Ron’s Blog

IOL has published this story:

The prankster who defaced ANC president Jacob Zuma’s poster and placed it on a pedestrian bridge near Virginia Airport, Durban, will be fined or face jail time if caught, the IEC said on Thursday

Clearly inspired by an e-mail that has been doing the rounds for the past month, someone added a mask to the poster and scrawled the word “Zumatello” alongside Zuma’s image.

The poster was then placed on the pedestrian bridge over the southbound carriageway of the M4.

The reference to Zumatello, for the uninitiated, comes from the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which featured four turtles whose names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello were borrowed from Renaissance era artists.

The Independent Electoral Commission says there is nothing funny about defacing any election posters.

Tension between rival parties was highlighted when a similar election poster of Jacob Zuma was defaced in Umlazi recently.

The ANC in KZN called on police to investigate, but no formal charges had been laid.

Just two months after that incident two men were arrested for plastering their business adverts on an ANC poster in Johannesburg’s city centre.

The men were taken to the Johannesburg Central Police Station and charged with contravening the Electoral Act, which makes it illegal to conceal or remove any voting or electoral material.

The charges included malicious damage to property and contravening the Electoral Act.

IEC spokesperson, Mawethu Mosery, who had not seen the poster in question said: “Misrepresentation of campaign posters is a matter that deeply concerns us.

“We will not tolerate such behaviour.”

Mosery went on to say that if it was concluded that another party was responsible for the defacing, the party would have to pay a fine of about R200 000.

However, if it was carried out by an individual with no political ties, there would be no option of a fine and the offender would face up to two year’s imprisonment.

Seriously – don’t people know what a sense of humour is any more?

I’m going to be in Cape Town from April 25 to May 3, on account of it being my Little Annoying Sister’s 21st birthday. For the Cape Town readers, you know what that means…

As the post title implies, I do a lot of the organising behind the family holidays, reasons being that I’m good at finding places to stay and that, owing to my photographic memory, I’m excellent at memorizing a road map and finding my way around the place. Anyway, on to what I’m blogging about… my mom phoned me this morning asking me to organise some flights between Durban and Cape Town. The first one will be flying my sister up from Cape Town for the Easter weekend. My aunt from Australia (the one north of Sydney) will be visiting us during this time, which is an added bonus. Then, my mom wants to go down and pay my sister a surprise visit at the end of April, when all those public holidays are. I was originally going to take my mom and dad to the Berg for that weekend, but all the places are already booked out so my mom wants to do this instead. I’m thinking of joining her, firstly because I won’t be accompanying the rest of the family when my sister starts varsity at the beginning of February, and because then we can go halvies on car rental and accomodation (obviously I’ll also be paying for my own air ticket).

I went looking at four options: SAA, kulula.com, 1time and Mango. Out of those four, I’m recommending kulula.com – I’ve flown with them many times before and it’s always been an enjoyable experience. Mango isn’t THAT much cheaper for flights between Durban and Cape Town, and their flights are at ungodly hours of the morning or similarly late at night. Evidently they only offer their “specials” for flights involving Johannesburg. My mom still needs to make the final decision, but my recommendation to her is that we pay the R300 extra for the kulula.com return ticket and fly at a more reasonable time. SAA has excellent flexibility in this regard because they have so many damn flights, but they’re almost double the price of the other offerings, so I would only use them if I had to be in a certain place at a certain time. As for 1time, they don’t seem to do flights between Durban and Cape Town.

Speaking of which, I may also be in Cape Town for two weeks in September. A friend of mine has got timeshare down there, so we’re all planning to go as soon as we’ve saved up enough money and leave. I got offered a place on the trip, I suspect mainly because of my reputation as the “walking, talking roadmap”. Now we just need to organize a bakkie that will be big enough for all 5 of us, plus luggage. I can always donate the family trailer to the cause though.

I’ve got a meeting now so I suppose I’d better end off.

UPDATE: I was slightly misinformed. Regarding the Cape Town flights, it’s one or the other: either we fly my sister up or we fly down. Guess which one I’m pushing for?