages, its beauty and ugliness, its ways of summing up the world.

“What is certain is that, when we are confronted by such a work of art, Nietzsche’s words regarding Greek tragedy are appropriate; ‘We must first learn to enjoy as complete men.’ Now, what is learning to enjoy as complete men – and women – unless it is a way of living and existing in uncertainty, chance, irreality, even absurdity?”

There I feel much better, hope you do to.

Mobamas remake Modern Marriage

There’s this photograph of Barack and Michelle Obama, or I should rather say, Michelle and Barack (when it comes to a couple it matters whose name gets mentioned first), shortly after the announcement that Obama had won a second term as US President.

Michelle is standing behind her husband, embracing him with those awesome arms wrapped over his. It is a tender and intimate moment and one of many of the public displays of affection the Obamas are so comfortable making.

The photograph is such a clear demonstration of the equality and the partnership of this particular relationship.

But the Obama marriage is so much more than just a snapshot of a contemporary American President and the First Lady (a term which feels antiquated in relation to them). The Obama partnership is symbolic of just how far gender relations have shifted, particularly in the United States.

The Republicans, of course, learnt this the hard way.

The GOPs conservative hard-line on women’s reproductive rights and rape were totally out of step with modern America. Romney and his political supporters’ often outrageous statements about women, lesbians and gays, the Latino population and almost everyone else who isn’t white and mega-rich, cost them the election.

Republicans seemed genuinely shocked afterwards to discover that the fabric of America had moved way beyond the 1950s Norman Rockwell ideal they seemed to live in or at least hanker after.

Imagine if you can, any of the former American presidents, from Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton to Richard Nixon, being embraced in such a manner by their wives.  Hillary and Bill Clinton had a different kind of marriage. It is and isn’t very traditional at the same time. She has stood by her man after his numerous hugely embarrassing infidelities, but there is nothing tender about the Clinton’s relationship. It is an intellectual partnership more than anything else. I would imagine Bill and Hillary are more like siblings at this stage of their marriage.

There’s this lovely joke about the Obamas doing the rounds. It goes like this: The President and Michelle go out one night and do something out of their routine. They find themselves at a casual eatery.

The couple are seated and, moments later, the owner of the restaurant asks if he can speak to Michelle in private. Later Barack asks Michelle what the owner wanted to talk about.

Michelle tells him that the restaurant owner had known her in her teenage years and had confessed that he had been madly in love with her.

Barack then says, “So, if you had married him, you would now be the owner of this lovely restaurant?”

To which Michelle replies “No, if I had married him, he would now be the President.”

And therein lies the magic of the Obama partnership.

He could not be without her and she without him. In many ways, Michelle Obama is the unofficial President of the United States of America. And who knows, one day maybe.

You need only to have listened to the speech she made at the Democratic National Convention to grasp her self-possessed, quiet confidence.  So often out in public Barack and Michelle’s body language reveals a genuine equality (to say nothing of the passion) that clearly is the glue here.

The Romenys were far more awkward physically in public as they desperately tried to depict the wholesome Mormon family. But there was something insincere, fake and outdated about Anne Romney’s adoring gaze. Look she might just have been uncomfortable with the public attention but I’m pretty sure the gender balance in the Romney household tips towards making Willard Mitt feel bigger than he actually is.

What is most heartening about Mobama is what the couple represents to younger people and couples. The tide of generic celebrity “relationships” and “marriages” that soak up megalitres of magazine ink are not exactly what we should be aiming for.

The Obamas have brought integrity, not only to the US Presidency, but also to what it means to be spouses, life-partners, co-parents and best friends.

The Obamas don’t exist in a vacuum and while we might idly view or take the millions of images of them across multiple platforms, these inexorably shift the internal worlds of those who soak them up. And we’re all better off because of them.

ends.

Starship Nkandla

Starship Nkandla

I really had fun writing this script on Sunday or was it Friday and then the whole team at ZANEWS made it look like like this

The God Project

“So, how’s the god project coming on?” those who are aware of the little spiritual safari I forced my family to embark on like to ask.

“Oh, we’re all saved,” I enjoy replying just so I can watch the expression on their faces (particularly friends who are scientific rationalists, Jedi or fellow atheists).

For those of you who might have missed the announcement, here’s a quick catch-up; it began with the idea of building a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under the jungle gym in the garden in the hope of finding the “god particle”.

Of course this proved more challenging than we had originally bargained for. Even after looking at our awesome sketches of the machine, the bank wouldn’t give us a $6.4 billion loan (and besides, we didn’t have a toolbox).

We decided instead to take our two daughters to church where we figured we were just as likely to encounter the “god particle”.

So, this has now been going on for about three years. We have had to be very disciplined about it because when you set off on a journey there’s no point turning back.

I am thrilled to report that I remain a confirmed atheist. I’ve only been able to claim this fully in the past six years. Before that I would probably have told you I was a “doubter”, “secular Buddhist” or a “pantheist” so as not to have you lunge at me with a pitchfork.

My journey to atheism was facilitated, free of charge, by Roman Catholicism and I figured that children should sometimes follow in their parents’ footsteps. Not the Catholic Church, mind you, I had a suspicion the girls might just go for all the smoke, mirrors and men in cool dresses mistaking it as a set for a Lady Gaga extravaganza.

Off we went of to a Congregational Church in Rondebosch with a long anti-apartheid struggle history and commitment to social justice. Not once has anyone tried to “convert” us and we have been welcomed warmly.

At first, I viewed the decision as a sort of benign aversion therapy and a long-term investment in sanity and tolerance.

And here begineth the lesson in what I have learned so far.

Firstly, it is easy for we atheists, we merry secular fundamentalists to belittle and make fun of those who believe in a supernatural being. Until recently, attacking and humiliating believers has been the modus operandi of an assortment of great atheist gurus like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (May His Atheist Soul Never Rest In Peace).

Like the child who has been bullied, we grew big and strong and began to bully back. But to what end?

Of course no journey turns out as expected and the oddest thing that has happened is how much going to church has changed me and my view of religion and believers.

As a biblically illiterate, recovering Catholic, I’ve learned quite a bit about the bible (wow, did you guys know there’s a talking snake in the first chapter!). I have also learned that there are benefits to faith, many of them positive and that belief offers a unique sense of connectedness and community

Then a while ago I realised that I was, without knowing it, part of a “second wave” of atheism currently breaking gently on non-believing shores.

Authors like Alain de Botton (his new book is titled Religion for Atheists) and Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith but whose new book is titled The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values) are questioning what it is we atheists have to offer, other than obvious god bashing.

They have also suggested atheists find ways of recreating what religion does for many i.e. bring a sense of order, hope and the belief that life has some meaning.

De Botton has come up with a decidedly middle-class solution – the establishment of global “Agape” (Greek for “love”) restaurants where people come together to eat and sing Kumbaya. Or would it be Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind?

Point is, if we want to convince you of our world-view – that the universe is indifferent and that you can choose to be moral without the threat of heaven or hell – we have to find ways of “leading” by example. Right now, most of us are leading by “doing nothing”. But the Times, They Are A Changing.

ends

 

 

The Long and The Short Of It

Life, as someone once noted, is sexually transmitted.

There’s no escaping it really which is why in the 21^st Century it seems rather quaint that images of one of the “implements” used to transmit life, the one that generally nestles in men’s trousers, should still unleash such controversy and hysteria.

South Africans, over the past few months, have found themselves in a grip of a severe epidemic of phallophobia.

It all began in May when the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) fined Multichoice R10 000 for showing a penis and “full frontal nudity” during a game show titled, Banzai (a word, while also Japanese in origin, is not to be confused with bonsai).

Which of course the offending member did not turn out to be. (Bonsai, for those of you who might not know, is a sort of tortured and crippled midget tree.)

I will, of course, forever regret missing the show, having been distracted lately by a full and happy real life. Apparently viewers of Banzai (an exclamation that either means “10 thousand years” or “a desperate military charge”) were asked to guess which of the contestants, all dressed in tight fitting budgie smugglers (Speedos), had the biggest “package”. (And also just to point out that this had nothing to do with the economic recovery of Europe where the word “package” has entered everyday political discourse).

There were five hopefuls. Two apparently stepped forward and “put their hands in their Speedos” as the legend is now told. But the third man, according to the BCCSA judgement, “does not put his hand in his Speedo, but he pulls it down and exposes his very long penis in a close, full shot in the face of the viewer”. (Well, technically into the camera lens but we’ll leave that argument there).

It cost DSTV R10k and there the matter was, shall we say, left hanging.

Then more madness erupted when towards the end of the month South Africans found themselves suddenly the most erudite nation on earth when it came to matters of art and phalluses.

For at least four weeks social networks hummed and crowds gathered in streets as the nation heatedly debated the merits of a 183 cm (size does count) high painting by artist Brett Murray depicting President Jacob Zuma with his package on display.

At least two people were at such a loss for words they decided to express themselves with pots of red and black paint, top and bottoming him so to speak, and blotting out the apparently “offensive” President’s “member” (as well as his face).

The fuss of course says more about the myth of the penis and what it represents in our very patriarchal society. In other countries, like Holland and India, for example, the penis has been demythologised, declawed and deballed somewhat and is now generally viewed as just another part of the human, male anatomy, like a hairy ear, or a toenail.

Each time I have visited Holland, and Amsterdam in particular, I have been confronted with public displays of the penis, some on real-life insane Dutchmen who roam the streets (one was on roller skates) or in various public artworks across the city.

Renditions of it, in the form of the many stone statues of  “lingams” can be found across India. During a trip there a few years ago the tour guide recommended that I “worship” at one of them but I declined the privilege stating that it was against my culture as a feminist.

The thing is, the more repressed, patriarchal or conservative a society the more men (and women) fear public displays of that simple means of procreation and pleasure.

The longer we imbue the phallus with some mythical power or status, the longer men are going to be insecure about it. Women’s bodies are routinely objectified, degraded and violated and any objection or complaint about it is usually dismissed as “shrill” and “hysterical” or an “over-reaction”.

Perhaps those men (and women) who take umbrage or who are offended by one of nature’s little (or big depending on who you are) miracles should grow some balls (as women have had to do) and stop taking it all so personally.

ends

 

 

The Value of Talent

Last year my relationship with my bank reached a no-turning-back point. Mind you, it is an association that has outlasted several high-profile celebrity unions so I should have been a tad suspicious.

Anyone who knew or saw us together would have been able to tell you that but those of us trapped in a loveless, unreciprocated union seldom see it for what it is so I fumbled along feeling mildly unfulfilled for many years.

Sure I got a breezy SMS on my birthday, usually the first to vibrate into the mailbox on the day, followed closely by one from my cell phone network provider.

But if my relationship with my bank had featured as a case study in a chapter of that popular dating-manual, He’s Just Not That Into You, we would have definitely slotted comfortably into the “terminal” category.

I should have realised it sooner; the unreturned phone calls, the passive aggressive SMSes, the personal banker who looked like a former Easter German Stasi agent and whose heartless stare bored into my soul across the desk.

It couldn’t go on. I’d have to find another way.

So, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street We Hate All Bankers in the World movement I attempted to find new ways of working with money.

Firstly, I would withdraw my “custom” from large corporates. I began by signing up for a weekly supply of fresh organic vegetables grown locally by grand mothers supporting their families.  Ultimately I was aiming to go completely economically feral and self-sufficient.

Move to Zimbabwe I hear you say. Why not? They’ve managed to do what the rest of the world’s concerned eco-warriors are suggesting.

Zim if off the grid people.

There are sporadic supplies of electricity, fuel and food and people have worked out their own exchange rates unrelated to the CAC or the FTSE 100.

Zimbabweans have miraculously found new ways of surviving and inadvertently helping to reduce the world’s global carbon footprint at the same time. No, uprooting the family to Zimbabwe wasn’t an option.

The established economic system proved rather tricky to thwart. But then I discovered the Community Exchange System. The blurb on the website was most promising.

“With the impending implosion of the usury-based, global money system, now is the time to seek a new way of ‘doing’ money, one not based on debt and controlled by a global monetary elite that seems happy about destroying our planet in the pursuit of profit.”

Bring it on…..baby.

“CES money is ‘created’ by its users so it can never be in short supply. So long as you can offer something of value you can have from the community goods and services of like value….so join the growing community who have discovered a new way of ‘doing’ money, a healthy money that will create a healthy society.”

I immediately registered on line.

Problem number one. I had to find a talent I could offer that others would want and need and that would result in a steady supply of reciprocal offers of dental and medical treatment for my family, an endless supply of dog food, petrol for my car, a full fridge and all the other requirements of an average middle-class household.

I decided against registering my very special and underexposed talent for singing a really cracking rendition of Barbara Streisand’s The Way We Were. Look, I didn’t want to get swamped with requests from across the country.

Then I looked a little more closely at some of the “offerings” on the site seeing whether they could match my “needs”

“Water Tank. Any size to start with please. Can pay in Talents or swop for 100 lavender plants (maybe, if you allow enough time so we can get them from cuttings to a nice size)” read one.

Or how about; “I’d like to play tennis, go walking/hiking, maybe try swimming”.

In return for what I wondered? A set of used encyclopedias?

And the fiendishly brilliant; “Looking for admin/marketing/PA to start ASAP on freelance basis. I would like to have someone on a part-time basis who can help with tasks such as marketing my business, website maintenance, admin, sorting of paperwork, possibly be trained up to do some of my work even.”

Holy smoke, this new economy was even more baffling than the imploding old one…

Oh what’s that? My phone….Oh it’s the bank, sorry, I have to take this call.

 

ends

 

 

The New Picket Fences

My, things are looking up for the nuclear family.

Once threatened by shattering divorce statistics, rising feminism, TV dinners, sperm donors, single-parent-headed households and still (let us not forget) under major threat from militant homosexuals demanding equal rights, the nuclear family has made a huge comeback.

Well, at least on the rear windows of suburban cars across the middle-class world.

Surely you have noticed them?

Those smug and happy little white “my family” cartoon decals that have become a de rigueur outward expression of middle-class domesticity? And it is comforting that the concept of “family” clearly now also extends to a range of pets, including birds, rodents and horses.

Every now and again people get a little extravagant and toss in a few other clues about their prosperity and happiness – like a smiling dad on a bicycle, a mom shopping on the internet with her laptop, a boy on a skateboard, girl with her “swag” and a baby in a nappy happily sucking its dummy.

Over the past few years some of the decals have grown more elaborate, little girls wearing ballet tutus, fathers with stethoscopes draped around their necks or mowing the lawn, moms doing yoga.

There are always some people in the world who don’t get the TMI (the too much information) bit of public life whether on social media or elsewhere. Ask Helen Zille who tweeted about having eaten a curry and having taken Imodium during the Argus cycle race.

I leave that one to your own imaginations.

Apologies for the short digression.

But the phenomenon of these decals are, I am guessing, the modern mobile equivalent of the white picket fence, that 1950s symbol of the ideal and natural, suburban order of things.

Of course as the reality (and sometimes deep trauma) of traditional, patriarchal family life was exposed and discredited in popular media, the picket fence lost its lustre and in fact became an ironic expression of the “traditional” family and the lives of quiet despair lived behind these apparently benign boundaries.

It was only a matter of time before the sheen needed to be restored. And hey presto…enter the global trend of the rear-window decal.

The precise origin of the phenomenon is lost in the deluge of useless information that clogs up the Internet. Some have speculated that it started in Mexico, of all places in 2001, and spread like a yeast infection in Hugh Hefner’s Jacuzzi.

We could add loads of new twists locally. Imagine the rear window of President Jacob Zuma’s family vehicle? There’d be very little space left what with four wives, a few mistresses and at least 21 children.

Of course it was only a matter of time before an “anti-My Family Stickers” movement was sparked. In Australia a young misanthrope, Dean Templeman, has designed a dark range to counteract the shoddy propaganda. His stick figures have sons with guns shooting their fathers and various others depicting the underlying tensions in ordinary families.

Other less angry designs by other subversives feature mothers as pole dancers, fathers out with their mistresses, teenagers smoking pot or even a row of tombstones.

Just a few days ago I laughed out loud at one display I found myself parked behind in traffic in Constantia in Cape Town.

There was a single stick figure on the rear window. A solitary horse.

I love horse people; they say it like it is. Of course it was a woman driving the car and we won’t here go into the deep psychological explanation of horse love for fear it might upset sensibilities.

Despite their tweeness, the decals are an intriguing global phenomenon, well at least in countries were people need to show off their family life anonymously to strangers in public.

Are they perhaps a desperate display of prosperity and materialism in a world where most economies are being squeezed mercilessly by a global recession?

Recession? What recession? We’re ok Jack.

But it is precisely because these are stick figures, childlike and naïve renderings of the human form that our suspicions should be alerted. These are facsimile families, not real and perhaps choosing to broadcast your personal life on the back window of your car says more about what you don’t have rather than what you do?

Just a thought.

ends.

Mothering, Penises and Neil Diamond.

The great thing about having children, in the early years at least, is that they’re fantastic for one’s self esteem. For a limited period of time children really do view their parents as a living, breathing version of Google.

But keeping up appearances can, at times, be tricky. The thing about children is that they reconnect you to worlds, spaces and pockets of knowledge you’ve long since forgotten or neglected.

I imagine that somewhere in our adult brains a row of old, metal filing cabinets are lined up like tired librarians, drawers rusted shut, their contents slowly crumbling and decaying.

And so it came to pass that one afternoon on a drive to or back from somewhere my youngest, who is six, nonchalantly asked apropos of nothing in particular, “Mom, does the earth revolve around the sun?”

I shot through a mental wormhole, back to my old school and a biology class (or was it geography? Maybe it was science? No wait, I didn’t take science! Did I even go to school?)

For a moment I stalled, bought time. You cannot, cannot yet afford to shatter or let slip the delusion that you are a walking dictionary/wikipeadia/encylopedia/music, religious or political reference work. The power balance in the home teeters precariously on this single most important element. Lose it and the inmates will run the prison. They will be Julius Malemas to my Jacob Zuma.

“Why do you ask?” I said while frantically, in my mind of course, trying to force open one of the drawers marked “stuff you should know”.

“We’re doing the solar system this week,” she replied.

Holy babaganoush! She’s in pre-school! Shouldn’t they just be colouring in and playing with plasticine? I mean what’s next? Heart surgery for beginners?

“Yes,” I heard myself answering confidently.

It was a wild, intuitive guess, I have to admit. Luckily that time, turned out I was right and that some traces and residue of my formal education had remained intact and accessible.

But it was a close call.

And then the second incident.

Driving to school one morning we passed a large suburban wall. Had I been alone in the car, I would have looked out of the window and hardly taken in the graffiti.

But there it was, a rather cute little, erect cartoon penis.

“What’s that?” asked eldest who is eight.

Look, I could have said it was an advert for a genetically modified mushroom but truth is another important element in parenting.

“It’s a penis” I replied casually.

“Why?” she asked gain.

“Why what?”

“Why would someone draw that there?”

Good question. Many possible answers. Some involving patriarchy, power and what it means to live in a phallocentric society.

I imagined a woman walking past that very same wall with a can of spray paint in her handbag (which most of us carry with us at all times) and suddenly being consumed by the desire to render female genitalia on that public suburban canvass.

“Oooh…here we go, let me just angle my can…”..pssst..”labia minora”…psssst….”another one”….psssst, “labia majora….x 2”…psssst “mons of venus”…..pssst …”clitoral hood”…pssst….”clitoris”….”urethra ”…

You can understand why women are less inclined to festoon walls with cartoon renditions of our reproductive bits. It would just end up looking more like a complicated cross section of a rain spider with an Afro. It’s just not fair.

In the end I answered that the man or boy who did that just really, really liked his equipment and this was his way of showing it off.

Now where I do score major know-it-all points is when I walk in on my kids watching an episode of the delightful series Glee (look it up if you don’t know what it is and then go out immediately and rent it).

I can pick up a melody or a line from any Neil Diamond, Fleetwood Mac or Katy Perry song and even riff through Sisqó’s wild, one-hit wonder, “Thong Song”.

“How do you know that song?” they will ask in unison with utterly startled looks on their faces.

“Google+ c’est moi” I reply.

ends

Laughing through the pain – Race and Comedy

When is making race jokes acceptable? I talked to some Cape Town comedians who deftly turn our worst flaws and fears into hilarity.

Recently one of Cape Town’s most beloved comic sons, Marc Lottering, posted a tweet that read, “Cops just arrested beautiful, decent people on Camps Bay beach for consuming alcohol. White folk! What’s this world coming to?”

The quip, gently parodying race in the province, is evidence that if there is one space South Africans feel comfortable enough to confront this incendiary topic, it is through humour.

Race may be a minefield, but it is also a goldmine for Cape Town’s comics if the jam-packed parking lot at the Baxter Theatre in Rondebosch – where most of the top comedy names perform – is anything to go by.

Top dog at the moment is Nik Rabinowitz a white, Jewish, Xhosa-speaking comic who combines political satire and stand-up in his routines.

Rabinowitz deftly navigates the complexities and nuances of power and racial stereotyping by “straddling”, as he puts it, a safe middle ground.

“Usually conversations about race or religion in South Africa are polarised into right or wrong, good or bad. I think humour offers a comfortable middle ground. Not everyone agrees with how I do it though. Often I get criticism from white lefties or Joburg intellectuals who say ‘you can’t do black accents like that’ or people who call into Redi’s show (Redi Thlabi’s slot on 702 where Rabinowitz presents the weekly Week That Was) and say [to her] ‘you are a coconut laughing with this racist”.

Rabinowitz plays with notions of racial identity using sometimes-absurd devices, for example how a dog in Sea Point barks differently to a dog in Athlone or Guguletu.

He gets away with it because he is an “insider/outsider”: for example he will try to get white English-speaking audience members to pronounce “difficult” Xhosa names like former SAA boss Khaya Ncqula, while drawing Xhosa-speakers in on the joke by translating it into a series of wild clicks that clearly mean something else entirely.

A few years ago the sold-out comedy show, Three Wise Men, directed by David Kramer and featuring Rabinowitz (a Jew), Riaad Moosa (a Muslim), and Lottering (a Christian) allowed “mixed” Cape Town audiences to laugh WITH and not AT specific stereotypical characters and the hilarious assumptions they made about each other.

Ventriloquist, Conrad Koch, who is also a social anthropologist, is another white comedian who is able successfully to negotiate the complexities of race using a “coloured” puppet, Chester Missing, who has become a well-known character on the LNN with Loyiso Gola on e-tv.

“For Chester to work he needs to be of a higher status than me and that way I can undo assumptions people make about race.”

Chester constantly complains to Koch about being controlled by white people or Koch in particular and gains the audience’s empathy in his attempts to escape this.

For Capetonian Stuart Taylor whose show, Money’s Too Tight To Mention, opens at the Market Theatre in Joburg at the end of March, race features more co-incidentally than deliberately.

“It’s not something I focus on but it’s there in the stories I tell. The reason why comedians can get away with a story involving race is because we don’t have an agenda while a politician always does.”

Lottering says that when he started out 14 years ago race featured much more prominently in his routines but audiences now seem to be “over it”.

“Before, I’d do something along the lines that coloured people love chip rolls while white folk tuck into a lovely summer salad.  When I threw things like that around on stage, South Africans laughed along with me.  They were not stories with fantastic punch lines, but merely exaggerated observations.  I now find that I no longer spend so much time talking about different race groups. My stories (I think) are now more about funny South Africans, rather than funny coloureds, blacks or whites”.

 

For Shimmy Isaacs, one of the few black women on the comedy circuit, who hails from the small town of Worcester, the laughs are more about “cultural differences” than race.

 

In her autobiographical comedy show, Allie Pad Funny Worcester, Isaacs hilariously recounts her working-class mother’s fury when she invited a new white friend to dinner. Isaacs talks the audience through her household’s tradition of “portions” (because of tight budgets) in relation to the “help yourself” buffet she encountered at her white friend’s home.

 

“I think that people understand each other’s cultures more so I like to think my humour is based on the observations I make about difference seen through this lens. I think you can make people uncomfortable if you mention race,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

A man for All Seasons

The opening to the President’s speech that he didn’t make…

State of the Nation Address By His Excellency Jacob G Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa, at the Joint Sitting of Parliament, Cape Town

Friends, Romans, countrymen, compatriots, comrades, compradors, tenderpreneurs, champagne socialists, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, apparatchiks, back stabbers, neo-liberals, axe-grinders, plutocrats, deployees, counter-revolutionaries, cronies, tax dodgers, crypto-fascists, democrats, constitutionalists, fear mongers, feminists, homophobes, bloody agents, Maoists, muckrakers, neo-conservatives, religious fundamentalists, environmentalists, quislings, reactionaries, racists, cosmopolitans, pan-Africans, securocrats, professional blacks/whites, spineless liberals, tree huggers, ultra leftists, activists, useful idiots, young lions, sushi eaters, tax payers, Helen Zille, ladies and gentlemen…..

Dumelang, good evening, goeie naand, molweni, thobela, heita, hoezit, sharp, sharp.

Thank you Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly and the Honourable Chairperson of the NCOP, for this opportunity to share with fellow South Africans and international guests our review and programme of action for this year.