Makoe+makes+feathers+fly,+Karen+Bliksem,+Sunday+Independent



=Gazza and his parrots worry me –= =but it's Makoe who's making feathers fly=


 * Karen Bliksem, Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, 24 February 2008**

I see that concerns have been expressed about the mental health of Paul Gascoigne, a famous English footballer who played 57 times for his country and was considered a brilliant midfielder.

This follows the detaining of Gascoigne, 40, in terms of Britain's Mental Health Act, after his refusal to evacuate the hotel in which he was staying when the fire alarm went off. Gascoigne and the night porter had what is referred to as "an exchange" on the subject.

A "source" claimed that Gascoigne had taken to wandering around the building carrying three battery-operated plastic parrots that said "Give us a kiss". He was also said to have ordered from room-service plates of raw liver, which he would eat the next day, saying it was good for his blood. He also answered the door naked, the source claimed.

"What the hell!" as my good friend Herman von Shtunkipoodle would say. Was Gascoigne set up by the Scorpions? What is wrong with walking about with parrots on your shoulder or with eating raw liver, which is good for your blood? It's certainly no worse than garlic.

As for answering the door naked, well, I do that all the time, especially when I go on out-of-town jobs with young reporters. And once I was arrested sans my panties and no one said anything about my mental health. They were too busy examining my botty.

And if some bozo tried to kick you out of a hotel at 3am, would you receive his instructions with equanimity? Or would you pen a strong complaint to the Human Rights Commission?

Anyway, a more serious concern is that I have been told that much of the concern for Gascoigne has emanated from this country. Do Seffricans not realise that charity begins at home, that we have some serious problems of our own?

For one thing, I have serious concerns about the mental health of a sweet chap called Abbey Makoe. He is the political editor of the SABC (is that an oxymoron?) and chairman of the steering committee of the Forum of Black Journalists. (Having been on an out-of-town reporting job many years ago with Makoe - one requiring much travel in a motor vehicle - no way would I allow him to have control of the steering wheel of my committee. But that's a separate issue.)

Makoe has got up everyone's nose - well, up the noses of honky journalists: whites, Caucasians, mahlungus, non-K-people, the previously advantaged - by excluding them from a media briefing given by his forum.

Alas, poor Abbey. He has simply taken to heart the plight of his fellow black journalists who, he reportedly said, were disadvantaged and sidelined.

This is, of course, true. Though Makoe never played midfielder for a team of note, he once worked for this newspaper and I had the honour of being his news editor. And I can tell you that I made certain that he was, at all times, disadvantaged (no way would I let him drive, as mentioned above) and sidelined (no way, for example, would I allow him to come to editorial meetings on time. Punctuality, as I am sure Ronald Suresh Roberts must have remarked, is a colonial, illiberal construct). And, okay, so instead of a bunch of battery-operated parrots on his shoulder, Makoe had a bevy of squawking black journalists close by - what's the harm in that?

Yup, poor old Makoe: he was ever a person who showed up on the battle field a mere 15 years too late.

Given, by the way, that the guest speaker at the forum's briefing was Jacob "Zoom-zoom" Zuma, the ANC president, I am also concerned about the considerable and mentally destabilising pressure under which Makoe must be - from the ANC top table or from his SABC bosses, or both. For, you see, before Polokwane, where Zoom-zoom was elected, Makoe struggled - though I must say he struggled manfully and with much angst - to say one good word about Zoom-zoom, or one vaguely negative word about the previous incumbent of the ANC presidency.

But equally, or more, worrying is the attitude shown by those white journalists who were outraged that they could not attend the briefing. What's wrong with their mental health? Why, as Groucho Marx asked, would anyone want to belong to a club that would admit me as a member? It's contrary to every journalistic principle I can think of.

I'm no bigot - some of my best friends are Jewish, in newspaper management, or are foreigners; I am merely making an empirical observation, the fruit of 30 years of journalism - but I suspect that, at a meeting of the Forum of Black Journalists one might experience considerable difficulty in finding someone capable of putting yesterday's photograph in tomorrow's newspaper.

So who cares? Why is everyone being so judgmental? If the darkies want to hold a meeting on their own, let them do so. The same goes for fat people, feminists, people who go to pilates, and so on. Is this country a (one-party) democracy, or what?

Dear me, my space is running out, leaving me little in which to talk about another person who might be experiencing mental difficulties: Irvin Khoza, the chairman of the soccer World Cup local organising committee, who calls himself "Ivan", whom many call the Iron Duke, whom I call the Iron Duck and whom my granny would have called a //goniff//.

Oh well, at least Khoza has halted this country's inexorable march to the land of Euphemism and put us back on the road to Dysphemism - not that the Iron Duck would have any idea what that is. He thinks - when bored with counting his money, he occasionally does think - that Dysphemism is a midfielder for the Cheque (sorry, Czech) Republic.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4270802**

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