SIS' DIKELEDI TUNES THE AMA-CALL CENTRES SKEEF
Tessa Dowling

The Sunday Independent
June 10 2007

KwaMzoli the cellphone rules, OK. You can be chatting to your closest skweeza (township slang: girlfriend) when hey, you hear Zuma's ring tone - "Mshini wam, mshini wam! Phendula ifoni! (Zulu: My machine [gun], my machine [gun]! Answer the phone!)" And then, as quickly as the ANC organising a march against Helen Zille, your friend cuts you off in mid-sentence and answers her phone, waving to you that she will only be a little second-enyana. (In Nguni languages you can add -enyana or -ana to the end of a word to indicate that the thing you're talking about is very small - in your opinion, anyway.)

But I am telling you the honest truth, my friend: when she has mshini wakhe (her machine) at her ear, you might as well go to the toilet, order another beer, take a walk around Gugs, get mugged, steal a car, get an extreme makeover. WhatEVA! Because you've got time. As Bra Zed always says, God gave whites watches, and Africans time.

Anyway, one day poor Sis' Dikeledi was trying to tell us about the time she was studying in the States and used to get so homesick she would make a long-distance call to South Africa and dial 1023 just to hear "Wamkelekile kwaTelkom, iinombolo zeFOWUni! (Xhosa: Welcome to the Telkom directory service!)" and how she wondered why they had changed that message, blah, blah, njalo njalo (Xhosa: etc, etc). Sis' Dikeledi tends to talk monotonously, which is interesting for a Sotho speaker because Sotho has so many tones the word lehata can mean "liar" or "skull" depending on whether the tones are low-low-low or low-low-high.

Anyway, there she was droning on when all of us, all at once, lifted up our cellphones to listen to someone else. She looked as sad as a half-built stadium in the wrong suburb and as angry as the driver of a BMW being overtaken by a Corsa Lite. "Mahlanya! (Sotho: Mentally challenged people!)" she shouted. "This is not a bloody call centre!"

The words "call centre" seemed to ring some kind of bell (for once not a telephone one) in that part of our brains where the emotion "extreme irritation" hangs out. One by one we switched off our cells and turned on the abuse.

Bra Zed, who loved any excuse to hurl abuse, couldn't contain himself. "Ama-call centres! They are run by izidenge, iziphukuphuku, izibhanxa ... (All Xhosa words for 'fool')".

Then he got really vicious. "Anybody here who works at a call centre?" A super cool call centre dude in a white suit sauntered up to Bra Zed and, in a fake American drawl, enquired, "Whassup? What you got against ama-call centres?" Bra Zed grabbed him by his gold chain. "Mbombo wakho! (Xhosa: The bridge of your nose!) Sipam-pamndini! (Xhosa: Fool! Note: add -ndini on to any word and that makes it abusive) Njandini! (Dog!) Masende akho! (Xhosa: Your testicles!)" Ooh, vok, that was it, my friends! The dude didn't mind the general abuse, but you don't refer to someone's testicles unless you want to be kicked in your own. Which is what happened, I am afraid. Bra Zed said afterwards he didn't mind, at least he had the chance to hurl an insult at a real live call centre person who actually reacted like a human being.

"You know, they turn real people into machines! You abuse them like so, 'Vilandini! Unentloko elukhuni okwenZulu! (Xhosa: Lazy fool! You have a head as hard as a Zulu!)' and all they say is, 'I am so sorry, maybe you can call back later.' Aargh!" And he gripped that part of his pants where he had just been kicked.

While he staggered around in agony the abuse kept flowing. Sis' Dikeledi, who loved using the word "fool" in English, was even more articulate in her mother tongue.

"One day, when I had been holding on for my medical aid long enough to get my hair relaxed and my neck stressed, I was finally put through to a lady who asked for my personal details AGAIN! Hey, I was soo bladdy mad, I screamed at her, 'Tseketseke! Setlatla! Lathalatha! (all Sotho words meaning: You idiot!)' That woman, she just said, 'That's a long name, could you spell it for me, please, sweetie?' I spelt all those words out for her, and then I mos asked her, 'Don't you want my surname, mosadi-towe? (Sotho: you stupid woman. Note: the Sothos add on towe when they want a word to become an insult). My surname is: Tsebe ts'ao! (Sotho: Your ears!) Mmao! (Your mother! - a word normally avoided when actually referring to your mother) O setlaela, o a itse! (Sotho: You are stupid, you know!)'"

Bra Nkuja told us how once, after he'd spent a whole week trying to get through to his bank and only got a recorded voice, he started to fall in love with it. But when the voice of his dreams asked him to key in his personal identity number and press hash, which he duly did, he was stunned to find himself talking to a real person. "Hey, I didn't like her voice at all. She kept on asking me what I wanted and I said, 'I want the OTHER lady. The machine lady.' She just said 'Hey, uyageza wena! (Xhosa: You are mad!)' and hung up." He looked around at us with a very hurt expression on his face.

That seemed to get us off the topic of call centres and onto the ongoing problem of Bra Nkuja's unsuccesful love life. To signal the end of the abuse, Bra Zed ordered a round of drinks and Bra February gave us a good idea. "You people must mos start your own call centre. A person what want to vloek at someone in their own language can mos phone this centre and press 1 for Xhosa abuse, 2 for Pedi abuse, 3 for Tsonga abuse, etc. You can have a special number: 08600 VLOEK."

What a $#@&^!?! good idea, we all agreed.