YOU can say whatever you like about the Woodwork Boy, aka Juju, and his educational achievements, or lack thereof, but what you cannot take away from him is his excellent ability to retain the knowledge passed on to him by his elders.

Contrary to popular belief, he is a good learner, too. It appears that some of his political schoolteachers were despised bantustan leaders and urban bantu councillors, or their proxies.

This may seem rather odd given Juju's anti-apartheid militancy, but it is true.

That these "apartheid" teachers taught him well became abundantly clear at a press conference held at the "revolutionary house" in downtown Johannesburg earlier this week.

Responding to questions about his lavish lifestyle - he is alleged to be building a R16 million mansion in Sandton, drives a set of top-of-the-range Mercedes Benz wheels and wears a R250000 Breitling watch - Juju did not deny that he was a benefactor of capitalism even though he was a well-known and unapologetic proponent of nationalisation.

Said he: "One of the things I have learned in my short life in politics is the ability to live in the conditions of capitalism while fighting it and defeating it."

Rewind to pre-1994.

Every time they were asked why they were serving in discredited and evil apartheid-created homeland structures, the late Dr Cedric Phatudi (Lebowa), Professor Hudson Ntsan'wisi (Gazankulu), Dr Kaizer Matanzima (Transkei) and Dr Lennox Sebe (Ciskei) - all of whom were highly knowledgeable and intelligent - had this to say: "Because we want to fight and defeat the system from within."

You have taught your great grandson well, gentlemen; you can now rest in peace.

Ran with the wind

Talking about the ability to retain knowledge, Oliver Spedding wrote an interesting piece in The Star the other day about how he had, in his formative years, often grappled with the intricacies of the English language, which he admittedly found "intriguing, frustrating and bewildering to the learner".

Dealing with tenses was especially challenging for him, he says. For example, he tells a story of how he, while playing with other children near a public swimming pool, hurried back to his father and told him how he "runned here and runned there".

His visibly embarrassed dad promptly interrupted him, politely telling him that the past tense for "run" was not "runned", but "ran".

The wiser young Oliver then ran back to the pool side, only to return to where his father was sitting a short while later to proudly exclaim: "Dad! The tiles near the pool were so slippery that I nearly slap."

His dad was devastated, Guluva exaggerates.

But Spedding snr should have started at the beginning - by telling young Oliver to always remember that the past tense for speeding was sped, not Spedding.

Out of the woodwork

GOING back to Juju's press conference earlier this week, Guluva was taken aback - and he reckons he was not the only one - to see the firebrand prefect of Ain't Seen Nothing Yet's kindergarten appearing before a battery of TV and print media cameras wearing an Orlando Pirates track suit.

Apparently nobody knew, until now, that the Woodwork Boy was a soccer fan.

Let's just say he has just recently come out of the woodwork.

Email Guluva on guluva@gmail.com