Cape Town – DA leader Helen Zille and puppet “Chester Missing” battled it out on a social networking site on Wednesday after her suggestion that he campaigned against racists to boost his career.

Zille seemed to target ventriloquist Conrad Koch and his puppet Chester Missing in her “SA Today” newsletter on racism and free speech, released earlier in the week.

She referred to Koch and Missing’s success in court after Dan Roodt brought an application for an interdict against them on behalf of Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr last month.

The spat began when Hofmeyr tweeted on 23 October: “Sorry to offend but in my books blacks were the architects of apartheid. Go figure.”

Missing then launched a civil campaign against the singer’s racism and had the interim protection order Hofmeyr obtained against him set aside.

Zille said the puppet became the “poster-pop for anti-racists” and a national hero after winning the court case.

“But maybe the laugh’s on us. Chester knows there is nothing like a running battle with racists to send your career into orbit,” she stated in the newsletter.

“Maybe he did a deal with Steve and Dan to share the royalties in perpetuity. Steve and Dan would know that’s what you do when your career needs a booster rocket.”

Missing responded to Zille on Twitter, saying he and his family had been threatened and he had nonetheless gone to court, while she apparently sat back.

He referred her to tweets he sent her and her parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane last month, in which he asked if they were okay with Hofmeyr saying black people deserved apartheid.

Zille on Monday tweeted: “Can someone please explain how @chestermissing managed to make this newsletter about himself? Who has lost it here?”

Satirical posters

Missing responded that Zille had brought him into it and she should not complain when he replied.

“You could’ve just nailed Steve,” he said.

Using satirical posters, Missing seemed to turn on his puppet-master on Wednesday and agreed with Zille that Koch was seeking publicity and attention.

He offered her advice in a tweet he posted of a photo of Zille in her party clothes on a donkey cart, waving her hand.

Missing said: “@helenzille best avoid donkeys lest people say anti-racist-satirist-pot-shot taking move is called a publicity stunt”.

She replied that a North West province community dealing with a land claim problem fetched her in the donkey cart and she had loved it.

When someone suggested her comment about sharing royalties was a bit snide, Zille replied it was “mindblowing” that satirists could not take the slightest bit of satire about themselves.

Missing seemed surprised that Zille was suggesting her comments were satire and asked if her doek (headscarf) was also satire.

He posted a much-circulated photo of Zille in a blue headscarf stirring a traditional pot of pap while campaigning in the North West earlier in the year.

Ah, newsletter was satire now? Doek also satire? @helenzille: mindblowing satirists cannot take satire about selves pic.twitter.com/r5T85Lx3F7

— Chester Missing (@chestermissing) December 10, 2014

.@helenzille Best avoid donkeys lest people say anti-racist-satirist-pot-shot-taking move is called a publicity stunt pic.twitter.com/3vkkQ1viio

— Chester Missing (@chestermissing) December 10, 2014

SAPA

Johannesburg – Steve Biko’s family and foundation will take legal action to get the anti-apartheid activist’s post-mortem report, their lawyer said on Wednesday.

“We have noted lack of undertakings to hand over the documents from the Steeles and regret that we now have no choice but to continue with legal processes,” Darren Olivier of law firm Adams and Adams said in a statement.

The firm represents the Steve Biko family and foundation pro bono (without payment, for the public good).

He said unauthorised access to health records was unlawful, and possession of and access to such records highly regulated.

Autopsy documents

Siblings Clive and Susan Steele were given until Monday to undertake to return the post-mortem reports of Biko and another anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol to their families.

In a statement on Monday, the Steve Biko Foundation said it was informed by Clive and Susan Steele’s lawyer that they would not return the document.

“It is with deep regret that the Timol Family, the Biko Family and the Steve Biko Foundation have been informed by Clive and Susan Steele’s legal representative that they will not undertake to return the autopsy documents relating to Ahmed Timol and Steve Biko to their respective families today.”

The High Court in Johannesburg last week halted the auction of Biko’s post-mortem document, about an hour before it was to go under the hammer at Westgate Walding Auctioneers. Bidding on the document was to start at R70 000.

Certificates from pathologists

The court also ordered Westgate to stop the auction of Timol’s post-mortem document.

On its website, Westgate says the Biko documents are from 1977 and contain certificates from pathologists, a certificate in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act, and a 43-page post-mortem report.

Years ago, the document was given to Maureen Steele for safekeeping. She was the personal secretary of Dr Jonathan Gluckman, the pathologist appointed by the Biko family.

After Steele’s death the documents went to her children, who did not want them. It was not known if the children gave or sold them to Westgate.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Steve Biko was a student leader. He later founded the Black Consciousness Movement. On 18 August 1977, Biko was arrested at a police roadblock and interrogated. He was tortured in prison and died in a prison cell in Pretoria on 12 September 1977.

Timol died in police custody in 1972. He was alone with a policeman when he supposedly fell out of a window at the then John Vorster Square police station in central Johannesburg.

SAPA