Calling Comrade Santa

DEAR Father Christmas,

We salute you in the festive spirit. However, we must also indicate our grave concerns over rumours you have taken it upon yourself to remove South Africa from your December world tour, citing the threat of wholesale nationalisation.

In this regard, we must urge you not to undermine or trivialise your legacy of stalwart support for South Africa's democratic dispensation, and more particularly for our silly season.

Inter alia, we have received disturbing media reports from Greenland that key members of your reindeer staff have embarked on unprotected strike action, provoked by a litany of grotesque bonuses that you have waywardly seen fit to award yourself.

We are reliably informed that hordes of militant reindeers and ultra-left elves are making your North Pole compound ungovernable as we speak, while the renegade Arctic Festive Creatures Union has gone so far as to call you an imperialist fat cat.

Indeed, there are allegations that your overzealous waistline - which allegedly rivals that of Khulubuse Zuma - is causing operational issues pertaining to gift distribution via chimney infrastructure in western Europe.

In this challenging environment, we urge you to re-evaluate your policy of chimney penetration, whose viability is questionable in the South African context where we have narrow chimneys, if indeed any at all.

Furthermore, we call on you to engage all stakeholders on the ground in order to concretise your mandate, by addressing and thereby eliminating service-delivery bottlenecks and associated opportunistic tendencies. In this regard it is imperative that you knock on the front door, or press the intercom button.

Lastly, we envision a holistic, dynamic and developmental relationship with you going forward. To generate such synergy, we invite you to contribute the following Christmas presents for needy but strategic individuals working in our renowned football industry.

For Afcon local organising committee boss Mvuzo Mbebe and his marketing cadres: an industrial supply of powerful Kenyan coffee. With just a month to go before the Africa Nations Cup begins, the nation has been gripped by a massive outpouring of total apathy.

There is more hype to be found in West Park Cemetery than in the CBDs of the host cities, and at this rate the stands will be as unpopulated as they are on any given PSL Sunday. In light of these dire developments, emergency chemical stimulation is required.

For Bafana coach Gordon Igesund: a lifetime supply of magic spray, horse placentas, dream catchers and voodoo dolls. With Bernard Parker suffering an ankle injury at the weekend, and various pleasure-loving strikers in a laughable physical condition, Igesund faces a capacity crisis in the final third. In this desperate context, it is time for Bafana to embrace alternative sports medicine methodologies emanating from various cultures.

For the Comitis and Efstathiou families: a R100000 psychotherapy voucher. The minority owners of Ajax Cape Town have rapidly succeeded in transforming a first-rate football club into a second-rate soap opera this year. We demand that their endless and brainless feud be resolved by a task team of the most acclaimed clinical psychologists currently practising on the Atlantic Seaboard.

In conclusion; see you next week!

Yours in socialism,

C Amato, national spokesperson,

Broad-based Union of Revolutionary Pontificators (BURP), Republic of South Africa