South African Satire

Issue 15, November  2004

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MDC Youth League Punks Mugabe

HARARE, ZIMBABWE – The Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) Youth League, together with MTV’s hit series Punk’d, succeeded in fooling Zimbabwe’s aging president Robert Mugabe into believing his country was being invaded by US and British forces on Wednesday.

An MDC Youth League spokesperson, speaking on condition of extreme anonymity, said that the idea to play a practical joke on the president had arisen after one of the Youth League’s senior members had seen prison guards watching the show through a gap in the door of his solitary confinement cell.

“Apparently all the prisons have pirate [Satellite TV] for the guards, and these guys just loved watching MTV in-between beating up our member”, said the spokesperson. “It was there that the idea was born. Once our member had completed his recovery in hospital the hard work began.”

According to the spokesperson, getting hold of Ashton Kutcher at MTV proved quite difficult since most his staff had not heard of Zimbabwe and thought they themselves were the targets of a practical joke.

“Convincing them was tough, but thanks to Google, we managed to prove to them that Zimbabwe did indeed exist. Then, we just told them we were good friends of the president and Ashton seemed quite keen on the idea. He said that they’d never done a president before, so it would be a good idea.”

Speaking from his Hollywood home, Kutcher explained that a large amount of his show’s budget went into pulling off the scam: “You know, we were a bit apprehensive at first, but then I realised we were dealing with a president and things were not going to come cheap. Man, we paid a whole bunch of people down there! From generals to drivers.”

the sjambok obtained a copy of the episode from MTV in which a hidden camera captures Mugabe ordering his troops back from the Congo to defend the country.

“Call them back from my diamond mines!” Mugabe is heard saying on the tape in reference to troops in the Congo. “I will defend this country from the colonialist swine if every last one of you have to die!”

According to sources in Zimbabwe, local youth militia and all available police and army units were all mobilized to confront the enemy whom Maguabe was told had landed an invasion force on the Mozambican coast and were making their way west.

MDC Youth League members who feared for Kutcher’s life, stopped him from his traditional practice of personally telling his victim they had been ‘Punk’d’.

“Instead, we smuggled him out of the country and let Mugabe think that his tremendous show of force scared of the ‘invaders’ from America and Britain”, said the MDC Youth League spokesperson.

Please note: the sjambok does not have official media accreditation in Zimbabwe, and, since our undercover journalist was thrown out of the country with the COSATU delegation recently, it was not possible to independently verify all of the details in this story.

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