Sometimes the wheels of justice grinds slowly, but it is heartening to read that Juan Duval Uys, the alleged mastermind behind a controversial anti-crime website and a slanderous male prostitute blog in which he “outed” a number of prominent South African men, was arrested at his mother’s house in Kroonstad on Saturday.

He was a creature of his fax machine and lazy journalists who never checked any of the outlandish claims he regularly made until he finally went too far by claiming that members of his non-existent Gay and Lesbian Alliance were going to donate blood and give false information about their sexual histories and orientation.

He did many stupid and bad things but he would not have been able to do it all and get the attention he so obviously craves, if he was not enabled by the media. Despite warnings from many of us, they kept quoting him as if there really was a Gay and Lesbian Alliance and as if he was credible person. Quoting Uys was like quoting Max the Gorilla – highly entertaining and good for circulation but with no relation to reality.

It makes one wonder about all the stories that appear in the papers regarding the ANC succession race and the alleged conspiracies on all sides. It seems if one has a contact at the newspaper one could get almost anything published no matter how preposterous or untrue.

UPDATE: Die Volksblad reports that Juan Duval Uys is really Lodewikus Uys later called Ludi Uys and that he might be connected with a murder committed in Kroonstad in 1993. Lodewikus just does not have the same right to it as all the aliases Mr. Uys came up with.