Happy Women's Day

Today is National Woman's Day in South Africa, part of this country's custom of having national days-off-work about every other week. I don't know what Women's Day is, other than a day for honoring and highlighting women's role in society, but I'm not going to be cheeky about it, like I did with Youth Day. I felt bad about that later.

Something, however, tells me there's no brutal apartheid-era murder providing some added significance to this holiday, like there was with Youth Day. That something, actually, is the Daily Voice. They had a feature in yesterday's paper, a "Sexclusive," where they replaced their regular page three with a Women's Day feature.

Holding with the best of Europe's tabloid tradition, the paper usually runs a picture of a topless woman on page three. But not yesterday. Yesterday, it was Brad Pitt's turn.

This caused quite a buzz at the corner shop where I buy my newspapers every day. Mainly, the buzzing noise was coming from the woman behind the counter, and from Katie.

I think Katie was just playing along, though. I mean, the woman behind the counter was quite enthusiastic about the rugby star who's sharing space with Brad there, and someone had to respond with something approaching a sympathetic response. It wasn't going to be me.

The Voice also had a note yesterday that the paper would not be publishing on Women's Day. "But," said a special editor's note, "your favourite paper will be back on Wednesday with the hottest sex, skinner, scandal and sport."

In other Daily Voice news, the media advisor to Cape Town's mayor, who was pilloried for days on end by the Daily Voice a few weeks ago, was fired yesterday. An article about the firing from a reputable newspaper can be found here.