Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Stupid bitch’s New Year’s resolutions somehow still on track

As the world clings to the final wisps of those vaguely worded December 31st promises it made to itself to live a better, healthier, more loving life, one woman is making us all look bad.

That’s right, even now, almost 5 months into 2015 – traditionally the three-month anniversary of your return to cigarettes and a sedentary, gym-free lifestyle – Jessica Henderson is still going strong, with a fiery resolve and superwoman determination that makes you look like a weak-willed chump.

“I feel great,” she said with a big smile that we just want to fucking punch so bad. “Since I made that promise to myself to eat more fruit and vegetables, drink less alcohol, and quit smoking entirely, I’ve never felt healthier, stronger, or better than everyone around me.”

Henderson, who sticks to a strict, calorie-controlled diet of three healthy, homecooked meals a day, makes sure to embrace her artistic side more often (always taking an hour at night to read, write or paint), completely avoids fat, alcohol and cigarettes, and is up at 5.30 for the gym, is reportedly an inspiration to the friends who still speak to her.

“You know, with her endless list of impressive feats, her constant donations to charity organisations in the city, and the Sundays she spends reading book to terminally ill children at the local hospice, she really makes me think about how much of an comparatively worthless piece of trash I am,” said friend Megan Daniels. “It’s really inspired me to take my own promises of being a better human being seriously – I really think this will be the year that I finally finish the resolutions I made in 2003.”

“Except for the cigarettes, perhaps. And the coffee,” she added. “I can’t possible survive without those. And maybe the gym – I’ve got a really crazy work schedule, and I need the extra sleep in the morning. And perhaps also the calling my parents and telling them I love them more often. But that one about eating less sugar, oh, that’s in the bag.”


Muse and Abuse would like to apologise for failing to live up to its 2015 New Year’s resolution of actually being funny for a change.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Immigration - the scourge of the whole world

You know what’s ruining this country – no, the entire blerrie world? Immigrants. Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen tackles this uncomfortable topic, showing us the truth behind something many people are hesitant to talk about frankly and honestly.



Immigration, my friends. Is it just me, or does this problem seem to be getting worse and worse every year? It seems that no matter where you go, you can’t even move without bumping into someone who isn’t from here. With xenophobic attacks so recurrent and regular that Somali shopkeepers could set their fiscal calendars by them, I decided to look at this issue. And let me tell you, it’s a lot more complicated than it at first seems.

Now, immigration has long been a problem in almost all societies. Immigration goes as far back as the unwanted and dirty flood of Jews and Irish and Poles into America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hell, we could go one step further and say that this scourge was affecting societies even as far back as the Southwards migration of Zulu and Bantu peoples into XhoiSan territories in South Africa in the early AD, or the northwards migration of Homo Habilus and other pre-modern humans nearly 70 000 years ago, or even the ugly, unstoppable wave of society-leeching primordial fish-lizard creatures that crawled unwelcomed and unwanted onto the prehistoric marshes of Pangea hundreds of millions of years ago.

Of course, today the problem is far, far worse, because back then there were no jobs or healthcare to steal.

Yes, friends, it might shock you to hear this, but immigrants are taking our healthcare and our government grants: you know, those things that are supposed to be reserved for South Africans, that our hard-working tax payers shell out for after they’ve finished handing billions of Rands to Zuma for his giant luxury Palacemansioncompound?

I remember a time when I used to think “but surely getting healthcare requires a valid ID and many documents proving your status as a tax-paying citizen? Surely getting the laughably paltry handouts that thousands of below-the-breadline South Africans survive on every month is a bit more difficult than just walking into a SASSA office and putting out your grimy, Zimbabwean hands?” Turns out I was wrong, friends. And that’s scary, because I’m never wrong.

And it doesn’t stop there: our jobs are being thrown out the window and into the laps of Malawian borderjumpers. “But that makes no sense,” I hear you predictably retort, “Johan, wouldn’t most companies be hesitant to give scarce jobs to what you have on many, many occasions, called ‘a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing unskilled thieves who don’t even speak our language’? Surely any employer would want to avoid huge legal ramifications and massive fines for breaking labour laws by making sure to go Proudly South African?” Well, to that I say “that’s the kind of senseless, contradictory society we live in.”

However, the damage goes beyond just the financial: what’s being hurt even more is our national culture and identity. All these immigrants make no effort to fit in, to try and be a part of South African society.

You know, every day I drive from my job at a single-language newspaper back to my home in that gated, all-white, English-Afrikaner closed community in Sandton and I pass these Somali or Zimbo neighbourhoods, these anti-nationalist, unpatriotic attempts to stick to one culture without embracing the beautiful diversity of South Africa. It’s sad and sickening. The put themselves behind these walls and barriers, and don’t even try to mix with everyday South Africans. Hell, they don’t even make an effort to try and learn any of the 11 official languages of South Africa, for example English, or Afrikaans, or, er, one of those other ones. Even the Zulu security guy who mans the barbwire, electrified gate of my suburb comments on it sometimes.

Or at least, I think he does. I don’t speak Zulu.

But what I can’t stand most of all is the pretence they put up, the lies and excuses they tell me to try and make us feel sorry for them. They put up this sad story of running away from hateful or outright murderous political regimes or iron-fisted dictatorships; they give us these sop tales of “brutal police” and “racist officials and harsh, anti-human immigration laws”; they wax lyrical about having left everything – their language, their home, their history, their culture, their families, their entire way of life and identity – just to live in fear and poverty in a country that despises and assaults them just for wanting a better life for them and their children. And why? Well, so that you won’t complain when they take that below-minimum-wage, no-security job that rightfully belongs to people born here!

You know, it’s exactly for this reason that I stopped my application to live and work in England or Australia. All I want is to go there, trade in my green passport, and live and work in peace: but how can I move overseas to live on greener pastures when all these bloody immigrants are stealing the jobs that I want, taking the healthcare and government grants that I’ll need when I get there? It’s absurd.

This, my friends is why I congratulate the ANC on at least one thing: that they’ve stood up for South Africans’ rights everywhere. You know, silly organisations like the Human Rights Watch, or so-called Amnesty International, might condemn South Africa’s diplomatic and political stance on human rights atrocities in other African countries, and her harsh, “unjust, retrogressive” immigration laws that miss opportunities to integrate trained professionals such as teachers, scientists and skilled workers into our society to better serve our people, but I say “well done.”

As tempting as it is to enjoy the cheap labour these guys offer (and that cool perk of being able to fire them at will, which forces them to never complain about how little you pay them for fear of you reporting them to the police on trumped up charges of theft) we need to stick to a strong code of national pride and moral integrity, to support - and ardently defend the rights of - those human beings who share a birthplace with us.

After all, how can we possibly have a better South Africa if it’s full of Zimbabweans?


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. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.
He also doesn't know his editor and employer is Zimbabwean.

Monday, March 30, 2015

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 propriĆ©taire (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?”

Thursday, March 26, 2015

"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).”

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

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

Monday, March 23, 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

Thursday, March 19, 2015

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.

    Wednesday, March 18, 2015

    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.

    Tuesday, March 17, 2015

    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.