The official New Zealand Department of Population and Sustainable Development website has a page dedicated to sheep. Or more specifically, a page dedicated to correcting the misperception that the sheep-to-human ratio in New Zealand is 20:1. I’m not making this up.

http://www.population.govt.nz/myth-busters/sheepmyth.htm

I find this fascinating. Clearly, the clear-thinking government of New Zealand identified this as a significant enough problem to warrant this action. Oh, how I wish I could get my hands on the minutes of that Cabinet meeting:

Helen Clarke: Clayton, you need to do something about this. That pompous little prick Blair is starting to piss me off. When we met in Geneva last week, he kept on making bleating sounds at me and placing his index fingers on his head.

But what I find even more intriguing is the angle that the author of the sheep page has decided to take. In the event that you are too lazy to click on the link or you are a hopeless technophobe (cough * Fred Khumalo * cough) allow me to cut and paste:

“But do we know how many sheep live here? Is there still a ratio of 20 sheep to every person living here? And if not, what is the sheep-person ratio?

According to the latest … statistics … there were 40,1-million estimated resident sheep … which means that the sheep-person ratio has halved … [to] 10 sheep per person … to put this in an international context, New Zealand’s ratio is still twice as high as Australia’s …”

I accepted that I’m a weirdo with a morbid sense of humour a long time ago. But this cracks me up.

Let’s recap. This is an extract from an official New Zealand government website. The closest we have to anything like this is a mystery serial blogger on the ANC Today website who writes about fleshy thighs and miniskirts every Friday. Let’s all agree that setting the record straight that the inhabitants of New Zealand only have “10 sheep per person” as opposed to 20 is worrying about all the wrong things. And I won’t even start on the bit where they compare themselves with Australia on the sheep stakes. That’s what I like to call painting the car to make it run faster.

Whether Australia has a better human:sheep ratio than you is neither here nor there. I think that the biggest problem you have is that you have national statisticians counting sheep … and then making a link to the number of people! Why is it necessary to keep referring to the ratio of the sheep to humans? What is the underlying issue here? Now, this is an adult website. I will not stand for juvenile jokes about human-sheep hybrids in New Zealand. That’s uncalled for.

And let’s assume there was rife human-sheep coupling there. So what? As recently as the 1990s, black-white intercourse still occurred largely in the dark in this country. Fast forward a decade and it’s a socially acceptable practice. My view on people-animal relations is that it will also be socially acceptable in a few years. I believe that history will judge animal diddlers kindly and identify them as pioneers. For my full views on the matter read this:

http://silwanekanjila.amagama.com/blog/2007/06/12/ giv-positive-goat-with-moral-quandary/

A friend of mine, Tim Richman, wrote a much better researched piece entitled ‘Why I’ll never live In New Zealand again”, which forms a chapter in an excellent book entitled Why I’ll Never Live in Oz Again:

http://www.atvelocity.co.za/catalog/ go_product.php?ISBN=9781920137151&cid=struik

Tim Richman has his reasons why he’ll never live there … again. I have my own reasons why I’ll never live there, ever. I do not have faith in a government that wastes taxpayers’ money counting sheep. Especially if they perpetuate rumours of bestiality by linking their citizens to said sheep on official government websites.

I’ll continue living in South Africa, thank you very much. Our sensitive government would never humiliate us in this manner. Our Afrikaner countrymen have been fondly calling their women “Bokkie” for centuries. No one has ever questioned why they liken their women to goats — or how they made this connection in the first place.

And nobody ever posted this indiscretion on an official government website.

Ndumiso Ngcobo is the author of the recently released book Some of My Best Friends Are White. (Two Dogs, ISBN 978-1-92013-718-2)

http://www.atvelocity.co.za/catalog/ go_product.php?ISBN=9781920137182&cid=struik

[email protected]

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  • Once upon a time, Ndumiso Ngcobo used to be an intelligent, relevant man with a respectable (read: boring-as-crap) job which funded his extensive beer habit. One day he woke up and discovered that he had lost his mind, quit his well-paying job, penned a collection of hallucinations. A bunch of racist white guys published the collection just to make him look more ridiculous and called it 'Some of my best friends are white'. (Two Dogs, ISBN 978-1-92013-718-2). Nowadays he spends his days wandering the earth like Kwai Chang Caine, munching locusts, mumbling to himself like John the Baptist and searching for the meaning of life at the bottom of beer mugs. The racist publishers have reared their ugly heads again and dangled money in his face to pen yet another collection of hallucinations entitled 'Is It Coz 'm Black'. He will take cash, major credit cards and will perform a strip tease for contributions to his beer fund.

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Ndumiso Ngcobo

Once upon a time, Ndumiso Ngcobo used to be an intelligent, relevant man with a respectable (read: boring-as-crap) job which funded his extensive beer habit. One day he woke up and discovered that he...

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