THANK GOD WE LIVE IN SUNNY SOUTH AFRICA
Go to Zim, North Korea you’ll rue the day you were born
THREE years ago, a Zimbabwean man, angry and distressed at how President Robert Mugabe was running things, picked up a piece of newspaper with a picture of the president, and told people he was drinking with that he was going to the toilet and would use that piece of paper to wipe his behind.
His friends laughed, and everyone never gave the man’s comment a second thought. Lo and behold, as the man was leaving the drinking hole, he was accosted by members of the much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation, who took him into custody and he was charged with insulting the president.
To us sitting here in sunny South Africa – where the likes of Julius Malema can tell President Jacob Zuma to his face, inside the National Assembly, in front of TV cameras, that he is an incorrigible thief who should be behind bars – the arrest of that man seemed preposterous.
Number one, there is no proof that he, indeed, used the piece of paper to wipe his ass; he could have been making a figurative statement when he said Mugabe’s face on the newspaper was fit for wiping his behind with. But if indeed he’d used the paper to seal the deal, then so what? It’s not as if he’d dragged Mugabe out of state house and used the old man’s face to wipe his derriere with.
Any citizen of Zimbabwe could have used the same piece of paper to seal the deal, in the privacy of their homes, and the alert CIO agents would have been none the wiser. In my book, the whole thing was a non-issue.
If anyone got a raw deal from using that piece of paper to wipe his behind, it is the man himself. Using newsprint to seal the deal is pure punishment. Ask me.
But of course, I am a South African. Clearly, South Africans are having it nice if you consider how the powers that be treat their citizenry in other countries. What is happening in North Korea will make Mugabe’s shenanigans pale into insignificance by comparison.
Two weeks ago, Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Ruler of North Korea, ruled that in the power vested in him by … himself, sarcasm was now banned in that country.
But in a country whose name is sarcasm personified – DRC – I wonder what constitutes sarcasm.
Maybe you can’t address Kim – who took over the reins from his own father – as “your Royal Highness”, mainly because he is not very tall?
Maybe you can’t make complimentary remarks about his hairstyle – on account that it is breathtakingly weird? Maybe you can’t make remarks about gout – seeing he’s been suffering from intense bouts of the irritating condition?
What is sarcasm to Kim? Well, there’s no definitive answer. You have to rely on clues, hunches, instinct. One clue: popular expressions such as “This is all America’s fault” are now out of favour, as these can be used to ironically take shots at the regime.
Wow, you have to be a super clever guy in order to be able to tell what constitutes sarcasm in Kim’s book. The problem is, you can’t even ask for guidelines as to what is legal and what is not – as this might, in itself, constitute sarcasm.
Recently, Kim executed one of his high-ranking officials “for sitting disrespectfully”. He also allegedly ordered his head of military to be killed for falling asleep during a meeting.
In another instance, he ordered a man to be killed for starving baby turtles. He then moved on and banned weddings and funerals. Why? Because he thought a gathering of people laid foundations for the birth of possible rebellion against his regime.
This, of course, is speculation because no one has asked Kim any question and lived to tell the tale.
Over the past month, central government authorities convened a series of mass meetings across the country during which they alerted the citizenry to potential “hostile actions” by rebels.