Why didn't we think of that?

Next Friday is Halloween.

In many parts of the world All Hallows Eve, end of the harvest and the onset of advent in the build-up to Christmas, is celebrated. Steeped in pagan traditions centuries old and heavily seasoned with ancient superstition and autumnal fear, it is a time to marvel at the irony and paradox of simply being human.

Few people know — or care — about why they dress up to scare each other; why lollipop-fattened Yank-kids go trick-or-treating; why Mexican favellas set fire to floats they’ve taken the whole year to build or why Icelandic teenagers chase adults through the snow dressed in gillie suits.

It’s glorious fun. When I lived in England (about the time The Beatles were emerging), the Kriels were part of a small egalitarian ecumenical “village” that included people from Japan to San Francisco. Our dads were all Anglican ministers studying at St Augustine’s College (since closed down) in Canterbury.

What was really wonderful was the open-hearted and non-judgmental way we shared each other’s national traditions. The Ozzies held barbies, we braaied homemade boerewors and pap, Father Hirokawa regaled us with kobuki theatre, Father Humphrey from Morocco introduced us to couscous and birthday parties were always fancy-dress. I went as Oom Paul once.

As anyone with the slightest insight into ecclesiastical history knows, pagan and Christian festivals are and always have been inextricably linked. Anyone offended by this fact has a tenuous faith, a superficial grasp of Biblical truth and probably needs a licence to go to church.

But all that is beside the point. South Africa is the poorer for not marking Halloween or Mardi Gras or Guy Fawkes or any other grand opportunity to poke fun at ourselves the way they do overseas. And to hell with all the pseudo-serious crap about heritage and hero worship and reconciliation that is so divisive. There’s nothing to beat dressing up and behaving like poephols to unite a diverse group of people. Ask any varsity student on rag day!

On Saturday the Blue Bulls supporters will (as they always do) out-dress the Shark-anauts in the Shark tank. That’s a given, but wouldn’t it be a blessed release to dress up like Julius Malema or Old Showerhead or Manto next Friday and run around our razor-wire fortresses scaring the children and every dog from Polokwane to Port Elizabeth?

US shop-owners are making a fortune right this moment out of Sarah Palin outfits and John McCain masks. This in the midst of the perfect financial storm and I ask: why didn’t we think of that?

We are so painfully PC we wouldn’t recognise a money-spinner from a spin doctor. We are so prosaic and backward in our national mindset we shut down Justin Nurse’s “Laugh It Off” T-shirt celebration (and I for one am delighted hardly anyone drinks Black Label anymore — serves the iconoclastic bastards right!). Thank heavens for Tannie Evita and Vernon Koekemoer.

That’s why we will stay a mere developing country. No bloody imagination! No gumption and a genetic lack of testicular fortitude. Give Vavi, Blade and the other commie sock-puppets half a chance and we will never be more than an African basket case. A perennially emerging economy forever the museum butterfly frozen in time just at the point of emerging from its cocoon (no racist slur intended).

We do have a new internet celebrity though. One Nhlanhla Nene, who has given “chair person” a whole new meaning thanks to the leaked video clip of him moering off an SABC chair in mid-interview. His XXXXXL obesity, the trademark of virtually every government AAA, may or may not have contributed as much to the “set malfunction” (a la Janet Jackson’s tit explosion) as the parlous state of Aunty Auckland Park’s budget. But the clip has spread across cyber-space and the cellphonosphere faster than you can say Eugene Terreblanche and horse in one breath.

I think, come next Friday, I’ll dress up in some Springbok skins and hunt down Boetie-Anna Kom-Pellie. Then post his reaction on You-tube. Could make a few bucks …