A SMAC in the Face #18:  The Mark of Zorrow

By Blaine McCleland in Jokes 0 Comment

In the early hours of Thursday, the 24th of February, 190,000 Russian troops supported by 1000’s of tanks and armoured personnel carriers stormed across the Ukrainian borders from Belarus and two ‘disputed‘ Ukrainian territories in the world’s first non-attack by a sovereign state on another sovereign state, at least in the world according to Putin.  Since both sides of this ‘non-war’ use the same armaments, all the ‘non-belligerent’ Russian vehicles had huge white Z’s painted on them so they wouldn’t get shot by their comrades. 

For some Russians, this ‘peacekeeping’ operation has become a source of pride and it has spawned a homegrown fashion industry around the Z symbol.

However, for millions of Russians and the rest of the world except China, Pakistan, South Africa and some other polecat nations, this stain on Russia has become the Mark of Shame.

But for the 1000s of Ukrainians killed, this has become the Mark of Zorrow.

A SMAC in the Face # 17: A Tsar is Born

By Blaine McCleland in Jokes 0 Comment

Russia made a fantastic investment years ago.  For the price of a few secondhand AK47s and unused landmines and providing free political schooling, they bought 27 years of kneejerk fealty from the governing ANC.  Meanwhile other cadres were toughing it out in the bastions of democracy and liberal thought – London, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.  Mbeki had it particularly tough puffing on his pipe while contemplating Dickens – it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, what did Russia actually do for South Africa apart from Putin offering Zuma a nuclear reactor and some secretive medical treatment for him and Mabuza?  Nada, nothing, niks!  Meanwhile the UK and the USA have been offering hugely beneficial trade deals and the northern European countries have been pouring billions into social and democracy strengthening projects.  This has been running at close to R17bn p.a. for the period 2012-2019, for example.

With Russia’s unilateral invasion – denazification or peacekeeping according to Putin – of Ukraine, which was a brother Socialist Republic until given complete independence by the Russian dominated Soviet, the ever flexible and hypocritical ANC has found itself with a self-inflicted wedgie.  It’s bending over backwards to the point that it’s about to disappear up its own arsehole.  Do they dissociate themselves from a friend with few benefits who has committed a blatant act of international aggression, do they prevaricate or do they support him?

DIRCO (aka Foreign Affairs, and we are not talking about Gigaba’s overseas mistress in New York) jumped the gun and asked Russia nicely to leave. This didn’t go down well with the ANC and, after a number of jumbled statements, the ANC’s position has becoming clearer – they wholeheartedly support a war criminal.

On 5 March, the ANC spokesidiot, Pule ‘The Other One’ Mabe, opined, “The ANC notes the draconian decision by the EU to impose sanctions on Russia … following the escalation of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia.”  What no mention of the massive and draconian invasion of a peaceful and truly democratic sovereign nation on the slimmest of trumped up pretexts?  He later goes on to disgorge this pearl of wisdom without a whiff of irony, “Stifling the plurality and diversity of views undermines internationally agreed principles on freedom of speech, choice and association. … the EU must still provide legal justification for this course of action.”  Really.  Does he actually believe that Putin allows now, or in the past, anything to be broadcast/published in Russia that he doesn’t like?  Stalin must be smiling.  The ANC are Russia’s useful idiots.  (And cheap at the price as Bosasa and the Guptas found out.)

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Motor cycle racing prior to WW2

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 0 Comment

Prior to WW2, Port Elizabeth hosted a prestigious motorcycle race known as the PE 200. This was the culmination of the development of motor cycle racing since the first race held as a 60 mile relay on the 7th August 1922 on the Kragga Kamma circuit.  

The early engines on the motorcycles were satisfactory for level or downhill riding but as soon as a hill was encountered, the rider had to pedal to assist the bike’s ascent of the hill. But this was only the start of what would ultimately become the power machines of today.

This blog covers the development of motorcycle racing from that date until the Second World War as well as the development of the early bikes.

Main photo: Winners of the PE 200 on 1st January 1958

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Port Elizabeth of Yore: Early History of South End

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 0 Comment

South End, as we know it, was a farm, Papenbiesjesfontein, extending from the Baaken’s River to about the S-bend at Humewood. According to J.J. Redgrave in Port Elizabeth in Bygone Days, it was granted by Lord Charles Somerset in 1820 to Gerhardus Oosthuizen. His widow bought the farm from the joint heirs for £135 sterling and subsequently married a tall, bearded Hollander named J.A. Rudolph. When he died, she married William Gardner and only after her death in 1859, was the estate sub­ divided into building allotments.

Main photo: Baakens Valley. C1881. In the background are three cottages (now Harris Street). Below them the old homestead of the Board family. To the right the steam laundry, opened May 1877. In the centre the property of John McWilliams (at one time a hotel). In the foreground the property of John Harrison Clark

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Corruption & Bang for one’s Buck

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs 0 Comment

The photo above shows what type of stadium a DA run municipality versus an ANC run municipality could erect at approximately the same cost. On the left is a R13m stadium provided by the Saldanha Municipality whereas on the right is what the ANC run municipality of Enoch Mgijima was able to construct with R15m. At a guess, the ANC stadium actually cost less than a tenth of the R15m and maybe even as low as a hundredth.

  • Do they have no shame?
  • Has anybody been prosecuted?
  • Has any of the money been recovered?
  • Has anybody been dismissed?

Probably NO on all four counts

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Horse Racing in the Bay

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 0 Comment

As racing horses is as old as riding these hoofed herbivorous mammals, the exact origins of horse racing are lost in the mists of time. Uitenhage preceded Port Elizabeth in establishing a Turf Club in 1815. However the first authentic records of organised racing give results of racing held in 1817 and include reports of a racing meeting held in the grounds of Cradock Place, the palatial home of Frederick Korsten on the Papenkuils River. Korsten matched his horses with those of the garrison officers from Fort Frederick.  The current Governor, Sir John Cradock, was also a keen racing man and with his support racing naturally flourished.

Main picture: Fairview Race Course 

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SMAC in the Face #16:  P.O.E.S.* of the Year

By Blaine McCleland in Jokes 0 Comment

(*P.O.E.S. – Person Of Extreme Stupidity)

This pre-empts Time’s Person of the Year by 10 months.  If Time is still around to award it then, I predict that Putin will be the winner, hands down.  It’s going to take an awful lot to displace him.  TS Eliot’s 1925 poem, The Hollow Men, ended with the lines:  This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.

Wrong, but then again, they hadn’t discovered the neutron yet, let alone the nuclear bomb, and it was to be 27 years before the unfortunate Mrs Putin would carry the spawn of the devil to term.  This single Horseman of the Apocalypse made the Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2007 when he completed his first term of office.  Time was rather presentient as they stated in the accompanying article, “If Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century.”  Perhaps they should have said, “If Putin fails, …”  After the drunken and chaotic Yeltsin years, Russia hankered for stability, order and the respect of being a superpower, even if it was oppressive dictatorships that provided it.  Cometh the hour, cometh the maniac – Putin.  Using all the techniques from the Communist playbook, he has taken complete control of the country until 2036 and has stopped all forms of opposition by assassinations and secret trials on trumped up charges – ask Novalny.

Using extensive false flag techniques, outright lying that the West was the aggressor and peddling false historical facts concerning the Ukraine, Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine in his and his coterie’s warped minds.  Unfortunately for his troops this wasn’t Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 when a column of tanks could reinstall a puppet regime.  The Ukrainians have fought back.  As his triumphant invasion has stalled, the rhetoric has increasingly become unhinged to the point that he is effectively threatening nuclear Armageddon in the West. 

The West: I raise you 5 sanctions.  Putin: I raise you 2000 nuclear warheads.

How do you begin to negotiate with a P.O.E.S.? 

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Collegiate Girls in Drowning Tragedy

By Dean McCleland in Port Elizabeth of Yore 0 Comment

On Saturday 1886 a group of Collegiate girls were taken to the beach adjacent to the mouth of the Baakens River and South End. In all likelihood these pupils were boarders and not day students. As no public transport was available, the girls must have walked from their accommodation down to the beach with their teachers in tow. What exacerbated the situation was that age, very few people were able to swim so when what one presumes was a rip tide occurred, none of the girls were able to swim. Even if they could, they would not have been able to deal with it successfully

Main picture: Bathing house at the mouth of the Baakens

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A SMAC in the Face #15: Chicken Kiev

By Blaine McCleland in Jokes 0 Comment

In mid-1940 with the atavistic German hordes rampaging though Western Europe with little hinderance and staring down the barrels of multiple guns of multiple calibres, the French generals indicated their readiness to cravenly surrender to Hitler.  Churchill demurred and stated that Britain was going fight on.  Having stubbed his cigar in the eye of Gallic pride, the French generals, with their Gallic noses distinctly out of joint, replied that Britain would ‘have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ 

Having seen off the Germans in the Battle of Britain and just about surviving in the Mediterranean, Churchill was on a tour in Canada 18 months later when he related the story and added, “Some chicken! Some neck!”

Fast forward 81 years and we find Ukraine under the cosh of the Putinic forces intent on establishing a buffer state against Western Imperialisim – good old Communist knee-jerk paranoia.  According to some reports, the going has been slower than the Russians planned and Kiev seems be a tough old bird.

Chicken Kiev – Some chicken! Some neck!