I have written before how Dr Seuss, who died in 1991, was one of the top earners when it comes to book sales.  How can he be issuing a new book?  As with many cases when the family has gone through his notes and sketches, they found some of his half-completed projects as well as one that he had labelled “The Pet Shop”.  That book now forms the basis of a new book called “What Pet Should I Get” and it will be launched on 28 July.  They are obviously expecting it to be popular because the initial print run is already 1 million copies in the hard cover format!  I still he is the best children’s author of all time and I look forward to see this book.  For those who have not read Dr Seuss’ books to their children, apart from missing out, you would not have had the chance to discover how his books are written in such a way that an adult can also derive tremendous enjoyment out of reading the book.  I recently discovered that he wrote his book, “Oh, The Places You Will Go” in his final months when he was dying and in fact his publisher had to colour in some of the pictures for him and that makes the advice contained in that book all the more poignant.  

I have been reading up recently about the electrical cars, and in particular the one formed by a former South Africa, Elon Musk.  It is a pity that Pretoria Boys High cannot really claim him as one of their proud past pupils – he has revealed to the media how, no doubt because he was too clever, he was terribly bullied at the school and assaulted and it is a disgrace that some schools don’t look into the culture of bullying within their schools.  In any event, back to the topic, and that is that I had no idea as to how fast some of these electrical cars actually can take off – to the extent that the model S has a more expensive version with what they call an insanity mode.  When you go into the insanity mode, the car can get to basically 100 km/h in 3 seconds and takes off faster than all Ferraris!  The fastest Ferrari will pass it after a 100 metres or so, but the Tesla is so fast that it will pull away quicker than them.  Alongside this blog is a clip from YouTube showing the reaction of people when the model S takes off – and just remember, although this is an American car, the founder and CEO of the company is a South African!

I am unfortunately a hoarder, which makes it very hard for me to ever throw away anything.  I have to keep things for years and years until I have last looked at them before I will finally accept that I am unlikely to look at them or use them.  I have recently tried to do quite a bit of spring cleaning and it is quite amazing how much space it can actually make in your cupboards!  This was prompted by my wife reading a book by a lady who basically says if you don’t love something, you must throw it away and while personally I cannot embrace that concept, I did at least try and get rid of, for example, T-shirts that I have not worn for 5 to 10 years!  

I found that I probably have more golf shirts than anything else, probably because at a lot of golf days you get given a shirt, covered in branding that you are meant to wear for the day and I don’t really like to wear those after that particular day!  The next thing I have to get onto is my cassette collection, because although I don’t even have anything that even plays the old cassette tapes anymore, I still have all the cassette tapes I used to carefully compile and put together when I was 13 years old, not to mention recordings of every phone call where a settlement was discussed with the client when the firm began.  I would have helped though if I made a better indexing system!

The Open, or sometimes called the British Open, is the third of golf’s majors and it takes place this week.  It takes place at the oldest golf course in the world, and perhaps the most famous, St Andrews.  

I was lucky enough to play the course twice last year and when they finished the tournament this year, I will remember that I made a birdie on the final hole, from the championship tee (the back tee from where the pro’s play), in shooting 77 at the course last year.  It is relatively flat and short, and many of the holes share greens – so they have huge big greens with two separate hole locations on them. There is something very special about a golf tour to Scotland, and while I will not be there this year, I certainly want to be back soon.

St Andrews itself is the home of golf and it is a wonderful University town, with a fantastic atmosphere where golfers are, especially during the summer like now, all over the place.  I will be supporting all of my normal favourites – Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day and Henrik Stenson.  

It was with a sense of predictability that our government allowed Omar Bashir, the President of the Republic of Sudan, to leave South Africa.  The judgment of the court makes interesting reading, and it is very important reading dealing with our failure to arrest a head of state against whom the International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  We read firstly how the government, who had to file their papers by 09:00, only filed them at 11:30 and when the court proceeded advocate Mokhari SC, representing the government, specifically denied that President Bashir had left South Africa whereas it now turns out that while he was giving these assurances, they were not in fact true.  

One assumes the advocate must have been misled by the government when they instructed him or whoever he was talking to was either clueless or deliberately misleading him.  The court, headed by Judge Mlambo, the Judge President of the Gauteng Division of the High Court, as well as Judge Ledwaba and Judge Fabricius, at the end of their judgment, had this to say about democracy:  “A democratic State based on the rule of law cannot exist or function, if the Government ignores its constitutional obligations and fails to abide by Court orders.  A Court is the guardian of justice, the corner-stone on the democratic system based on the rule of law.  If the State, an organ of State or State official does not abide by Court orders, the democratic edifice will crumble stone-by-stone until it collapses and chaos ensues.”  They went on to say that when the rule of law is undermined by the government, it is often done gradually and surreptitiously and that where this happens in court proceedings, a court must fearlessly address this through its judgments.  

This is about as strong as a judicial statement that we’ve had about the way the current government is undermining democracy in South Africa and one hopes that we do not have a situation where, like Zimbabwe, Judges who criticise the government are next taken to task and replaced.  We must salute the Judge President Mlambo, the Deputy Judge President Ledwaba as well as Judge Frabricius for taking a fearless stand and telling the government off in this embarrassing matter.