All aboard Shabangu’s Bang Bang Club

After the startling success of her president’s Native Club (the koeksisters at their Tuynhuys imbizos were reputed to have been a particular hit), a deputy minister has made a desperate escape from obscurity with the launch of the Bang Bang Club.

At the launch last night, Susan Shabangu’s corpulent beam — previously only seen framed on the walls of dysfunctional police stations countrywide — lit the room as she outlined a host of initiatives for members, including target practice in Pollsmoor Prison’s courtyard during the inmates’ exercise hour.

Workshops will be held on how to cut the brakes of speedsters who fail to pay outstanding fines, while How to Pepper-Spray Kleptomaniac Grannies is now available for download on the club’s website — right in time for pensioners’ day at your nearest Shoprite.

The website also offers cut-price matches and paraffin with the suggestion members give their local unlicensed shebeen a good dousing on Friday after work.

“There’s been some questions on what I define as a criminal,” Shabangu told the packed audience. “But let me just say now that no ruling-party member is a criminal. Criminality does not exist within this movement’s collective culture.”

At that point, the Bang Bang patron, Jacob Zuma, waddled on to the stage in a leopard skin to shake Shabangu’s hand.

“Is that a machine gun or are you just pleased to see me?” whispered Shabangu rather too close to an e.tv microphone.

The club’s first policy proposal, due for publication next month, advocates the re-education of “moffies, mkwere mkwere and other miscreants” at an “Afro-gulag” in the Karoo.

Shabangu, a former secretary of Vigilantes for Victory, is also behind the launch of the Department of Safety and Security’s new logo, two thunderbolt-shaped Ss that to history students learning about Nazi Germany will look vaguely familiar.

The contents of this “news report” may just have been imagined. And then again, it’s quite possible that they weren’t …