This is the way we brush our teeth on a cold and frosty morning!
The Boss of Me (BOM) shared with me how the other day, while driving home from work, her Google Maps app took her on an unguided tour through the suburb of Westbury. At some point, she spots a rugby ball bouncing onto the road. Like anyone who possesses even a smidgen of common sense, she immediately slows down, anticipating a child chasing after the ball. Sure enough, 0.01 seconds later, a bundle of snot clad in Faf de Klerk rainbowy briefs appears, attempting to retrieve the ball.
The BOM comes to a complete halt as the snotpocket stands there transfixed, with a bunny-in-the headlights look on his face. Upon realising that this wasn’t quite his day to meet his Maker, the little boy grabs his ball and, without looking, darts across the road into oncoming traffic, where a young man in a VW Polo is taking a leisurely drive at, oh, about 100 km/hr. In peak hour traffic. On a residential road.
Let me pause this story right here to make some observations. One: that child has clearly never been taught that playing with a ball on the side of any road is a terrible idea. Two: the boy has never been told that running across a street is as bright as handling extra hot Nando’s sauce and taking a whizz immediately afterwards. Three: the young man in the Polo is an idiot, as is anyone who doesn’t anticipate a child following a ball bouncing on the street. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s go back to the incident.
Little Faf-in-a-Speedo escaped unharmed. The VW Polo wasn’t as fortunate. It had an untimely meeting with a fire hydrant and is probably on a hoist inside some workshop right now, with a mechanic called Smiley staring at its suspension, whistling ominously at the owner: “Jirre!
You’ve got major problems here, my friend!”
Common sense. Possibly the No 1 oxymoron in human existence.
Successive National Party prime ministers resisted bringing television to SA for almost two decades. Christian Nationalism held that television would corrupt the citizens, make the natives as arrogant as Cassius Clay, convince pure Aryan girls to marry future Springbok captains and all manner of abominations.
To appreciate how much effort DF Malan, JG Strijdom and Verwoerd put into keeping television out of South African households, you need to understand that Zimbabweans and Zambians (well, South and North Rhodesians at the time) already had television by 1960 and 1961 respectively. Only under propaganda-obsessed BJ Vorster did we finally get national TV in 1976.
There was one programme I found most fascinating. It was dedicated to teaching the natives elementary tasks
However, it is only in 1982 that television specifically designed for the natives was brought to us by the S.A.U.K. There were two stations — TV2 and TV3 — sharing one channel. In line with the Bantustan policy of the time, the former was specifically for the Nguni cluster of languages and the latter the Sotho cluster. The Vhavenda and the Vatsonga had to fend for themselves, I guess.
There were many ways in which this “black TV” was different from the Afrikaans/English channel, TV1. But what fascinated me was the inordinate number of educational programmes we had. There was one I found most fascinating. It would air every afternoon at about 4.30pm if I remember correctly. It was dedicated to teaching the natives elementary tasks such as washing one’s face, brushing one’s teeth, using a tap, operating a flushing toilet and that sort of thing.
I have a distinct recollection of a fiery speech from a prominent UDF leader in the early days of the organisation, lambasting the SABC for airing programmes that patronised black South Africans, teaching them how to brush their teeth. Around the late 1980s/early ’90s these programmes started disappearing from our screens. Because I was also offended by them, I was relieved to see the end of them.
However, in retrospect, I think we threw out the baby with the bathwater. If anything, the SABC should have made “the circle bigger” and aired them on the TV1 channel too. As I interact with South Africans of all walks of life, it is increasingly and abundantly clear that common sense in this nation is as abundant as JMPD officers who don’t enjoy free “cold drink”. The near-miss that the BOM witnessed the other day is only a tip of the iceberg.