It’s always hard to write the first column of the new year. First of all, I don’t know what kind of festive season you had. Was it simply out of this world? If so, welcome back to planet earth! Perhaps it wasn’t much different from umpteen previous festive seasons: the same routines, the same faces around you, the same sort of food, the same silly chatter? Or was it utterly shattered by some unsuspected misfortune, or did you get wherever you were meant to get to and back again safely?
Of course, there were a few laughable moments just before the silly season really got under way. One, in particular, took my fancy. As I was driving to a mall early one morning, long before the stampede had even breakfasted but while the ANC gathering was in full swing, I caught sight of a placard which read: ZUMA SEALS VICTORY. And I wondered if the author had perceived the delightful ambiguities in it.
While I was fully aware that the president might be running a circus of some kind, I was astounded to learn, via the placard, that he also owned some seals. There were, apparently, competitive seals, not that I was sure what kind of competition one normally subjected these creatures to. Actually, I’m not sure whether the word “normally” is quite accurate here. Seal competitions are just as bizarre a possibility as snail racing, buck-turd spitting, egg heaving, and numerous other jollities invented by the less functional areas of the human brain. Even more fascinating was the idea that the president’s staff had found time from their political infighting – another highly competitive individual sport akin to verbal kick-boxing – to produce seals that could triumph, earning some sort of unspecified victory. After the festivities, the sales! Why would dozens of people stand banging on a supermarket door, so that they could get their hands on a Christmas cake at a 50% discount? Are they planning a birthday for it this December? Then I realised: of course, they wanted to feed the seals! Yeah, right. What seals?