SAZPRO - SAve the Zakumi PROject

Have you seen South Africa these days? It’s just before the start of the 2010 Football World Cup, and there is excitement everywhere. Forget excitement, this borders on mass hysteria.





Ever since the World Cup hosting rights were awarded in 2004, there has been a gradual growing of hype and anticipation. And now it has reached a crescendo of armageddonic decibels.



There are flags everywhere. Cars are adorned with flags. Flags on mirrors, flags on bonnets, flags on windows, flags on boots, flags under the car. Roads are festooned with flags and other livery.







People are wearing football jerseys. Seats are being transformed into football bean bags. Tables are made into football pitches. Malls are flashing with lights and other billboards. Vuvuzelas blowing everywhere. It’s like a festival. And then there are Zakumis.

Zakumi is the official mascot of the games. He is an anthropomorphised (whatever that means) leopard with green hair.



Very cute & cuddly, if you ask any child, teenage girl, or Twilight Fanatic, in no particular order. And he is everywhere. Key chains, car ornaments, t-shirts, dolls, and even life-size or bigger replicas placed everywhere you see.



It’s all good and part of the celebrations. But the big question is, what are they going to do with them after the games are over? Are they going to destroy all of them? Are they going to put all of the Zakumis in a giant blender and mash them into a giant yellow pulp? This is the question that begs to be answered.




This is an initiative called “SAZPRO” or short for “SAve the Zakumi PROject”. Here, I propose a few alternatives, on how to save the Zakumis and put them to use after the World Cup is over.

You can add your own alternatives, or you could always donate to this cause.
Contact me with your bank details after you finish reading this post. :-)

SAZPRO alternatives for saving the Zakumi.

1. Place them in wildlife reserves (where all the animals have been poached) and offer a Big 5 Zakumi viewing experience.


2. Give them to politicians around the world, who can use them as their proxy attendees in the Parliament.


3. Donate them as punching bags to the Boxing federation.


4. Use the heads as footballs for the impoverished kids all around the world to play with.


5. Use the torsos as pillows and beds for the homeless.


6. Dress them in black cloaks and place them near your house gates, to give a semblance of a security guard to all the wannabe robbers.


7. Stick a hair dryer in their hands and place them on the side of the road and watch speeding motorists slow.


8. Place them as roadblocks on the shoulder lanes of a road, to prevent taxi drivers from using that lane to speed past you.


9. Use them as mascots for your own NGO. Something like “YellowPeace”


10. Create a giant float filled with all of them and parade it through the streets to keep reminding people of the spectacle that the World Cup was. (Warning: Be on watch for Israeli commandos who might storm it thinking it was filled with Gaza supporters.)


11. Give them to the Inflatable Doll Industry, which will use them for their new fetish line due this fall.


12. Send one to John McCain as a new Vice-President candidate for the 2012 elections.


13. Send one to Al Gore, now that he has split up with Tipper. More ecofriendly, you see.


14. Michael Bay might use a few in the new Transformers movie.


15. Stick a lot of them together and use as jumping castles for kids.


16. Give one to Elizabeth Taylor and she’ll marry and divorce him within a space of a month.


17. Use them to plug the hole that BP created in the Gulf of Mexico.


18. Use them as dummy protestors for all your peace marches.


19. Give them to Toyota to use as crash test dummies for their new (and hopefully safer) cars.


20. Give them to Arthur Anderson and they’ll create fake bank accounts for them, and scam millions.


21. Send them to Australia. They have a lot of land no one uses.


22. Give them to China who will immediately put them to work in labour camps, making more Zakumis.


23. Send them to Japan, who’ll create a food delicacy out of them, and might stop killing endangered whales and sharks.


24. Give them to the allied forces who can use them to practise their new water-boarding and other torture techniques.


25. Send them to the Vatican. Finally they'll have priests that the kids would actually want to touch.


26. No point sending any to Zimbabwe. Mugabe will blame them for stealing the farms, and execute them. Those who don’t die, will come back as refugees in South Africa.


27. Send them to Nigeria. There’s no one there.


28. Send them to India, who’ll create the world’s first Zakumi Call Centre .


29. Give them to Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian so that they can make more home videos featuring them.


30. Do not give them to Sri Lanka. They don't like big cats. Remember Tigers?


31. Use them as waiters and shop attendants, so you can get better and smiling service all the time.


32. Deliver them to Pakistan, so they can use them as effigies for burning, whenever they protest against Facebook & YouTube, or anything.


33. Send them to North Korea, so that Kim Jong Il can put his face on them and use them as propaganda statues.


34. Madonna and Angelina Jolie might want to adopt some.


35. Do not send any to Rihanna, or she might claim to be beaten by them.


36. Elin Nordegren (Tiger Woods' wife) might want to try a second innings at marriage. With a Leopard this time. Fidelity guaranteed.


37. Hugh Hefner might need some as playmates, I think.


38. Pity, Michael Jackson is no more. He might have needed them for Neverland.


39. Send a few to the Greece so they can sell them and make some much needed money.


40. Send a few to Dick Cheney and he’ll shoot their faces off.


41. Drench one in oil and gift it to George W Bush, and he’ll get a best friend for life.


42. Send one to England, and they’ll make him the Prime Minister.


43. But whatever you do, do not keep them in South Africa, or the USA might invade, claiming “Weapons of Mass Hysteriction”.