Sowetan

The Doc’s clear about her vocab... she’s not mantashing

- Vera vera@sowetan.co.za

Dr No Yes

There are people and there are special people, and Dr Makgabo Manamela is a special breed who was unfortunat­ely asked to look after very special people.

The madam has been under the spotlight at the Life Esidimeni arbitratio­n hearings into the ill-advised deadly transfer of mentally ill patients into the care of illequippe­d NGOs.

The other day Vera woke up to a replay of her testimony on the radio. From the exchanges, Vera swears two words don’t exist in the good doctor’s vocabulary: “yes” and “no”.

And there are no two ways about two things as far as Dr Weirdo is concerned: No she won’t give one-word answers and Yes she doesn’t give one-word answers ... especially. Instead, she unleashes a mean spaghetti of gobbledygo­ok she wouldn’t attempt to fathom.

Role reversed

Vera was struggling to find words to describe the madam properly, but was rescued by a fellow listener who SMSed the show and declared: “that doctor is a patient”. On the evidence of what she heard, who is Vera to dispute that?

Each one teach one

Good old Razz is an old hand at this Tweeter thing. Vera can imagine him giving the dinosaurs in Namba Wan’s inner circle some lessons on how to use this great tool of communicat­ion.

No. 1 Mean Street

But the idea was thrown out the window when it became obvious to Vera this week that the tutor still needs lessons himself.

As Vera is fond of reminding people, they can be very mean down Tweeter Avenue, and users need to watch what they say.

The twitterati, as Razz might well know, also have elephantin­e memories – nothing said or done there is forgotten, ever – delete button or not.

Room for one more

Poor Razz must have felt the need to get himself onto the NDZ wagon before it pulled out of station or see himself kiss goodbye the razzmatazz trappings of office he’s so fond of.

Indelible like a tweet...

This week saw the Free State ANC go through rituals for Khongolose’s big poll this month. The stage was set for the Free State’s own mini Mugabe, Ace Magashule, to preen around.

The show he put on must have had Razz all mesmerised that he declared he was now an Ace man.

Trouble is our man had declared on Tweeter in June that:

Mini Mantashe

It’s no wonder that when Vera’s colleague typed in the word Fikile, looking for the infamous tweet, the damn search engines enquired if he meant to type in the word “fickle”.

Can’t argue with technology, not especially when a man Mantashes like that.

 ??  ?? Dr Makgabo Manamela
Dr Makgabo Manamela
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