South Africa P.I.G.: ANC

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South Africa "just another country" in Africa

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRfxFSgieXBcKeLYG2wPXL6WZTVX8Gm69iDF5jAwrRT8nYjwnzPOKj1gfjPcqLF90_usSg680Duf45s5VLDVm2Xc5JBT2f6xUBfT8MofKcDp429rbLLVp07La-WcvV8GUmATCOP8WzRvH/s1600/boilingfrog.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634904617678309154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRfxFSgieXBcKeLYG2wPXL6WZTVX8Gm69iDF5jAwrRT8nYjwnzPOKj1gfjPcqLF90_usSg680Duf45s5VLDVm2Xc5JBT2f6xUBfT8MofKcDp429rbLLVp07La-WcvV8GUmATCOP8WzRvH/s400/boilingfrog.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 266px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 400px;" /></a>There are lots of South African articles doing the rounds, this is one of the best. I have always tried to understand why Africa has not prospered with all the mineral wealth and available labour. This is without a doubt the most plausible explanation for me. I do hope I am completely wrong. I expect, like me, you are aware that there has never been a prosperous black-led country, but perhaps it’s just because of “bad luck”, or whatever, for that incontrovertible fact. Take Haiti as an example. Before the black slaves revolted and killed all the whites and half castes Haiti had a GNP greater than most of what is now the USA . It supplied 60% of all the sugar used in Europe. Today it is a wasteland. Apparently if you Google Earth the place you see is a sere, brown coloured landscape compared to the neighbouring Dominican Republic which is green and verdant. Twice the USA has occupied Haiti , building roads, ports, hospitals and schools while putting in a functional society. The moment the Americans left they reverted to dictatorship, voodoo, witchcraft, corruption and barbarism. They did not stagnate, they regressed to the primitive savagery of their forefathers Since the 1960s, when the Congo expelled the Belgians this has been a mirror of African regression, moving steadily southwards until the example of Zimbabwe . Once a prosperous, well educated exporter of food the population now eat rats to survive. Will SA go the same way? There are those optimists who say “No, we have such a strong economy, such sophisticated infrastructure, such a talent pool, that we can never sink”. My belief is that they have not considered the root cause of Africa’s failure. A cause that is not spoken about as it is fearfully politically incorrect, and probably illegal to speak about. That cause is the deficiencies of the black ”mentality”, for want of a better word. Are there differences between races, or is race just a meaningless social construct? Until recently, I believed all races were the same under the skin variations, and that perceived differences were only the result of cultural differences. I believed in a common and equal humanity. But things did not always ring true, observable anomalies were inexplicable if all men are the same. Why, under apartheid, did the Indians prosper, become doctors, scientists, educators, merchants and professionals while the vast majority of the equally oppressed black Africans remained hewers of wood? Why can black Africans run, jump and throw better than honkies, but why, out of a billion of them, have they never invented a single thing of any worth? Why have they, collectively, contributed absolutely nothing to the advancement of humanity. Well the physical thing, the running, throwing bit is easily and uncontroversial answered. Simple, people of African descent (especially the Jamaicans) are genetically better equipped in this regard. Their muscle fibres are different and the typically have 15% more free testosterone than other peoples. Acknowledging this is regarded as racism. Unfortunately, racist or not, that is proven and a fact. Google it and you will find that for over 70 years, in test after test, done by dozens of university professors and Nobel laureates plus USA government studies, most people of African descent trail other races by a wide margin. Of course I.Q. tests have been attacked, especially by those who perform badly at them, as one might expect them to do. Detractors claim cultural bias, dysfunctional families, past oppression, poor schooling and a host of other reasons for poor black performance, but the professors defend their contention that I.Q. is largely an inherited trait; that differences are inherent, built into a person’s inherited DNA. For every argument attacking the validity of these tests they have a host of results confirming their accuracy and typicality. Fascinating stuff if you are interested in reading up on it. The effect of high/low I.Q. has also been studied in depth, with fairly predictable results. Low I.Q. individuals performed badly in social class, family stability, income, educational levels, illegitimate pregnancy, single parent families, rate of prison incarceration, rape, violent crime etc. etc. etc. I.Q. measurement measures different facets of intelligence and mental competence. Sadly it is in the absolutely vital sphere of cognitive ability that blacks score worst. This means they score abysmally in things like forward planning and anticipating the consequences of their actions. It is this I.Q. (and testosterone) disparity that is blamed for the fact that African Americans are 5 times more likely to be imprisoned than white (including Hispanic) Americans, 9 times more likely than Americans of Asiatic descent. All in line with I.Q. distributions. Once imprisonment for violent crimes are computed the numbers become stratospheric. These are American government collated statistics, so pretty accurate. Our government in SA do not, for obvious reasons, publish similar stats, but a pound to a pinch of salt they are even more astounding. So why the lecture on I.Q.? Well for a start you must understand that our ruling party are voted into power by a largely moronic plebiscite. I choose the word moronic intentionally. If the cut off point for moronic is an I.Q. of 70, half the voting population would be classified as such. Only one in 40 black South Africans achieves the average I.Q. of his white fellow citizens. One in a hundred have the I.Q. to achieve university entrance requirements. That is why only one in ten blacks pass our dumbed down Matric (with a pass percentage of 30% in many cases). One in 6000 black grade one learners will pass Matric with both Maths and Science. Simply put, they are bloody stupid, and they rule us. Furthermore Zoooooma says they will rule us until the second coming. I believe him. This explains why the ANC have such idiots in their positions of power and influence, the likes of Zuma, Malema, Khomphela and Cele. They are, unfortunately, the best they have! Well, they are the best blacks they have. All the critical positions in government are held by Indians, coloureds or whites, something I am grateful for but which pisses Malema off big time . Will this last? I doubt it. The black/white polarisation is growing and the rhetoric is becoming more extreme. Listen to the pub or workplace chatter, read the blogs and comments sections of the newspapers and it becomes obvious. Whites are gatvol at the waste, corruption and stupidity of the black elite. Blacks are demanding, as their right, the wealth of the whites by means of redistribution of assets. No matter that they have not worked for those assets, they claim them as the spoils of war. Just in the past week the Mayor of Pretoria, Malema, a minister and Winnie have gone on record as blaming whites for sabotaging redistribution and exploiting blacks. Malema calls out “Kill the boers for they are rapists” to thunderous applause by university students Four influential ANC opinion makers who are echoing the groundswell of mutterings in the ghettoes. The natives are getting restless. Things are not going to improve. They cannot, there is no reason to believe our slow slide into a failed state can be reversed with our current regime, and there is no prospect whatsoever of there being a change to governance based on meritocracy. Anyone who believes otherwise, or that the ANC can mend their ways, is living in LaLa land. They do not have the intellect. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating pot we have become inured to the slow collapse of our hospitals, schools, courts, water supplies, roads, civil service and service levels. They will become totally dysfunctional shortly. Inevitably so. Those in charge do not have the mental capacity to organise things. Our economy and Rand is reliant on short term “hot” funds from overseas that can flee at the touch of a computer button, and probably will if our Rand weakens. Conversely we need a weaker Rand to encourage exports. 6 million taxpayers support 12 million recipients of social grants, and that figure is set to rise this year. The National Health Insurance scheme will happen, no matter how unaffordable. That will push our social grant costs up to four hundred billion Rand. Four hundred billion Rand which produces absolutely no product. Inflation is set to stay and worsen. The consequence of being the biggest socialist state on earth. I do not believe the ANC has the intellect to conceptualise how big a billion is, let alone 400 billion, or what effect this will have on the economy. You do not believe Malema’s call to nationalise the mines? This guy articulates what the hoi polloi are thinking, but the ANC leadership will not say yet. The tactic is to set the bar high, then lower it and the victims will sigh with relief and say it could have been worse. So perhaps it will not be total nationalisation but rather 51%, a’ la Zim. Just look north for revelation, Zuma does. Who would have believed that this country would ever be headed by an unschooled, rape accused, adulterous, corrupt, sex obsessed bigot like Zuma. Anything is possible with the ANC. Summary. You have few years left to enjoy what is left of the glorious SA lifestyle, especially in the Cape , but understand it is not permanent. The end could be sudden as the tipping point is reached, just as it was sudden for those Zim, Zambian, Mozambican or Angolans whites. It could, conceivably, be as bloody as the Hutu/Tutsi uprising when primitive tribal bloodlust overcomes a thin veneer of inculcated civilisation. Enjoy it while you can, and enjoy it in the Cape where the population mix is more favourable, but be aware that change is inevitable. Your children must get a world class education, because they will not be adults in SA. Get assets stashed offshore, you and your children will need them there.

South Africa "just another country" in Africa

There are lots of South African articles doing the rounds, this is one of the best. I have always tried to understand why Africa has not p...

3:37 PM

25 Years After Magoo’s Bar Bombing

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDDYIQTacHfou0pSYeonbQ-_u2DAoyr_eN9Yn4C5MTdMOYDFR0VdMGEG7Qs0KARif6o0AXeCkkdt4Q37Cja7PdXGKsJ0kPhYi5MTgk3ILqshkFmlxukvdUtAEBY2LPbCFSjou2oUbfcau/s1600/bar-bomb-magoos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDDYIQTacHfou0pSYeonbQ-_u2DAoyr_eN9Yn4C5MTdMOYDFR0VdMGEG7Qs0KARif6o0AXeCkkdt4Q37Cja7PdXGKsJ0kPhYi5MTgk3ILqshkFmlxukvdUtAEBY2LPbCFSjou2oUbfcau/s640/bar-bomb-magoos.jpg" t8="true" width="640" /></a></div>On this day 25 years ago in the ANC and Robert McBride’s bomb attack on civilians at Magoo’s Bar on Durban's Marine Parade, three young white women were killed and many bar patrons were wounded when former MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe - the former armed wing of the ANC) operative Robert McBride planted a powerful car bomb outside Magoo's on June 14, 1986 Apart from the three women ‒ Angelique Pattenden, Julie van der Linde and Marchelle Gerand ‒ who died in the bombing, 73 people were wounded in the explosion outside the popular Durban beachfront Magoo's Bar. In June 1986, McBride taped together more than 100 pounds of explosives, attaching a mine with a 15-minute timer as his trigger, and swaddling this propulsive charge with bags of machine-gun bullets and metal scraps for shrapnel. He secreted his lethal contraption in the spare-wheel well of a powder-blue Ford Cortina, which he parked one Saturday night on a crowded beachfront esplanade in Durban. The bomber was out of earshot when his device exploded into two busy white bars. Magoos bar and the nearby "Why Not" bar were targeted because they were believed to be frequented by apartheid security force personnel, who were regarded as legitimate targets in the ANC's armed struggle against the former government. Few, if any, of the victims were members of the security forces. That was not the first time the ANC had used car bombs and it was not the last time. McBride and a companion were convicted of the bombing, and McBride was sentenced to execution three times for his part in the attack. A pardon negotiated by Nelson Mandela saved McBride from death row. In 1999 McBride was released and granted amnesty for the Magoo’s Bar terror attack by the TRC due largely to the fact that the ANC claimed it had ordered McBride to attack the pubs, contrary to its initial denials that it was involved in the bombing. McBride, one of the most famous saboteurs in the furtive military underground of the ANC, then became a diplomat in the new SA government, then was recalled for sexual indiscretions (he sexually abused white female staffers at the Malaysian embassy where he worked). His reward was to be appointed as Police Commissioner for the second largest Urban Metropolitan police force in South Africa... a position from which he was suspended for four years due to a drunk driving charge. Yet another fine example of a black history maker.... The Constitutional Court recently ruled that 'Bomber' McBride may be called a murderer because of the cold-blooded multiple murders which he committed although he had received amnesty for the incident. But he still stands by the bombing, saying that if he was in the same situation, he would do it again. So, on this sad anniversary, our thoughts are with the next of kin of those victims who died and the 73 innocent victims who were injured in the deadly blast that night 25 years ago. The total number of people killed or injured in the 30 years of MK's campaigns is not known exactly. MK launched its first guerrilla attacks against government installations on 16 December 1961 and was subsequently classified as a terrorist organization by the South African government and the United States, and banned. Ten leaders of the ANC were tried for 221 acts of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial. Details are not available, but it is estimated that the MK High Command co-ordinated over 190 acts of sabotage between October 1961 and July 1963. A study by Tom Lodge of the University of the Witwatersrand estimated that there were 150 MK attacks between 1976 - 1982. SEE <a href="http://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02918/06lv02949.htm">HERE FOR List Of MK Operations</a>

25 Years After Magoo’s Bar Bombing

On this day 25 years ago in the ANC and Robert McBride’s bomb attack on civilians at Magoo’s Bar on Durban's Marine Parade, three young ...

11:48 AM

An open letter to SA’s leadership...

<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; CLEAR: both" class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgJC-o3pB6FRLZWGjm6E2XBs8nSffUZXMgoW3qXlE5vH6mzgthgR0y-FCcJCHNI3rAMnvnrcxN_z1IGJPlvK1d5ngibRQlQfEjWZ3HfD0J4OSRmAMa28S-M65RYtLUl_I7Emrqe0T7_le/s1600/anc-running-water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 1em; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em"><img border="0" height="378" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgJC-o3pB6FRLZWGjm6E2XBs8nSffUZXMgoW3qXlE5vH6mzgthgR0y-FCcJCHNI3rAMnvnrcxN_z1IGJPlvK1d5ngibRQlQfEjWZ3HfD0J4OSRmAMa28S-M65RYtLUl_I7Emrqe0T7_le/s640/anc-running-water.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> I will try to answer three questions; 1. Which way are we going? 2. Why? 3. Can we find a better way forward? Apart from racial policy, the institute I head has been documenting almost every aspect of South Africa since our foundation in 1929. It was inevitable then that when the ANC came to power in 1994, people asked us why South Africa should not become just another African disaster. I gave the usual list of advantages: a greater pool of skills, good infrastructure, a resilient private sector, our strong international economic linkages, a tradition of political pluralism, independent trade unions, a free press, and the vigour of our NGO sector. Since then the country has won golden opinions for macroeconomic policy management, reflected most recently in a heavily oversubscribed 30-year government bond. Despite this, we now learn almost daily of things that prompt the question once again: are we headed for the list of African failures. Recently an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred because a vital border fence with Mozambique had been neglected. Such problems are not isolated. We have slipped further down global tables as a destination for mining investment, police behaviour seems to be increasingly lawless, maternal and infant mortality rates are rising, millions of schoolchildren have started another year without textbooks, and the country's commercial capital is run by people who are out of their depth. We also have much higher rates of youth unemployment than countries to the north that recently chased away their rulers. Specific problems aside, among the main reasons we are going wrong are the following: •Affirmative action, which has denuded the State of both skills and institutional memory •Labour laws which protect unionised workers at the expense of the jobless •The cadre deployment policy, making loyalty to the party a key criterion for appointment to offices of state, and •Use of a model of government which makes elected institutions more accountable to party headquarters than to voters. Apart from policies and practices, the problems confronting us arise in part from assumptions and attitudes that affect the policy environment. These include: •limited understanding of what entrepreneurship requires •ideological hostility towards business •poor appreciation of how markets work or even antipathy towards them the belief that the pockets of our small number of major taxpayers are bottomless, and •too much faith in the efficacy of the State, leading to more and more regulation To these harmful factors must be added others: •corruption said by the deputy president to be "worse than anyone imagines" •lawlessness on the part of the State •a love of the grandiose, such as new bullet trains to Durban while we can't fix commuter rail services •the callousness towards ordinary people found all too often in service departments, and •no accountability even for preventable deaths of mothers and babies in public hospitals Then there are two key problems in the way policy is made. One is a habit of putting the cart before the horse - for example, embarking on ambitious education or health schemes without first fixing the basics such as training enough teachers and reversing the decline of public hospitals. The second is failure to apply the lessons of admitted mistakes. To its credit, the Government has admitted the failings of outcomes-based education but the ANC nevertheless plans to forge ahead with a national health system without considering the State's capacity constraints. These various aspects of our problems show that we are facing not just a few wrong-headed policies, but a challenge arising from the very nature of the Government and how it runs the State. Most of them have a direct impact on business. Part of that challenge arises from the fact that the ANC is not a normal political party. When a party with a two-thirds majority in Parliament is still committed to a "national democratic revolution," we must ask what it is that they wish to stage a revolution against. The economic system? Probably. Democracy? Perhaps. The rule of law? Very likely. The Constitution? Possibly. The Press pays little attention to the national democratic revolution, but the ANC is committed to it. This is one of the risks we face. Another is that tougher affirmative action requirements lead to a drain from the country of the most skilled segment of the population. Yet another is that public spending gets out of control as the ANC promises more free things to more people and puts more of them on to the public payroll, including now members of Umkhonto we Sizwe. We might also see a more rigid labour market, destructive interventions in agriculture, attenuation of property rights, damage to private health care, more malfeasance with mining licences, further corruption of the criminal justice system, and more local governments collapsing. It is ironical that we are expanding our social security commitments at the very moment when rich countries are having to cut back. It is also ironical that we are seeking to extend controls of the labour market while Europeans are trying to make their labour markets more flexible. A further piece of irony is that we are lengthening the arm of the State at the very time when China and India are continuing to liberalise economically, when parts of Africa are liberalising, and when even Cuba is showing signs of liberalisation. I have painted some dark clouds and the challenge now is to find the silver linings. Like a contrarian investor, we must look for signs of change that may not be obvious. One of these is the very fact that the Europeans, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Cubans have been here before and are having to reverse thrust. The international context in which we make policy has changed. Africa is also having to pay more attention to good governance than in the past. Already, some African countries are more attractive as mining destinations than we are. If we don't look out, we may find that our lead as the most important economy in Africa is shrinking. Despite the ANC's close historical ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was unable in 1994 to follow a communist path because the USSR had in the meantime imploded. As welfare and dirigiste states elsewhere come under pressure, so will the ANC have to recognise that those role models are also unworkable. Despite this country's achievements since the advent of democracy in 1994, we are pursuing an unworkable political model. This model will have to be abandoned just as communism and apartheid had to be abandoned. How long this will take I do not know. The evolution of liberal democracy can be a slow and difficult business. But we need to find ways of helping the process along, while also trying to minimise the fearful human and economic damage that may be done in the interim. Among the reasons why apartheid disintegrated, two are relevant today. One is that its contradictions - notably the belief that you could run a modern economy without exploiting the skills of the whole population and granting them political rights - became unsustainable. The second reason was that, as the policy crumbled under the weight of critical scrutiny and its own contradictions, the ruling elite began to lose faith in it. Disillusionment spread from the Dutch reformed churches, to the Afrikaans Press, to academia, to business, to the ruling party, to the Cabinet, and not least to the Broederbond. This made Mr FW de Klerk's bold actions on 2nd February 1990 both necessary and possible. Parallels between the last 25 years of National Party rule and the first 15 years of ANC rule are becoming quite striking. The most obvious is on racial policy. The NP thought it could run a successful economy without fully exploiting the skills of the black population. The ANC thinks it can run a successful state without fully exploiting the skills of the white population. The evidence that this cannot be done is apparent all the time at all levels and in all branches of government. And it is beginning to cause instability at local level and hurt the party. Unfortunately, however, one of the parallels with our past is that failed policies are sometimes intensified rather than abandoned. This happened with the pass laws, for example, before PW Botha finally repealed them in 1986. It may also happen now with the Employment Equity Act, with its provisions for heavier fines to enforce racial quotas upon all employers - when the Government cannot even get Denel, or Eskom, or SAA, or Transnet to meet its racial targets at management or skilled levels. But there are other parallels. Just as the National Party steadily lost support among the intelligentsia, the same is happening with the ANC. Some black newspaper editors and journalists are at least as critical of the ANC as their white counterparts. In discussions with black business leaders over the past few months, my Institute has been struck how some of them have become very critical of the government - more so than most of their white counterparts. Moeletsi Mbeki probably speaks for more people than we think. Some of the squabbles in the ruling tripartite alliance are about spoils and patronage, but others are about policy. There are divisions over whether "decent" jobs should be placed above the need to generate more jobs. A growing minority is beginning to question the deployment policy. Others would like to have a professional civil service instead of one subject to ministerial whim. Racial policies are now also becoming a source of division, as we saw last week with Trevor Manuel's public attack on Jimmy Manyi. This spat is causing the ANC to tie itself into knots. When my Institute pointed out that forcing employers in the Western Cape to conform to the national racial breakdown would necessitate the (illegal) dismissal of thousands of coloured workers, President Jacob Zuma said companies would have flexibility to conform to national or regional demographics. This, however, is not what the proposed amendment to the Employment Equity Act says. Now the general secretary of the ANC, Mr Gwede Mantashe, has weighed in to the effect that national companies will have to use national demographics and provincially-based companies provincial demographics. This is the opposite of the flexibility of which Mr Zuma speaks. In November last year the minister of finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, told an audience in London that economic empowerment policies designed to improve the standard of living of the black majority after 1994 had not worked. After all the employment equity, labour, and land reform legislation, not to mention hundreds of billions of Rands in BEE deals, this is quite an admission. In the short term it may lead to an intensification of failed policies, but in the long term these policies will have to be abandoned. The new constitution ushered in democracy in 1994. Ironically, however, the ANC's model of government - based on the Leninist idea of "democratic centralism" - in terms of which party headquarters dictates to local communities whom they must elect - is causing growing dissatisfaction at local level as the municipal election on 18th May approaches. Though many officials are hostile to white farmers, others recognise that no one else has the expertise to reverse the failures of land reform. Despite antipathy to the private sector, some of the ruling elite see a growing role for it in getting our ports working more efficiently, in electricity generation, in the rescue of local government, in AIDS testing, and in sorting out the problems of further education and training colleges. Indeed, as the failings of the State become more and more apparent, thanks in part to a critical media, more and more people in government will turn to the private sector for help. Even Cosatu wants private sector involvement to be mobilised when Postbank gets a banking licence. These inconsistencies will multiply as the ANC continues to pursue mutually contradictory policies. Promises of creating millions of new jobs are incompatible with key components of official policy, among them affirmative action, the deployment strategy, restrictions on immigration, tightening up the labour market, and adding to the regulatory burden on business. Eventually the contradictions will become unsustainable. Either some of these key policies will have to be jettisoned, or the quest for millions more jobs will fall by the wayside. In the meantime, what do we do? The first thing is to keep exposing the contradictions, so providing arguments for those in the ruling alliance who wish to see more realistic policies. Arguments for the liberalisation of our damaging labour laws need to be refined and intensified. The climate to do this is now more favourable than at any time since 1994. I suspect that affirmative action and cadre deployment policies have also done more damage to this country than most people care to admit. Can you really run a modern industrial state if you would rather leave posts in the public sector vacant than appoint whites to them? The major victims of this folly have been blacks rather than whites. The connection between these policies and lost growth and investment, high unemployment, shoddy RDP houses, inability to obtain social grants or medicines, preventable maternal and infant deaths, high crime rates, perilous roads, poisonous rivers, mismanagement of flooded dams, fraudulent passports and IDs, and a great many other problems needs to be repeatedly pointed out. The ANC's economic objectives simply cannot be achieved while everything is subordinate to racial ideology and the imperatives of the "national democratic revolution". This message needs to be hammered home without reservation or apology until a critical mass of opinion within the ruling alliance comes to recognise it. Secondly, it is necessary to stand firm in the defence of vital practices and institutions as they come under increasing threat, not only the rule of law but also academic freedom, independent civil society, a free Press, an independent legal profession and prosecution service, and independent courts. It is also necessary that organisations other than business come to the public defence of the free market system, private enterprise, and entrepreneurship. Not for a second should anyone in the ruling alliance be allowed to forget that the money the Government spends on education, health, housing, child support grants, and everything else - including its lengthening list of promises to its constituents - arises from taxes extracted from the private sector and private individuals. This is a point that needs much more emphasis than it gets. Business might wish to think of ways of getting the point across more strongly in public as well as to parliamentarians, civil servants, and other members of the ruling alliance. Thirdly, keep proposing alternatives to present policies. Business may not necessarily see a direct role for itself here, but it is nevertheless essential that alternatives be put forward. Here is my list of a dozen: 1. Cut back on the size of the State 2. Put inspectors back into schools 3. Systematically extend private education 4. Radically redesign land reform 5. Democratise Parliament 6. Liberalise the labour market 7. Make economic growth rather than redistribution the topmost priority 8. Change our welfare state into one that promotes entrepreneurship 9. Direct all state interventions at helping the poorest of the poor regardless of race 10. Replace the deployment system with a professional civil service 11. Increase our global competitiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment 12. Repeal all racially discriminatory laws Some of these may seem fanciful right now. However, given growing contradictions, policy failures, and paralysis in government, the climate is in fact auspicious. Detailed policy work on alternatives will of course be necessary. But the main point at this stage is to undertake a tenacious campaign to change ideas, preparing the soil, as it were, for new policies to be planted. This will be a long haul and a hard slog, so the sooner it is stepped up the better. The ruling party must be a prime target, both direct and indirect. Don't forget that ideas predate policies and that their power, for good or ill, should never be underestimated. It was after all, that great incendiary journalist and armchair revolutionary, Karl Marx, who produced some of the most powerful ideas in history. Despite their murderous consequences some of these ideas still have an iron grip in South Africa. They need constantly to be countered by the ideas that underpin liberal democracy. In particular, we need to keep on propagating the idea that the real alternative to apartheid is not another form of social engineering designed to promote an impossible equality of outcomes but an open society committed to equality before the law, political and economic freedom, corruption-free and proper democratic government, and rising living standards for all. Social and racial engineers failed in South Africa last time around, and they will fail this time too. That is cause not for despair but for eager anticipation. - John Kane-Berman - CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

An open letter to SA’s leadership...

I will try to answer three questions; 1. Which way are we going? 2. Why? 3. Can we find a better way forward? Apart from racial policy, the ...

8:26 AM

A vote for ... is a vote for Heaven

Zuma's Promise of Heaven... EISH !!!!! A vote for ANC is a vote for Heaven... <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582551233593197634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfum8b0PDDYVlTXg8JeAkWNKeH0DfneMpQCPwnnSkAG-vPdJHGg3ekhBLymdBYDHrk2j1s8qYeG2MVcQpU-KN0PW29YU6DA31VC7duMnfjtswswkzDCSqUM8d2vnojTiubCz8-ttZltrx1/s320/ANC-Heaven.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 281px; CURSOR: hand" /> ANC membership card GUARANTEES an automatic pass to HEAVEN! We HEAVEN GOT electricity, we HEAVEN GOT water, we HEAVEN GOT jobs, we HEAVEN GOT money AND we HEAVEN GOT roads... eish!!!

A vote for ... is a vote for Heaven

Zuma's Promise of Heaven... EISH !!!!! A vote for ANC is a vote for Heaven... ANC membership card GUARANTEES an automatic pass to HEAVE...

12:27 PM

'Politicians' spending YOUR tax money

The next time you hear an SA politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you wanted the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money. <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579421992566663058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih00c5caTtcxRHe0VZZ9rNV-2u9ZdLdL5_CdNxpL9Hi5SBDMP40SZ7VFksJL-vwbtgb24RetZ2u7mbcmjmtnGHYcTONcE5vMWmqkQZes4r84j-Xylfj_vIPz1wYKVGz6m_kwC5IBGHg8Jr/s400/zuma-gravy.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 226px; CURSOR: hand" /> A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its press releases. A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. E. A billion Rand ago was only 27 hours and 12 minutes, at the rate our SA government is spending it. Building Permit Tax Cigarette Tax Corporation Tax Income Tax VAT GST Fishing Licence Tax Food Licence Tax Fuel LicenceTax Petrol/Diesel Tax Hunting Licence Tax Luxury Tax Property Tax Service charge taxes Capital gains Tax Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax Local Tax Vehicle Licence Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Workers Compensation Tax Not one of these taxes existed 20 years ago... And our nation was one of the most prosperous in Africa. We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in Africa And Mum stayed home to raise the kids. What happened? I hope this message goes around at least a billion times. What the HELL happened ?????

'Politicians' spending YOUR tax money

The next time you hear an SA politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you wanted the 'politicia...

12:10 AM

ANC to investigate causes of lightning.

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi94U92UFJTcG2j9P0ha2Bz34kRgTw-Azm174WZ26IsTHyb4UB56FLu-1t6eOX9rkOMjMb4JNqV6RIzjhYxFAqCo-IP12sIkm-VbP7gSucM1us1ZJwoD3C14CFQFlhUHcEnLnG-nL2_wV_Z/s1600/idiot+village.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 1em; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: left; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em; cssfloat: left"></a>I had to copy this. What a laugh! KwaZulu-Natal MEC for co-operative governance and traditional affairs Nomsa Dube on Monday called on the national department of science and technology to investigate the causes of lightning after seven people died in lightning strikes. <div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none"></div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi94U92UFJTcG2j9P0ha2Bz34kRgTw-Azm174WZ26IsTHyb4UB56FLu-1t6eOX9rkOMjMb4JNqV6RIzjhYxFAqCo-IP12sIkm-VbP7gSucM1us1ZJwoD3C14CFQFlhUHcEnLnG-nL2_wV_Z/s1600/idiot+village.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 1em; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: left; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em; cssfloat: left"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikUNSJ8qNJTtk_Jie4YEbMbWFHiGqfUibynqQZLBER5nGzejDT5KTjL_om3xnnzjbZFvKAIL528KYqo6CfLhdLZNjy46UzkJSLB_NiAcywWbl1lraVJVu58FL0JC1k5It_vqL3GVBSVWs/s1600/4278379591_e0cd40d0fe.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558465456790236930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikUNSJ8qNJTtk_Jie4YEbMbWFHiGqfUibynqQZLBER5nGzejDT5KTjL_om3xnnzjbZFvKAIL528KYqo6CfLhdLZNjy46UzkJSLB_NiAcywWbl1lraVJVu58FL0JC1k5It_vqL3GVBSVWs/s400/4278379591_e0cd40d0fe.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>"We will do an investigation and talk to the department of science and technology on what is the cause of the lightning. Scientists from the department could perhaps help us and come up with instruments that could help community members protect themselves against lightning. The department has dealt with floods and fires, but lightning was new to us." said Nomsa Brightspark Dube.</div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none"> </div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none">That joke about having an electrifying personality is only funny for so long. It's really annoying when you get zapped every time you touch something.</div> Now with that new lightning thing, there's a whole new world we can barely fathom. We shall call upon the spirits for guidance, visit a sangoma, and eat the powerful medicine of human body parts, a bowl of stewed anuses and dicks, the bones will show us the way, then our ancestral spirits will send messages regarding the bird of lightning who is punishing the wicked and evildoers who are guilty of theft and murder and have been sent to a bad heaven. If all else fails we will arrange the slaughter a bull. <div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none"><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; TEXT-ALIGN: center; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; CLEAR: both; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" class="separator"></div></div>

ANC to investigate causes of lightning.

I had to copy this. What a laugh! KwaZulu-Natal MEC for co-operative governance and traditional affairs Nomsa Dube on Monday called on the n...

5:01 AM

R370m Youth fest blunders on as delegates kiss, sing, dance and sleep

One can only wonder how the Pikanin boss of the ANC kindergarten, Chairman of the all important NYDA, Andile Lungisa, managed to convince the tight fisted bastards of the National Lottery (NLDTF) to part so speedily with R40million for the Atteridgeville piss-up. ANC Youth League linked to botched events tender. Will taxpayers foot the R370m bill? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBnvpe6nuca6v5nFho_E_REmZ_Tbb0VyH1u10Y8OX3ZGsNXVMaZvBAKf5BySteSRlws7__rxJd2qKmPkPG2P2QBYsPpU9k1JVxdMCWQ52yPEuGCZw4giBRrgb7Ooma5VXi1QKUkMlsJCma/s1600/lotto.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5551736028684694194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBnvpe6nuca6v5nFho_E_REmZ_Tbb0VyH1u10Y8OX3ZGsNXVMaZvBAKf5BySteSRlws7__rxJd2qKmPkPG2P2QBYsPpU9k1JVxdMCWQ52yPEuGCZw4giBRrgb7Ooma5VXi1QKUkMlsJCma/s400/lotto.bmp" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 306px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>THE MULTIMILLION rand <strike>totalitarian talk shop</strike> World Youth Festival was not being run by an unregistered tender company owned by ANC Youth League members, the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) said yesterday. This followed reports of tender irregularities within the events management company which allegedly won the tender to run the event, Global Interface Consulting. “I’m the convener,” NYDA chairman Andile Lungisa told journalists in Pretoria when questioned about the controversy. “I’m running the event with Tiago Vieira, the president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth. “I don’t know whether I’ve been sold now to be a company. I’m not an Ltd.” He said NYDA had been approached by the company but that it had failed to deliver and so was not assisting in any way in the 10-day festival. Lungisa said the company, owned by members of the ANC Youth League’s national provincial council, did not have enough capacity. It has also emerged that Global Interface Consulting was not registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office. But Lungisa said it was not his responsibility to see to it that the company was registered. “We support people who start initiatives. It doesn’t necessarily mean that if you’re not registered then you can’t work with us because we… must empower the youth.” NYDA reportedly had advertised a contract for an events management company only on August 30, giving interested bidders just 10 days to put in proposals. The contract was on October 29. The "Let's defeat imperialism" festival got off to a slow start with some teething problems on Monday. Many delegates were not attending sessions but rather playing games in Pretoria. The major problem was food, then transport. Some people complained that they were being mistreated and had gone for days without food. Awarded Lungisa, however, hit back. “This is not called a wine and food festival. People will not get a three-course meal. There’s food for people to eat, but no one is going to die after this festival,” he said. In addition, at least four Moroccan delegates were injured in what is believed to be political infighting between them and delegates from Western Sahara. A camera belonging to a delegate from Iraq was allegedly stolen yesterday. But Lungisa defended the anti-imperialism-themed festival, particularly with regard to apparent widespread kissing among delegates. “The kissing game is going to continue,” he said. “They are not in a prison. They are part of this festival. We need to provide an opportunity for exchange.” The number of people attending workshops grew yesterday, in contrast to the scene outside, where groups of mostly South Africans were singing and dancing. Lungisa defended this behaviour, saying South Africa was a nation of song and dance. Meanwhile, the R40 million granted by the National Lotteries Board to the festival was double the amount it gave to the opening and closing ceremonies of the World Cup. And an amount "greater than the entire annual budget for the Cotlands orphanage" According to the Lotto's website it is required to distribute 45% of its funds to charities; 22% to arts, culture and national heritage and 5% for miscellaneous purposes. Wasting taxpayers' money - again, still, whatever! The presidency promised R29m to host the nine-day left-wing youth festival themed "Let's defeat imperialism" but this appeared to be far too little. NYDA Chairman, Andile Lungisa, had been reported as saying they need closer to R370m to cover their costs. And Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has revealed that his department also pledged R300 000 towards the festival budget and paid R190 288 for an exhibition stand. Cosatu and the DA both called for an investigation into the grant and a full audit of how the people’s money from the National Lotteries Board and the government was spent. It issued a statement yesterday deploring the reported shambles at the festival in which speakers were not confirmed and did not arrive, seven out of 18 seminars on Tuesday were cancelled and visitors complained of “bad food, a lack of transport and poor co-ordination of accommodation arrangements”. Several dodgy regimes were included in the participants list - North Korea and Zimbabwe is among them.

R370m Youth fest blunders on as delegates kiss, sing, dance and sleep

One can only wonder how the Pikanin boss of the ANC kindergarten, Chairman of the all important NYDA, Andile Lungisa, managed to convince th...

10:33 AM

Self-delusion and denialism within SA’s ruling and BEE classes

It is dawning on South Africa that there are two very separate and distinct mindsets at work in the country, and it seems never the twain will meet. Newspaper columns and letter pages, as well as talk shows and phone-ins, are replete with what “should be done” and ”why is this not done?” and the now over-used word “unbelievable”, from citizens aghast at the unfathomable behaviour of the ruling classes. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWSiqc_Vkja2A8XUCS2__cSyJQoNlzG4TZ8n5H_QwdoVPCEAEIwfRrPcsNMVBD3hYxyt3Y33oVsTNOodr_4gpegsFSIaOLZz2ppRJ4jrEg1x-23Pzth8C8gVv5Q1HGLZYy54CF-uQ48xw/s1600/incompetence01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538844529326576226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWSiqc_Vkja2A8XUCS2__cSyJQoNlzG4TZ8n5H_QwdoVPCEAEIwfRrPcsNMVBD3hYxyt3Y33oVsTNOodr_4gpegsFSIaOLZz2ppRJ4jrEg1x-23Pzth8C8gVv5Q1HGLZYy54CF-uQ48xw/s400/incompetence01.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 115px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 115px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>The logic of one mindset is not the logic of the other. Who would think that after the abysmal failure of the South African land redistribution programme, the government would continue with it, albeit under different guises? Who would believe that after wantonly destroying Zimbabwe and rendering his people to grinding penury, the South African government would ask the United Nations to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe’s president, a perpetrator of human rights atrocities? Who can fathom a government that month after month - indeed year after year - places advertisements for desperately-needed municipal staff, stipulating that they are “equal opportunity employers”, meaning skilled whites need not apply? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVvENGzy20c2PemX-p2ZqdK3nqdQqfzecIac-ndgjZhHnQ8z3010hSXQk9NHJwOOBiISFKr4gI5kUMI2yVNvS1ZacLCyfBXJEBauoZ9OmithsM9TF7JVj2W8H_SwLZyUavuSGT5pLt3ht6/s1600/incompetence02.jpg"></a>How is it that despite embarrassing service delivery failures, the wholesale plunder of taxpayers’ money by tenderpreneurs and government employees, the nepotism, the lowering of standards in health and education, the failing feeding schemes and the abuse of the social welfare system, the miscreants simply carry on as if nothing happened. There is no shame, no sense of accountability to those who pay them and indeed to South Africa as a nation. Indeed, when many are fired for incompetence, mismanagement or fraud, or all three, they go to court to demand huge payouts that they believe are their due! Denialism is at work here, and this brings us to an interesting explanation of this phenomenon now doing the Wikipedia rounds: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect">Dunning-Kruger effect</a>. THE D K EFFECT <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538849613055124050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9wqjPYscBsBra90QiVogpW9sfqYkB_fWGdiJwwSC8kIyocCdBA7Vkux54JWEqxIaTRrqShEf-bY8Fyw1NX0sUmv2KFtHQ8Kl5_4V-XX5RQHR-bcr_sasc5VC7u1rpoudR1ms9REwtZp8e/s400/dunning-krugereffectwikipedia.png" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 372px; CURSOR: hand" /> The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do. Wikipedia reports that Justin Kruger and David Dunning of the USA’s Cornell University first performed a series of experiments in 1999 which suggested that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence. One of their 2000 reports was entitled “<a href="http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it">Unskilled and Unaware of it</a> : How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments”. They say that, <ul><li>Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill. </li><li>Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others. </li><li>Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. </li></ul>They conclude that poor performers do not learn from feedback that suggests a need to improve. Wikipedia gives numerous examples of others who have completed works in this field, including Bertrand Russell’s “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933) and other more current academic writings about “the absence of self-insight among the incompetent” (Ehrlinger) and “among the inept, researchers discover ignorance is bliss” (Goode). Many of these findings have been widely published in the US national media, including the New York Times. <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538845405602465522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqLB5AJySz4kDsvK9X4AjDd8AfFbWT557IAZfRHRWJ7UDVOFIIAqjMnbB5KnsWZCor3vLn55pLHgFopeNb9RVDCQBW3OkcYB4qJLfv0bEnKwXHrvPmHbx9w-I6Un62puI56KQsz9Y9wkkH/s400/incompetence02.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" />These syndromes of denialism and self-delusion are pervasive within SA’s ruling and BEE classes. People blithely take on a job that everyone knows they cannot do, but which they themselves don’t seem to realize they cannot do! We see this in the land redistribution policy where beneficiaries agree to run productive farms when they know they are incapable of doing so. They then blame the government, or mentors, or each other. We see someone in an expensive suit perched on the corner of an expensive desk being photographed as the new CEO, or the incoming “human resources manager”, or the new chairman of an organization. In many cases, this person is a token, it is well known that he is a token, but the subject himself seems to think he’s entitled to be there! Self-delusion and denialism are not new in South Africa. A report in the magazine YOU of 12 October 1995 revealed the degradation of small towns that had once thrived in the erstwhile Transkei. After the ANC took over in 1994, the decay set in and the town of Butterworth, for example, was described as “a wreck, with littered garbage in the streets and potholed roads. The century old town hall is neglected and the parks are overrun with weeds and rubbish.” Corruption, bad management and political infighting had taken their toll, said the article. Municipal management was “abysmal” and a debt of R50 million had already accrued. Nobody was paying for municipal services. Shortly after he arrived, the town clerk gave himself a salary raise R126,000 a year - from R20 000. (This pattern of deterioration repeated itself all over the old Transkei, and has been replayed all over South Africa since then). SHAME AND APOLOGIES? Was there any public acknowledgement by the ANC that it was not on top of the job, any requests for help, any promises to mend its corrupt ways? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyGyzTrCOnhop7mcZuZLQiFMU4Ljd9pxQhjqzq6IZ-nlZuHrrdEw4BwZ2Y3FbtCLJ14EEb9f_yqQtGFu_y4BG0U5wuK38an8s-LZtZxylZcVMY2qTPU1NwmtZBpTBXkkvuP8G4W9Z0yQh/s1600/denial-eyes-pants.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538846866618249186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyGyzTrCOnhop7mcZuZLQiFMU4Ljd9pxQhjqzq6IZ-nlZuHrrdEw4BwZ2Y3FbtCLJ14EEb9f_yqQtGFu_y4BG0U5wuK38an8s-LZtZxylZcVMY2qTPU1NwmtZBpTBXkkvuP8G4W9Z0yQh/s400/denial-eyes-pants.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 256px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>On the contrary, denialism was the aggrieved reaction. Then President Nelson Mandela declared there was “no crisis” in the Eastern Cape. After a two-hour meeting with officials on 10 September 1995, Mandela declared there was “no crisis” and that in fact the problems of civil servants “were not discussed”, nor was a report to the parliamentary finance committee on the situation in the former Transkei. Provincial premier Raymond Mhlaba was “totally trustworthy”, declared Mandela - “Mahlaba had been involved in the struggle for more than 40 years”. So that was that! Problems in the Transkei were due to “untrained staff”, said another provincial report, despite evidence that there was wholesale theft of funds. (How do you train someone not to steal?) This was the mindset then, and this is the mindset now! (Interestingly, the Eastern Cape from where the ANC’s chosen emanates, is the most decrepit, corrupt and incompetent province in the country. They even steal from their own children – from the budget to feed 1,42 million E.Cape children, the government department involved cannot account for more than R180 million of this budget!) Even the most accommodating liberal supporter of the ANC’s South Africa has turned, and they have turned with a vengeance. Noseweek’s editor says SA’s leadership is “corrupt and delusional and irrational”. Others say the government is “out of touch” and a “bunch of mental midgets”. CABINET RESHUFFLE President Jacob Zuma’s recent cabinet reshuffle was simply a ploy to enhance his chances of being re-elected in 2012 by removing political antagonists and replacing them with acolytes. (Citizen editorial 2.11.10) His administration has now been further bloated by extra appointments, and really incompetent persons such as Lulu Xingwana have remained as they are loyalists. Zuma is simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic! The implications of this denialism are far-reaching. Erstwhile honest taxpayers are now finding ways to avoid paying tax for more wives, more overseas trips, higher salaries, larger luxury vehicles and summits at Sun City! Our farmers are under siege, farmland is being destroyed by coal mining because top-level ANC friends have shares in coal companies, BEE has resulted in nothing more than the self-enrichment of a few, our health services will be destroyed by delusional dreams of a national health service underpinned by a shrinking tax base, threats to nationalize mining are taken seriously by investors, school and university certificates are in many cases not worth the paper they’re written on, farmers are accused of shooting labour inspectors without a shred of evidence, our water is polluted, our police force is corrupt and untrustworthy, our defence force a shadow of its former self, but the denialism is so entrenched that no advice is taken by government to alleviate the problems, and none is sought.. On the contrary, those who speak up are racists who don’t want to see blacks succeed! If present-day South Africa is an ANC success, then their failures are too terrible to contemplate!Source:- <a href="http://www.tlu.co.za/">http://www.tlu.co.za/</a>

Self-delusion and denialism within SA’s ruling and BEE classes

It is dawning on South Africa that there are two very separate and distinct mindsets at work in the country, and it seems never the twain wi...

2:20 PM

Where is the liberation?

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLk6n8otTaUvK3o0clscFk-f_9Pqgf4UjUAR4NU0AtD6u5FCU8tbADcrfOJWBTdEjPKKLqg_XG1ZkyRL0emojdEr8T7XPHXDLpHudVasK4poWrLENGWAe-HeBCzkomF0ThjZ2mkhDe81Ms/s1600/apartheid-info-scandal-south-africa.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533197907795254114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLk6n8otTaUvK3o0clscFk-f_9Pqgf4UjUAR4NU0AtD6u5FCU8tbADcrfOJWBTdEjPKKLqg_XG1ZkyRL0emojdEr8T7XPHXDLpHudVasK4poWrLENGWAe-HeBCzkomF0ThjZ2mkhDe81Ms/s320/apartheid-info-scandal-south-africa.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 298px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>by Peter I recently read a full speech by a Member of Parliament detailing the reasons why the new media bill was required. Very convincing stuff – all of which we have heard repeatedly over the last couple of months. The alarming thing though, is that this was the speech given by Connie Mulder in 1977 when the Nats implemented exactly what the ANC is doing now. If we analyse critically the issues that have risen since 1994, the only conclusion is that the struggle for liberation and freedom was a farce. It was nothing more than a power struggle to change the base of wealth from an elite few whites, to an elite few blacks at the expense and sacrifice of the masses. We should hang our heads in shame. The real acid test is to take all current employment, social, university and institutions (like the Black management Forum) and replace the word “black” with “white”. Imagine the outcry if there was a white management forum, postings of job adverts with whites only need apply tag lines, university entrance requirements with lower standards for whites, sports teams requiring a certain percentage of whites in each team..., that was apartheid and yet are all current situations save for the word white being replaced with black. So one segregation system has been brazenly replaced by another and the base of power has simply transferred to another inept, corrupt and incompetent set of individuals who then have the audacity to proclaim that the masses have been liberated by them. The poor are arguably worse off than during apartheid. The fact is that the Nats still built houses for the blacks at a greater rate than the current government! Blacks are still being abused and exploited; it’s just that their masters are no longer white. Maids are still black, gardeners, construction workers, miners, heavy duty labourers are still black. What has changed? Where is the liberation? What has the current ANC government done since 1994? What are the excuses? The incredulous part for me is that black people will still consider themselves as liberated, simply because there is a black government. Zimbabwe has the grossest of human violations – far worse than during white rule and yet Mugabe still reigns supreme raping the once bread basket of the world. If we are going to truly become a liberated country, we have to actually liberate the masses. Change has to occur materially in their lives. We need to stop making this a black/white issue and concentrate on making it an accountability issue. It seems Africa has not learnt any lessons whatsoever and wherever “liberation” has occurred, decline on an unprecedented scale has occurred soon after because the so-called liberators had only one real agenda: power. The current activities of the ANC are case in point. People will continue to flog the apartheid horse (which is beyond dead) as their excuse for what is going on. If only we could be mature enough to realise that the problem is that this country is being mismanaged by people who have no motive other than to enrich themselves. To quote Oscar Wilde: Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

Where is the liberation?

by Peter I recently read a full speech by a Member of Parliament detailing the reasons why the new media bill was required. Very convincing...

12:42 PM

'Dear Government'

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixztUxfVNE4OL180rVcmKzdK51yJqtaYxB_-rB6bHfWcQkPTyJpUIISzozXgy5mKGxLUIXauOgb-WfyXme2ozyumG8f53RQHmYWFcyOmZWC0RQKNeXvGQ33IFveTwfzJ0-BC3rXcLn5Z1/s1600/garethcliff01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531739878972046594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiixztUxfVNE4OL180rVcmKzdK51yJqtaYxB_-rB6bHfWcQkPTyJpUIISzozXgy5mKGxLUIXauOgb-WfyXme2ozyumG8f53RQHmYWFcyOmZWC0RQKNeXvGQ33IFveTwfzJ0-BC3rXcLn5Z1/s400/garethcliff01.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 252px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>Radio jock <a href="http://www.garethcliff.com/chronicles.php?articleid=791" target="_blank" title="Read entire letter on this link">Gareth Cliff's "Dear Government"</a> letter may have been criticised this week, but the Idols judge has done what many ordinary citizens – and journalists – have been unable to do. Not only did he get a prompt response from the Presidency to his letter but he also secured a meeting with President Jacob Zuma at the Union Buildings on Tuesday. Now his scathing attack on the government has spawned more public letters to Zuma, including one from University of the Free State head Jonathan Jansen, as well as a website, <a href="http://www.deargovernment.co.za/">http://www.deargovernment.co.za/</a> <div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" class="arcticle_text" align="left"></div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" class="arcticle_text" align="left"></div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" align="left"></div><div align="left"><a href="http://www.garethcliff.com/chronicles.php?articleid=791">Dear Government</a> OK, I get it, the President isn't the only one in charge. The ANC believes in "collective responsibility" (So that nobody has to get blamed when things get screwed up), so I address this to everyone in government - the whole lot of you - good, bad and ugly (That's you, Blade).</div><div align="left"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWobuvyWQNw5r47wnMWVHzHSa-kFqyeaaisDOcih9UeyTWRhXIcHc-Ftvb0wccu39hmncUfUTNqG4ZCoBolAY8OSt4gasenqJgelbMpZmIwJ4yYulB2vTleGVDPmxK3ECbJJ7bIaulTSBV/s1600/garethcliff01.jpg"></a>We were all so pleased with your renewed promises to deliver services (we'll forgive the fact that in some places people are worse off than in 1994); to root out corruption (so far your record is worse than under Mbeki, Mandela or the Apartheid regime - what with family members becoming overnight millionaires); and build infrastructure (State tenders going disgustingly awry and pretty stadia standing empty notwithstanding) - and with the good job you did when FIFA were telling you what to do for a few months this year. Give yourselves half a pat on the back. Since President Sepp went off with his billions I'm afraid we have less to be proud of - Public Servants Strikes, more Presidential bastard children, increasing unemployment and a lack of leadership that allowed the Unions to make the elected government it's bitch. You should be more than a little worried - but you're not. Hence my letter. Here are some things that might have passed you by: 1. You have to stop corruption. Don't stop it because rich people moan about it and because it makes poor people feel that you are self-enriching parasites of state resources, but because it is a disease that will kill us all. It's simple - there is only so much money left to be plundered. When that money runs out, the plunderers will raise taxes, chase and drain all the remaining cash out of the country and be left with nothing but the rotting remains of what could have been the greatest success story of post-colonial Africa. It's called corruption because it decomposes the fabric of society. When someone is found guilty of corruption, don't go near them - it's catchy. Making yourself rich at the country's expense is what colonialists do. 2. Stop complaining about the media. You're only complaining about them because they show you up for how little you really do or care. If you were trying really hard, and you didn't drive the most expensive car in the land, or have a nephew who suddenly went from modesty to ostentatious opulence, we'd have only positive things to report. Think of Jay Naidoo, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and Zwelinzima Vavi - they come under a lot of fire, but it's never embarrassing - always about their ideas, their positions, and is perfectly acceptable criticism for people in power to put up with. When the media go after Blade Nzimande, Siphiwe Nyanda and the President, they say we need a new piece of legislation to "make the media responsible". That's because they're being humiliated by the facts we uncover about them daily, not because there is an agenda in some newsroom. If there had been a free press during the reigns of Henry VIII, Idi Amin or Hitler, their regimes might just have been kept a little less destructive, and certainly would have been less brazen and unchecked. 3. Education is a disaster. We're the least literate and numerate country in Africa. Zimbabwe produces better school results and turns out smarter kids than we do. Our youth aren't usemployed, they're unemployable. Outcomes-based-education, Teachers' Unions and an attitude of mediocrity that discourages excellence have reduced us to a laughing stock. Our learners can't spell, read, add or subtract. What are all these people going to do? Become President? There's only one job like that. We need clever people, not average or stupid ones. the failure of the Education Department happened under your watch. Someone who writes Matric now hadn't even started school under the Apartheid regime, so you cannot blame anyone but yourselves for this colossal cock-up. Fix it before three-quarters of our matrics end up begging on Oxford Road. Reward schools and teachers who deliver great pass rates and clever students into the system. Fire the teachers who march and neglect their classrooms. 4. Give up on BEE. It isn't working. Free shares for new black partnerships in old white companies has made everyone poorer except for Tokyo Sexwale. Giving people control of existing business won't make more jobs either. In fact, big companies aren't growing, they're reducing staff and costs. The key is entrepreneurship. People with initiative, creative ideas and small companies must be given tax breaks and assistance. Young black professionals must be encouraged to start their own businesses rather than join a big corporation's board as their token black shareholder or director. Government must also stop thinking that state employment is a way to decrease unemployment - it isn't - it's a tax burden. India and China are churning out new, brilliant, qualified people at a rate that makes us look like losers. South Africa has a proud history of innovation, pioneering and genius. This is the only way we can advance our society and economy beyond merely coping. 5. Stop squabbling over power. Offices are not there for you to occupy (or be deployed to) and aggrandize yourself. Offices in government are there to provide a service. If you think outrageous salaries, big German cars, first-class travel and state housing are the reasons to aspire to leadership, you're in the wrong business - you should be working for a dysfunctional, tumbledown parastatal (or Glenn Agliotti). We don't care who the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces is if we don't have running water, electricity, schools and clean streets. You work for us. Do your job, don't imagine you ARE your job. 6. Stop renaming things. Build new things to name. If I live in a street down which the sewage runs, I don't care if it's called Hans Strijdom or Malibongwe. Calling it something nice and new won't make it smell nice and new. Re-branding is something Cell C do with Trevor Noah, not something you can whitewash your lack of delivery with. 7. Don't think you'll be in power forever. People aren't as stupid as you think we are. We know you sit around laughing about how much you get away with. We'll take you down, either at the polls - or if it comes down to the wire - by revolution (Yes, Julius, the real kind, not the one you imagine happened in 2008). Careless, wasteful and wanton government is a thing of the past. The days of thin propaganda and idealized struggle are over. The people put you in power - they will take you out of it. Africa is tired of tin-pot dictators, one-party states and banana republics. We know who we are now, we care about our future - and so should you.</div><div style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none"> Source - <a href="http://www.garethcliff.com/chronicles.php?articleid=791">http://www.garethcliff.com/chronicles.php?articleid=791</a> </div>

'Dear Government'

Radio jock Gareth Cliff's "Dear Government" letter may have been criticised this week, but the Idols judge has done what man...

5:12 PM

Where to next, South Africa?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIk8JZU9uQ2T_Ye86lQlbPfpCyzEZXy74ulDVppGUDhj9Q1T7ffJ9lITjIpAwuhK7CVFKEjL8WJKQitqh1ZWxRIqW8DSPyxwelkjc-hmTH3CSDMDy1ZGFSFx8RgKhSpkXZa-nXXzOm9Rwz/s1600/Alliance+-+strikes1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIk8JZU9uQ2T_Ye86lQlbPfpCyzEZXy74ulDVppGUDhj9Q1T7ffJ9lITjIpAwuhK7CVFKEjL8WJKQitqh1ZWxRIqW8DSPyxwelkjc-hmTH3CSDMDy1ZGFSFx8RgKhSpkXZa-nXXzOm9Rwz/s640/Alliance+-+strikes1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> Barely seven weeks have passed since the end of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, and South Africa feels as though it has transferred into the twilight zone. From what was arguably one of the greatest triumphs of sporting capitalism in the world, the country is increasingly being squeezed between groups that either believe Marx, Lenin and Trotsky were right or that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is the world's greatest living man. And being bullied into believing these are only two options on the table. By BRANKO BRKIC. The last full week of August 2010 brought firm displays of power and determination by two antipodes within the ruling tripartite alliance: At one pole, the public servants' strike raged across the country, accompanied by ugly scenes of dehumanising stupidity, and being greatly strengthened by Cosatu's Zwelinzima Vavi's threat to stop SA's heartbeat. At the other pole, safely ensconced behind menacing bodyguards and security officers, ANC Youth League officials and national general council delegates plotted their way to greater influence of their own; influence that would result in changing of SA's Constitution to bring their Chavez-like plans to reality, as well as to ensure hastening their own ascent to power. As we are writing this, President Zuma has ordered his relevant ministers to return to the negotiating table to break the strike deadlock, a move that may have been designed to bolster his weakened decision-making credentials. Still, sitting somewhere in the middle, almost nobody believes he would be asked by his own people to lead them for another term. It appears that we are about to hit a fork in the road, and both directions offer a lousy future. And yet, not everything is necessarily definite. Depending on how the events of the next 30 days or so play out, SA could be in for a surprise or two. The picture of our future is still developing. But before we continue talking about what will paint that picture, and perhaps to understand the process better, let's look at the events that led to the destruction of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, whose long-time leader, Broz Tito, died in 1980 after leading the country and his party since 1945. In 1985, the communist cell of Belgrade elected a new boss, a little-known banker named Slobodan Milosevic. And as had been the case many times before, Milosevic became leader of Serbian communists in 1987, as his best friend and mentor, Ivan Stambolic ascended to the post of president of Serbia. But in the same year, Milosevic, a career communist until then, turned nationalist, split with the official line and demanded an urgent and forceful resolution of Kosovo's Albanian separatist problem. Where he encountered a problem at party level, he steamrollered the opposition, including his own boss and best friend, Stambolic. In the best populist tradition, while controlling the press completely, he stoked up people's feelings of righteous anger and then organised so called “people's revolutions” to replace the leadership of the provinces he needed to put into his column. (You are completely free to draw parallels with one Julius Malema's consolidation-of-power tactics) His plan was pretty sound: He was to mobilise and organise his forces to become a majority compared to the “enemy faction” from Croatia and Slovenia, before the 14th Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party in January 1990. He completed his master plan well before that date. And his domination of the party's congress was total. His people came to power, his policies became federal policies. At that moment, he thought, he was in control of the whole country. Except that Croatian and Slovenian communists simply couldn't and didn't want to stay in the party dominated by the polarizing and uncompromising figure Milosevic was. So they pulled out of the Federal party, effectively ending its existence. By the end of the 1990, there were free elections in every Yugoslavian province and the communists were still clinging to power only in Serbia, after an election campaign marred by violence and intimidation. Suddenly, Milosevic's master plan, so brilliantly executed, meant nothing anymore. His only way of thinking, through communist party apparatus, was simply outdated and no longer applicable to the entire country. So he turned to his last set of friends, the heavily-ideological Yugoslav Army for help in stopping the secession of Croatia and Slovenia. The result was the bloodiest war in post-WWII Europe. So why, you may ask, do we dedicate so much space to a loser politician in charge of a perpetually losing nation? Well, history is there to teach us something rather painful in this case. The ANC and its partners are built very much in the same way, and on the same understanding of the liberation movement's moral righteousness and total infallibility as was the Yugoslav communist party. As any communist party, for that matter. The same system of deployment wrought incalculable damage to country's economy. The same near-total blindness to global developments and civilisational gains. The very same claims of exceptionalism. Especially where communist parties are concerned, history can teach a lot. The current antagonism within the tripartite alliance is a sure sign of a party that was running the country having gone unchallenged for way too long. So long, in fact, that the original idea around which the organisation was built has been long-relegated to largely fictional self-congratulatory statements about how great the country is and how well everyone lives. (Repeat after us: We have successfully completed the SABC's transformation from the state broadcaster into a public broadcaster.) No, the glue that holds every organisation that has near total power is just that, total power. And if one side in the ruling alliance does not enjoy that power, the organisation will eventually have to undergo a major, sometimes crippling and always painful make-over. So it is important to understand current events in the Cosatu – ANC – Youth League maelstrom through this historical perspective. Cosatu and the Youth League are motoring in completely opposite directions at full speed. Cosatu wants more socialism, Youth League chooses to follow an even worse path of cheap populism. But what is important to understand is that what happens within the ANC proper in the following weeks will substantially define the future of South Africa. By orchestrating his total domination over the Youth League and with his renewed push for his own agenda, Malema has pulled the wires to the point of breaking. And if his allies in the ANC leadership use the national general council to pull ever so slightly more in the same direction, it may render the alliance null and void, very much the same way as Milosevic did in 1990. In other words, if successful in taking over the ANC, Malema and company will probably win the battle, but lose the war. Still, it is not an easy task being a Cosatu leader these days. On one side, one has to satisfy the raging members regardless of the waning popular support, and on the other, one has to find another way of attacking the ANC without explicitly stating that the alliance is no more. Vavi and company have a painful choice to make these days, one of becoming the power themselves or not. And if Malema's line wins at the national general council, that choice will probably be made for them. The only remaining question would be whether to go it alone, or attempt a takeover of the ANC itself. Source <a href="http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/">http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/</a>

Where to next, South Africa?

Barely seven weeks have passed since the end of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, and South Africa feels as though it has transferred into the twil...

8:15 AM

White farmers 'being wiped out'

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate. <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454183353579109394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJApHQFQ8LHS_I3WPMzfVuBpRhl4CHFWPyjbowMsZm1JU5nEqhIP-MOwgtiSuJ8-MAqVHaGO0N_Vt18BxQJyGfj34K5RLVw1uql7DnW83P3nGJecggDp3qiAHJu4BOFEmzbptYrubaeUmT/s400/Farm_Murders_White_crosses.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 385px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 185px; CURSOR: hand" />THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers. Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room. As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest. In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying. The attackers, who were drug addicts, simply disappeared into the night. Cillier’s murder, at Christmas, was barely reported in the local press. It was, after all, everyday news. Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000. In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a campaign of intimidation that began in 2000 has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, but has left fewer than two dozen dead. The vulnerability felt by South Africa’s 40,000 remaining white farmers intensified earlier this month when Julius Malema, head of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) youth league, opened a public rally by singing Dubula Ibhunu, or Shoot the Boer, an apartheid-era anthem, that was banned by the high court last week. Malema’s timing could hardly have been worse. Last weekend in the remote farming community of Colenso, in KwaZulu-Natal, Nigel Ralfe, 71, a dairy farmer, and his wife Lynette, 64, were gunned down as they milked their cows. He was critically injured; she died. That same day a 46-year-old Afrikaner was shot through his bedroom window as he slept at his farm near Potchefstroom. A few days later a 61-year-old was stabbed to death in his bed at a farm in Limpopo. The resurrection of Dubula Ibhunu, defended by senior ANC officials as little more then a sentimental old struggle song, has been greeted with alarm by Tom Stokes, of the opposition Democratic Alliance. He said the ANC’s continued association with the call to kill Boers could not be justified. “Any argument by the ANC that this song is merely a preservation of struggle literature rings hollow in the face of farming families who have lost wives, mothers and grandmothers,” he added. He was supported by Anton Alberts of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party: “Malema’s comments are creating an atmosphere that is conducive to those who want to commit murder. He’s an accessory to the wiping out of farmers in South Africa.” Rossouw Cillier, Pieter’s brother, bristled as he pointed to the bullet holes in the panelled kitchen of the farmhouse near Ceres in the Western Cape. “They shot him through the fridge from the back door — the bullets came straight through here, into his heart. He never had a chance,” he said. A successful apple and pear grower, he believes his community is living on borrowed time: “More white farmers have been killed than British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, we are at war here.” His brother’s farmhouse is now shuttered and empty. “I can’t spend time here. We’ll have to sell. This farm has been in our family for generations but it must go. Who’ll manage it? The children will never come back here. They held their own father as he died in front of them. Will they ever get over that?” As we walked across the orchard, fruit destined for the shelves of Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the UK was still being picked. A tractor passed a 10ft cross erected in honour of the murdered farmer. “It lights up at night,” Rossouw said. “My brother was a religious man. It’s all that’s left of him here.” Across South Africa many farmers feel endangered. In Northern Province a tribute has been created beneath an enormous sign with the stark Afrikaans word “plaasmoorde” — farm killings. Thousands of white wooden crosses have been planted across a mountainside, one for each fallen farmer. Recently the government’s department of rural development has been airing proposals to nationalise productive farmland as a “national asset”. Critics claim it is designed to deflect criticism from the ruling ANC’s failures. “It’s a lot easier talking about nationalising farms than building decent houses, making clean water come out of taps or honouring promises to redistribute farm plots to millions of landless poor,” said a spokesman for AgriSA, the farmers’ union. On the outskirts of Ceres there are few groceries in the township store — tins of pilchards, baked beans, some dried biscuits. A group of teenage boys sit on the burnt-out remains of a Ford Escort. This is where Cillier’s killers gathered, in a shebeen, a drinking club, where they fortified themselves with cheap hooch before they set off to rob him. They escaped with nothing. According to Rossouw Cillier the most telling detail is that his brother was unarmed when they attacked. “If we brandish a weapon, we’ll go to prison, not them. What did they gain from this murder? It was an act as pointless as their lives.”From The Sunday Times - <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article7078730.ece">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article7078730.ece</a>

White farmers 'being wiped out'

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate. THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting...

3:02 PM

Matric mess: look out, the government has lied to you

Andile Mngxitana - from the Sowetan Shocking Education results - Black man writes... <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCR6RjT04EvlI3jSv5MsXqQBbZplbOA9rUUJmV_E_lUF_O1xOYBMDHL_qaeqUYLiIOGYPOthLs6BPVDej5N2FSRLEkKi61iGIuSHKhKRRPVdIWO2MI33SEy840x8b5hanRx9Aq1XM2FG9h/s1600-h/ancgovlies.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448653316888699474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCR6RjT04EvlI3jSv5MsXqQBbZplbOA9rUUJmV_E_lUF_O1xOYBMDHL_qaeqUYLiIOGYPOthLs6BPVDej5N2FSRLEkKi61iGIuSHKhKRRPVdIWO2MI33SEy840x8b5hanRx9Aq1XM2FG9h/s400/ancgovlies.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 150px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>DEAR reader, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your government lied to you when it said 60 percent of matriculants have passed. The truth is only 21 percent actually passed and I’m being generous here. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrEQaHPZ24mwAX0uCCA0v1znbzkvHZIUvKoL9iqfTSdjwmZ9cHN0HfhfYWdg92hpV2gMv4HxfjMSwobEM5z1-2IeNv1Y34ONZTV0foqyGDukCZaFFCWXaAjq9CSiwt-sbxxKew4q5DCqab/s1600-h/sa_education.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWQ-PUt0eBgH5FwhyphenhyphenEaSsDP1KoDl2GRrHIB08ObajdCFumqFzqfnlIMfIuF4b4lHCuDpSc46Qf91EGjVW0EDVylbBD1XOCgBtCCC_UG_3L4-T8LrqrgVW-DepB9YFowpYjMPjlLl6-IHv8/s1600-h/anc+incompetence.jpg"></a>Basically we have a situation where, if you had 100 children who were supposed to be in matric last year, only about 20 would have passed. Let me tell you about a well-kept national secret and monumental scandal. The media and most education commentators missed it. In 1998 about 1,5million children started school. Of these only about 500000 wrote matric last year. This means that during 12 years, the schooling system lost almost a million pupils. Yes , almost a million children who started school in 1998 dropped out before matric. We must ask President Jacob Zuma what the democratic government has done with a million of our children. We have lost these pupils under ANC rule so no need to blame apartheid . Only about 40 percent of those who started school in 1998 wrote matric last year. So the real pass rate is a shocking 21 percent as Martin Prew of the Centre for Education Policy Development said The pass rate could be as low as 10 percent if we discount those who got 30 percent and 40 percent in certain subjects. Yet our democratic government says if our children do not know 60 to 70 percent of a subject they have passed. Incredible! Further , those with university exemptions are likely to fail the first year, because they are hugely under-prepared. Black-wash, the Soweto based youth movement, explains the crisis thus: “The reality is that even though blacks and whites are supposed to have equal opportunities, blacks in township schools have few opportunities or skills. For example, a Grade 7 pupil in a white school is more likely to have better mathematics and literacy skills than a black matriculant. So blacks fail Grade 12 because they have been systematically under-prepared since Grade 1.” As we know, 97 percent of children in private schools, which is essentially a white system, have passed and of those, close to 80 percent have university exemption . These differences speak to different resource allocations, teacher preparedness, salaries and conditions of work. They also speak to the unchanged socioeconomic conditions of blacks. We need to blame the government 100 percent for the shocking state of our education. We must demand to know where the million pupils we lost in the 12 years are. We must demand that Zuma and his government declare our education system a national disaster. This means we need urgent and extraordinary intervention to correct the situation. We need to really stop the pretence we call education. If need be, we must stop schooling for two years to sort things out. Right now there is educational genocide for the black child. Truth is, if half the energy we put into the FIFA 2010 World Cup was focused on education we could turn the situation around within five years. But then, again, we care more about games and jamborees than our people, so don’t count on it. Next year this time I will reissue this same column. Expect no changes in our education disaster. I wonder how one can be positive under these circumstances.

Matric mess: look out, the government has lied to you

Andile Mngxitana - from the Sowetan Shocking Education results - Black man writes... DEAR reader, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ...

9:51 AM

Malema linked to R250m mining deal

The most vocal proponent of the nationalisation of South Africa's mines, the leader of the ruling party's youth wing, Julius Malema, is linked to a R250m mining deal that involves politically connected individuals at the expense of impoverished communities, the country's Sunday Times reported. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNke6m6yfFl7bcxpssiG_kYXwlEtO79vJlhU_6XHghY4fmw-TPhTaZV1JOuqo2vHyprneSmWZbaTJiqSdYBok7-37dcVi0CzesTCiSmFAJLKQUppI6guN0XO5g0njmU0cAphjWonmU8gFO/s1600-h/Malema01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448426917035457266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNke6m6yfFl7bcxpssiG_kYXwlEtO79vJlhU_6XHghY4fmw-TPhTaZV1JOuqo2vHyprneSmWZbaTJiqSdYBok7-37dcVi0CzesTCiSmFAJLKQUppI6guN0XO5g0njmU0cAphjWonmU8gFO/s400/Malema01.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 314px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" /></a>The company at the heart of the deal is ASA Metals, which is 60% owned by Sinosteel subsidiary Eastern Asia Metals Investment Co Ltd from China and the rest is held by Limpopo Economic Development Enterprise (Limdev) of South Africa. ASA Metals owns a chromite mine and smelter near Steelpoort on the platinum-rich Eastern Busveld Igneous Complex. The Sunday Times said it had information showing those involved in the deal include soccer boss Irvin Khoza and Kgomotso Motlanthe, the son of deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe. Limdev will retain 10% of ASA once the deal is done. Malema was also a founding director in a consortium that was registered for the bid, shortly after discussions about the broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) deal started in 2006. He was later forced out, the Sunday Times said. But the Sunday Times said it understood he had since held several informal meetings with those involved in putting the deal together. Malema first publicly raised the issue of the nationalisation of mines at a Black Management Forum meeting on October 9 last year - about a week before ASA Metals and the Limdev were scheduled to announce the successful bidder, the newspaper said. Sinosteel denied speculation that it was being pressured into selling out of its 60% stake in ASA Metals. Sinosteel is to invest R3bn in the project, increasing it value 800 times, Suwei Zhang, chief executive of ASA Metals told the newspaper. An official announcement on the sale of 30% of ASA Metals, from Limdev's stake, is expected in three weeks, Sunday Times reported, adding it had been established that five consortiums and companies - from an initial short list of 43 - have been earmarked after being interviewed by the Limdev board a month ago. The five will each get a 12.5% stake of the shares being sold. The stake had been earmarked for impoverished communities living near the mine, but the Sunday Times reported there had been political infighting and intimidation by politicians. A number of politicians within the Limpopo ANC structures suggested Malema's increasingly strident calls for nationalisation were designed to deflected attention away from the ASA transaction. One of the short-listed bidders, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, told the newspaper the entire transaction was "rotten". "You will be shocked to find out who else is involved (in this deal) ... I'm terrified just talking to you. I'm not only risking the deal but also putting my life at risk. These people mean business and are not prepared to lose this deal at whatever cost," the source was quoted as saying. He alleged that Khoza had used his political connections to "steal" a stake in the deal. "(A)nd there are other politicians and their families involved, who have either signed up in their own personal capacity or used proxies," he said, describing the deal as "a joke". The Sunday Times has established that the short-listed consortiums include Tunache Investment, led by Khoza and serial empowerment dealmaker Ronnie Ntuli; Rebone Mining Consortium; Kalapeng Mining Resources; Moribo Resources; and Dilokong Consortium. Buena Vista Trading, led by Kgomotso Isaac Motlanthe, features in one of the consortiums. Malema this week refused to speak to the Sunday Times. The youth league's spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, on Friday denied claims that Malema was benefiting, either directly or indirectly, from the deal or that he had lobbied on behalf of interested parties. Limdev's transaction advisers, SizweNtsaluba VSP, declined to discuss the deal or explain why the announcement of the successful bidders had been postponed twice. Limdev spokesman Leo Gama said he could not comment. "Once it is completed, our organisation will announce the winning companies and the public will know," he told the newspaper. - Fin24.comSee full story in Sunday Times - <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article354776.ece">Malema and the R250m mining deal </a>

Malema linked to R250m mining deal

The most vocal proponent of the nationalisation of South Africa's mines, the leader of the ruling party's youth wing, Julius Malema,...

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