Find five wrongs

Sorry I'm not updating this blog much, but it's cold here - bloody snowing in Johannesburg - and NOTHING happens here in winter. Well, except for the incessant cold fronts tipping lots of rain on me. But then, a friend sent me this photo from some random Web 2.0 upload-your-own-shit website. And I knew I had to say SOMETHING.


Now take a good loook at it. I swear I have no idea where this photo comes from, or who took it. But look. Look closer.

I thought at first that some kids had been to some formal do, spent all night drinking Hooch (does anybody drink Hooch anymore or have I just dated myself horribly?) and then struck gold with their digital camera on the way home in the morning. But nobody would be wearing a tied bow tie after 12 hours on the piss. So this must be BEFORE the party.

What is going on? Anywhere you start - the guy, the van, the police - you just end up somewhere that doesn't make any sense. But nothing beats the sowing machine. Was it salvaged from the van? What's in it? Cake? Gold? Is that why the chap in the foreground looks so chuffed? Or is this a weird sadist about to chuck it into the swollen river, containing his pet hamster? What? WHAT????

There, now I'm feeling nauseous again. I have to stop looking at this picture. I haven't felt this affected by art since seeing Damien Hirst's decomposing tapestry of dead flies in the Guggenheim. Somebody should call Charles Saatchi.

Media Mole at the World Economic Forum

Since I'm going to be busy over the next few days getting the anniversariy issue of RA ready, I brought the Media Mole with me to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town to entertain you during my absence. - L

Media mole in the hizzouse! Yo, finally the author of this blog has allowed some talent onto these pages. World Economic Forum in Cape Town, check us out. At the CTICCTICCTTICC, fo sho!

Registratioooon... Hello pretty lady! Mole, Media - yes that's me, darling, the mole with the mostest.

Wow, you get a World Economic Forum laptop bag for free and gratis. Ka-ching! Unfortunately, we journalists lose out on the WEF tie, the WEF pen, the WEF sunhat and the WEF Wunderbaum (smells of cold, hard cash) that the real participants get to finger. Not to mention the WEF MoneyMaker. I don't even know what one looks like but I sure as hell know that most of the people round me couldn't wear the suits they do without it.

The WEF laptop bag - own it

So this is the Davos of Africa. Low on the Gluhwein if so, in my humble opinion. But who listens to a mole? People watch, people watch... Wow, people are really a lot more attractive at the WEF than at the sciency jobs I usually get dragged along to. Maybe I should start hanging out with business reporters.

Opening press conference... It's the united colours of Benetton. That's right, keep the white man on the sidelines. Yam-di-dam. Have you heard the one about the Chinese, the Indian and the South African? They would never stop talking. Bla bla bla...

Molecam: Opening press conference

ZZZzzzz...

Wonder how Linda's doing. I'm bored. Look, she's scribbling away. Amazing, I don't understand a word. Are they even speaking in English? Yam-di-dam.

Hang on! Did that Chinaman just say that Africa was "backward"? Better check Linda's notes. Hey, move the pen! "Bla bla bla bla... we used to be backwards just like the African countries are today" HA HA HA! Why aren't people laughing? This is gold!

Yum-di-dum. Where's the cafeteria? Oooh, free sarnies! With smoked salmon and caviar! Wow, Africa must be a pretty rich country to be able to afford food this expensive. Bet they all eat like princes.

Holy smokes, look over there it's Coffee Annan! He's the most honest guy in the world, no flies on him. Just look how he takes a swipe at Senegal's President Wade about buying arms instead of seeds for farmers. Hmmm... He's really quite an attractive man, Coffee. Well-preserved. Wonder what he's doing tonight.

Now they're talking about hunger. Speaking of which, where are those sandwiches? They seem to have all vanished. 30 per cent of Africans are hungry. Whatever - what about me? I'm hungry too. A little bit of hunger never killed anyone.

Oops, now it's over. Coffee doesn't let on whether he thinks it's been a success. He should play high-stakes poker in Vegas instead of chairing agriculture commissions. And then give the money to Africa.

That's enough for this time. Linda needs to "file" a "story". That's what press releases are for, dumbass! Whatever. Later dudes and mofos. Media mole has left the building!

Girl cat... you'll be a woman soon

This weekend, you couldn't breathe in my humble flat for the female sex hormones flying around. And it wasn't me, I'd hasten to add, but the cat. That's right, my baby has become a grown lady. And what a lady!

It started with some odd meowing and scratching at the door. But before I could look up 'cats on heat' on wikipedia, the formerly innocent kitten herself left me in no doubt as to what was going on. Hunkering down, she was giving me and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity what can only be described as a very Lindsey Lohan view of her charms while tapdancing with her hind paws and purring like a tigress. Restricted to the balcony, she soon had a suitor circling below like some boho Romeo to her brazen take on Juliet

Wherefore art thou down there, Romeo?

Pole dancing Juliet - rated XXX

This all troubled me, since sterelisation of lady cats is neither cheap nor the work of a swift nick with a scalpel. I could take the cost, but what would the cat's real owner say if she found her with a big scar on her belly and a 18th century ruche collar to stop her performing unintentional hara kiri trying to scratch at the stitches?

There were other complications. The owner (I've spoken to her now, by the way - she knows the cat hangs out with me a lot, but not that I've fed her) namely thinks that she's a he - a Tomcat. I don't know how blind you have to be to think that, but there you go. Now, I can't really tell her that the bergies done it, can I? Not without kicking up a neighbourhood feud.

It was all resolved peacefully this afternoon, if somewhat sadly. Finding the real owner at home (for a change) I went over and knocked only to be greeted by a 'Hi, where is my cat? She keeps running away.' Hoping that my blush would pass for rosy cheeks on a brisk winter's day, I told Her Holy Blonde Absentee Catownerness that her cat was a she, that she needed a vet, and that she was being gang banged around the corner (which turned out to be true). That seemed to shut her up.

Alas, it also meant that She-Who-Is-Hated-By-Cats locked my baby up until Friday, when she'll go to the vet. So I won't see her until then - and who knows how long it will take her to get well after the op. Frankly, I miss her. And I know she misses me. Maybe I can smuggle her little kitty treats through the kitchen window when the Wicked Witch is away. She may hold the key to my baby's fortress, but I hold the key to her heart!

Complex systems

This week's award for wasted effort goes to Pick'n'Pay (the South African supermarket chain whose name had my sister in stitches after she was subjected to it and those of the toy shops Tinka Tonka Toys and Plinka Plonka Play in the space of ten seconds when she arrived last October) and it's "organic" range of fruit and vegetables. After painstakingly unwrapping the cling film that swaddled the styrofoam plate that held my organic avocado in bundles of four on the supermarket shelf, I felt about as environmentally friendly as Halliburton on a cold day.

Wrapping with avocado

Wrapping without avocado

It's a funny old country. And not so old, come to think of it. But what it lacks in age it makes up for in complexity.

There are many stories worth listening to about South Africa. One of the most worthwhile is of course that about the struggle led by Mandela and others to free the country from its Apartheid opressors. Another is the tale of the HIV/Aids epidemic and its victims. A third is about the disenfranchisement of the white South Africans and their loss of identity. There is the story of the growing upwardly mobile black middle class. And there is the crime.

What still confounds me after over a year down here is how all these stories fit together. Mandela would have us think of new South Africa as a weave, where many strands make one strong whole. Some days, I think that sounds feasible - as long as it's liberally strewn with the social glue that is money and wellbeing. Others, I'm determined it's not.

Maybe it's just me. But I have a growing feeling that this disjointedness that I feel is not superficial, that it goes right to the core of new South Africa.

If it does, that would mean the new South Africa is inherently unstable, just like the chaotic systems we studied in the final year of my maths degree in London. In those systems, prediction was inherently impossible because uniform small events could have arbitrarily small or large effects - in the same way that when a small tremor occurs along a faultline in the Earth's crust, you can't say how big the earthquake will be because the earthquake itself doesn't know yet.

Take the new South African consitution. It's one of the most progressive in the world, making all men and women equal regardless of race, gender, creed etc. But, watching television on a rainy Wednesday you will realise that the VAST majority of South Africans are almost militantly set against the constitution on at least one - often several - points. People from rightwing christians to traditional tribal healers come out all bleary eyed and wonder what all this is about... "Gay marriage? I didn't know that buggery was legal, even!" and so on.

Rocks rolling down a hillside. *Plod Plod* South Africa wins the 2010 World Cup. *Plod* Zuma, despite everything he's been accused of, soars on the Zulu vote. *Plod* The government introduces a HIV/Aids plan. *Plod* A white middle-aged couple is murdered in bed, causing all their closest friends to think about moving to Australia. *Plod*

Some of the events seem positive, some negative. All seem too small to cause cataclysm. But they are all the same in a critical system, perpetually poised on the verge of a rock slide. And so predicting the future of this country, at this time, is about as futile as me trying to rid the loan-cat of fleas. It sounds like a cop out, but isn't really. Because like with the fleas, the fact that it's impossible isn't discouraging me, or anyone else for that matter, from trying.