Hello and welcome! This little fortnightly column presents news and politics at its most absurd. SAtired supports freedom of speech, small government and free markets. This means we’re centrists. This is NOT a safe space!
The Weekly Squib*
- squib /skwɪb/ noun: squib 1. a small firework that issues a hissing sound before exploding into a short piece of satirical writing.
Bang! You’re dead, not
Even in the face of a chronic crime wave and lethal gangsters, there are moments of sheer farce.
Imprisoned gang leader of the Terrible West Siders ordered the hit on the prominent defence lawyer, William Booth.
Kauthar Brown, Ebrahim Deare and Riyaad Gesant were ordered to carry out the hit. Easier said than done apparently.
The three planned the hit and agreed that Deare was going to be the hitman. They staked out Booth’s house for a few days.
The details of the attempted hit on Cape Town lawyer William Booth were released in an unexpected plea and sentencing agreement in the Cape Town Regional Court on Friday.
However, this was not, according to New24, a ‘sleek coterie of assassins’.
Brown provided Booth’s address and a getaway car to a state witness who was instructed to drop them close to the house.
On one of the trips to scout Booth’s house, Deare and Gesant decided to smoke some mandrax in the bushes. Mandrax has a sedative effect.
On another occasion Deare – the hitman – fell into a hole after smoking the drug and hurt his leg, so he had to be driven to Groote Schuur Hospital for treatment and the mission was abandoned for the day.
That night, the imprisoned gang leader expressed his unhappiness and ordered that they must get the job done the next day.
In the final attempt on 9 April 2020 the driver, Deare and Gesant returned to Booth’s house. The driver dropped them off near Booth’s house.
Deare fired five rounds at Booth while he stood with his dogs in his garage, but he was not hit. The three assassins then left in the getaway car. The three received payment from Brown that night.
The police published pictures taken from CCTV around Booth’s neighbourhood and arrests followed.
The coterie face charges of being part of a gang – the Terrible West Siders, based in Woodstock – and gang activity, as well as conspiracy to murder and attempted murder.
Deare also faced charges of illegal possession of a firearm and illegal possession of ammunition.
The driver seemed only to realise what was happening when he overheard a conversation about the person who ordered the hit becoming impatient.
The matter ended up in the Regional Court for a plea and sentencing agreement for each of the three. There was a brief delay in the proceedings while the attorneys went to find the magistrate during what would normally have been the lunch break.
Brown, a self-employed mother of five who earns around R3 500 a month will be subject to house arrest. Deare is a father of three who earns R4 500 a month and he will serve 10 years. Gesant will serve five years.
It sounds like a case of cadre deployment in the private sector.
OMG, AOC!
There’s an absurdly powerful force in Democratic Party politics in the US of A.
“The Five”, formerly “The Squad”, comprises 5 young women who are Democratic Party representatives in the US House of Representatives.
They are brash, inexperienced and opinionated – perfect examples of the Millennial generation.
The “leader of the pack”, so to speak, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who represents New York’s 14th congressional district which includes the eastern part of The Bronx and part of north-central Queens.
AOC, as she is fondly and not so fondly known, is very earnest: she’s also very attractive which may explain why she gets away with comments that are often inane, vacuous and wrong. She has over 1 million Twitter followers.
She was an author of the new Green Deal that President Joe Biden is presently getting behind. The Deal is generally thought to be unaffordable and unimplementable.
Unsurprisingly, AOC is a climate change proponent in the hysterical manner we’ve come to know and love from Greta Thunberg.
This is an excerpt from a press interview or address:
“The climate crisis is a crisis born of injustice, and it is a crisis born at the pursuit of profit at any and all human and ecological cost, which means that we must recognise in legislation that the trampling of indigenous rights IS a cause of climate change. The trampling of racial justice IS a cause of climate change. Because we are allowing people, and we are allowing ourselves to deny folks the right to healthcare and the right to an education.”
The comments can be viewed here on the Rubin Report from 26:00.
Stand and deliver your bread!
On 24 April 2021 robbers travelling in a Toyota Avanza tried to rob a van delivering bread in Mawothi, KwaZulu-Natal.
“The owner of the bread distribution company contacted RUSA [the company’s security company] at 08:44 requesting assistance to locate his driver who was taken with the Hyundai H100. Tracker confirmed that signals from the vehicle were emitting in Mawothi. Reaction officers converged on the area and recovered the vehicle with the South African police,” RUSA head Prem Balram said.
Would-be robbers in Mawothi, KwaZulu-Natal, allegedly resorted to offering bread to residents after failing to open a cash safe in a bakery delivery van on Friday.
According to the driver, the occupants of the Toyota Avanza accosted him and his colleague while they were making deliveries in the area.
“One person produced a firearm and forced him to get into the vehicle and drive to an alternate location. The driver’s assistant managed to flee and contacted his employer. The suspects accessed the back of the bakkie but were unable to open the safe. They then forced the driver to offload 24 bread crates packed with 240 loaves of bread,” Balram added.
The robbers then distributed the bread to residents informing them that “Christmas had come early” before driving off.
The driver was unharmed.
While usually no good deed goes unpunished, in this case the bad does outweigh the good, sadly!
At the time of going to press it wasn’t known whether the bread spreaders had been apprehended.
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