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Mary Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow?
With cockle shells and pretty bell all in a row.

Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Kak? The Whinger’s Guide to South Africa From AA to JZ.
by Tim Richman and Grant Schreiber. (Two Dogs) R97
16 December 2007
Well, the title says it all, or almost all: this is a bad-tempered, foul-mouthed,
unconstructive review of the State of the Rainbow Nation a few years on. The AA of the
sub-title, you will not be surprised to hear, is neither the Automobile Association nor
Alcoholics Anonymous, but Affirmative Action. As for JZ – well, you’ve guessed it.
Two Dogs publishers specialise in books for that near-extinct species, the South African
Male. Previous titles include Defending the Caveman and Modern Man is a Wimp …
Long Live Real Men! This new title is right in there with the boys, because whereas no
doubt women also do whinge, they don’t whinge in just this language about just these
things. Admittedly, some of the whinges are non-genderspecific – our Minister of Health,
for instance, pisses everyone off (except of course, our President), across all boundaries
of race, class and gender. In a special sense, she may be said to have done more than
Madiba to unite the nation. Paris Hilton, too, sets on edge the teeth of everyone over the
age of thirteen. And everybody who doesn’t actually own Crocs detests them. So on some
issues there could be a communal whinge.
But only men, and real men at that, go homicidal in the presence of the Braai Meddler,
‘the guy who steals the tongs when you’re not looking, pokes the coals indiscriminately,
pricks the boerie without asking.’ And if you don’t know what a boerie is, you’re
probably not who this book was meant for.
Richman and Schreiber, in short, are not in touch with their feminine side, though it’s not
something you’d want to tell them in the pub. Not that you’d have the opportunity --
they’d be too busy whingeing about Kobus Wiese (and if you don’t know who he is …),
vuvuzelas, André Markgraaff and Wayne Rooney to listen to your analysis of what’s
wrong with them. Besides, they’re probably not interested in hearing what’s wrong with
them: in spite of the implied disclaimer in the title (Is It Just Me?), they clearly feel that
Everything’s Kak because everybody else is. Indeed, on “Other people” their entry is
brutally to the point: “They really are terrible. And they smell.”
I may be giving the impression that Richman/Schreiber are specimens of the kind of
South African Male that crowds you off the road in his SUV, shouts insults at the ref, and
hasn’t yet caught up on post-apartheid racial attitudes.
This is not the case. If many of their targets (Mbeki, Manto, Nqakula, Yengeni and of
course JZ) are black, that is because they are whingeing about bad governance, and the
government happens to be overwhelmingly black. True, they whinge about “The race
card”, but only to explain that theirs is in fact the anti-racist stand : “It is not wrong to call
a black man an asshole if that’s what he is. After all, assholes come in a variety of
colours. As do racists.”
Indeed, one might say that their most frequent term of abuse – asshole – is truly nonracist
and non-sexist, and applied as such: “In case you’ve ever sat waiting behind a
Sandton mommy in her Pajero while she’s yakking on her phone, or had a Russian
bouncer-type driving right up your backside in an X5, and suspected that most SUV
drivers are assholes who don’t know how to drive, various auto-industry reports will
confirm your suspicions.” . That, extract, incidentally, comes from a long entry on
“Hummers”, which also manages to dispose of Americans (“It’s like they intentionally
set out to make the rest of the world hate them.”)
And if Richman/Schreiber whinge a lot, they certainly do not imply that things used to be
better. They reserve particular scorn for “the bitter expat [who] loves nothing more than
harping on about how terrible South Africa has become since ‘they’ took over.” As they
say: “You’ve chosen to move on. Now get over it, you big wet bags.”
In short: if you’ve recently emigrated to Perth, drive an SUV, wear Crocs, are a Sharks
fan, or heaven forbid, a Paris Hilton fan, speak on a cellphone in the cinema, go cycling
in pink Lycra budgie-smugglers and/or prick the boerie, this book is not for you – unless,
indeed, you are exactly who it’s for. If you’re none of these, buy the book anyway:
you’re bound to find a whinge or two to share. I was delighted to find, for instance, that
other people (well, some other people) share my detestation of leaf blowers, those
pointless machines that blow the leaves from one end of the garden to the other and
sound like a Boeing taking off: “the god among kak inventions,” according to our
authors.
This, then, is the ideal book for that Season of Enforced Good Cheer, as an antidote to the
carols and the grandchildren. It will reinforce your prejudices, reassure you that it’s Other
People’s fault – but also perhaps make you wonder whether you’re not one of the Other
People. So you’ll enjoy it and it will be good for you – which is an odd but welcome
effect of all that whingeing.