The news you didn’t see coming

Your week in cyber flashes

“Our beloved Cyril the Buffalo is back."

With comrade/fighter Carl Niehaus returning to the spotlight, the memes created themselves.

The ANC and DA's political mating dance also made the meme world go crazy.

The English abbreviation for the government of national unity, GNU, which is the Khoi word for a wildebeest and is also used in English, fired journalists' imaginations.

With the alt-right former Gqeberha DA councillor and pod bro (a strutting young man with a podcast), Renaldo Gouws, now going to parliament, a bunch of noisy lefties who are not part of the GNU delved into his past postings. It has  become an embarrassment for the DA and Gouws was suspended from the party yesterday.

Some of the biggest news of the election is that Jacob Zuma's MK Party, despite its surprising performance, managed to end up in almost no position of power.

For cartoonists, the aftermath of the elections was like a jumping castle for a lively child, and South Africa's leading cartoonist, Zapiro, did not disappoint in Daily Maverick. Here are the cartoons from June 12 and 15. We use them with permission.

Time for masks once more

Damaging election posters carries heavy fines, but any magistrate's heart will surely melt when watching this video.

When eyes on your ass are a good thing

This would be true when walking in lion country. Three researchers from the University of Sydney conducted research with more than 2,000 cattle in the Okavango. Lions are responsible for by far the most cases of predation of livestock by carnivores. The researchers used three groups of about 600 cattle: eyes were painted on one group's backsides, a cross on the second group and nothing on the third group. After 24 days, no cattle were caught in the first group, four in the second group were killed and eight in the third group. — The Conversation 

Smuggled bunnies born in sin

The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) has come up with a clever and creative plan to recirculate confiscated items with counterfeit brands. It seizes tons of clothes and shoes every month from traders in places such as Marabastad in Pretoria, around Bellville station in Cape Town and Johannesburg city centre. The commission's Amanda Lotheringen says traditional ways of destroying the goods, such as burning or burying them, are harmful to the environment and expensive. Instead, they make new products, such as toys and therapeutic tools with the materials from the old ones. An example is a series of soft bunnies stuffed with hair extensions. A children's book that tells the story of the bunny's journey from fake to real is sold with it. — Sunday Times

These squatters have come a long way

A soil scientist from Stellenbosch University, Michele Francis, has announced the exciting discovery that the mounds of southern harvester termites (Microhodotermes viator) along the Buffels River in Namaqualand are the oldest inhabited termite mounds yet found on Earth. The mounds are between 13,000 and 34,000 years old, while the oldest previous live finds in Brazil were only 4,000 years old. For scientists, the discovery is a living archive of the environmental conditions that shaped our world. It is presumed that a significant amount of carbon is stored in these types of nests and that termite mounds can play a role in counteracting climate change. Read the whole story here. — The Conversation

The old man is looking a bit skinny?

Dogs look and recognise with their noses. People who love dogs will enjoy this video.

Circus Tswanas show a clean pair of heels

The first black Africans to take part in an Olympic Games were two Tswana men, Jan Mashiani and Len Taunyane, who took on the marathon in St Louis, Mississippi in 1904. South Africa did not yet have an official Olympic team but Mashiani and Taunyane were part of a group of South Africans who staged scenes of Boer war battles twice a day as part of the St Louis World's Fair.

Among the “actors" were two real Boer generals from the war, Piet Cronjé and Ben Viljoen. For years, Cronjé relived his humiliating surrender with 4,000 burghers at Paardeberg in February 1900 twice a day in the travelling performance. It was eventually seen by 2 million Americans.

Olympic organisers spotted Taunyane's talent during an “intertribal" marathon against men from Egypt and Syria and invited him and his friend to the Olympics marathon — they were looking for anyone to run, as almost no athletes from Europe showed up. A barefoot Mashiani came 12th and Taunyane ninth. Taunyane would probably have done much better, had it not been for aggressive stray dogs chasing him off the trail. — Mail & Guardian

♦ VWB ♦

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