“Yes, we can!”, they agreed, the political commissars and the guardians of tribal truth and tradition, and eventually even a judge. And so of course they did.

On Saturday in KwaZulu-Natal, as reported by The Times columnist Justice Malala, President Jacob Zuma (himself a proud Zulu in leopard skin) and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini led the “Ukweshwama” ritual in which young men killed a bull with their bare hands. They were not particularly brave, strong or skilled, so it took time. They had to gouge out its eyes, tear out its tongue and rip at its genitals. The strength of the bull would be transferred to the king.

This was to celebrate the fruits of the harvest, which are celebrated in different ways in various parts of the world. The trouble with the debate with Animal Rights for Africa, as Malala notes, is that “the noise that has persisted is black versus white, European versus African, colonialist versus freedom fighter … What is surprising is to see the ANC, the party of progress for 98 years, falling into the backwardness of support for superstition and cruelty … in the name of culture and tradition”.

Here’s the other side of the story, by way of a letter to Sunday Times columnist Pinky Khoabane after her article “Everybody kills animals for fun, why chastise Zulus?”. Wait for it: “Khoabane, a brain that is as confused as your name and your skin colour. What you have spewed forth is the epitome of munt logic, proof undeniable that the black thought process is not human. Close, but again undeniably that of a sub species”.

Wow. Probably the result of masturbation and interbreeding, and I think “munt” was a Rhodesian expression, but it’s got nothing to do with me, Pinky.

I am somewhere in the middle here, since I visited Barcelona on my first trip overseas, in bad company, a Brit and a Latino, over 50 years ago, with an Ernest Hemingway book in my pocket. It could have been “The Sun Also Rises”, or “A Dangerous Summer” or “Death in the Afternoon”. He was an afficianado, and I became one too.

The Spaniards were transported. Afterwards, over awful cheap wine, we had time to look at some of the historic photographs taken in their bull ring. One, of the master Manolete, showed him on his knees, flaunting the cape contemptuously close to his body, his back to his adversary. He died in l947 after being gored by a fatally wounded miuira bull. I have sometimes thought that if I were a bull, or a toreador, that is the way I would choose to go. But it seems to be dying out. The run of the bulls in Pamplona is something else- perhaps more like Ukweshwama.

Hemingway is sometimes quoted as saying that there are only three real sports in the world – bull fighting, motor racing and mountaineering. Notably, he omits boxing, which he pursued as a macho dilettante, and which I did in fact, way back, becoming on behalf of NRTV the promoter of the first professional Northern Rhodesian boxing championship. We built a ring in the TV station grounds, surrounded it with all the chairs we could find, and took the cameras out from the studio on long cables. The sponsors were the brewery. I did the running commentary.

Our match-maker and inter-round summary was by ex-great SA middleweight, Dougie Miller. My diary is hopeless and I didn’t get to his funeral years later. But I can remember saying to him, before: “Dougie, you went the distance against world champion Randolph Turpin. At the end he was hanging on for a draw, but in the first few rounds you were down at least four times. You know the risks. Why did you keep getting up and taking punishment?”. “Well”, he said, “I was just a Dutchman from the bushveld – what did I know?”. Here’s to you, Dougie.

That’s a story not just about boxing, but about television and the recent bailout of R1.4 bn (what?!) for the SABC. Immodestly but categorically, given an acquaintanceship with some on the board, I would submit that nobody there now, or below, could conceive or execute a programme to fill a gap like that, even in the unlikely event of no political interference.

That of course is the main problem, and no one to stand up to it. About 1980, the SABC Staff Association raised a dispute concerning legislation which it saw as a censorship measure. There were crowded meetings and smaller ones between management and myself as then President of the Association. “This has got nothing to do with you”, they threatened in wonder. “This is politics. You are a broadcaster”.

Yes, but not from the bushveld. In all their threatened strikes and muttering, staff have been more concerned with money since then.