Ex-pat prepares himself for return to South Africa

With just one month remaining on his contract as a teacher in France, South African citizen Eric Van Der Westhuizen has kicked his preparations for his return home up a gear, with daily “South Africanisation” exercises such as whining about crime, paranoia mediation and saying ‘blerrie’ a lot helping him to build up the skills crucial to surviving in his hometown.

“Back when I lived in South Africa, I thought it wasn’t that bad,” said the soon-to-return expat. “But now, having been exposed to mostly international coverage of South Africa over the course of eight months, it turns out it’s actually a giant poverty-stricken, racist’s-haven shithole filled to the wallet-stealing, carjacking brim with crime and government corruption. It’s only right that I prepare for this, my unavoidable, return.”

According to French propriétaire (that’s ‘landlady’, you cretin) young “Vaan duh ‘Estayzan” is taking his new daily training regime very seriously.

“I hear him in his room, complaining out loud about ‘flippen reverse racism’ and ‘the fokken government’,” she told reporters yesterday evening. “And now, whenever he walks around the train station I see him gripping both straps of his backpack with white-clenched fists, pausing every few seconds to see if anyone is walking too close to him and patting his pockets in a ‘have I been robbed yet’ interpretive dance.”

The young South African reported a few months ago that he really missed South Africa, and while this daily routine may seem a tad pessimistic, Eric says this is just one small part of his program.

“You know, success is always in the small details,” he explained. “Small things most returning citizens might overlook, for example maintain a constant, 24hr, exhausting state of heightened worry and anxiety, and never sitting out of direct line-of-sight of your bags. Tiny touches, like remembering to feel a constant sensation of dread and terror whenever a shadow comes up behind me. You know, those details that most just overlook, like making a big show of locking all your car doors, leaving the window slightly ajar so that it can’t be shattered by a bunch of batteries in a sock, or even remembering to flip the entire switchboard off and sitting in depressing, awful darkness for hours on end.”

And this is just Phase One of his plan.

“Ag, it’s not all negative stuff,” he said. “I’m also doing positive stuff, like taking cheap public transport, sitting in relaxed, free public parks on weekends, taking advantage of excellent, affordable and state-reimbursed healthcare, and using high-quality, cheap internet.”

“I mean, how else am I going to make an extensive list of all Europe’s cool shit so that I can smugly bitch about how ‘blerrie backwards this blerrie flippen country is’ in two months’ time?”

Google launches new Rhodes-debate-inspired App

"Cheat" lawyer receives international recognition

A former Law student is being honoured by several large Law Universities this week, after numerous news articles and reports published in South Africa proved that he was ridiculously overqualified to be a lawyer.

Lwazi Mzozoyana, who was enrolled to read for a Law Degree at Rhodes University in 2005, is to be the recipient of not one but four honourary law degrees, having been praised as “the very definition of brilliance” and “possessing a legal talent and universal public revulsion far beyond his years and legal experience”.

“If we look at his astonishing list of accomplishments – for example, being found guilty of stealing two fellow student’s assignments from a locked submissions box in 2012, cheating on a law of contract exam in 2007, and also being banned from Rhodes until 2022, which, let me add, was previously a lifetime ban,” said Barry Starr, the Dean of the prestigious Law Faculty at Harvard University, “then we can see that, at the tender age of just 33, he’s amassed the kind of widespread contempt and scornful, dismissive public hatred that most lawyers take years to build up.”

“His utter disregard for the laws and rules of both academic institutions and civil society, his disrespect for moral decency, and his brazen attempts to utterly destroy another Zimbabwean student’s reputation and chances of graduation have shown that he is leagues and bounds ahead of even the most absolutely reviled lawyers who defend paedophiles,” explain Starr. “If you add this to the fact that he’s shown no remorse or shame whatsoever, hell, he might even be TOO ridiculously overqualified to practise law.”

The plans to confer these honourary titles and degrees have been met by widespread approval by members of the legal community.

“It’s simply astonishing,” said lawyer of nearly three decades, Sue Primcourt. “It took me years of defending definitely guilty serial murderers, baby-rapers, and underground sex-slave mafiosos to get even half of the spite and derision he got in just years of study.”

However, for Mzozoyana, this is just the beginning. With promise and accolades such as these, it’s only a matter of time before he takes up political aspirations and becomes President.

“If he works hard, puts in the tireless effort and passionate devotion it takes to succeed in the political sphere, then who knows,” said Starr, “Perhaps he could be as much of a thief as Zuma is (allegedly).”

UCT Press Release: Rhodes Statue will be demolished

UCT makes its final decision on the controversial matter of the Cecil John Rhodes statue.

Text reads:

Date: 24 March 2015

Alumni, colleagues, and fellow students,

By now you’re all aware of the heated and bitter debate happening on social media and on campus concerning the controversial Cecil John Rhodes memorial statue located on the Jammie stairs. Since the furore kicked off, strong public pressure has mounted on UCT to take a decision on what to do with this statue, this painful reminder of our imperfect past.

And, having listened to the all the rational arguments, heartfelt submissions, ad hominem spiteful tweets, disingenuous oversimplifications and absurd Hitler comparisons on both sides of this debate, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve come to a decision.

The statue will fall.

Of course, this is only the first step in a long, long journey of progressive change to combat the institutional racism and elitism that, unlike that blonde girl you dated last year, you can’t escape even if you take the long way around campus to the Politics department.

Many ask us, “CRS, what kinds of socially progressive programs will you put into place to ensure that postive change and justice is rooted into our institution’s core?”. Many email me asking, “Eric, what sorts of scholarships and funding programs for disenfranchised youth will you source and offer to ensure that this protest isn’t just a skin-deep, feel-good, masturbatory paintjob?”

And to you I say, there is still so much work to be done before we can consider such trivialities.

Look at the Parliament buildings in Cape Town. Look at the Union buildings in Pretoria. Look all around you – how can we possibly introduce institutional transformative measures when there are still so many monuments to be torn down and free us from the oppressive weight of mental violence?

How could we possibly instigate better equal employment measures, or introduce student funding and financial aid schemes for students from a disadvantaged background if all the buddies of Cecil Steel-eyes – like Jan Smuts - glaring down at downtrodden South Africans from their places of honour?

How could we create new student scholarship opportunities or education programs aimed at including unheard authors and thinkers in our academic discourse if we’re reminded at every turn how racist everyone except us is?

And let us gaze turn overseas. What about The Pyramids of Giza? Ofttimes shrouded in a false veil of grandeur, these are nothing more than death relics that represent a terrible and oppressive age of slavery and horror. And it doesn’t stop there: we look at Mount Rushmoore, The Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, The Cistine Chapel, Notre Dame, Woolworths, and even the Great railroads of the United States. Time and time again, where most see just buildings, we see the blood-soaked bodies of the millions whose bones have served as cement and toothpicks.

Until these artefacts are demolished, how can we call the world truly equal and inclusive?

This is just the beginning of the program, however.

Next, we’ll ban religion, destroy every mosque, church and place of worship. After all, almost every religion is built on a disgusting history of slavery, genocide, executions, state-sanctioned torture, and hatred, not to mention Holy Crusades that were little more than giant ethnical cleansings, rampant accusations of paedophilia, extremist terror attacks and brutal beheadings.

Then we’ll destroy all art, all books. These are nothing more than the products of oppressive heritages. Every word and sentence, every brush stroke or musical chord, is a disgusting representation of the systems that oppressed and discriminated millions.

Then we’ll behead every person whose family tree is fertilised with the blood and watered with the sweat of the oppressed.

Then, because humanity itself has destroyed and forced into extinction countless species on this planet, and because our daily existence is at the cost of the lives and freedom of millions of creatures and fellow humans, we’ll mass murder the entire human population, finally ridding our beautiful world of all reminders of how terrible history is.

Some have said to us, “but Eric, there is a nuanced middleground in between these two dichotomous extremes that doesn’t require such an extremist stance on the matter, a calmer, more considered halfway house where we can introduce more level-headed considered programs and actions that will contribute to true social justice instead of sowing dissent by exacerbating entrenched butthurt”. And to this we say, “racism, in any form, requires an extreme response.”

Finally, in this beautiful utopian world where we can pursue academic excellence free from the horrifying realities of the past, we can turn our attention to incorporating progressive changes to the institutional policies and politics of our esteemed university.

Yours in solidarity,

Eric Jeffries

CRS President 2015

Dear Axe Deo,

I use Axe. It doesn't drown me in women. I get angry.

Text reads:

Dear Axe Deodorants,

I am very sad to say that I am on the verge of giving up your line of Men’s deodorants for good. My experience with your extensive bodyspray products has been nothing short of disappointing, and is at the very least a gross waste of time.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me perhaps explain my angst, right from where it all began: as a thirteen year old boy.

Naturally, your product immediately appealed to me. It wasn’t so much that I was brainwashed by the doglike incessant smokescreen that followed all my seniors in an inescapable hormonal fog of Phoenix and testosterone, through which I had to walk on a daily basis and which now serves as an immediate PTSD-esque trigger to darker, younger days, but rather the scientifically accurate promises in your advertising that assured me that all it took to change my virgin life into one of abs and being Brad Pitt in a suit surrounded by literally fallen angels was one mere spray.

And so, I became an Axe User.

But if I’m a true Axe user, then why, please explain to me, am I not wading through a knee-deep sea of bikini models biting their lips and gazing with sultry desire at my rock-hard abdominals?

Am I perhaps applying my can of Axe Twist incorrectly? I have taken painstaking lengths to study, in minute, frame-by-frame detail, the exact techniques the subjects in your many short-length documentaries use to become inundated in female pudenda, but no matter how true I am to the original techniques and hand-flicks, I cannot get more than one girl at a time.

He goes across the body, diagonally down his torso towards his left hip and then snaps the can across his waist and groin area. I have done this repeatedly, sometimes even more than once, and still, I don’t have difficulty rolling over in my bed at night because the entire female population of the planet serves as my duvet. What is going on?

I’ve tried everything. Nothing works. It doesn’t matter if I spend half an hour and entire bottle of Axe Hair Wax to sculpt my hair into a kiff bedhair quiff like those okes in GQ. It doesn’t matter if I inflict multiple coldburns on myself by applying several dozen cans in one sitting. Hell, it doesn’t even make one smidge of difference if I empty all my Axe products into a blender, make a pasty puree of them and soak my entire body in it for half an hour or before I pass out from the fumes, whichever comes first.

I’ve had this problem before. A few years ago I gave up Radox Mens Xtreme Body Wash because it didn’t turn me into John Smit rappelling down a refreshing waterfall after just one mere sniff of the stuff.

Then, to make matters worse, Sky Vodka didn’t transport me to literally a club in the fucking sky filled with babes and disinterested looking gentlemen. Even after six years of drinking a bottle every day, I have yet to get anything sexier, more carefree and youthful than extensive liver damage. And I’m pretty sure we both know how much Michelle Pfeiffer and Scarlett Johansson I’ve gotten in the past months of using certain expensive colognes.

I demand a public apology and a full refund, or at the very least a step-by-step, full and detailed (perhaps even illustrated) explanation of how to fully capitalise on Axe’s female-getting prowess.

Some idiots have suggested to me that I’d probably attract more women if I changed my backwards, unrealistic attitude towards them and stopped treating them like sandwich-making dogs who give you the sex at the mere hint of cheap deo, but of course they are utterly wrong. Why would advertising exaggerate or outright lie about its product’s social appeal or woman-winning powers? It’s absurd to think that companies would ever put soulless profits over the respect and responsibilities that society has come to expect.

So please. Send me the secret technique, or give me back my money. I have just recently started a project to utterly eliminate all inconvenience ever in existence by buying every Verimark product I can think of, and I’ll really need the money.

Until then, I’ll be giving Axe my own axe effect.

Yours sincerely

Author, writer, recent Old Spice client, 13 going on 26,

Matthew de Klerk

PS: I've read in the local news that I'm not the only person you've let down. This is unacceptable.

www.to-muse-and-abuse.blogspot.fr/2014/06/tv-commercial-product-user-still-not.html

We need to ban Gay Marriage right now

Guest writer Johan Van Eksteen presents his most compelling argument against the society-destroying scourge of gay marriage: a cautionary tale we should learn from if we want to stop Satan polluting our beautiful country.

Gay Marriage. It’s a subject that divides us all – unless you’re a man and a man, that is. I’m sure by now we have heard the age-old arguments from the bleeding-heart liberals. And they’re clever arguments, I have to admit. Ingeniously veiled under a shroud of pretence, claiming in carefully constructed, logically sound arguments that it’s a move towards a more truly equal society.

Or so it seems.

But friends, no amount of facts can sway the ugly, dark truth: we’ve been sold a lie, and now it’s time to take it back to the pink, rainbow-velvet curtained store and ask for a full refund.

It destroys the sanctity of marriage

Marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman. I can tell you quite honestly that the sanctity of my first three marriages has been outright ruined by the unions of hundreds of people I’ve never met and will never cross paths with at any stage during the rest of my life.

And please, don’t oh-so-cleverly quote my ex-wives and say I had “multiple affairs” with “that skank from the office”. Gay marriage was legalised years ago – years before any of my marriages, whether we're talking about the first shotgun marriage, the second one that afforded us fantastic tax and housing allowances, or the third one I got because she had a passport that wasn't green. How could I respect my union if its sanctity had been utterly compromised decades before? I fear that my fourth and upcoming marriage (after she leaves her husband so we can be finally be together in public and not just in a cramped, sweaty supplies cupboard) will forever be tarnished. And all because of “the law”.

Gay marriage makes people gay

Remember how in the 1950s in America they banned laws preventing white people and black people getting married, and almost immediately every woman in America married a black man? Well, we’re seeing the same thing today, except with people who have similar genitalia.

Take my son, for example.

Johan Junior used to be just the red-blooded meat-eating rugby-playing bugger any dad would be proud of using as a tool to belittle their co-workers’ children and emasculate every oke in the bar. He was never, ever gay before gay marriage was a thing. In fact, he used to frequently express homophobic slurs and call everyone within earshot a “moffie poof”. When he went into his twenties, he could outdrink everyone, any day of the week. Hell, he could put away booze like a fish in water. Even when he was sitting at home crying in self-loathing while deleting his internet browser history.

Now he tells me he's also gay. I mean, this is what the Gay Agenda wants: to make us all gay. And worse than that, it wants to brainwash us into saying things like "no dad, this is who I've been all along" and "I hated gays because I hated what I was, but now I've come to accept that this is who I am" and even "this is my boyfriend, Steve. Be nice, dad". It likes to pretend that all it wants is a society that doesn't hate people for their sexual orientation, but my friends, we're not going to let the wool be pulled over out eyes (because that sounds like something kinky a gay oke would do).

Why else would I sometimes see John Smit in that rock-climbing shower gel advert and feel certain feelings? Some may say my insecurity in my own sexuality and the subsequent projection of this self-loathing onto people who have nothing to do with me shows me that I maybe have to do some difficult soul-searching - I say that it's the blerrie gay agenda working its fairy dust magicks.

The Bible says it’s wrong

Lots of people laugh at this one, but it’s right there in the Bible. Right there, between the bit about never cutting your hair and not eating crab or shellfish . No, AFTER the part about being allowed to sell your female relatives into slavery. Yes, there, BEFORE the part justifying genocide. See?

What is more true than the Bible? (Except maybe this column, haha). When has religion ever been wrong about anything? When has the church – or any other religion – done something awful in the name of its faith? Never. The Muslims and Jews might be going to burn in hell for all eternity while I sit at Jesus’s right hand (not in a gay way), but at least we all agree that we’ll definitely see gays there.

Moral Degeneration

Every generation has been going slowly to hell, according to the generation before it – and never has this been more true than right now. Just look at the world right before Gay Marriage was made legal: it was a utopian paradise, a beautiful child’s daydream of heavenly euphoria and ceaseless joy – a world where war was impossible and Moral Decency was internationally prevalent.

And now? We can’t even move for stories about disease, war, famine, death, murder, terrorism and - God, dare I say it - Woolworths running out of salmon. Just a coincidence, a correlation – or statistical causation?

I think we all know the answer to that.

After all this, it’s clear to see that South Africa – and indeed the world – needs a wake-up call. If we want to live in peace, prosperity, and universal tolerance - a wondrous era of Moral Good and Golden Era Values of decency and love, then we need to chase these flippen’ gays out and push them to very brink of society and make it illegal to even hug a man unless it’s the Currie Cup final and the Blou Bulle win.

At the end of the day, the only acceptable same-sex marriage is where a man has the same sex with the same woman for the rest of his life.

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit.

Internet commenters unsure which racial epithet to use

'Uncle Tom Sell-out, or arrogant whitey?', ponder debate enthusiasts

Following a comment posted ten minutes ago online concerning the controversial issue of the University of Cape Town's Cecil John Rhodes memorial statue, online commenters, social media activists, and digital bigots on both sides of the debate have told reporters they are still unsure which utterly unnecessary, hurtful racist slur to bash into their well-worn keyboards.

Citing the "ambiguous profile picture" of the Facebook user in question and touching on her "scant profile information", internet users across South Africa are still uncertain whether to reply to her call for a "return to calm and considerate debate free from ridiculous racist slurs, mockery, ad hominem attacks and rhetoric fallacies" with a "STFU you stupid and arrogant white crybaby upholding a legacy of oppression" or a "OMG look at this sellout counterrevolutionary Uncle Tom brainwashed into defending white privilege."

"When you click on the thumbnail of the post next to this peaceful, non-toxic plea to her fellow citizens that we treat each other with the respect and dignity that we all, as human beings, deserve, all we can see is a group shot with four girls of a varying range of skin colours," said 1st-year politics student and fiercely involved social media RhodesMustFall debater, Vlei Mwar.

"So, as of this moment, we can't be sure which form of cyber bullying and utterly disrespectful slander to employ. I mean, at this stage we don't know if she's white or black, so how are we supposed to pick which racially charged epithet to use in scorning her personal, subjective stance on the matter?"

"I mean, we could just call her a 'fucking stupid bitch' who should 'go and educate herself' and 'read a book about the history of this before you bring your dumb comments' - you know, a general, non-racial smear that is easily applied to people of any race, religion or creed online," explained Mwar, "but when it comes to debates as important as this, we think that if we're not going to be considerate, thoughtful and critically engaged in the current discourse, we should at least apply that high-level logic-based rational thinking to our short-sighted, debate-sullying engagements with other people."

However, not all internauts agree, with one side of the camp calling for a calm and respectful waiting period before heaping ridicule and abuse on her and likening her to something that should be universally despised and ostracised.

"We're not mindless animals," said Rashad Homnem. "I mean, why in the world would anyone in this nationally-watched debate sully the importance of mature, respectful discourse with ridiculous things like making over-simplistic comparisons between two unconnected, vastly dissimilar people?'

"Besides," added Homnem, "even if someone doesn't tip us off, what's not being able to call one out of hundreds of people a 'fucking stupid blind moron who should shut the fuck up because you don't know what you're talking about'? I'm pretty sure we can let this one slide."

Muse and Abuse would like to get this debate going by preemptively calling you all massive festering cockworms.

The Rhodes Statue : what’s the big stink?

Guest writer Johan Van Eksteen braves the internet once more to bring us another serving of truth. Today’s topic on the menu: the Cecil John Rhodes statue at UCT. Should it be removed?

Friends, I want to be clear about one thing: when I saw this story pop up in my newsfeed, I had to take a step back, and think logically. You know, emotion is a powerful thing. Ya, sometimes when you’re angry it can be a good thing, like, if you clearly asked for Peppersteak sauce and the chick brings you Monkeygland; but we can’t forget that our emotions can also blind us.

Not literally though. You’d need extensive corneal damage for that to happen, for example from staring at the sun, or accidentally mistaking that bottle of Hydrogen peroxide for the similar bottle of contact lens solution you keep on the same shelf for some reason, or even just from reading the stupid comments on my wall about this story.

And how much emotion there was! It was a real hotpot debate; it mixed all the well-loved elements of many famous South African ‘debates’: Race, history, apartheid, race, privilege, race, racial privilege, politics and race.

So I had to take a few days to think. To let the air clear: not just because I wanted to talk sense to you guys, but also because that kak stank to high heaven, and it needed a day or two for the cleaning staff to get the air on the Jammie stairs breathable once more.

And what I think I’ve decided is that it’s not time to break out the sledgehammers just yet.

It looks nice

So before we ask ourselves what position the inevitable replacement Nelson Mandela statue should be in, we need to ask ourselves: what is this statue all about?

First of all, the statue is "flippen’ kiff" as my son would probably say. Just look at it. I don’t care what people say about his “legacy of horror” and his “merry band of genocidal racist maniac henchmen”, just look at that bronze and brass, set in magnificent foreboding concrete. Look at the eternal expression etched into his face. That’s a face that means business - exactly the kind of person we want our Uni kids to be, instead of flippen’ spending my flippen’ money getting drunk all the time and pretending it’s “because of tuition and expensive textbooks”.

If we ignore what the story books say and don’t think “shit ya this oke was pretty bad”, it’s just a statue.

Change is expensive

Secondly, demolishing or breaking down the statue will be expensive, even if we use the cheapest low-class labour operating without Union protection. Hell, even if we put together a workgang of terrified, easy-to-control illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe and Malawi who won't say boo to a goose for fear of being deported back to their respective hellholes and tell them "enda lapa na breaki lo statue faga naconcrete lapaside", we’re still looking at spending thousands of Rands that could be better spend elsewhere. Like on funding a cool society that throws cool parties.

I myself went to university, and I can tell you that my knowledge and respect for Hellenic Culture and the great legacy of the Greek people grew and grew with every shot of Zorba and each toga party. Do we want to deny our children this opportunity?

Should we ‘photoshop’ History?

Like it or not, Rhodes was a part of our history. I can admit, it would be nice to remove all painful reminders of our past – just like how I wish I could erase my ex-wife’s Facebook profile, or the sms notifications I get from people commenting on stories like this - but painful reminders of our harsh past can make us better people. I remember once I beheaded a beloved family pet using a rusty panga, and I can tell you that the awful dreams mean I probably won't do it to Fido 2.0. Unless he also eats my entire bag of biltong and there's nothing in the fridge by carrotsticks.

But if we do decide Rhodes Must Fall - if we start with this one statue - who knows how far this will go? Ya, lots of people like to pretend that we don’t have to pick between two polarised, binary extreme opposites – that there’s space for a nuanced middleground between the two sides – but we all know that’s a lie.

What’s to stop okes smashing sculptures of past presidents? What will stop them rioting en masse and utterly demolishing the Union Buildings, the Parliamentary buildings, or even beheading someone who shares a surname with any of these notorious historical figures?

And what about the pictures of our esteemed President hanging in every government building? Has there ever been so vivid a daily reminder of how we are less than garbage, a populace of taxpaying buffoons who are subjected to a hateful regime on a daily basis? What about those bloody liberals polluting our country and my Twitter feed? Why do we let these slide; where do we draw the line?

In any case, removing the statue is totally unnecessary – if you want our children to grow up in a South Africa free of reminders of our painful past and our difficult, divided society, well, Zuma and Motshekga are doing a bang-up job by making History books and a decent education a thing of the past. We're entering a bright future where our children won't even know who these people are.

Besides, I think we can all admit: photoshop is hard.

However, I’d be an idiot not to admit that the protestors had some great points. I was reading a survey done by UCT recently, and they found that by simply knocking down this one statue we can end all racism and hatred everywhere. In the past, in places like Iraq and Ukraine, simply knocking down a statue has led to an immediate increase in democracy and peace.

What the protestors did was not only make me ask myself hard questions about the things I don’t like in society, they also gave me the means to get tonnes of media coverage and protest around it. In fact, just this morning I had a huge breakfast, and for lunch I had the Double-cheese-Zinger Double-Down hot-wing combo with extra hot sauce at KFC, and I’m cooking up a pretty huge protest against Woolworths as we speak.

But friends, doesn’t this make you think how it could all escalate out of control? Ya, I know some people think that it’s a worrying sign that it took so extreme a form of protest just to get mentioned somewhere other than the UCT twitter community, that it's a disconcerting indication of how marginalised views can be ignored by mainstream media unless extreme measures are taken - but once throwing poo at something goes out of fashion, what next?

I live in constant fear of what the next step up from “giant bucket of diarrhoea” is. Perhaps the next time we see Mr Maxwele in the news he will be voiding his past three meals though every possible orifice, simultaneously crapping, vomiting, urinating and ejaculating all over the stony, oppressive artefacts of white arrogance.

In conclusion, I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to understand why everyone gets so upset. These are serious topics we're talking about - but like with any other respectful, calm debate on the slow-to-anger, understanding and compassionate Internet, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and we should respect that. It's only right that I treat your wrong opinion with the dignity and consideration that I would give to any other foaming-mouthed vituperative and utterly narrow-minded gibberish-spewing idiot whose opinions make me uncomfortable or force me to ask myself difficult, troubling questions.

But what I can't abide is this childish poo-flinging. I mean, I always thought UCT students liked the smell of their own shit, but in public, on their statues?

Sies. Come now.

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit.

“I accidentally shat myself” admits Rhodes statue protester

Academics accused of “reading into things too much, bru” after damning confession is heard.

The controversy surrounding the Cecil John Rhodes statue has blown out of all proportion today, after a scathing interview revealed that creator of the political movement and author of the ‘poop incident’ against the heavily debated statue, actually accidentally soiled himself.

“It’s true,” said the clearly distraught Politics student, Maxwell Troespou.

“I was doing the butt-clenching Prairie-dog duckwalk between the Pol and Social Sciences buildings when the attack struck. As I stood there, a puddle of my own filth pooling in my underrods, I thought, ‘oh shit, what now? I’ve gotta get rid of this. Of course there was no bin around, so I dumped it on the closest thing possible.”

And that closest thing just happened to be the statue. With furtive glances left and right, he attempted to quickly stash his ruined briefs.

“I thought the small crevice in his lap would sufficiently conceal my mistake,” he lamented. Alas this is where his statue-atory jape was spotted.

“This lady came up to me and asked me ‘what the hell are you doing?’. I froze and quickly shouted ‘Apartheid and Race!’ – you know, what I always shout when I get in an argument I’m scared of losing. Lucky for me, I’m a Post-grad and a Pol major, so I’m used to talking convincing-sounding crap at a moment’s notice.”

However, despite the confession, protest supporters have said it’s too late to turn back now, with UCT standing by its decision that the Rhodes monument must be removed.

“It’s kinda snowballed out of control,” said one marcher, who now feels dumb after the 14000 words and 3 676 tweets he’s written online critiquing elitism and institutionalised racism since the furore started. “And not just because of the resounding public support, thousand-strong marches and endless internet debate - just think of the Twitter followers I would lose if I were to back down now?”

This isn’t the first time such an eventuality has occurred on the famous Cape Town campus. Back in 2011, an Art student accidentally spilt paint all over her masters exhibition pieces, which quickly became part of a Masterclass exhibition series in half a dozen galleries.

“I’m in too deep to say anything now,” she said. “I mean, what did you expect me to say to my supervisor when he waffled on about ‘genius counter-intuitivity of a new post-peinture style’ and how ‘these works represented a breathtakingly bold defiance of the reductive transfixion of art into a meaningless product aimed at garnering marks or money’?”

And it doesn’t end there.

“Yesterday I left some blank canvasses in my gallery because I was in too much of a rush to stash them in my studio,” she told. “An art critic saw them, and now I’ve been force to announce my latest ‘Negative White’ series.”

Rhodes Statue “must fall” says UCT study

University of Cape Town administration is finalising plans to remove the ‘offensive and racist’ monument to Cecil John Rhodes, after a study was published this morning confirming that it was indeed the central anchor of institutionalised racism in South Africa and that its removal would immediately end all racism and hatred everywhere.

“We’ve crunched the numbers and looked at the data, and we’ve come to a conclusion we all knew was coming,” said Bart Hert, a researcher from the International Statistical Institute of South Africa, which was commissioned by the obviously Apartheid-worshiping tertiary institute to produce the study. “This statue is the root of all the anger, violence, and racism in not just the institutional culture in universities like UCT, but in all of South Africa as well, and removing it would instantly make the issue go away.”

Hert outlined the study’s findings in detail.

“You know, there are a lot of misconceptions about this debate. There are many people who believe that effecting the kind of institutional and societal change towards respect and dignity – a giant cognitive shift in our country’s paradigms that make us more tolerant and less likely to apply backwards and retrogressive ideas of racial discrimination – on such a large scale would take lots of effort and debate beyond shallow gestures that give the mere illusion of acceptance and progressivity."

"People assume it would require a massive improvement not just in our levels of basic education, but also in introducing complementary programs that allow hugely subsidised access to high quality education for all, regardless of origin or colour,” he told reporters. “This is obviously all wrong. We’ve found that we can just skip all this with a chisel and a hammer, and perhaps a set of sturdy chains and a M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.”

Taking down statues has been proven to drastically
improve democracy, as shown in Iraq in 2003.

Ever since it shattered the global speed records for a comparison to Hitler, the debate around the iniquitous statue has been heated, with both sides staunchly standing by their False Dichotomy entrenched extremes. However, with the publication of this eye-opening study, both sides have put aside their differences.

“Since its earliest days of calm-level headed poo flinging and rational, logical accusations of racial bias, colour privilege, and empty ‘revolutionary’ lingo, it’s easy to see how some people were worried this entire thing would just devolve into another cesspit of racial slurs, facile and puerile comparisons to previous dictators ‘photoshopping’ history and fractious name-calling,” said one commenter who took time out of sipping lattes and buying apple Products to speak to reporters about white privilege, “but I really think this debate has brought out everyone’s compassionate, considerate side. And at the very least, it got me couple of retweets.”

UCT, which is still taking the difficult decision of which replacement statue of Nelson Mandela they’ll use, has responded to the study with their full cooperation, saying the “evil token of Satan” should be knocked down on Friday at the very latest.

“Maybe it’ll be Nelson Mandela sitting in a chair. Maybe it’ll be him standing up. Or maybe, now that we’re free to ‘improve’ history as we like, we can just have him wielding two massive machine guns like a colonialist-head-stomping Xhosa Django. “

Whatever their decision, one thing is for sure: the statue is coming down.

“Not because of who he was or how his legacy of oppression can be toxic to our university environment,” said the University in their lengthy statement, “but mostly so that you’ll all just shut the fuck up on Facebook and Twitter.”

Rhodes University was not available for comment, because they’re sitting this awkward one out.

Pics: Creative Commons.

Read more from Muse and Abuse on this hot topic:
Protest creator admits he "actually just shat [him]self" and another calm, balanced take on the whole matter.

Dear Chain Letter Sender

Someone sends me a chain letter. I reply.

Text reads:

Subject: This is freaky

This is freaky!!!! But ......:)

Supposedly The Phone Will Ring Right After You Do This.

Just read the little stories and think of a wish as you scroll all the way to the bottom. There is a message there then make your wish. No attachment on this one.

Stories........ I'm 13 years old, and I wished that my dad would come home from the army, because he'd been having problems with his heart and right leg. It was 2:53 p.m. When I made my wish. At 3:07 p.m.(14 minutes later), the doorbell rang, and there my Dad was, luggage and all!!

I'm Katie and I'm 20 and I've been having trouble in my job and on the verge of quitting. I made a simple wish that my boss would get a new job. That was at 1:35 and at 2:55 there was an announcement that he was promoted and was leaving for another city. Believe me...this really works!!!

My name is Ann and I am 45 years of age. I had always been single and had been hoping to get into a nice, loving relationship for any years. While kind of daydreaming (and right after receiving this email) I wished that a quality person would finally come into my life. That was at 9:10 AM on a Tuesday. At 9:55 AM a FedEx delivery man came into my office. He was cute, polite and could not stop smiling at me. He started coming back almost everyday (even without packages) and asked me out a week later. We married 6 months later and now have been happily married for 2 years. What a great email it was!!

Just scroll down to the end, but while you do, think of a wish. Make your wish when you have completed scrolling. Whatever age you are, is the number of minutes it will take for your wish to come true (ex. you are 25 years old, it will take 25 minutes for your wish to come true)

However, if you don't send this to 5 people in 5 minutes, you will have bad luck for years!! Go for it!!!

STOP!!!

Congratulations!!!

Your wish will now come true in your age minutes. Now follow this carefully....it can be very rewarding!!!! If you send this to 10 more people, other than the 5 that you already have to send to, something major that you've been wanting will happen.

Kelly

---Ends.---

I reply.

Text reads:

Dear Kelly,

Thank you for your not at all guilt-tripping, fear-exploiting email. Where most people would probably hit the ‘reply all’ key to tell not just you, but every single person who has so far played a part in this email arriving in their inbox, to strongly consider going and fucking themselves with the largest blunt object at hand, I’m not most internet idiots.

Alas, I am an idiot in one sense – I ignored your warning. Like a stubborn child who thinks he knows better, I sneered at it and hit ‘Mark as Spam’. And so, this reply is somewhat an apology – having restored it to its rightful place in my Primary Inbox and Starred and Highlighted as “Crucially Important DO NOT DELETE”, I want to say you were right.

First of all, I want to say that your chain letter holds much, much power. It practically drips with the bad luck of Ancient, Dark Magicks Now Forgotten by Man – in fact its power is so considerable, so life-impactingly terrible, that the surplus of bad luck attached to it retroactively went back in time and affected most of my life before the moment I opened this email.

How was I to know that that horrifying, unbroken 18-year dry spell of No Sex At All that I went through just after my first birthday could be tracked down (or perhaps forward?) to the moment I hit the ‘spam’ button? This goes double for my string of failed relationships up until this moment. Lots of people might try to explain away this as “purely coincidental” and “a part of life” and even “because also you’re an insensitive moron” but I think we both know why this unerring string of bad luck has ruined my life: the Dark, mystical and ill-fated Convocations and Shadow Magic of the Gods of Unforwarded Chain Mail, who know no mercy and shew no forgiveness.

You know, unless I was horrifically cruel to a variety of small, defenceless kittens in a past life. I dunno, maybe I like squished their eyes out with a stick or something.

However, given the prevailing climate of viral media – where people will forward the entire planet a picture of a dress just to argue pointlessly about what colour it is – you really need to up your game.

In our modern age of ubiquitous social media it is very difficult for old artforms like this to compete against the vapid garbage that gets spread around faster than measles at Disneyland, or Government bailout money at an SABC Board Meeting.

We see death, disease and war on the news every day. People have become desensitised to these old passive chain letter threats. You need to ramp up the guilt. You need to ramp up the fear. You need to up the ante, elevate the stakes: give the people something to lose, something to fear, and you’ll see millions of shares.

Well, that, or just put a spelling mistake in the Subject line.

And so, I’ve taken the liberty to rewrite your email to be more contemporary.

--- Chain Letter 2.0 ---

Dear Kelly

This is freaky, but…..

Suppose your entire family will be murdered by Ebola-infected ISIS extremists while global warming drowns every person you’ve ever loved in a sea of blood and oil if you ignore this email?

Just read the little stories and think of a wish as you scroll all the way to the bottom. There is a message there then make your wish. No attachment on this one.

Stories........ I'm 13 years old, and I wished that my dad would come home from the army, because he'd been having problems with his heart and right leg. It was 2:53 p.m when I ignored this email. At 3:07 p.m.(14 minutes later), the doorbell rang, and there my Dad was, in a coffin, his head on stake with the words “I never loved you, you whore disappointment” smeared on my favourite dress in his blood and excrement. Then I got beheaded by ISIS, roughly ten minutes after I succumbed to the dreaded Ebola virus.

I'm Katie and I'm 20 and I've been having trouble in my job and on the verge of quitting. I made a simple wish that my boss would get a new job. I ignored this email and then immediately contracted Ebola and smallpox, which before now was widely believed to have been completely eradicated. Not only that, but my boss fired me and hired ISIS agents in their place. Their first job was to be behead my children. Believe me...this really works!!!

My name is Ann and I am 45 years of age. I had always been single and had been hoping to get into a nice, loving relationship for any years. While kind of daydreaming (and right after receiving this email) I wished that a quality person would finally come into my life. That was at 9:10 AM on a Tuesday. At 9:55 AM a FedEx delivery man came into my office. He was cute, polite and could not stop smiling at me. He started coming back almost every day (even without packages) and asked me out a week later. We married 6 months later and now have been happily married for 2 years. However, right now he is holding a machete against my neck and forcing me to write this. Having tricked me into thinking true love exists, he wishes to show me the error of having ignored this chain email. Allahu Ackbar PS my children have ebola and got autism from vaccines.

Just scroll down to the end, but while you do, think of a wish. Make your wish when you have completed scrolling. Whatever age you are, is the number of minutes it will take for your wish to come true (ex. you are 25 years old, it will take 25 minutes for your wish to come true)

However, if you don't send this to 5 people in 5 minutes, you will have bad luck for years AND DIE A VIRGIN IN AN ISIS TERROR DEN WHILE WATCHING EVERY HUMAN BEING YOU’VE EVER PASSED IN THE STREET SUFFER A PAINFUL AND POINTLESS DEATH. Go for it!!!

STOP!!!

Congratulations!!!

Your wish will now come true in your age minutes. Now follow this carefully....it can be very rewarding!!!! If you send this to 10 more people, other than the 5 that you already have to send to, something major that you've been wanting will happen.

Matthew

---

Please immediately send this email back to me so that I know you haven’t been beheaded.

In the meantime, I’, going to visit a Sangoma who promises me that, by just drinking his secret magic potion every night before bed, burning a special herb to chase away the Tokoloshe, and sleeping with a secret rock of the ancestors under my pillow, I should be clear of bad luck, financial troubles and relationship woes by Sunday.

That should go really well with the massive penis he promised I’d have.

Yours sincerely and apologetically,

Internaut, believer in lost dark gods, soon to be 18-incher

Matthew de Klerk

Name changed because people will know who I'm talking about if I use her name.
Jen.

Not that you know her of courseWINKWINK

Next Hunger Games novel “will be set in South Africa”

South Africa will be placed in the international spotlight next year, after world-renowned author Suzette Colins has made public plans to set the recently announced fourth and final installment of her famous Hunger Games series in South Africa.

“For some time now, we’ve seen undeniable thematic links and locational similarities between the fictional world of Panem and South Africa,” said her publishing agent and PR Manager Mark Kinjay. “The book is set in segregated districts, much like apartheid South Africa was, and even in more modern times we see starting parallels between the brutal, murderous police force that kills protesters, and the SAP.”

The similarities were so numerous that Colins found it “the only course of action” to put South Africa in her books.

“In her books, the protagonists and downtrodden people of the land fight against the forces of darkness, much like we do with Eskom every day,” said Kinjay. “There’s dire social inequality. There are corrupt, power hungry leaders who will do whatever it takes to cling to power. There are the hedonistic elite. There is even the national obsession with pointless games and competitions and massive waste of public funds to build elaborate stadiums to host their beloved entertainment when obviously the money could be better spent elsewhere. How can this book not be set in South Africa?”

The plot, Kinjay says, is sure to be intriguing.

“The novel is set about 30 years after the events of the third book, after Katniss has taken down the evil government and restored peace to the land. However, the people who followed in Katniss’s footsteps betray her legacy and start recreating the hateful, exploitative and corrupt demeanour of those they unseated,” he explained. “In this troubled new age, it is up to the young Katrien Eevyndag and her best friend Pieter Meerlagt to win an oppositional majority in a cutthroat political battle royal in her district and expose the evil President Jacorneliab Snuma. Will she succeed? Will she choose Pieter, or finally be together with her true love Gheybriel Heythiern?”

He added that the book would go on sale sometime in January early 2016.

“Basically, it’s going to be as exciting as the 2014 elections, just with happier ending.”

Dear Nigerian lawyer overseeing my dead unknown relative's will

A kindly lawyer in Benin informs me that my recently-dead uncle has left me millions of dollars. I bite.

Text reads:

Dear Klerk.

I am Advocate David Amaugo. A personal attorney to Eng. Michael H. Klerk (my client), from your country who was Director of engineering consultant here in Republic of Benin. On the 5th of March,2010, my client lost his life as a result of Brain cancer, at Benin Medical Center. Since the death of my Client, i have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives until now, so i decide to contact you and need your urgent Assistance to present you to the bank so that the proceed of my client's fund valued about $10,7M (Ten Million Seven Hundred Thousand United Dollars.) can be paid Into Your Bank Account immediately before the funds will be confiscated by the Bank here.

After reading this message, reply me with your direct mobile telephone number... Your full address...Your age....and your occupation so that i can send further details to you for better understanding and also tell you how we can legally proceed the claim. Upon the fund transfer into your bank account both of us will share it 50% for you 50% for me. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.

I am waiting your urgent response.

Yous sincerely,

Barrister David A

---Ends---

I reply.

Text reads:

Dear Barrister David,

I was heartbroken and yet grateful for your caring, kind-hearted and obviously not exploitative email. It’s a true tragedy that old Uncle Mike has passed away – to tell the truth, I never really knew him (not at all, not even that he existed, to be honest) and although we had our obvious differences (for example, our surnames) I always thought that if I’d just gotten to know him better, like what his favourite colour is, what his hopes and dreams and fears were, or even who the hell he is, we’d have gotten on famously.

Honestly, though, I was expecting this email. Just last week my best friend Eric got an email informing him that his unknown uncle in Nigeria had died of cancer, and the week before that it was my other good friend Jess. For years now, all my friends, family and work colleges have had to go through the difficult and harrowing process of getting an email from an East African Lawyer telling them of their unknown relative’s demise at the hand of dreaded cancer. Since I was a young boy, I’ve been 100% certain that, somewhere in the world, there is a family member I’ve never met who will die of brain cancer and will me, his last remaining relative, his millions. It was only a matter of time before my poor unknown uncle Mikey met this exact fate.

Of course, some idiots I know on the internet are trying to convince me that this is a scam – perhaps in a blackhearted attempt to take Uncle Mike’s millions for themselves, the soulless fucks. But we have to ask ourselves – if this is a scam, then how come you’re an experienced, trusted lawyer in possession of an internationally recognised degree that qualifies you to deal with the difficult intricacies of international inheritance laws and the complicated string of transnational tax policies that govern the transfer of wealth across national barriers?

If this is an attempt to “empty my entire bank account and leave me in crippling debt”, as these imbecilic nonbelievers claim, then how come you’re such a good, kind-hearted person who would move hell and high water just to fulfil the last will and testament of a lonely dying man. I mean, what kind of low-life, scum-eating, piece of shit, soulless asshat would take advantage of the trauma of the loss of a loved one in an exploitative, black-hearted attempt to cash in on someone’s lack of internet savvy and ruin their lives by plunging them into dire financial straits? Obviously not you.

Please find attached to this email all my personal banking details, three signed and police certified copies of my passport, identity, several telephone and utilities bills going back several few months, and my original birth certificate. No, not a copy – the original. It was tough forcing this physical copy of it into the internet, but if you can track down one man’s sole surviving relative across nearly 5000 miles, well, what is a little digital-physical barrier in comparison?

My best wishes. Please let me know as soon as you can send me the money. I’m writing a book about why Geocentrism is real and how vaccines cause autism and I desperately need money to fund my lifestyle while I cherrypick articles and discredited hack “research” to present as proof of my theories.

Yours sincerely,

Anti-vaxxer, Soothsayer, your loving friend and co-inheritor,

Matthew Klerk