Tim Richman and his co-author Grant Schreiber have gone far with their Kak books, which now, with Complete Kak! The Comprehensive Whinger’s Guide To South Africa And The World, number no fewer than four (don’t forget to count Is Dit Net Ek Of Is Als Tos?).
Let’s face it: the books are funny. They’re crass, to be sure, and they respect very few boundaries – cross-reference the first entry below with the third for a taste of just how catholic the offense-giving can be – but they also elicit sniggers, chortles and smiles of recognition.
In short, you can blow off steam with the Kak books. This one boasts “50% more material and 500% more exclamation marks” and will be launched on Friday. (It also has a strapline: bow-chikka-wowow! – which is code, I think, for “put on your kak-porn goggles before proceeding”.) Here are the first five entries:
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AA
Something new and interesting to kick off Complete Kak!, you ask? Throw in a banana kick and start with those badly dressed Automobile Association technicians or the party poopers at Alcoholics Anonymous? Of course not. How could we not start with Affirmative Action? It’s big, it’s bad and it’s not budging. Complete kak? You betcha.
About the only thing that’s changed about Affirmative Action in South Africa in the last few years is that we now have black people complaining about it. And an Mbeki, no less – albeit the one that white people approve of. In his book Architects Of Poverty Moeletsi Mbeki argues that AA and BEE are in their current forms not practical solutions to growing the economy, creating a black middle class or trickling wealth down to the poor. Not quite the same line of thinking as your average white guy being told “Pale male, bottom of the scale”, but another opinion to add to the list. Because everyone’s got one. And they all end up tweaking someone else’s nipples.
“AA policies are necessary to uplift underprivileged ‘previously disadvantaged’ black South Africans from generations of repression and lack of opportunity…” Tweak.
“Affirmative action is even applied to university entrance requirements these days – to teenagers who weren’t yet born when Nelson Mandela was let out of prison…” Tweak.
“South African business hierarchy resembles a cappuccino: black on the bottom, white above, with a sprinkling of black right at the top. Without employment equity nothing will change…” Tweak tweak.
“Affirmative action is hypocritically based on the colour of a person’s skin – it’s as racist as any apartheid policy…” Tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak…
Maybe it’s the cynical application of AA legislation by window-dressing big-money corporations that rubs you up the wrong way. Or it could be the huffy white boys fresh out of varsity complaining that jobs aren’t just landing in their laps; or the way affirmative action has been implemented with far more enthusiasm and good intention than common sense and forethought. For many, it’s the great, big irony that those who suffer the most due to the failure of basic service delivery are the poorest of the poor – that is, the previously disadvantaged who are supposed to be benefiting the most.
For me, it’s the four months I’ve been waiting for my new ID. That’s AA’s fault, right? Or is it corruption? Or just incompetence? Speaking of which…
Actions without consequences
Corruption and incompetence may be universal, but the notion of having to suffer the consequences if you’re caught apparently isn’t. Certainly that idea doesn’t seem to fly much in SA these days.
In the UK you can’t be speaker of parliament any more if you’re deemed to have abused your expense account. In China they execute you for getting the lead content of the baby formula wrong. And in Japan you’re expected to disembowel yourself, or at least jump to your death, if you dishonour your family and country.
But shame and contrition are far down the list of reactions when our local bigwigs screw the pooch. Lie to parliament and no-one bats an eyelid. Grossly mismanage your ministerial portfolio and all’s well. Run a state-owned enterprise into the ground and you don’t even have to say sorry. Hell, if you head up Armscor they’ll bail you out to the tune of half a billion rand the one year and give you an 89 percent pay raise the next; if you’re CEO of the Road Accident Fund you’ll get a R2.1-million “performance bonus” despite the fund being R40 billion in debt; and if you effectively commit HIV-related genocide while Minister of Health you’ll get off with the odd newspaper caricature, a new liver and a smattering of international ridicule.
Then there’s the genuinely illegal stuff: corruption, cronyism, fraud, kidnapping of teenagers, that kind of thing. Get caught with your hand in the till and you can feel hard done by for being the fall guy while everyone else gets away with it. Don’t fret, Tony Yengeni, your prison sentence will be slashed to a couple of months in minimum security and you’ll have a decent supply of Armani suits while you’re in there. Back on the ANC’s National Executive Committee in no time!*
And if your name’s Schabir Shaik, well, the nation owes you an apology for the undue stress and discomfort you’ve endured while sleeping on a hospital bed and eating takeout before your comrades organised you a medical parole. Luckily you had a spot of high blood pressure rather than Aids-induced pneumonia! Enjoy the Struggle-like kudos you’ll no doubt have thrown your way until your dying day. And do let us know when that is. We wouldn’t want to miss it.
Here’s a parting truism for you and your cronies from PJ O’Rourke (which you may think is way past its sell-by date): “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
* Less than a year after getting out of jail! And more than three years before he was due to be released according to his original sentence.
Afrikaans music
On more careful consideration of that last entry right there, perhaps, in a more abstract or ethereal sense, it’s not always such a bad thing that actions do not always lead to deserving consequences. Because if there were genuinely such a thing as karma it is hard to see how the universe would not conspire to send a giant asteroid to the earth to eliminate all the creators and listeners of Afrikaans music. Being as they are dispersed across our entire country, this would necessitate a particularly large lump of extraterrestrial rock striking somewhere in the Free State, which in all probability would be the end of the rest of us. But sometimes, when I consider the extraordinary popularity of Afrikaans music, it occurs to me that the asteroid, despite its obvious drawbacks, may actually be the best solution.
The world is indeed a vexatious place that it lets bonehead beats rule the South African music market as they do. I’m not talking about boeremusiek here. You know, okes on accordions singing liedjies and having a jol. They’re fine. Well no, they’re not fine. They’re horrendous, and choosing between listening to them or listening to a Celine Dion/Barbra Streisand duet* would be like choosing which arm you’d like sawn off. But because you never hear them unless you physically venture out beyond the Boerewors Curtain, they’re not much of a bother. Unlike Afrikaans music, which is huge! And it finds you! At the rugby, in shopping malls, during commercial breaks…
Someone please enlighten me as to how albums like Langarm Sokkie Dansklub Treffers and that annual Bokjol Somerpartie monstrosity can afford so much prime-time advertising space. And why Steve Hofmeyr is such a god in this country. And how Bok van Blerk can fill Loftus Versveld to the brim with demented fans by singing about a Boer general with a rhyme-able name. And how the gelled-hair, open-shirt, kak-music, cheeseball-male-singer formula works. Van Blerk, Kurt Darren, Nicholis Louw, Jaco, Robbie Wessels, Robbie Klay – are these guys the same person in disguise? Or are they Steve Hofmeyr’s illegitimate kids, genetically modified by Wouter Basson to send out subliminal messages that hypnotise unsuspecting young Afrikaners?
Probably Wouter’s fault. Daai kabouter.
* Which exists, by the way. It’s called Tell Him. The Americans used it as part of their torture repertoire at Guantanamo Bay. I imagine.
Agents
Few people know this, but the term “agent” is actually an abbreviation of the phrase “agent of the devil”. Yes, this is true. And it’s quite logical if you think about it. Estate agents, recruitment agents, celebrity agents – they have no soul, morals or conscience, hence they are clearly minions of the Prince of Darkness. The least evil of all agents are secret agents; as in the people who spend years learning the dark arts of espionage in order to assassinate, murder and maim without conscience. Those other agents: far worse.
Note that travel agents are not necessarily pure evil, as such, but they make up for this through sheer incompetence.
Airline weight allowances
Of the many factors that can contribute to making air travel a thoroughly unpleasant experience – the queues, the delays, the body-search violations, SAA – the two worst must surely be excess-baggage costs and sitting next to fat people.
Having to pay extra because your bag is over the permissible weight might be understandable if the fuel-to-weight ratios were as critical as when, say, a rocket ship is sent into lunar orbit. But they are not – as is clearly evident when you see the inevitable selection of gargantuan passengers gravitating towards your airline counter. Here I am paying a R48,000 fine for being a couple of kilograms overweight, and there’s Larry Lardass checking in his titanic butt without any penalties. It’s an outrage! Given the current ludicrous arrangement that sees a one-ton wideload with 20kg of luggage in the clear, while a svelte lady carrying 30kg has to take out a second mortgage just so she can bring her makeup kit on holiday, it defies logic that passengers aren’t weighed together with their bags like they were in the good old days. If this gets me steaming, I can’t imagine how the anorexic chicks must be feeling.
Oh the cruel irony of those fateful flights when you’re pinged for an overweight suitcase and then get seated between a couple of heffalumps for 11 hours. Naturally, they both fall into catatonic sleep seconds after nomnomnomming their way through dinner, leaving you trapped and cowering while your TV screen malfunctions and a teething baby wails away in front of you. With flabby arm-rolls invading your miniscule territory, engine failure is just a heartbeat away.
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- Complete Kak!: The Comprehensive Whinger’s Guide To South Africa And The World by Tim Richman, Grant Schreiber
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EAN: 9781920137298
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