Carnivorous Cow

"Is Julius Malema the secret love child of Jacob Zuma and Winnie Mandela?" Bronstein asked the Cow.

"Not as far as has been acknowledged in the media," the Cow shrugged, "though between the father of the nation and the mugger of the nation, anything's possible!"

"Just wondered," Bronstein sighed. "He's got all the strategic ineptitude of uZami, and all the fatuous charisma of uMalume.  Either that, or he just hatched under the stupid bush."

"Perhaps," the Cow conceded. "But he hasn't imploded yet... He's appealing the hate speech verdict."

Bronstein collapsed laughing. "I never thought I'd hear the phrase, 'Julius Malema is appealing', in any context!" he guffawed. 

"Well, he clearly can't recognise when a woman has a 'nice time' or not! Which suggests his media charm doesn't extend into the bedroom..." the Cow added. "Though I'm not sure how the fine is going to work, given that Malema's already told the taxman to nationalise the fortune he denies having amassed..."

Bronstein sighed. "There'll probably be a legal delay... or a series... until uMalume can push through Shabir Shaik's pardon, and give him time to find his cheque book and pen!"

The Cow thought this hoarding was too good to pass up:

 ("I wonder what 'Business Report' old Liz gave uMalume?", mused Gramsci...)

The Cow was bemused upon hearing that uMalume had decided to take on Steve Hofmeyr in the "Father of the Nation" stakes. "Surely he knew the press would relish the challenge?" she asked Bronstein. "They'll be commenting on his 'kak' shoes, next...."

Bronstein shrugged. "It's apparently none of our business how many children he spawns," he sighed, "though not everybody agrees with that view!"

"I suppose expecting consistency of one's leaders is a bit much," the Cow mused. "Urging people to practice safer sex, and then clearly engaging in some bareback activity himself..."

"Perhaps he had a shower afterward?" suggested Bronstein.  "If it kills HIV, it must kill semen?"

 "More likely he was sending a veiled threat to his new wife," the Cow proposed. "Showing how easy it would be to replace her, since he has all these women gagging for him!"

"Gagging, I can understand," Bronstein shuddered. "I can't understand how anyone would find something sexy if it looked like a rabid potato with false teeth!"

"Wasn't it Kissinger who stated that power was an aphrodisiac?" asked the Cow. "He must also have wondered how he ever got lucky! But..." she paused. "Of more concern to me is this new discourse of parenthood."

"You mean," Bronstein asked nervously, "uMalume's not going to stop spawning until he has literally fathered a nation?"

The Cow rolled her eyes dramatically. "No! Although, given his selection for the inner circle at Copenhagen, you'd think he'd be a little more sensitive to ecological issues than irresponsible overbreeding. But no, I was referring more to this framing of him by Malema as the Father of the Nation."

"Maybe Jules is setting him up for a blind date with the Mugger, uh, Mother of the Nation,  Jennifer Hudson?"

"You mean Winnie?" laughed the Cow. "Well, that's not too far off. I was thinking of the other national father - Idi Amin, Dada."

The Cow shuddered to Bronstein. "It was truly terrifying to behold," her voice quivered.

Bronstein tut-tutted sympathetically. "It's OK," he said tentatively, proffering a cup of tea. "Rooibos," he added, "with a hint of buchu and honeybush."

The Cow sighed. "Some problems are not soluble by tea," she explained patiently. She knew this was heresy to a Brit, but persevered nonetheless. "I'll just have to learn to avoid That Time of Day..."

...When the local schools let the local mini-mes out of their cages. And the local mothers armed themselves with their prams and went down to fetch them, before meandering around the local shop aimlessly while their mini-mes wreaked as much havoc as they could, in someone else's space, before they took the calmer versions home. 

"Not only," the Cow began, "do they insist on parking their prams where they can cause major obstruction from all angles, but they seem completely uninterested in providing any kind of supervision for the mini-mes! In fact, they don't even seem to notice they exist!"

"Which, no doubt, adds to the hyperactivity and attention-seeking," agreed Bronstein.

"Indeed." The Cow sighed. "But worst of all was the way the mini-mes were coughing and sneezing all over everything and every one, with no attempt whatsoever to keep their mucus or its inhabitants to themselves!"

Bronstein shuddered. "The media has been warning about a second wave of swine flu," he cautioned. "It's easy to understand why!"

The Cow nodded. "The population back home is about the same size, more or less," she gestured vaguely, "but the incidence and prevalence are far lower. Unsurprisingly. Kids back home are taught manners, and how to behave in public places! Yech!" She shuddered again. "It's apparently the same in the States, where the President was required to go on national TV to explain basic public hygiene behaviour!"

"Indeed," chuckled Bronstein. "It's quite amusing to see notices up in the cloakrooms of public places 'reminding' people to wash their hands!"

"Well," the Cow laughed, "soap and water can do wonders against viruses. It wasn't too long ago that another President was confessing that to be his preferred HIV prevention strategy..."

The Cow rolled her eyes as Twitter spat out the latest headlines. "The youth of today," she muttered. "Remember when we thought Fikile was an embarrassment? He's almost sane, compared to this Julius chap!"

Gramsci nodded sagely. "Those 'kill for Zuma' comments were just a little inflammatory," he agreed. "Especially in the current climate where there's all too much of that going on anyway!"

"Yes," the Cow sighed. "And Jon Qwelane's febrile ravings don't help much! If Julius is looking for someone to kill, uMalume has made his views on 'agtermekaar manne' all to clear on previous occasions."

"Do you think the bestiality insinuation was to get the cat-huggers on board to vote for uMalume?" Gramsci mused.

The Cow shook her head. "Julius has already blown off those types as irrelevant," she reminded him. "Though some liberal aunties bringing stew may be welcome when he's governing from jail, perhaps?" 

Gramsci chuckled. "Especially if it's goat stew," he added.  

"So why then," pondered the Cow, "did uMalume appoint one of the sisters doing it for themselves as premier in the Western Cape?"

"Well," Gramsci reminded her, "her former girlfriend was one of those Travelgate agents. He's probably hoping for parole terms like Yengeni's, and Soraya can can toss in a weekend or two away?" 

The Cow paused. "As long as she brings her kanga, it's all good for him, I guess."

"Women are a costly business!" the Cow muttered to Gramsci. "One moment the press is full of Shaik paying for uMalume's various wives and their spawn, and the next it's some other dubious character funding some other shady official's women and offspring!"

Gramsci skipped closer. "You mean," he whispered hoarsely, "Jackie Selebi?" Gramsci glanced nervously over his eight shoulders. In the Spy vs Spy saga between the cops and the good guys, anything you said was likely to be taken down and used in evidence against whomever was in the rifle sights at the moment.

The Cow nodded. "It seems so," she sighed. "His wife and girlfriend, as well as their kids, were the recipients of the latest dirty money aired in the press." 

Gramsci shook his head sadly. "Perhaps the State should be more like the Catholic Church," he suggested, "and only appoint the celibate?"

The Cow snorted. "Just think of the costs of defending all the paedophilia claims!" she retorted. "That's unlikely to work out cheaper!"

"I suppose we should be thankful it's druglords and not taxpayers funding it," Gramsci sighed. "Though i suppose we do end up paying for it, through the legal costs of the trials and the subsequent accommodation costs of the guilty."

The Cow shuddered. Shaik's accommodation and medical costs were probably enough to run a small Third World country - or at least, one whose leadership was getting its women and children funded elsewise.

"Still," she mused, "it would be interesting to know who funded uMalume's latest: the lobola, the wedding, and presumably the First-Lady-in-Waiting outfits."  

Gramsci chuckled. "I'm sure there are no end of applicants for that vacancy!" he mused. "After all, the next government will have lots of business on offer..."

The Cow was a little bemused. "Do  you think that was intentional?" she asked Gramsci, pointing to the lamppost bearing weekend newspaper hoardings. Directly beneath a Weekend Argus headline about Jacob Zuma was the Sunday Times's "Dumbest Crooks of 2007" headline.

Gramsci chuckled. "Perhaps he's realised Dave Bullard and Zapiro aren't going to hand over the R6 Million-odd he's demanding, so he's going for the man in the street - literally!" 

The Cow sighed. The uMalume soap opera was even longer running than Sewende Laan, and far less interesting, albeit with a cast of 218 planned for the new season. And the storyboard, well...

"R25 for a mini-valet for his car!" Gramsci announced. "You'd think they'd provide the contact details. Unless it was another 'special deal'?"

"Like Yengeni's discounted luxury vehicle?" the Cow mused. "Certainly possible. But how about all those kids' school and technikon fees? Do you think that is the estranged wives getting back at the absence of formal education uMalume boasts?"

 Gramsci shrugged, rippling a Mexican wave through his multiple shoulders. "The wife payouts are interesting, too. Nkosazana gets R22K over four years as a divorce settlement, whereas poor old Kate, for '24 years of hell', gets pretty much the same amount!"

"She was only 44 when she killed herself," the Cow noted. "She must have been 20 when they married. Her entire adult life, worth R23K!"

Gramsci looked up. "Do you think Shaik paid the lobola, too?"

The Cow chuckled. "If many of the payments to uMalume were allegedly 'loans', what was Shaik going to do if he defaulted? Repossess his wives?"

Gramsci blanched. "Perhaps that's why the man is in such a state of stress," he observed wryly. "He was afraid Sarafina and Co. were coming to stay..." 

The Cow was gobsmacked on reading a report on people's motivation for engaging in sexual behaviour. "Surprise, surprise," she announced to Gramsci. "It's because of lust!"

Gramsci looked up. "You mean," he asked incredulously, "people are having it off with other people... because... they want to?"

" 'Fraid so," admitted the Cow. "The study definitely seems to indicate that sexual attraction is what makes people want to get down on it."

Gramsci shook his head sadly. "What is the world coming to?" he sighed. "Sex as pleasure, not as obligation. How on earth would uMalume's argument fare in a court with that kind of knowledge available?

"Well," the Cow paused, "the researcher did admit that 'Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner...' - even if the differences were small. She suspected that the differences might be larger with a more elderly sample - which is where uMalume would fit in."

"Ah," noted Gramsci. "The socialising effect of age?"

"Perhaps," conceded the Cow. "But then again, there's a comment by a Dr Goldstein that 'the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.' Perhaps that may be relevant in uMalume's case, too? After all, he did peg 'normal' at fifteen minutes....?"

The Cow wasn't sure if it was an April Fool's joke or not, when she heard that uMalume was suing the Sunday Slimes for R6Million, following a couple of Dave Bullard columns wherein he allegedly alleged that uMalume was "stupid" and "dishonest". But, it appeared, the date of the report was coincidental. uMalume apparently needed the cash to bankroll his presidential campaign.

The Cow was just a little confused. "Surely the issue of his dishonesty was still sub judice, given that the corruption trial had yet to resume, at that point?" she asked Gramsci. "Despite all the prima facie evidence Bulelani Ncuka and others claim to have in their possession?"

Gramsci sighed. "Innocent until proven guilty" meant different things to different people, in his experience.

"But on the 'stupidity' allegation, there, surely, there can be no doubt?" the Cow continued. "After all, this is a man who believed a shower could protect him from HIV infection after unprotected sex with someone he knew to be HIV+, someone whose views on rape could most charitably be described as medieval, someone whose idea of good sex was 15 minutes with an inert, resistant partner..."

"But," Gramsci interjected, "Defamation has only tangentially to do with truth, and rather more to do with reputation. If his 'status, good name or reputation' have been adversely affected, he has a case!"

The Cow thought long and hard. "Surely," she asked, tentatively, "his actions rather than the reporting on them would have caused the damage? And an opinion piece - purporting to be opinion, rather than fact - could not be seen as detrimental to his 'status, good name or reputation', given that this would by that stage have been in tatters anyway?"

"Ah yes," chuckled Gramsci, "but it's not as sinister as you think! Dave Bullard asked uMalume to sue him, and uMalume simply obliged. Currying favour with potential voters, I reckon."

The Cow wasn't so sure. Perhaps a little bird had tipped uMalume off that he'd need the money after all, given that the Courts had OK'd the request for the contentious Mauritian documents. The taxpayer might finally get tired of forking out for all those legal fees, after all.

The Cow was disturbed to read that uMalume was again facing the prospect of prison. This time, it seemed, for something as prosaic as giving the tax man the finger.

The Cow has always been happy to pay her taxes, and since SARS introduced e-filing, even submitting tax returns has ceased to shake her bovine cheefulness. So she found uMalume's attitude a bit puzzling.

"It's the one State department that's actually efficient!" she sighed to Gramsci. "You'd think people would welcome the opportunity to engage with such a paradox!"

"Gmf! Only those with nothing to hide!" muttered Gramsci. He suspected that the jailing of uMalume's financial advisor may have led to some opacity in uMalume's understanding of his financial affairs.

"Still," the Cow said, "Surely it's all been aired in court, so he need only take out his paper scissors and cut out the media reports to submit those as the documentary evidence SARS wants in support of his submission?"

Gramsci chuckled at the thought of encrypted faxes and contested emails being stapled onto uMalume's IT2 in lieu of an IRP5. "He could always provide the URLs and do it by e-filing!" he suggested.

But the Cow's mind had drifted. "If he's found guilty, that constitutes a crime, right? And Willie Hofmeyr is allowed to seize assets used in the commission of a crime, not so? So... how do you rate the prospects of them auctioning off Shabir Shaik's brain on EBay to recover some of the expenses from these costly trials?"

Gramsci took refuge under the keyboard. It was a terrifying prospect. Britney's hair. Paris Hilton's miscarriage bill. Shabir's brain. And parents worried that their kids spent pocket money on drugs??

Gramsci retreated under the keyboard and took his head in his hands, muttering darkly. The Cow was rather more stoical about uMalume's reprieve, divided between relief that the judiciary still maintained enough independence from the State to toss out a bad, albeit politically convenient, case, and abject disappointment that the State seemed to employ prosecutors solely from the extended family of the Marx Brothers.

Gramsci had heard from his UK cousin Bronstein that reporting and comment in the UK media had all made a point of mentioning that the judge had stopped short of dismissing the entire case, merely dismissing the current indictment - something which hadn't enjoyed nearly the same prominence in local media. At least, not in the liberal, white-aligned media that tended to cross his attention span. Where most of the staffers were probably on the Net applying for jobs in other countries rather than picking up news off the wires, their partners at home packing up and selling off the suburban house with swimming pool and 2.2 children and electric fence, he assumed, a Zuma presidency now looking ominously imminent.

The Cow wasn't so sure. There were other contenders in the wings, younger, smarter, better looking. Mind you, she conceded, youth was neither here nor there, and pretty much anyone was smarter and better looking. Come to think of it, wasn't that what Miss South Africa was about, these days? Not just who looked best in a bathing costume, but who could most authentically convince the judge that they cared very, very much about world peace and starving children?

Gramsci emerged, looking hopeful. Perhaps the process of choosing a new leader might be interesting, after all - only, in the interests of world peace and celestial harmony, please don't ask uMalume to parade in a speedo...

The Cow has been quite depressed of late. While senior politicos weighed in with their affidavits in support of the State's case against uMalume, there was resounding silence across the sea concerning his cosmic twin. Had the connection been broken?

And then, earlier, she was pleased to hear from Gramsci's UK cousin Bronstein that Two Shags had gotten some press coverage at long last! Not for his amorous pursuits this time, or for his alleged corrupt activities... his current scandal was reportedly to have referred to the Bush administration's Middle East policy as "crap".

Carnivorous Cow was gobsmacked! While not exactly the observation of a genius, it nonetheless intimated that there was at large a politician with some residual inclination towards honesty.

It was Gramsci who pointed out that there was other reported evidence of Prezza possessing enough blood to operate both anatomical appendages cited by Robin Williams, albeit not simultaneously.

The Cow was overwhelmed. She was forced to consider that, just possibly, it might be Prezza's hint of integrity, and the whisper of an operational braincell, rather than his charm and good looks that drew women like a magnet to his (tax-funded) bedroom.

The possibility was terrifying. Did this mean uMalume was about to grow a braincell, too?

Poor uMalume! It seems he's so desperate for conspiracy and mistrust, he's had to fall back on his own resources to create some, if the City Press is to be believed.

Given his recent confessions of unemployability - which appear not to have dampened his ambitions for the presidency (anyone else spot a contradiction here?) - it appears that he's cast himself as a victim of some Vendetta or other... though the Cow is struggling to understand how failure to live within ones means translates as a conspiracy.

Gramsci wasn't much help in explaining, either. In fact, he was fuming against something altogether else. "Why are taxpayers putting up with it?" he demanded. "Not only are they paying for the State's less-than-optimally-competent legal team to prosecute, they're now footing the bill for the accused's defence, too! All of which comes at a considerable price tag - it's even bankrupted Shabir Shaik!"

"Which means," sighed the Cow, "we're paying for it three times. Remember where Shaik's money came from originally..."

Gramsci paled. "You're right," he muttered. "I'm beginning to think it is all a conspiracy. Only, the ANC succession war is only a side-show. The _real_ conspiracy is against the South African taxpayer, and the real beneficiaries are the lawyers!"

And, perhaps, a couple of second-hand corvette salesmen...

The Cow was still trying to make sense of it all. According to press reports, uMalume's legal team were "shocked" and "traumatised" to discover pornographic images (15 of them) among four million documents submitted by the State to the defence teams.

As the Cow understood it, this was the same legal team who represented uMalume during his recent rape trial. As the Cow remembers, the evidence led during that trial was fairly graphic at times. She could thus not understand why 15 images, alleged by one of the lawyers for Thint to have been of "the anatomy of women and men copulating", could have led to these hardened interrogators becoming "shocked" or "traumatised". Still, she hoped it instilled in them some belated sense of the shock and trauma they inflicted on the rape complainant.

"Perhaps," mused Gramsci,"it was educational material, given the clear gaps in uMalume's lovers lexicon?"

"And the viruses?" asked the Cow, referring to the riddled state of the hard drive in question. Gramsci was unfazed. "A shower will soon sort those out!" he shrugged.

 (More)

The Cow was shattered to see that uMalume was passing the hat around - or at least as far as the Office of the State Attorney - because he was "unemployed and broke", according to iAfrica.com.

She also found it rather perplexing. Given the millions he was claiming as compensation for defamation, she thought, he shouldn't have to worry where his next legal paycheque was coming from.

But then again... Perhaps he, like the rest of the country, knew that the claim was a huge joke which would achieve little beyond jamming the internet with another round of uMalume jokes. Perhaps his joking was merely to show us, after the trauma of the rape trial, that he was a good guy at heart, with an intact sense of humour?

But then again... These lawyers were the same lawyers he was begging money to retain. If he had such little faith in their ability to deliver on the defamation claims, how could he believe they'd spring him on the corruption charges?

It was making less and less sense. Perhaps, she thought, if she took a shower....?