Save it for the pub

THERE are things you can chuckle over in the pub with your mates and then there are things you can write down and distribute on the internet.

One Patric Mellet, a director in the Department of Home Affairs, clearly does not know the difference.

According to The Star newspaper, Mellet decided to step onto the national political stage with a scalding Facebook posting in which he referred to DA leader Helen Zille as "mein Führer".

He is reported to have said: "How she justifies her racist rants just deepens the foot in mouth disease. PW Botha has risen from the dead. She really does him proud."

While Zille can be strict, to put it diplomatically, comparing her to history's greatest fascist and racist is more than a little over the top. His explanation - that "mein Führer is simply referencing a tendency towards Botha style" - was not convincing.