Remember the countdown to the Fifa World Cup? 1000 days to go, 400 days to go, 30 days to go etc etc and then it was suddenly upon us before you could say goal line technology. Well, there’s a new countdown now and it’s this….seven days until politicians once again make it onto the front pages of the newspapers and make our lives miserable once again.

Somewhere, probably in a darkened bunker at a secret location, they are loosening the buckles and straps on Julius (Kiddie Amin) Malema’s strait jacket and preparing him for his media re-entry. Can you believe we’ve heard nothing from the bugger for almost four weeks? Well it took some doing I’m told. They had to lay a trail of Breitling watches and Johnnie Walker Blue Label to a snare in the forest and trap him that way. Then they bundled him up in an Armani suit and took him to a “safe” house to watch videos of Hugo Chavez’s speeches. The little chap was as happy as a pig in the proverbial I believe. They also gave him a colouring book and some crayons and encouraged him to discover his inner mining magnate by colouring in pictures of headgear and mine shafts. That’s to prepare him intellectually for one of the many idiotic statements he’s bound to make when he steps blinking into the daylight once again in just over a week from today.

Don’t think that because he’s been under a sort of luxury house arrest these past few weeks that he’s been doing nothing. He’s been playing I Spy and Snap with Floyd Shivambu and coming up with all sorts of Chavezian plans to seize mines, banks, insurance companies, Nando’s outlets and anything else he can lay his hands on. The only reason the ANC have kept him out of sight is that the SA government didn’t want to embarrass Paris Hilton by letting the country’s greatest intellectual loose on the same world stage at the same time. Her reputation as the planet’s most famous space cadet must remain unchallenged for now.

Yes….it sure has been a wonderful three weeks thus far and what it tells us is that we don’t need politicians spouting their drivel 24/7. Or, more accurately, we don’t need the dead tree media quoting them 24/7 because nobody’s going to ever stop politicians spouting drivel. It really is all the fault of the newspapers because they feel compelled to fill the white space between the dwindling number of ads with something and if there’s no football any more then they’ll probably choose the easy way out and start writing about politicians again.

Having not written about creatures like Kiddie Amin for several weeks to the great relief of the real people who live in this country you’d think the newspaper editors would read the mood of the country and realize that we are all far happier not hearing what politicians have to say. It really has been a wonderful period of unity and, as Clem Sunter remarked on Classic FM last Friday, it’s this “can do” enthusiasm that we need to harness to carry the country forward to greater things. We’ve proved to the world that we can stage a world class event and we’ve demonstrated that South Africans of all colours can get along very well together, much as that may irk the likes of Oom Max du Preez and similar social misfits who manage to see racism all around them. We South Africans (and I include myself in this club only by virtue of being a taxpayer for the past 30 years) are just a bunch of regular guys. Show me a foreign tourist who is going home saying we are not the most smiling and hospitable nation in the world and I’ll show you a miserable sod who probably works for a London tabloid newspaper. And we’ve given the world the vuvuzela.

So what about the South African National Editors Forum calling their esteemed members together and asking them to drastically cut back on the exposure given to oiks like Malema and the treasonous yobbos who are demanding absurd pay rises from an already bankrupt Eskom. The only reason these empty vessels make so much noise is that they crave the publicity much as a vampire craves blood. Cut off the supply of publicity and they fall silent; as we’ve found out over the past month.

Anyway, the mood is changing all around the world. I read last week that the talented chanteuse Lady Gaga now has more followers on Facebook (over ten million apparently) than President Barack Obama. The obvious retort is what on earth is the US president doing on Facebook anyway but that’s beside the point. Fact is, one of the greatest freedoms of a democracy is the pursuit of happiness and we have all been much happier during the month of the World Cup with no politicians to spoil the party. So let’s keep it that way please.