Racist census to continue dividing a nation

Dear Statistician General Pali Lehohla,

         What’s it feel like to blow money on a grand scale on nothing more productive than bits of paper? And to make matters worse you are doing it without a thought for the majority who live in slums with nothing better to do than riot and trash the place.

         Eighteen years after racialism was supposed to have replaced 40 years of White domination that spawn the hated apartheid system in South Africa and kept Blacks as serfs you are still at it - classifying people according to colour. 

         Refresh my memory; what colour gets preference when Government jobs are dished out?

         Now that the Black African National Congress Government is in charge you are having an expensive census to put everyone in their place; Blacks, Whites, Coloureds, Indians, Chinese and any other colour of the rainbow nation that you can think of.

         It’s pure, unadulterated racialism.

         Surely we are all people now, all 50-million of us. So when your 300 000 part-timers call round at houses shortly, with those 75 question forms, everybody should refuse to complete the colour question.

         I hear we’ll be asked a host of things designed to improve the lives of everyone. Like: How often do you have sex? Have you done it outside your racial category? Have you had aids? If so how many times and in what racial group was the person who gave it to you?

          Sorry I’m wandering. What I really wanted to tell you is I’m organizing a National Census in opposition to your official one. I was shocked to read that you are only going to have the results of your one two years later when it’s completely out of date unless you expect us to put breeding on hold while you do your sums. And that’s stretching it even for African Time. And it’s going to cost a very reasonable R2.8 billion plus.

          I don’t know which Government official’s salary that equates to but no doubt the meddling press will tell us, if they are still allowed to by next year. I don’t suppose you’ll be happy about my rival census but South Africa’s a free country; at least it was yesterday.

          Mine will be a cut price one. With any luck you will have a lot to thank me for because it will make the official one unnecessary and the nation will save a packet.  Oh! I forgot your Government is not in the business of saving tax payer’s money. It’s on a glorious spending spree for the good of the few at the expense of the many.

          I’m calling for volunteers to go to their nearest shanty town and question just 10 hut owners and their families. Here’s what they will be asked.

          1. Have any of the ANC’s Promises become a reality for you and give us an idea of how they have improved your life.

            1.1 How long have you lived in abject poverty?

            1.2 How many times a year do you get a square meal?

            1.3 Have you been forced to connect electricity illegally?

            1.4 How many times has your shack been burnt down in the last year?

            1.5 How many people, above 20, live in your one roomed tin hut?

Then come the Billion Dollar questions as it were which you may not be too happy with, but I’m afraid I have to ask them to complete the picture.

            2 Have you heard of the Government Census scheduled for October 2011? If so answer the following:

            2.1 What would you do with R2.8-billion?

            2.2 Have you ever eaten a 14 page census form? If so did it alleviate your hunger?

            2.3 How many houses for the poor do you think could be built with that money?

            2.4 How many trees do you think would have to be cut down to produce the paper to record all the questions for 50-million people? And if you had the wood instead how long would it last your community when used for heating and cooking?

          I know it’s being a bit familiar but do you mind if I call you My Pali from now on; it’s so much friendlier? You have to be Pali to go into people’s homes and ask them all kinds of intimate questions.

Imagine how long it’s going to take, especially among unsophisticated people with huge families, to fill in forms with 75 questions. In our President’s house, as an example, it could take a week or more at a rough guess. What with all his wives and I don’t know how many children.

How does it help to know things like in the Western Cape 35 000 of us live in houses with brick walls and corrugated iron roofs while another 20 000 have houses with tiled roofs and no walls.

Your Government won’t do anything about it anyway.

At the end of the day My Pali the exercise won’t feed or house anybody and you will have blown enough to keep the poor in food for years. Is that something to be proud of?

                   WHEN OH! WHEN IS YOUR GOVERNMENT GOING TO GET ITS PRIORITIES RIGHT BEFORE OUR SIMMERING SQUATER CAMPS BOIL OVER INTO THE REST OF THE COUNTRY?

                 Yours,

       Jon, Classified: Unemployed, homeless, starving. Race: Other. 

Wake Up Call to Cricket Administrators

Dear International Cricket Council,

          What a lot of slow moving, fuddy-duddies you are. My pet tortoise would show you a clean pair of heels.

          You are determined to keep at least one foot in the Bradman era when it took the Poms a year to get to Oz by boat. And tours lasted six months.

          Catch a wake up if you can. With Australia/England and South Africa/India test matches currently underway it’s long overdue. We are now in the hi-tech age so all LBWs, caught behinds, run outs and other not so obvious decisions should be reviewed by the TV umpire automatically. And he should have the power to immediately correct any mistakes made by the on the field umpires.

          Currently we have the ridiculous situation that in some test matches, but not in others, each side can have a certain number of challenges per innings, much like they have in tennis. They lose one if they’re wrong but not if the call is correct.

          Then on field umpires can call upon the TV umpire for help when it comes to things like run outs and dicey catches but not when they have difficulty in arriving at an LBW decision. So the result is that television replays show that batsmen are wrongly given out LBW almost as many times as they are told to walk legitimately.

          And it doesn’t help when you have international umpires still at it when they are nearer a century than most batsmen. Do you ever insist on having eye and hearing tests for these pillars of the game?

          The argument that it would waste too much time if the TV replay was automatic should be no-balled straight away because cricket is by nature a slow moving affair. Why do you think you can’t get the Yanks to play it? And why do you think that five days have been allocated to test matches if everybody was expecting a lightning fast experience like ice hockey.

          A batsman comes in, takes guard, and moves his bat around until the umpire tells him it’s where he wants it. Then he digs up the pitch to mark his territory; walks around a bit to see where the fielders are and waves to various girls in the stand. Then he tells the umpire he needs the sight screen moved because the bowler has changed his mind and decided to go round the wicket.

          Did you say you are worried about slowing the game down?

          Satisfied that the batsman is ready the umpire signals to the bowler to go ahead. As he runs up the batsman steps to one side signaling that somebody has walked across the sight screen. The bowler then has to walk back to the boundary and start his run up all over again.

          And you chaps are worried that permanent TV reviews will spoil the game. What matches have you been watching in recent times?

          Have you ever noticed how the umpires do their bit to ensure that nobody gets a move on? They don’t worry about the spectators. Who cares about them? They’ve already paid so they can wait. That’s why test match play is stopped at the slightest sign of failing light.

          These policemen of the game remain silent while a captain has a half hour powwow with the bowler and various players to discuss tactics when things are going against them. Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, specialises in having team conferences on these sorts of occasions.  

        

         The fact that a player’s entire career can be badly affected by wrong decisions which would never occur if the existing technology was used to its fullest extent has not dawned on you stuffed shirts who control the game from the armchair of some members only club.

          Wake up from your old fashioned dream. The way you are governing the game is Just not cricket; at least not the way it should be played in the current age.

          Regards,

          Jon, a lover of fair play.  

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16 coming up 17 years after South African was supposed to have become a colourless society under the new Black dominated Government the independent DSTV network is conducting a survey for its SuperSport channels to get viewers opinions on its cricket commentators. And one of the questions asked is: Are you Black, Coloured, India or White?

          No provision has been made for the Chinese even though (before the days of political correctness) a particular type of ball bowled was called a Chinaman. Presumably that was a ball that went between the chink in the stumps.