As South Africans we are far too quick to credit people from overseas with brilliance in a particular field while condemning any local who dares to stand on the brink of greatness.
How often, for example, do you hear academics and the media going on and on about wonderful speakers like Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Cicero or Demosthenes without so much as a word or a nod in the direction of giants like Frans Ludeke or Chris Maroleng?
Of course André Visagie would also have been a nominee but unfortunately someone kept interrupting him.
Shame.
Yet among us there are those who stand head and shoulders above the rest. Men and women whose command of the English language are without equal and whose delivery cannot be faulted.
These are the Afrikaans magistrates who give their judgments in English.
Yet even these men and women are dwarfed by a speaker who can only be described as the next great South African orator — Vernon Philander.
As a bowler Vernon must be the hottest prospect in world cricket right now and it’s hard to find a commentator who does not heap enormous praise on this exciting young man. Google Philander and you’ll get some idea of just how talented he is and how highly he is rated by the cricket fraternity.
While that is all very well, I can’t help but feel that he is being cheated by the media who have failed to pick up on the fact that in Vernon South Africa has a great orator.
During the series against New Zealand the chief Kiwi commentator, Simon Doull, has repeatedly interviewed the Proteas’ destroyer-in-chief and just from his answers you can see the incredible depth of his knowledge and the clinical method with which he delivers it.
Doull: Hi Vernon, another great performance.
Philander: ThankyouSimonImustsayitfeltgoodtobeoutthereandbowlingwithinmyselfbecauseIknowIcan
strikeearlyfortheteamiftheconditionsarerightbutIamparticularlysatisfiedwithmyperformancetoday.
(NB please note that we are sure Simon and New Zealand viewers understood what Vernon said and the fact that no question is ever in response to one of his answers is purely coincidental)
Doull: AB de Villiers played exceptionally well.
Philander: YesABisanintegralpartofourteamandweknowthatheisalwaysgoingtocomethroughforusevenwhen
thepressureisonourbatterstoperform.
Doull: Are you enjoying your trip to New Zealand.
Philander: Ithasbeenwonderfulnotonlyfromacricketngperspectivebutalsoingeneralwithpeoplealwayshappy
toseeusandspeaktoussoithasbeensomethingquitespecial.
Afterwards you can picture the average Kiwi family:
Dad: Did you understand a word he said?
Ma: Not really.
Son: Don’t be stupid he must be speaking one of his home languages like our Maoris.
And the average white South African family:
Dad: What?
Son: What, what?
Dad: What did Vernon say?
Son: Must have been Xhosa or Zulu … couldn’t make out a f******* word of it.
Laugh if you must but in ten years’ time Vernon will be able to head Cricket South Africa, help himself to any bonus he wants and never get charged because no-one in the media, the National Prosecuting Authority or heading any commission will be able to dispute a word of what he says.
Truly a great orator for our time.
Oh, that is so sad Traps. Do hope you’ll reconsider. Didn’t think your comments were remotely racist, you are just a very brave man to comment (without due reverence, obviously) on the ‘religion’ which is Cricket and its heroes in South Africa!
Have really enjoyed and laughed at all your articles, and hope this won’t actually be the end of them.
Michael
You once wrote that you were a “bittereinder” and would be the last in the country to “turn out the lights”.
So have you given up, and are you now “turning out the lights”?
Michael
Politicians keep power by giving people an external “enemy” to blame.
The Nazis blamed the Jews for the poverty of Germany after World War 1, not the Kaiser and the war.
The ANC increase the blame on “the whites” which now also includes “the browns” for their poverty – not their own corruption, nor tribal mis-rule in the Homelands.
The “whites” are even supposed to have exterminated the Khoi – which is a joke. Who do they pretend the Cape Coloureds are? In fact DNA testing has already proved they are Khoi descendents in the rural areas of the Cape, Malay descendents in Cape Town, and a mixture on the Cape Flats.
The Muslim Cape Coloured is mostly descended from Malay slaves. The Christian Cape Coloured is mostly descended from the Khoi.
Their alcohol problem is nothing to do with the “dop” system, but caused by the same social problems causing the acute alcoholism among the Australian aborigines.
It was a disaster that the ANC appointed American marketing advisors in the early 1990s who obviously had no knowledge of who the Cape Coloured were, and advised the ANC that they were loyal to the whites and should be fought against (ref: Trevor Manuel)
In fact, having now learned a lot about Black American mythology, I suspect they thought the Cape Coloureds were “Uncle Toms” or “House Niggers”
@ Traps
I have always maintained what a pity it is that there are no fonts in writing to denote tone of voice. When one reads or acts in a play, it tells you in brackets what tone of voice to use. (pleading, shouting, demanding, jokingly, softly, sarcastically, stubbornly etc.)
It is sometimes extremely difficult to anticipate the reader’s interpretation – especially when it comes to writing humour – and if it is (as the ANC are wont to have it) ‘taken out of context’.
Years ago, I gave my sister a birthday card which I thought was hilariously funny.
I was convulsed in the shop when I read it.
It said: “You don’t look a day over thirty – but you’re still ugly.’
She opened it during her birthday party. Where I was already ready to burst out laughing again, her face turned absolutely white. She angrily showed the card around and demanded of everyone: “What do you think of This?!”
Of course, no one thought it was funny.
We still disagree about that card. I keep telling her that it was obviously meant to be funny; that I would never have ever given her a card like that if I really thought she was ugly … etc.
She’s still not buying it.
That’s the way it goes, sometimes, Traps.
I enjoy your columns immensely. YOU’RE TOO GOOD TO GIVE UP. PLEASE DON’T!
What we should do is invent a font to indicate the tone in which the written word is meant to be read.
We’d make a fortune and it would clear up a lot of misunderstanding.
@Charlotte. Oh yes, I do wish that too…. My brother has a genious for sending me ‘rude’ birthday cards. Don’t know where he finds them. But then we have the same sense of humour. His latest effort was a ‘rude’ mug exhorting me to concentrate and not dribble (I am older than him). I use it every day while concentrating on….. something or other.
Also wish that someone would invent a sign for drivers of cars which says ‘whoops’ or ‘sorry’ which flashes across the back windscreen.
Go well, Traps…… really hope to read more of your ‘stuff’ sometime in the future. You are a really humourous writer and your blogs have been so much appreciated by a huge number of people.