president showerhead

"President Mugabe is a pooh," says my six-year old Afrikaans niece. My son chuckles. At five, toilet humour is his idea of fun too. "President Mugabe is a pooh, a pooh," he chants.

This could be a problem. Chloe lives in South Africa, where you're allowed to freely criticise your leaders. Ask her who the president of South Africa is and she'll giggle: "President Showerhead", the widely-used nickname for Jacob Zuma, who testified in a rape case that he'd showered to minimise the risk of HIV infection. Chloe has heard her Zimbabwean father (and no doubt many others) slam Mugabe at the dinner table. My son hasn't. In Zimbabwe, criticising Mugabe is a jailable offense. State media often carries stories of individuals picked up because a CIO officer sitting behind them in a commuter omnibus heard them badmouthing the Father of the Nation. At home, we use the code RGM when we talk about Mugabe so our child doesn't repeat what he's heard. Our neighbours are ZANU-PF as are half the kids at his preschool (which is why the school can't organise farm visits anymore in case the small visitors tell their parents where they can find a nice farm...) We've even had to hide what we do from our child ("When the teacher asks you what your mummy and daddy do for a living, you know we write BOOKS, don't you?").

Time to take him aside again. "You can't say bad things about President Mugabe," I tell him.
"Why?" "Because if people hear you, you could get into trouble." "But why can Chloe say it?"
"Because she lives in South Africa." Which will have to do, for now. But after reading South Africa's papers, I'm inclined to believe that Chloe's turn to watch every word may well come.