Scrutator
FOR some time Scrutator has been looking for that fly-by-night prophet, Thomas Ramaloko, who claimed to have found a bizarrely garlanded snake at Kou Flats in Ha-Tsósane.
I mean that prophet who insisted his dummy of a snake was alive when it was clear that it had no sign of life.
Yet, no matter how bogus Ramaloko might be, I still believe he can help in these desperate times like we face now.
If you happen to meet him please tell him his services are required urgently to capture a venomous snake that has been causing havoc in government offices.
He must, however, be very careful because this snake is of a rare species that is very much alive unlike his very dead reptile he claimed to have found at Kou Flats.
The viper is Ifmis.
Since it slithered into government offices, civil servants have been dreading to go to work.
A number of them have been experiencing nightmares, seeing in their deep sleep Ifmis biting them.
There are those who have been sneaking into offices just to drop off sick notes and disappear before Ifmis sees them.
Many have been cooking up stories about their relatives dying just to avoid meeting Ifmis.
Some have simply gone AWOL.
There is pandemonium.
The reason Ifmis is such a scary snake is because you need training to get along with it.
Until you learn to deal with it there will be no peace in the office — Ifmis will bite until you can cry no more.
Scrutator is aware that some have been bunking classes meant to teach them to charm Ifmis.
Well, you must find a very huge gully to take cover because that learned and bespectacled technocrat who runs the money ministry will soon be dragging you by the ears, kicking and screaming, to the Ifmis classroom.
Ifmis will bite anyone who is hostile to education and new ideas. Be warned.
“Civil servants lazy: PM,” screamed the front-page headline of one weekly last Friday.
Unfortunate readers who bought the paper might be forgiven if they thought the writer had just landed from the moon.
Only a journo who has just disembarked from beyond the stratosphere can be shocked by the fact that civil servants — here or anywhere in Africa — are an indolent lot.
That civil servants are lazy is as obvious as the fact that cows have four legs.
At what point did that obvious fact become newsy enough to be plonked on the front page, especially for a paper that is so pricey?
But Scrutator is not shocked by such valour.
In fact, I prefer slothful people to those who pretend to be working by spending productive hours making kindergarten sketches of news subjects.
Someone at the paper was so underemployed that they decided to justify their salary by making a sketch of Motsotuoa Ntaote’s picture that was on page 3 of the same paper a fortnight ago.
That was a shallow attempt to give some oomph to a story that was very old and frail.
It was a laughable attempt to appear sophisticated.
If it’s not that, the journos at the paper totally misunderstood the concept of sketches from court proceedings.
A courtroom sketch is an artistic depiction of the proceedings in a court.
Newspapers use sketches because most courts do not allow cameras into courtrooms especially in high-profile cases.
For a moment I thought the paper had an artist in the courtroom but I was startled to discover they had actually used one of Ntaote’s pictures to make the sketch.
That was juvenile to say the least.
What do you call a person who counts a slow-mo depiction of a goal on TV as another goal? The use of that sketch was completely offside.
The aides of that geriatric leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, must be fired for forgetting to remind him to take his usual dosage of lunacy pills.
Bob, who has not shown any grain of shame for presiding over the demise of his country, has been struggling to remain sane.
And this week he gave up the battle and turned mindlessly vulgar.
He called the American diplomat Johnnie Carson “an idiot”.
The old man was angry after the two reportedly had a heated exchange in Libya last week at the African Union Summit.
The octogenarian said Carson was “a little fellow” who “thinks he could dictate to us what to do and what not to do”.
“You wouldn’t speak to an idiot (referring to Carson) of that nature. I was very angry with him,” thundered Mugabe in his increasingly undiplomatic language.
I don’t know what really caused Bob’s fuse to blow but I am sure Carson must have told him to first stop starving, beating and maiming his own people before his government starts begging for aid from the west.
Last year he called another American diplomat, Jendayi Frazer, “that little American girl trotting around the globe like a prostitute” — all because she dared say the opposition had won last year’s elections.
Can someone tell Bob that his age-mates are either dead or if they are lucky not to have been called yonder they are at least conserving the little life left in their lungs by speaking softly?
Finally, the bouncer from that opposition party who almost killed another MP with his hammer of a fist was at it again.
This time round he kept his hammer to himself, though, when he threatened to evict journos from some Mickey-Mouse meeting his party was having.
He used his thundering voice.
Where did the party get this breed?
I want to know so that I can hire one to protect me and my house.
Methinks he makes a better guard than a party leader.
