Here's a fantasy maths poser for all you bright young things who've just finished matric. Grab your calculators, graph paper, pencils, pieces of string and whatever else it is that you'll need and off we go.

South Africa is ranked 69th out of 187 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, having fallen 31 places in the last 12 years. Since 2009, when Jacob Zuma became president, we slipped 14 places down the index, five of them in the last 12 months. Using this information, determine the country's position on the index in 2014 when Zuma begins his second term as president. No looking over one another's shoulders, please.

The answer, of course, is still ahead of Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia -- who share the index's bottom position. Clever learners who took higher grade maths may want to determine at what point South Africa will overtake these countries, but then again, life is very short and it is probably in everyone's interests to cram in a few more alco-pops in preparation for this evening's rage activities.

Well, so much for make believe. In real life, of course, it would probably be impossible to work these things out. According to the Annual National Assessment released by Basic Education Minister Angie ("We are not feminists") Motshekga, our children have learnt little more than how to roll plasticine worms at school.

Which is okay. We may one day need all those plasticine worms for a huge public works programme. Just don't ask anyone to count them though. We are useless at sums. According to the assessment, Grade 9 pupils in our poorest schools -- quintile one -- scored an average of 10.8% for maths, while Grade 9 learners at the country's most advantaged schools -- quintile five -- managed an average of just 23.7%.

Educationists are apparently shocked at the figures, and are at a loss to explain why there should be such poor results across the board. Could this be a case where, contrary to the laws of physics, we are seeing a perverse, "trickle up process" in shoddiness? Who can say, what with physics being another area of chronic academic under-achievement?

But on to more pressing matters. There appears to be a great fuss over the cancellation, shortly before it was due to be broadcast, of a live Metro FM programme in which political journalists were to discuss issues around the ruling party's elective conference at Mangaung. The Independent Communications Authority of SA is now to investigate the SABC over the alleged blacklisting of certain journalists.

Now, I don't know about Metro FM's sophisticated urban audience but there are not that many of us here at the Mahogany Ridge who would have tuned into such a programme in the first place. Given that it is bad enough reading them, the notion of having to listen to political journalists as well is not something we'd readily do.

Their problem -- and here we have another case of that "trickling up" stuff -- is that, to do their job, political journalists must mingle with politicians, and they tend to pick up their bad habits rather too easily. Politicians are not only the worst liars in the world but, rather like cholera and the ebola virus, their urge to bother others and interfere in their lives should be notifiable.

It is a sad day when an otherwise halfway decent reporter, having been hanging out with a minister's quislings, begins to think that his or her views on the world at large are indispensable. What's even more lamentable, of course, is that is from the ranks of such moral narcissists that newspaper editors are chosen. It will be a frosty Friday in hell before some hack from the sports department or the theatre critic (if any local newspaper still employs such a thing) gets the keys to the big office on the top floor.

But censorship is censorship, I suppose, and we are duty-bound to cry foul. The excuses, as usual, were pathetic with the SABC's acting chief operations officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, suggesting the show was canned because Metro FM had not followed the corporation's correct grovelling procedure in that the ANC had not been invited to "present their views".

The SABC is, of course, no stranger to this sort of thing, and Tuesday's incident had much in common with its decision, in 2007, to blacklist certain political journalists just before the ANC's Polokwane conference. Recently, the SA Communist Party secretary general, Blade Nzimande, claimed the broadcaster shouldn't be giving airtime to "nonentities", in what is clearly a reference to those opposing Zuma's leadership.

Obviously, the best thing to do would be just to switch the SABC off and not be bothered with it. As someone once said of radio -- that's not journalism, but furniture.

A version of this article first appeared in The Weekend Argus.

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