Lip Service

2004-12-03 11:01

Cape Town - A selection of quotes of southern and South African interest from the media during the past week.

"I have already been sentenced to more than 100 years in jail in my country. That is Obiang's problem. It leaves me neither hot nor cold." - Exiled Equatorial Guinea opposition leader Severo Moto, who was sentenced on Friday to 63 years in jail over an alleged plot to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, brushed off the verdict as meaningless.

"Together we must avoid the resort to populism and catchy newspaper headlines that have nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with the pursuit of self-serving agendas." - President Thabo Mbeki, replying to Archbishop Desmond Tutu's charge of sycophancy in the ANC.

"Thank you Mr President for telling me what you think of me, that I am a liar with scant regard for the truth, and a charlatan posing with his concern for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless." -Tutu.

"Relations between the president, the ANC and the archbishop are cordial, normal and harmonious - there's no crisis at all in our view." - ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama.

"The alliance will remain tenacious, it has nothing to do with Vavi, he is a very, very young child in the alliance." - Ngonyama questioning "toxic statements" by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi in the ongoing war of words between the two organisations.

"He cannot be objective... because he is part and parcel of the parasitical accumulation of capital." - Vavi on Ngonyama, who recently brokered a major Telkom share deal.

"The custom of posing sweetheart questions to the executive perpetuates a tradition within the ANC, as one observer crassly put it, of farting each other warm." - Commentator Rhoda Kadalie on what she said was the lack of independent thinking in Parliament.

"The National Treasury allocates funds equitably between provinces and does not award more to provinces that overspend their budgets." - Deputy director-general for intergovernmental relations in the Treasury Ismail Momoniat on the Eastern Cape's plan to ask for help in dealing with its R1.7bn deficit.

"It's just that I've been doing this work for 14 years now and it's getting to me. Fourteen years and still people are not listening." -HIV/Aids economist Prof Alan Whiteside, explaining why he choked with tears as he was telling a conference that in six years, a quarter of all Lesotho children would be orphans.

"I believe that I will reach Mandela's age, living with this virus." -Treatment Action Campaign volunteer Judith Dlulane at a World Aids Day rally.

"If no one is HIV-positive, you are safe and you can continue to disdain the use of a condom and sleep with multiple partners, until one day you notice a skin lesion and say, 'Oh! Someone is bewitching me'." -Swaziland factory worker Amos Dlamini on the deep-rooted stigma and silence surrounding the disease in his country.

"These 16 days should become 352 days." - President Mbeki, shortening the year a little as he urged that the campaign against violence against women and children be sustained.

"He is an old man. He is not a boy; old men don't have a reason to joke." - 78-year-old Mpumalanga resident Lettie Nhlapho on Mbeki after he kept his election promise of making sure she got the house she had longed for.

"This might be the beginning of internal power struggles and eliminations characterised by stage-managed accidents and poisonings. These guys are ruthless and it's open season now." - Zimbabwean analyst John Makumbe on the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in Zanu-PF as President Robert Mugabe heads for retirement.

"Marriage is the union of two persons to the exclusion of all others for life." - Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron's gender-neutral definition of the institution in his judgment upholding a gay couple's bid for their marriage to be legally recognised.

"Things are happening too fast. Society is getting shock after shock." -Family law advocate Francis Bosman, expressing concern after the judgment that South Africa may be too far in front of the rest of the world on human rights issues.

"For me, the idea of a marriage is terrifying. I don't even have a proper relationship with my refrigerator." - Performing artist Nataniel on the judgment.

"Thank God my father is not alive to see this." - Alleged coup plotter Mark Thatcher, saying the criminal charge against him has severely damaged his reputation. His mother, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is still alive.

"I wondered why Zuma would suggest one company in particular. I also found it unusual that a minister had to be helped to write a letter. It did not fill me with confidence." - British tourism consultant John Lennon telling the Schabir Shaik trial how he received a letter from deputy president Jacob Zuma recommending Shaik's company as a partner in a tourism school venture.

"With your hands cuffed behind your back you can't do most things. Not even use the toilet. I had to wipe Bone's bum for him." - Ablo Augusto, acquitted of participating in the Equatorial Guinea coup plot, recounting his experiences in a Malabo jail with co-accused Bone Boonzaaier.

"No evidence was presented in court to sustain the charges against the accused, other than their statements, which the defendants said had been extracted under torture." - Amnesty International's verdict on the "grossly unfair" Malabo trial.

"I am pleased you came, because you didn't come last time, and he beat her so badly." - An unidentified Hillbrow mother to police she called when her 20-year-old daughter was being beaten by the daughter's husband.

"I was so drawn into that [political] life, I had to speak so loudly to break down apartheid, that I could not distinguish the voice of God. And God said he wanted to speak to me. Alone." - Allan Boesak, in his first sermon as a dominee in 14 years, giving theological context to his imprisonment for fraud.

"With words that were sparse but pure, she seared for herself a place in Afrikaans literature and in our consciences, from which healing and new growth will flow for a long time to come." - Writer Andre Brink on the death of poet Sheila Cussons.

"The Afrikaans universities think I'm filthy. I really don't impress them at all. The only degrees I got from Afrikaans universities I bought for R100 each from Potchefstroom." - Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys on the latest of four honorary degrees he has received from English-language universities, this one from Wits.

"Sometimes a teacher would walk around with a ruler to measure whether your sideburns are too long and you have to shave them according to what they think is appropriate. It is just not fair." - Vorentoe school pupil Zaheer Solomon-Benjamin who was asked in the middle of an exam to go home and shave.

"I commissioned my personal designer, Spero Villioti, to create an original gold-and-black lace outfit for Winnie. She looked absolutely radiant in it. I brushed a tear from her eye when she wore it for the first time, knowing that this was small consolation for all the hurt she was feeling." - Murdered socialite and friend of Winnie Madikizela Mandela Hazel Crane, in a posthumously published autobiography.

"It ate our animals, so it is only fair we eat it, too." - Unnamed villager in Zimbabwe's Muzarabani area, one of several who made a meal of a lion killed by game rangers for raiding livestock.

"We found Bob the hamster hiding in an empty tomato sauce bottle. I grabbed him and said: 'Oh Bob, thank goodness you're alive." - Janine Genade of Miller's Point outside Cape Town describing how a troop of baboons trashed her house and the hamster cage.

"It's been made clear before the tour... that the team will not be put in a position to shake any government member's hand." - England cricket captain Michael Vaughan, speaking after the commencement of the team's Zimbabwe tour.

"We have a plan for him. We're going to shoot him in the hotel tonight." - Proteas coach Ray Jennings in a tongue-in-cheek comment on how South Africa intended to deal with Indian batting maestro Virender Sehwag.

- SAPA