The story that broke surrounding the millions of dollars stolen from Squirrel Ramaphosa’s farm raised countless questions.  Why does Squirrel deal in cash, and dollars nogal?  Why was this not properly reported to the police or a case opened?  Is it true that the suspects were effectively kidnapped – held for days against their will, without charge and not in police custody.  Was it $4 million as reported by Fraser, erstwhile head of the State Security Agency who has the skinny on everyone, or a more modest amount according to Squirel’s spokesman?  In fact, Iqbal Surve’s news group, who love to tell porkies, report $80 million!   And so on.  But the one that piqued my interest was why was the cash stored in a couch.  After much scratching of my head, I remembered my Afrikaans.  Apart from a bank being a bank, it can also be a desk or a bench and a rus bank is a couch.  There you have it.  I solved the mystery – they actually did bank the money.

Jokes aside, this is serious shit Cyril.  It is disgustingly similar to the December 2009 theft involving David Mabuza, then Mpumalanga Premier and now No.2 (and we know what that stands for) in the country.  The head of security told the Sunday times that R14 million had been stolen but that he only registered a case for R4 million as it would have raised eyebrows otherwise.  Officially though, the only case on the books is for R1200 registered on 23 December.  This case has never been resolved and has been allowed to die a quiet death.

It is blindingly obvious to everyone except the clinically obtuse that there are nefarious goings-on in both the Mabuza and Ramaphosa cases.  No one deals in that amount of cash unless there is something to hide.  The Zondo Commission made it abundantly clear that it was cash that greased the wheels of corruption.  Cabinet Ministers and a variety of Zuma appointed players were given golden showers of cash money in a variety of amounts, denominations and delivery methods.  With the Guptas, supplicants had to first pay homage by visiting the ‘Saxonwold Shebeen’ whereas Bosasa played Mr Delivery.  Bosasa also used braai packs as an alternative currency – messier and not as compact, but easier to launder.  Within a few days all evidence would turn to shit just like the tenders that the braai packs bought.

Corruption on the industrial scale that we have witnessed would virtually cease if two simple laws were enacted.  The first would prohibit cash payment if it exceeded a stipulated amount, say R20,000.  The second would deem cash in the possession of individuals and companies to be the product of criminal enterprise if it exceeded a certain amount and confiscatable by administrative fiat.  Exemptions based on typical cashflows could be applied for. 

I’m very disappointed that Squirrel has his nuts in a vice and it looks like his smalla-nyala skeletons are coming out of the furniture.  It’s not that I think that he’s a great President, it’s just that he’s the best of a bad bunch.  I shudder to think of a future with any other senior ANC member.  They’re either corrupt, ideologically bankrupt or clowns like Mbalula.

What mirror did Port Elizabeth break?  It’s been in the grip of a drought for seven years now.  Worse still, for 28 years it’s also been in the grip of a useless municipality that shouldn’t be allowed to run a spaza shop, let alone a modern city.  The Bus Rapid Transport system that was hastily established to burnish PE’s image as a modern metropolis for the 2010 Soccer World Cup has gone nowhere and the buses parked.  The main Library had roof leaks in 2014 and closed up shop.  A refurbishment program was initiated which, with luck, might be completed this year.  Why should the response to the water crisis be any different?  With less than a month before Day Zero, one recent official response by the head of the Water and Sanitation Department, Barry Martin, is to pray for rain.  Ja, right!

Overlaying this Act of God, or whatever deity you choose, is the Act of Man or the lack thereof.  For the last year, my penpal (a bit of an old school word, I know) who inspired this piece has kept me apprised of the water situation in Lorraine and surroundings.  Hardly a week has gone by without water being cut off for days while some emergency repair was undertaken on the crumbling infrastructure.  In fact as I write this, 26 suburbs in Port Elizabeth were out of water today due to a burst pipe at Churchill Dam.  Compounding this Act of Man has been another, namely the copper theft at pump stations.  Vandals, it must be said, will never unionise as they don’t sleep on the job, they willing exceed 40 hours per week and happily do night shift.  The overall effect, of course, has been a huge uptick in gym membership in other areas for the sole purpose of a free shower.

Cape Town faced its own existential crisis a few years back.  More than a year before we were staring down the barrel of Day Zero, a massive publicity campaign was launched to keep the city updated on the situation and citizens cajoled to save water.  A daily water dashboard was published giving current water consumption, graphs of the trends with targets and the various dam levels.  The most effective measure though was to raise the water tariffs to extortionist levels early on and this was what probably saved the city blushes more than anything else. 

In the absence of an effective official response in Port Elizabeth, the residents have taken the initiative themselves with water tanks growing like pestilential weeds in the courtyards of middle-class houses.  This is not cheap and prices seem to range from about R7 000 – 13 000 for a small installation as everyone jumps on the only growth industry in town.   Obviously, this leads to a fair amount of tank envy as everyone compares sizes of their equipment and their ability to pump.  Catholics are lucky as they can easily assuage their guilt each Sunday.  “Forgive me Father for I have sinned.  I have coveted my neighbour’s tank and been having wet dreams and shameful thoughts.” Tank you!

Who would have thunk that a silly but harmless little computer game would cause a rift between the two greatest English-speaking nations.  I refer of course to Wordle.  The outbreak of linguistic war between the Old and the New Worlds has its genesis in the fact that the game’s developer, Josh Wardle (believe it or not) is a Welshman who sold his Celtic soul when the New York Times bought his program.

First, the normally phlegmatic Brits provoked a trans-Atlantic twar when they complained bitterly about the American spelling of the word HUMOR on the 9^th of February. Little did they know that the word, humor, was used extensively in Old English.  In the Middle Ages, they believed that a person’s health and disposition were the result of a balance of four fluids in the body – blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.  These fluids were called humors and there was nothing funny about them.

On the 24^th of February the New York Times evened things up with the wordle of the day being BLOKE.  This time it was the turn of the Americans to spew bile, both the yellow and the black varieties and probably indulge in a bit of bloodletting too.  To them, a bloke is just a guy but that does not signify to the Brits as they killed that Guy off with extreme prejudice on 5 November 1606.  A few days later Wordle had the poor Americans up in alms again with the word RUPEE.  “It’s not even an English word,” was one of the more benign tweets.

South Africans have grown up in the middle and are confused, particularly my generation who were brought up speaking and spelling British Standard English but are now force fed a diet of simplistic American English without the mystique and eccentricity of British spelling – what’s the difference between practice and practise or does the word end in -ise or -ize.  But we are lucky now with Wordle as we slide seamlessly between the two English languages and can solve AITSA as well.

Wordle has about 10,000 words that are valid entries to stop people randomly going through the alphabet.  It also has a predetermined list of about 2300 answers which will take us deep into 2027.  What are we addicts going to do then, huh – take up knitting when our bladder wakes us up in the wee hours and there’s no the new wordle of the day?  Since the takeover by the New York Times, they have removed at least 19 words from the possible inputs and 6 from the answers.  The reasons cited have been: offensive words straight out of Trump’s and rappers’ lexicons like PUSSY, WHORE, BITCH, etc.; triggering words such as LYNCH; obscure ones like PUPAL; confusing spelling between the Brits and Americans such as FIBRE/FIBER or current news items as in FETUS (which also has the confusing spelling – to Americans that is – of FOETUS).  Interestingly, towards the end of March the woke worthies of the NYT removed HARRY as an answer.  It could have fallen foul of a number of categories: it is offensive or a swearword to a lot of Brits in these post markle times, it is a current news item and, as a verb, it has an obscure meaning to illiterate Americans, or is triggering to some snowflakes. 

Take your pick but The War of the Wordles continues unless PUTIN presses a button which will be the end of Wordle and the World as we know it.  As Einstein said, “World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”