JUST when we thought the multibillion-rand bail-out that Greece received a few months ago would stabilise that country's economy and start improving people's lives, the situation is developing into a helluva Greek tragedy.

The political system has become a total mess, with feuding politicians unable to form a government, even after an election. Another election is on the cards, but there is no guarantee that a lasting political solution will be found.

Political leaders in the euro-zone - notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy - have been spending the past few months trying to make Greek leaders understand the implications of thebail-out and the austerity measures that go with it.

Despite all these attempts, the country continues to sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire. It would seem that the more the situation is explained to the Greeks, the more it sounds like Greek to them.

The last white lie

GOING back to the system that the likes of Coloured Passmore enjoyed so much toying around with, it was unbelievable to hear Mzansi's Last White President suggesting - 18 years after apartheid was buried - that whites were right to decide what was good for blacks and where they should live.

"They were not disenfranchised, they voted [in their homelands]," the 76-year-old Last White President told CNN's Christiane Amanpour while trying to justify the dumping of black people in barren and underdeveloped reserves.

Here's what the De Klerk Foundation should do before spewing another white lie: research the number of people who voted in those so-called elections and report back.

Bright future for Mdluli

WITH the saga surrounding the shifted crime intelligence boss Lieutenant-General Richard Mdluli continuing to rage on unabated, it does not seem the tough-as-teak cop will "pass by" - as his name suggests - any time soon.

But the shenanigans around him remind Guluva of one Samuel Mdluli, who lived in Alexandra many moons ago. With a name like that, Mdluli was - as with many blacks - destined to a life of perpetual servitude and grinding poverty in a squalor shunned even by pigs.

The apartheid system's influx control and race classification legislation, as well as the Group Areas Act and other discriminatory laws, made sure of that.

But our streetwise Samuel Mdluli did not sit back and allow all these obstacles to stand in the way of his dreams.

Although all odds were heavily stacked against him, Samuel Mdluli soon became one of the most successful businessmen in Johannesburg, rubbing shoulders with soccer personalities such as Guluva's namesake, eating out at the best restaurants in town and dating the most beautiful cherries of that era.

He even owned an amateur soccer club, which once boasted talented players such as John "Shoes" Moshoeu, Geelbooi Masango and Fani Madida.

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