THE Premier Soccer League 2011-2012 season has hardly kicked off and already the newly appointed Orlando Pirates head coach Julio Leal is running scared.

We all know that the boss of the Orlando East outfit, Irvin Khoza, does not hesitate to wield the axe at the slightest provocation or the minute he believes a coach is acting outside the mandate given to him.

When Ruud Krol, the most successful Pirates coach in recent years, was shown the door at the end of last season, Khoza made it be known that although he was happy with the success the club had achieved, he was thoroughly unimpressed with the way they did it.

Under Krol the team lacked the South African flair and played a boring style of football influenced by, as the embattled Woodwork Boy aka Juju would say, "foreign tendencies".

That probably explains why Leal's starting line-up for the Pirates' opening league match, against Black Leopards at Peter Mokaba Stadium on Friday night, was made up entirely of South African-born players.

No foreign players, no foreign tendencies, no confusion and no confrontation with Khoza, Leal must have thought to himself as he left out the indefatigable Isaac Chansa and other foreign players, who had rescued Pirates from certain defeats on many occasions, from the line-up.

But it could be that Khoza's message was lost in translation for the Portuguese-speaking Brazilian coach, whose knowledge of English language is at best rudimentary.

Only time will tell if Julio is the Leal deal for Pirates.

Red menace

AN Australian politician has made a bizarre claim, saying that traffic lights are part of a communist plot aimed at limiting people's freedom and that they should be replaced by roundabouts, known in Mzansi as traffic circles.

Speaking in the Sydney legislature, Peter Phelps said: "Traffic lights are a Bolshevist menace. Traffic lights are things which are set up to try to control traffic, to try to control individuals on the roads."

Although Phelps seemed to be going around in circles or articulating his point in a roundabout way, he got Guluva thinking.

Mzansi does not have that problem because traffic lights hardly work; so there's no Red at every street corner. All the Reds - Blade Nzimande, Jeremy Cronin, Pumulo Masualle, Rob Davies, Joyce Mashamba, David Masondo, Willies Mchunu and others - are in government.

Whether they do any work there is another matter.

Dewani loves Mzansi

MURDER suspect Shrien Dewani seems to be abandoning his bid to avoid extradition to Mzansi to stand trial for the murder of his wife Anni, who was killed in a suspected staged hijacking during their honeymoon in Cape Town last year.

Instead of channelling all his resources to mount a strong appeal against Judge Howard Riddle's ruling that he be extradited, Dewani has changed tack and is reportedly putting together a team of top-notch Mzansi lawyers to defend him in the case.

Guluva was surprised at the sudden change of heart. But he should not have been. Given the wanton violence that engulfed London and other British cities last week, Dewani apparently reckons he would be much safer in South Africa than in his violent country.

E-mail Guluva on thatha.guluva@gmail.com