3 Stories

Woosh 7: Woosh's son's view of Woosh (aged 90)

2009-10-08T11:49:00.000+02:00

And then I came across Woosh Wayne’s son last year when I was in Europe.

This was at an airport where I had just the latest edition of TIME magazine which one can rely on to objectively report on the major issues of the day.

The real problem that issue reported on was that people are living longer than before!

Somehow there was now a real social conflict: we desire people to live long, we make it desirable in the way that products are marketed, and we even make laws that make it illegal to commit suicide via nicotine; but when they live long this is a problem of proportions that not only become front page on TIME magazine and even a plat form for the political parties that are voted into power?

So there I was sprawled on the seats at the Luxemburg airport perusing TIME and saw across the seat a young Woosh Wayne.

In essence what the article said was that the Baby Boom Generation of the 1940-50’is now about 60-70 years old in 2010. Instead of dying as nature intended they are now living to the age of 70, or 80, or 90.

Now there is a very real problem for societies like USA, England and Germany:
Too many people were created in the post war years,
And, they are not dying as they should.

I thought this was a very insightful lead story for TIME magazine.

I am a naturalist and believe in divine evolution. All species create more children in the next generation – more than the current generation. It is always two of the species that mate several times and create more than two off-springs in their lives. This is the divine purpose of evolution.

This way there are always more young people to till the lands and milk the cows so that they can care for the old and senile (retired). There will always be more cows to milk because they reproduce more than what they are every new generation. There will be enough corn to harvest because each produce and fertilise more than what they are in their generation. And there will be more bees to pollinate the wheat.

When the cows become too many they will either be eaten, or simply chased out of the kraal so that the lions can eat them. And as more cows are retired from the kraal there will be more lions in the next generation to care of all the surplus cows. Divine Evolution.

As Darwin explained: Everybody has the right to die! Even the weakest of the species.

Young Woosh Wayne (or Woosh Wayne the Younger) whom we shall refer to as Woosh Wayne the IIIrd opposite me noticed me reading the article and said as a conversation opener: “Well fuck all the old people in any case!”

I asked him whether he is any relation to Woosh Wayne, and he told me that it is his father. (“The Old Sod” he added, except he used a word much worse to describe the ‘old sod’.)

So I asked Woosh IIIrd what has happened to Woosh, my friend.

He told me (in his own words) that the old man is now about 90. He still jogs every morning, but has to use his zimmerframe to get around the block in about 40 minutes and as he does this he is incontinent.

I was not sure what he meant so I asked for an explanation and he explained that when one is incontinent using a zimmerframe to ‘jog’ around the block one leaves a stream of defication on the pavement.

What makes this even more embarrassing, Woosh IIIrd explained, is that the old fart (his dad) is the Honorary Lifelong Chairperson of the ‘Pick up the Dog Turds in New York’ Society.

I asked Woosh III whether he did not agree with me that it is truly a great achievement to be so old and still be able to jog, and whether he did not agree that Woosh had achieved a lot in his life.

Woosh III said: “Yes, he has achieved a lot in his life, but now he is simply a burden on his children.”

So I said to Woosh III: “Let’s not talk about Woosh, but let’s talk about you”. This was obviously a good move changing the topic to something that Woosh III loved.

“O, I am my father’s son, I am what he wanted me to be, he would be so proud of me if he was not dying of dementia.

“I jog 60 miles every week, I do not sully my lips with cigarettes, I drink sparkling mineral water from natural resources, I eat no fat, and alcohol is an abomination. I am the pinnacle of health. In fact, I can truly say that I do nothing that gives me painless pleasure.”

So I asked him the obvious question: “Why?”

Well, to the members of the Anal-ist society this might not be an obvious question. But, since I was not a member but merely interested in what had happened to Woosh Waynes philosophies I asked the un-askable question: Why.

Woosh III had the answer: “So that I can have a healthy long life!!”

When I said: “You mean that you can, when you are 90, jog around the blog using a Zimmerframe and leaving a stream of shit behind you?”

Woosh III gave me a very succinct answer: “You don’t understand!!!”.

I understood this to mean: Fuck Off.

Woosh 6: actually getting serious

2009-10-02T02:30:00.000+02:00

He then also suggested that the other wooses should join him in investing in the stock of chemical companies that develop drugs which people will use to replace the effect of nicotine. After all there is a reason why 1/3rd of the world population in any country is self-medicating with nicotine. This reason might be Attention Deficit Disorder or Depression and if they deny themselves nicotine they will need other ways of control.

The effect on me of these interviews was overwhelming. I realized that I was in the presence of a man that was a brilliant strategist and a great word-crafter. If he was not an accountant he would have been a brilliant marketer since he built one some of the biggest brands of modern times: Jogging, Anti-Smoking, Eternal Health, etc.

He sold these brands to millions of people. He caused societies to change their views and life-styles. He even created laws.

His word-crafting is on a par with people like Hitler, Stalin and George Bush. All people that created wars from words and ideas. Even Thatcher.

In South Africa a young girl inspired by vision (dream) will be remembered for being a young girl who had a vision and convinced a large part of the Xhosa population to walk into the sea. So was there a young girl in France who will be remembered for her crusade which killed a lot of people. And then there was the preacher that had his whole commune drink poison killing all of them. History has a number of people who were mis-guided and simply caused mayhem by being able to convince people to believe them.

Woosh Wayne will be remembered for setting free the wooses of the world, and in the process affecting the lives of millions.

I felt saddened that his children are now complaining that he has become a burden on them and society, living on health care and having to be looked after in his mindless state with so few memories of his great achievements left by Alsheimers. Such a sad fate for such a great mind.

Woosh 5 - the first anti-everything victories

2009-10-01T13:19:00.001+02:00

By now there were so many wooshes finding a new life in the self-created respect they get as joggers that they can get the conversation theme introduced into New York at quick notice and we all know that when everyone says something then it must be true.
“How did you enjoy your jog this morning?”
“Well last nights beer made me burp little beer bubbles all the way”
“The beer from last night was so heavy in my stomach”

Once this became common talk in bars it was a small step to say to the barman: “Can I have a glass of sparkling mineral water instead of a beer tonight? I have to jog tomorrow”

It is said that when John Wayne walked into the bar and heard Woosh #4 saying this to the barman he said to Chuck Norris: “I refuse to save his life in my next film”. Chuck said to Bruce Lee: “Kill him! He knows my name.”

Rmemeber I told in Part 1 (now in the archives) what John Wayne, Chuck Norris etc. has to do with the Wooshes and how it all started.

But then Arnold arrived and said ‘Nhhh’ and Bruce understood this to mean: “Don’t kill him’. Then Arnold said to the Barman: “Can I have a glass of sparkling mineral water, please?”

Van Damme asked Arnold whether he has gone soft in the head, and Arnold said: ‘To the contrary my friend. I have been thinking. If a cowboy actor can become a president then everything is possible in America. I think that an actor that has saved America from more disaster than Reagan, and even from future disasters that are yet to occur, can also become president”. By this he meant himself, and thus started the political aspirations of Arnold.

‘Did you know that Dirty Harry has become a mayor of a town? And he only killed one or two guys at a time in his movies? I intend to act a robotic cop with a big macine gun that has a limitless supply of bullets and kill everything that threatens American citizens. If I do this well they might even erect a place in Disney world where people can come and pay homage to me. Then I can also become a president. Did you know that presidents do not have to act about how they kill people? They just declare war!”

Chuck Norris said: “Thou has truly gonest soft in the head. Even I, Chuck Norris, do not think such stupid thoughts. You dream on, I will rather dream of Pamela Anderson”.

Again, I stress, that she was not even born at the time of this conversation. But then we all know that Chuck Norris knows everything so he might have been talking with great foresight. Except then he would have had much more respect for Arnold’s dreams.

Woosh Wayne pointed out that the tactic to order water with gas in it in bars was so successful due to pressure from wooshes on other wooshes that the beer companies had to make tasteless beers to compete with water.

The association’s victories to date could by no means be considered trivial:

Jogging was now fashionable. Wooshes could now do something that requires no skill or ability other than being able to crunch oneself into the joggers crunch and then shuffling your feet. For this they get great acclaim and people looking at them with the same awe that is reserved for Chuck Norris killing a 100 gooks, except that everybody knows chuck was only acting. (The only flaw in this achievement is that they have not managed to pass a law to stop the killing of gooks.)

Dogs could not crap in the streets of New York. The real achievement is that this time they managed to pass a law, against dogs passing turds on the street. The only flaw in this trophy was that the dogs could not really talk back. It was heard, on the streets, that some dogs were saying: “You could not walk anywhere in the days when horses crapped in the streets, and there was no pollution from stinking car gasses, and no-one complained.” But since dogs can’t talk these canine observations went largely unheard.
It is also true that this was not an international achievement. The dogs in all the major cities of Europe can still do what they naturally do where they feel like doing it. Or, where horses used to do it before cars started to pollute the place.

People were now drinking tasteless beers and gassed water in bars. The major achievement is that the Association changed the whole economy of their country and big breweries eventually had to be sold to small countries like South African Breweries. The Association now knew they can break economies! But still the big prize eluded them: a law against everyone, in all countries.

The associations founding fathers, and they were by now at the age where they should have been fathers, the only problem was all the jogging had reduced their sperm count to -1, had to think a lot about how they can achieve the ‘big one’.

According to Woosh Wayne the inspiration really came from them recalling that Chuck Norris kicked John Wayne in the nuts. In retrospect they felt that this was because Chuck did not like John. Admittedly this would have been a Freudian repressed dislike because of a regressed Oedipus complex. Since Chuck asked John to put down his cigarette before he kicked John nearly in the nuts it was felt that this Oedipus complex arose from a secret dislike that Chuck had of cigarettes.

There were some obvious realities that the association had to face.

An obvious strategy would have been to tell people that John Wayne was a smoker that died of lung cancer and try to rally people against smoking on this issue. But then Ronald Reagan was a famous cowboy actor and even a president who advertised cigarettes and was simply lingering on with Alsheimers – and no-one had yet even thought of accusing cigarettes of causing Alsheimers.

In any case, since Chuck Norris kicked John Wayne nearly in the nuts the association was not sure whether he – as the real founder member – would appreciate the association building John Waynes reputation.

So the founding wooshes of the association sat in a circle sucking on their drinking straws in a bar and gave the matter a lot more thought.

They considered doing to cigarettes what they did to beer, but this appeared to be less rewarding since they had already succeeded in making people drink tasteless beer. There was no real point to prove, and the cigarette companies were already producing tasteless cigarettes without nicotine.

They also felt that while people were drinking tasteless beers in bars, they have not really achieved there total objective – total abstinence.

Woosh #2 sugested: “The way to go has to be a composite attack on all fronts. We must involve civil liberties and social responsibility. We must get as close to human rights because this was very powerful at the time of the French Revolution. What worked for Voltaire can work for us. We have to go for the Freedom of the Individual, it is what American like to hear, and sounds great in third world countries – if we really want to make this an international achievement.”

Woosh #4 pontificated: “We have a president that was very popular until his cigar made him do funny things to Monica. Maybe if we give the people reason to blame the cigar we can subconsciously get them to blame cigarettes.”

Woosh #5 nused: “We have very few members of our association in third world countries. One does not see them jogging around the block – or wheatfield, or kraal, or whatever. In fact the Kenyans insist on winning marathons and that is not in the spirit of running around the place not to win.”

Woosh #4 suggested: “But we have the United Nations here dishing out aid. I don’t really understand how we can have this massive international debt and still be dishing out aid, but surely this is a way we can make those third world countries behave.”

Woosh #3 added to this: “One should probably think of the UK as being one of those as well. Not that they take aid, but one can hardly think of them being first world like we are? Remember the UK includes the Irish.”

On this point Woose Waynes recollections were very clear, and since they accord with the known facts no-one can argue. Woosh #1 one summarized the views into a strategy:
“Remember how when we started this association we looked at the AA prayer and found the mistake in their reasoning being that one has to accept the things one cannot change?

“The mistake everyone makes is to think that smoking is a human right and that everyone has a right to choose.

“All we have to do is base our strategy on civil liberties and freedom.

“We have the right to choose not to smoke and therefore they are infringing on our rights. This means they must stop smoking. We are not infringing on their rights, they are infringing on our rights.

“We don’t use Reagan or John Wayne as spoke-persons. We have enough movie actors drinking water with gas in bars. We just influence them to not smoke in movies – and make everyone aware that they don’t smoke in movies. Thus by making aware of what they are not doing they are all spokespeople for us. The more they drink, swear, screw and show blood the more obvious it will be that they are not smoking

“We tell the UN and the world bank, who are not achieving anything in terms of alleviating poverty or AIDS or world food shortages or climate change that they can also become winners. After all we made wooses winners; we can do this for the UN and World Bank. We tell them to focus on anti-smoking laws in countries that want aid!! We will get our laws into countries that no-one has ever heard of.

“UK is easy. We just tell them. They will do what America asks. I am certain that if we ask them to go to war they will do so as a favour to us. We just need to give them an excuse in clever words. Something like: There are weapons of mass destruction lurking there. Come to think of this, why not try it someday? Then we can achieve a new objective.

“The rest of the British Isles are simple to get sorted out. The Irish and Scotts have brains addled by scotch, Guiness and whatever they can find that has alcohol. We just tell them it is a good idea to make laws against smoking and they will do it, as long as we do not touch their rights to drink.

“Once we get the Irish to do this, we just tell the English that they are lagging behind and they will also make laws against smoking in their pubs simply so that they also appear to be civilized.

“And we can base all of this again on our general play on people’s need to live forever. The churches have all shown this is the most powerful driving force out there, one that is much stronger than the need to enjoy life, or have fun, or have a good quality of life drink, have sex, etc.

“QED.
For the benefit of the other wooses Woose #1 explained that QED means ‘Quite Easily Done’.

END PART 5

Wooshes story 4: How the Anal-ist Society was launched

2009-09-28T10:51:00.002+02:00

It was decided to launch the association at the Auditors 15th Competitive Conference held in the New York Hilton’s fifth floor in New York. This conference, held annually, was where auditors debated the merits of different styles of ticks. At that stage it was generally felt that the two Deloits companies, Doos and Douche, are the trendsetters in the debate. Many tickers felt that having two companies each arguing for one of the alternatives gave Deloits an unfair advantage, and therefore there were many papers presented which did not truly stay inside the limits of the debate, but which were aimed at attacking Deloits for being unfair.

The newly formed wooshes association was anti-competition in any form or fashion in its strategy formulation based on the view that when there is a competition then there are losers, and wooshes invariably are the biggest losers.

The tactic was to submit a paper in which it is pointed out that the Annual Competitive Conference is detrimental to all auditors because of the competitive nature which means there will be losers. Since this conference is attended 99.9% by wooshes it was believed that they will understand the desirability of not having a competition where there can be losers.

The title of the paper was: “The Chuck Norris non-competitive solution to competition between Auditors as pertaining to auditing ticks”. The key principle being that ‘if you can’t beat them join them’, which removes the element of competition.

The paper was to explain that a ‘group of wooshes’ had a meeting with Chuck Norris. The group would remain unnamed and it would not even be implied that they were auditing clerks. Chucks joining solution would be explained. (see part 2 of the story).

Still, not explaining that the authors think the audience is a bunch of wooshes the audience would be invited to leave the conference hall, and take on the posture that will in time become known as the joggers posture and shuffle around the block. It was made clear that the rules include that no-one was allowed to be first back in the room, because that would be competitive and the shuffle around the New York Hilton block will be a non-competitive event.

Thus a few surprised New York businessmen, some beggars and two hot dog vendors witnessed the first organized jogathon in history. In due course the anal-ist society re-branded this to ‘Fun Run’.

The time for papers at the convention was strictly 35 minutes. The jog took about 20 minutes due to the rule that no-one was allowed to come back first, which meant that everyone had to wait for everyone. Five minutes before the papers presentation was due to end everyone rushed in the hall simultaneously.

The last 5 minutes of the allotted time was spent with the auditing clerks being told to ask their neighbours how they felt after the jog, and on being told by their neighbours that they feel great to reflect on the benefit to wooshes that jogging has.

For the first time the assembled wooshes realized they did something approaching a physical activity which no sane person would do, and that they did not lose!

The presenters ran over their allotted time when they went on to explain to the audience that they can do this the rest of their lives. And especially that they should share this by asking each other every morning in the office or in bars, coffee shops or other public places about each others jogging. A list of suggested answers to this question was also proposed

‘How was your jog this morning?’
‘Great I never felt as alive as I do since I started to jog’
‘Jogging certainly clears ones mind’
‘Haven’t had such great sex before I started to jog’ (or since, but don’t mention this)
‘Love the New York polution in the morning’
‘Great family builder – I can leave the baby with the wife’
‘You should see Central Park at 8 in the morning before they remove the hobos and drunks, beautiful’
‘Saw Pamela Anderson jogging past me this morning’

Especially non-verifiable answers like the last one would be encouraged.

The assembled wooshes recognized that this will be a clear one-up on everyone in the bar, restaurant or public place where they are having this conversation. For the first time in their lives they will not only not be the losers, but will be the winners.

I think Woosh Wayne’s recollection of using Pamela Anderson in the last suggested answer line might be a bit faulty. They probably meant Pamela Ewing who acted in Dallas – a popular soapy at that time.

Thus in many auditing companies in New York this was the general tone of conversations. Pretty soon other wooshes recognized the benefits of jogging and took it up so they could also be non-losers.

The un-expected outcome of this tactic was that the 15th Competitive Conference was also the last. So strong was the appeal for a non-competitiveness to remove the disgrace of losing.

As jogging became the in-sport for non-competitive wooshes, the association could move on to implement other tactics aimed at banning things they did not do. Remember the principle was (and still is) very simple: if I don’t do it, let’s ban it!

The first was the banning of dogs doing what is natural on pavements. The wooshes were gaining in self-confidence, many joined their ranks. But they were still afraid to go against the non-wooshes, so they decided to target dogs as their first victims. Not that they had anything against dogs. In fact many had dogs. However, if they can win a victory against dogs they can obviously go for the big fish – smoking, drinking and having fun.

So the Association introduced a new theme into the analists conversation:
“How was your jog this morning?”
“I trod into a dog turd – it is so unpleasant”
“You should see all the dog turds in Central Park”
“Dog turds are so unnatural” (This is demonstrated by my spell-check saying there is no such word!)

We all know how easily they won the anti-dog turd in New York argument. Few appreciate the significance of their first anti-law!!

Tactic number three was to address the problem of having to order beer-shandies when what they really want is just lemonade.

End of part 4 – coming up: How they won the anti-smoking battle, not only in NY, but the world.

Wooshes story 3: How the non-smoking jogging society got its name

2009-09-23T10:02:00.001+02:00

Parts 1 and 2 has been archived. This is the story of how Woosh Wayne set up the anal-retentive society of non-smoking so that they can also have respect and how they decided on a name for the society. His story continues:

‘When we came together the next week, at the same table in the same bar, we had all given the matter a lot of thought and we started to strategize.

‘First on the agenda was to clarify our objectives.’ Said Woosh Wayne. “We started of with a lot of highfaluting words about how we want to benefit the human race and other thoughts. Eventually we realized that all we want was that people stop looking down on wooshes. To do this we had to make everybody a woosh, or make them despise those that are not wooshes. This was such a simple and honest objective so we settled for this.”

“For this to become a reality we needed people to subscribe to the objective and become a popular movement. We then discussed other movements that had become popular over time so that we can learn from their principles.

“Communism was an obvious one for us to take as a role model. They simply banned anything they did not like. They banned capitalism. They banned the church. They banned making money. They banned people enriching themselves. This worked for us because if we were communists in a communistic country we would simply ban people from making derogatory remarks about wooshes. We could ban fun things like smoking, beer, and blonds having sex with hulks.

“The church was a good contender for a role model. They banned sex, mostly. They banned anything that the hulks enjoy. They also taught that one should love thy neighbor, but what we wanted was more than just neighborly love. We wanted people to love wooshes, and aspire to become wooshes. At least the church had managed to ban smoking and beer drinking in church.

“The American government was a good potential candidate. But they were very liberal and allowed people to do what they want, which was not quite what we wanted because anti-wooshism will continue if people have a free choice. In fact it is the result of this freedom that we had our problem. One of us knew that the democratic USA had more laws then the Russian communists, so this made them even more attractive as an organization to emulate.

“The organization that we felt most attracted to was the Alcoholics Anonymous. This was because of their prayer which asks God for them to be able to clearly identify the things that bother them in everyday lives, then to be able to differentiate those into which they can change, and to have the courage to change those they can and accept those they cannot change.

“As woosh #4 pointed out: ‘We know what our problem is – we are wooshes, and like all other people we don’t like us. We also know that we cannot change what we are because once a woosh always a woosh. As God said to Adam: Some of thine offspring shall be borne as wooshes. God repeated this to Moses: And your sins will be visited onto the children of the third and fourth generation for them to be borne wooshes.

“Woosh #4 said that we know that we cannot change this, but we need not, like the alcoholics, accept the status. We must change what looks like impossible to change.

That was the time of the American government being anti mostly everything. They were anti communism; they were anti the hippies who were anti the war in Vietnam. They were not particularly keen on the Germans. Things have changed in that they are not anti-these things anymore. Just anti other people owning oil, or also owning nuclear bombs.

Woosh Wayne then explained that they needed to come up with a name. At first they wanted to follow the Alcoholics Anonymous considering Woosh Anonymous. Somehow this did not work: “I am John a Woosh, I have not had a beer for most of my life and do not smoke. I don’t play any sport because I always lose.”

Then they remembered that the foundation of their movement is that they are anti most things, so it sounded like a good idea to call it “Wooshes Against …”. Unfortunately when one completes this title with mostly anything the acronym for the organization became WANK or WASP, which they believed would be counter productive.

It was Woosh #5 who gained fame forever by mentioning that the other staff at Deloite and Tush stuck a notice on his door simply stating ‘Anal’ in big letters. He believed this had to do with his obsession on making correct ticks in an audit and him refusing to accept any audit from his juniors if the ticks were not in the prescribed format. He explained that this had nothing to do with being anal, but that it is professionalism.

Says Woosh Wayne: “We realized that if we simply claimed to be analysts then most people will believe we are annalists, a step up from accountants, which we mostly were.”

They all agreed that the popularity of AA is that it appears at the top of any directory that is alphabetically sorted and when people are looking for something to join then this is the first society they come across in the telephone book.

Woosh #5 believed that many people who are new in the country, or even new in a town, would look for some society to join to make contact with people and when they find AA as the first entry in the telephone directory they phone to join up. When they arrive at the meeting everybody stands up and introduces themselves: “Hi, I am John, I am an alcoholic” which must sound to the lonely new comer like people preparing for a big party.

Then they ask him to introduce himself, and in keeping with the party spirit he says: “I am Ivan Slurpalotabeer from Russia and I am also a great alcoholic well known in my country for my alcoholism.”. Then he is asked to tell them about his drinking escapades, and they listen with great awe as he adds a few untruths to his story. Soon these are his best friends, but he believes they sometimes over claim when they say they are alcoholics and he never sees them drinking. Eventually he believes they don’t like him because they obviously must have great parties that he is not invited to.

So by calling the organization Analists Against Anything Action Related to Sport (AAARS) they would be on the top of the telephone book, and really describe what they are about.

End Part 3

Woosh’s story 2: Chuck Norris arises and the anal Society of non-smoking joggers is formed.

2009-07-30T18:49:00.001+02:00

To read part 1, where Bruce Lee killed Chuck Norris for kicking John Wayne in the balls, click on archive. Now read further:

Since we all know that Chuck Norris cannot be killed he shrugged at Bruce Lee and muttered something about ‘stupid gook’ and told Woosh #2 that it was all an accident. (He then explained that what he meant was: he, Chuck Norris, kicking John Wayne in the stomach was the accident, not Bruce Lee killing him, Chuck, because that was not an accident but because, he, Bruce Lee, is a stupid gook.)

‘Nhh’ Arnold added to show that he understood. To understand this in joke you need to read part 1.

Van Damme, the muscles from Brussels, probably the cleverest of the actors since he even has muscles for brains, said: “Hey guys, we have real wooshes here, with a real problem. Maybe we can help them in real life”.

‘Nhh’ Said Arnold ‘I hate wooshes’.

Van Damme asked woosh #2 what he sees as being the problem. To which the answer was “Everybody looks down on us!! Just look around the bar. Everybody drinks beer and we have drink shandies so it looks like we drink beer! We even have to sit with drinking straws in our hands so people think we smoke.”

‘Nhhh’ Said Arnold. “So we get to kill all the people in the bar?”

Chuck, always reasonable, modified the idea “It is illegal to kill them. But, we can kick them all in the balls!. John, you start with the big guys on the left, they look like bikers. I will take the fancy ones with the leathers over here. They are small enough to be gooks.”

So Bruce Lee expertly killed Chuck again saying “No-one uses the g-word in my company”.

And Arnold said “No-one calls me a swartsenegger.”

Van Damme (as Jean-Claude van Damme is affectionately known by his fans) wisely said “Lets talk about this.”

The wooshes and the movie stars gathered around one table as Woosh #1 explained “We do not get the sexy blondes at school, only the ones with no tits and lots of brains who want to remain virgins until some-one marries them. Since no-one wants to marry us we are the last left and then they resentfully gives us a look in. They then resent us and we end up washing dishes and baby sit.”

“At school we end up head-boys because all the other kids want someone in that job that they can beat up for reporting them when they smoke in the toilets.” He continues.

“Worst of all we never get on the track team, this is where one gets the big-titted blonds, because all the events require one to run fast. Even the long-distance events still expect you to be the fastest over the distance”.

‘Nhh’ said Arnold.

Chuck Norris felt he needed to contribute something because it has been a long time since anyone gave him any attention, the last time was when Bruce Lee killed him the second time. So he contributed “I always say ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’”

What he probably meant was that since he can beat everybody he never needs to join anybody.

Woosh #3 became very excited “That’s it! That’s the answer! You guys must join us!”

‘Fuck that for a lark’ said Arnold, revealing his Austrian culture.

‘Who do I defend then? In the movies, I mean’ said John Wayne.

‘I will kill you if you suggest this again’ Said Bruce Lee, and killed Chuck Norris again because he thought this is what Chuck suggested.

Van Damme just flexed a few muscles to show what he thought of the idea.

The movie stars realizing that people might think they are joining the wooshes because they were sitting at the wooshes table quickly found themselves a table as far away from the woosh table as they could find.

Woosh #2 shouted across the bar at Chuck “Thank you! You are my friend for life!”

Chuck murmured at Bruce Lee: “Please Kill Me”.

Woosh Wayne, who believes he was Woosh #1, then led the group as they worked out their 10 point strategy:

If you can’t beat them, which obviously the wooshes had no chance of doing, then make them join the wooshes! This is rule number one and forms the whole basis of the plan. Never to be ignored.
Invent a track and field game that does not rely on skill, strength or stamina. IF it also does not rely on co-ordination then so much better. Make sure that time is not part of the rules. In fact make sure that winning is not even mentioned. Just suggest that ‘it is all about participating’.
Jogging is the ideal candidate since it meets all these requirements.
Since wooshes never smoke – at least those at the first meeting sucking their drinking straws did not – make it a pre-requisite that to join one must stop smoking.
Obviously there has to be a real incentive for joining. Use the one thing that people has always wanted. Eternal Life?
After smoking the next step is to go for beer. The ultimate would be beer that does not taste like beer.
Recognise that all great religions survived by abstinence. So we need to make people sacrifice something – what about tasty food. Promote ‘lite’.
Since our wives despise us and use us for housework lets sanctify the term ‘houseman’.

I know there are only 8 points in this 10 point strategy, but Woosh Wayne could not remember the rest.

End Part 2.

The Woosh’s story 1: Or, How the non-smokers won the battle of Ellis Park and all rugby stadia, When non-smoking wooshes don’t ever go there!

2009-07-17T11:40:00.002+02:00

This is a longish story – about 3 episodes.

Woosh Wayne told me this in a private conversation. His real name is not Woosh but John, for obvious reasons he prefers not to be called John Wayne and had his name legally changed on his seventieth birthday as a present to himself.

Woosh was about 85 when he told me this story – he looked a healthy 105. The telling took about five days because Whooshes’ memory went wandering most of the time. When it was not wandering it was jogging. It was also very difficult to identify fact from fiction, so some of this account includes my wishful thinking, and some might be Woosh’s wishful memory.

At the time Woosh was trying to recruit me for the analyst society. I became interested because I thought it was the annalist’s society.

The benefits of the society, Woosh explained, are that one live for nearly ever if one follow the analyst lifestyle.

‘Look at me’ Woosh said, lifting his head from his hips where it had gone too as a result of the Jogging Posture. ‘I am still jogging at the age of 85. Pass me my Zimmer frame so I can show you – the sports model with the big wheels.’

‘Some people say that I am a waste of the tax-payers money. But these are all young people that work and pay tax. I worked until I was 55, a full 30 years of productivity. This means that I have now been retired for 30 years, and living on the state-pension, and health care should not bother them. My children say that I only worked from age 25 – having been taken care of by my parents before then, and had a subsidized education. They claim that I have now not contributed to the economy for 55 years. But they just say this because they would like me to die.’

‘Look at my son. He smoked and ended in hospital for 3 months before dying – what an irresponsible waste of the tax-payers money!’

I quote this to explain how difficult it was to get to the real story when Woosh kept up such obviously illogical arguments.

The Analyst Society, according to Woosh Wayne, was founded in a bar in NewYork.

4 Wooshes were having beer-shandies (beer and lemonade mixed – in those days there was no such thing as lite beer). They were drinking shandies because this allowed them to have a beer in front of them, while they were drinking lemonade. They all found the taste of beer (even Millers) very overwhelming.

One of the wooshes worked for Deloite and Tush, the other one also. Two worked for Deloite and Douche. This was before the two companies merged. At first the new management considered naming the new company Tush and Douche, but then decided against this.

Woosh #1 (Woosh could not remember any of the other wooshes’ names) was the debits auditor clerk because he was left handed, and Woosh #2 did credits, for obvious reasons.

They were all discussing the relative merits of the ticks they make when auditing. Seems that at Deloits and Tuch the company style was a tick that started with a short up line, then a strong down line and a tapering up line. At Deloit and Douch the up line was not included.

At a nearby table, drinking beer and smoking, was John Wayne. For the younger readers we need to mention that John Wayne was a famous cowboy movie actor. In all his movies there would invariably be a lemonade drinker in the bar when John Wayne arrives in town, at some stage the lemonade drinker will experience some life-threatening problem like a big bad guy wanting to kick him around, John Wayne would calmly stub out his cigarette, kill the bad guy, and kiss the beautiful blond.

This was a basic theme for all John Wayne’s movies. One must remember these were the days before AIDS so kissing was shown in movies rather than the full act of making love. These days, of course it would be politically incorrect showing John Wayne (or any movie hero) stubbing out his cigarette before beating the bad guy using the unspoken Queensbury rules of the Wild West. These days a non-smoking John Wayne will kick the living shit out of the bad guy, aiming mostly to kick him in the balls while swearing loudly about Mothafucka and then end up fucking the blond.

But, back to the bar in New York. With John Wayne being at a nearby table the 4 wooshes felt relatively save because it was known that John Wayne has a soft spot for wooshes.

At John Wayne’s table was Chuck Norris. Even in the 60’s which is when this happened, Chuck looked like he does today. We all know that Chuck Norris does not age, so he looked the same then as he does now. He is also known for saving wooshes when he is not busy saving all of the USA. (Maybe there is not much difference in these two jobs).

Also at John Wayne’s table was Jean-Claude van Dam and Arnold Swartsenneger, according to Woosh Wayne, but since they would have been young and living in Brussels and Austria at the time it is possible that this was just Woosh Wayne’s fanciful memory. However, it is true that both of them soon after the sixties embarked on careers saving wooshes and Americans (preferably USA Americans) they might very well have been there at the time.

The movie stars were discussing ways they use to get rid of the bad guys.

John Wayne was explaining: ‘So after the scene in which I get to say “Look at all them Injuns” we went to the bar scene where there was this bad guy. I bopped him one on the snout, and some other guy hit him over the head with a chair. I wish they would allow me to do this just once, but it is always some scruffy guy that gets this role, and I have to be shaven because the director says to not be shaven will be bad for my image.

‘After he is hit by the chair he pulls out a knife. I am also not allowed to use a knife in movies’, complained John Wayne. ‘So I pull my gun and shoot him – somewhere where there is no blood in his body. Then I get to kiss the girl – no tongue.’

‘Nhh’ grunted Arnold, showing why he does not get speaking parts in movies.

Chuck then gave his opinion ‘John, these are the old days of movie fighting. Pretty soon we will do it differently. First we will have a gook shoot us so we are full of blood and obviously dying. Then we will kick him in the balls several times, shoot him with a machine gun, cut his throat, hand him a hand-grenade with a drawn pin and, then we will fuck the blond.’

‘Nhh’ grunted Arnold, showing of his oratory skills.

John Wayne expressed his desires for things to change so that he can make movies like this one day.

Chuck warned him that things will not be as great as what they sound like “We will get to call them gooks, or dirty commies, but only the black actors will be allowed to call the bad guy a mothafucka. And even the bad guys will not get to screw Pamela Anderson.”

At this point Bruce Lee joined the table so they had to stop complaining about being able to call the bad guys chinks or gooks.

At John Waynes request Chuck demonstrated his well rehearsed ‘ball-kicking technique’. First he stubbed out his cigarette and asked John Wayne to stop smoking. Then he aimed a solid kick at John Waynes balls. Probably due to the beer he missed and slammed his foot into John’s stomach.

Expelling all his breath, and a mighty expel it was, John said “Wooooosh”.

At this point Woosh #1 interrupted his arguments pro-ticks-with-less-emphasized-up-strokes to exclaim: “It really Pees me off when someone calls me a woosh”.

Woosh #2 siad to Chuck Norris: “You guys are supposed to protect us wooshes! Why do you now go around calling my friend a woosh behind his back? Maybe you should kick John Wayne in the balls for calling my friend a woosh.”

Bruce Lee, who did not understand the conversation between John Wayne and Chuck Norris just saw Chuck Norris trying to (very poorly) kick John Wayne in the balls. So he jumped up, and with one delicate karate chop killed Chuck Norris.

This is the story that Woosh Wayne told me, but remember that he was 80 and had the memory of a 3 year old because of his healthy living. I mean the healthy living caused him to be 80 years old, not necessarily contributed to his memory problems. (Or, rather, his lack of memory problems).

End of Part 1.

Lucky 10: Lucky meets politicians

2009-07-09T18:59:00.002+02:00

LUCKY MEETS POLITICIANS

At the time that Lucky came to stay with us the country was entering its new era and the first multi-racial elections were looming.

The white National Party, having been in power since 1948, and having driven the reforms in the country and having called a referendum, now had to contest an open election.

No one expected them to really win, but then politicians never agree with a popular view, at least not when the popular view is that their party will not win.

It became a bit of a joke: White Afrikaner politicians, who had their parliament seats because the electorate in the past was white (the English people voted for the National party as hard as the Afrikaners, they just did not say that they did); now had to canvass for votes in the Black areas.

They did not live in the black areas; most of them had never been there in their lives, cannot speak the language of the voters, etc.

In the Old South Africa a Member of Parliament represented a specific constituency, and was supposed to look after the interest of the community that voted him into parliament. This really meant that the Member of Parliament was sort of also looking after the black people in the constituency, but they had no vote so they were not really important to the Member.

What happened in practice was that there always were some very safe seats, constituencies where the party can rely on winning the vote. These were often given to senior party members, who did not necessarily live in the constituency.

Sounds like normal politics? Nothing really changed in South Africa since then in any case, few ANC politicians live where their voters live, and in fact they do not represent a specific constituency in any case. The different parties are allocated a number of seats in parliament to be filled from their lists in terms of seniority. Thereby members are relieved from having to worry about the concerns of a specific constituency, and obviously the need to live among the constituents.

It is, of course, an interesting thought that in the New South Africa there is no more racism. This means that anyone can theoretically live in any area they like. In practice the black people of South Africa still live in the mainly black poorer areas that they lived in before. The New South Africa members of parliament live in the affluent areas, which are still predominantly white areas. But, since their constituents can theoretically also live there the politicians cannot be accused of not living in their constituencies.

However, back to the story about the elections and the National Party MPs that had to canvass votes in the black areas inside their constituencies where they have never been, and cannot even speak the language.

These politicians now had to make a show of trying to gain votes in the Black Areas.

We were friends with the Jan and Annette Bredenkamp. Jan Bredenkamp was the Member of Parliament for Florida – where he lived. It now fell on him to go and canvass votes in the Black townships.

Like a good White Afrikaans South African Male, he co-opted his wife.

(In fact, if I left out the words: “White, South African, Afrikaans” in the above sentence and just left the word “Male” the sentence would still be correct. I have discovered that White, South African, Afrikaans males are no different from other males anywhere in the world.)

So it came to pass that Annette was asked by the National Party to attend a rally inside Soweto. Soweto is Johannesburg’s sister city, which contains probably more people that the greater Johannesburg area, all of them black.

Most white people have never been inside Soweto and believe that it looks like some of the slums we see on television, like Harlem in New York. It is in fact not as bad, but it still is not a desirable area to live in.

A common joke in the Old South Africa was that the most suicidal thing a white person can do is to skateboard through Soweto singing “This Land is My Land!”

Some whites worked (and still work) in Soweto, and there was even a nightclub area that was known as “white by night”. I cannot remember any reports about a white person being mugged or treated badly in Soweto. But, for most whites Soweto was an area to be avoided.

So it came to pass that Annette had to go to a political rally for the National Party (what used to be the white apartheid party, and which is now trying to reposition itself as a party for the people) inside Soweto. Hearing about this Mariki, always game for some fun, decided to accompany her, and to take our two sons so they can see the reality of Soweto and politics.

Surprising as it might sound there were a large number of black people supporting the National Party and even were promoting the National Party in the run-up to the election. I cannot speculate as to their reasoning, but I was introduced to some and they were not uneducated or obviously retarded. They must have had their reasons in terms of how they saw the future of the country.

The black National Party politicians met Annette and Mariki at the border of Soweto, with a police escort. A police escort would not have been necessary for any whites in Soweto. Since no one could have guessed that they were representing the National Party it was not necessary to escort them either.

After w few miles into Soweto the police started to talk anxiously on the radio in their car, and explained that the National Party convoy of two cars must turn around immediately. There was a political march (riot) on its way and their lives are in danger.

But, by then it was too late.

In South Africa when blacks ‘march for political reasons’ they toy-toy. Toy toying is a sort of dance step that involves jerking the knees high, waving the arms and ululating at a high pitch. This is common to all countries of Africa. This particular crowd was toy toying to celebrate the expected victories of the ANC over the white National party in the coming elections.

Before Mariki and Annette’s convoy could be turned around the toy-toying mass was upon them. Leaving two white women and two children of whom one was black separated from the police vehicle that was there to protect them.

In any movie produced by Hollywood about Africa this would have been the making for a great slaughter of white women and children. The only thing that could have topped the dramatic potential of this moment would have been if it were white nuns in the car.

The crowd simply continued past the car.

A few noticed Lucky in the car and bent down to shout at him. Presumably that he should not be sitting in the car with a lot of whites. The person that was the most scared at the end of this experience was probably Lucky.

So they arrived at the National Party rally being conducted at a school hall where a lot of potential black supporters were waiting to hear the National Party promises for the coming elections.

Naturally being the only white women – in fact the only whites – they were the guests of honour and introduced to every dignitary at the function.

And this is where we get to the point of this story. Remember that we started of by saying how much grown ups respond positively to Charl and Lucky?

What struck Mariki was that as they were moved down the line being introduced to the dignitaries – first Annette, then Mariki, and then Charl and then Lucky – there was enthusiastic hand-shaking by all the dignitaries and very friendly conversation with all except Lucky.

After the speeches there was tea and biscuits for all, where Mariki commented to one of the women (black) that both Charl and Lucky did the right thing: they stepped up to the dignitary they are introduced to, offered a hand to be shaken, and looked them openly in their eyes. But Lucky’s offer was received with less enthusiasm than Charl’s.

She explained that Mariki has to understand how difficult it is to change cultures when the person that you are addressing is the same skin colour as yourself, or is obviously of the same culture as yourself.

To the black dignitaries at the meeting Charls behaviour was exactly what they expected and respected. As a result they responded positively to him. However, because Lucky was black they expected a different behaviour from him, and when his behaviour was white rather than black they were ill at ease and even confused.

To me this was an important lesson, and one I believe will stand all of us in good stead. So I will expand on this.

I started my own business back in 1984 and the fifth person that joined the company was Kenny Magobathu in 1985 as the driver. He is still the driver of the company 19 years later.

When he had worked for the company for about a decade I felt that we have sort of mutual respect and friendship – the type that develop when one works with someone for a long time.

It then started to bother me that when he needs the keys to my car to fill it with petrol he will not come and take it of my desk, but always ask someone else to get it.

It also bothered me that when he speaks to me he would seldom look me in the eyes, mostly looking down and occasionally glancing up. To my mind someone with integrity would look you straight in the eye, not deviously look at the ground all the time.

I asked my secretary to have a word with Kenny to change his behaviour because I don’t think he is a devious person, nor do I see the need for him to ask other people to speak on his behalf, or collect the car keys on his behalf for that matter. I was quite upset.

Kenny told my secretary to explain to me that he absolutely respects and love me. In fact he sees me as his father. In his culture however the body language is different from ours.

To look a person straight in the yes is a challenge, not a sign of respect. Similarly to stick out your hand and have a firm handshake is a challenge of power. Even to make a request directly to a person that you respect, and have the power to grant this wish to you is disrespectful – rather ask via another person that has his ear.

In fact this African custom is much closer to nature than our westernized custom of looking people straight in the eye. In nature when two males of a species (say dogs) meet then one will look away. If they both look each other straight in the eye they are issuing a challenge. Even with dogs you can demonstrate your dominance of a dog by looking him straight in the eye, but if it is a strange dog with a bad temperament then dog trainers advise you to look down and avoid prolonged eye contact.

It is the culture of black Africans that when they offer you something and you accept, they will thank you for accepting it. Black Africans do not stick their hands out aggressively to be shaken, they do not try to issue a challenge by giving you a firm grip, and they are not aggressively looking you straight in the eye when they do all these other aggressive things. The white Africans have not learned about this culture of the blacks.

This is a little anthropological lesson. But Charl and Luckys meeting with the black dignitaries in Soweto have a more profound lesson.

The dignitaries were expecting Charl to stick his hand out, look them in the eye and give a firm handshake, speak to them first saying ‘hello’ because he is white and that is the way that whites behave.

The dignitaries were expecting Lucky to not stick out his hand, to not say anything until spoken to, to not have a firm aggressive handshake, to not challenge them by looking them straight in the eye because he is black and this is how black children behave.

Black people have learned how to respond to white people by behaving like white people in terms of handshakes and eye contact. They understand the cultural differences, and adapt as and when required. White people have been slow at learning these things in South Africa – largely because they had no need to. They ascribed these things to customs rather than culture.

Lucky, at that stage, did not have a black culture, and was only starting to be introduced into a culture of sorts – white.

The dignitaries, even knowing that Lucky came to the meeting with whites, and that he lives with Mariki and Charl who behaved like whites could not adapt to a black child exhibiting a white culture. This, to my mind is again a form of racism – i.e. generalizing from the outward appearance what the behaviours would be like.

If you have read this far you might want to go to my website for some videos of South Africa in the period 1984-1994

http://www.erikdup.com/South_Africa__84-94.php

One of these found its way onto Youtube!

Lucky 9: Lucky changes his name, and his biggest tallent

2009-06-20T10:37:00.001+02:00

LUCKY CHANGES HIS NAME

As I explained at the outset Lucky was not adopted by us, he sort of came to live with us.

Most of our friends thought that we had adopted a little black boy.

This is very illegal. One cannot create the impression that you have adopted a child that you have not adopted. Adoption is a legal process; you cannot just take a child and have him live with you.

We had a black child living with us, we had to presume that it is with his mothers consent because the person that everyone believed to be his mother knew all along where he was, and never made any attempts at contacting him or us after she disappeared.

Lucky was registered at the school as Lucky Mosesane. He became known as Lucky du Plessis among the teachers, his friends, etc.

Lucky liked being called a ‘du Plessis’. He felt it gave him stature among his white friends, at least more than what Mosesane did.

What he did not like was being called Lucky. It did not have the same ‘ring’ as the white names had – at least not in his opinion.

When school started for his third grade Lucky decided to change all of this. We only found out about this three months later.

The teacher read the class-roll, and when she came to ‘Mosesane, Lucky’; he informed her that his surname had been changed, he is no longer a Mosesane, but is now a ‘du Plessis’.

She changed the register. Believing he is on a roll he went for the full house: he also told her that he is not Lucky anymore, his name has been changed to “Pieter” – a good Afrikaans name.

Henceforth, he insisted, everyone should call him Pieter du Plessis.

The whole school called him Pieter du Plessis for about three months before Mariki was talking to the headmaster who was telling her about “Pieter’s” progress. She could not understand why he would be telling her all these details about Pieter, or why he thought she would even remotely be interested. She concluded that he was confusing her with another Mrs. Du Plessis.

When she, politely tried to explain that she is Mrs. Du Plessis, but not the Mrs. Du Plessis who was Pieter’s mother but the Mrs. Du Plessis that looks after Lucky, the whole story about Lucky changing his name came out.

Since we had not adopted Lucky, and it probably was illegal for Lucky to live with us, it would have been very illegal to allow the school to have him registered as Pieter du Plessis. We had the school change all there registers back to the real name.

And so, just as Lucky Mosesane became Pieter du Plessis, did Pieter du Plessis become Lucky Mosesane.

We realised that the issue of adoption is one that we will have to consider, and I will tell you what happened in a later chapter.

But while we were considering this issue we had to also consider the issue of Lucky not wanting to be Lucky – or, at least, not wanting to be called Lucky.

And here we had some really good luck. Mariki saw on the television news that an Italian racing driver was called Lucci, the American announcer pronounced this as Lucky.

She told Lucky about this, and since he was not registered anywhere on any population register, we felt it would be fair to change the spelling of his name. Henceforth he was still called Lucky, it was just spelled Lucci.

So there you have the story of how Lucky Mosesane became Pieter du Plessis and Pieter du Plessis became Lucci Mosesane, and how there is a black South African named after an Italian racing driver who does not know that a child has been named after him, and there now exists a black child with a named spelled Lucci and pronounced Lucky.

LUCKY’S GREATEST TALENT

God gave everyone a number of talents.

The picture below shows Lucky’s major talent – or the biggest one we identified at the time.

If you look closely at the picture you will notice that Lucky is holding the book upside down.

Don’t be mislead into believing that Lucky’s talent is that he could read upside down at an early age.

Lucky’s great talent is that he can sleep any-where, any-time, in any position. Lucky has to be a contender for one of the world’s greatest sleepers!

Like any gifted person with a great talent, Lucky did have certain preferences for when he exhibited this talent. So, despite him being able to sleep anywhere, anytime; he had a great preference for sleeping when he should be doing his homework.

Mariki decided that rather than allowing him to develop this talent, she would ask him to do his homework in the dining-room. Here she could occasionally wake him.

The story behind the above photo is that Mariki showed me how Lucky is doing his homework – i.e. sleeping on top of his book. I fetched the camera and took the photo below of Lucky doing his homework.

The flash woke him, he grabbed his book and seeing us next to him contrived to appear engrossed in his homework. Unfortunately he had grabbed the book upside down, and I was able to get the picture showing Lucky demonstrating his ability to learn from an upside down book.

Exercise 8: Lions and Springboks and 2007 world cup

2009-06-06T21:18:00.003+02:00

Twenty Two superior men, wearing the colours of South Africa (Springboks) and the Lions (England), facing each other ready to do Battle, edged on by their supporters.

This is how we cultured societies do WAR.

The principles remain the same: choose your best youth, train them in the art of battle, send them to maul the other countries best youths and cheer them on. They become national heroes if they win. Like in the old days they get honours bestowed on the, titles, money and statues are erected.

If this event at Parc deFrance in the 2007 rugby world cup is reminiscent battle before countries became cultured, then think of what it would have looked like before that – on the plains of Africa.

Imagine you are a Zulu and coming over a hill you notice in the plains below 15 lions and 15 springbuck squaring up with a leather covered cow bladder between them. They have fenced of the area so that no-one can get away from the other. They are obviously going to do battle over the bladder!

You might briefly think that this is going to be a slaughter of Springboks – a type of genocide they have allowed themselves to be tricked into.

People that live in Africa will tell you that they have never seen this, but they will also tell you that there will not be a genocide. At least not as much as there was in Parc de Franche.

What will happen is that the lions will lie around in the shade looking at the Springbuck. The Springbuck will be grazing sort of keeping an eye on the lion.

At some stage the male lion (there will only be one) will call over the she-lions and tell them to get him a springbuck.

The she-lions will ignore the bladder, as the springbuck has, and start to circle the springbuck, which will start to shuffle around with a bit of unease.

Once the she-lions have identified the weakest of the species among the springbuck they will quickly rush it. If they have been wrong and it is not the weakest, it will run away for a short distance, the she-lions will give up, the springbuck will continue grazing – as most of the other would have while this is all happening.

The she-lions will identify another one as being a most likely meal, rush it, and if they get it they will kill it. The male lion will wander over, smell the kill and have some meat. The she-lions will rest in the sun until he is done. He will then go to sleep, and they will have their bit.
The springbuck would have moved away a save distance, about the distance from the half-way line to the 22 meter line on a rugby field, and continue grazing, knowing they are save. They will probably even go to the same watering hole as the lions.

The principle of nature is that:

READ MY PRVIOUS BLOG ON THIS ISSUE!

This principle holds because no lion will run around when it is not necessary, and therefore no springbuck needs to run around when it is not necessary.

This is nature.

Humans evolved to the extent that we declare war. We have been doing this even BC. However, those wars were fought with very little preparation. The young men that were around were collected, send to a place where there was going to be a battle, edged on by the rest of the tribe.

The battle would mostly be short, comprising of people throwing things at each other or swinging sticks or swords at each other. One side will win. The other side will run away – for a short distance because no-one was really following them. This was very much like the lion and the springbuck.

This running by the losing side really relied on you being a bit faster than the guy who is following you. He is probably not putting much effort in running after you because he is as unfit as you.

In any case, why would he want to catch you when he is out of breath? You might just turn around and fight? So you know that he is running more to impress the young women of the tribe who are sitting on the nearby hill cheering him on.

So even in a less cultured (ancient) society than ours the principles of battle remained very similar to that of the lion and springbuck.

Then we evolved to the stage where we could really kill each other over long distances using guns and cannons. Once again there was no real reason to be able to run long distances fast. No matter how far you can run, or how fast you can do it in, you will never outrun a bullet or cannon ball.

The problem was that the rules have changed from the ‘rules of nature’. While the springbuck know they only have to outrun a lion for a short distance, maybe once or twice in their life, the modern soldier knows that no amount of running will get him far enough away.

The problem is of course that the women and old folk that sat on the hill cheering their young men onto great feats of heroism are now also got shot and bombed at. Suddenly things were not as much fun as before.

After the last big flings in Europe (WW I and WW II) countries realized that going back to the old ‘rules of nature’ is best. Don’t do battle – do Rugby, Soccer, Olympic Games, Wimbledon, etc. All of these things did not really exist before the World Wars, and all became big rapidly after the two wars.

So we are going back to the ‘rules of nature’.

Most of us have now seen what a real ‘civilised’ war would look like. That Hiroshima was really just a test market for such a very civilized war.

BUT, while we recognize how far wrong our progress into civilized war has been, and the benefits of a more ‘nature like’ war; we have not recognized how we have formed our visions about how we should be treating our bodies.

Much of what we propagate we should be doing to our bodies is a civilized and harmful as civilized war is. Possibly because we are holding up the Olympians and Spartans as role models of what we should all be. We forget that they trained in what was a most uncivilized and unnatural endeavour: To kill, on demand, for other people’s pleasure.

This booklet is about:
Thinking about being ‘natural’,
Thinking about what nature requires of us,
Thinking about what is really natural,
Using the examples nature gives us about what natural is.

Even a great white shark does not exercise to becoming a super-fit killing machine, seldom exerts itself, only kills what it wants to eat, and only trains up to that required level. Mostly it does not care about what the other sharks think of it.

In writing this book I have found many examples in nature of how we can live a natural life. In fact, I have yet to find examples in nature that replicates our health and fitness fanaticism.

I use the word ‘fanaticism’ wisely. I am not writing about the real fanatics, although I write about that too, I am talking about all of us – including you – that have some of this fanaticism in you.

My major concern is that this little bit of ‘fanaticism’ you have makes you worry about your level of fitness, and this leads you to be depressed by your body not being the body you are taught that you should have.

Knowing that you will never have such a body makes one depressed. The Dutch call it (Gemoedsbekak). This word describes your mood attacking you (like the words ‘a heart attack’ describes your heart attacking you).

Look at nature. How many animals do you see that have their mood attack them? Very few and very seldom, and mostly the cause is easily identifiable. Maybe we should be like them.

Exercise 7: The natural way to exercise

2009-06-05T17:59:00.000+02:00

THE NATURAL WAY TO EXERCISE

Over the past 50 years there has been an increased trend in lifestyles toward a more ‘natural’ lifestyle. This is quite obvious in the changes in eating trends, the increased general popularity of jogging as a pass-time, the rise in shops selling ‘natural’ things – from natural foam baths to natural herbs, the activism against smoking, etc.

There is general agreement that natural is better than synthetic. This book does not question this assumption.

What this book does is to question whether much that goes under the guise of being ‘back to nature’ is really back to nature. Too many things are being positioned as being natural when they are totally unnatural, but no one seems to question the assumption that these things are natural and good.

We will look at aspects of modern lifestyles and test these against the ways of nature to see what nature has to say about things.

Obviously one has to start of by inspecting nature, a bit, if one wants to evaluate activities in terms of whether they are more natural than other activities.

The best description of nature’s ways comes from an African saying (and who can deny that Africa is still the continent closest to nature).

The Rule of Africa:
In Africa every lion, when it wakes up, knows that it has to be faster than the slowest buck,
And every buck, when it wakes up, knows it has to be faster than the slowest buck.

There is a lot of wisdom in this saying about nature, and we will come back to this often throughout the book to demonstrate points about what we now call natural lifestyles if only to prove that what we call natural is mostly very unnatural.

This African saying is, of course, a very concise summary of Darwinism.

Darwinism is often described as ‘survival of the fittest’, but even Darwin never used the term because this is not want Darwinism is about. Darwinism is about the non-survival of the weakest. Darwin does not suggest that the best gene pools ultimately survive, but that the bad genes get weeded out.

If one then considers what ALL animals, without an exception (in Africa at least) do between waking up and going to sleep then the answer is: MOSTLY NOTHING!

One does not get to see a springbuck, kudu, lion or elephant wake up, do a few push ups, jog a few miles and then during the day go to the gym. In fact one seldom sees them trying to impress the girls (or guys), this is a special activity that they embark on only when it is necessary – breeding time.

It is true that sometimes one sees them running, but when they do run there is a reason for this. Either they are being chased by something, or they are chasing something.

On odd occasions one does see them jogging toward water. Especially cows do this in the evening when it is homecoming time. It is possible that they are running to work up a good thirst, but somehow this seems to be unlikely. It is more likely that there is an incentive to be among the first to reach the water before the others trample it full of mud.

Whilst it is true that animals mostly do nothing this does not imply that they do absolutely nothing. They walk to where they can graze. Those that have homes (birds, bees, ants, snakes, aardvarks, etc.) will build, or dig, or construct their homes. They might even be trekking to an area of veldt where there is a better supply of food (be it grazing or meat). They will be doing guard duty. Many will indulge in grooming activities (monkeys, birds and elephants), but this is not aimed at making them look better only to rid themselves of lice and parasites. Grooming is a matter of hygiene.

In human terms all of these activities can be considered to be work. They are working to eat, sleep, remain healthy and have the occasional sexual exploit.

Nature only runs when this is part of survival – either to eat or not be eaten. In other words running is classified under work, not pleasure.

What does nature do when it is not working? What does it define as pleasure?

Sleeping, dozing or napping comes very high on the list of what nature defines as pleasure time. This is true for all of nature whether it be animals, reptiles or birds.

There appears to be the occasional romping by especially the youngsters. These are always just short spurts of energy. For most of nature even this waste of energy stops when it reaches some maturity.

Some people theorize that this playing is really just a way that nature’s children acquire their hunting skills. If this was the case then one should classify this behavior as not being pleasure, but work – i.e. like going to school.

It is unlikely that the young in nature romps because they feel a need to learn. After all, how often will an average springbuck be in a real fight? If it has to fight a lion or leopard it is going to lose irrespective how much it has learned from romping and it would be a lot better of if it runs away – this skill is not really improved by romping with a few friends.

The animals that are general thought of as developing their killing skills by romping are parts of the cats or dogs families. Even here, if one considers that male lions seldom join the hunt and therefore do not really need to learn a killing skill, it is questionable whether the learning of hunting skills is a major objective of romping. In any case snakes, crocodiles, falcons and many others do not exhibit romping behavior but remain very effective killers.

This very short exposition, based on the Rule of Africa, leads us to a number of learnings about nature’s way:

RULE 1: Energy is only expended to get to food, shelter or sex.
RULE 2: Energy is only expended to get away from danger, and then only to the extent of being faster than the slowest buck.
RULE 3: Energy is sometimes expended by the very young for short bursts of energetic behaviour.
LEARNING 1: Nature NEVER indulges in behaviours that require energy unless it is for the objectives of Rules 1 to 3.
LEARNING 2: If nature indulges in an energetic behaviour that is not in compliance with Rules 1 to 3, then it is only for a very short time.

2009-06-01T15:46:00.006+02:00

Exercise 6: Joggers and Cyclists caused the decline of the Suburb Culture

2009-05-21T22:32:00.001+02:00

When I was at school the street was where children played. We played soccer, cricket and touch rugby in the street.

At any point in time you can leave your homework and walk onto the street, there will be someone else also avoiding homework and we could develop our social skills. Before you go to bed you can simply walk onto the street and there will be someone to talk to. This is where you got to know the other children in the street, and, if you were lucky, get to meet girls.

During the day there would be the jingle of ice-cream carts (children today do not know what I am talking about) and even fruit and vegetable vendors. Children today do not realize the origin of the vendor shouting Mielies in the comic series.

Now you can drive through the streets I used to play in (Bellville and Parkhurst) and you will be lucky if you see even one kid. Children don’t know the other children in the neighbourhood. They play in hidden places where their parents cannot see them, and hence they can easily start to take drugs.

This decline of the social role of suburban streets happened so slowly that people did not realize the big threat it is to society. People also did not realize that this is nearly 100% due to joggers and cyclists.

Dogs recognize joggers and cyclists as people involve in something that is not natural, and therefore try to chase them away from their area.

Generally dogs do not bother people that walk past at a reasonable pace and who will be saying things like ‘Nice Doggy’ and getting of their bicycles to give them a pat on the head. At least, they did not when there were people like this on the streets. Now there are not people like this on the streets – only joggers and cyclists. Look out of your window, if you can see the street, if you do not believe me.

Joggers and cyclists were never nice about dogs chasing and biting them. They did not attempt to take any of the blame. They are not the type of people that think they are to blame for anything.

So, during the 70’s and 80’s when joggers started to jog one would regularly have someone in funny clothes ringing your bell:
“YOUR DOG BIT ME!”
“The little fox-terrier standing behind you waving its tail?”
“YES YOUR DOG BIT ME, LOOK HERE”
“That little scratch? There is no blood”
“YOUR DOG BIT ME, I AM REPORTING YOU TO THE POLICE”
“They are going to take my fox-terrier to jail?”
“YOUR DOG BIT ME, THEY WILL ARREST YOU”
“I did not nip you!”
“I’M CALLING MY LAWYER, YOUR DOG BIT ME. HE IS A MENACE TO SOCIETY”
“Did you do anything to provoke my fox-terrier? Tease it? Dress in funny clothes? Behave like a mad man?”
“MY LAWEYR WILL SUE THE HELL OUT OF YOU AND THE VICIOUS MONGREL THAT BIT ME!”
“But the fox terrier does not have any money.”
“THIS IS NOT A JOKING MATTER! YOU ARE THE OWNER AND YOUR DOG BIT ME. I AM SUING YOU!”
“Actually my 5 year old son, who is hiding behind my legs because you frighten him, is the owner, and he also does not have any money.”
“DON’T BE FACETIOUS, YOUR VICIOUS MONSTER BIT ME. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT”
“Say ‘I’m sorry’?”
“IF I COME PASS HERE AGAIN AND SEE YOUR DOG I AM GOING TO KILL IT! YOUR DOG BIT ME.”
“It did not kill you, it nipped you. If it will make you feel better I will hold it so you can give it a nip?”
“STOP BEING FACETIOUS. YOU ARE IN DEEP …”
“Please don’t use language like this in front of the kids”

Joggers do not learn. The next morning ones bell would ring again, again at 7am. And the same jogger wearing the same ridiculous clothes will report that your fox-terrier viciously mauled him.

Non-joggers were being polite – which is in their nature. Instead of trying to placate joggers we should have said things like:
“Just wait here, I want to bring the pit-bull from the back yard.”
“So why did you not run a bit faster to get away from the dog?”
“F… Off!!”

What we did was to build walls around our properties to keep our dogs inside. Fox terriers jump over 6 foot walls so our walls are 10 to 12 feet high.

Along with the dogs we were now keeping our children inside. They stopped playing touch rugby and cricket because it is no fun if you cannot kick/hit the ball into someone prize rose garden. One can clearly see the effects of this on our national rugby and cricket teams. (Jacques Kallis comes from the platteland where they still played cricket in the street.)

Children, now hiding inside their gardens, had privacy to start taking pot and drink their fathers’ whiskey. It is even probable that since they did not develop any social skills with other children in the street they also became joggers.
I recently went to Soweto for a wedding. There children are playing in the street. Grownups are standing at their gates socializing. Dogs wag their tails. Ice-cream carts are ringing their bells joyously. Everybody knows everybody on the street. People are relaxed and smiling.

The reason is that large parts of Soweto are juppy-free. I did not see one jogger in Soweto’s streets. (I saw aspirant boxers running, but they were swinging their arms, had an upright posture, lifted their feet, occasionally made a few dance-steps and waved at people because they had to practice how they would wave in the ring after knocking the other guy out. So they do not count as joggers.)

Compare this with the streets in Sandton where the up-tight, juppy joggers live. It is very difficult to understand why anyone would want to live in Sandton given the type of neighbours you are likely to have.

The biggest exodus from South Africa to places like Australia comes out of up market juppie neighbourhoods like Sandton, Rivonia, Waterkloof, Sea Point, Kloof, etc.

People in these areas look at the social decline that has set in upper-class suburbia.

To rectify this they set up neighbourhood watches, and the first advice given to a neighbourhood watch is: GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOUR. Which is exactly what the neighbourhood made impossible by the big walls they built to keep the joggers away from their dogs.

When the neighbourhood watch does not work, because not enough people join, because they don’t want to meet their neighbours, these people blame the neighbourhood. They believe that the solution does not involve moving to Soweto they move to other countries – like Australia.

What they don’t realize is that the neighbourhood is what it is because of the people that form the neighbourhood (this is the dictionary meaning of neighborhood). When these people move to other neighbourhoods they are taking the problem with them, they are the problem. So then end in places like Perth (Australia) which has the biggest population of South Africans outside South Africa.

I lectured in Perth for a few months so I can comment on the neighbourhood there with great expertise.

Because the type of people that emigrate are the type of people that they are nothing changes. The Australians do not want to make friends with them either. Soon these emigrants end up with only South African friends – who are mostly the same type of people as them because they also emigrated because they are also the type of people that emigrate.

So Perth comprise of little groups of ex-South Africans that are friends only with ex-South Africans and all that they have in common is that they all come from neighbourhoods that did not like them, and now live in neighbourhoods that does not like the. This means that all they can talk about is how bad the neighbourhood was that they came from, or, how unfriendly the neighbourhood is to them now.

Obviously the exodus from the country would be much less if places like Sandton were just nicer places to live in. But, given the type of people that live there, this is unlikely to happen.

I am not suggesting that as part of the Lion and springbok exercise program you should sell your house in Sandton and move to Soweto. You will probably feel out in Soweto, because they do not like joggers there either. You can, if you happen to live in Sandton start the Exercise Program and try to turn Sandton into a friendlier environment in which to live.

As Sandton becomes friendlier and people walk in the streets (instead of jogging or power-walking or cycling) the people will get to know their neighbours. Since people are on the street they would not need a neighbourhood watch which co-opt residents to drive patrols at night, the streets will be automatically patrolled because of the residents walking around in them. Crime will decrease. Walls will come down so that the dogs can also patrol the whole neighbourhood instead of providing burglars the easy option of just poisoning ones dogs.

With the walls coming down the neighbours can now keep watch on each others house. Neighbours will also know when a car that should not be in the drive is in the drive because the neighbours will know each others cars.
There are a lot of social wrongs, other than just the anti-smoking laws, that the joggers should be called to responsibility for. I envisage a Nuremburg type trial, but maybe we can just ask them to confess in front a reconciliation commission – non joggers are forgiving types

Exercise 5: Heart rate monitors, walking and jogging

2009-05-18T08:48:00.000+02:00

The Heart Rate Counter
If there is anything that gives one a great insight into the joggers mind then it is the piece of equipment they strap around their chest to measure their heart rate. (Some work on one wrist, but is not so obvious that others can see it.)

Doctors warn their patients that it is not a good idea to get your heart rate up too high, and also not your blood-pressure. This is when things like cardiac failure occurs and also strokes. Blood vessels in the brain can burst. Etc.

Yet this is what the jogger is actively striving to do!

If you feel you need to buy any equipment for the Lion and Springbok Exercise Program then a heart rate monitor would be a good thing, especially if it includes a blood pressure meter.

If you stick to the program as we will set it out you will never have your blood rate or pressure increase to uncomfortable heights as a result of anything in the program.

Now take a brisk walk, with the meter attached, and note how fast your heart rate and blood pressure goes up. Stop when you start to feel uncomfortable, and note how it goes back to what it was. Now imagine how uncomfortable you would feel if you had to push these measures to an extreme.

Yet, this is what the joggers do daily.

The obvious question is: Why would they? Well the answer is that they are druggies; they just don’t buy their drugs.

Nature has given us the ability to produce heroin in our brain when we are in extreme pain. This is what the joggers do. They just call it ‘hitting the wall’, heroin users that buy their own heroin calls this ‘hitting the needle’.

What the heartbeat monitor does is to tell the jogger how far he is from the heroin kicking in!

Then they take great pride in watching their heart rate coming back to normal, which is the heroin doing its work.

Now sit back with your own heart rate monitor, have a whiskey, and watch your heart rate and blood pressure decrease. You can get the same effect as the jogger, and any other druggie, by using your drug of choice (not amphetamines, or other stimulants – like coffee.)

The difference between a druggie and a jogger is that only the former is conceited about what they do.

The difference between Walking and Jogging

The Lion and Springbok exercise program is, as its name implies, not against exercise itself. It is anti un-natural exercising like jogging, cycling, swimming and other extreme activities.

It will be about to any observer that jogging is not just a form of walking faster, nor is walking a form of slow jogging. Even when a jogger jogs at a ridiculously slow pace, about the speed that many people walk, it is obvious that he is jogging not walking.

The first difference is in the body posture. When you walk your posture is upright – like what your mother suggested it should be. Your head is mostly upright. Your lungs are open. Your arms will swing giving your shoulders some exercise. You look at the environment and appreciate nature. You will mostly seek out beautiful places in nature to do this, not crime ridden streets.

Walkers look as if they are enjoying it. They smile and greet the people they pass. If there is more than one then they will be talking to each other, saying things like: …

You will feel like saying ‘hi’ to them because they look like pleasant people enjoying themselves.

They often will have their family with them, and all would appear to be enjoying the family experience.

Walkers will not be wearing equipment that measures their heart rate or blood pressure. Just wearing such equipment show an unnatural approach to what they are doing. In fact when a walker wears a pedometer we would immediately disqualify him as a walker in our definition. We also discount power-walkers for the same reason.

If they feel like something to drink they will stop and drink, not gulp things down on the run.

If they see something beautiful like an unusual bird on a branch they will stop and appreciate nature.

Mostly they will be lifting their feet and look natural.

They will not look dehydrated, lacking the juices of life, or in pain.

Some will be whistling. When last did you see a whistling jogger?

It will be obvious that they are not on their way to get some dope for another high.

Some walkers will smoke while they walk. The whole activity is about relaxation.

The medical profession insists that walking is very good exercise. Since we are not anti walking we are obviously not anti exercise.

If you have time then listen to Bob Dylan sing “I’m walking, and talking..”. The slow relaxed melody is what we are talking about. Joggers do not listen to Bob Dylan, this distinguishes them from other drug addicts. (Except Rastafarians, I think).

Lucky 8: What will Lucky become?

2009-05-10T12:23:00.000+02:00

WHAT WILL LUCKY BECOME?

All parents are concerned about the careers that their children will one day follow. From a very young age parents (and especially grand-parents) start to speculate whether their child will become a doctor, or preacher, or lawyer, or stockbroker, etc.

The children themselves want to become firemen, lion-tamers, ice-cream merchants etc.

When they grow up they become criminals, drug- addicts, wife-beaters, etc.

Very often they are unhappy in their profession because it was their parents choice, not their own.

Maybe if the parents left the children alone to become what they wanted to become they would be better of.

In South Africa the situation is a little bit different from elsewhere. Until a few years ago the white parents knew that if their children are not all that bright they will find a career in the railways or the post-office. The public sector was some kind of safety net for whites against being jobless. Even if you are useless, and do not want to work, then you could go to the public sector – but, mainly only if you were white.

This has changed, the public services now have to be staffed non-racially in such a way that each race is present in the ratio that it occurs in the population – and this is true for every level of the hierarchy.

As a result the civil service is still as ineffective, lazy, etc. as what it was before the political changes in South Africa, but at least it is non-racial because the racially set quotas are adhered to. (One really would have wished that the change were more in terms of effectiveness, than skin colour.)

Off course if the racial bias in such a non-racial structure is biased toward black employees then it does not matter because this is not racial bias. It is only non-racial if it is not biased toward white employees.

In the past companies tried to be politically correct by being non-racial and not recording the races of their employees, so that they can truly say that promotions were not based on race. This has now changed; it is politically correct to be non-racial by recording the race of ones staff!

In fact, if a company wished to be a supplier to a government organisation, which is now non-racial, then this non-racial civil department insists that the supplier submits a form showing the races of its staff members at different levels in the organisation – especially the racial composition of the shares of the company. When a supplier can demonstrate that it is non-racial, based on this recording of races, and balancing of races, the non-racial government department will give it preference in the tender – just to demonstrate that they are not racist.

As a result the parents of white children now do have an even greater concern about their children’s future careers: not only might the child be a bit stupid and lazy, but it is a fact that if he is white, and he will probably not find a job in the civil service.

On the way back from school, in the car, our children started a conversation about their careers, what they thought they might one day become.

After some discussion, Charl said: “Lucky, you are lucky; you don’t have to worry about these things. You know that when you finish school you will have a job.”

Mariki was very impressed that Charl, even at such a young age, already has this appreciation of the racially bound political nature of our non-racial society and how it is a great benefit to be black in the new non-racial society of the new South Africa.

Until Charl explained to Lucky: “You know that you can always be my father’s gardener.”

It is interesting to speculate about his career: he has great people skills, speaks Afrikaans very well, does not like numbers or computers (every-one in our house does), is especially good with younger children.

Maybe he will a teacher?

Would be even more interesting if he becomes a dominee in the NG Kerk! I think this is a possibility because Lucky likes to act and make speeches.

2009: We now know that he chose a career in advertising, having graduated from VEGA. Although he still would like to be an actor – and can soon be seen on “I want to be..” on television.

Lucky 7: Lucky fails grade 2

2009-05-05T10:29:00.000+02:00

LUCKY FAILS GRADE 2

The ‘new’ approach to education, in South Africa, specifies that children cannot really fail a grade.

Obviously if one is going to have a society where there is no discrimination based on skin colour, one should have a ratio of black doctors vs white doctors that matches the population profile. This means that the universities have to produce Black and white doctors in the required ratio; which means their intake has to be proportional to the population profile; which means that the schools system has to produce candidates in this ratio; which means that in each study year the pass rate has to be maintained at this racial ratio; etc.

To maintain these ratios it was decided that children should not be failed.

When Lucky came to the end of grade 1 it was obvious that his grades are not really very good.

The school called Mariki, in locus parentis, to tell her that they suggest he repeats the grade, but that they cannot fail him. The decision is ours.

We said that this is a good idea.

Wonderful things happen.

Where Lucky was a withdrawn shy child lacking confidence, he suddenly blossomed.

The reason for this was simple: as the new grade 2’s started the year insecurely, Lucky knew what to expect, and was seen to be natural leader. This newfound confidence changed Lucky’s personality.

Suddenly he was a ‘achiever’, and not a laggard struggling to keep up with the rest.

Maybe the education authorities can learn something from Lucky: It is sometimes a good thing to be kept behind for a grade to establish self-confidence.

Exercise 4: A philosophical question about benefits

2009-04-27T09:13:00.001+02:00

Exercise is Healthy: A Philosophical Question

We have all been indoctrinated by the view that exercise is healthy for you. In fact to the extent that we glibly say ‘any exercise is healthy for you’.

Under this doctrine my Lion and Springbok exercise program is also heathy for you.

Lets consider this believe in the health aspect of exercise.

It is certainly not based on any evidence that people who exercise live longer than those that do not.

When one read about the lifestyles of people that are more than 100 years old one find mostly that they are farmers from Russia or other people that have never jogged in their lives. Similarly communities that have been identified as having people that live to older ages than other communities are never communities that would have jogged or exercised as their life style.

In fact, if one goes back and look at people that were great sport heroes in their time (which would imply that they are fit and therefore healthy) one finds no evidence that they lived longer than their counter parts who did not exercise.

Part of the problem is that jogging and other exercise only became fashionable since the mid 50’s. So that people who were born then, and might have been exercising as a routine to become healthy are now only about 50 years old. So there is not yet a generation of people that can be used to demonstrate that the joggers live longer than the couch potatoes.

Kenyans dominate the Olympic long distance races. Obviously they have to be a great jogging nation. Their life expectancy (see the CIA website) is 58 years, compared to the Americans at 78. The difference is not that Kenyans jog more, or Americans eat healthier food (they don’t), but the state of health care in the two countries.

So, if longevity is not a benefit of exercise that one can prove then one has to ask what is the evidence that exercise is a healthy option? (Which the presence of surgeons at the Sport and Science institute belies – see my first post).

Largely the evidence flouted is that lots of exercise will lead to a slower pulse, and that your blood pressure will be more ‘normal’, and your lung-capacity will be more. These all sound good, until one thinks about it.

It is notable that these are the three things that one can easily measure about your body.

Not jogging does not mean your heart rate increases to dangerous levels, just that it might if you suddenly do start to run. People with low heart rates will not necessary live longer than those with a faster heart beat.

People with huge lung capacity also get lung cancer, its just that afterwards their lung capacity declines.

Blood pressure has a lot more to do with stress, than what it has to do with exercise. Joggers tend to be ‘up tight’ people and probably more prone to high blood pressure problems in their daily lives than non-joggers.

So one has a philosophical problem: the three easily measured things of the human body are not demonstrated as leading to a longer life, and whilst it is true that if one of them goes out of kilter one is unhealthy, there is no evidence that these are out of kilter due to a lack of jogging.

Wally Hayward is still going strong at age 100, but several springbok rugby players have had a by-pass at age 45. Individual examples do not make a statistical argument.

It is true that people are now more health conscious and jog more than they did 100 years ago. It is also true that they now live longer than what they did 100 years ago. This is, however, a spurious correlation. People live longer due to advances in medicine. In very developed countries like the USA, where more people jog than in any other country, and where people live longer than before, the biggest problem is due to the poor diets resulting from modern processed food. Yet, despite this they live longer than before.

A major reason cited for people living longer is that their work environment has changed from doing long hours of menial work outdoors to much shorter, less strenuous work, and more time to relax and less stress. The pro-jogging lobby would like to see us go backward in time by replacing these hours we now have to relax with strenuous exercise outdoors.

Not content with just changing our lifestyle they would prefer us to worrying about the types of food we eat, what we drink, whether we smoke, and anything else that is pleasurable and not stressful. They do this while they get high on their internally generated drug, which is still legal, and which they have no intention of banning.

What is undisputable is that joggers have less resistance to most diseases. Next season change when the next virus from Asia hits your office watch who are the people that succumb first, and who succumbs most: the joggers.

Doctors warn joggers to stop jogging when they feel the least bit ill because of the danger that the virus will attack the heart muscle of people doing exercise. One would have thought that if exercise strengthens the heart then their muscles will be the least to succumb to the virus.

So, the question of whether jogging, or cycling, or swimming, is good for your health is totally dependent on how you define health. If your definition of health has to do with heart rate, blood pressure and lung capacity then you will have a nice chicken and egg argument proving jogging is good for you. If your definition of health includes saying: healthy is when you are not sick, then the evidence is against jogging as being healthy.

In the modern anti-smoking environment it is always educational to watch all the smokers (who tend to be drinkers) stand outside braving the cold and rain, while the joggers are not inside the building working, but sick at home.

The final word on whether exercise is healthy has to come from the joggers themselves. Every jogger will tell you that they jog because it makes them feel good. Well that is what every smoker of dagga, user of heroin, and other drugs will tell you. “I do it because it makes me feel good”.

So maybe we should not be asking the heroin junkies why they do it.

The second reason they mention is that jogging makes them feel healthier. Implied in this is that they feel healthier than me, because I do not jog. Great stuff, but how do they know how healthy I feel? There is a great arrogance in believing you ‘feel’ better than what I ‘feel’.

This belief that they feel better than me is supported by a whole shelf full of magazines and books about jogging, exercise and diets which all supports the view that I do not feel healthy. Then there are the two minute infomercials on television that tells them that they will feel better if they buy the equipment that is advertised. Obviously there comes a time when anyone will believe that so many people can’t be wrong as long as you ignore that they make money out of propounding what is possibly a myth. No-one has even set out to prove that there is a correlation between IQ and jogging.

From an employers perspective joggers are seldom good workers. They get flu when there is some to be got. They leave early so they can jog, or they arrive late because they had to jog. When there is a marathon coming up they have to work their way up to a peak, so things just get worse. Then they have to recover. Much rather employ golfers.

Possibly the most dangerous sport is boxing due to the blows that the brain receive. The human body is not built to travel faster than 12km per hour, nor is it built for the head to be knocked about by punches, nor is it built for the continuous jarring and shocks that jogging provide, for hours at a time every day. This continuous jarring occurs because the knees, ankles and hips are not designed to absorb such shocks. Obviously this translates into physical changes occurring to the protection mechanism of the brain the protective sheet around the brain grows thicker (like a callous) and ultimately is the reason why joggers appear and act like brain dead people who cannot wait for their next heroin fix.

(I have to admit that I made up this bit about the brain damage, but it sounds good)

This is the second basic tenet of the Lion and Springbok Exercise Program: remember that nature works on a ‘use it, or lose it’ principle and this is true for your brain.

Joggers lose it because jogging is designed to not use it (the brain I mean). When a jogger takes on ‘the posture’ the second thing they do is to switch of their brains before they put their feet into motion. The whole idea of being a successful jogger is to not think while you jog. Do not be aware of the environment, other joggers, or even the pain in your body. Just run in a daze until the heroin comes in.

Next time you watch a group of joggers on television, or on the road, take note that they are not socially chatting while they jog. They are totally anti-social. No-one says: ‘Look at that beautiful bird sitting on that beautiful branch over there. Did you know it is a …’. They do not even ask: “So how are your children these days?..”. There is no use of their brain while they jog (other than the occasional glance at their watch, and even this is specially designed to have a stop-watch feature telling them how far they have run so that they do not have to do complex mathematical calculations.)

But, besides this not using of the brain while they jog, it is being pounded – literally on the ground. So joggers will lose it even faster.

Random 1:What I did

2009-04-23T09:19:00.002+02:00

Exercise 3 - Start NOW

2009-04-17T09:33:00.002+02:00

Exercise 3 - When to Start

Most exercise programs suggest that the best time to start is “NOW”. Unfortunately what they omit to mention is that generally before you can start you need to do one of the following:

Wait until you have time and money to join a gym,
Wait until you have time and money to buy the required shoes,
Wait until you have time and money to buy the right (their) equipment,
Wait until the next morning because you first have to read the book to know what to do.
Etc.

All of these reasons to delay starting the program is often the reason that most people just read the book and the next morning (wisely) decide they don’t feel like making the effort.

My exercise program has the advantage that you can start it NOW. As you are reading this sentence you are probably already following my program, all you will need to do is to continue doing what you are doing now.

The reason I am so sure that you are already doing the basics of my exercise routine is that it is highly unlikely that you are reading this book while shuffling alongside the road in a crunched up posture telling yourself you are lengthening your life by jogging.

There is only one circumstance I can conceive where you should not start my program NOW. If you are reading this book inside a bookstore and the sales assistant is glaring at you then you first need to buy the book NOW.

Obviously there are some ways that are better than others to start the program.

I would recommend that you go to your favourite chair with a glass of whiskey or beer (leave the wine and the water for the joggers – they deserve it.)

If you have started to read the book in the morning and you feel that having a whiskey or beer is going to be frowned upon by your spouse you have three options:
Explain to her that you have started a new exercise routine which involves not feeling guilty about what you drink. To demonstrate that you are serious you don’t care what you drink in the morning because if it is good for you after noon, then it has to be good for you before noon. Tell her/him that in due course she/he will notice you have a much more pleasant don’t care attitude to life, you won’t even care that she/he is overweight. Start to prepare her/him for the new you.
Wait until after noon.
Divorce your spouse. She/he is obviously not willing to take the journey towards being a pleasanter person with you.

If you can then take the book outside so you can continuously remind yourself about what nature is about. You will find this inspirational since the whole concept of this exercise program is built around being natural.

If you do go outside in your own garden then before you read further have a look around and identify a place where you can build a private corner with a chair on which you can contemplate nature. Think of how this can be enhanced with a few shrubs that require low maintenance and which brings nature closer to you and provide some privacy for you to drink your whiskey or beer in. Dream about this place for a while before you start to read my book. You will find this inspirational.

Having thought about this place make it your BIG DREAM. You will see that much of the exercise program is based on you having BIG DREAMS for yourself and about yourself.

Now that you have your first BIG DREAM think about who will build your dream: your gardener? Your Wife (unlikely, but some people are lucky)? Your children (less likely)? If you can, then settle on the gardener. Only if you are a real handyman should you decide to do this yourself – and this is another basic belief about my exercise program: don’t get roped into doing things you don’t enjoy and therefore things you are not good at.

So now you know when to start. In case you fell asleep while dreaming of building your own exercise space in the corner of your garden, with a comfortable chair and a fridge for your whiskey and beer and shrubs for privacy, let me repeat: START NOW.

Unlike other programs suggesting that you ‘start now’ and you will feel the benefits in three months time after a lot of pain and deprivation, I can guarantee you that if you start my program now, you will feel the benefits NOW.

Lucky 6: Black Racism

2009-04-14T09:38:00.000+02:00

BLACK RACISM

We have a holiday apartment in Plettenberg Bay on the south coast of the Cape.

The entrance to the town’s supermarket leads directly onto the parking area. The parking area is littered with street-children. I don’t use the word street-urchins because it is one of those euphemisms of the English language that implies beauty where there is no beauty to be implied.

As well as the street children there is also a collection of the local coloured population hanging around, often drunk – mainly because the local liqour store also faces onto this parking area.

The street children make money of the holidaymakers that shop here in two ways:

1. When you come out of the store they will offer to push your trolley to the car and unpack it for you, in return for a gratuity (tip);
2. When you have pushed your shopping cart to the car and unpacked they will appear and offer to return the empty cart to the store – 10 meters away – for a gratuity.

Not unexpectedly the latter option is the one that most of them prefer – it involves less actual work, and generally gets the same pecuniary reward as one gets for the first option, which involves work.

I went shopping, and came out with two trolleys. Charl and Lucky having accompanied me, I asked them to push the trolleys.

As I was unpacking the trolleys a drunken coloured man came to me and confided that I should in future not allow Lucky to push my trolley because “he is a known criminal in the area, and the police were there just that morning trying to find him.”

Since we had just arrived in Plettenberg Bay I knew that even if Lucky (age 8) was a known criminal, he could not have committed his crimes in Plettenberg Bay. So I invited my new confidant to accompany me to the police station where we will deliver Lucky to justice.

He declined this offer, but not before he again advised me not to have any further dealings with criminal types like Lucky.

As it turned out he viewed the parking area as his franchise. All the street children that ‘worked’ the area had to pay him a hefty commission on their earnings. He believed that Lucky was an outsider trying to move into the territory.

Lucky was standing next to me. He was born with naturally large round white eyes. These were growing larger and rounder as he heard himself being accused of being a major criminal, being sought be the police and then me, whom he trusted, offering to deliver him to the police.

The rest of our stay in Plettenberg Bay became a nightmare for Lucky. The street-children gangs started to terrorize him. Where-ever he appeared alone on the streets he could be sure of black street-children shoving him and trying to provoke fights – and fighting is something that Lucky is ill equipped for.

Racism is not skin colour related. Racism extends between self-perceived classes.

Lucky certainly came from much worse conditions than what the street children found themselves in. But Lucky found himself now living in much better conditions. He was living the life of a well to do white child.

There was no charity to be found in this by these street children. In fact, there was absolute jealousy. A jealousy that does not extend to white children. It was natural, and ‘even’ right for white children to live in the luxury that Lucky was living in. But they perceived it to be wrong that a black child should live in that luxury.

This might be where the whole ‘New South Africa’ will break down.

The politicians like to talk about the new deal for the masses. But, in effect they are the people that gain from the whole new deal. As far as the ‘new deal’ for the masses are concerned the politicians are first in the queue, and having satisfied their needs the rest gets distributed to the masses.

Politicians labour under the mistaken belief that if they can show the masses how blacks (saying the masses, but meaning themselves personally) have achieved things, then this will satisfy the masses.

Everybody looks at life only from a personal perspective, never from the view of ‘the masses’. Even if you are part of the masses.

ADDED in 2009: I wrote this mid 1990. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that what I predicted did come to pass. A super-wealthy black class arose from the ashes of apartheid. This was achieved by a well conceived Black Economic empowerment program of the government. Unfortunately this did benefit only a small portion.

When Bishop Tutu criticised the program for not benefiting the masses the Black Business Forum was the first to criticise him. Obviously these were the beneficiaries of the program as it was implemented, they did not really want everybody to benefit.

The government extended the program titling it Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). There is a lot of evidence that this is working much better.

The way that the implementation of this program is to work in the future is part of the debate for the coming election, and it will be interesting to see how it is implemented in the future.

Personally I see a lot of evidence that after 15 years of government by the ANC that there is a much greater interest in merit promotions rather than skin colour promotions. The accent shifting to creating situations where black people are in a situation where they can compete on merit in the job market.

Exercise 2 - The benefits

2009-04-06T10:57:00.004+02:00

All books on exercise programs try to sell their unique brand of exercise by listing its benefits. Mostly these are that you will probably never die if you follow their advice, or that sexy men and/or women will swoon around your body. Most even propagate both benefits.

The fact is that their programs will change your body shape. Either you are going to look scrunched up, dehydrated, like a jogger; or you are going to look like the bouncer at the local strip joint. The best alternative would be to look like the bouncer because then you might suddenly get a few more gay friends, the joggers just get no friends other than other scrunched up dehydrated joggers.

In fact, I think some of the female bouncers at my local strip joint looks rather attractive, and so do their lady friends.

So here is a list of benefits you will get with this program:
1. You can sleep later in the morning.
2. You can come home in the evening and have a beer rather than go running pointlessly around the neighborhood.
3. Your disposition will improve, from day one. You will not be walking around stressing that you did not get your exercise yesterday.
4. It will be as if a load is dropped from your shoulders, immediately.
5. You will have more time during every day to do things that you really enjoy. And if you do not then this is because you are already addicted to the heroin high. Yes, you are a druggy and the only cure is rehabilitation.
6. You will save a lot of money you wasted on special orthopedic designed shoes that you then submit to strenuous wear that no shoes, or feet, were designed to endure (marathons).
7. You won’t feel guilty when you drive around in your car.
8. You will probably start to enjoy nature around you the way nature was intended to be appreciated.
9. You will find new friends, and will discover a different dimension in your existing friends: those that are serious joggers you will now discover are very shallow people with little interest in the important things in life, those that are not joggers are interesting and diverse people.
10. You will discover your couch and television. You paid a lot of money for them, and before you start this program you probably felt guilty about using them.
11. Your shoulders will straighten, you won’t slouch, your legs will stop cramping, and you will be taking deeper breaths with every day you are on my exercise program.
12. You will stop feeling superior to other people, so they will start to like you. Nature in tended us to be part of the tribe.
13. You will stop feeling guilty about the food you eat. After all, nature evolved in a way that it supplies is with a great variety of food. We evolved in a way that we have the means to appreciate different types of food because they are good for us.
14. You might even start to accept that cigarette smokers are not drug addicts intent on killing you slowly using the weapon of mass destruction called secondary smoking, but people enjoying their drug the way you used to enjoy your heroin addiction.
15. Your spouse might even start to love the new improved you – this is seldom an immediate benefit because there will be a lot of baggage you need to get rid of. (Like all the time you did not spend at home when you are out jogging, cycling and then when you were at home you wasted time recovering rather than giving her attention). But, it will come in due course.
16. You can start my exercise program immediately without investing in any expensive equipment other than my book. And, what the hell, if you are reading it then you already spent the money.
17. You will be much less focused on your own body and ways of improving it.

THERE ARE MANY OTHER BENEFITS BUT I AM SURE YOU CAN THINK OF SOME YOURSELF.

PLEASE MAIL ME YOUR THOUGHTS ON THESE BENEFITS.

Exercise 1 - Introducing The Program

2009-04-01T16:18:00.002+02:00

Exercise like a Lion or Springbok Program

This is the first chapter of the second book. You can look at the archives and the chapters for the Lucky book is so indicated, as will the chaapters of this exciting book on how to live healthy like nature intended.

I have spent most of my life studying exercise. Like any good coach I have done this largely by observation from the side-line, and like any good coach I have a lot of wisdom I can depart to the players (or even the other people on the sideline). A lot of what I have learned I learned from nature.

The main lesson I have learned from the experts is: NOT ALL FORMS OF EXERCISE IS EQUALY GOOD FOR YOU. The corollary to this fact is that: EVERY FORM OF EXERCISE IS IN SOME WAY BAD FOR YOU!

I recently visited the UCT Sport Science Institute which is located next to the famous Newlands rugby field in Cape Town. It is a four story building with a huge swimming pool in the ground floor, and the SA Rugby Board’s offices occupying half of the top story.

Guess what occupies the whole 1st floor? Suites for a large number of medical specialists: Knee Surgeon, Shoulder Surgeon, Heart Surgeon, etc.

It is a fact that the supply side of the market will follow the demand side. In short, Al Capone robbed banks because that is where the money is. Obviously these surgeons have figured out where the market for there services are: The sports Science Institute.

This is where Prof. Knokes study what happens to people during exercise by pushing people to do all kinds of exercise that are supposed to be healthy for them. He is often interviewed on TV and quoted in magazines on the topic of how healthy exercise is, but these never mention that a whole flock of surgeons has collected around his institute.

As someone standing next to the sideline when massive numbers of people run marathons I am constantly amazed by the number of heart-attacks that are reported after the event. None of these heart attacks occurred among the spectators, and very few among the couch-potatoes watching the event on TV drinking beer, despite the fact that the health fanatics predict that the couch potatoes are the ones prone to heart attacks.

I have heard that one of the benefits of regular exercise is that should one have to run to catch a bus or train one will not keel over with a heart attack. As a youngster this was an impressive argument, and I did occasionally jog, so that I won’t get a heart attack running after a departing train. Fortunately I then realized that I never have to run to catch a bus or trains, one can always wait for the next one.

In London there are some x million people using the underground. Most of them do not look to me like they have ever run a marathon. I am yet to see dead bodies lying strewn out on the platform while the loudspeaker system says: “Mind the Gap”.

I am convinced that there are more people dying of heart-attacks while they are exercising so that they won’t get a heart attack when they try to catch the train, than what there are people getting heart attacks when they occasionally try to catch a departing train.

I am also convinced that there are more people getting damaged while playing rugby than what there are getting hurt watching rugby (at the field or in front of the television). Obviously I am talking proportionately – there are more people watching than what there are playing so the odd death or injury among a spectator is to be expected. It is the players that end up in the surgeons’ suites at the UCT Sport Sciences Institute.

It is not the intention of this book to propagate that people should stop playing rugby. I love to watch rugby and for me to be able to watch rugby one needs people that play rugby. It is just that there are many people like me that prefer others to be the hurtee than to be the hurted themselves, and who love to watch sports on television where other people are hurting other people.

The form of exercise that I think should be legally banned is jogging. It is number one on the list of bad things to do to you. Unfortunately the training for most sports involves getting fit, and this is mostly seen to be best done by jogging.

We can rest assured that jogging will never be banned. Politicians that smoke will ban smoking, but politicians that do not jog will not ban jogging. The reason is that there is too much vested interest involved (read MONEY). All forms of sport has become big time money makers, and no-one will attempt to ban the sports, and, as I said, to practice the sport always involves jogging for fitness.

Imagine all the money that will be lost if all the big stadia in the world stands empty, the television channels have nothing but reality shows to broadcast, beer companies cannot sponsor events and use the money to reduce the price of beer, no-one is lying on the couch drinking beer in any case, etc. Imagine the loss to BA if they cannot fly half the Super 14 teams and their accompanying trainers, physios, bag-handlers etc. between New Zealand, Australia and South Africa for 14 weeks each year!

So jogging will never be banned – it will be a world-wide economic disaster.

There is no-one more self-righteous than a jogger (not even a golf-player). If there are two at the bar one can be assured that at some stage they will introduce the topic of jogging into the conversation. It is not the introduction of the topic, but the self-righteous we-are-superior way they will do it: “How many miles a week are you doing?”.

What they forget is that to be a good jogger one needs to have a body that nature never intended. Throughout nature, and even in mankind’s history, the king always has a well rounded body. The specie of the species that survive through propagation are seldom the scrawny example.

Not only do good joggers start of with the type of body that would have ensured they take no further part in the evolution of human kind, but they then proceed to make a bad job worse.

As a student of jogging I have come to realize that the most important thing about jogging is the way that you carry your upper body – it has very little to do with what you do with your legs.

Firstly you have to hunch your shoulders, pull your neck in as far as possible. Then push your face out a bit, but not so far that you cannot see your toes anymore. Clutch your hands, get them chest high and not move them while you jog. Only once you have this upper-body posture right can you start to worry about what you do with your legs.

You can watch any good jogger and you will see they take ‘the posture’ before they start. If a jogger stands up straight like a normal person, opens their chest so they can get fresh air into it, swings their arms so that their shoulders unwind, they are not true joggers. If they look around at the beautiful scenery that nature provided them taking deep breaths of fresh air, they have not jogged more then once or twice in their life. If they, God-forbid, smile, then this is their first ever jog.

Once an experienced jogger has ‘adopted the position’ they will start shuffling their feet. The idea is to not lift their feet more than 2mm above the ground. A good jogger will rather run around a stone in his path than lift his feet to get over it. It is important to not ‘stride out’ as if you are enjoying a nice walk and getting your lungs filled with fresh air and enjoying it.

Doing this regularly leads to the well known problem of “joggers body”, which is especially noticeable in women. The body actually adapts to this jogging pose even when it is not being used to jog. Women, especially, start to get a hunch-back. Their shoulders sag and since their boobs are attached to their shoulders their boobs sag with their shoulders, as it is being pulled back into their hunch back.

Jogging causes unnatural leg muscles to be used, certainly not the muscles nature intended to make for show-off legs that attract male attention. Female joggers’ legs can easily be recognized: it is the pair that no man is looking at when they are on the beach. In fact the same can be said for the upper-part of her body as well.

With this ‘joggers crawl’ it takes a while before the pain sets in, and then they still have to turn around and jog home. Jogging is not worth while unless one gets to the pain threshold (they call it ‘hitting the wall’) because this is when the heroin is released in the brain. This heroin induced trip is what jogging apparently is all about. So in the period before the heroin is released the jogger goes through extreme pain. This results in them grimacing – which is what one does during an extended period of pain. This grimace becomes a natural feature of a female joggers face.

Again one can recognize a female jogger just by watching how the men ignore her based not only on her funny body but also the grimace on her face. One look at her mouth and you know this is one sour bitch that you are glad someone else married. (Hopefully the self-righteous specimen you met at the bar the night before.)

Serious joggers not only look as if the Juices of Life has been extracted from them, but in many ways the juices of life has been extracted from them. It is a well known medical fact that they struggle to procreate – both the male and the female jogger has problems in this area. This only gets worse the longer they jog, and often the only medical advice is for them to stop jogging for a long time if they hope to procreate.

This is a serious threat to the species.

You might well ask: If they struggle to procreate, why do they consider themselves to be the King of the Jungle? Why they are not bred out of the human race?

The answer is simply that jogging is a modern phenomenon. When I was young my parents did not jog, and did not even think they had to jog. None of their friends were jogging. Early mornings the streets were as nature intended them to be: quite and peaceful, no dogs chasing joggers, cars swerving to avoid joggers, etc. No-one sat in their car worried that the jogger coming past them in the traffic jam might get a heart attack and you will be late for work.

The good news is that it is only because your parents lead a healthy life and did not jog that you are here to read this. If they jogged you might not have been here, or you might have been made artificially by insemination.

This is the theme of my book: jogging is artificial, and I use the word ‘artificial' in its strictest sense as meaning ‘unnatural’.

A much more natural, and healthy, option is offered by nature. This option has been tested over millions of years by a process called Evolution. There is no need to find modern evidence for its benefits such as is being done by scientists at the Sport Science Institute, where the physicians gather to get their patients.

I call this the ‘Lion and Springbok Exercise Program’, based on nature.

Lucky 5: Racialism, Rugby and Lucky

2009-03-30T13:29:00.001+02:00

RACIALISM AND LUCKY

Whilst the foregoing story about the church and the ‘attitude’ of some people toward Lucky does knock the white structures, there are other ways that Lucky has taught us what Racialism means.

People take an immediate liking to Charl. He has a very open and honest bearing treating grown-ups with deference but as equals. Most people find this refreshing in a child. Then he is also a lot bigger than other children his age.

Black people especially like him. They respect size, and they like the way he treats them as equals without being condescending.

When we had painters doing our house they tried to talk to Lucky in one of the vernacular languages, their assumption being that he is black and therefore that he would understand them. They could not understand why he only understood Afrikaans – as I explained, we also don’t have a great understanding of this. The point of the story being that they had preconceptions of blacks, preconceptions is really the basis of ‘racism’ – as it is the basis of most words that ends in “-ism”..

Occasionally we would spend a weekend at Sun City, staying in the Cabanas because they are cheapest.

A white family with a black child is unusual, and memorable. (Back in the mid. 1990’s).

At Sun City Cabanas there was a restaurant ‘Mabula’. When we went there for dinner on one of our stays the lady (black) that served us remembered Charl and Lucky

Having taken our table order, as she was leaving, she stroked Lucky’s head. He said ‘Sies’.

This response of disgust at being touched by a black’s hand from any of our children would have lead to a massive reprimand. Most white South Africans, and especially Afrikaners, would not tolerate such a show of racism from their children.

Our situation suddenly was very different: none of our white children would have had such a reaction, but Lucky had become a racist. He had become a bigger racist than the whites.

Remember he was about 7 years old.

Interestingly, he is now 22 and still does not like to be touched – by anyone. He is the least touchy-feely of all my children. So maybe it was not a racial thing and I am seeing this out of proportion. Anyway, this is the story.

Racism is obviously mostly a skin-colour thing.

But real-life in South Africa teaches one daily that it is not just as simple as that. Anti-Semitism is not skin-colour based; anti-Afrikanerism is not skin colour based. And in many respects there is as much racism practiced by Blacks on Blacks in the new- South Africa.

Lucky just felt that he is now in a new and different class to the black lady that was serving him? But then, we are talking about class-ism, which is just as wrong.

There is, off course the beautiful reverse-racist story of Rufus. I mentioned Rufus and his gardener dad earlier. I omitted to mention that Rufus entered the wrestling team, and became a provincial wrestler for his age group (under 9). Being a strong and tough little bugger Rufus also became the tight head prop for the Florida Afrikaans Primary School’s rugby team.

(Since Charl was the lock for the team this might have been the first instance in South Africa where a white was trying to shove his head up a black’s behind.)

Whilst Florida Afrikaans Primary School is not situated in one of the wealthier suburbs, it was also not situated in the poorest, but one of the neighbouring schools is in a very poor area and it is a well-known fact that the heart of anti-black-racism is in the poorer white areas.

So it came to pass that these two schools played a rugby match, and it was the first year that black children were in white schools. To make this rugby game more interesting was not only the fact that our schools team included two black children, but one was in the front row – i.e. in direct physical contact with the front row of our poorer, more conservative, neighbouring school.

Anybody with half a wit would have known that there would be some drama.

Whites believe that Blacks smell. This is one of the underlying preconceptions of racism.

Off course Blacks don’t smell bad, not naturally. Many Blacks mainly lived in non-electrified areas without running water and bathing facilities. Anyone that has to spend a lot of time around a campfire, without access to a bath, starts to smell of smoke.

We (the fathers of Florida Primary) all knew that something would happen at the rugby. We had all worked out our private strategies of what to do when it happens. Some were preparing themselves to make a statement and argue (with fists) that Rufus deserved his spot, and they will make sure he retains it. (My strategy was to silently disappear into a corner until the problem was sorted out.)

When the third scrum was called Rufus was blown up for popping out of the scrum. The referee called him aside to explain that when a prop pops up in a scrum a penalty has to be awarded to the other team.

This happened on scrum four and five.

When the referee again explained the problem to him, Rufus replied: “I can’t stay there – he stinks too much!”

One up for black props, and reverse racism!

Lucky 4: WAS IT ALL FUN HAVING LUCKY?

2009-03-17T11:47:00.001+02:00

Lucky 4: WAS IT ALL FUN HAVING LUCKY?

Not always.

Lenadri, our oldest daughter, thought she made it big time when the drum major of the school band asked her for a date.

Drum majors are so elected because they are handsome, have an upright posture, and they practice twirling the baton for hours because they think they are handsome, have good posture and might be elected drum majors.

It goes without saying that they are unusually arrogant individuals. And like for all arrogant individuals, girls think they are worth getting as boyfriends – but maybe I am only a simple jealous father believing that any boy who would think my daughters consider him to be great is an arrogant individual.

Lenadri’s relationship with the drum major was developing quite well when he suddenly announced that he was not willing to go out with a girl who has a kaffir living at her home.

Lenadri took this very well announcing that she did not want to talk to anyone who calls her brother a kaffir; a very mature view for a smitten Grade 6 girl!

The church was not as simple an issue.

We are members of the Afrikaans NG Kerk.

The church professed to be non-racial even before the country legalised non-racism, or rather un-legalised racism.

So that it could say that it is non-racist in a country where racism is legalised, the church had split itself into two: the church itself and the ‘missionary church’. The latter basically being black dominees (preachers), and their black congregation.

One would have thought that missionary work implies leaving one’s country to travel afar to countries where there are heathens among whom one can carry out missionary work. But the Afrikaans church did show concern for the local heathens, black people, and did missionary work among them on Sunday afternoons. Even if they were converted they remained in the missionary church rather than graduate to the main church.

Most parishes also had a ‘special service’ for maids, to demonstrate how they were spreading the word of God in the local community. (And, of course how liberal they were in their views of racism.)

This ‘maids’ service’ was never held at the same time as the main service (09h00 or 10h00), but around 15h00. This would allow the maids to clean the houses while their employers were at church, and then when the employers were having their afternoon sleep, the maids could go to church.

They did not come to the church itself, but rather just the church hall – I have not yet figured out the reason for this, other than that God shifted between the Church building and the Church hall during lunch time. It might also be that there are two Gods, one in the main church building and one who lives in the church hall. The NG Kerk never explained this to me.

The afternoon session for the maids was not conducted by the dominee, he had done his work that morning. It was generally conducted by one of the elders on a rotational basis, and comprised hymn singing. Presumably the ‘church hall God’ preferred music to sermons.

My friend Eon Smit – who is a professor, and therefore should know about these things – told me the joke of a non-white entering the white NG Kerk one Sunday during the sermon. Two of the deacons stood up to evict him, whereupon a great voice boomed through the church: “Don’t worry my son, I have not been allowed in there either”.

As Lucky increasingly stayed with us over weekends, we asked him to accompany us to church.

This raised eyebrows. Obviously one would expect this to happen, his was the only black face in church, other than the cleaning staff. But the cleaning staff was not there when the congregation was in the church. The cleaning staff went to the church hall in the afternoon with the rest of the people of colour.

Charl, like any Grade 2 child, did not really enjoy being woken on Sunday, forced into his Sunday best, marched off to a one-hour sermon that taxes grown-ups’ concentration, and then being herded into Sunday School for another hour while the grown-ups go home to recover from the sermon.

When Lucky started to live with us more-or-less full-time we approached the dominee to explain our problem: We had become ‘parentis in locus’ and are bringing this child to church as part of our responsibilities; but we had no official sanctioning of this, nor had the child been baptised, nor is he attending Sunday School – being a ‘visitor’. We told him we felt people were looking at us a bit funny, and would like to have an official directive from the church council that this was ‘OK’. We also asked if they would allow Lucky into the Sunday School.

The official answer was that the dominee saw nothing wrong with this, but that ‘some of his church councilors thought that some of the members of the congregation might have a problem’.

The standard run-around: Nobody would say ‘yes’, blaming everyone else for potentially being offended, whilst they largely meant they themselves would be offended.

One route open to us would have been to simply take Lucky to church, and then allow an issue to develop. However, we felt that we were not raising Lucky as a political statement. We did not want to take him to church to make a statement.

In any case we did not choose Lucky, he sort of chose us. He came to us and there was no one to give him back to. So we could not really claim that we were very liberal, or very Christian like for that matter, in raising him.

This left us in a very peculiar situation every Sunday morning: Forcing an unwilling Charl to go to Church, and telling a willing Lucky to stay home. Very difficult to explain to Charl why he couldn’t stay at home, like Lucky; and even more difficult to explain to Lucky why he couldn’t go to church, like Charl.

Fortunately a nearby congregation resolved the issue for us - Florida Afrikaans NG Kerk. We told friends about the ‘church problem’, who told the dominee at this church; he invited us to bring Lucky to the Sunday School.

Lucky 3: First Multi-Racial Election in South Africa

2009-03-06T10:20:00.000+02:00

THE FIRST ELECTION IN THE NEW MULTIRACIAL SOUTH AFRICA

At the time that Lucky came to stay with us the country was entering its new era and the first multi-racial elections were looming.

The white National Party, having been in power since 1948, having legalized apartheid and having driven the reforms against apartheid (splitting into several right wing parties) and having called a referendum, now had to contest an open election.

No one expected them to really win, but then politicians never agree with a popular view, at least not when the popular view is that their party will not win.

It became a bit of a joke: White Afrikaner politicians, who had their parliament seats because the electorate in the past was white (the English people voted for the National party as hard as the Afrikaners, they just did not say that they did); now had to canvass for votes in the Black areas.

They did not live in the black areas, most of them had never been there in their lives, cannot speak the language of the voters, etc.

In the Old South Africa a Member of Parliament represented a specific constituency, and was supposed to look after the interest of the community that voted him into parliament. This really meant that the Member of Parliament was sort of also looking after the black people in the constituency, but they had no vote so they were not really important to the Member.

What happened in practice was that there always were some very safe seats, constituencies where the party can rely on winning the vote. These were often given to senior party members, who did not necessarily live in the constituency.

Sounds like normal politics? Nothing really changed in South Africa since then in any case, few ANC politicians live where their voters live, in fact they do not represent a specific constituency in any case. The different parties are allocated a number of seats in parliament to be filled from their lists in terms of seniority. Thereby members are relieved from having to worry about the concerns of a specific constituency, and obviously the need to live among the constituents.

It is, of course, an interesting thought that in the New South Africa there is no more racism. This means that anyone can theoretically live in any area they like. In practice the black people of South Africa still live in the mainly black poorer areas that they lived in before. The New South Africa members of parliament live in the affluent areas, which are still predominantly white areas. But, since their constituents can theoretically also live there the politicians cannot be accused of not living in their constituencies.

However, back to the story about the elections and the National Party MPs that had to canvass votes in the black areas inside their constituencies where they have never been, and cannot even speak the language.

These politicians now had to make a show of trying to gain votes in the Black Areas.

We were friends with the Jan and Annette Bredenkamp. Jan Bredenkamp was the Member of Parliament for Florida – where he lived. It now fell on him to go and canvass votes in the Black townships.

Like a good White Afrikaans South African Male, he co-opted his wife.

(In fact, if I left out the words: “White, South African, Afrikaans” in the above sentence and just left the word “Male” the sentence would still be correct. I have discovered that White, South African, Afrikaans males are no different from other males anywhere in the world.)

So it came to pass that Annette was asked by the National Party to attend a rally inside Soweto. Soweto is Johannesburg’s sister city, which contains probably more people that the greater Johannesburg area, all of them black.

Most white people have never been inside Soweto and believe that it looks like some of the slums we see on television, like Harlem in New York. It is in fact not as bad, but it still is not a desirable area to live in.

A common joke in the Old South Africa was that the most suicidal thing a white person can do is to skateboard through Soweto singing “This Land is My Land!”

Many whites worked (and still work) in Soweto, and there was even a nightclub area that was known as “white by night”. I cannot remember any reports about a white person being mugged or treated badly in Soweto. But, for most whites Soweto was an area to be avoided.

So it came to pass that Annette had to go to a political rally for the National Party (what used to be the white apartheid party, and which is now trying to reposition itself as a party for the people) inside Soweto. Hearing about this Mariki, always game for some fun, decided to accompany her, and to take our two sons so they can see the reality of Soweto and politics.

Surprising as it might sound there were a large number of black people supporting the National Party and even were promoting the National Party in the run-up to the election. I cannot speculate as to their reasoning, but I was introduced to some and they were not uneducated or obviously retarded. They must have had their reasons in terms of how they saw the future of the country.

The black National Party politicians met Annette and Mariki at the border of Soweto, with a police escort. A police escort would not have been necessary for any whites in Soweto. Since no one could have guessed that they were representing the National Party it was not necessary to escort them either. The escort was there because this was politics.

After a few miles into Soweto the police started to talk anxiously on the radio in their car, and explained that the National Party convoy of two cars must turn around immediately. There was a political march (riot) on its way and their lives are in danger.

But, by then it was too late.

In South Africa when blacks ‘march for political reasons’ they toy-toy. Toy toying is a sort of dance step that involves jerking the knees high, waving the arms and ululating at a high pitch. This is common to all countries of Africa. This particular crowd was toy-toying to celebrate the expected victories of the ANC over the white National party in the coming elections.

Before Mariki and Annette’s convoy could be turned around the toy-toying mass was upon them. Leaving two white women and two children of whom one was black separated from the police vehicle that was there to protect them.

In any movie produced by Hollywood about Africa this would have been the making for a great slaughter of white women and children. The only thing that could have topped the dramatic potential of this moment would have been if it were white nuns in the car.

The crowd simply continued past the car.

A few noticed Lucky in the car and bent down to shout at him. Presumably that he should not be sitting in the car with a lot of whites. The person that was the most scared at the end of this experience was probably Lucky.

So they arrived at the National Party rally being conducted at a school hall where a lot of potential black supporters were waiting to hear the National Party promises for the coming elections.

Naturally being the only white women – in fact the only whites – they were the guests of honour and introduced to every dignitary at the function.

And this is where we get to the point of this story. Remember that we started of by saying how much grown ups respond positively to Charl and Lucky?

What struck Mariki was that as they were moved down the line being introduced to the dignitaries – first Annette, then Mariki, then Charl and then Lucky – there was enthusiastic hand-shaking by all the dignitaries and very friendly conversation with all except Lucky.

After the speeches there was tea and biscuits for all, where Mariki commented to one of the women (black) that both Charl and Lucky did the right thing: they stepped up to the dignitary they are introduced to, offered a hand to be shaken, and looked them openly in their eyes. But Luckys offer was received with less enthusiasm than Charls.

She explained that Mariki has to understand how difficult it is to change cultures when the person that you are addressing is the same skin colour as yourself, or is obviously of the same culture as yourself.

To the black dignitaries at the meeting Charls behaviour was exactly what they expected and respected. As a result they responded positively to him. However, because Lucky was black they expected a different behaviour from him, and when his behaviour was white rather than black they were ill at ease and even confused.

To me this was an important lesson, and one I believe will stand all of us in good stead. So I will expand on this.

I started my own business back in 1984 and the fifth person that joined the company was Kenny Magobathu in 1985 as the driver. He is still the driver of the company 19 years later. In fact, as part of the company’s BEE Enterprize Development he now is the shareholder and director of a courier business financed by the company.

When he had worked for the company for about a decade I felt that we have sort of mutual respect and friendship – the type that develop when one works with someone for a long time.

It then started to bother me that when he needs the keys to my car to fill it with petrol he will not come and take it of my desk, but always ask someone else to get it.

It also bothered me that when he speaks to me he would seldom look me in the eyes, mostly looking down and occasionally glancing up. To my mind someone with integrity would look you straight in the eye, not deviously look at the ground all the time.

I asked my secretary to have a word with Kenny to change his behaviour because I don’t think he is a devious person, nor do I see the need for him to ask other people to speak on his behalf, or collect the car keys on his behalf for that matter. I was quite upset.

Kenny told my secretary to explain to me that he absolutely respects and love me. In fact he sees me as his father. In his culture however the body language is different from ours.

To look a person straight in the yes is a challenge, not a sign of respect. Similarly to stick out your hand and have a firm handshake is a challenge of power. Even to make a request directly to a person that you respect, and have the power to grant this wish to you is disrespectful – rather ask via another person that has his ear.

In fact this African custom is much closer to nature than our westernized custom of looking people straight in the eye. In nature when two males of a species (say dogs) meet then one will look away. If they both look each other straight in the eye they are issuing a challenge. Even with dogs you can demonstrate your dominance of a dog by looking him straight in the eye, but if it is a strange dog with a bad temperament then dog trainers advise you to look down and avoid prolonged eye contact.

It is the culture of black Africans that when they offer you something and you accept, they will thank you for accepting it. Black Africans do not stick their hands out aggressively to be shaken, they do not try to issue a challenge by giving you a firm grip, and they are not aggressively looking you straight in the eye when they do all these other aggressive things. The white Africans have not learned about this culture of the blacks.

This is a little anthropological lesson. But Charl and Luckys meeting with the black dignitaries in Soweto have a more profound lesson.

The dignitaries were expecting Charl to stick his hand out, look them in the eye and give a firm handshake, speak to them first saying ‘hello’ because he is white and that is the way that whites behave.

The dignitaries were expecting Lucky to not stick out his hand, to not say anything until spoken to, to not have a firm aggressive handshake, to not challenge them by looking them straight in the eye because he is black and this is how black children behave.

Black people have learned how to respond to white people by behaving like white people in terms of handshakes and eye contact. They understand the cultural differences, and adapt as and when required. White people have been slow at learning these things in South Africa – largely because they had no need to. They ascribed these things to customs rather than culture.

Lucky, at that stage, did not have a black culture, and was only starting to be introduced into a culture of sorts – white.

The dignitaries, even knowing that Lucky came to the meeting with whites, and that he lives with Mariki and Charl who behaved like whites could not adapt to a black child exhibiting a white culture. This, to my mind is again a form of racism – i.e. generalizing from the outward appearance what the behaviours would be like.

Lucky 2

2009-03-02T20:39:00.000+02:00

LUCKY LEARNS TO SWIM

When we bought our house it came with one of the largest swimming pools in Johannesburg. The deep-end is about 9 feet deep.

The house itself is a split-level, with a balcony overlooking the swimming pool. From this balcony the only way to reach the swimming pool is by going through the house itself.

On one of Lucky’s first visits to Charl they asked Mariki whether they could go for a swim. Lucky assured her that he could swim very well.

Off course Lucky had never seen a swimming pool, in fact it is unlikely that he has seen a bath before, and as far as he was concerned it was just another puddle of water.

Charl took of like a rocket, trying to create the biggest splash he could in the pool – with his size he is able to create big splashes. A secret for a big splash is that you need to jump into the deep end so that you do not crash in the floor of the pool.

Lucky did the same thing, and also in the deep end. This is how he discovered that one does not naturally float on 9 feet of water, nor learn how to swim instantaneously.

Mariki was watching all of this from the balcony, from where, as I mentioned, one has to run through the whole house to get to the pool. Not only did Lucky go down, but he also did not come up. It is a myth that one goes down three times. Lucky went down once.

He did, however, rise towards the top. His rise stopped about six inches from the top, from where he looked up. From the balcony, looking down on the drowning Lucky, all one could see was a black face with white protruding teeth and two very big white eyes.

Charl saved his live using the pool cleaner to catch lucky and fish him out of the pool.

THE MEANING OF ‘ENVIRONMENTALLY DISADVANTAGED’

In our household the telephone is a very important piece of equipment. It is virtually impossible to call us because the instrument is in constant use: We have two daughters, who have friends, who have boyfriends, etc. Any parent will know about this.

Mariki views the telephone as her lifeline to … , well, life.

When the phone rings in our house one would expect that all the women (at least) and possibly all the boys also, would rush to the phone because they all hope that the call would be for them.

Unfortunately this is not the way it works.

When the phone rings everybody starts to shout at everybody else to answer the phone. In practice this mean that seven people shout at six people at the same time to answer the phone, while the same seven people do nothing about the phone ringing. Seven people then gets upset that everybody else is doing nothing to answer the phone, and then start to shout at everybody else louder and more agitated.

Mostly by the time that anyone answered the phone, the caller has rung-off. At which stage everybody accuses everybody else for being to lazy to answer the phone, while everybody explains why he or she was too busy to answer the phone.

The simple ringing of a telephone in our household can lead to quite an extended period of acrimony – even if it was just a wrong-number or time-share sales person.

However when children are still young most children are quite keen to answer the telephone. It seems like they think it is a grown-up thing to do. Unfortunately this enthusiasm exists only while they are too young to receiving their own calls, once they are old enough to get their own calls they lose this enthusiasm.

At the time that Lucky started living with us, Charl was still in grade 2 and quite keen to answer the telephone. This was something that obviously fascinated Lucky.

We learned what it meant to be ‘environmentally disadvantaged’ when the telephone rang, and amidst all the resultant shouting Mariki saw Lucky walking past the instrument, ignoring it. She shouted: “Answer the phone!”.

Without lifting the receiver he said, towards the telephone: “Hello?…Hello?”, with a big frown because the machine did not stop ringing.

We always thought that when black politicians talk about ‘environmentally disadvantaged’ they talk about the lack of lighting and facilities to learn. We never realised that they meant that the children were not brought up with instruments like telephones in their homes, and have no idea how these work.

So when a teacher uses the word telephone in a class of black children then the children will not know what she is talking about!

Rufus is another black student that entered Florida Afrikaans Primary School the same year as Lucky. His father is a gardener for a white widower in the area, and the widower paid for Rufus to attend the school. As part of the school-preparedness tests that all prospective grade 1’s undergo they are shown pictures and asked to talk about them.

Rufus, when shown a picture of a horse and asked what it does said: “They are used by the Kaffirs to herd sheep”.

In South Africa the word ‘kaffir’ is as politically incorrect as the word ‘nigger’ is in the USA. Even my spell check does not recognize the word ‘kaffir’, although it does appear in the 18th century edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Lucky 1

2009-02-24T05:49:00.000+02:00

THIS IS LUCKY

When one looks at a photo of our (my wife Mariki and me) five children there is one immediate noticeable difference between Lucky and the other four children, Lucky is black.

Lucky came to live with us in 1992. This is the story of Lucky.

Some people believe that we adopted a black child – in South Africa this is a praiseworthy thing to do, it shows true liberalness. It is something like the Americans adopting little Vietnamese. It is also appears to be a potentially Christian thing to do.

Fact is that he came to visit us, and then there was no one to give him back to.

So one might say that Lucky adopted us.

One of the FAQ’s we get is ‘Where does Lucky come from?’

Technically Florida Afrikaans Primary School is where Lucky comes from. Most children’s parents, at some stage, will drive them past a hospital and tell them that this is where they were born. When the day comes that Lucky starts to raise these questions we will show him Florida Afrikaans Primary.

Schools, especially White schools, were legally segregated until a few years ago. Black schools were technically also legally segregated. Of course this did not really matter because the whites did not really want to go to the black schools. That is because whites did not feel welcome at these schools, and would have been made to feel unwelcome in practice did they try to bus to these schools. (But then, the American busing was also not from white areas to black schools.)

When Florida became – by law, not voluntarily – multi-racial, Lucky was entered in the school be some one. We don’t really know whom. The person that subscribed him was the person that Lucky thought was his father, at that stage. But this also changed.

Our son Charl was also entered in Florida. A strange friendship developed between the largest child the school had ever seen, and one of the first black children the school had ever seen.

Mariki, my wife, often took Lucky home after school. It is fairly standard practice in South Africa for mothers to drive to school to pick up their children, so Lucky got a lift to his home. Home for Lucky meant a single room outside the house that his father was restoring. There was no electricity, although there was running water. The two people Lucky believed to be his parents and himself shared this room.

After Lucky came to life with us we started to piece together some of the fragments of the place that Lucky called ‘home’.

A white builder who was in the process of restoring it, or breaking it down owned it. During the two years Mariki delivered Lucky here, she could not establish whether things were going up or down.

The man that Lucky believed to be his father, who was the white builders foreman, was allowed to live in the backroom with the woman that Lucky believed to be his mother. The builder and the ‘father’ registered Lucky at Florida Afrikaans Primary School.

As far as we know no money was paid to the school. The new laws in South Africa state that no school can refuse to accept any child – especially not because of his skin collour. The law also says that non-payment of school fees is not a reason to not accept a child.

It might seem to have been a peculiar choice to place a black child in an Afrikaans school. Later we learned the reason for this: Lucky could speak only Afrikaans. Which is even a lot more peculiar for a black child in South Africa.

One day Lucky told Charl that he learned some very good news the night before: “The Shangaan that beats me every night is not my father! My mother said so.”

So what is known of the person Lucky believed to be his father is only that he might have been a Shangaan (one of the black cultural groups in South Africa), was a building foreman, and was unlikely to have been Lucky’s father.

In this single backroom Lucky’s family ran a shebeen (illegal bar), which regularly erupted in bar-brawls.

Lucky disappeared from school for three days in grade 1, assumed to be sick by the teachers. When Mariki asked him where he was, he told her that the police had arrested his mother and father for disorderly behavior and running an illegal shebeen, and he ran away being scared that he will also be taken to jail. For three nights he slept under the hedges in the neighbourhood without any food.

This does not explain how he came to live with us, but it does tell something about where he came from.

When he was in grade 2 the school held a concert, and had the ideal opportunity to have an actual black child play the lead role to the song of Mama Thembo’s Wedding. Fortunately the other black child in the school was a girl, so that the roles were perfectly matched (i.e. the children need not have been disguised with shoe-polish.)

A grade 2 concert is always a big event for mothers – fathers (like me) that have already had three children in grade 2 before tend to be less enthusiastically involved.

Despite Lucky having the required skin collour, naturally, there was still a certain amount of dressing up required. His mother’s involvement was non-existent. The parents felt that she could not be relied on to ensure that Lucky will be at the school for the concert on time every night. Since he had to walk to school one could also assume quite reasonably that he was not going to walk in the streets with his bridegroom outfit for the concert – in Mama Tembo’s Wedding the bridegroom basically wears a loin-cloth with a tiger motif (ignoring the fact that there are no tigers in Africa).

So Lucky came to stay with Charl for the three days that the concert was on.

And he never really returned to his own home. Maybe one should say ‘house’ rather than ‘home’ because the word ‘home’ implies a lot of things that were not at Lucky’s house – or room.

At first Mariki took him home on Fridays, but he stayed with us from Monday evening onward. His mother preferred this arrangement – she had lost her job, and the building foreman was not earning money. She probably felt that we were buying Lucky clothes, his schoolbooks, he had decent meals, someone is seeing that he does his homework, and he is not bothering her.

Toward the end of that year, because Lucky’s ‘mother’ was workless, we employed her for a month and learned some interesting things about her.

The most interesting being that she could not speak a word of Afrikaans. Lucky could not speak English or any black language. Obviously an improbability for a natural mother and son – we have, to this day, not yet found out what the true relationship between them might have been.

And then, one day, they were gone. There was no one to take Lucky back to.

That is how Lucky came to live with us.