PRETORIA. As government corruption, apathy and a nonexistent education system threaten to turn South Africa into a banana republic, President Jacob Zuma has launched an aggressive marketing campaign to destigmatize bananas, including a catchy calypso called ‘Come, Mr President, tally me banana!’. However a spokesman insisted that the line “Daylight come and me wanna go home” did not refer to a Presidential romantic liaison.
South Africa has been slipping down the United Nations’ Fruit List in recent months, as it finds itself saddled with a pawpaw as Police Commissioner, the ANC Youth League staffed by fruit-loops, and an education system rapidly going pear-shaped.
However, this morning the Presidency admitted that the nation now faced the very real possibility of becoming a banana republic. According to Presidency spokesman Backtrax Mpofu, Zuma’s administration now had to chose between working hard toward clean democratic governance, or “riding the sleaze train all the way to Banana Station”.
Asked which one Zuma had chosen, Mpofu said, “All aboard the Banana Express! Toot toot!”
But, he said, in case “a few racists and people with tendencies” were still unhappy about living in a banana republic, President Zuma had launched an aggressive marketing campaign to rehabilitate and destigmatize banana republics.
“Banana republics have given humanity some of its greatest treasures: moustaches, cocaine, girly-boys, strippers who can shoot ping-pong balls out of their what-whats…need I go on?”
He explained that the central thrust of Zuma’s new campaign would be to establish a sense of national pride around the central pillar of the banana republic: the banana.
“The regal banana is full of potassium,” said Mpofu. “And that keeps your heart working. Which is medical proof for why you will die if you stop voting for the ANC. It’s science. You can look it up.”
He went on to explain that bananas also symbolised the country’s economic policy: “white on the inside with a few brown spots, but pretty yellow when you look at the bigger picture”.
Asked by journalist if the bananas would ever turn into a banana split, Mpofu told the “bloody agent” to get out.
“There are no splits in the ANC-SACP-COSATU banana!” he screamed. “We are more united than ever, or at least we will be when we finally crush dissent amongst those Commie bastards and the peasants in the unions.”
Mpofu ended the press-conference by playing a recording of Zuma singing his new pro-banana anthem, ‘Come, Mr President, tally me banana!’, in which citizens celebrate having their bananas counted by a benevolent banana-counter called Big Banana.
“That’s pretty much how banana republics work,” he said. “You grow bananas, then the Big Banana counts them, buys them for twenty Banana Bucks, and then sells them to JP Morgan and China for actual money.”
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