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Pit latrines with a VIP status

ONE would have expected Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, which is still seething after losing the Western Cape to the Godzille-De Lille Connection in the 2009 general elections, to have made a big noise about the stinking and nauseating issue of the Makhaza informal settlement open-air toilets.

Here was an opportunity for Mzansi's ruling party to expose the Godzille-De Lille Connection for what it really was - an elitist bunch of politicians who did not understand the basic needs and interests of the poor.

It would have justifiably argued that, honestly speaking, Godzille and her crowd did not give a hoot or s.t about black people in general.

But, realistically, Ain't Seen Nothing Yet could not have called the Godzille-De Lille Connection to order because the Machine Gun Man's party is itself in a bigger cesspit than its rival.

After promising for years to do away with the stinking pit latrines - especially those at rural schools - the Ain't Seen Nothing Yet's government now says these unsightly toilets are there to stay because water-borne sanitation is not an appropriate technology for many of these areas.

This means that thousands of pupils at more than 2000 rural schools will have to make do with what they have, no matter how nauseating it might be.

But the country's ruling party still somehow believes its Ventilated Improved Pit Toilets, as they are called, are of a much better quality than those given to the poor people of Makhaza by the Godzille-De Lille Connection.

The party would like to make people on the ground believe that its pit latrines have a VIP status. That's why the Ain't Seen Nothing Yet's government calls them Ventilated Improved Pit Toilets.

As you can see, the shortened version of Ventilated Improved Pit Toilets is: "VIP Toilets".

Mogodu detested

Business has sadly plummeted to new lows for the elderly ladies from whom Guluva buys his weekly ration of mogodu (tripe) every Monday afternoon. And it is not the recession or unhygienic conditions, real or imagined, under which they work at their makeshift mini-market outside Tshiawelo railway station in Soweto that has made the business take such a colossal plunge.

Since the second week of December the poor gogos' regular customers whiz past their mini-market one after another after work. Walking with a spring in their steps and clutching a variety of fabulous goodies in their arms, they don't even look in the poor ladies' direction.

With their bank balances having seemingly vastly improved, these erstwhile members of the mogodu munching brigade have become overnight Patrice Motsepes and Khulubuse Zumas, who wine and dine in some of the best-known restaurant chains in urban shopping centres teeming with festive season shoppers.

They now have no time for mogodu. Brand loyalty has gone up in smoke.

But the poor gogos have seen it before. Even though they would have loved to be making a roaring business at this time of the year like everybody else, they are not at all deterred.

They know that, come the first working day of the new year, their regular but now untrustworthy customers will be back, making a beeline to their stalls, where they might even have to fight for space with the flies that usually ferociously attack these "insides" as soon as they are unpacked.

Business will be booming again.

Email Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com.

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