WELL-KNOWN mechanical engineer Chippy Shaik was quoted in a Sunday newspaper as saying, “I know f***-all about any bribe or any money.” I, for one, believe him. Growing up in Durban, I had several Indian friends who regularly said the same thing whenever anyone called them after 10 pm.

It’s an automatic defence mechanism, an instinctive reaction that goes back to a time when Britain ruled India with an iron fist wrapped around a bottle of pink gin and does not imply guilt in any way.

As far as I am concerned, the only crime Shaik committed was writing a doctoral dissertation on the development of higher-order laminated composite structures under static and thermal loading. How dare he? This country needs genetically-modified food, thinner women and bottle stores that stay open on Sundays. We can’t eat, drink or sleep with laminated composite structures, regardless of how they behave under pressure.

Shaik has had enough and is moving to Australia. I know at least seven men and women who have been trying to get on to this fantasy island for years, but their applications always get rejected. I keep telling them that they need to engineer a situation in which they find themselves facing some kind of criminal investigation spanning three continents.

There is no point trying to get into Australia on the grounds of being a cleanliving, God-fearing person who is prepared to work eight days a week. This is a former penal colony run by people descended from murderers and thieves, perverts and pickpockets.

If you understand static and thermal loading, the Australian authorities are frequently prepared to overlook your ties to the Cali cocaine cartel. Hell, you could even be married into Jackie Selebi’s family, for all they would care. To get into Australia, you have to be wanted.

Right now, we have more important things to worry about. Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi may or may not be bankrolling Jacob Zuma for president. Should we be concerned? Hardly. He’s a colonel, for God’s sake. He calls himself The Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution, but he can’t upgrade himself to general?

Zuma might have trouble balancing his cheque book, but at least he doesn’t live in a tent. I don’t trust people who live in tents. That’s why I don’t trust Gaddaffi. That’s also why I refuse to climb Everest. Until they put up prefabricated cabins with underfloor heating in the death zone, there is no way I’m going near that treacherous lump of rock.

Another thing to worry about is that there is a rent boy by the name of Skye who has started naming his clients on the Internet. I need to make it clear that I am worrying on behalf of others.

After spending the last 10 years satisfying 2 500 politicians, preachers, sportsmen, entertainers, journalists and other lowlifes, the naughty bugger has decided to break the golden rule. And where is he living now? Australia. Funny, that.

Skye calls it his own personal truth and reconciliation commission, although I struggle to see where the reconciliation part of it would come in. So far, he has named 12 of his clients. He plans to reveal the names of another 39 over the next few weeks. The biblical injunction that it is better to give than to receive is cold comfort in times like these.

Skye provides a sphincter-clenching blow-by-blow account of his skirmishes with a group of people who could have gone down in history as the Dirty Dozen.

I found it particularly disturbing that Skye spewed his catharsis in Afrikaans. It has been my experience that degeneracy on this scale is largely the preserve of those who speak in the tongue of the Queen. To discover that the great-greatgrandchildren of those unbendingly heterosexual pioneers whose creaking wagons cut their trails into the Earth have been up to such monkey business is almost too much to bear.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging anyone, here. But I am the product of a system based on the wisdom of Klein Calvin. My teachers told me stories of great bravery and sacrifice among the Afrikaner people. They told me of Wolraad Woltemade and Piet Retief, even though Wolraad’s horse was the real hero and Piet wasn’t all that bright. You want us to leave our weapons outside the kraal? Sure thing, comrade.

In those days, Boer porn did not exist. Men did it with their wives. In private. And always in the missionary position. Or so we were led to believe. Now, everything has changed. Skye’s revelations have shattered an entire generation’s worth of cherished myths. I want my money back.

The nail in the coffin of the camel whose back was broken by the final straw came when Beau Brummel announced his plan to turn Orania into a nudist colony. It’s the Dutch coming out, I tell you. There is nothing a Hollander likes more than to take his clothes off, smoke a joint and fondle an underage girl from Cameroon. Make that a Swede. Africans are verboten in Orania.

I would like to wish everyone a lucky strike on Friday. I am in a no-work nopay situation every day of my life, so I don’t particularly care if civil servants get their 12% increase or if they get gunned down by the riot police.

Instead of suggesting that the ghost of Goebbels is manipulating our economy, Cosatu’s chinless wonder should be pushing for a three-day working week. Nobody needs more money. More money just means more people trying to steal the stuff you bought with your more money.

Better to trade the money for time. With an extra eight weeks’ leave a month, everyone can go to Perth and toss a few prawns on the barbie with Shaik, Skye and J. M. Coetzee.

With acknowledgement to Ben Trovato and The Witness.