Touroterrorism

Al-Qa'ida as a branch of the hotel industry, from Jamie Kenny.

Which made me laugh. I've just got back from a GSM conference in Cape Town, and no doubt I'll get around to posting something worthy about leapfrog development and the like in the next days, but at the moment I feel like cheap laughs at the expense of others.

I shared a hotel with the world's supply of German travel agents, who had been invited there by some local authority in a transparent effort at bribing them into sending more Germans to the Cape, on the pretext of some sort of conference (notice a pattern?). As is not uncommon, the real point was the extra-curricular activity. Part of the show was a bus tour of the city, including an opportunity to gawp at the poor in the township sprawl of the Cape Flats. Somewhere in Khayelitsha, the two buses stopped so that the travel agents could take photos of some "traditional dancers".

And then, of course, they were invited to stand and deliver at the pistol's point. Having been relieved of money, jewellery and (of course) mobile phones in an orderly fashion, the tourists and the bus driver, who was also robbed, were released with contemptuous indulgence, in their vehicles. I don't know about you, but I find the whole story suspiciously neat, especially as the tour guide (who unlike the bus driver wasn't mentioned as having lost anything) only seems to have had one name ("Sonja"). After all, how did they know they were coming? Hell, the probability of stumbling on robbers at random even there can't be that high.

You could market it - the authentic Khayelitsha shakedown. The pictures will astonish your friends and the apres-robbery party back at the hotel is legendary.

In more serious news from the crime beat, Ilyushin IL-76TD ER-IBE, serial number 43454615, formerly of Aerocom, Asterias Commercial, and now with Jet Line International, has been down at CPT all week in a rather smart red-white livery that would gladden Jack White's heart, or at least his record-company stylist's.