Sorry? What's That?!

No one likes to admit it when they are wrong. Most hate it even more at having to use those often-dreaded 5 letters - S-O-R--R-Y, when confronted with moments of regret. So, when in one week, not one, not two, but three high-profile political figures, possibly confronted with attacks of conscience or simply desperate for survival, resorted to apologies to dig themselves out of their deep holes, then you must know, either something is wrong, or right, with the universe.
DA leader and Western Cape premier, Helen Zille, did the unthinkable (at least in political circles) and admitted she erred in referring to learners streaming into the province from the battered Eastern Cape seeking education, as refugees. Indeed it was a gaffe of note and it took the Iron Lady weeks to suck up the courage and show her contriteness; on national television nogal! I almost choked on  my tongue! Was this woman of steel really apologising... sincerely? Well, that's another question altogether. The fact she admitted she went too far is something for a politician, if you take into account the levels of arrogance we see in political leaders these days.
Floyd Shivambu, that now out-of-work ANCYL spin sangoma, also had to swallow generous doses of his ailing pride recently. He settled his long-standing hate speech case involving journo, Carien du Plessis, amid a tangible atmosphere of reluctance on his part. For this bigmouth to apologise unconditionally (even though you got the distinct sense he was doing it simply out of desperation) to a journalist, given the Leagues hatred of the media, is also no small feat. If I were du Plessis I'd include this Pyrrhic victory on my CV, that's how important it is for me, at least, to see any one of the merry bunch of wannabe ANCYL revolutionaries-cum-idiots show even an inkling of repentance.
Even the beret-donning, former league boss, Julius Malema, had to tuck his tail in between his legs. He reportedly begged for his ANC membership at Luthuli House after learning his expulsion is official and final. Oh to have been a fly on the wall, watching Jules grovel and plead, his usual belligerent attitude wounded beside him. As nasty as it sounds, I took great joy in this trio of political 'celebrities' having to show some humanity and display that they too are imperfect, like the rest of us, and are capable of making mistakes.
Should we see this as the latest political fad - showing some regret, uttering an apology, even putting on your best puppy dog face? Don't hold your breath. I'd love nothing more than President Jacob Zuma to address the country and admit he's wrong or he's failed in some areas of his leadership. Wouldn't it be pleasantly sobering to see more political leaders acknowledge, they too can err, often in a big way. I do fear, however, we may never see such displays of apologising for some time as entitlement, greed, wanton power lust and a detachment from reality seem to pervade South African politics, so much so these supposed holier-than-thou politicians have drifted away from reality into their worlds of selectivity and delusions.

Taping over my life

They rattle in their plastic encasings, fragile and unpredictable. They whir, warp, stretch and twist as easily as Cher's face. It's easy to see why cassette tapes longevity never quite reached the 21st Century. I recall many a time having to manually 'rewind' or 'forward' my cassette tapes with a pen or pencil, all the while carefully ensuring the 'tape' inside isn't condemned to an impossible knot of plastic fury making for consternated listening. The inaudible auditory deformations of sound that could emanate from a thoroughly abused tape left many a moron believing the devil was in the mood for making contact. This very fickle trait of the cassette helped pave the way for CDs and committed the once-loved tape to the annals of music history. But oh how I long for tapes, their many imperfections and seemingly endless nostalgia.
In 1962 Philips unveiled to the world the first compact cassette audio tape. Like cavemen discovering fire, I can only imagine the manic curiosity this rectangular invention incited. To this day I ask myself: How the hell do they put actual sound onto a magnetic piece of tape? My eyes rolled into the back of my head once as a mate tried to explain the mechanics of a cassette in high school. It was the music I was after, not convoluted explanations.
However, in my not-so-tender 30s I find my perplexion and curiously stimulated once again. My deep musical nostalgia has expanded from a now firmly galvanised passion for vinyl LPs to cassettes. My next mission - to find a functioning tape player. My aim - to re-ignite my somewhat mawkish musical desires for these beautifully imperfect devices.
Fast forward to mission accomplished. My wife's mother discovered her old CD/tape player (you gotta love moms) dating back to her teens and so this added to my desperate momentum to explore what would be a slice of my distant, dark, precarious almost completely forgotten adolescence. To my immense delight Nirvana's 'In Utero' whirred into action as I slipped the tape into the 'cradle' of the tape player, reintroducing my aging ears to a muffled, scratchy version of Kurt Cobain belting out 'Serve the Servants'. I was 15 again, enamored with mindless rage and rebellion, enthralled by all that was anti-establishment and boobs, of course. Once again I was sitting in my bedroom, my fortress against adulthood, memorising the lyrics to Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy', Rage Against the Machine's 'Freedom' and REM's 'Drive'. Play, stop, scribble, play, stop, scribble. Such haphazard transcribing led me astray with many a lyrics being contorted into incomprehension. The words 'A libido' in Nirvana's 'Smells like teen spirit' was construed as 'Allen Beedo'.
Mixed tapes were for the better part of the 1980s the equivalent of climbing a medieval castle's walls to reach your star-crossed lover, where soft words and sacharine emotions would be laid bare. Many a mixed tape, complete with soppy songs, cringe-worthy messages and drawings on the tape cover were given to girlfriends. Although I do believe at least a few girls I tried to woo in my teens were apparently rather taken aback at the inclusion of death metal outfit, Fear Factory, and industrial-meisters Ministry, on a few of my cassettes (listen carefully and romance can be heard in strange places). But through mixed tapes, awkward emotions could be given a voice, anger could be vented and imaginations awoken.
My late grandmother had a small yellow radio/tape player, one of only a handful of worldly possessions she still had in the last years of her life. My memory bank is littered with fond thoughts of my sister and I lying around the radio, colouring in, smacking each other amid constant teasing all the while listening aimlessly to tapes, as my Gran admonished us. That radio accompanied me through my teenage years and was later christened with tip ex, stickers and crudely-pasted pictures of Eddie Vedder and Jim Morrison.
It was via a roughly-handled tape I discovered Nine Inch Nails, The Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. An education in music, my tutor - the cassette tape.
When Radio 5 arrived on the frequencies of those of us condemned to the sticks and voids of small towns, so another chapter in my growing relationship with tapes and music was written. The other day, to my delighted amazement I came across legendary DJ Barney Simon's voice, urging me to 'Crack it up!' as Manic Street Preachers exploded onto the radio waves. I almost cried. My adolescence flushed back into my head. Simon may as well have narrated my youth as every single week night for over 5-years I couldn't tear myself from the radio. I was poised, blank tape loaded in the yellow radio. My finger stiff and alert, at the ready, lingering over the record button. Many a mixed tape were birthed through such crude means. During the great musical drought of the 1990s in South Africa, where the only bands and artists to found in music stores were 2 Unlimited and Ace of Base, I had only Radio 5 to save me.
In my re-discovery of tapes, I found myself toying with them, examining them, trying to decipher what I was thinking at the time when I scrawled 'Hatred is purity' on one such tape cover. Entire lives have been documented through music and the cassette tape. I doubt the same kind of sentimentality, as sickening as it can seem, will ever be properly replicated with CDs, as they were in the heady days of the tape. And that's why, as I placed the few tapes that have survived my childhood and life, back into storage, I found myself tenderly wrapping and enclosing them; a rudimentary means of preserving another music artifact. I hope to show the few I still have and which may survive to my future child. I expect a puzzled frown from the little sprog as I try to share this wistfulness. Future generations may not fully appreciate the tapes role in music, it's simple delight.

Hallelujah, Jules!

Whether Jesus ever did in fact come back from the dead is irrelevant in my heathen world. But read as a fairy tale (have I got the Bible-bashers frothing at the mouth yet?) and considering Julius Malema's apparent detachment from reality (it's over, get over it already) I dare to conflate this long-held tale of Jesus's betrayal, death and resurrection with this enfant terrible of the ANC's own woes.
As many of us have been indoctrinated through Christian scripture, the last supper is painted as the scene of great drama, where the fruit of immaculate conception dined with his followers, broke bread, drank some wine and singled out his betrayer . Makes me wonder - were there any 'last suppers' for Jules? Judging from his ever-growing boep I'm sure he's had many an indulgent dinner, complete with Johnny Walker purple (or which ever fucking colour whiskey is most obscenely over-priced these days), lobsters, sushi and naked women-plates. Surely the whinging, soon-to-be former ANCYL leader shared a meal with his ex-pal, Jacob Zuma. But did his little brain (Julius's) ever ponder the prospect his one time mentor, surrogate father and hero would politically 'off' him? In the dog-eat-comrade world of SA politics the possibility, at times certainty, of your mates stabbing you in the back should never be too far from politicians' minds. At one stage JZ and Jules must have shared at least a few candlelit dinners together, staring lovingly into each others eyes, sharing political ideas, trading insider secrets on how to cling to power, influence friends and make even more enemies. Were soft, romantic words shared as they played with their food and may've precariously sucked up the same strand of spaghetti, which brought their lips dangerously close to a kiss (Lady and the Cramps) ? Was there profound, orotund religious-speak, on par with JC's prophetic, 'I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me'?.
Surely Jules must've had a vision of his demise? Perhaps an angel, clad in an ANC t-shirt (made in China, of course) descended from Luthuli House and bestowed upon him a message from upon high, 'Thou time is almost up, Comrade'.
Jule's believes he's being crucified. And maybe he is. Who knows or even cares these days. He will very likely be 'put to death'. His spear of destiny, dislodged from the ANC's emblem, may render him politically dead. It may also martyr him, much like Jesus was. This could see him rise from the dead to walk the earth and sow panic and march towards economic freedom once again, with his disciples firmly behind him, their eyes glazed over. In the Bible of politics, resurrections are abundant. Even JZ pulled a Jesus and now leads a country.

They doth protest too much

Tyres. Check. Rocks and boulders large enough to block roads. Check. Stones, assortment of other projectiles. Check. Pissed of attitude mixed with healthy ignorance. Check. Feeling peeved with the powers that be? Check. Got all of the above? Yes? Then you ready to go and spark up your very own 'service delivery' protest. Staging violent protests are South Africa's forte. The country, and more specifically the down-trodden, have perfected the art of throwing stones, burning tyres, committing arson, dancing in circles, singing and demanding things. The great majority of the country has been doing this for decades so why would they be experts in the field of protests. Name it, they'll demand it. Why? Because they often don't have it and they are sick and tired of promises. By 'it', of course, I'm referring to basic services, like running water. If you lived in a shack minus electricty, no water, sharing a toilet with 5 other families, filling a bottle with petrol and striking a match becomes the only voice which you believe will be heard amid suffocating poverty and stifling political arrogance. But let's never, ever forget, where there's a violent demonstration, there's also a politcal party lurking in the shadows, sometimes right out on the front line. No province knows this heady, precarious mix of pathetic politicking and genuine civil grievances better than the Western Cape. It's the land of the DA and the ANC and its pals will do almost anything to destabilise the province at the expense of the proverbial 'people' and their grievances. Take the recent explosion of violence in Grabouw, where a bonafide issue, that of inadequate education, was hijacked and morphed into an all-out race war. Do you think the individuals shown in photographs stoning, kicking and beating people because of their skin colour had an inkling of an idea of the real catalyst of the unrest? I'd bet a whole bunch of money if anyone had the balls to have intervened, to stop those 'protesters' to ask: Do you know what the real problem is in your community? You'd be met with blank stares, the smell of liquor and quite possibly an intolerant klap. I'm not for a second saying other politcal parties aren't capable of fomenting violent protests to further their own myopic means? Where's there's politics, there are always looming problems? However, where there's petty jealousy and resentment among rival parties (the Western Cape and it's DA/ANC rivalry) there's always going to be ambiguities around the cause of protest action? It's not so easy to simply dismiss yet another violent march in an informal settlement as the have- nots yet again venting their anger over still not having anything. Look behind the curtain and there'll more than likely be a 'political leader' instigating uneasiness, playing on communities frustrations in the name of his/her party. Why? It has nothing to do with taking on a cause in the interests of the people. It has everything to do with idiocy and narrow-minded ulterior motives, where genuine issues are lost in the dirty details of politics. Political groupings with think nothing of instigating all out chaos. They trade on the poor and trample on the real issues.