Freedom of speech? Let's not be having any of that rubbish, now... I admit it; I was wrong.

Back when I was young and innocent, I figured that if y ou were an academic, your only duty was to your work; you didn't have to blindly follow an organisation, and in fact had a duty to speak out against... well, wh atever you thought was wrong. It turns out, though, that I was completely wrong. The vice chancellor of UKZN has decided that action will be taken against any l ecturer guilty of bringing the institution into disrepute, which includes pointi ng out that he and his flunkies aren t doing their jobs. As such, he's instigated disciplinary hearings against two lecturers, for the heinous crime of pointing o ut in public that the much vaunted aims of the institution are empty rhetoric, a nd the situation s is getting worse. However, since the VC demands blind obedience , they're being sued, at a cost to the uni of R250,000 - a years salary for two l ecturers, or about a tenth of what he's paid. Viva le revolution! Zuma, he don't smoke da reefer. So at the funeral of Billy Nair, JZ recalls them smoking zol on Robben Island, b ack in the day. The ANC then released a statement claiming 'zol' meant tobacco ro lled in paper . Which is a bit like claiming 'booze' means fruit juice in a cup . Sti ll, it's not that I mind them lying to us; I mean, politicians have been telling bare faced lies to the people for millennia; it was old in Rome, for chrissakes . What irritates me is that I could have come up with a better excuse. They coul d have said everyone else smoked, but JZ didn't (or didn't inhale); that it was the only time in his life he smoked, to escape the horror of living there; hell, they could even have pointed out people smoking in Durban is about as rare as h eavy traffic in Jo'burg, or posers in Capetown. But no. Zol is not dagga; thoug h dagga, presumably, is still skuif. You gotta ask yourself; how stupid does my government think I am? Cop-killing killer cops. Now, murder is not really news here. Internationally, the belief is that South A fricans spend most of their time murdering each other, with the odd break for a bit of raping. Still, sometimes it comes back to you just how fucked up things a re. As if it's not weird enough that the new head of security is recommending th at cops use excessive force - not reasonable, not justifiable, excessive - in th e last week, two cops have been out on the rampage. The first shot five people, killing three, in Hillcrest; in retribution, residents have burned his tuck shop . As if that weren't weird enough, another cop has a minor accident, denting a f ellow officer's car outside the police residences. He's asked to do an alcohol t est by the duty officer, who goes off to get assistance when he refuses, and the n shoots the guy he ran into and himself. [last sentence needs to be made cleare r]Just what the fuck is going on here? Killer Cops II; the Taxi Massacre So, we all know that the taxi bosses are the worse kind of scum. They hold the c ity over a barrel, refusing to allow themselves to be victim to such petty and m eaningful laws as regulation and accountability, and stop any kind of real publi c transport initiative from getting off the ground. Still, you have to feel sorr y for them from time to time. One of them has recently tried to get an interdict against the police to stop them from killing, injuring, threatening or harassing him. Apparently, he thinks he s linked to the killing of a police superintendant ( which the cops don t, incidentally) and that there s a list of suspects the police a re hunting down and killing. Aside from the fact you can t legally bar the cops fr om doing something they re not allowed to do anyway, and a police spokesman says it is not in the interest of the police to kill anyone. Fair enough, fellas

Traxx Traxx is the best club in Durban. By miles. By so far, in fact, that I've almost

stopped going anywhere else. Admittedly, I'm biased - I was a club kid long bef ore I came here - but still. The first time I went there, the overwhelming impre ssion I got of it was cuteness. For a guy raised on the squat parties, warehouse raves and superclubs of London, well, a little warehouse out by the railway tra cks with a couple of speaker stacks, a single set of lasers and a chunk of the d ancefloor taken over by muscle marys, all doing that little shuffle you do when your shoulders are built up somewhere around your ears... adorable, in a provin cial kinda way. Well, until about 3am, anyway, when the music got a little too h ard for my taste; there's only so much unremittting doof-doof I can take before my brain starts trying to escape through my ears. Since then, every time I ve been there, there's something new. Some things stay th e same - the crowd's the friendliest in Durban, always happy (even ecstatic, som etimes); the music always gets too hard at around 3; and the beer's still nice a nd cheap. On the other hand, every time there are new, fancy lasers, they've don e up the venue a little more, with giant drapes, extra screens, sofas, or a dude outside selling hot dogs. Hell, there s even a free, more chilled friday thing. I mean, you gotta love anyone trying that hard. There are even friendly bouncers; I have a bit of a gripe with tough-guy, po-faced bouncers; the guys here, despi te being built like small mountain ranges, are always refreshingly smiling and c hatty. Hell, the music is even on the up and up; the hard set is still too hard, but the rest has gone from housey tripe to the kind of dance you can listen to even if you're not ripped to the tits on pills. On top of it all, the new stadiu m s just outside, and looks the bollocks just what you need when you re really fucke d up. Seriously, just go; you ll love it.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. There's this weird feeling I've only had twice before. The first time, we sat in our geography class, and our teacher said "I know you don't listen to anything I say, but listen now; today, the Berlin Wall fell." Of course, I didn't really get it - not being all that hot in the realm of international politics at 9 - bu t there was a feeling of it not being real, of something happening that was so b ig that it just couldn't compute. The second time, I was chilling in my room, re covering from a long flight back from the states, when my mum called me; I came downstairs to see buildings I'd been standing on a month before collapsing. It w as like a movie; big action without a trace of reality. That one came back a lit tle later, when I sat up with a bunch of mates, watching the Americans go agains t the UN mandate and invading Iraq. I said the same thing both times; This isn t re ally happening, is it? Both times, the whole world shifted around, but it was jus t too massive for me, too unreal, y know? This last month or so, though fuck. The financial bubble finally burst, along wi th the overextended credit market. You guys are fine, though; they should make s tatues of Tito Mboweni for making sure no-one could borrow more than they could pay back. The ANC, which two months ago was saying it would be in power til Jesus came back, is collapsing in a mire of it's own shit and flame; the rats are lea ving, and now it's not even clear if they'll win the next election. And a black (ish) man became the most powerful man on earth; the bit that's important there is that he's not a struggle leader, like every other famous black politico. Just think about that for a second; Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Madiba, all the f ailed leaders who came in on a wave of glory and became monsters (Amin, Mugabe) were struggle leaders, and there's an assumption that a black leader has to be as struggle leader. No more. Screw America; think of the difference that ll make h ere. Which is not to say that I really understand any of it. I mean, I still get up, complain about the coffee on campus, sit and talk all kinds of shit with all kin ds of people. I guess that s the thing; these events are so big you expect them to change your life, right now, but they never do; not enough to make it seem real

, at least. Pay attention, though; the course of the next few years has been se t.