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Call me a coconut but I confess to being a chief advocate of African customs

So the bleeding-heart liberals and brain-washed blacks - aka coconuts - are gatvolwith Tony Yengeni for stabbing a bull with a spear before it was slaughtered for his homecoming celebration.

So the bleeding-heart liberals and brain-washed blacks - aka coconuts - are gatvolwith Tony Yengeni for stabbing a bull with a spear before it was slaughtered for his homecoming celebration.

They claim it is cruel to inflict so much pain on an animal when there are other quicker, more humane ways to kill the beast.

The same crowd raised Caine recently over the traditional Zulu ritual in which men kill an ox by breaking its neck with their bare hands.

The soppy liberals have company - yours truly. Tradition is cool, but abject cruelty is an absolute no-no - and you can go ahead and call me a coconut.

Before my ancestors wring my neck, I hasten to say few things are as beautiful and cherish-worthy as African culture. Some of it is ridiculous: for example, someone has spread the lie - and we all believe it - that a man is a jacket.

We consequently believe that it is unAfrican and disrespectful not to wear a jacket to show respect. As far as I can tell, our forefathers, the founders of African culture, moved around naked from the waist up.

For the uninitiated, a key element of African culture is the spilling of the blood of an animal.

And lest my detractors say I have lost my soul, I confess to being a chief advocate of African customs. I have on several occasions been in delegations that discuss magadi - bride price - and have experienced a gazillion interesting anecdotes.

One was when we went to Stinkwater, north of Pretoria, to ask for a bride for a friend. We could not enter the yard before being welcomed to do so.

As a result we stood at the gate, screaming our greetings. Our hosts ignored us for more than an hour, and only took pity on us when an old lady in our delegation doddered out of the car to go relieve herself.

Someone must have seen her through the window, and they sent a relative to open the gate for us and welcome us in.

A particularly hilarious incident is related by my aunt. She says they were negotiating magadi in Hebron and the argument between the two parties over the price went on for hours.

An old, wrinkled Motswana lady sat quietly in the corner, and asked to speak. After ignoring her for a long while, they invited her to offer a solution.

Speaking calmly in a shaky voice, she counselled: "I hear you all. The one side says R5000, the other R3000. We are going to spend the night here. I say, let us stop this madness and hear what the owner of the ***** [the bride] says!"

Amen.

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