Police Sell Weapons to Criminals

police scandal

Eight Winters (The Star: Aug 5, 2009)

8 Winters

Dead Man On The Highway

I was driving to cover a court case in Germiston this morning when I spotted a dead man lying in a flowerbed next to the M2 highway.
There were a few police vans around the body but nobody had put that tinfoil stuff over it to prevent motorists from seeing his pale stomach and rigid neck.
The photographer I was with pulled the car over (cnr M2 and Refinery Road) and we went to investigate - like the curious journalists we are.
The first man I spoke to was from the Albany factory across the road. He had been called to the scene, searched through the man's pockets and found a piece of paper with telephone numbers on it. He dialled some of the numbers and reached the man's son.
As we stood chatting there, the son arrived with a work colleague and was asked to identify the body. As a uniformed cop lifted the white material that had - in the meantime - been placed over the old man, he recognized his father. It took a spit second for his head to collapse into his hands. And there we stood, caught in this surreal moment that we now shared.
A maintenance worker at the scene told us the old man - "madala" as he called him - had been wandering the scene since yesterday, searching for water. The garden worker shared his bread with him and said he had a crazed, stressed look in his eyes. He didn't know where he was going or what happened to his car. The last thing he remembers was the old man sitting by a statue. This morning, he was dead.
I tried all day to speak to the family, hoping for them to shine some light on the mystery, but got nowhere.
What a crazy town we live in.

The House of Flu

When I was a kid, and watched ninja movies, I usually raided my mother's kitchen for jam tin tops to transform into ninja stars, which I flung (with great enthusiasm) at cardboard boxes. Later in life, when I watched movies with car chases, I couldn't help drive a little faster. So it was of little surprise that after reading way too much about the fabulous Drum magazine era, I got inspired to name our apartment and give it some arty, hippie, super-cool name. It was going to be the House of (whatever name I came up with). Like Can Themba's House of Truth.
My girlfriend didn't quite see the appeal. Neither did my friends, who were very firmly in the 21st century. But I kept the dream alive, the cinders flickering weakly in the back of my mind.
If I was to give our flat a name this weekend, I would call it: The House of Bronchial Infection, Inner-Ear Inflammation, Antibiotics and Endless TV Watching that Results in Frightening Mess of Tea Cups. The House of Flu, in other words.
It's been one of those weekends... We've been passing the infection around, snapping at each other through our headaches and trying to get better while being forced to leave the warmth and happiness of the home. Yesterday, to complete the picture of the miserable weekend, it hailed.
So forgive me if I have little to write about. But as I return to work tomorrow, I'm sure things will pick up again...

Flu and False Predictions

Yesterday, I boldly announced that the flu had released me. I spent the day covering a court case in Alexandra, hunting for a semi-decent restaurant in Germiston CBD (which, believe me, is not as easy as it sounds), sitting in the public gallery of a long council meeting and finishing the day at the Civic Theatre, sniffling my way through the Cheap Show.
This morning I am in bed, swimming in a small ocean of soggy tissues and getting ready to go to good old Dr Shein - my family's GP. I should have known better than to speak on flu's behalf - damn hearsay evidence.
The good news is I managed to finish a book I'm reviewing: Happy Chappie. It's written by a man called Tony Katzew, who is dying of Motor Neuron Disease (MND). MND has got to be one of the cruellest diseases in the world - over several years it basically shuts down your entire body, muscle by muscle. Tony, who lives in Hospice, has been completely paralyzed for over six years but is one of the most inspirational people I have ever met. I interviewed him for my newspaper and later spent two days with him to put together a short story called Eight Winters (still to be published).
In his book, which he dictated to a friend and launched last weekend, he had a beautiful message inscribed to me and signed it with a fingerprint. I'll post the review soon.

From Dusk Till Dumb

Life is a never-ending lesson. Early on, we learn not to run into busy roads and are taught that heroin is not a sustainable hobby. Later we feel our way through love, sex, heartbreak and, ultimately, death. But at what point do we learn that just because a movie touches that special place in your soul - as movies do - doesn't mean you should tattoo its name (along with the names of the two lead actors) across your back. (Yes, it's real).
I write about this because, quite coincidentally, my girlfriend and I watched Twilight for the first time this weekend. We finally gave in. All our friends had read the books, seen the movie and bought the special 2-disk DVD sets. While it was beautifully filmed, and was very romantic (in the traditional forbidden-love way), it hardly pushed me to add to my tattoo collection. With the craze around it, it just feels too much like the vampire version of Hanna Montana (for teenagers as opposed to children and without the singing).
But, in my eternal quest to be an objective journalist, I am open to arguments against these sentiments and in defence of the "film name" tattoo. I am still deeply haunted by the movie Blindness - but that wouldn't make a great tattoo, now would it?
Here's a photograph I took a few weeks ago. Believe it or not, there were two fighters with the identical tattoo. Bad Boy must love them.


Moving on... check out this link. It's a brilliant story that appeared in the news today and is about how Mugabe's government got conned by a woman claiming she could magically extract diesel from a rock. Bob's ministers jumped at the opportunity, claiming the country's woes were over and paid her a hefty 500 billion Zim dollars (which, come to think of it, is probably a box of smokes in SA). But the con was priceless.

Caught red-feathered

Here he is. The culprit. The nemesis. The pigeon that keeps setting off the sensors on my balcony at 6 or 7am every Sunday morning.
Look closely at him. Or her. Perhaps you have seen this evil beak before. Those slimy feathers. Those cunning little eyes.
With this footage I can start investigating. Has this bird of doom been sent to haunt us by our neighbours as punishment for letting our plant water dribble down on their patio? Or is he (or she) a guardian from all the birds I rescued at work? Only time will tell...
In other news...
My video clip from Tokoza (below) was published on IOL (one of SA's biggest news website). My first little bit of multimedia journalism. Check it out.
And if you need something weird to celebrate... try Maybe Day.
Now, I am off to enjoy a free Friday.

Squatter camp or proud piece of history?

Well, I finally know what a true dilemma feels like: the university professor who holds the key to a BA degree you've slaved away at for two years insults your newspaper and calls its legendary Sauer Street offices a "squatter camp".
Talk about being caught in the middle.
Somewhere in my subconscious is buried a very vivid memory of traveling past 47 Sauer Street as a child and looking up at "The Star" sign on the wall - it's letters faded and proud. Something about that building always made me think of the romantic side of journalism: the smoke-filled offices, typewriters, giant presses and journalists in hats and rimmed glasses sneaking sips of whiskey between deadlines. When I joined The Star in 2005, I loved the old marble staircases, heavy iron furnishings in the toilets and the relics of an era vanishing into the quicksand of time. It was history - and it was beautiful.
But all indications are that by today, Independent News and Media (The Star's parent company in Ireland) will file for bankruptcy - like many proud newspapers have already done in the US. The future of the local operation - with its 14 titles - is uncertain, with questions over who will buy it.
In a column this week Wits professor Anton Harber, who heads up the journalism school in which I'm enrolled, wrote about the collapse of the Independent group and called it "the best news of the week". It's owner, Tony O'Reilly, has always been accused of using his friendship with Nelson Mandela to set up the media juggernaut and milk it to fund the overseas business. Last year, our hard work gave O'Reilly 26-million Euros but he has, Harber argues, failed to put money back into his most profitable operation.
"In this time, very little has been invested in infrastructure, with the result that the printing presses are decrepit and the Sauer Street headquarters are like an office squatter camp," Harber wrote.
47 Sauer Street is not a squatter camp. Yes it needs modernising. Yes the canteen may be a heath hazard. But a part of me cries out to defend some of the building's magical history. To blend the old with the new. To find a way to fight off the death of the newspaper. To slow the advance of the very technology that makes this blog possible...