September 20, 2014
The Darwin Awards have been around since the mid 1980′s and are awarded to individuals who remove themselves from the gene pool in an effort to aid human evolution. Think of it as HTH for a green pool, where the algae represents the dumbest of the dumb that humanity has to offer.
It’s such a pity then that politicians who really should be striving to attain Darwin Award status, are instead multiplying and breeding faster than slum-rats. Wouldn’t this world be a much lovelier place in the absence of politicians, and bankers too for that matter?
Famous people say dumb things all the time, and celebrities seem to bask in the glory of their faux pas fame.
Take Brooke Shields for example, who once famously said “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” Now some might say that Brooke was never the sharpest tool in the shed, and admittedly her claim to fame relied more on her looks than her brains, but when you’re Governor Of California one would hope that you were elected because you have some degree of intelligence. Arnold Schwarzenegger proved this theory false when he said “I think Gay Marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.” Money is no guarantee either that the words coming out of your mouth will first have been processed by your brain. Mariah Carey was lampooned for once having said “Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff.”
South African politics has not been spared a spanking with the Stupid Stick.
Just this month our Minister Of Water And Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, was quoted as saying “We will defend Zuma with our buttocks.” Feminists throughout the country were left gobsmacked and members of the ANC Women’s League hurriedly convened a pre-protest protest to protest against any protest against Minister Mokonyane. One never knows who the ANC Women’s League is going to throw their weight behind (no pun intended) as their decisions over the last few years have left many wondering exactly who this league actually represents.
The ANC Women’s League have become the R. Kelly of politics.
Just when you really started getting into them and appreciating what they are all about, they go and pee on someone and make you question their agenda.
So while the ruling party had it’s spin doctors working harder than the aspirant black tea-girl at a DA caucus meeting, trying to explain Minister Nomvula Mokonyane’s statements as harmless, the rest of the educated populace knew that the damage had already been done. Young girls in the country with the highest rape statistics had just heard a political leader endorse the use of her buttocks to defend a man she had no marital relationship with. Scarier still is that every time our leaders say daft things and come under ridicule and criticism, their default setting is to use culture as a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.
Suddenly it became a cultural idiom that the rest of us non-Sepedi speaking people just never understood.
If you’re going to defend a fellow comrade, why not defend him with your words.
If you’re forced to defend him with a bodily part, maybe choose one other than your buttocks.
If by some miraculous alignment of the cosmos you simply have to defend your comrade with your buttocks, do you really want that comrade to be Jacob Zuma?
We know his track record when it comes to buttocks.
