Durbanites love their bunnys — even more than Cape Tonians love their Gatsbys — and now a Durbs branding agency and Deputy Mayor Logie Naidoo have launched a website where you can rate and slate the bunnys you chow on the city’s streets. What a fun idea — it’s part of the city’s marketing efforts for 2010 and I’m sure it’ll catch on. Read the IOL story here and you can go to www.quarterbunny.co.za  here.

Personally, I never really caught the bunny fever while I lived in Durbs. I’m not keen on the way the bread gets soggy but I know plenty of Durbanites who have their favourite bunny and roti haunts (the Sunrise Chip ‘n Ranch rates highly with the locals).

I’m married to an old Durban skate, who upon hearing about the website, went into fits of reverie for his bunny days.

"The best bunny is when you’re 18 years old, sitting on a poof in front of your mom’s TV after staggering home from an all-night clubbing session," he opined fondly.

I’ve heard plenty surfers say that skoffing a bunny and  Sterie-Stumpie after an epic surf is the cat’s pyjamas and this makes perfect sense to me a la Heston Blumenthal, the obsessive compulsive chef believes where you eat something utterly affects the taste and appreciation of the food.

I once tucked into a bean bunny and a chocolate milkshake at Blythedale beach, north of Durban, that was sublime but I think the salt air, crashing waves and yellow sand between my toes really made that bunny. Just like eating those pineapple chunks dipped in chilli powder and cayenne pepper you get on the Durban beachfront tastes so much better if you’re noodling along Vetch’s Pier.    

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As a Joburger for four years, I revelled in being in the heart of the beast. Being in the commercial capital of the country, where all the really important decisions are made, is thrilling for a journalist. And,  for a twenty-something bar fly, the social whirl was just as fun. I loved that it was so cosmopolitan and that the races mixed so easily and gregariously in the work place and at party time. 

But then you grow up, become a one-house crime wave and get bored with hanging out at mega malls.

I’ve been watching The Times and Mail & Guardian online  and their disinterest in the rabid storm that is battering the whole country’s coast with curiosity today. Doubtless both web teams know about it as it’s all over Sapa and News24 and IOL are going to town on the rescue and storm damage stories. Both newspapers also have Cape Town and Durban staff so it’s not a manpower issue.

I’m hazarding a guess that the Joburg newsrooms feel it’s not very important as it’s not affecting Joburg. If it doesn’t happen in the Big Stink, then it’s not particularly exciting — and there be the rub.

I’ve lived in three cities since I left Joburg — Cape Town, Durban and East London — and have come to view Johannesburgers are rather blinkered and insular. "This is the real South Africa," I’ve heard Joburgers say (and in fact said it myself when I lived there).  Because of its wealth and pace, its crime and grime and the fact that it’s so intergrated, they believe the rest of the country is somehow "unreal", left behind.

Now that is the cry of la-la land, if ever I heard it. The rest of South Africa — where people struggle financially, where the races are still largely weary of each other and where lifestyle isn’t a swear word — is the real South Africa. It’s how most of us — about 40 million of us — live. And at the moment, there’s a terrific storm terrorising its citizens. That is in fact a story — even if it’s at the coast.    

I know that the Sunday Times has heard a rumour that there are people out there as they keep recycling stories from other papers for their splashes. Politics.web ran a story about the recycled public-service corruption report  that the Sunday Times ran with a couple of weeks back and I’ve noticed  two Daily Dispatch stories re-done by the Crimes in the past few months (one about the ANC food parcels given out in townships and rural villages before the elections and another about Transkei teenage girls being forced into marriage).

Come on, guys, you can do better than that. Once upon a time (and I know because I worked there), a story that had appeared in another paper didn’t get a sniff at a splash contender on the diary. 

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1. The lawyer for the three doctors who treated Jacob Zuma’s former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, says they did not sign documents recommending medical parole for Shaik. Read the story at The Times here.

2. Top Durban businessmen have been linked to a child prostitution ring, reports The Witness. There’s no names yet but they have been charged so all will be revealed when they enter their pleas in court. Read the story on News24 here.

3. President Kgalema Motlanthe has (through his spokesman) made the silliest statement of his short presidency: that the government did not want the Dalai Lama to divert attention away from the peace conference he was meant to attend in SA. The less said about this the better. This is topped only in gross hypocrasy by the Chinese government itself. Read this recently posted piece on a Chinese government website about the Dalai Lama (that he’s been striving to send Tibetans back into serfdom). Click here.

4. The SA government has launched a kids website today, says it’s news agency BuaNews. There’s no link to the website from Bua but the Minister in the Presidency, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said:

As a caring nation, we have an obligation to teach our children about their country and national identity. We can only do that by ensuring that children understand the national symbols.

“We also deemed it important that our children should be afforded an opportunity to understand the responsibilities of the Presidency.

Ahem, ANC president Jacob Zuma needs to do a little surfing of the site, methinks. Read the BuaNews story here.

5. South African businessman Maxim Krok is courting the media to sell his Sandhurst residence in Joburg for R25-million, says MoneyWeb, after spending a record price (R180-million) for an Australian mansion. Read the story here.

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Here’s a bit of fun on East Coast Radio’s website that could well become the new SA internet phenomenon a la Vernon Koekemoer. DJ Dave Ilbury is running a Schabir Shaik spotting campaign on his blog. Check it out here.

The pics are spoof for now but I wonder if anyone’s keeping an eye out at Spiga D’Oro restaurant in Durbs, which was so frequented by Shaik before he was sent off to chookie that they even named a pasta dish after him.

Read the full story

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1. The Times reports that government sources say that Intelligence Minister Siyabonga Cwele was to meet President Kgalema Motlanthe last night to ‘‘provide him with an explanation” of what’s potting following the Sunday Times story saying that the minister’s wife is being investigated for trafficking cocaine between South America and South Africa. Read the full story here.

2. Schabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma’s former financial adviser who was jailed in 2005 for fraud and corruption, made an offer of R10-million for a swanky plek in Morningside in Durban one week before he was paroled. It also happens to be a stone’s throw away from the official Durban resident of the state president. Looks like Shaik was pretty sure (10 million bucks worth!) that he had a “get out of jail free” card. You have to subscribe to the M&G to see the story online. Click here to do that and you get one week free.

3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch Zuma says South Africans are being big meanies about Shaik’s health, waiting for him to die now that we’ve been told by Correctional Services that he’s in the final stages of terminal illness.

“You can’t say so many officials, all the way up to the minister, were all corrupt and dishonest and wanted to smuggle a prisoner out, it can’t be,” Zuma said.

Famous last words? Read the story on News24 here.

4. There has been a 56% rise in the number of missing police dockets over the past year, it emerged in Parliament. In 2005/6, 382 were lost or stolen; 427 in 2007/8 and in 2008/9 668 dockets went up in a puff of smoke. Ever wondered how easy it is get to a police docket vanished but you’re persecuted by traffic and library fines? You’re not working the system properly, people.

5. And maybe , just maybe, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for hacks (and readers) as there is a change of guard at the Evil Empire. Tony O’Reilly is handing over the reins of the Independent newspaper group to his son. They’re denying this will means a sell-off papers but we can only hope. In South Africa the Irishman owns both Cape Town daily broadsheets, both Durban daily broadhseets, The Star in Joburg and the Pretoria News. Most South African hacks have watched in dismay as these papers have fallen in quality in the past 15 years as cost cutting rules the day. Read Business Report’s story here.

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Check out these cool pics at  Seth Rotherham’s 2Oceans Vibe blog of a great white shark cruising the water off Simon’s Town. (Click here.) There’s some monster lurkies out there — and quite close to shore.

Remember the story about the veteran swimmer who just vanished after going for her daily swim in Fish Hoek a couple of years back? All that was found of her was her swimming cap.  And the guy who had the bottom of his leg taken off while fishing the shallows of  the Durban harbour.  Gives me the grills, ek se.

Last month there was an international wire story floating around saying that shark attacks fall worldwide during a recession because fewer people take seaside holidays.   Read it here.

Personally, I reckon the lurkies are quite happy to have less humans fooling around in their space. For a shark, going after a human on a surfboard must be a hugely labour intensive business compared with a baby seal or a penguin. Kind of  like us wrestling the meat out of a crab.

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1. We have to make 302 runs today on the last day of the Ozzie Test in Durban. Yikes! It can be done as we’re 244 for four. Come on, guys, give us some heroics!

2. There’s a big storm brewing over the Sunday Times story about Schabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma’s former financial adviser, who got medical parole last week because he’s supposed to be in the final stages of terminal illness. Now the doctor who told the Sunday Times that he had discharged Shaik from hospital four months ago because he was well enough to leave is saying he was misquoted while the health department has complied a report for Health Minister Barbara Hogan on how he was allowed to stay in a private ward in a state hospital for four months at taxpayers’ expense.

3. The percentage of mortgage applications turned down by banks leapt to 61% in February, compared with 41% in the same period last year, reports News24. This means, says property economist Erwin Rode, that you need to get saving for a deposit if you want to buy a house. Best you buy a caravan and park it your parent’s yard if you’re a first-time home buyer and give up those dreams of a holiday home if you have bought a house. Read the full story here.

4. And more gloom on the property front. Business Day reports that house prices are expected to fall more this year before recovering early next year. The price index from one of the big South African mortgage origination firms shows that prices fell a further 0.7% last month compared with a year ago. The average house price was R827553. Read the full story here.

5. Two-thirds of the 62 firefighters at Cape Town International Airport are “poorly trained” and have little or no general firefighting experience, says IOL which has laid its hands on internal airport documents. So no sneaking off for smokes in the toilet at Cape Town airport, people! And stay clear of the area when the puff-happy Germans hit town for the soccer World Cup next year. Read the full story here.

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Every hack worth his salt knows that animal stories fly … well, like, a dart to a bull’s eye. They cut across all boundaries: age, sex, race, language. Everybody reads a fun animal story. I once did a story about a clutch of pampered cats specially flown all the way from France to South Africa to float in a boat in a sea of fake milk for a British advert being filmed in Cape Town. Apparently, they travelled the world. “Enchante,” I said as I interviewed the fluff balls. They were not co-operative with the photographer.

Henry excelled at the evolution module.

The Sowetan has an absolute classic, about a monkey called 2Pool, who is to be given a big send-off in Umlazi in Durban after dying recently. He belongs to a traditional healer, who sprung close to R2000 for the funeral. Now these quotes from the healer Nhlanhla Cele about 2Pool rank as my favourite of the week:

“I found 2Pool while he was still very young. He went through training like all healers until he made the grade.

“He then started helping me to fetch the muti and heal people, especially women who wanted to get married ,” he said.

Funeral for monkey

Have to say, though, that the Sowetan subs desk get the Snoozarama Award for Most Boring Headline of the Week. Jeez, guys: “Funeral for monkey”? What’s that between your heads? A brain or a word processor?

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