Our World Cup 2010 mascot is an Asian cartoon looking leopard with green dreadlocks. His name is Zakumi.

There never could have been a mascot that would have impressed us. It will ALWAYS be received by hand-cupped gasps of, “OH MY GOD!”

Zakumi

It’s not shocking as much as it is disappointing.

Once again it seems a junior school competition was held to put it together, and the winning school won. How else do you justify the dreadlocks, clearly indicating the country’s embracing of the Rastafarian movement/religion and therefore the condoning of marijuana? A fantastic notion, for all – I agree. But surely something too ambiguous for them to risk promoting, which I’m sure was not their original intention?

Locals are so confused about the weed laws, with Capetonians, in particular, lighting-up happily in public. TV is littered with it, with hit TV shows including Californication and Entourage showing the characters sparking up in nearly every episode! This new mascot will be MORE than enough for the locals hopefuls to proclaim, “you SEE, it IS legal!”

It’s encouraging, at the very least..

I mean, we’ve already heard the ANC mentioned the legalising of prostitution for the World Cup.

It’s all happening!

Oh, and, just so you know, the “ZA” in Zakumi, stands for South Africa -the very same ISO 3166 code used in our country’s URL web extension “co.za”.

And “kumi” means “ten” in various African languages.

You see what they did there? “Ten,” like twenty ten. You know, the 2010 World Cup?

Get it?

Sick!

Clever hey?

[Read more on the launch of our latest ferret here]

CLICK HERE to see a video of our National Pot-head in action.