Groot Krokodil has died
Pieter Willem Botha, an icon of apartheid South Africa, unexpectedly passed away last night. He was instated the year before I was born and was the prime minister/state president I grew up with for 10 years of my childhood in a racially segregated country.I just read through some of the 400+ comments on the Inside IOL blog post by Renee Moodie. Hot topic indeed:
May his soul rot in hell
...seems to be the most popular opinion. IOL are also featuring a poll, asking whether he should be given a state funeral. Currently 56% say "No".
UPDATE: Found on YouTube: Spitting Image - Mission Impossible (Series 6, 1986): Sir Geoffrey Howe embarks on a mission to stop the evil of PW Botha in South Africa.
Songs from Table Mountain
I was at the Live concert last night and have little to no memory of the night's events after leaving the gig and arriving at the first Durbanville club we came across, although some dodgy camera phone photos involving a large number of beer pints and a Halloween pirate eye patch reveal a few clues. Arrr.
Wow! Best. Fucking. Rock. Band.
Ever.
UPDATE [02/11]: Some random camera phone photos are up on Flickr!
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11 Comments
Oh – just another thing…
What’s so surprising about a wobbly 90-year-old kicking the bucket? Apparently (the source is my mother so fairly reliable) he’d gotten so doddery that when he went shopping at the Woolies in George he stayed in his huge Merc in the parking lot and Woolies attendants brought stuff out to him to yay or nay…
Mmm sorry you missed the concert Est, it was truly awesome (I’m still drunk!). Posters were lining the streets, how did you miss them? :(
I wonder if those Woolies attendants spoeged in his milk, and stuff.
I hated the apartheid as much as the next person, but the man has past, what good can come out of him making his name even worse. The only people who it will effect are his family. Nay to state funeral, but also nay to making his family name even worse than it already is. It’s all up to the higher powers now.
State celebration instead.
Toy toy on coda.coza :P
Yeah, I’d seen the LIve posters and all…just meant I’d succesfully avoided hearing about how awesome it was…
Talking about how evil PW was isn’t making his name worse, as far as I’m concerned Laertes…it’s just not glibly slipping into all-round eulogising, which seems to be the order of the day, which I think is dishonest, especially to the memory of the people who not only suffered, but died, because of or exacerbated by his decisions/’reign’. Sure, let the man ‘rest in peace’ (not that I’m sure there’s some cosmic come-uppance due), but let’s not all of a sudden start talking about him being a ’steadfast leader who stood by his principles’…
Okay. Ranted out.
Know, I agree Est, he was a total bastard. Just irritates me when people go on and speak about how he should “burn in hell for eternity!!!!”. I just think to myself, WTF is the use of make statements of that kind. Nothing productive will ever come out of that.
Still need to track the non PEAR version of Validate_ZA down. powertrip.co.za/PEAR/Validate_ZA/ is the PEAR Validate_ZA I worked on quite some time ago. Need to figure out from which project I extracte Validate_ZA.
I was waiting for this! Zapiro’s take on the Botha matter.
01 November 2006
Est03:27 pm
Yeah, his demise nearly made me blog again. Nearly. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Evil rubbish in fact. State funeral. Pah. As if.
Onto lighter subjects – booh. Had very successfully avoided hearing anything about the Live concert up until now. Glad it rocked though.