Pretoria's Fidel Castro Street to be one-way cul-de-sac

PRETORIA - The Tshwane council has confirmed that Pretorius Street in Pretoria is set to be renamed Fidel Castro Street, and will "celebrate the legacy" of Cuba's veteran leader.

As such, the street will be transformed from a thriving thoroughfare into a one-way cul-de-sac whose residents will have access to excellent healthcare but won't be allowed to read newspapers.

The South African Communist Party has celebrated the decision, saying it has already reported the victory to the Kremlin.

"We called the Soviet Triumph Hotline as soon as we heard," said SACP spokesman Pogrom Pedi.

"As usual it went straight to answering-machine, so we reported the heroism of our street-renaming cadres, and reminded the Comrades to give us our new orders.

" He said that the message on the answering machine had been unchanged "for some time now", and that it said that Party leadership was away on clandestine anti-capitalist manoeuvres and "would return to Moscow in June 1989".

He also conceded that Moscow had not given the SACP any new orders since early 1987, when it had sent a postcard from Bali which read, "Wish you were here, weather great, just keep on, you know, being angry about the exploitation of the etc etc".

He said that the creation of Fidel Castro Street would be a decisive blow against the forces of capitalism within the Tshwane Metro,which included Babu's Friendly Café on Potgieter Street, which had refused to accept a cadre's job application because Mr Babu did not recognize a Masters degree earned at the Leonid Brezhnev Technical University of Tractor Maintenance in Minsk.

Pedi said that those living on Fidel Castro Street would "soon come to enjoy the immense benefits" of living in a street modeled after Castro's Cuba. He confirmed that residents would have free world-class healthcare, excellent medical treatment, top-notch hospital access, superb clinics, highly trained doctors, free world-class healthcare, highly trained doctors, top-notch hospital access, "and lots, lots more".

Asked if residents would have anything other than good healthcare, Pedi said, "No."

"Residents will not be allowed to have newspapers delivered to them, or to watch any television produced outside the Eastern Bloc after 1983," said Pedi.

However, he said, residents would be allowed to take part in an annual May Day parade in which they could celebrate living in "the greatest street in the world".

He said attendance at the parade would not be compulsory, and all those who didn't want to celebrate the life of Castro would be taken by truck to an alternative celebration that involved mining salt.