Two Bits: Nightmares of mudslides

The soft, liquid gurgling of the Rain bird (Burchell’s Coucal) outside my window on Wednesday heralded the arrival of soft rain across the coast that persisted into Friday. Everyone welcomed it, except me.

I have just started building a new house on a steep slope in Sheffield and had nightmares of a tidal wave of mud shooting across Colwyn Drive.

There is an eight-metre bank that we have hacked into to insert retaining walls and a deluge right now could deposit the lot into the neighbour’s yard.

In the ’87 floods, when we had about 900mm of rain in a space of four days and the mudslides were horrific, half my garden ended up in the swimming pool of my neighbour and lawyer, Andy Horton.

I had visions of being led away in cuffs, but he recognised it as an act of God and was probably more understanding than most. Anyhow, I have no wish to be introduced to my neighbours-to-be in Sheffield at a digging party.

The death of Robert Mugabe overshadowed most other news last week, and seldom have the opinions of a leader been more sharply divided.

Yes, he was a liberation icon to everyone who has ever worn a Che Guevara tee shirt and yes, he made a pretty good fist of running the country for the first 20 years, but the wheels came off when he killed and kicked white farmers off their land and handed it over to cronies who ruined the agricultural economy.

He was a dictator who between him and his wife, Grace, stole who knows how much and turned one of the most productive countries in Africa into a basket case.

And yet, the radio this week was filled with Zimbabweans phoning in, mourning the death of their ‘hero’.

How is it they cannot recognise that the second half of his 47 year rule set a new benchmark for ‘how low can you go’?

The fact that they’re phoning in from Jo’burg, Cape Town and elsewhere in SA should not go unnoticed.

The madman caused millions of people to flee penniless into Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries, most of all here, which is at the root of the other big story of the moment, the so-called xenophobic attacks on foreigners.

Are foreigners being targeted because they’re the ‘tall poppies’, I wonder, the ones who have to work twice as hard because they have nothing and have to support starving families back home?

At a time when something like six out of 10 South African citizens are out of a job, it’s not that surprising there is resentment of those who are doing okay yet conveniently forgetting they are working twice as hard to get there.

If the flood of Eastern Europeans can be resented in Britain, the same can happen here.

I dislike the use of the word ‘xenophobia’ anyway. It’s bandied around but people only have a vague idea of what it means.

It’s not plainspeak like ‘hatred of foreigners’ and manages to avoid confronting reality.

Our world is filled with politically correct euphemisms and sometimes, plain gobbledegook.

I was particularly irritated last week by a page of so-called news in my daily newspaper – which is a source of irritation on its own, because since its new owner is in thrall of Luthuli House the editors seem to have forgotten how to write, report on or analyse any matter of importance.

I understand this is ‘Women’s Month’ and the media is filled with subjects as widely spread from the state of the ANC women’s league to the health of your vagina, as if I really wanted to know, but what exactly is meant by ‘gender-based violence’?

I might have thought that the term was being used because it would include men, women, homosexuals, transsexuals etc, but the entire page carried reports of attacks by men, physical or sexual or both, on women.

There was one mention of violence against ‘women and children’.

Children are not a gender, so that can’t be it.

If they mean to condemn violence against women then why not call a spade a spade?

And, what is more, recognise that violence is the issue. Violence and crime, and our police force and judicial system are woefully unable to cope with the deluge.

In passing, I noticed that all the victims named were Black or coloured women, and, I think, heterosexual.

It was curious that a report of a court case from a North West dorpie called Mooinooi, of the murders of white lesbian couple Anitha and Joey van Niekerk, was carried on a separate page.

No connection whatsoever to the full-page splurge on ‘gender-based violence’.

Does the colour of your skin make a difference?

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My dad died when we couldn’t remember his blood type. As he died, he kept insisting for us to “be positive,” but it’s hard without him.