1. The Cape Times ( Cape Town )
"I have promised to keep his identity confidential,' said Jackie Maxim,
a spokeswoman for the Sandton Sun Hotel, Johannesburg , "but I can
confirm that he is no longer in our employment. We asked him to clean
the lifts and he spent four days on the job.
When I asked him why, he replied: 'Well, there are forty of them, two
on each floor and sometimes some of them aren't there'. Eventually, we
realized that he thought each floor had a different lift, and he'd
cleaned the same two twelve times. "We had to let him go. It seemed
best all round. I understand he is now working for Eskom (Power
company)."
2. The Star ( Johannesburg )
"The situation is absolutely under control," Transport Minister
Ephraem Magagula told the Swaziland Parliament in Mbabane . "Our
nation's merchant navy is perfectly safe. We just don't know where it
is, that's all." Replying to an MP's question, Minister Magagula
admitted that the landlocked country had completely lost track of its
only ship, the Swazimar: "We believe it is in a sea somewhere. At one
time, we sent a team of men to look for it, but there was a problem
with drink and they failed to find it, and so, technically, yes, we've
lost it a bit. But I categorically reject all suggestions of
incompetence on the part of this government. The Swazimar is a big
ship painted in the sort of nice bright colours you can see at night.
Mark my words, it will turn up. The right honourable gentleman
opposite is a very naughty man, and he will laugh on the other side of
his face when my ship comes in."
3. The Standard ( Kenya )
"What is all the fuss about?" Weseka Sambu asked a hastily convened
news conference at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport . "A technical
hitch like this could have happened anywhere in the world. You people
are not patriots You just want to cause trouble." Sambu, a spokesman
for Kenya Airways, was speaking after the cancellation of a through
flight from Kisumu, via Jomo Kenyatta, to Berlin . "The forty-two
passengers had boarded the plane ready for take-off, when
the pilot noticed one of the tyres was flat. Kenya Airways did not
possess a spare tyre, and unfortunately the airport nitrogen canister
was empty. A passenger suggested taking the tyre to a petrol station
for inflation, but unluckily the jack had gone missing so we couldn't
get the wheel off. Our engineers tried heroically to re-inflate the
tyre with a bicycle pump, but had no luck, and the pilot even blew into
the valve with his mouth, but he passed out. "When I announced that
the flight had to be abandoned, one of the passengers, Mr Mutu,
suddenly struck me about the face with a life-jacket whistle and said
we were a national disgrace. I told him he was being ridiculous, and
that there was to be another flight in a fortnight. And, in the
meantime, he would be able to enjoy the scenery around Kisumu, albeit
at his own expense."
4. From a Zimbabwean newspaper
While transporting mental patients from Harare to Bulawayo , the bus
Driver stopped at a roadside shebeen (beerhall) for a few beers. When
he got back to his vehicle, he found it empty, with the 20 patients
nowhere to be seen. Realizing the trouble he was in if the truth were
uncovered, he halted his bus at the next bus stop and offered lifts to
those in the queue. Letting 20 people board, he then shut the doors
and drove straight to the Bulawayo mental hospital, where he hastily
handed over his 'charges', warning the nurses that they were
particularly excitable. Staff removed the furious passengers; it was
three days later that suspicions were roused by the consistency of
stories from the 20. As for the real patients: nothing more has been
heard of them and they have apparently blended comfortably back into
Zimbabwean society.
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