South Africa P.I.G.

‘Shoot The Politician’ to be new hit struggle song

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsnmlVxnCCXEfPMsbD0tjEZwhtWKsxM6UnsRAeUHyHYU7XZz2nlm3XmaTAoNIR3d-aLWhXS2W6-Grh0rD64zdt1No0i3QpcsSLXVzdyHJsE1uLtGYFp7agWC2zItAKKZ2SajjRjzljsxX/s1600/motivator-democracy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="512" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsnmlVxnCCXEfPMsbD0tjEZwhtWKsxM6UnsRAeUHyHYU7XZz2nlm3XmaTAoNIR3d-aLWhXS2W6-Grh0rD64zdt1No0i3QpcsSLXVzdyHJsE1uLtGYFp7agWC2zItAKKZ2SajjRjzljsxX/s640/motivator-democracy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> A catchy new struggle song, ‘Shoot the politician’, has been hailed by the 20-million South African voters who get nothing in return for their vote. “If ‘Shoot The Boer’ refers to a struggle against a corrupt anti-democratic system rather than being a call for genocide, then MP’s won’t have a problem if we sing ‘Shoot the politician’,” explained a spokesman. “Ain’t democracy a bitch?” Meanwhile some white farmers have expressed “slight discomfort” at their taxes being used to pay for Julius Malema’s hate speech defence. “Call us reactionary counterrevolutionaries,” said farmer Ploeg Spoeg-Kroeg, “but doesn’t it strike anyone else as a bit odd that we’re paying lawyers to defend Julius’s right to call for us to be murdered?” However, most legal experts have agreed that the song ‘Shoot the Boer’ is not a call for actual murder but a call to arms against the repressive apartheid regime, a verdict that has been welcomed by the writers of the new hit struggle song, ‘Shoot the politician’. “When we sing, ‘Shoot the politician, blow the corrupt thieving complacent racist motherf*cker away’, we’re actually just calling for greater accountability,” explained songwriter Stratocaster Semenya. “Or maybe we aren’t, but that all depends on what the lawyers say. And how much longer our patience holds out.” He said that references to specific people were also harmlessly metaphorical. “The second verse goes, ‘Shoot Sicelo Shiceka, shoot him in the ass with buckshot made of diamonds, then rub wasabi paste onto his perforated ass, then shoot him in the ass again, don’t worry, he’s got medical aid’. “Obviously in this case he is just a metaphor for all the criminally insane MPs who use taxpayers’ money to visit their girlfriends in Swiss jails. So chill. It’s not a threat. “Or is it?” This morning politicians from across the political spectrum reacted angrily to the song, saying that freedom of speech was nice in theory but when it “blundered with its grubby peasant clogs through the hallowed members-only halls of Parliament and threatened those who account to nobody but God, their bank managers and Jacob Zuma – in ascending orders – then it has gone too far”. “You can’t go around calling for people to be shot,” said backbencher Filibuster Zuma. “Unless you’re referring to Boere. Or criminals. Or cockroaches. And by cockroaches we mean of course political opponents, and we mean ‘shoot’ in a metaphorical sense. Sort of, depending on the context.” hayibo.com

‘Shoot The Politician’ to be new hit struggle song

A catchy new struggle song, ‘Shoot the politician’, has been hailed by the 20-million South African voters who get nothing in return for the...

2:29 PM

Extreme Police Butality - Killing of Defenceless Protestor

South Africa “the protest capital of the world” - The beginning of the end for the ANC! As the ANC turns into an aggressive kleptocracy - and confronts an ongoing country wide revolt from poor communities - the politicians have made themselves the enemies of their own people. As one of its members said: “The ANC regards their own people — not the other official political parties — as their true opposition, because they are closer to the pain on the ground.” <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOx9f7BkdDjYzKofBlNkSEIVnrxXXFrOZb33o-B6tiZK_00UtRwvw1C6jTMwWH8k9F2ZilFT47oiV1AkdaEg7S0Bdb_Il9RoeKBUTiNOp-dfXi38tTnvDGmpVmpCtBqOguMhFDj6819gGE/s1600/BhekiCele+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOx9f7BkdDjYzKofBlNkSEIVnrxXXFrOZb33o-B6tiZK_00UtRwvw1C6jTMwWH8k9F2ZilFT47oiV1AkdaEg7S0Bdb_Il9RoeKBUTiNOp-dfXi38tTnvDGmpVmpCtBqOguMhFDj6819gGE/s1600/BhekiCele+copy.jpg" /></a>The ranting against Boers and ugly women is to take attention away from the multitudes of protesting people whose life is a nightmare under the rainbow-nation mirage. The very convenient return to anti-apartheid songs calling for whites to be shot.. and their harping on ‘struggle songs’ as they were sung in the past, is not a reflection of how attached they are to the struggle, but an attempt to get the people to believe that all they have is remnants of the old order against whom their anger should be vented. In this way, the political elite sidetracks the people from singing about the current dislocation of water and electricity, the ruthless and violent evictions of shack dwellers, the vicious police attack on service delivery protesters, and the kleptomaniac proclivities of the new political and economic elites. They raise race not to confront racism but as a card to render themselves immune from criticism and also to find a slice for themselves in the economic cake. It is a weapon of mass distraction. They want to focus the people on imaginary fights with the Boers while the filthy rich black political and economic elites are involved in equity deals with the stinky rich whites, strolling half-naked with them in exotic beaches and exclusive resorts.</div> The brutal killing of an unarmed protestor, attacked simultaneously by six policemen - viciously beaten with batons and fired on at close range with rubber bullets. Tatane was a school teacher, a councilor, a husband and father of one child, a rolemodel in his poor community where he was a volunteer teacher helping learners to improve their marks in Science, Math and Afrikaans. He rescued a helpless old man from being sprayed down by a water cannon. He took his shirt off to draw attention away from the old man, telling the police to rather spray him. The cops then attacked him. Anybody with sense will recognise brutal, excessive force by ill-disciplined cops. The ANC Militia, masquerading as the SAPS, are now clearly and assuredly completely out of control. Shocking images of the police brutality were broadcast to the nation on television yesterday - they showed an unarmed man being viciously beaten and shot to death by a mob of policemen.  <div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pictures of the attack on the 33-year-old man by at least six policemen simultaneously, during a service delivery protest at Setsoto, in Ficksburg, eastern Free State, were shown on all SABC news bulletins last night. </div><div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </div><div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The visuals of the chilling and sad scene show how the armed policemen cornered Andries Tatane, striking him with their batons and kicking him in an assault that lasted for a few minutes. </div><div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </div><div style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tatane, from Masaleng township, Ficksburg, is seen holding his hand against his chest after the assault. He collapsed and died before an ambulance arrived.</div> Click on image below to watch SLIDESHOW <a class="photo" href="http://multimedia.timeslive.co.za/photos/2011/04/ficksburg-killing/" target="_blank">Ficksburg killing </a>  <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" height="412" id="soundslider" width="470"><param name="movie" value="http://multimedia.timeslive.co.za/photostory/flicksburgsz/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=620&embed_height=533&autoload=false&autostart=false" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="menu" value="false" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://multimedia.timeslive.co.za/photostory/flicksburgsz/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=470&embed_height=412&autoload=false" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="470" height="412" menu="false" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object> We are all Andries Tatane - By An Anonymous Reader South Africa is far from what Tunisia was like pre-revolution (for one it is not governed by a one-party police state), but the parallels of small-town <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/protester-beaten-to-death-by-cops-report-1.1056538" target="_blank">cops beating to death</a> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omWi5PayXiM">here</a>‘s video footage from the South African state broadcaster SABC news) a South African Everyman because he was angry with poor or non-existent service delivery (water, electricity, roads, housing) is eerily reminiscent of a certain <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201111684242518839.html">fruit vendor in southern Tunisia</a>.   Again, the differences between South Africa and Tunisia are too many to mention. But if you asked someone in Meqheleng (yes, I did look up the largest township in Ficksburg in the Free State Province) if they are as frustrated as your typical Tunisian circa 2010, I wonder what they would say? Would the ANC’s proper electoral mandate and liberation credentials outweigh the impression that those in power–<a href="http://concernedafricascholars.org/bulletin/84/" target="_blank">Jacob Zuma</a>, <a href="http://mg.co.za/person/tokyo-sexwale" target="_blank">Tokyo Sexwale</a>, <a href="http://mg.co.za/person/sicelo-shiceka" target="_blank">Sicelo Shiceka</a>, and <a href="http://mg.co.za/person/siphiwe-nyanda" target="_blank">Siphiwe Nyanda</a>, etcetera–are amassing wealth and governing just like Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali? I worry that a few years from now they won’t care how legitimate the ruling party’s mandate is: poor service delivery is poor service delivery. You know at least for now in further Tunisia parallels the people of Ficksburg have <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article1020872.ece/Ficksburg-protesters-set-buildings-alight" target="_blank">ratcheted things</a> up a bit. That leads me this: Does that 18-year old in Meqheleng know the basic dynamics of what is happening in North Africa or the Middle East? Are vernacular radio and local papers giving the “Arab spring” coverage, at least to the point that that 18-year old realizes how crap Mubarak was and, closer to home, how dismissive the ANC leadership has been to their demands the last 17 years, basically the span of his or her entire lifespan? Trevor Manuel, former finance minister, said in the aftermath of the Paris riots that Cape Town  is treading water. Meanwhile, Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of Thabo, drew a picture for the country following the events in Tunisia. We shouldn’t be surprised when in the absence of meaningful political representation and mediation, the atrophy of social change, and in a context of socially acceptable and government sanctioned accumulation through nepotism, cronyism, and political-connectedness, the structural violence of South African life finds vivid and widespread expression. “Service delivery” protests (a misnomer if there ever was one), or what passes as xenophobic, domestic, interpersonal violence, wanton brutality on the part of security apparatus, all these are all <a href="http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=140341" target="_blank">symptoms of the greater malaise</a>. <div class="comment-text" dir="ltr">Sky news propaganda. Dramatic footage of the whole clip was shown on the <a href="http://youtu.be/0iz2_pP7UTk">e News Channel</a> (Warning - shocking and disturbing) where the man was just verbally challenging the police while they were threatening the crowd with a water cannon telling the protesters to go away. He was unarmed and posed no threat to the police. The man was first attacked by a cop with a batton, then he started fighting back... THEN <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Krh0k-tYFY&feature=related">Sky cut the clip</a> in where you see him fighting the cop. They make it look like he was violent to begin with, leaving out the beginning. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMSHm3mph3U&feature=related">Another Police Beating</a>  <h3 style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s7W2M4vnEc&feature=related">Police Beating</a> </h3></div> Death in Ficksburg shows how we value life By : ITUMELENG MAHABANE A MAN died this week. He died with his arms clutching his chest, trying to stop the blood spilling out of a gaping bullet hole. His crime? In a country in which nearly 50% of the people live in poverty and where nearly 50% of black people are unemployed — most of them without the prospect of ever finding a job — he died because he wanted a better deal for his community. <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In a country in which miscellaneous items worth hundreds of millions of rand are consumed each year by politicians, where people become instant multimillionaires supposedly providing public goods, goods that rarely materialise, this man died because he wanted his government to do its job.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></div> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">There is no official finding. Early indications are that he was killed, possibly murdered, by the system that is meant to protect him. He was beaten viciously by a group of police officers. Then he was shot. Probably as he was lying on the ground, hurt and defenceless.</div> By the the middle of this morning, there had not yet been a statement of sympathy, of outrage, of a call for an investigation, from a member of the Cabinet. A country with three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, a government ruled by a party once described as having the most genteel armed wing in the world, and this is what we have been reduced to? The public, vicious deaths of citizens at the hands of the people entrusted with protecting our lives seemingly leaves us cold. In Andries Tatane’s death we have shown, unequivocally, how we value life in a country with a constitution that is supposed to be the most progressive and enviable in the world. This is not simply about police brutality. This is about national brutality. The police are simply a reflection of the society we are. It begins with the acceptance of the brutality of poverty and economic injustice. Former President <a href="http://www.blogger.com/" id="popupAnchor" style="color: #b30616; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: underline;">Thabo Mbeki</a> described SA as a country with two economies, a first economy and a second economy. Between 70% and 80% of South Africans live in that second economy and it is a place of humiliating and incapacitating poverty. The overwhelming majority of our country survives on a household income of less than R2500 a month, most will spend between R500 and R1500 a month on accommodation because there is a shortage of pro-poor housing stock. That is ignoring for a moment that even R1000 will simply get you a makeshift room. These households must then feed, clothe and send their children to school. These poor people must survive in an economy in which pricing is determined by the need to satisfy the earning expectations of first-world citizens and their price-fixing and where their government has failed to provide functioning public infrastructure. The poverty in which vast numbers of South Africans live can make places such as Alexandra seem like places of privilege. We have people who have been on housing lists for more than a decade, many of them the supposed recipients of supposed houses built by people who live it up at bling parties, hobnobbing with the political and business elites of the first world. Meanwhile, provinces are rushing to outlaw shack settlements. We seek instead to criminalise the poor for being poor. They must know their place and sit in the dust bowls that apartheid shipped them out to until the rest of us have eaten. We cannot have them scarring the vistas of our first economy. The maladministration and poor governance is tolerated, rewarded even. The unequivocal message from the reaction to the death of Tatane in Ficksburg is that not only do we do not value the lives of our people, the government has a minimal sense of accountability to its citizens. If it does not care about their lives then how can it possibly care about its duty to them? This is not simply about poor governance and delivery, it is about economic and social justice. There is something repugnant, for instance, about the ease with which we demonise workers in our battle against inflation, when the problem is multifaceted. In a country of bread-price fixers, officials who steal from children and pensioners, and crass chauvinistic materialists, the ease with which the working class has become the enemy of the country is a reflection of the society we have become We can comfort ourselves and tell ourselves that we have a democracy and a constitution and that there will be no violent uprisings in this country. Yet democracy is not a piece of paper. It functions only if people believe they have a real choice, and many do not think they do. In that context, the combination of extraordinary inequality, material excess, poor political accountability and responsiveness, and debilitating, brutalising corruption will eventually spread the flames engulfing poor, black SA into our comfortable little first world. We are becoming tribes at war. We need to find our way back to prioritising an inclusive and just society. • Mahabane is a partner at Brunswick.

Extreme Police Butality - Killing of Defenceless Protestor

South Africa “the protest capital of the world” - The beginning of the end for the ANC! As the ANC turns into an aggressive kleptocracy - an...

7:03 AM

Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

by Moeletsi Mbeki: Author, political commentator. <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKglNi_iw3snTREMVqrRhKch1fxCkDDqseIXlTnX56gzhhiO_PiVr0GfEvDFAZRg3IoFIt7FZNBT-r77uYgftKe58_i_pBLBYNHVtUP_X9KlH95JuMsyqO3VnmpKPeUaJ54qaroMFiejFz/s1600/sa_burn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKglNi_iw3snTREMVqrRhKch1fxCkDDqseIXlTnX56gzhhiO_PiVr0GfEvDFAZRg3IoFIt7FZNBT-r77uYgftKe58_i_pBLBYNHVtUP_X9KlH95JuMsyqO3VnmpKPeUaJ54qaroMFiejFz/s320/sa_burn.jpg" width="320" /></a>I can predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded. </div> <div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes. </div> <div></div>The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed. <div></div>A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200000 people were killed. <div></div>The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse. <div></div><ul><li>Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power; </li><li>In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its history; </li><li>The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and </li><li>The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA’s poor and foreign African migrants.</li></ul> <div></div>What should the ANC have done, or be doing? <div></div>The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA’s strengths were; identified what SA’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses. <div></div>A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels. <div></div>What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE). <div></div>BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations. <div></div>Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE. <div></div>The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business. <div></div>The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. That was the design of the big conglomerates. <div></div>Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates. <div></div>But what is wrong with protecting SA’s conglomerates? <div></div>Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy. <div></div><ul><li>The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour; </li><li>It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources; </li><li>It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population; </li><li>It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and </li><li>It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass. </li><li>Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates. </li></ul> <div></div>The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos. <div></div>My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground. <div></div>But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates. <div></div>The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed. <div></div>What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment. <div></div>So what is the correct road SA should be travelling? <div></div>We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors. <div></div> <div></div>

Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

by Moeletsi Mbeki: Author, political commentator. I can predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the mas...

9:27 AM

South Africa P.I.G.

‘Shoot The Politician’ to be new hit struggle song

Extreme Police Butality - Killing of Defenceless Protestor

Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

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