Satan, Mugabe, cancer, ghosts
23/03/2005 07:46  - (SA)  

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It's been a good week for lovers of the absurd, the pointless and the just plain wacky. Such a good week, in fact, that I'm struggling to pick which ridiculous news story to write about.

There are so many juicy contenders. I like the one about the Sudanese government asking Britain's Food Standards Agency to change the name of the Sudan Red cancer-causing dye, because it's harming the country's reputation.

When your reputation is as a government that promotes murder, rape and what some people are calling genocide, you're worried about a little adverse publicity?

I can picture the scene. Dick and Janet are deciding where to go on holiday.

"Ooh", says Janet, "Let's go to the Sudan! They have rape and mines and people without limbs and stuff! It'll be FUN!"

"Are you MAD, woman?", says Dick, aghast. "That's where that food dye stuff comes from! It could be dangerous."

Even more absurd is the story about our Belaboured Minister Membathisi Mdladlana landing at Harare Airport, and proclaiming that the Zim Elections would be free and fair before actually bothering to go and look.

See, this is why Thabo Mbeki needs a private jet. The commercial airlines are so cramped, politicians land with their foot ALREADY in their mouth. Not that our lot need help, of course.

Unfortunately, this story started sounding less and less funny the more I thought about it. Our neighbours are suffering while our president wastes our reputation up against the wall of Mugabe's new palace. Hard to think of a joke about that. An idle, TOTALLY UNRELATED thought: does anyone remember PW Botha and Israel, back in the 80s?

And speaking of presidents without a clue (Botha, not Mbeki, of COURSE - I'm still angling for that job on the ANC newspaper), I must update you on the saga of the ghosts haunting the Malawian president.

Three journalists have been arrested for spreading lies about the president. It's not true that he moved out of the mansion, and that clerics are trying to exorcise the ghosts. Not true at all.

According to the Reverend Malani Mtonga, who is the president's advisor on religious affairs (and possible the illegitimate love-child of Josef Goebbels and Grace Mugabe), this is the REAL story: "It's true that the president is no longer staying there and we have asked clerics from several Christian churches including the Roman Catholic to pray for the new state house to exorcise evil spirits." Well, that's totally different then. I hope they punish those lying journalists.

Catholics, liars, Robert Mugabe - this is a great moment to segue into my absolutely favourite story of the week.

'Satanism is my favourite'

Of all the crazy religions in the world, Satanism is my favourite after Catholicism. I like a religion with good music, funny clothes, and a hefty amount of sexual perversion.

Which is why I was amused to hear about the furore in New York, where two Catholics are being charged with hate speech for calling 20-year-old Satanist, Daniel Romano, a "Satan worshipper," a "baby sacrificer," and a "hooker killer".

Now, you might be a little confused as to how "Satan worshipper" can be an insult, when addressed to a Satanist. Would calling a Christian a "Jesus lover" be hate speech too?

Aha! Luckily, thanks to the power of the internet, I can reveal to you that Satanists do not in fact worship Satan, but (according to the Village Voice), see Satan as "a metaphor for self-determination". What next? Catholics who don't believe that a communion wafer is really the body of Christ?

But leaving that aside, the really interesting part of this case is that a law designed to protect mainstream religions is being used to protect something that most major religions wouldn't call a religion.

Ha, that's called being bitten in your liberal backside by the hand that was supposed to feed you, metaphors as mixed as the reactions of people in New York.

The two Catholic boys also beat up the Satanist, with a metal pipe and an ice scraper. Opinion is divided as to whether this is a hate crime or not. Although it's hard to bludgeon somebody lovingly, I would have thought.

It's the classic paradox. Your religion's most basic tenets are that you're right, and everyone else is wrong. But those damn liberal pinkos insist that everyone has a right to their own form of worship, and you're also uncomfortably aware that this year's oppressed Jew can be next year's martyred Catholic paedophile, so you NEED that freedom of religion thing. And then along come Satanists.

Well, at least we know that, if they ever hold elections in Hell, we can send a couple of ministers over there to announce that it's free, fair and frying. Mind you, it'll be a close thing between Mugabe and Satan.