Dear Comrade,

Allow me to join President Zuma in congratulating your union for the excellent work it’s not doing.

Your efforts in the Eastern Cape in particular are paying less-than-handsome dividends. A lot of people might disagree with me, but I think the Eastern Cape is a shining example of what can’t be achieved through a sustained campaign of resistance to learning.

Education has destroyed lives and made countless people miserable. Our eternally cheerful president is a living manifestation of the proverb, “ignorance is bliss”. To clear up any confusion, I am not referring to ProVerb, the rapper from Joburg.

The teachers who belong to your union serve South Africa far better on strike than they do in the classroom. An educated child is an angry child. That is why I like the Transkei so much. There are no angry children. They stand on the side of the road and smile and wave and ask for sweets. In countries ravaged by education, Greece, for example, children throw petrol bombs and rocks at the police.

I need not tell you that knowledge is a dangerous drug. I tried it once when I was younger, and right away I wanted more. The counter-revolutionary teachers at the white school I attended had no qualms about feeding my need. They made me what I am today, the bastards.

• Complete column: Sunday Times

The ANC says it is pleased with the appointment of its chairperson, Baleka Mbete, to the African Union’s African Peer Review Mechanism panel.

Spokesperson Token S’phamandla said Mbete planned to make several sweeping changes to the APRM.

“The original aim of the APRM was to ensure good economic and political governance on the continent. Things have changed since then. In these modern post-Mbeki times, the ANC feels it is unAfrican for one country to judge another. It is disrespectful to the ancestors,” she said.

S’phamandla said Mbete would push for the body to be renamed the African Pier Review Mechanism.

“There are many, many piers in Africa that are going unmonitored. Right now, countries can choose to join the APRM.

• Complete column: Sunday Times

Dear Helen & Patricia,

Allow me to congratulate you on your nuptials. When I saw the wedding photographs, I nearly platzed! You make a truly gorgeous couple.

My wife, Brenda, said that Patricia brings out Helen’s eyes. I hope she didn’t mean it literally. If there is going to be any fighting, please stick to hair-pulling and biting. You will need your eyes to watch out for the big, bad ANC.

I think it’s fabulous that you girls have so much in common. You’re both women. You share an appalling dress sense. Er, that’s it. Just kidding. Those shiny blue DA wind-breakers are at the cutting edge of fashion and I have already seen people walking around in them. Well, in Fish Hoek anyway.

I expect you will be wanting to have children soon. Don’t leave it too late! Your political clock is ticking. Brenda tells me you will definitely adopt and have already picked out a couple of toddlers. Black ones at that. Well done! Angelina and Madonna will be green with envy. But I do think you should change their names. Youdee-Em and Cope sound like gangsta rappers and they will be nothing but trouble if you allow them to grow up with those names. You need to call them something they will identify with and respond to – names that rhyme with “money” and “power” perhaps.

I know you girls always claim that size doesn’t matter and that you’re happy with what you have, but I just want to say that it would be a terrible mistake if one of you (I’m talking to you, Patricia) started coming over all coquettish with the ANC. Anything that brags about having 800000 members can’t be trusted.

I don’t want to pry into your private lives, but I would love to hear what you said in your wedding vows. Here’s my guess: Patricia, you offered Helen your constituency, probably the most precious gift a girl could give. And you, Helen, offered Patricia … hmm, tricky. I would have to say you offered her the mayoral chains. Symbolically, of course. The real ones are still hanging around the neck of that unspeakable dunderhead, Dan Plato.

• Complete letter in the Sunday Times