Birds of a feather? On the weekend of the ANC’s biggest political challenge in its history, Jacob Zuma was away, palling with dictators. Power-shower Jake was in Equatorial Guinea, doing ... well, doing something with Brig Gen Teodoro Obiang Nguema — a man who declared himself a god in 1993 and is considered worse than Comrade Bob. So what could Jake, aspirer to eminence, want from a regime billed as "one of the most corrupt, tribal, oppressive and undemocratic" globally?
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When civil society types open their mouths, is it only so that the noise politicians are making can echo from their heads? The sale of the Grand Regency for Sh2.9 billion had people bouncing off walls. But talk of billions in health spending missing doesn’t even elicit a frown or a demand for explanation. And this in a nation where one in four slum children die before they turn five. No wonder Kriegler was so dismissive of "frauds"!
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The latest guys to plot to kill Barack Obama are nuts. Their plan wasn’t a sniper attack, like the drug addicts caught two months ago, but a low-tech drive-by shooting of the sort drug dealers favour. Dressed in tuxedos and top hats, and shooting from a moving vehicle these fools would be lucky to get within earshot of the 600 million-dollar-man whose Secret Service security detail rivals that of President Bush.
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Lawsuits against three journalists haven’t slowed South African media’s onslaught on Power-Shower Jake. But with an ANC youth leader threatening to "kill for Zuma" and him looking like the next president, SA has found jokes about him aren’t funny any more.
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And finally...
A tale of grandpa seeing double: A 65-year-old Austrian charged with drink driving drove to a police station to complain about the charge while drunk. The man had his driving licence and car keys first taken away from him after driving while over the alcohol limit. He went home for his spare keys, went back to the abandoned car and drove to police station to complain, earning a second charge!
palaver@eastandard.net
