Here is #11 in my helpful series on what the ideal job application should look like.

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To the Drakensberg Boys Choir for the position of Music Teacher

Dear Madam,

Being as isolated as you are in the mountains of KwaZulu-Natal, you may not be aware that circumstances in South Africa have changed dramatically since your school was established in 1967.

For a start, BJ Vorster is no longer prime minister. This may come as a shock to you, but we now have a president by the name of Cyril Ramaphosa. Yes, that’s right, the natives won.

You may be experiencing feelings of alarm at this point. Do not panic. This is quite normal. The good news is that there will be no second Anglo-Boer War because most of the Boers are learning to speak English in the New World (New Jersey, New South Wales, New Zealand) and the Anglos are drunk.

As your latest recruit, I would be failing in my duty if I did not assist your boys to acclimatise to the new new South Africa, which is not to be confused with the old new South Africa. First to go will be the Broadway hits. Joining the likes of Handel and Mozart on the scrap heap of history will be anything remotely resembling gospel. No more will the hills come alive to the sound of Carl Orff’s Carmin Burana. Fuck Orff. And you can forget about anything sung in Afrikaans.

Instead, the boys will learn to sing the country’s unofficial anthem, Umshini Wam, and a host of revolutionary songs including “My father was a garden boy, that’s why I’m a communist” as popularised by the legendary tenor, Blade Nzimande.

With your permission, I would also like to introduce paramilitary training to the curriculum. No amount of singing is going to disarm a knife-wielding thug or get rid of a persistent Jehovah’s Witness. By the time I am done, the entire school will have learnt how to parachute into enemy territory and snap a man’s spine with a single blow.

Yours in the struggle to reach the high notes.

Ben ‘Soprano’ Trovato (Ret.)