PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma and his advisers take his security seriously, hence the fortified swimming pool at his Nkandla residence with its hidden cameras, tracking devices, gun emplacements and even interrogation rooms.
Most presidents are important enough, and have enough enemies, for someone somewhere to consider them worthy of assassination.
The Nkandla amphitheatre, for example, is no ordinary amphitheatre. It has animal costumes — snakes, rats, cheetahs, skunks, chameleons, foxes, cuckoos and more — dotted around its walls that serve as decoys for anyone who might be nuts enough to consider taking a potshot at the third person in the second row of seats. Try aiming straight with a giant chameleon’s eyes fixed on you. Then you get the chicken run, which, according to reliable spies, is more than just a lot of birds clucking around. These are actually security cluckers and you would be well advised not to muck around with them.
Not all of these costs, considered to be top-secret expenses on national key points such as an amphitheatre, can be publicly disclosed for fear of compromising national security.
At R246m and rising, SA might have actually picked up a bargain at Nkandla.
Not so dead sure
POLICE in Los Angeles in the US last week shot a "dead unarmed man". Americans who hate the cops will think it possible, indeed even likely, that the police shot to death a man who was already dead, but the BBC’s blurb for a video of that incident probably didn’t mean it like that.
"Videos show police shooting dead unarmed man in Los Angeles", it said.
At first read, it is clear they were shooting at an unarmed man, but it seems he was either dead when they shot at him or he died as a result of the shooting.
As an unarmed man can be either dead or not dead, the reader is left wondering at the extent of the depravity of the Los Angeles police given that many are of the Hollywood brand.
After much thought, the Insider has concluded that the man was alive in the seconds he was being shot at, and dead at the end of those seconds. The way words hang together can sometimes be confusing.
Wise words
"THE police must obey the law while enforcing the law."
Earl Warren, US jurist and politician (1891-1974)
• E-mail [email protected]
Members of the National Assembly ad-hoc committee on Nkandla and the media inspect part of President Jacob Zuma's residence in Nkandla. Picture: GCIS
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma and his advisers take his security seriously, hence the fortified swimming pool at his Nkandla residence with its hidden cameras, tracking devices, gun emplacements and even interrogation rooms.
Most presidents are important enough, and have enough enemies, for someone somewhere to consider them worthy of assassination.
The Nkandla amphitheatre, for example, is no ordinary amphitheatre. It has animal costumes — snakes, rats, cheetahs, skunks, chameleons, foxes, cuckoos and more — dotted around its walls that serve as decoys for anyone who might be nuts enough to consider taking a potshot at the third person in the second row of seats. Try aiming straight with a giant chameleon’s eyes fixed on you. Then you get the chicken run, which, according to reliable spies, is more than just a lot of birds clucking around. These are actually security cluckers and you would be well advised not to muck around with them.
Not all of these costs, considered to be top-secret expenses on national key points such as an amphitheatre, can be publicly disclosed for fear of compromising national security.
At R246m and rising, SA might have actually picked up a bargain at Nkandla.
Not so dead sure
POLICE in Los Angeles in the US last week shot a "dead unarmed man". Americans who hate the cops will think it possible, indeed even likely, that the police shot to death a man who was already dead, but the BBC’s blurb for a video of that incident probably didn’t mean it like that.
"Videos show police shooting dead unarmed man in Los Angeles", it said.
At first read, it is clear they were shooting at an unarmed man, but it seems he was either dead when they shot at him or he died as a result of the shooting.
As an unarmed man can be either dead or not dead, the reader is left wondering at the extent of the depravity of the Los Angeles police given that many are of the Hollywood brand.
After much thought, the Insider has concluded that the man was alive in the seconds he was being shot at, and dead at the end of those seconds. The way words hang together can sometimes be confusing.
Wise words
"THE police must obey the law while enforcing the law."
Earl Warren, US jurist and politician (1891-1974)
• E-mail [email protected]
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