A catchy new struggle song, ‘Shoot the politician’, has been hailed by the 20-million South African voters who get nothing in return for their vote. “If ‘Shoot The Boer’ refers to a struggle against a corrupt anti-democratic system rather than being a call for genocide, then MP’s won’t have a problem if we sing ‘Shoot the politician’,” explained a spokesman. “Ain’t democracy a bitch?”
Meanwhile some white farmers have expressed “slight discomfort” at their taxes being used to pay for Julius Malema’s hate speech defence.
“Call us reactionary counterrevolutionaries,” said farmer Ploeg Spoeg-Kroeg, “but doesn’t it strike anyone else as a bit odd that we’re paying lawyers to defend Julius’s right to call for us to be murdered?”
However, most legal experts have agreed that the song ‘Shoot the Boer’ is not a call for actual murder but a call to arms against the repressive apartheid regime, a verdict that has been welcomed by the writers of the new hit struggle song, ‘Shoot the politician’.
“When we sing, ‘Shoot the politician, blow the corrupt thieving complacent racist motherf*cker away’, we’re actually just calling for greater accountability,” explained songwriter Stratocaster Semenya. “Or maybe we aren’t, but that all depends on what the lawyers say. And how much longer our patience holds out.”
He said that references to specific people were also harmlessly metaphorical.
“The second verse goes, ‘Shoot Sicelo Shiceka, shoot him in the ass with buckshot made of diamonds, then rub wasabi paste onto his perforated ass, then shoot him in the ass again, don’t worry, he’s got medical aid’.
“Obviously in this case he is just a metaphor for all the criminally insane MPs who use taxpayers’ money to visit their girlfriends in Swiss jails. So chill. It’s not a threat.
“Or is it?”
This morning politicians from across the political spectrum reacted angrily to the song, saying that freedom of speech was nice in theory but when it “blundered with its grubby peasant clogs through the hallowed members-only halls of Parliament and threatened those who account to nobody but God, their bank managers and Jacob Zuma – in ascending orders – then it has gone too far”.
“You can’t go around calling for people to be shot,” said backbencher Filibuster Zuma. “Unless you’re referring to Boere. Or criminals. Or cockroaches. And by cockroaches we mean of course political opponents, and we mean ‘shoot’ in a metaphorical sense. Sort of, depending on the context.”
South Africa “the protest capital of the world” - The beginning of the end for the ANC!
As the ANC turns into an aggressive kleptocracy - and confronts an ongoing country wide revolt from poor communities - the politicians have made themselves the enemies of their own people. As one of its members said: “The ANC regards their own people — not the other official political parties — as their true opposition, because they are closer to the pain on the ground.”
The ranting against Boers and ugly women is to take attention away from the multitudes of protesting people whose life is a nightmare under the rainbow-nation mirage. The very convenient return to anti-apartheid songs calling for whites to be shot.. and their harping on ‘struggle songs’ as they were sung in the past, is not a reflection of how attached they are to the struggle, but an attempt to get the people to believe that all they have is remnants of the old order against whom their anger should be vented. In this way, the political elite sidetracks the people from singing about the current dislocation of water and electricity, the ruthless and violent evictions of shack dwellers, the vicious police attack on service delivery protesters, and the kleptomaniac proclivities of the new political and economic elites. They raise race not to confront racism but as a card to render themselves immune from criticism and also to find a slice for themselves in the economic cake. It is a weapon of mass distraction. They want to focus the people on imaginary fights with the Boers while the filthy rich black political and economic elites are involved in equity deals with the stinky rich whites, strolling half-naked with them in exotic beaches and exclusive resorts.
The brutal killing of an unarmed protestor, attacked simultaneously by six policemen - viciously beaten with batons and fired on at close range with rubber bullets.
Tatane was a school teacher, a councilor, a husband and father of one child, a rolemodel in his poor community where he was a volunteer teacher helping learners to improve their marks in Science, Math and Afrikaans. He rescued a helpless old man from being sprayed down by a water cannon. He took his shirt off to draw attention away from the old man, telling the police to rather spray him. The cops then attacked him. Anybody with sense will recognise brutal, excessive force by ill-disciplined cops. The ANC Militia, masquerading as the SAPS, are now clearly and assuredly completely out of control.
Shocking images of the police brutality were broadcast to the nation on television yesterday - they showed an unarmed man being viciously beaten and shot to death by a mob of policemen.
Pictures of the attack on the 33-year-old man by at least six policemen simultaneously, during a service delivery protest at Setsoto, in Ficksburg, eastern Free State, were shown on all SABC news bulletins last night.
The visuals of the chilling and sad scene show how the armed policemen cornered Andries Tatane, striking him with their batons and kicking him in an assault that lasted for a few minutes.
Tatane, from Masaleng township, Ficksburg, is seen holding his hand against his chest after the assault. He collapsed and died before an ambulance arrived.
We are all Andries Tatane - By An Anonymous Reader
South Africa is far from what Tunisia was like pre-revolution (for one it is not governed by a one-party police state), but the parallels of small-town cops beating to death (here‘s video footage from the South African state broadcaster SABC news) a South African Everyman because he was angry with poor or non-existent service delivery (water, electricity, roads, housing) is eerily reminiscent of a certain fruit vendor in southern Tunisia. Again, the differences between South Africa and Tunisia are too many to mention. But if you asked someone in Meqheleng (yes, I did look up the largest township in Ficksburg in the Free State Province) if they are as frustrated as your typical Tunisian circa 2010, I wonder what they would say?
Would the ANC’s proper electoral mandate and liberation credentials outweigh the impression that those in power–Jacob Zuma, Tokyo Sexwale, Sicelo Shiceka, and Siphiwe Nyanda, etcetera–are amassing wealth and governing just like Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali? I worry that a few years from now they won’t care how legitimate the ruling party’s mandate is: poor service delivery is poor service delivery.
You know at least for now in further Tunisia parallels the people of Ficksburg have ratcheted things up a bit.
That leads me this: Does that 18-year old in Meqheleng know the basic dynamics of what is happening in North Africa or the Middle East? Are vernacular radio and local papers giving the “Arab spring” coverage, at least to the point that that 18-year old realizes how crap Mubarak was and, closer to home, how dismissive the ANC leadership has been to their demands the last 17 years, basically the span of his or her entire lifespan?
Trevor Manuel, former finance minister, said in the aftermath of the Paris riots that Cape Town is treading water. Meanwhile, Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of Thabo, drew a picture for the country following the events in Tunisia.
We shouldn’t be surprised when in the absence of meaningful political representation and mediation, the atrophy of social change, and in a context of socially acceptable and government sanctioned accumulation through nepotism, cronyism, and political-connectedness, the structural violence of South African life finds vivid and widespread expression.
“Service delivery” protests (a misnomer if there ever was one), or what passes as xenophobic, domestic, interpersonal violence, wanton brutality on the part of security apparatus, all these are all symptoms of the greater malaise.
Sky news propaganda.
Dramatic footage of the whole clip was shown on the e News Channel(Warning - shocking and disturbing) where the man was just verbally challenging the police while they were threatening the crowd with a water cannon telling the protesters to go away. He was unarmed and posed no threat to the police. The man was first attacked by a cop with a batton, then he started fighting back... THEN Sky cut the clip in where you see him fighting the cop. They make it look like he was violent to begin with, leaving out the beginning.
Death in Ficksburg shows how we value life By : ITUMELENG MAHABANE
A MAN died this week. He died with his arms clutching his chest, trying to stop the blood spilling out of a gaping bullet hole.
His crime? In a country in which nearly 50% of the people live in poverty and where nearly 50% of black people are unemployed — most of them without the prospect of ever finding a job — he died because he wanted a better deal for his community.
In a country in which miscellaneous items worth hundreds of millions of rand are consumed each year by politicians, where people become instant multimillionaires supposedly providing public goods, goods that rarely materialise, this man died because he wanted his government to do its job.
There is no official finding. Early indications are that he was killed, possibly murdered, by the system that is meant to protect him. He was beaten viciously by a group of police officers. Then he was shot. Probably as he was lying on the ground, hurt and defenceless.
By the the middle of this morning, there had not yet been a statement of sympathy, of outrage, of a call for an investigation, from a member of the Cabinet.
A country with three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, a government ruled by a party once described as having the most genteel armed wing in the world, and this is what we have been reduced to?
The public, vicious deaths of citizens at the hands of the people entrusted with protecting our lives seemingly leaves us cold.
In Andries Tatane’s death we have shown, unequivocally, how we value life in a country with a constitution that is supposed to be the most progressive and enviable in the world.
This is not simply about police brutality. This is about national brutality. The police are simply a reflection of the society we are. It begins with the acceptance of the brutality of poverty and economic injustice.
Former President Thabo Mbeki described SA as a country with two economies, a first economy and a second economy.
Between 70% and 80% of South Africans live in that second economy and it is a place of humiliating and incapacitating poverty.
The overwhelming majority of our country survives on a household income of less than R2500 a month, most will spend between R500 and R1500 a month on accommodation because there is a shortage of pro-poor housing stock.
That is ignoring for a moment that even R1000 will simply get you a makeshift room. These households must then feed, clothe and send their children to school.
These poor people must survive in an economy in which pricing is determined by the need to satisfy the earning expectations of first-world citizens and their price-fixing and where their government has failed to provide functioning public infrastructure.
The poverty in which vast numbers of South Africans live can make places such as Alexandra seem like places of privilege.
We have people who have been on housing lists for more than a decade, many of them the supposed recipients of supposed houses built by people who live it up at bling parties, hobnobbing with the political and business elites of the first world.
Meanwhile, provinces are rushing to outlaw shack settlements.
We seek instead to criminalise the poor for being poor.
They must know their place and sit in the dust bowls that apartheid shipped them out to until the rest of us have eaten.
We cannot have them scarring the vistas of our first economy.
The maladministration and poor governance is tolerated, rewarded even.
The unequivocal message from the reaction to the death of Tatane in Ficksburg is that not only do we do not value the lives of our people, the government has a minimal sense of accountability to its citizens. If it does not care about their lives then how can it possibly care about its duty to them?
This is not simply about poor governance and delivery, it is about economic and social justice. There is something repugnant, for instance, about the ease with which we demonise workers in our battle against inflation, when the problem is multifaceted.
In a country of bread-price fixers, officials who steal from children and pensioners, and crass chauvinistic materialists, the ease with which the working class has become the enemy of the country is a reflection of the society we have become
We can comfort ourselves and tell ourselves that we have a democracy and a constitution and that there will be no violent uprisings in this country.
Yet democracy is not a piece of paper. It functions only if people believe they have a real choice, and many do not think they do.
In that context, the combination of extraordinary inequality, material excess, poor political accountability and responsiveness, and debilitating, brutalising corruption will eventually spread the flames engulfing poor, black SA into our comfortable little first world.
We are becoming tribes at war. We need to find our way back to prioritising an inclusive and just society.
I can predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded.
For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes.
The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed.
A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200000 people were killed.
The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.
Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power;
In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its history;
The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and
The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA’s poor and foreign African migrants.
What should the ANC have done, or be doing?
The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA’s strengths were; identified what SA’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses.
A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels.
What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE).
BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations.
Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE.
The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business.
The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. That was the design of the big conglomerates.
Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates.
But what is wrong with protecting SA’s conglomerates?
Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.
The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour;
It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources;
It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population;
It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and
It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass.
Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates.
The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos.
My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground.
But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates.
The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed.
What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment.
So what is the correct road SA should be travelling?
We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.
205 million people were unemployed in 2010 (according to a UN Report) and that number is not expected to improve this year – which leaves global economic growth on the back foot.
Europe, Africa and South America’s labour markets are struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis – as people under 25 face youth unemployment rates at a record level of 21 percent.
Here are the 10 most jobless countries:
1. South Africa: 25.3 percent unemployment
The problem: Poor education leading to high youth unemployment. Though the government has tried to create more jobs, one in four people in South Africa is unemployed – and jobs created by government programs only last 4-6 days.
2. Croatia: 18.8 percent unemployment
The problem: The government’s initiatives for job growth have failed – and 141,000 jobs lost in the last 2 years. $13 billion of new infrastructure projects announced by Croatia are expected to combat the problem.
3. Lithuania: 17.8 percent unemployment
The problem: High corporate taxes and large deficit – in effort to control the credit crisis, Lithuania imposed higher corporate taxes which only lead to more companies shutting down.
4. Latvia: 14.3 percent unemployment
The problem: Even lower unemployment rates outside the capitol in the Riga region where unemployment can soar up to 22.3 percent. Their government job programs have been troubled and education budgets cut.
5. Ireland: 13.8 percent unemployment
The problem: Known as the face of EU economic problems, Ireland’s real estate bubble resulted in a banking sector collapse. Unemployment went up by 10 percent and is unlikely to pass due to an exodus of people leaving the country.
6. Slovakia: 12.5 percent unemployment
The problem: Up and raising, the unemployment rate in Slovakia is expected to rise until March, when job market reforms are expected to have kicked in.
7. Greece: 12.4 percent unemployment
The problem: 192,000 people have lost their jobs in October 2009 and he economy shrank in 2010 by 4.2 percent with construction, retail and tourism taking the biggest hit.
8. Poland: 12.3 percent unemployment
The problem: Youth, women and long-term unemployed struggle to find jobs. The country has not been able to control its unemployment rate since it moved on from communism 20 years ago.
9. Colombia: 11.3 percent unemployment
The problem: 2.5 million out of work although financial and natural gas sectors are performing well.
10. Turkey: 11.2 percent unemployment
The problem: Export drops in automotive, linens and textile sectors. Although women’s employment prospects are improving by 0.9 percent (to 28 percent) the year before.
Minister and epic freeloader Sicelo Shiceka has been named by the ANC as the man who will draft a new Free Stuff Charter to replace the Freedom Charter, citing his willingness to “fight oppression to the death even it means he must eat nothing but lobster thermidor”. Meanwhile, the poor have asked Siceka whether he would like his head-basket lined with velvet or silk when he is finally guillotined.
According to the Sunday Times, Shiceka spent R300,000 of taxpayers’ money on a single visit to his girlfriend who is serving time in a Swiss prison, a detail initially thought to be the invention of satirists but confirmed by Swiss authorities who asked the media not to make “insensitive remarks about turf wars between rival gangs of yodellers”.
Shiceka is also said to have spent R700,000 of public money at the One&Only hotel in Cape Town, although it unknown whether he and his colleagues stayed in the standard Quasi-a-la-Modo Faux Florentine suite or splurged for the Mafia Bride penthouse with full Taste Impairment options, including porcelain whippets, paintings of Tuscan painters painting Greek islands, and quotes by Paulo Coelho on the toilet paper.
The revelations have reportedly reinvigorated the ruling party, with many describing Shiceka as the “poster-boy for the new ANC”, and calling for an updated Charter.
“It is this breathtaking capacity to spend other people’s money that makes him the stand-out contender to draft the new Free Stuff Charter,” explained government spokesman Mbezelment Mbete.
He said that the ANC had had problems with the Freedom Charter for some years now.
“The enemy is no longer white oppression,” he explained. “Today the enemy is off-white three-star bed-and-breakfasts that grind our leaders under the jackboot of austerity.”
He added that some of the original Freedom Charter was “just embarrassingly old school”.
“’South Africa belongs to all how live in it’? Seriously? I think if you read the fine print you’ll find that most of South Africa belongs to the Peoples’ Democratic State Organ for the Harvesting of Viable Topsoil, Office 1367, Concrete Tower 7, 103 Concrete Street, Concrete City, Concretia Prefecture, China; and they’ve got the hastily PhotoShopped title deed to prove it.”
Meanwhile South Africa’s 20-million citizens living in abject poverty have suggested to Shiceka that “if he wants to keep saying ‘F*ck you’ to the poor, there are cheaper ways of doing it”.
“For starters, you could just hire a van with a loudspeaker on the top and drive around yelling, ‘Hey fodder, f*ck you!’” suggested spokesman Lesmisrables Afrika. “Or if you really want to insult us, why not just keep promising a better life in return for our votes and then don’t…oh, wait, you’re already doing that.”
However, Afrika said that the poor were not unreasonable and wanted to know whether Shiceka would like his head to fall into basket lined with silk or one lined with velvet when their patience finally ran out and they guillotined the kleptocrats.
Its an old saying but Charity really does begin at home. David Cameron would obviously deny that he has just helped Pakistan buy six new submarines with his very generous £650 million hand out of British tax payers money, but that’s what most rational British people are thinking today. Like India there is no doubt that there is poverty in Pakistan , but surely their own Governments should be held responsible for some of it. If they can afford Nuclear weapons and an army navy and air force bigger than the British and splash out on six new Chinese submarines then there is something morally and economically wrong with their country. At a time when the UK is facing the most sever cuts since WWII, Cameron not only angers the whole Country with massive payments to dodgy Governments he actually increases the overseas aid budget. The British Royal Navy is little more than a coastal defence force at the moment and would struggle, to say the least, if Argentina was to try to invade the Falklands again, luckily Argentina is skint as well.
To simplify things I believe we should run our country as we would run our own households. Imagine if you were hard up but managed to save for years for a family trip to Disney land and a week before you are about to go, your father decides that he has donated all of the holiday money to a family down the road who spend most of their time selling and using drugs and committing vandalism including damaging your car and assaulting you sister? Doesn’t make any sense does it, well that’s how angry Cameron is making the ordinary people of Great Britain feel. If Gordon Brown was Prime Minister (remember him) we would not have been surprised at all at these type of decisions, but you would expect better from a so called Conservative Prime Minister. The truth is if their was an election tomorrow he would be toast and Labour would win with a landslide and be in power for the next decade and so the cycle continues. Even if Mickey Mouse himself was in charge of this crumbling Country he would make sure his buddy Pluto and his missus Minnie were living well before splashing the cash on others. Never mind Disney - Cloud Cuckoo comes to mind with tweedle dum and tweedle dummer in charge.Source:- http://www.roguegunner.com/
It seems there is a prevailing opinion that once you have emigrated, you lose your right to read the news in South Africa. And God forbid you dare comment, which has become a popular feature of most news websites. Should you do so, you are frequently met with hostility, ridicule, threats and insults which range from the hilarious to the downright disturbing.
Now, why does one leave a country? Is it because you’re a coward? Is it because it is easy? Is it because it is financially advantageous? Who knows?
Leaving, for me, was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. And I say “had to do”, because I have this very well honed sense of self-preservation. I no longer felt safe in SA. I didn’t like living in a prison called home. The hijackings of cyclists really put me off. Erratic bills from the Joburg City Council and zero recourse (I had to pay R32 000 for a “clearance certificate” on selling the house, promised a refund, nothing six months on), we’ve been victims of crime too many times, crumbling roads, deteriorating water quality (we used to wakeboard on the Vaal river – no more), absurd police force, even more outrageous and absurd “government”. You know all the reasons; having experienced them in person, and increasingly understanding that there was a gaping chasm in my personal moral and ethical makeup and that of South African society, it was clear that getting out was the only option.
Why is it hard? Emigrating is very disruptive. More than that, it is a mountain of admin and paperwork. And it is expensive. It requires commitment, perseverance and nerves of steel. And lots of money.
Once you arrive on the other side, you want to look forward and get on with it. However, if you are someone who likes being informed, plugging in takes time. The political landscape is murky, the issues are almost trivial compared to what we have become accustomed to in SA, the personalities are unknown. And, frankly, the news here lacks entertainment value - it is comparatively boring.
Add to that the fact that no matter who you are, you will have plenty of friends and family in South Africa. If you are like me, you feel strongly about why you had to leave (you’d have to – see the paragraph about why it is hard). When I feel strongly about something, I tend to want to proselytise others into my way of thinking. To me, getting out was a matter of life and death.
So if I think it is in your interests to look at emigration because it might improve your chances of living to be an old coffin dodger, believe me I will try and convince you to do it.
Then there is the issue of confirming to oneself that the right decision has been made (who wouldn’t want to, right?) Well, that’s not difficult, now is it? Look at top stories in SA news right now: TheTimes, News24, Moneyweb, City Press. You get the idea – hell, of course you do, you live there.
And this is before we start digging into the shenanigans of government, you know, Bheki and the lease, Jacob and the 783 charges, Schabir and the “terminal illness”, Nomvula and her now deceased son, Shiceka and the fake degree, Motshekga and whatever the hell she is doing with education, Kgalema and the dodgy deals, the Guptas, Radovan Krejcir, Lolly Jackson, Joey Mabasa, and on and on it goes.
And yes, it is a psychological reality that individuals will seek out information which confirms their world view (and their drastic decisions). It is comforting. There, I admit it.
People, what you are accepting IS NOT NORMAL. It is NOT ACCEPTABLE. None of it. But it becomes the norm and acceptable in SA. You are a part of that society which permits it, like it or not. I am no longer, because I found myself incompatible with that society. Are you compatible with it? Do you like what you are becoming as a consequence of being a member of that society?
Anyway. What are your thoughts? Now that I have left, is reading and commenting on SA news verboten? Should we prevent people from commenting on, say, USA news if they aren’t resident? Should I not share with the world, in this age of social media, the things that I find here which I find strange and wondrous? (You know, like getting your phone line connected in less than two hours, electricity connected in a two minute visit to the power company, having no fence or burglar bars around my house, and, yes, having to do my own dishes and mow the lawn.)
Or should I refrain from comparing, shut the hell up, and let the South Africans I love carry on thinking that they have it the best in the world.
Hacktivist group Anonymous has released a video calling on the people of South Africa to rise up and “take their country back” from corrupt and inept rulers.
The video, posted to YouTube on March 18, begins with grainy footage of wind sweeping over Table Mountain, evoking the famous Winds of Change speech by Harold Macmillan which foreshadowed the end of the colonial era.
The now-infamous Anonymous mask breaks in and a computerized female voice begins to list off a set of injustices being done to the people of South Africa; how the country has one of the largest rich-poor gaps in the world while Anglo-American and the Oppenheimer family have gotten wealthy from the country’s mineral resources; how, over the last six years, more people have been murdred in South Africa than in the Iraq War; and how crime runs rampant “while the police are rendered impotent by the very laws that govern South Africa.”
“Throughout all of this, Jacob Zuma and the rest of the South African government are telling the rest of the world that South Africa is a Rainbow Democracy,” Anonymous says.
“How long, people of South Africa, will you allow this to go on?”
“The winds of change are blowing across mother earth and the time is now to take a bold stand against the government because they lost all legitimacy the day the first child was killed under their watch,” Anonymous says.
Anonymous then calls on the people to “take their country back.”
“We are Anonymous and we support you. We are Black and we are White, we are Coloured and we are Indian.”
The website of South Africa’s ANC Youth League (ANCYL) was hacked last Wednesday afternoon, in what some believe is the start of a much larger cyber-war in the country.
Computer news website membrum.com reports the hackers gained administrative access to the site. A fake press release by ANCYL leader Julius Malema announcing his resignation from the political organization because he “had made a fool of [him]self,” among other “essential” reasons, was posted on the front page.
“The hacker then went on to expose the site’s directory structure, systematically deleting core config files (see screenshot below) before — we suspect — a backup was implemented,” membrum reports.
The attack happened hours before Malema was set to give a radio interview on Metro Drive FM. The website of the popular news-talk station was also defaced at the same time.
Although the website was repaired a few hours later, it was still experiencing errors over the next several days.
An examination of the source code of the attack shows someone named “Warbird” was responsible, although it is not known who exactly did it.
Online marketing specialist Rafiq Philips told TimesLIVE, “There are some basic security measures you have to take care of when you build a website, obviously the youth league website was lacking.”
ANCYL spokeswoman Magdelene Moonsamy gave an Orwellian spin on the hacking to IOL News when she said, “There is nothing that we are aware of at this point and there is nothing on our website. “We do not have time for things like this.”
ANCYL spokesman, Floyd Shivambo, slammed down the phone on Times LIVE when they contacted him for comment about the hacking.
With local elections looming we are bound to hear all sorts of nonsense about how the government should be uplifting the “economically disadvantaged” (the current SA euphemism for the poor) and how our finance ministers have failed to deliver to the poor in 17 years of ANC government. Deliver what though? Jobs, free money, hope, food vouchers? Surely that's the old give a hungry man a fish and he'll be hungry again tomorrow argument? What can you possibly give the poor of South Africa that would provide them with more than a faint hope of a better life? The government had the brilliant idea of starting a national lottery which would encourage people to gamble what little money they had on a ticket which could change their lives for ever. Very few lives have been changed.
In between elections the poor get very little mention and there is good reason for that. Firstly, they are not particularly economically active which means that they don't count. Let me give you an African wildlife metaphor. When an impala is born and is found to be weak the rest of the herd don't run around starting action groups with like minded caring impala to protect the weak of the herd. The poor lame hobbling impala is left to fend for itself and it's inability to run faster than other impala of a similar age is just part of the process of natural selection. The lame and the sick end up on the dinner menu of the predators. And it's not all rosy for the predators either. If a lion cannot hunt for himself he is reduced to scrounging the scraps from other lion kills. The chances are that he will be driven away by younger healthier lions and will become thinner and thinner before dropping from sheer starvation and exhaustion and providing food for the vultures. Who said it was a fair world? We are the only species that protect the weak with such enthusiasm and the result has had a substantial effect on the quality of the gene pool.
The second reason the poor don't matter very much in the yawning gaps between elections is that they don't have much money, don't throw great parties and can't chuck the juicy bone of a tender deal to hungry politicians. Julius (Kiddie Amin) Malema may talk about improving the lot of the poor and nationalising the mines so that ordinary South Africans can share in all that wealth underground but we all know this is nothing but political bullshit. Anyway, when has a nationalised industry ever benefited the people (with the exception of oil in Norway)? They usually end up costing the taxpayer a fortune and the reason for that is very simple; politicians don't make good businessmen. No, like most politicians the world over, Julius and his mates want to hang out with the sort of people who can settle the bill for all that Johnnie Blue at the end of the evening. So why waste time on the poor?
If the ANC were really serious about doing something for the poor in South Africa they would start an economic education scheme. This would point out there is no such thing as free money. Money has to be earned and that is the only way most people are able to survive. The gap between rich and poor is no different than the gap between the successful and unsuccessful hunter. The rich are, by definition, smarter, better informed, better connected, more willing to take risks and as a result are more productive members of society. It's no accident that the poor suck life's hind tit....they are always waiting for handouts. If the government, by some miracle, created five million jobs in the next ten years what sort of jobs do you think they would be? Would they provide opportunities for the poor to make serious money and change their family's lives for ever? Or would they be crappy, low paid jobs that would provide just enough to live on? Where's the dignity in that?
If the poor really think that the ANC are there to provide a better life for them then they are probably too dumb to realise that they are nothing but gullible electoral cannon fodder. The chances of things ever changing for these wretched people is zero. If it did the ANC would no longer have a desperate constituency to go to for votes every five years. David Bullard
The police and other corruption-busting organisations have warned South Africans to stop paying tax, saying that citizens are knowingly becoming accessories to crime by funding a shady gang of confidence tricksters, fraudsters, embezzlers and petty thieves known throughout the criminal underworld as “the South African government”.
According to recent estimates, around R100-billion is stolen by corrupt public officials every year, thanks largely to a massive annual heist known to government criminals as “tax season”.
“As far as we can tell there’s a front operation, fairly legit, they’ve got offices and everything,” explained lead investigator Colombo Phiri.
“There’s a big blue sign over the door that says ‘SARS’, and every year during the ‘tax season’ heist they rake in about R350-billion of swag.”
He added that once the loot was safely in SARS’s vaults, the “Government Gang” usually stole between 25 and 30 percent of it, depending on the current price of BMWs, the amount of patronage they needed to buy from regional ANC Youth League commissars, and the number of political opponents they needed to assassinate in Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
Phiri conceded that up to R100-billion was also being stolen in the private sector every year, but said less fuss was made of this for one major reason.
“The main difference is that citizens are not required by law to hand over 30 percent of their earnings to patently corrupt companies,” he said. “It’s not like you go to jail if you refuse to shop at your friendly neighbourhood arms dealer.”
However, he said, the law was the law and taxpayers who willingly funded organised crime – or extremely disorganised organised crime, as in the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga – could expect no mercy.
“When you fill in that tax return and write that cheque, you know that 30 percent of your money is going straight into the slush fund of some self-entitled mouth-breather with a Grade 9 education and a cousin in the Youth League,” he said.
“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
He added that those who flouted the law by paying tax would be prosecuted, unless prosecutors accidentally shredded and then burnt their dockets after being bought off with tax revenue.
“Do the right thing. Stash your salary under your mattress and if you see anyone who works for the government, from a local councillor right up to cabinet ministers, do not approach them but rather go to a safe place, keeping your money well out of sight, and call the police immediately.” source: hayibo.com
Why are we spending R800m on aircraft for VIPs when millions of people do not have housing, health and basic services?
Government VIPs will soon be jetting around the country in two luxury jets complete with sleeping quarters, computer and satellite communication services and a conference cabin with space for six people.
The department of defence has leased the jets on a five-year contract to supplement its VIP squadron.
According to a report in Beeld newspaper, the contract with AdoAir, a small Lanseria-based company, is worth R808m.
The company belongs to the Adonai Group, founded by Nigerian businessman Adegboyega Olulade.
AdoAir “came out top” out of five competing tenders, the department spokesperson Ndivhuwo wa ha Mabaya said yesterday. He said an ageing air transport fleet had made it necessary for the South African Air Force to charter flights for VIP air transport, and this had been expensive.
Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu revealed in December that chartered flights for VIPs spiked from R3.6m in 2009 to R16.9m last year.
Mabaya added that the lease agreement also included the maintenance of the luxury jets over the five-year period.
He said: “The two jets will be used by the VIP squadron. Our current fleet of VIP planes are very old and we don’t have the money to buy new planes.”
These jets will also be used when the presidential jet, Inkwazi, is undergoing maintenance. - City Press
Readers comments
fandash1 -R808m over 5 years equates to R161,6m per year yet the cost which had spiked was only R16.9m and that over 5 years equates to R84.5m. Maybe the honourable Minister sholuld ask for a refund on her school fees as basic sums (no not maths) were not mastered. What a rip off for the tax payer. 9 1/2 times the cost dear Minister, who gets the rest. SHOCKING EXPENDITURE. Apache -Have I got this right? R808m over 5 years = R161.6m per year, but they only spent R16.9m on chartered flights last year! So we, the taxpayers, will be forking out 10 times more per annum than we have been...no wonder this country is in the mess it is. What clown did the maths on this decision? And yet the masses will again vote for these clowns in the upcoming elections, despite the fact that they still don't have the houses or services they are repeatedly promised. Funny thing that... marc - US$ 115 million? You could get two very exceptional jets, that fulfill the mandate, for a 3rd of that price. ADO AIR is a Nigerian company......Look it doenst take an rocket scientist to work out there is something very, very fishy about this deal. Daylight Robbery! Check out controller.com for jet prices.
Why sleeping facilities for "flying around the country"? How many conferences with not more than 6 people? Why computers? We all have our own laptops with our own data and software on hand!!
She either wants a piece of the action or doesn't have good people to guarantee return on investment. We can't have SAPS getting all the shady deals. I thought SAPS did VIP transport? Hence the purchase of the R150 million Citation jet two years ago. Google ADOAIR. They own one Hawker 800XP. Used price between R35 to R50 million. Google pre-owned gulfstream. You will find used top of the line G550 at about R350 million. So the defense department wants to lease two planes for over twice the price of purchasing two G550.
It must have been the bantu education that the present elite had that helped them calculate that R16,9million times 5 is greater than 808 million. PS When chartering an aircraft , the maintenance is already added. The money the ANC plan to spend will not remain in South Africa, if you say I'm wrong, check the ownership of charter company.
Assuming it is the Hawker 800XPi's- these sell for around $8m dollars pre-owned in the first world. To the math...someone is lining someone's pockets somewhere...
US$ 115 million? You could get two very exceptional jets, that fulfill the mandate, for a 3rd of that price. ADO AIR is a Nigerian company......Look it doenst take an rocket scientist to work out there is something very, very fishy about this deal. Daylight Robbery! Check out controller.com for jet prices.
In 1994 the ANC took over the goose that laid the golden egg, but I am afraid that they are forgetting to feed the goose and pretty soon it will die and then they will have nothing.
National police chief Bheki Cele has likened the SA Police Service to Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles disciples.
(The term apostle means one who is sent forth as a messenger while a disciple is a follower or a student who learns from a teacher. Is the blundering, loose-tongued, self-styled "general" police clown chief Bheki Cele even aware of the difference?)
He said that if even Jesus and God had criminals in their midst, it was to be expected that there would be criminals in the 193 000-strong police force.
"Jesus Christ had an organisation of 12 people... among those 12 there was a criminal who sat with Jesus every day," Cele was quoted saying at a police cars handover ceremony in Pretoria on Friday.
"Even when Jesus berated him [Judas], he denied that it was him who was a criminal.
"In the Garden of Eden, there were two people. God himself did an inspection every morning. One day, He could not find them. They were hiding, because they had committed a crime," he said.
(Which begs the question what did God do? Did He condone corruption within the organisation? Did He reward the criminals with a promotion, big bonuses, deployment, suspension with full pay? Adam and Eve chose the way of disobedience and were banished from the Garden for one mistake-just one crime sin, no second chances. We all understand choice and consequence. God warned them that if they should eat the fruit of this tree, in the same day they would die. Sure enough, this is what happened. All of creation was subject to death as a result of their choice.)
"If you will find criminals amongst two people, then you will find criminals in an organisation with 193 000 members," Cele said.
Beeld said that in the past seven months, some 254 police members in Gauteng were arrested for alleged involvement in robberies and corruption.
Top cop Richard Mdluli and several of his colleagues were arrested this week for their alleged involvement in a murder that was committed in the late 1990s.
This is not the first biblical comparison used in SA politics.
President Jacob Zuma was criticised a few years ago for saying the African National Congress will rule until Jesus comes.
In 2008, a provincial ANC leader likened Zuma's suffering in the then corruption case against him to what Jesus had gone through.
Reports say that Malema is co-owner of the company SGL Engineering Projects. SGL is said to have been awarded more than 20 contracts, each worth between R500000 and R39-million between 2007 and 2008. Most of these projects came from “cash-strapped” municipalities in Limpopo, some of which claim to be facing dire financial difficulties. Just recently the Limpopo county government requested a ZAR 5 billion loan from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) for such projects.
The new “tenderpreneur” (a newly coined name given to those entrepreneurs who have become stinking rich via the South African Government’s tendering system) could not avoid facing the press who have been hounding him since news of his dubious wealth was recently leaked. When asked by reporters on national television station SABC about the origin of his wealth, Malema avoided all accountability and explanations of his lavish lifestyle and the source of his wealth, meticulously protesting, “I am not accountable to you, I am accountable to the ANCYL and ANC…. There are no laws that says politicians can’t be businessmen. The problem with you [white Africans] is that when an [black] African crook child is emerging and becoming successful, that is when you have a problem. That is your major problem that causes you sleepless nights. You want to see us dying in poverty. That is what you are committed to.” In an earlier interview with reporter from South African alternative television channel e.tv he said, “You cannot audit us… I cannot be audited by you because I have defeated you. I cannot be defeated by people I have defeated.” The big-mouth public servant also happens to be listed as the director of four companies (SGL, Ever Roaring, Blue Nightingale Trading 61 and 101 Junjus Trading).
Malema linked to 'wrecked' taxi rank
Julius Malema has been linked to another failed construction project – a collapsed R2-million taxi rank in Limpopo.
SGL Engineering Projects, a company that has had at least three municipal projects taken over after non-performance, won the tender to build the R2.1m Apel Cross Taxi Rank in Ga-Masemola, south of Polokwane, in March 2006.
At the time, Malema was listed as a director of SGL. When his link to the company was revealed last year he claimed his signature had been forged and said he was never a director. Malema has since resigned as a director.
City Press has obtained tender documents that the municipality previously told the Public Protector had been lost. The documents showed that SGL had subcontracted the construction of the taxi rank to two companies – Ever Roaring Investments and Moloko Business Enterprises.
Malema was also a director of Ever Roaring at the time.
According to the documents, the contract was split in two – R1.8m for construction and R300 000 to SGL as consulting engineers.
Moloko’s director, Mathews Mathabatha, was one of Malema’s business partners in Ever Roaring.
Malema was a director in Ever Roaring until last June.
City Press has identified the following problems with the project: - The rank was completed in October 2009, two years after its original deadline of August 2007; - In March 2008 Moloko and Ever Roaring were kicked off the project because of non-performance and another company had to complete the project; - The Greater Sekhukhune district municipality had initially refused to sign off on the project as it had questions about the roof’s design, according to a probe by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela; - Water and electricity have still not been supplied to the taxi rank though it is stipulated in the contract; - One section of the taxi rank’s roof caved in in October last year, a year after construction was completed, and; - Minutes of several site meetings held between SGL, contractors, labourers and the project steering committee show that some of the labourers were not paid for up to four months.
Municipal spokesperson Willy Mosoma said part of the roof collapsed due to natural disasters and not through any fault of SGL. However, he could not elaborate on these “natural disasters”.
He said the municipality was working with Eskom to supply electricity and water to the rank.
Mosoma’s version of how the roof collapsed was disputed by the chairperson of the Masemola Local and Long Distance Taxi Association Danie Mohlala, taxi drivers and hawkers, who believed it happened because poor quality materials had been used.
Malema, through his spokesperson, Floyd Shivambu, refused to comment, saying he would not respond to questions from this reporter.
In a recent meeting with City Press editors, Malema “banned” Rampedi from all youth league activities after he’d reported on Malema’s business interests.
SGL project engineer Thomas Mulaudzi and company lawyer Mpoyana Ledwaba acknowledged receipt of questions sent to them but they failed to respond.
City Press revealed last year that SGL had been awarded government tenders worth at least R140m by municipalities in Limpopo.
Dramatic footage of the whole clip was shown on the e News Channel (Warning - shocking and disturbing) where the man was just verbally challenging the police while they were threatening the crowd with a water cannon telling the protesters to go away. He was unarmed and posed no threat to the police. The man was first attacked by a cop with a batton, then he started fighting back... THEN Sky cut the clip in where you see him fighting the cop. They make it look like he was violent to begin with, leaving out the beginning.
Another Police Beating
Police Beating