Category: Kibbitz

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Kibbitz

Jacob & Bibi: Viva the grandchildren!

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE EX-PRESIDENT

February 25, 2018

Dear Bibi:

So Friday afternoon I bade farewell to my former staff at the Union Buildings and needless to say there was a huge amount of weeping and so forth. We South Africans, Bibi, besides being happy and smiling, are a sentimental bunch. Only things we love more than money and bemoaning the evils of our holocaust (the apartheid years) are public farewells, funerals and apologies.

The farewell was of course captured in glorious technicolour by one of my (former) trusty photographers from the oddly-named GCIS, Government Communication and Information System, also known by many as the JGSU, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa – or sometimes Joseph Goebbels – Strike Unit. But I never named the GCIS; that’s one they can’t blame on me; if memory serves, it was christened during Thabo Mbeki’s reign or maybe even the Old Man’s.

But none of the pictures, though they were dispatched to all the fake news practitioners, will appear in this morning’s newspapers. If they did, the white monopoly capitalists and all their thousands, nay millions, of followers would erupt in a mammoth wail and general gnashing of teeth. On the other hand, Squirrel teeing off at some charity golf jamboree, even more incompetently than I ever did, two days ago, will be the lead story on the front pages for weeks to come.

But I have to say that Squirrel is learning fast. Very fast. Everyone’s chosen not to notice that a few days ago, Gigabyte the finance minister gave Squirrel R700 000 a year more than I got. Not, I concede, a lot in dirhams, rupees or dollars, but still.  And four days ago, Squirrel hosted a farewell function for me at the Tuynhuys (we have more official dachas than you fellows) in Cape Town – and, without even blanching, he paid tribute to me for my “contribution to South Africa’s development” during my nine years in office. Not bad, given that even an easily-bamboozled person such as he is knows my main contribution was always to my own development and my family’s.

Because you see, Bibi, I have always been, above all, a family man, as you obviously have also been – though, if you don’t mind me saying, my 23 (or 24 – sometimes I lose count) kids have been kinder to me than your few to you. Did you know, by the way, that I have a Jewish grandson? I have insisted he call me zeyde – and he does! I call him Bafana, which means boychik.

Yes, my boy Duduzane, cognizant that happy congress with a beautiful Jewish woman is accompanied by seven years’ good luck (but also, as you say, some tsuris), has shown himself to be as fruitful as I have been, and will,Insha’Allah, continue to be. My point is that, even amidst my troubles, I have put some money aside in Dubai for the young lad. Surely, after you complete your imperial ambitions in the Middle East, as you surely will, the bank there will be easily available to Jewish people?

Viva the grandchildren!

Jacob

 

THE PRIME MINISTER’S BUREAU

Dear Jacob

February 25, 2018

I’m delighted to hear that you have a Jewish grandson. You beat me to it! Normally, I would urge you to send him to Israel to absorb a little yiddishkeit, but the timing is probably not appropriate. You see, we’re trying to get rid of our black Africans right now and I wouldn’t want him to be mistaken for an infiltrator and sent to Rwanda. (Though that’s in Africa, so he could probably take an Uber home, couldn’t he?)

Your best bet would be to ensure that he gets a good Jewish education in South Africa – Zionist, but I’d steer clear of the Lubavitch – and then send him here to spend some time among his own kind. Yair has kindly to offered to show him around the strip clubs and whorehouses of Tel Aviv, complete with state-financed bodyguard and car. Though, come to think of it, that may not be a good idea. Most of the women are Russians, who are not particularly partial to people of color. Maybe Sara knows some appropriate non-Russians.

But I must insist that you teach him to avoid the mistake that you yourself made in your last email. There was, is and always will be only one Holocaust (spelled with a capital H) and that is the Jewish one. Other people have tragedies, disasters – catastrophes, even – but only Jews have a Holocaust. Talk of other holocausts is in most cases no more than disguised anti-Semitism. God gave the Jews the Book and the Holocaust (and a gift for finance, some say.)

Seeing that your grandson – I think you said his name is Banana – has a Jewish mother, it would be best to leave his Holocaust education up to her. That way, he’ll be up to speed when he gets here.

As for me, the local gestapo has ordered me in for questioning this week on what are colloquially known as Cases 3000 and 4000. Not, God forbid, 3 & 4. The Nazis want the public to believe that my supposed indiscretions run into the thousands! After all I’ve done for the Jewish people, they want to grill me like a common criminal – and about what? About favors I purportedly doled out to an old friend (almost family!) in return for positive coverage about me and my family in the press.

Could even Goebbels have made up a better lie? (By the way, I noticed your reference to him but didn’t really understand the context. Were you referring to the lies about you in your local rags?) Is it the fate of all great men to be besmirched by pygmies?

Last week that righteous Christian Donald Trump announced that the US embassy would move to Jerusalem in May. One of the greatest achievements of the Jewish people – a miracle no less than that of Hanukkah or the salvation of the Jews on Purim – that happened on my watch. But do you think I get any recognition for it? Any thanks? Forget it. Case 4000 is what I get!

Your brother in anguish

Bibi

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Kibbitz

Bibi & Jacob: The Buffalo and the Judge

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE EX-PRESIDENT

February 21, 2018

Dear Bibi:

There is so much I have to tell you. At the same time, I have to keep up with the ever-changing news: the events of today and just yesterday. It’s so difficult. No wonder that most journalists get most things wrong most of the time. No wonder too that fake news is the order of the day, as that fine leader and human being, Donald “grab-‘em-by-the-gigaba” Trump, keeps remarking.

Actually I secretly met the Trompoppie a few months ago at a secret venue arranged by our mutual benefactor, Vlad Putin, and was most impressed by him – but was even more impressed by his gorgeous wife, who didn’t seem to care for him very much but afforded me a smile or two, I can tell you. (She’s heard about chocolate cake, don’t you worry.)

More of this another time. Back now to the fake news. Bibi, it’s been absolutely remarkable: I have never before witnessed such a massive outpouring – such a veritable tsunami – of misinformed euphoria as that which flowed from the fingers and addled brains of the fourth estate and from many others when I left office and my successor, Squirrel Ramaphosa, or The Buffalo, took over.

I’m not referring to the flood of holier-than-thou pieces, liberally slathered with righteousness, which were written or broadcast when I quit. Those, in the immortal words of a former South African judge, ran off my back like a duck’s water. I know that when a true servant of the people and liberation hero falls, Lilliputians everywhere swoon and virtually ejaculate with hatred.

No, I’m talking about the mind-boggling sycophantic adulation and idiocy that greeted The Buffalo’s first speech. For he did exactly the same as I did: uttered a raft of meaningless promises! Can you believe it? To be sure, he speaks much better English than I do (or pretend to do publicly) and has a much better grasp of the bullshit-speak popular in white monopoly capital boardrooms the world over. Still, you’d have thought he’d promised each and every citizen a cheque of one million rand.

Then today, when my former henchman, Malusi “Gigabyte” Gigaba – one of the fastest-slithering snakes of all time – he was one who turned and bit me faster than you could say “value-added tax” – was allowed to deliver the national budget, well, today, the truth might finally have begun to dawn on my fellow countrymen. This is: that they will continue to be ripped off like there is no tomorrow; that in his maiden speech as president, The Buffalo in fact delivered a master class in snake-oil salesmanship; and that life in general will continue in much the same vein as it did in my time. Heh-heh.

Cheers for now,

Jacob.

 

 

THE PRIME MINISTER’S BUREAU

February 21, 2018

Oy Jacob, Jacob

Don’t talk to me about false news and misinformed euphoria. About the plebs rejoicing at every drop of blood shed by their betters in the line of duty. You, my friend, are outside the firing line, at least for now. I envy you being able to luxuriate on the ample bosoms of your multiple wives without a care in the world. For your sake, I hope that none of them is a child psychologist.

Yours truly, however, remains in the firing line. Abandoned and forsaken on the field of battle. Can you believe that they (the bloodthirsty media and, no doubt, treacherous members of my own government) are now accusing me of attempting to bribe a judge by offering her a senior government position in return for dropping a case against my wife? Have you ever heard of anything as mean and contemptible? That’s the level I’m forced to descend to with this gutter press.

Who but the most malicious and spiteful of my enemies would take an innocuous conversation between an associate of mine and a senior jurist, in which he informally sounded her out regarding the circumstances in which she might be prepared to accept a certain appointment – the sort of guileless conversation that occurs daily in the corridors of power – and turn it into attempted bribery? What spite does it take to make such a leap? What evil?

Not only is it unthinkable that a person like myself who has dedicated his life to the service of his country would do such a thing, but anyone who knows me is aware that, were I to ever indulge in a little venality, it would not be in order to save that loud-mouthed ingulube (I think that’s what you called her), who is the source of all my tsuris (That’s problems in Yiddish.) I’d gladly see her in the dock were it not for the small matter of a legal document she forced me to sign after catching me with my shlong in the wrong parking spot early in my marriage.

And the rest, as they say, is history. So the next time you see me on the TV loudly proclaiming the innocence of Lady Macbeth and exalting her as an icon of womanhood, please notice that I’m being filmed from the chest up. That’s because she has my balls nailed to the dining table.

Speaking of balls, you’re right about Trump’s Slovakian (or is it Slovenian) hussy. She’s naughty that one. Gave me a look across the supper table that set the gonads tingling. I wonder if she’s ever wriggled on the end of a Jewish rod? They’re all anti-Semitic, you know, those Eastern Europeans, which makes defiling them almost a mitzva.

Tell me, why didn’t you get rid of that Ramapussy fellow with the teeth of a ravenous rhinoceros long before he plunged the knife into your back? My entire cabinet would do the same to me, given half a chance, were it not for the fact that they’re all halfwits and the country knows it. The only thing keeping me in office these days is the prospect of one of those Neanderthals succeeding me.

Well, I’ve got to be off now. Got some saber-rattling with Iran to do. Nothing deflects the attention of the media from one’s peccadillos like the prospect of a good war.

Shalom

Bibi

 

 

 

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Kibbitz Kvetch

Israel Pursues True Apartheid

For those of us who consider Israel to be an apartheid state, it is sobering to realize that things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better. In South Africa, racial segregation took a long time to gestate, before reaching its full potential in apartheid. The Israeli version is only now showing signs of approaching maturity, never mind reaching its inevitable demise.

The term “apartheid” emerged in 1947 as the slogan of the pro-segregationist National Party in South Africa while it was still in opposition. It represented a slew of policies aimed at tightening white control over the country, deepening segregation and “balkanizing the country into separate socio-economic units,” as Richard Steyn put it in his new biography of South African statesman Jan Smuts.

In other words, apartheid was the formalization of the segregation that had existed in the colonies that made up the Union of South Africa, as it was then, for well over two hundred years. It’s implementation, in the years following the Nationalist victory in the 1948 elections, provided the legal framework for the entrenchment of practices – of a social reality – that, to a large extent, already existed.

The whites of South Africa were no more or less racist after the introduction of apartheid than they were before. What had changed was that they felt sufficiently unencumbered by their previous colonial master, Britain, were more organized and they finally had a plan.

It’s worth remembering that less than 50 years before apartheid became state policy, the Afrikaners were fighting the British in the Boer War, which they regarded as a struggle for survival against the colonial, commercial and, in particular, mining interests – represented by Britain – which threatened to swamp them.

Apartheid, then, was the culmination of a long and hard struggle by the Afrikaners to overcome foreign rule, establish themselves on the land, build up their power and create a nation. The presence of a large black population throughout that process was a problem that necessitated increasingly discriminatory and harsh measures, but until the formation of the Nationalist government in 1948, no overall solution to the race problem was ever put forward.

Even Jan Smuts, an international statesman and the drafter of the preambles to the charters of both the League of Nations and United Nations, was at a loss when it came to solving what was called the “native problem.” For most of his career, he preferred to side-step the issue. It fell to the Nationalist government of 1948 to propose an overarching race policy – apartheid. And it took close to another 50 years for apartheid to collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions and in the face of international obloquy.

In a very similar vein, Israel has failed to come up with a policy for its own “native problem.” It wants the land of the West Bank, but it has no idea of what to do with the population. Like Smuts, Benjamin Netanyahu’s only policy is to side-step the issue, his vague nods in the direction of a two-state solution notwithstanding.

In a technical sense, therefore, Israel is in a pre-apartheid phase. It has the functional segregation, the oppressive measures and an apathetic population that is largely disinterested in the fate of the other. It is apartheid-ready. What it lacks is the legal framework in which to implement its aspiration toward a state in which Jews control all the land and all the power.

That could soon be on the cards. Following the passing of the so-called Settlement Regularization Bill in early February, Knesset members from the coalition have now set their sights on annexing the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to Israel. That is likely to be followed by further annexation, either on a piecemeal basis or of large swathes of the West Bank in one go.

The Regularization Bill, which retroactively legalized Jewish theft of private Palestinian land, was the first law passed by the Knesset that dealt with the fate of the Palestinians and their land. Until then, the displacement of the Palestinians had been accomplished by means of military decrees and Supreme Court dismissal of appeals by Palestinians or their Israeli representatives against the decrees.

To put it another way, the bill was the first occasion on which the Israeli legislature passed a law enabling discrimination by one segment of society against another. As such, it was an important milestone in the advance to fully-fledged apartheid.

Apart from David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister and he has fought numerous bruising diplomatic battles. He may not be the most appropriate person to lead Israel into the full bloom of apartheid. That distinction could well fall to Naftali Bennett, head of the avidly pro-settlement Habayit Hayehudi party, who, unlike the prime minister, does have a proper apartheid plan. Until now, Bennett has anchored the right-wing of the ruling coalition and prevented any deviation from the coalition’s pro-settlement line on the part of Netanyahu.

Bennett’s plan would involve the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, the herding of West Bank Palestinians into areas reminiscent of bantustans and the creation of two legal systems, one for Jews living anywhere in the greater territory and the other for West Bank Palestinians. It is a plan of which the South African architects of apartheid would have been proud.

To the best of my knowledge, Bennett’s plan doesn’t envisage discriminatory action against the Palestinians living within Israel proper, but that could be only a question of time. With apartheid fully in place in the West Bank, it’s unlikely that Israeli Jewish baasskap (domination) will tolerate unregulated Palestinians elsewhere. Their model could be the scrapping of the qualified black franchise in South Africa’s Cape Province by the apartheid regime.

If the experience of South Africa is anything to go by, therefore, apartheid is a slow-growing plant that needs ample time and water. In Bennett, Israel has the means, but will it have the time?

 

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Kibbitz Uncategorized

New Year Kisses from The Kibbitzer

President-elect Donald Trump will kiss himself at midnight tonight precisely, a senior source in the presidential transition team told The Kibbitzer.

“You’re meant to kiss the person you love most to welcome in the New Year,” the source said, asking to remain anonymous.

“Well in Donald’s case that’s Donald,” the source added. “Of course, he’ll also kiss Melania afterwards, but he’ll make sure to do it in front of a mirror so he’ll be looking at himself.”

“And he’ll tweet a kiss emoji to Putin for hacking him into the White House.”

A source close to John Kerry said he was considering stopping to speak about settlements long enough to kiss whoever is closest to him at the time.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, a source in the prime minister’s bureau said that Benjamin Netanyahu would be spending a quiet evening at home, building a settlement with his Lego Christmas present.

“He’s not really a kisser,” the source said, “though he wouldn’t mind having the nation kiss his ass.”