Sitting at my desk on a Monday morning, I find I am at a loss. What can I write about, what helpful comments can I possibly offer to our engaging young democracy? Could I remark cynically on pedestrian issues like the news that billions of Brett Kebble’s ill-gotten gains are said to have been strewn around the upper echelons of the ANC? The trouble is that grievances about the chicanery, duplicity and general ineptitude of our political masters invariably fall on deaf ears -- unless there’s a whiff of perceived racism about them, in which case there’s blue murder.

What about the news that a full bench of the high court last week found that, when she was minister of health, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma deliberately sacrificed babies in order to save Aids drug money? No doubt she believed the money could better be spent on Sarafina II. Nkosazana got a promotion, South Africa got Manto.

And then there was the stunningly well-executed heist of some R100-million at Johannesburg International airport. Full marks to the gangsters who seized the loot from right in the middle of the Airport Company of South Africa’s “high security” zone. Not a soul injured. Doubtless Acsa will say it was an “inside job”. Too true, except the “insiders” are actually the schlemiels who run Acsa.

Or perhaps I might reflect disparagingly on the news that the city of Cape Town is about to start paying some hideous expenses associated with the 2010 World Soccer Cup. It turns out that the previous Cape Town municipality, with none but a furtive glance at the fine print, committed the city to expenses amounting to billions -- these trivial costs to be borne by the city’s ratepayers. Hardly a sou of the income from the events will come to the city. Fifa takes the lot. These global leeches also demand that for 10 days preceding and during the tournament, the city must come to a virtual halt in order to conform to Fifa’s boodle-gathering agendas. Among other stipulations: no construction work may be undertaken; free office space, food and beverages must be supplied to Fifa officials; special traffic lanes must be assigned for sole Fifa use; a sizeable force of local officials must be press-ganged to ensure that no “unauthorised advertising” takes place; free “without limitation” telephone lines and Internet connectivity must be supplied. Cape Town has to fork out some R24-million by July, just for the “planning” stage. Biggest laugh of all is Fifa’s insistence on “sufficient back-up power grids to deal with any power failure”.

Why no observations on the spending of R500 000 on flying the speaker of Parliament to Liberia in a private bizjet -- lest she squander too much of her precious time? Not much to satirise there. And anyway, Baleka Mbete didn’t squander much more then five minutes of her precious time acquiring a driving licence.

What pronouncement could anyone offer in reaction to Jacob Zuma’s claim that his current sufferings are comparable to those visited on Christ? Not surprising, now that Jon Qwelane has attributed messianic qualities to our ambitious saviour.

Then there’s the matter of revelations that, in the name of “security”, our government has secretly been listening in telephone conversations, intercepting e-mails, covertly fingering the opposition’s arseholes and generally behaving just like the Nats -- of whom they increasingly are becoming a rather pathetic replica. No bitter comment about any of that.

Even without counting rapes and murders, last week was a fairly average one for a South Africa, des nos jours. So, instead of all these insignificant quotidian peccadilloes, I have had to devote this column to praise of the visiting Australian cricket team. Not for their undoubted prowess with bat and ball, but for their quite extraordinarily revolting oral habits.

Never mind the effeminate ear-rings, highlighted hair and cute little beards, when it comes to hawking, spitting, gobbing, teeth-sucking, exposing facial orifices by chewing great wads of gum with their mouths wide open, the Aussie cricket team are masters of this yobbo’s art-form. A psychiatrist friend tells me that what he calls “quasi-paranoiac” gum-chewing among adult males is a consequence of lamentable potty training at the solids stage. Either that or the expression of a subliminal craving to return to the suckling phases of life.

Whatever the reasons, there are none to touch the Australian mandibular virtuoso, Captain Ricky Ponting. Ricky’s taken public gum-chewing to profane levels. Sources say he’s been masticating the same golf-ball-sized wad of Wrigleys for the last three series. He takes the wad everywhere with him, has a pet name for it. When he travels, he checks his wad in as mouth-luggage so as avoid paying overweight. On the flights he pays Matthew Hayden to keep the wad company and chew it for him while he’s asleep. Ricky certainly likes to show his wad off to everyone. Whenever he senses cameras are on him, he proudly pushes the wad out between his incisors for public exhibition, glistening threads of saliva sliding off it.

In his promising impersonations of a cricket captain, our own Graeme Smith is doing a passable effort at being as orally sordid.

With acknowledgment to Robert Kirby and Mail and Guardian.