“It hasn’t featured outside of SA”

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One of my Facebook friends (peace be upon them) had shared this News24 piece, replete with The Arch being more Tut Tut than Tutu over the recently delivered Nkandla report (featured here) and suggesting that the government had “humiliated SA”.
At least, the Facebook friend suggested, it is:

Good to know someone respected world-wide is on the side of the “average” SA citizen.

And, I suppose it is.

But then there was this comment in reply*:

It hasn’t featured outside of SA once again. Zuma doesn’t give a monkeys because Zuma is well aware of the fact that International media have wiped their hands of SA.

“It hasn’t featured outside of SA”? Really?

Apart then, from er… the BBC:

South Africa’s ‘brazen cover-up’ of Zuma’s home upgrade

And The Sydney Morning Herald (and with it, The Brisbane Times, Western Australia Today (good news for those in Perth), The Age and The Canberra Times):

‘The pool is for fire safety’ and other Jacob Zuma renovation excuses

Sans oublier RFI – ‘Les Voix Du Monde’:

Ceux-ci ont estimé que le rapport du ministre de la Police est « biaisé » et inconstitutionnel, puisqu’il ne prend pas en compte les recommandations de la médiatrice de la République.

Of course, the fugly (but sadly, well read) Daily Mail didn’t miss out:

South Africa’s president has been cleared over using £15million of public cash to add a swimming pool and visitor’s centre to him home because the new features are actually security measures.

Elsewhere in the UK, The Daily Telegraph:

Police claimed expensive swimming pool was necessary in the event of putting out a fire on his sprawling taxpayer-funded estate

While the Middle East was covered by The Gulf Times:

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko said on Thursday that an investigation found that the president is not liable to repay any of the public funds spent as the improvements were in fact security features.

I could continue, but I think I’ve already shown that the allegation that SA has dodged an international news bullet simply by the president being routinely crap is, at best, misplaced. Zuma et al. don’t give a monkeys not because they think their actions will avoid international exposure, but simply because they have gone beyond the point of caring what people think of them.

Because, as I mentioned in that post last week:

We seem to have crossed yet another line of pisstakery with today’s events.

It seems hard to believe that Zuma and his cronies are capable of anything more ridiculous than we saw last week. However, having said that, ironically, we had said that previously and yet they continue to confound us and outdo themselves time and time again.

But that “it hasn’t featured outside of SA” line?
No. The damage is still being done with every step of breathtaking hubris.

* I’m choosing to ignore the grammatical disaster of the gratuitous “of”.

Rain

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There was a hint a few years back about a new law in SA which prevented anyone – well, anyone without appropriate qualification, anyway – from publicly commenting on upcoming bad weather. This was obviously a hugely important step in a country where the discussion of upcoming poor meteorological conditions has topped the lists for both most serious and most prevalent crimes for the past decade. Time to end this heinous behaviour.
Here’s Ivo’s view on it.

To be honest, I’ve no clue if that law was ever passed, and thus I’m not willing to stick my neck out and suggest that there may be excessive precipitation headed towards Cape Town on any particular day in the near future. Like, Wednesday, for instance. Simply, I can’t say if that’s going to happen.

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It would surely be even more foolhardy of me to do some rudimentary calculations by adding up some apparently random numbers…

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…perhaps including 6.4, 10.7, 13.3, 12.7, 4.6, 6.6, 7.1 and 5.6, and then gasp in amazement and concern that the total of those digits is 67. And were that the number of millimetres of rain to fall in any given 24 hour period, that would be quite a bad thing for wherever it fell on. Especially if some of that place was already at high risk for landslides following large veld fires earlier in the year.

Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going to happen, of course. In Cape Town. Throughout Wednesday.

Because I’d be risking arrest if I told you that.

Cows can wait

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I was going to tell you all about the cows that invaded “my” suburb of Sheffield over the weekend.
And I also had a paint-by-numbers politics post in mind.

But then tonsillitis hit our younger one and everything went south.
And geographically-minded readers will be well aware that there isn’t much south of here. Serious stuff, then.
Thus, let’s look for a quota photo.

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Here’s the back of Table Mountain after this weekend’s (much needed) rain: the multiple cascades which end up running through Newlands Forest, into the Liesbeek River, into the Black River and then into Table Bay – as if it isn’t full enough already.

I need to get a (strictly medicinal) brandy now and head off to bed early. Experience dictates that it’s unlikely to be an undisturbed night. As for you – well, you already have a clue about what’s likely to be on here tomorrow. Take it or leave it.

Good night.

Massively disappointing volcano

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Yeah – after this, that might come as a surprise. But wait, there’s more. This massively disappointing volcano is also in Iceland, home of exciting stuff like whale-hunting tourism, puffin pie and the Best Landscapes In The World™.
Iceland doesn’t do “massively disappointing”. Or rather, it didn’t, until now.

Imagine my excitement upon reading this headline:

The view from inside Iceland’s Thrihnukagigur volcano

Thrihnukagigur – still way up in the top 50% of Icelandic volcanoes listed by ease of pronunciation. And now they’re going inside it:

I’m being lowered through the dome of a subterranean cathedral-like space. Above me, the volcanic crater is a small bright circle in a thin tube. Beside me rainwater runs down ripples of frozen lava and cascades into the quiet depths.

OMG! How cool? How HOT? But then anticipated amazement turns into that crushing, massive disappointment.
Because what it turns out to be is just a big cave.

Ugh.

And I’m not alone in thinking this way; even its discoverer – a local opthalmologist – was rather unimpressed:

On Midsummer Eve 1974 Mr Stefánsson was lowered down into it with the help of nine friends. He was really disappointed.”I dreamt about finding a drainage channel with lava falls, lava pits and formations, never seen by a human eye before,” he says.
Instead he found an expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, “like a stone quarry”, he said.

And, over the intervening 41 years, bugger all has changed.

Still, there’s a video of this expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, so click that link above and go and play.

Just don’t expect to be impressed.

Extreme

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I followed a Braam Malherbe vehicle in the traffic this morning. I have no idea if it was the Braam Malherbe vehicle or if there are other Braam Malherbe vehicles, but given that Braam Malherbe describes himself as:

A South African international motivational speaker, extreme conservationist, extreme adventurer, philanthropist, writer and educator.

you’d imagine that he’d probably have at least a jetski and an assault helicopter as well as a bakkie.

Basically, we’re looking at Lewis Pugh-lite here.

I’m concerned though. Is he not spreading himself a little thinly? Wouldn’t it be better to cut back on the range of activities he does and do them a bit better. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m suggesting that he’s not doing them well right now. Just that surely if he devoted a little more time to, say, the writing and the speaking, he could probably improve them both. Makes sense, no?

Also, what is “extreme conservation”? I find the idea rather discriminatory against less extreme, but equally endangered species.

“OMG Braam, the Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl has just been added to the red list!”
“That’s terrible, Penelope. What’s its primary habitat?”
“Well, the remaining 2 pairs live in the mountains just outside Somerset West.”
“Pfft. That’s nowhere near extreme enough. Let them die. Now, you got any more news on that Antarctic lichen? And get me a coffee – use those beans I brought back in that handmade snakeskin bag from that mountain in Mongolia.”

I’m guessing that’s probably what it’s like in his office most days. And that’s also why you’ll never see a Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl in Somerset West.

One of the reasons, anyway.

I’m sure that Braam Malherbe is a great guy, doing great things. I’m sure that he’d be even more famous than he already is if he’d only add “cold water swimmer” to his CV. And I’m sure that if he did do cold water swimming, he’d be more than willing to answer questions about the massive carbon footprint of his recent Seven Seas Expedition.