It’s all gone pear-shaped…

It’s been nearly a year since I came back from England and the thing that’s probably the most terrible thing about that fact is that I haven’t really walked anywhere. For a year. Walking around in a mall just doesn’t count, and anyway, what’s the point of walking around a mall when you have a wallet that would resemble Kate Moss’ cranium if you opened it up and peeked inside?

I can’t afford the luxury of a gym – not even the dodgy ones you see in the movies where they have cockfights in the basement. Going for a quick run in the neighbourhood would be a cheaper alternative, but the problem comes in when the police have to identify my remaining body parts to notify the next of kin. Yeah, this is Jo’burg baby! Love it or hate it, you can’t run in it.

The point is, I haven’t exactly been very active of late, and when your primary function in life is sitting in front of a computer all day and the highlight of your week is driving down the road to Checkers for groceries, you are going to end up with a flabby, square butt. Things tend to atrophy, and then gravity takes over.

Okay, I’m probably lying – my trip to Checkers every week isn’t really the highlight, but it does come a close second. I also go to my mother’s at some point during the weekend, and when that happens, I invariably end up stuffing my face with Mother’s Food. So it gets worse.

During the week my lovely husband is fond of having chocolates, ice-cream and popcorn (not necessarily in that order) after supper in front of the television before going to bed. Naturally I participate in this tradition because I wouldn’t want him to feel lonely, eating all those terrible, terrible things by himself.

It’s pretty darn obvious from reading the above that I needed to make a bit of a change in the way I live. When I realised that I could no longer walk in front of the full-length mirror in the hall without my eyes closed, I decided something had to be done.

I’m not terribly large. I wear a size 10 (34). But the thing is, I’m really short. Like really, really, really tall to the negative power of 5 billion. Dwarves would be allowed on the roller-coaster before me. I’m 147cm tall (about 4ft 8in, I think). Twelve-year-olds tower above me. Ominously. That’s why, even though I now weigh 56kg, I still have to lose about 10kg to look proportionately normal.

To make matters worse, I’m naturally pear-shaped. I have hips that make Oprah look like a catwalk model. Well, in my mind, anyway. It probably looks worse when you’re looking down at them all the time. When I was around thirteen I woke up one day and boom! Hips for Africa. I’m still waiting for the boobs, fifteen years later.

But lately, when small objects started to gravitate to and orbit around me, I knew that the time for action had come. So, I started The Diet yesterday. So far, apart from a bit of muscle ache from jumping around in my lounge like an simpleton with a skipping rope, it is going pretty well, but it’s still early days yet.

When I start fantasising about biting Francois Pienaar dressed up as a giant Lays potato crisp, you might just see me standing at the traffic lights with a cardboard sign which reads: “will write Mills & Boon novels for lipo”. Please spare some change...

Ten things I should have told my husband before we got married

I have taken up the challenge from the indomitable Hamish and compiled a list of what I should have put in the fine print for my poor husband.

1. I expect you to eat my delicious curries and cakes and get fat during the course of our marriage, thereby rendering you unattractive to all other females, while I munch on lettuce leaves and develop a body that everyone, male and female alike, would lust over incessantly (that was the plan, anyway. If I grew taller by an extra thirty centimetres and looked more like a supermodel, less like a midget it might have helped, too).

2. Rule number one: I am always right. Rule number two: I am never wrong. Rule number three: if in any doubt, please refer back to rules one and two.

3. Any chocolate of yours left in the fridge will be eaten while you are at work.

4. There is absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, that can persuade me to listen to Bala and Peru on Lotus FM. Same goes for watching Scandal!, WWE Wrestling and the Steve Wilkos show. If you insist on listening to/watching any of them I will cut you.

5. I am an obsessive neat freak and minimalist. I will take all the things you have left lying around and squeeze them into your cupboard, even if it means your life is in danger every time you open the wardrobe door.

6. Don’t expect me to do anything manly around the house, like oiling locks or changing light bulbs. Do I pay you to stand around and look pretty?

7. I expect you to listen to my incessant prattle about various things, such as how my mother’s neighbour’s daughter ‘s boyfriend’s uncle’s gynaecologist is being sued for malpractice and repeat it back to me at a later stage as and when deemed necessary by me.

8. If I want chocolate, even if it is midnight, I expect you to get in your car and go buy me some. Otherwise a sulk of epic proportions (due to low blood sugar) will follow. I shall be forced to demonstrate peaceably. In which case there is bound to be violence.

9. If you fail to remember my birthday or our wedding anniversary and make a big fuss of your lovely wife thereupon, the police will never find your body.

10. Don’t make me come back there and beat you.

Ten types of South African Muslims

Lately I’ve been having a good giggle over Hamish’s blog and something he said today reminded me that we South African Muslims are stranger than fiction. So, even at the peril of mortally offending everyone’s sensibilities, I have made a tongue-in-cheek list of the different types of Muslims you get in this country. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to contribute to it in the comments box.

The Dariwallah

This guy wears pyjamas in public and has a long, usually unkempt beard. I’ve seen beards that could hide small mammals in them. Biologists could spend years studying what’s in them. I digress. He usually starts sentences with “Bismillah” and more often than not finds a way to justify his chauvinistic and warped opinions by quoting from an obscure Hadith or from allegorical verses of the Qur’an. Dariwallahs usually find it hard to sit down when speaking. Flecks of foam usually emerge at the sides of the Dariwallah’s mouth and large veins begin to bulge in his forehead and neck when he is riled up, and he usually gets riled up about everything. It’s often a good idea to keep the paramedics on speed dial and sharp objects hidden when trying to defend your non-jamiat approved view of a certain aspect of Islam. Won’t look directly at, speak to or save a woman from drowning because it might awake carnal desires and send him directly to jahannum. The Dariwallah often gets a hard-on from watching the Oprah Winfrey Show.

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi is rarely seen in urban areas, and when she does make an appearance, she often seems to labour under the misapprehension that every woman she recognises, even someone she met briefly at a book fair ten years ago, will recognise her simply by noticing her veiled face and muffled voice. In the company of other Muslim females, the niqab comes off and the devil comes out. Possibly the wickedest group of Muslim women I have ever come across. The best place to observe her outside her natural habitat is usually at Adult World, where she can be observed furtively purchasing studded underwear.

The Taliban-Wannabe

Usually young and inexperienced, this boy is typically the son of a Dariwallah. He can be found in sheep’s Western clothing, having developed a severe distaste for his father’s kurta-pyjama from an early age. He normally has a short, neat beard and looks like the kind of boy you’d want your daughter to marry. Until he opens his mouth, that is. Taliban-Wannabe is obsessed with guns, killing people and defending Islam (not necessarily in that order) and often expresses a desire to go to Afghanistan to fight for his Taliban brothers, but will never really end up going. What’s in his pants is normally a disappointment and is the most likely to end up murdering his own wife and kids. Quotes incessantly from the Qur’an but is a notorious skirt-chaser.

The Beauty Queen

Strikingly beautiful, slim and intelligent, this woman is a sight to behold. Sadly, she knows it and will remind you of it every chance she gets. She likes to put millions of beautiful profile pictures up on Facebook so that her army of unattractive male “friends” can gush creepily about how much they would like to get her into bed pretty and amazing she is. She is also fond of updating her status with deep, intelligent statements in the hope that one day, people will like her for her brains and not her beauty. Usually has daddy issues and is cold in bed.

The Player

Not normally the brightest kid on the block, the Player relies on his good looks, pimped ride and the money from Daddy’s hardware store to get him by in life. The Player usually gets married before he develops pubic hair, more often than not to his first cousin in order to keep the money in the family, but doesn’t see that as an obstacle to pursuing his ambition: being the biggest slut on the face of the earth. He has been known in the past to get involved in wife-swapping activities with his Player friends and has a predilection for paying for sex with transvestites. The Player often has nasty personal habits and is most likely to get arrested in a public toilet with George Michael.

The Harassed Mother

The poor soul is worn out from having four to six children and spends her whole life cooking, cleaning up puke, lactating and changing nappies containing sloppy green stools. She lost her figure after the second child, doesn’t have time for makeup and can often be found snoring during sex. She hates her husband for being able to leave the kids behind and go to work. She has forgotten what the second-last kid’s name is and he grows up thinking his real name is Bhaiyya.

The Repressed Nerd

Usually the guy all the girls want to be friends with. Often writes in programming language better than he can write in English. Is obsessed with gadgets and technology and spends hours searching for javascript arrays, SQL injections and porn. Repressed Nerd finds it difficult to communicate human emotions to others. His mother phones him once a week to ask him when he’s going to get married and give her grandchildren. Whenever he works up the courage to make a move on a girl, the typical response includes contorted facial expressions and pepper spray. Will remain a virgin until he realises it’s better to just pay for it.

Manhattan Wife

The Manhattan Wife is usually married to the Player. She knows her husband is a man-whore and sees more vaginas in a week than the average gynaecologist sees in a year, so the only thing she has left is his money. She would be hideous if it wasn’t for her regular visits to the cosmetic surgeon. Fond of Dolce & Gabbana, Louboutins and the South of France. The Manhattan Wife drives a gas-guzzling SUV that is far, far too big for her and wouldn’t know a prayer mat if someone flagellated her with one. Sandton City has given her VIP parking. Often has sex with random people and of course is no stranger to the wife-swapping phenomenon mentioned earlier. Manhattan Wife spends more time in rehab than out and has invariably had butt-fat injected into her lips.

The Sap

The Sap will always work for a fellow Muslim because he has been made to believe it is his moral obligation to be enslaved for a fifth of his market-related salary. Can be typically found working seven days a week in hardware stores, supermarkets and for charitable organisations. Has no ambition and his only thrill in life is from sexually harassing dolly birds at the shop. The Sap thinks it’s his right to steal from his boss because he is paid so little. Is usually married to the Harassed Mother and also can’t remember the second-last born’s name without having to consult the birth certificate folder.

The Hardcore Thinker

The Hardcore Thinker is a woman that will nag and annoy any man or child unlucky enough to be near her to the brink of suicide. She is fond of overly sentimental and hardcore religious status updates and thinks her poo smells like roses. She can often be found lamenting that she is misunderstood. The Hardcore Thinker is very fond of drama and can be found to be stirring pots of shit in a variety of different locations simultaneously. She is not afraid to embarrass others. She tries very hard to give off the impression that she is a serious person who contemplates very serious things all the time. Quick to judge and lose her temper. If any man ever has the balls to dump her she will most likely take out a billboard ad to tell the world how he did her wrong and how small his penis is.

If you have been offended by this blog post it’s a sign that you probably take yourself too seriously. Go and be a Nazi on someone else’s blog.

Checklist - How Jacob Zuma knows when he's doing it right

Jacob Zuma knows he’s doing it right when:

1. An entire day goes by and Julius Malema is not made fun of in the press
2. The national police commissioner's daughter tells him she is not pregnant after all with his 47th child
3. A new law is passed requiring all men to have a minimum of ten wives
4. The African Christian Democratic Party stops trying to book him into the same rehab clinic as Tiger Woods for sex addiction
5. Helen Zille decides to form an alliance with the ANC to disband the Democratic Alliance in return for a position as Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs under Marthinus van Schalkwyk
6. Schabir Shaik really does die of a terminal illness so he can say “I told you so!” about letting him out of prison early
7. COSATU and the ANC Youth League agree to go on regular playdates at Zoo Lake so they can bond better.

Checklist - how you know if you're doing it right

You know you’re doing it right when:

1. People smile at you often
2. You get invited to events and parties
3. People add you as a friend on Facebook
4. Your mother makes your favourite dishes for you
5. Your significant other spends quality time with you
6. Dogs wag their tails when they see you
7. Your biggest problem is wondering what to make for supper

You know you’re doing it wrong when:

1. People move their heads back and try not to breathe when you speak
2. You get voted the designated house-sitter every time your flatmates go out
3. People block you on Facebook
4. Your mother tells you not to come over because she has gone out, but you’re already there and you can see her car in the driveway
5. Your significant other spends quality time with you and the judge while explaining why he/she needs a restraining order against you
6. Dogs wag their tails when they see you – just before they jump up to go for your jugular
7. Your biggest problem is trying to figure out who your baby’s daddy is

Some thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Quotes and prophecies from the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament, thought to have been recorded at the time of Moses)

Genesis 49 – Israel’s prophecy

8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hands shall be on the necks of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
9 “Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him up?
10 “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs (Heb: until Shiloh comes); and to him shall be the obedience of the people.”

Exodus 20 – the Ten Commandments

13 “You shall not kill
15 “You shall not steal
16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour
17 “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.”

Exodus 22:21

“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Leviticus 19

33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
34 “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

Numbers 35

33 “You shall not thus pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of him who shed it.
34 “You shall not defile the land in which you live, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

Deuteronomy 28

47 “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of the heart, by reason of the abundance of all things, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and in thirst, in nakedness and in want of all things; and he will put a yoke of iron around your neck, until he has destroyed you.
49 “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a nation of stern countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old age or show favour to the young, 51 and they shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed; who also shall not leave you grain, fruit, wine or oil, the increase of your cattle or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish. 52 They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given unto you.
53 “And you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.
54 “The man who is the most tender and delicately bred among you will grudge food to his brother, to the wife of his bosom and to the last of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing left him, in the siege and the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns.
56 “The most tender and delicately bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will grudge food to the husband of her bosom, to her son and her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because she will eat them secretly, for want of all things, in the siege and the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns.”


Deuteronomy 32:39

“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”

Draw from it what you will…

Forced removals

I have been doing a bit of research for one of my short stories, and the subject matter was Johannesburg in the early 1960s. I am absolutely transfixed by the stories I have read, the pictures I have seen and the sad relics that still remain today. The Mayfair / Fordsburg area is something that gets under your skin - if you allow it to - and never leaves you. Every time I drive around this area I am transported to another time.

Mayfair was a white suburb, built for poor whites working on the railways. Fordsburg was also a predominantly white area into which some Indians moved around the 1950s. Fietas, otherwise known officially as Pageview / Vrededorp, was an area which is remembered by most of the people who inhabited its colourful streets with sad regret and painful nostalgia. Sophiatown was a suburb initially developed for whites, but after the government slapped a sewage plant next door to it, the owner of the land began to sell the remaining land to Indians, coloureds and blacks.

I try to see all this history when I am out and about. Now it is Mayfair and Fordsburg that are the colourful, vibrant areas, much like Fietas of old. Today, these two neighbouring suburbs are filled with Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, coloureds, Pakistanis, Somalis and even some old whites who never sold up. Yes, there is practically a drug dealer on every street corner. It is also a place of stark contrasts. The old burnt-out shell of an old railway house can exist merrily with its drug-addicted occupants right next to a brand new two-storey, five-bedroom house with a Mercedes and a BMW parked in the garage.

I prefer the old houses, myself. I’m an old-fashioned kind of gal. When you are in an old building with a history, the soul is filled with appreciation in a way that can’t be obtained from standing in a shiny new building, full of glass doors and stainless steel trimmings. The house I live in is a typical old railway house, with beautiful hardwood floors, dado rails, pressed metal ceilings and a fireplace in the lounge. When I look up aimlessly at the patterns on ceilings I do so wondering what kind of people lived in this house over the years and whether they too looked up at the ceilings in the same way I do now.



Whenever I have reason to cross the divide of seventeenth street, I enter completely into the past. For who can roam the streets of Fietas without being haunted by ghosts of the people who were forcefully removed from this place? Unlike Sophiatown, the people of Fietas were evicted over a long period of time, due to resistance from the residents and a lack of concerted organisation on the government’s part. And unlike Sophiatown and District Six, Fietas was sort of half-demolished. Some buildings were only partly torn down, and remain to this day, ghostly reminders of the destruction wrought by the apartheid regime. And of the houses that were demolished properly, relatively few new ones were built upon the vacant stands that were cleared for the sake of the whites.

Fietas is a sad, seldom-visited museum. Its patches of unkempt grassland speak volumes about the children who grew up in the houses which now only exist in their fast-fading memories and crinkled back-and-white photographs. Its grand mosques speak of a time when the surrounding neighbourhood was a community. The solitary remains of its dilapidated 14th street bazaar tell little of a trade mecca that invited patrons of every race from far and wide.

I can also imagine the terror and the sadness felt by the residents of Sophiatown in 1955 when they were rounded up by heavily-armed military personnel like dogs and put on trucks headed for the South Western Townships. The whole area was then razed to the ground by government bulldozers and the area re-developed for whites. It was as if Sophiatown never existed. The new suburb was named Triomf (Triumph in Afrikaans) – a final kick in the teeth to the people who grew up listening to the sounds of jazz music and tsotsitaal in the vibrant township.

Did those residents of Fietas, Sophiatown and District Six ever think that the cruel regime under which they lived would come to pass bloodlessly? Did they think it would happen in their lifetime? Did they think they would ever get rid of the Special Branch coming into their homes late at night? Did they ever conceive that their grandchildren would grow up going to school alongside children of all different colours and religions, and that they would be free to study what they wished, apply for any job they wanted, marry whomever they wanted to and live wherever they pleased? And finally, did they imagine that a non-racial, democratic South Africa would be a utopia? Would you choose to live in Fietas in the fifties or Mayfair in 2010?