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.
10 new-born babies – a fantasy of many parts?
Everyone must have heard about the alleged birth of 10 babies to Gosiame Thanara Sithole from Tembisa?
Other the sense of horror from mothers everywhere over the idea of having 10 babies simultaneously, it it interesting that the brave journalist who revealed this extraordinary event was no other than the editor of the Pretoria News, Piet Mahasha Rampedi.
The facts unravel thus:
- Sithole gave birth to decuplets on June 7 at an unspecified hospital in Pretoria, according to her partner Teboho Tsotetsi.
- Tsotetsi also said that Sithole delivered her seven boys and three girls by Caesarean section. A family member, however, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC that Sithole gave birth to 5 babies naturally and 5 by caesarean section.
- Sithole broke the Guinness World Record held by Malian Halima Cissé, who gave birth to nine children in Morocco in May.
- None of the relevant hospitals and clinics knew anything about the decuplets [a little hard to ignore, wouldn’t you say? – Ed.]
[Notice the balloons in the background? Just saying – Ed.]
- Government spokesperson Phumla Williams said neither the babies nor their mother could be found. The Provincial Government spokesperson, Thabo Masebe, said the same.
- Rampedi tweeted on Thursday, and I kid you not, “I am a credible and reliable journalist who has NEVER lied to you. So is Independent Media. We will not start today”.
- Iqbal Survé, who Jeremy Gordin reminds us, is a medical doctor, entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and a person who has modestly admitted to staffers at Independent Media that he is a “genius”, arranged for Tsotetsi to fly to Cape Town to receive a gift of R1 million.
- Having apparently collected the money, Tsotetsi and his family later issued a statement to the effect that he couldn’t locate Sithole or his babies, and had concluded, therefore, that the decuplets did not exist.
- The family had, apparently in the meantime, filed a missing person’s report [or should that be persons’? – Ed]
- On Tuesday 15 June Sithole finally broke her silence, accusing the Tsotetsi family of wanting to profit from her babies. She apparently did not look like a woman who had just given birth to 10 babies – most woman look like they’ve just given birth to only one baby months after the event. ‘No one will force me to reveal where my [10 babies] are. I will reveal their location in my own time, and no one is going to force me to tell where they are,’ she said.
- The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) stated that “This entire episode ranks as one of the lowest points in the history of South African journalism. The failure of Rampedi and Independent Media to do basic fact-checking and verify grandiose statements before publication has undermined and damaged the entire journalistic profession”.
- Rampedi’s response is that there is a conspiracy afoot, with ‘sources’ saying ‘the denials [of the existence of the decuplets] were part of a campaign to cover up medical negligence that involved senior politicians and public servants including Premier David Makhura and others.’
- Rampedi also said: ‘[The sources] likened it to the Life Esidemeni scandal. Nurses and doctors were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from disclosing information about Sithole’s delivery and the babies.’
- And further he said: ‘Instead of [the birth] being a cause for celebration, however, it has resulted in an orchestrated campaign to discredit the story, the mother of the decuplets, Ms Sithole, the Pretoria News editor Piet Rampedi, as well as Independent Media and its chairperson, Dr Iqbal Survé, with claims that the story is “fake news”. It is not and we stand by our story.’
- Sithole’s attorney advises that Sithole is in a mental ward at a hospital in Tembisa.
Gordin says: ‘Anyway, when this is all over, I hope Sithole is given the Order of Mapungubwe for getting a million latkes out of Dr Survé. It’s more than the Public Investment Corporation has achieved, and it’s their money. But then, as I said, cheques are easily stopped, or something – because one thing I’ll never believe is that Survé is as gullible as we are.’
When is a real deal not really a real deal? When it’s for SAA
Pravin Gordhan’s road-to-Damascus-like conversion to capitalism is not as promising as it may seem. The deal with the Takatso consortium is, shall we say, mired in uncertainty.
The consortium isn’t actually buying SAA – the R3bn to be paid by Takatso will be “put into” SAA over three years. All SAA’s existing liabilities remain the responsibility of the Treasury.
Government’s 49% stake is boosted by an additional 33% of “golden share privileges” over the issues of guaranteed race transformation (ho hum), South African domicile and retention of the name.
The government also remains the ultimate guarantor if SAA runs out of money and needs a cash injection or, heaven forbid, to guarantee a loan. Gordhan’s department is not really saying who was interested in SAA, who was shortlisted and how Takatso was chosen. His ministry only says ‘about’ 30 expressed some form of interest at some time or another and, in the end, it came to “about five”. As William Saunderson-Meyer (@TheJaundicedEye on Twitter) says ‘in spite of South Africans’ notorious lack of numeracy, even the most challenged government spokesperson should be able to say whether it was four (one hand at use) or six (two hands at use).’
Takatso still has to perform its due diligence and the last audited financial statements date back to 2017 – just saying.
Some experts in the aviation industry say that unless failing or failed airlines convert completely to carrying freight or half freight: half passengers, they haven’t a hope post-Covid.
Saunderson-Meyer points out that while SAA was grounded, Qatar, Emirates and Turkish ventured into SAA’s most profitable destinations as too did Kenyan, Ethiopian and Airlink regionally. ‘That leaves domestic travel, where the market is crowded and the customers jaded.’
Local competition creates highly competitive ticket pricing, as passengers are reluctant to pay a premium for business class travel.
An online TourismUpdate poll this week found that 64% of respondents would not fly on SAA, 16% would and 20% were undecided.
In a galaxy, far, far away
This piece is neither satirical nor cynical – is just wondrous!
The MeerKAT radio telescope in the Karoo has produced a striking image showing a combination of cosmic features never before seen. They reveal unexpected details of the inner workings of enormous radio galaxies.
On Thursday the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) said at the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy IC 4296 is a rotating black hole with a mass of a billion suns.
Energy released by matter falling onto the black hole generates two opposing radio jets containing magnetic fields and relativistic electrons.
After travelling through intergalactic space at the speed of light for 160 million years, these radio waves were detected by the MeerKAT.
The bright spines of the initially straight jets become unstable just outside the galaxy, where some of the electrons escape to create several faint radio “threads” below IC 4296.
Between the bright jets and the outer lobes are smooth “ribbons” filling channels excavated from the surrounding gas by defunct jets from an earlier period of activity.
The ribbons are eventually stopped by intergalactic gas, nearly a million light-years from the central galaxy (a distance equal to 10 times the diameter of the Milky Way, and form the “smoke rings” visible in the left radio lobe.
Jim Condon of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory says of this research done by a US-South African team that ‘only MeerKAT’s unique combination of sensitivity, angular resolution and dynamic range allowed the discovery of these threads, ribbons and rings’ in this previously well-studied galaxy.
The discovery is going to ‘overhaul our understanding of extragalactic radio sources’.
In January two giant radio galaxies were discovered by the telescope; they are among the largest single objects in the universe.
In 2020 astronomers from SA and the US used the telescope to solve a longstanding puzzle in ‘X’-shaped radio galaxies.
In 2020 an international team of astronomers uncovered unusual features in the radio galaxy ESO 137-006 using MeerKAT data.