Thoughts on the prospect of a bonded President: will we be ruled by the favours he owes?

Most politicians are whores. It comes with the territory. As a politician it is virtually impossible to climb the power ladder without selling off pieces of yourself along the way.

This is because in the world of modern politics influence has become a commodity. Influence is the sole currency in those high places where favours are traded amongst the custodians of the various disciplines of modern society’s substance: politicians, industrialists, entrepreneurs, bankers, etc. Ah yes, and many times even trade unionists.

Where these men meet a myriad of tightly knit and ever spreading networks of men of “consequence” are formed and become inseparably intertwined with each other as their different breeds of influence feed off each other during a cross pollination which nurtures the resultant organism through years and years of vested interest driven networking. It all sounds very complicated, but just think of it as mould growing on a stale old loaf of bread in a dark, damp wooden cupboard.

I have been unable as yet to decide whether this is a bad thing altogether, this concurrence of politicians, entrepreneurs, industrialists, unionists and other assorted sorts in the world of power, or whether ordinary men once in a while derive sufficient benefit from it for us to tolerate it. We, the uninitiated, know little about this organism and what we think we know is based on speculation and conspiracy theory mostly. It is known to us really only for its obscurity and for the fact that tabs are kept in this dimly lit, thick carpeted kingdom of wooden clad walls and discreet whispers flavoured by the aroma of exotic cigars and rare imported aperitifs.

We know the fate of ordinary men is written on the tabs these men keep. The quality of our lives, or more often than not the lack of it, is determined by the favours they owe each other. But what if these determinators of our fate are not the paragons of excellence popular opinion so badly wants them to be, super beings with abilities and gifts far above those of mere mortals; what if they turn out to be just ordinary men who got themselves elevated through luck, cunning or sheer circumstance in this age where the bar has so consistently dropped that the scales of excellence has had to be reinvented several times already to accommodate the meagre abilities of prominent dwarfs and untalented hacks in high places?

One tab which tickles me more than any other is that of our prospective new president. What were the terms of the trades he made in the networks that resurrected him from virtual political death to the position in which we find him today: poised to begin his ascend to the throne? This, against seemingly insurmountable odds generated by his own personal choice of lifestyle, lovers and associates not to mention those drawbacks he was not responsible for himself such as that which came with his non-Xhosa ethnicity. One cannot help but wonder...

I wake up often, these nights, in a cold sweat after nightmares in which Zwelinzima Vavi is a senior minister in our Cabinet. And then I realise that I should count my blessings. That Zwelinzima Vavi, immature wannabe politician and loose cannon for whom there should be no place in high stake politics now or ever, is not a problem at all. I realise in these moments when panic threatens to choke me, that I should thank God, and every other deity, sub deity and would be deity that could possibly exist in the entire multiverse between here and infinity, for the apparent fallout between Zuma and his great friends, the Brothers Shaik. Because even in the blessed absence of jailed Shabir and the divine luck of Chippy ducking into hiding from the National Prosecuting Authority, there is still a couple of Shaiks left to collect on that tab. Imagine Mo Shaik as the Minister of Education. Yunis, our new Chief of Police.

I cannot even bear to think of any others like these men who may come out of the woodwork now that payday seems to have arrived. We should all get down on our knees and stay there for the next two years until after the announcement of the new Cabinet in 2009 and the revelation of the rest of the powers that will make up the Zuma administration, when we will see how much of his presidency our prospective new president has sold off, pawned or bonded, even before it was his, to the band of misfits, thugs and thieves he has associated himself with.
Let us pray.

The other side of Africa

The one who overfears, is the one who meets with hardship.

- African proverb

Just look at the clouds and the water and the ten tiny men!

This picture of a fishing crew pulling their dhow ashore was taken at Linga Linga, Inhambane, Mozambique by my friend Strandloper - (his Afrikaans pseudonymn refers to a bird who lives mainly on the beach)

The demise of the grande old dame

My mind is still on Polokwane and will probably remain there until the closing ceremony of The Conference on 20 December when the new leader will deliver his inaugural speech and we will have an indication of what to expect over the next five years. Zuma and Mbeki by all indication are the only two candidates in real contention and this is not healthy for the party as neither of them present a reassuring record of leadership or much promise of a meaningful departure from this path of impending chaos their lack of leadership as ruler and deputy ruler has set us on in the first place.

The odds that the African National Congress will split if Mbeki is re-elected as leader of the party is not insubstantial. Even in the scenario of a Zuma leadership this possibility is not alltogether excluded over the duration of his term in office.

It would be a mournful day indeed if the grande old dame, who came to life during the dehumanizing era of British colonialism, overcame the staunch Afrikaner nationalism of Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd, rode out the brutality of Vorster and survived the deadly eighties under the siege of the Botha’s, finally succumbs not to her enemies, but to the self interest of her own sons. The sad thing is that this might happen on the eve of her centenary and that she, who so deserves it, may not live see her one hundredth birthday in the form that she was intended to exist: as the vehicle for unified pursuit of equality, freedom and dignity for all.

She is an eccentric old gal, our party. Her colourful and sometimes tainted history is so full of ironies, funny events and tales of strangeness that one can write an entire book about it. One of the more serious ironies is in the fact that in spite of protests to the contrary and institutionalised opposition to ethnic discrimination, tribalism still plays a major role in the leadership of the ANC. For the last two decades or perhaps even longer some Xhosa’s in the upper echelons of the party have apparently laid exclusive claim for members of their clans to the position of highest leadership in the party to the exclusion of members of other African ethnicities such as Zulu’s, Sotho’s, Sepedi’s, Tswanas, etc etc, while they strive at the same time to maintain control also of the executive body of the party.

What this so called “Xhosa Nostra” in its attempts to hijack the leadership for itself seems to forget, and herein lies the next delicious irony, is that the very founder of the organisation our ANC originated from (the South African National Native Congress established on the 8th of January 1912) was in fact a Zulu man whose original vision was to resurrect his once proud Zulu nation from its humiliation under white colonial rule and restore Zulu pride and heritage. This Zulu man, Pixley Ka Izaka Seme, however, upon witnessing the horrendous plight of all Africans under the Union government, departed from the ethnic orientation of his plans and decided that this freedom movement should actually include all of the oppressed and aim to create a single powerful united African nation to counter the colonialists.
(See the history of Seme at

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/congress/began.html)

In the ethnically inspired rumblings of Mbeki’s predominantly Xhosa speaking opinion makers who influence the predominantly Xhosa speaking men who fill most of the decisive chairs in his administration, another beautiful irony could have been found if only the Zulu claimant to the throne, Jacob Zuma, was a man of such irreproachable character that he could be “faulted” by these bigots on his ethnicity only instead of being one who presented his mainly Xhosa speaking detractors with ample opportunity to obscure their ethnic bigotry behind references to his dodgy personal associations, questionable social habits and possible prosecution on charges of corruption and bribery that can be brought against him.

On the other side of the struggle for leadership of the party stands the current President of both party and country, one Thabo Mbeki - Xhosa Nostra crown prince, leader designate by virtue of his last name, who sailed unopposed into the position of vice president first and supreme ruler later after “the family” eliminated by way of their unique methods of persuasion all those candidates whose aspirations interfered with the path towards the throne of The Anointed One. The sad irony in his case is that he himself may be implicated in the same incidence of corruption and bribery he cited as motivation two years ago when he dismissed his deputy, the very Zuma of Zululand I just spoke of.

This is not the first time, however, that the party is threatened by lack of integrity or weird behavior in her leadership. Hell, in her history of strangeness her very founder succumbed to it and almost destroyed her in the process. Much like Mbeki, Pixley Ka Izaka Seme, in spite of his brilliance and vision and the sheer willpower with which he established the party, was also a man who “believed in his mind only, and therefore could not listen to the advices of other men”.

But her tale of eccentricities and ironies may no longer be funny, because the mother who gave birth to our freedom is dying, dying from the self interest and bigotry, the lethargy and lack of commitment of some of her children who disregard their precious sibling named Freedom. She cannot afford for the others to be silent any more, or accommodating of the indolence of their brothers, or to tolerate their presumptuousness and their arrogance any longer. She is sick to the point of dying.

But there is also an alternative perspective on the demise of our dame: maybe, like every aged mother, she is designated to die to make way for the coming generations. Or maybe she even has a choice.

Perhaps it is to be the final act of love of the brave old mother of freedom and democracy to sacrifice herself for the prevention of decay and the advancement of that which she gave us. Maybe she realised that her existence now supports an unhealthy application of the power she represents which will not serve to alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable and the disenfranchised, the very ones she was meant to deliver from hopelessness. And she may know that her very existence will cause either the prolonged deferment of relief for the miserable because of the excesses of a new elite who occupies her belly or erupt in an unstoppable anger of the masses that will explode into anarchy and destruction. Or perhaps even both.

Maybe she knew long before us that the only way to establish truly accountable governance in the long run will be to divide the balance of power in such a way that the threat of being replaced at the next election always stares the ruling party of the day right in the face.

And for that to happen unity must die, she must die.

Krokodil

“Un”decidedly disabled: children in the gap between the main stream and the decidedly disabled

How can they appoint the most incomparably stupid idiots they can lay their hands on to run the department responsible for the education of our children and then on top of that contract the inoperably incompetent and inimitably ignorant to advise them?

Leigh fared extremely well in 2007, so says her final progress report. In fact, she exceeded all expectations.

Unfortunately she’ll have to repeat this year, so says a person related to someone befriended with somebody owed by some pen chewing big shot at the education department, who got him or herself on the educational payroll as an “expert” consultant. According to the indisputable wisdom dispensed by this faceless contractor of superior educational informedness, my daughter, at almost nine years of age, is too young to progress to a level higher than the one she just completed with flying colours and which is comparable with a conventional grade one (normally associated with 6 to 7 years of age).

This paragon of educational wisdom has decided that age should be the main criteria by which our children should be allocated their education level and consequently their class (special needs classes are not called grade 1 to 12 as in normal schools, but refer to the level of ability of a learner instead) with seemingly no two year age margin such as that which applies in normal schools either.

Apparently, in the infinite wisdom this individual possesses, it was decided that all special needs learners are on an average 2 to 3 years behind their peers of normal mental development. No allowance is made for the fact that in children with special needs educational functionality is not necessarily related to age at all, but is affected by a myriad of factors such as mental ability, sensory integration functionality, attainable level of socialization, etc etc etc.

They have now condemned my daughter to spend another year doing the same elementary school work she did for the last two years and I know that before the next year is out, someone up there will realise the idiocy of this new instant policy Thabo Mbeki’s incompetent array of overpaid yes-men in office cooked up overnight to prove that they did go in to the office every once in a while and the department will hastily retract it, but by then it will be too late for Leigh to progress to the appropriate level and they would have stolen another year from her – in addition to the year they already robbed her of and all the other opportunities they will deny her in her life because they do not have appropriate school facilities to accommodate her educational needs and that of the hundreds of thousands of other higher functioning special needs children like her who, in spite of their substantial numbers, is not provided for in our educational system. Not to mention their neglect to train educators to teach these children as well.

It is estimated that one out of every 17 South African children are affected by this dismal failure of the government to provide for higher functioning learners with special educational needs who fall in the gap between mainstream education and the currently existing spectrum of facilities aimed at mentally and physically challenged learners. These children are doomed to a choice between being the misfit in a normal school or being squeezed into the limited existing special needs education the state provides and which is inappropriate for their needs and abilities. They are consequently being robbed of the chance to develop to their full potential while most of them will, with the right training method, be able to achieve an education that would enable them to pursue normal careers.

That is why it is in the Department’s own interest that I fight them now and spare them the ordeal they will suffer the day when I finally reach such a level of gatvol that I decide to put on hold my entire life and dedicate my every waking hour for as many years as it takes to locate and organise several hundred thousand parents just like me and bring the biggest class action in the existence of litigation in South Africa against the Department of Education for this unforgivable infringement on the basic human rights of our children.

The day we marched...

A few days after the cold blooded assassination in 1993 of erstwhile MK leader and SACP boss, Chris Hani, by rightwing extremists Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis (both of whom are trying to twist the President's arm to consider pardoning them), we had a massive march in his honour in the city centre of Pretoria, these days known as Tshwane. I have participated in many marches and collective protest actions in my day, but, in the annals of experiences, this occasion remains to this day bookmarked in my life. In addition to sumiltaneously being one of the saddest as well as one of the most spiritually uplifting events I ever participated in, this march is also credited with providing the moment that changed my perception of the disenfranchised masses in my country forever.

In spite of the fact that before that day I had spend uncountable hours with comrades and dissidents involved in the struggle and knowing that they were fierce in their convictions and their commitment to the execution of the aims and principles of the struggle for freedom and equality for all in this land, I always had an inadvertent perception of us activists fighting the fight on behalf of a collective who is unable to do it for itself; of us being the deliverers of relief from oppression, disenfranchisement and poverty for the masses who had no voice of their own. After that day I would never view our people as a helpless abstraction ever again; a hapless collective who cannot liberate themselves. What I had always taken for helplessness exposed itself to me on that day as restraint; an almost supernatural restraint by people who have the autonomy to decide to control their anger in the face of incessant provocation.

This restraint is the single biggest component of the manifold characteristic that distinguishes the process of democratization in South Africa from that of most of the rest of Africa, even though it is never acknowledged by the analysts and other talking heads on the televisions of the world when they speak of the successful transformation of the Jewel of Africa, our very own Mzansi. It is a restraint that still holds, but which is tested to the same extreme limits these days than what is was during the reign of the White Masters.

The turnout that day was massive. And the mood so volatile that the command structure of Umkhonto We Sizwe (who assumed responsibility for order amongst our people themselves in spite of the presence of the regime’s hordes of hired guns, who were there en masse lining the route behind kilometre after kilometre of barbed wire coils, rolled out on either side of every street the march was designated to move along) divided the huge crowd into blocks of 500 people per block - 25 rows with 20 marchers to the row in each section.

A space of ten to fifteen metres was left open between each block and in this space the “marshals” walked. They were returned MK cadres that were called marshals on occasions where we coincided with the proponents of the regime so as to not evoke too much unease in their already uncomfortable consciousness. They were after all temporarily still “in charge” in a technical sort of way and besides, everybody was trying to be very gracious during those times. There must have been tens of those blocks filled with mourners: fifty, sixty; a hundred even. The crowd stretched so far down the street that one would’ve had to have been in a helicopter or something high up in the air to see quite how big it was.

It took more than two hours of standing in formation, sweating in the sun, but also getting acquainted with those around one, bonding beyond ordinary bond, replacing the collective anger with unshakeable resolve and solidarity, before all the blocks were finally set up. And then: the sound of thousands of rubber soled feet simultaneously, rhythmically impacting the hard tar surface of the street hundreds and hundreds of metres to the front, followed, almost immediately, by the familiar deep, deep drone of predominantly male voices as uncountable thousands of comrades took up the familiar chant while the first blocks in the massive human column at last slowly came into motion.

“Tjere, tjere..." the front thundered.

And "Ttjere, tjere...” we thundered back, wide eyed with awe at the power of the sound as amplified echoes of the chanting from all the groups bounced back at us off the sides of the highrise buildings lining the street on both sides of where we waited. Then we realised: apart from the mourning masses waiting in the columns, the city was completely empty.

When the motion finally reached our block, we locked arms; all twenty of us interlocking each other at the elbow, like every row before us, and joined the rhythmic dance which moved that enormous human organism forward.

A man who watched from the roof of one of the highest buildings in the area told me years later we looked like a “humongous” human caterpillar crawling slowly towards the centre of the capitol that day.

If the killers of Comrade Hani get the presidential pardon they now so audaciously demand consideration of, it will break my heart.

Krokodil

(Photographs: some of the pictures I took while we waited for the formation to be set up before the march began.)

Notes on the death of an idol...

I find the thought that someone like Norman Mailer must die like any normal person disconcerting and immensely weird.

Suddenly, in spite of all the controversy, subversion, famous infamy, abrasion and undeniable brilliance, he becomes just another man. And that does not feel right. There is a handful of people about whom I feel this way, most of them wayward subversives and social “denigrateurs” such as Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Martin Amis (yes, I cannot help but like this writer in spite of his often conservative sentiments), etc.

None of them are nice men in the true sense of the word. All of them became larger than life as a result of their tendency to indulge in deviant utterances. We idolise people like them because they stomp like a herd of buffalo where others fear to tread. Because they are truly free from any need to be liked by others, they become exempted from the ties that bind ordinary folk; they have no need for decency or protocol. They built their celebrity mostly on their highly entertaining abrasiveness, and we love them for it. We aim to become just like them. And then they fail us by dying like ordinary men.

In death – except for the price tag of the funeral – all are equal. Once the formalities and rites are concluded, “they” are just like “us”. What an indescribably depressing thought; what a demystification! It makes me wonder why we even bother. One death you owe this world, irrespective of who you are. Does that not offer us who are mere wordsmiths good reason to be as idle as possible? We who will not invent or discover anything that will contribute to the comfort or even survival of our descendants, why must we bother.

Or do we secretly pursue immortality precisely through what we leave behind when we depart this world? Is that ultimately why we almost compulsively post our thoughts on paper and even in cyberspace in spite of the inherent vulnerability that goes with it? Mister Norman Mailer, in one of his more sober utterances, said this about our compulsion to write:

“Part of the ability to keep writing over the years comes down to living with the expectation of disappointment. It's the exact opposite of capitalism. In capitalism you want your business to succeed, and to the degree it does your energy increases, and you go out and buy an even bigger business. In writing it's almost the exact opposite. You just want to keep the store going. You're not going to do as well this year as last year probably, but nonetheless let's keep the store going. What ruins most writers of talent is that they don't get enough experience, so their novels tend to develop a certain paranoid perfection.”

Norman Mailer exhibited a kind of deliberate egotism and a self conscious arrogance that only the most brilliant can get away with. And he got away with it. Yes, sir, he did. His abrasiveness at times matched that of Hunter Thompson. But other times his metaphors were so sharp and so clear that reading his narrative was more like watching a movie than like reading words on a page. Look at this excerpt published by The New York Times:

“Their uniforms were twice blackened, by the water and the dark slime of the trail. And for the instant the light shone on them their faces stood out, white and contorted. Even the guns had a slender articulated beauty like an insect reared back on its wire haunches. Then darkness swirled about them again, and they ground the guns forward blindly, a line of ants dragging their burden back to their hole.” - The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Only to be followed by this assessment by the author himself of his stature in American literature:

“I find arrogance in much of my mood. It cannot be helped. The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception that will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time. Whether rightly or wrongly, it is then obvious that I would go so far as to think it is my present and future work which will have the deepest influence of any work being done by an American novelist in these years. I could be wrong, and if I am, then I’m the fool who will pay the bill, but I think we can all agree it would cheat this collection of its true interest to present myself as more modest than I am.” - Advertisements for Myself (1959)

What can anybody say? The man won the Pulitzer twice.

One just has to love a character like that.

Krokodil

Waiting to exhale in Mzansi...

And so we hold our breath and wait for Polokwane[1].

Conference delegates will have ringside tickets to the long awaited showdown between Comrade Waboeing The Fly One and Comrade uMsholozi of Mshini Wami fame. The fight rages most vehemently in the ranks of the side kicks and even the hired hands are sticking their heads out from time to time.

Meanwhile former Gauteng premier and recent Black Economic Empowerment beneficiary Tokyo Sexwale, hoping to be the third dog in the idiom of two dogs fighting over a bone and a third taking it home, is feverishly spending his not so hard earned BEE dough buying stakes in national newspapers and romancing the grassroots in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu and who knows where else.

At the same time the only candidate truly qualified for the job remains mum amidst high level attempts to get him into the ring as well. If, and its a big “if”, Cyril Ramaphosa does decide to accept his nomination as a candidate, the moment of his entry into the succession race will be timed with cold blooded strategic precision. That is how this man does things. Mr Ramaphosa will not be lured by sentiment or emotion. He will not show his hand prematurely. He will not be drawn into the ungracious cesspool the succession saga has become. That is why he has not said a word about it. I believe he has no personal ambition to have the presidency of this country as a trophy in his CV. He will only vie for the job if there is no other way to get Mzansi back on track, to restore her dignity in the eyes of the world and to deliver her people from the unmentionable chaos that awaits her if barnyard chickens are allowed to rule her.

This week we heard that the much publicised pending corruption and bribery case against our ex-vice president may be alive and well after the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled prosecutors may use evidence obtained in a series of raids against him in a future hearing. The initial trial collapsed last year due to procedural matters. But! We must know that Zuma’s supporters will not accept this lying down. Both the ANC’s alliance partners, COSATU and the SACP, immediately voiced continued support for Zuma. Fortunately apart from delegates with overlapping membership of these organisations, neither COSATU nor the SACP has any voice at the conference. Reports about Zuma's popularity within the party itself are generally speculative, so we will only know how much support he really enjoys once the votes are cast in Polokwane.

In the meantime we are holding our breath as we wait for December while we read in the newspaper that Comrade Cyril is on his farm planting mealies.

Ag, nou ja

Krokodil

[1] For those not familiar with South African politics: Polokwane is the place where the ANC’s big conference is set to take place from 16 to 20 December this year. On the agenda this year is the election of a new leader for the party and, unless the constitution of the party is changed, this person will also become the next president of South Africa if the ANC wins the next general election in 2009. It is also an almost foregone conclusion that the ANC will prevail in 2009, unless certain factional divisions that have existed for a long time in the party reach a critical point and cause it to split. Therefore the prize up for grabs is not only the presidency of the party, but eventually also of the country. The two most prominent candidates on the leadership ballot, current President, Thabo Mbeki, and former vice President, Jacob Zuma who was fired by Mbeki after being charged with corruption, represent two of the main factions in the party. Additional candidates have also been nominated who represent alternatives to these bickering factions and the most important of these are Tokyo Sexwale, former Gauteng premier and BEE businessman, and of course my beloved leader and the only man many believe fit to get us out of the mess Mbeki and Zuma got us into, namely the honorable, most reverred and highly respected Cyril Ramaphosa, who has not indicated whether he will make himself available. (See my open letter to him in an earlier posting.)

Picture: Mbeki and Zuma in happier days.

Louis Ribeiro: immortal through his music

South African musician and anti-apartheid activist Louis Ribeiro passed away in London on October 23 after a long illness. He was 55-years-old. He left South Africa in the late 1980s and released two albums in the UK, Under African Skies, which he produced with the African Centre, and The Harvest.

Go and listen to samples of some of his songs at http://cdbaby.com/cd/jivenation (on the left side of the page.) My favourite is Shoshaloza. I love the way he fused African sounds with other genres.

Also Check out http://www.myspace.com/louisribeiro.

Ndiyakumamele, Louis!

Krokodil

Do thieves have mothers?

On the way to school in the car this morning Leigh asked: "Do thieves have mothers?"

I considered the question carefully. Sometimes her quizzes are typical childish quests for knowledge, but often they are tests designed to determine the level of my social comprehension which in her view is sometimes sadly lacking.

"Yes, they do," I eventually said, confident this one is not a trick question. I mean, it's a straight forward birds and bees matter and she knows that everything that breathes has to have a mother of some kind, right?

But alas "No, they don't," she says.

"Every living thing has a mother, Leigh."

"Thieves don't, you dummy!" she replies with friendly indulgence.

"How come?" I ask.

"Because they don't get born!"

The President's brother...

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s greedy band of nepotistic yes-men does not include his brother, entrepreneur and socio-economic analyst Moeletsi Mbeki. Known for his unflattering views on the state of the economic (un)health of Africa and the reasons for it, Moeletsi’s crusade is aimed at the vast wealth gap between the poor and the rich in post colonial Africa with special reference to the fast growing disparities between the poor and the noveau riche in South Africa since 1994.

According to a story in the Cape Times of 6 November 2007 Moeletsi warns of an industrial decline in South Africa which leaves small islands of wealth in a sea of poverty. He says the economy is in a “slow long-term decline”, a condition he ascribes to the fact that the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, such as financial services, real estate, business services, construction, trade, transport and communications, “do not export and they absorb the least amount of labour”. At the same time the leading export sectors, such as manufacturing and mining, which should absorb the most labour are in fact declining in terms of their contribution to the GDP.”

In other words, we export too little, import things we should and could be making ourselves and consequently the industries that have the potential to create the most jobs are in decline while economic sectors that create bureaucrats and grabbers are on the increase.

Hmm... that explains all those hideous shopping malls, all of them called this-”city” and that-”city”, which are popping up like mushrooms all over the place: all those bureaugrabbers are looking for places to blow the dough!

Moeletsi says that after 1994 amongst black people in South Africa the weakest party (the liberation movements) walked away with the most power, while the strongest party (the popular masses) emerged greatly weakened. Big business, multi-national corporations and the West emerged with their power intact and enhanced by democracy. It has created a model that facilitates the exploitation of South Africa’s vast mineral wealth, through the use of cheap black labour in combination with hugely inflated salaries for skilled and professional supervisory, managerial and technical staff.

Moeletsi warns a sliding economy that has become an exporter of raw materials (instead of processing it ourselves), unable to create sufficient jobs, and which feeds excessive salaries to a new black elite, was unsustainable: "If South Africa is to develop and get rid of endemic poverty and high unemployment, the elite in this country cannot continue to enjoy the standards of living of the middle classes of the West without the equivalent productivity..."

Black Economic Empowerment has unfortunately in many cases caused opportunistic black beneficiaries thereof to make themselves available as buffers for white business to continue with business as usual. Once they tasted the instant wealth, they never stopped for a minute to spare a thought for their destitute brothers in the poverty trap. Instead they caused it to spiral downward faster. Thabo took too long to realise what monsters the original empowerment policies created and only time will tell if new BEE legislation can remedy this.

How the hell could a learned man like Thabo not foresee this? He should have listened to his brother.

Krokodil

A genie, a race, a show, a castle and a couple of smiling damsels

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture..."
John Adams - US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)

My daughter drew this picture on her PC. In spite of her autism she uses several different software packages without ever having been shown how any of it works. I am convinced that she allready knows much more about computers than I ever will - probably because unlike me she has no fear of them.

Do yourself a favour and click on the image to see the blown up detail: there is a genie, a race and a show complete with audience consisting of winged unicorn ponies, plus a castle with damsels in the towers.

Maybe those children who speak less see more.

Open letter to Cyril Ramaphosa

It is not my habit to write open letters and I doubt that my leader will ever visit this little blog, but you never know...

Dear Comrade Cyril,

At the launch of your campaign aimed at raising one billion rand towards the education of previously disadvantaged tertiary learners in our country, you said (amongst other things) that you can forgive the previous dispensation for almost everything, even for locking our beloved leader up for 27 years, but what you can never forgive is that they denied most of our people an education. It was a speech so beautiful that it almost had me in tears.

But seeing you so prominently in the public political arena for the first time in so many years touched me more than even the most powerful words ever can. And looking at you, comrade leader, I wondered if you realise how reassuring it is to all the people in our land, irrespective of political conviction, socio-economic class or even race, to see you on a podium once again.

Our people are afraid these days, Comrade. It is not a fear of white men or black men or even a middle class fear or a fear of the poor. It is the fear of everybody who watch day by day how our liberation slips through the fingers of our bare hands like water we cannot hold onto no matter how we try. You delivered an immaculate constitution for us which is now grossly violated on a daily basis by lesser men who have no appreciation for the true significance it holds. These self important men, Comrade Cyril, also does not remember the Freedom Charter and they do not hear the cries of fallen cadres and the silence of the dead soldiers of the forgotten war anymore.

They fight over the leadership of the party and the country like junkyard dogs over a bone while not one of them is truly fit to govern with wisdom, insight, balanced compassion and above all selflessness. They do not care that they are bringing disunity to the party and that their actions are threatening the stability of our country as a whole.

Comrade Cyril, I know you read the papers and see the flashes of ever increasing chaos that has erupted under the current ruler and his army of wannabe wabenzi’s who think running a country is the same thing as playing office-office in your mama’s lounge as a child while they are gambling with the lives of 45 million people and squandering the gains we have achieved so far.

I beseech you because I know that you alone can bring us back from the brink we are fast approaching. I know that you are the only one who can reconcile the undeniable need for restitution and reconstruction with the equal importance of the principles of fairness and a socio-economically stable middle class to create the wealth we need to uplift all our people.

You are our true leader and you should be our President.

I am your’s truly

Krokodil

Jake, Thabo en daai SARU-manne wat nie ken van dummy en sidestep nie

Ai, dat manne wat nie eens weet hoe dit voel om te dummy en te sidestep met ʼn rugbybol in die hande nie nou dies moet wees wat besluit oor onse rugby...

My issue is eintlik met politici, maar vir ʼn wegspring het ek nou eers een en ander op die hart oor ons nasionale opium (ja, ek geniet self ook my weeklikse dosis daarvan!).

Ons kon net sowel die ou geel koppetjie maar vir die Engelse gegee het, want nog voor die nasionale euforie Maandag op Nuweland tot ʼn hoogtepunt kon kom, is die Springbokke se oorwinning klaar geruïneer deur die publieke toutrekkery tussen Jake en SA Rugby se opperburokrate. Arme Kameraad Thabo het nog nie eens kans gehad om behoorlik in te cash op sy glorieryke oomblik op Ashwin Willemse se skouer daar in die Franse rugbystadion nie, toe pluk Mike Stofile en sy mede rugby wabenzi’s die mat met soveel geweld onder die nasionale afrigter se voete uit dat die Staatspresident ook op sy bas te lande kom.

Ja, ja, Jake het nou wel voor die wêreldbekertoernooi gesê hy’s nie lus om na sy kontrak uitgeloop het aan te gaan nie; en ja, dinge het toe tydens die gebeure in Frankryk verander en SARU was moedswillig om hom nie eers ʼn kans te gee om van plan te verander nie, maar ek twyfel of ons ooit sal weet hoe die poeiers rêrig daar agter die skerms geval het. My vermoede is dat Jake nie eintlik soveel belangstel om aan te bly as wat hy belangstel om die spul daar by SA Rugby ʼn punt te druk nie.

Ongelukkig is dit die manne wat op die veld bloed gesweet het wat nou die prys betaal vir hulle afrigter en sy base se publieke manewales. Mens kan nie help om te voel dat hulle “kwatsch” ernstige afbreek gedoen het aan die Springbokke se oorwinning nie. Net soos ons Staatspresident se goedkoop poging om politieke munt daaruit te slaan.

Die hele bevolking van hierdie land het nou oorwinning op ʼn wêreldplatvorm geproe. Hulle sal dit weer wil hê en hulle weet niemand staan ʼn groter kans as ons rugbyspelers om dit vir hulle te gee nie. Die Springbokke het transformasiegrasie gekoop, gebruik dit behoorlik. Tradisionele Springbokondersteuners het gewys hulle gee nie ʼn moer om wat ʼn man se kleur is as hy oor die doellyn duik of ʼn drie van die vyand afweer nie en die nuwe massa Springbokentoesiaste het gewys solank as daardie geel koppetjie huis toe kom, gee hulle nie ʼn moer om wat die kleur is van die ouens wat hom bring nie.

Êrens die afgelope maand het iemand geskryf dat dit groot geld vat om ʼn 75kg laaitie in ʼn 110kg internasionaal mededingende rugbyspeler te omskep en dis wragtag waar. Dis van jongs af jarelange volgehoue spesiale voeding (ek weet van verskeie skole wat voedingsprogramme het vir hullle topspelers), ideale geriewe, die beste afrigters, ens ens ens. Alles buite die bereik van die kinders in die townships. As daai manne daar bo wat nie van sidestep enigiets weet nie, nie vinnig gaan begin luister en besef hulle moet hulle bekpraatjies met ernstige ontwikkelingsgeld stu nie, gaan rugby óf in obskurigheid verdwyn, óf die domein van die nuwe opkomende swart elite word wat dit kan bekostig om hulle seuns op die regte kragvoer groot te maak. Nie een van die laasgenoemde twee scenarios baat die duisende hoopvolle township spelertjies wat na RWB 2007 groen en goue drome droom enigiets nie.

Net soos in politiek, is daar in mededingende spansport nie quick fixes nie. Vra maar vir ons arme (oukei, nie so arm nie!) ingevoerde nasionale sokkerafrigter van wie daar verwag is om binne twee oefensessies ʼn jarelange endemiese losing streak te fix. En, face it, hierdie land verdien darem om elke vier jaar oor iets te kan goedvoel.

Nou ja, tot môre dan

Krokodil