A MOTHER’s exasperation with her daughter learning to ride a bicycle, but instead crashing into the goalposts at the end of the rugby field, went viral, becoming a meme and a new South African expression of frustration in 2019.
“My fok, Marelize,” became a catch-all expression for everything from load shedding to SAA going on strike.
In fact, SAA going on strike in November would turn out to be a combination of Marelize Horn’s own goal, so to speak, and the next three.
It all began in February, when Marelize, 19, was practising riding her bike at Affies Park in Windhoek, Namibia and her mother, Heidi, was filming it. Heidi was unable to contain her exasperation as Marelize unerringly headed for the only obstacle on the field - and hit it.
Self-confessed and acknowledged by her mother as preternaturally clumsy, Marelize had been trying to master the skill before her move to the Netherlands as an au pair.
Marelize Horn, 19, the Namibian woman who rode her bicycle into rugby posts, in a video that went viral with her mother’s ‘My fok, Marelize’ comment. Facebook
The organisers of the Cape Town Cycle Race thought it would be great to fly her to Cape Town to fire the starting gun for the world’s biggest cycle race, which she did after being asked to point the starting pistol away. She also managed to ride without crashing into anything after a clinic organised by the Velokhaya Life Cycling Academy in Khayelitsha in Cape Town.
It was all to no avail. Later in the year, Rapport revealed she’d crashed her cargo bike with her two young charges into a Tesla in the Netherlands, leaving a 7cm gouge in the paintwork.
In terms of internet sensations, Horn was quickly pipped by Pastor Alph Lukau who hosted a pre-Easter resurrection at his Sandton Alleluia Ministries, raising a man, later identified as Brighton Moyo, from a coffin specially brought into the parking lot.
Lukau was charged with fraud by various complainants - from a rival pastor for bringing religion into disrepute to concerned members of the public. His wife, Celeste, later complained her husband was being crucified like Jesus for daring to help people.
As for Moyo, after his brief
15 minutes of fame, which included a theatrical resurrection and a voracious eating of the food ostensibly brought by mourners for his funeral, he apparently went home to Zimbabwe where he succumbed to pneumonia and this time, did die. The National Prosecuting Authority later withdrew the charges against Lukau.
Pastor Alph Lukau claimed this man was raised from the dead during one of his Sunday services.
By his own admission, increasingly controversial singer Steve Hofmeyr managed to watch the Rugby World Cup, although it’s unclear whether he quietly did it using a pub’s DStv subscription or he benefited from the SABC’s last-minute decision to show the tournament. He had filmed himself physically destroying his decoder after he was excluded from this year’s Ghoema Awards and then banished by MultiChoice - in any shape or form, past or present - an act he said smacked of an anti-Afrikaner, anti-white vendetta.
After driving over his decoder and clambering onto his roof to dismantle his dish and throw it to the ground, he challenged his fans to do the same. The results were as predictable as they were impressive - on the Darwin front - with people shooting them or setting fire to them. One person dropped his from a drone, while another, known only as Johan, got De-Worsed, breaking his decoder into tiny bits and then mixing it into his boerewors which he braai-ed and ate.
The challenge took on a life of its own, with R56 000 raised in sponsorships and Hofmeyr doubling the initial prize to R20000. He has never announced the winner, but did award a R4000 spot prize to a young blonde-haired girl filmed shooting what looked like her parent’s decoder.
But it was left to a Pretoria North woman’s cellphone video to cap it all. Horrified by the goings-on of the neighbours over the road, she delighted South Africa as she harassed her husband, Hugo, to phone the police while she screamed at the bywoners over the road to stop fighting with each other, including a one-legged man who showed every intention of getting involved in an arse-kicking competition, albeit hopping off his false leg.
The video, especially the shrill “Hugo, bel die polisie!” went viral: Port Elizabeth dance teacher Ashwin Ash Le Priester mashed it into a dance tune with its own video, someone else created a ring tone, another person set it to the theme tune of Titanic and used it to accompany the All Blacks beating the Boks in their opening game of the World Cup in Japan.
It was the fight that left many with the phrase, “Hugo, bel die polisie!”, stuck in their head.
The one-legged man, identified as Wynand Janssens, was painting a picture of flamingos in his backyard when the ruckus blew up. He and his family ended up on the cover of Huisgenoot - they’d all been at church earlier he said, when the car rolled up to their front door with the boyfriend of a blonde, and his mates, convinced that Wynand jnr had been having an affair with his girlfriend.
Couldn’t have been, Janssens told the magazine, Wynand jnr has his own girlfriend and a new baby. Case closed. It wasn’t enough to defuse the almighty eight person punch-up and hair-pulling that ensued, before the invaders - repelled by the one-legged Janssens senior and his clan got back in their beaten-up little sedan and fled back from where they had come.
The police never arrived apparently - and still haven’t. No one has heard from the women videographer or the hapless Hugo, but the Janssens did get evicted about two months’ later. They’ve moved to the quieter climes of Johannesburg, and Janssens sold his painting on a live auction with Jacaranda FM for R10 000.
The year hasn’t ended well though: SAA is in business rescue and load shedding is back with a vengeance, this time because the coal is wet - for the umpteenth time. Couldn’t we, by this time, as Zo Bamba asked on Twitter, have learnt to build an afdakkie to keep it dry? She wasn’t the only one asking the same question. The only good news was that there isn’t enough current to electrocute our perpetually shocked president.
“Pravin, bel die polisie! Eskom, julle word Maandag hier uitgesit”.
Saturday Star