The folly of Bantu Education

South Africa's matriculation results were released today. Predictably, the best (read "white") schools did better, but the rest of the schools fared worse than in previous years. The failures can largely be ascribed to the politically driven implementation of a piece of left-wing folly, Outcomes-based Education (OBE). The usual suspects have already been trundled out and blamed for the disastrous results in some schools. "It was apartheid. The legacy of Bantu Education is to blame."

"Bantu" is the collective name for black Africans. It literally means "people." In apartheid South Africa, Bantu Education was the name for the educational system to which black people were subjected, from more or less 1953 onwards.

Everybody obviously "knows" Bantu Education was an "injustice / crime against humanity / evil", don't they? The loony left becomes apoplectic by just thinking about those dastardly whites subjecting those poor people to an inferior educational system, segregated schools and even segregated universities. How could those evil whites perpetrate such a diabolical scheme?

(Isn't the deliberate phrase "segregated universities" interesting? Listen to the left-wing bilge spewing forth from the PC brigade these days, you'd have thought no black could go to university in the old days. The facts and reality are different. Nelson Mandela became a lawyer in apartheid South Africa. He went to university, in other words. He was allowed to practice law in Johannesburg.)

Bantu Education was just plain wrong, wasn't it?

I agree with the last statement. Bantu Education was wrong, but not in the sense that the politically correct brigade perceives it to be.

If somebody wants to maintain Bantu Education was inferior, I am going to ask the obvious question, that the PC brigade is too afraid to ask: inferior compared to what? To the advanced, enlightened educational system to be found in Sub-Saharan Africa before Arabic or European colonizers arrived? You know – the same one that brought forth literary giants such as, ahem…. Or wait: weren't there those brilliant black scientists, schooled in the idyllic and sophisticated educational system that was in existence in what is now the Transkei or Kwazulu-Natal in, say, 1700? What were their names? Strangely I can't remember right now…

Of course I'm being facetious above. In all of recorded history, prior to Arabic or European settlement, there was no tradition of the written word, no science in the Arabic or Western sense of the word, and therefore no notion of anything even approaching, say, Plato's Academy, except for an Islamic (i.e. Arab-inspired) university in Timbuktu, far to the north of South Africa.

All the black tribes, every single one of them, encountered by South Africa's European colonizers, were in a pre-civilized, pre-literate, pre-technological state. There were no schools as Westerners would understand them.

I ask again: is anybody still maintaining Bantu Education was inferior when compared to a complete lack of education?

Yet Bantu Education was wrong. It was lunacy. It was stupid. It was unsustainable. South Africa's whites, the Afrikaners, did an almost insanely stupid thing by even implementing such a system in the first place. By doing so we (I am an Afrikaner) assumed responsibility for the education of millions of denizens of other nations – Zulus, Xhosas, Vendas and Tswanas – the different black nations that inhabited the Southern African subcontinent.

Consider this for a moment. Whites have never been a majority in South Africa, but our ancestors took it upon ourselves to educate millions of others, who at present outnumber us by at least 10 to 1 in South Africa, and by 150 to 1 in the rest of Africa.  It was the equivalent of the white population of, say, the United States, taking it upon themselves to educate everybody in Central and South America. Think of the language barrier. Think of the logistics.

Think of the obvious question: why should the education of millions of South Americans become white Americans' problem? Why would Americans agree to such a thing?

It would be lunacy. And it was. Bantu Education was lunacy. White South Africans ignored the example set by the monumentally callous British colonizers, whose indifference to their colonial subjects in Africa and India was breathtaking. Whites took it upon themselves to educate millions of people from other nations, an endeavour funded by white tax money.

We made other people's and nations' problems, our problem. This was an almost unbelievable act of generosity, although it was sadly misguided. Why could Koreans, whose country was poorer than Zambia in 1960, educate themselves out of poverty within 30 years? What's wrong with Africans if Koreans could do it for and by themselves? The left keeps telling us how all people are supposedly equal. Why then point fingers at whites for trying to educate blacks, by endlessly harping on about the so-called inferiority of Bantu Education?

Sure, Bantu Education had its problems. Compared to the alternative – no education at all – it was however an astounding though foolhardy piece of generosity on the part of white South Africans.

Time to admit to South Africa's educational failure

South Africa's matriculation (grade 12 or university entrance exams in other countries) are about to be released. This will be the first group of matriculants who wrote matric using the new Outcomes Based Education (OBE) curriculum.

(OBE is a disastrous exercise in political correctness, implemented in great haste by the ANC regime. Like almost all left-wing ideas, it is a complete shambles, although that is not the topic of this column.)

According to Umalusi, the body in charge of supervising matric results, the pass rate is very similar to last year's pass rate, in exams written under the old curriculum.

I personally find the above outcome (pardon the pun) a bit difficult to believe. The entire curriculum has changed. Subjects like mathematics have changed completely. Call me cynical, but something is fishy, should the results be that similar. How is it possible that the pass rate is almost exactly the same, given the comprehensive changes that have occurred? Some Stalinist manipulation has obviously occurred, if you ask me.

Furthermore, South Africa's school leavers fare dismally when compared to their international peers. Although approximately 70% of matriculants "pass" annually (many of them with marks like Julius Malema's - an H symbol in mathematics), they compare very poorly to their international equivalents. South African school leavers and school pupils routinely come last in international tests, especially in mathematics. This points to the fact that, although South African pupils pass matric, they cannot actually read and write properly. They are especially poor at numeracy - adding 10 and 12 together may present a challenge to many school leavers.

Approximately 500,000 "learners" (an abhorrent, left-wing word for students or pupils) "pass" matric every year. It is a fact only that a small proportion of these, probably less than 10%, is of an international standard. They do especially poorly in mathematics. Of the 400,000 black matriculants who pass annually, fewer than 1 in 100 pass mathematics on the higher grade. This is usually ascribed to "apartheid" or "poverty", even though no black pupil currently in school has ever experienced apartheid education, and the fact that there are millions of rich blacks in South Africa. Nobody would ever dare to whisper the dreaded "g-word" - genetics - as a possible explanation.

Those that do not pass mathematics often tend to take subjects like Biblical Studies and History, which are perceived as "easy", but which hardly prepare them for real careers.

I often wonder whether the problem is not that there are too many candidates for matric in South African schools. Candidates who, for whatever reason, are ill-prepared and unsuitable for university entrance, and should not be there in the first place.

Would it not be better to produce 100,000 well-educated, literate and numerate matrics every year, than 480,000 ill-prepared, illiterate and functionally innumerate matrics that graduate with useless certificates?

Of course the above is a pipe dream; it would mean that the ANC regime admits to yet another failure, to be added to its long list of utter incompetence. However, South Africa will keep falling further and further behind due to the complete and abject failure of the ANC's education system.

Mandela is the problem, not the solution, Breyten

An enormous controversy has predictably arisen following Breyten Breytenbach's letter to Nelson Mandela. The letter in question is a rambling, incoherent piece of writing, proving once and for all that Breytenbach has finally lost the plot.

 

It rambles from a hagiography and ode to Breyten's demi-god, Mandela, interspersed with bitter complaints about crime, but then in almost the same breath expresses sympathy for the perpetrators of violent crime, such as the poor, "thin like praying mantises" (sic) savages of  between 9 and 15 years old who stoned to death a girl aged 11, ostensibly because she was HIV+. One wonders why Breytenbach doesn't have the same sympathy for the Skierlik shooter, Johan Nel?

 

Breytenbach clearly views Mandela as a demi-god, a kind of elderly holy man, who can do no wrong and who, according to Breytenbach, almost single-handedly halted a possible revolution. The former is of course complete hogwash; the monumentally incompetent Mkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's so-called military wing (primary targets: defenseless civilians) couldn't defeat a girls' soccer team, let alone liberate one square inch of South African territory when faced with the then mightiest army on the continent.

 

Breytenbach idolizes Mandela as a victim of circumstances and of nefarious businessmen who are exploiting his name, as well as corrupt, criminal politicians who, according to Breytenbach, are destroying Mandela's legacy.

 

What seems to be totally lost on the seemingly increasingly befuddled Breytenbach is that Mandela, far from being a Gandhi-like figure who eschewed violence, was in fact a violent revolutionary who planned a Communist-inspired revolution in South Africa. This is in fact why he was jailed on Robben Island. Far from being Buddha, Mandela continued preaching violence even after his release from prison. Read here how Mandela and Mbeki seemed to approve of the chant "Kill the Boer" at a funeral, and view this video to see and hear Mandela chanting violent anti-white hate songs.

 

Far from being a saint, Breytenbach's demi-god, Mandela, is one of those directly and personally responsible for the increasing crime, mayhem and violence in South Africa. Far from being out of control and disloyal to Mandela, the ANC regime, one of the most corrupt kleptocracies on earth, is a monster in whose creation Mandela played a pivotal role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tito Mboweni - pig at the trough and hypocrite

In its quarterly bulletin the South African Reserve Bank has called on wage and salary earners to moderate their wage demands, seeing that high demands for wages could have an inflationary effect. Mention is made of wage increase demands of between 12 and 15%

This is extremely rich (pardon the pun), coming from whom it does: the former trade unionist and current governor of the Reserve Bank, Comrade Tito Mboweni. Comrade Tito earlier on this year received a whopping 28% salary adjustment, making him one of the most highly paid central bank governors in the world, in spite of South Africa being nowhere near the largest economy on earth. The hypocrisy in the Reserve Bank's bulletin, in telling Joe the plumber to moderate his demand for a wage increase, is therefore nothing short of breathtaking.

Perhaps we should not be surprised at Comrade Tito's pig-like snuffling at the trough. The ANC, of which he is a member, is after all nothing more than a criminal bunch of former terrorists bent on plundering the nation's wealth.

Why are most black-on-white murders not seen as racist attacks?

The Beeld newspaper, an Afrikaans-language newspaper in South Africa, reports that five black youths are part of a gang that murdered an 81-year old white person in the suburb of Primrose in Gauteng. The elderly white man was killed for drug money, according to the police.

A few years ago, 4 white school boys known as the Waterkloof 4, assaulted a black vagrant in a park in Pretoria. He died as a result. It is unclear whether the thugs intended to kill the man, because according to them he was still alive when they left the scene. The liberal media however went to town on this incident, wasting no time whatsoever in screaming that the murder was a racist murder (as opposed to common thuggery.)

I am prepared to bet a large amount of money, however, that the media will not call the 5 black youngsters who murdered a white senior citizen the "Primrose 5." The murder will not be called a racist murder, but will instead be ascribed to ordinary crime. The press will go out of its way not to report on the race of the black perpetrators. If anything, they will start gushing sympathy for these murderous animals, and ascribe their behaviour to apartheid or colonialism.

There is something very, very wrong here, people. If a white kills a black, it is almost per definition a racist murder. If a gang of black thugs murders a white person, it is suddenly reduced to "ordinary crime", swept under the carpet and dismissed. This cannot be right. If crime across racist boundaries is automatically seen as racism, then it cannot only work against whites.

If crimes of whites against blacks are racist, then blacks murdering whites is violent racism too.

Predictable, Kgalema

President Kgalema Motlanthe, after only a few months in office, yesterday fired suspended prosecutions chief Vusi Pikoli. It didn't take all that long for Motlanthe to show his true colours as a mere stooge of more powerful interests within the ANC, who will think nothing of abandoning principle in favour of narrow party or personal interests.

 

Those interests are nothing more than those of a corrupt polygamist (at the last count he had 5 wives and God knows how many other concubines and children) called Jacob Zuma, an idiot with a 4th grade education who thinks that showering after porking an HIV+ person will prevent AIDS.

 

The real reason behind firing Pikoli was not that he "wasn't sensitive to national security", the ridiculous confabulation that the puppet Motlanthe gave. The real reason was that Pikoli was too independently-minded, and would be sure to prosecute the likes of Zuma and his cronies who form part of the fundamentally corrupt gang of criminal scum known as the ANC.

 

Zuma is as guilty as sin of gross corruption and theft. A corrupt Indian businessman, Schabir Shaik, has been jailed for 15 years for bribing Zuma. Zuma, that shining example of moral rectitude, will now be rewarded with the presidency in 2009 for his troubles.

 

With so-called leaders like the odious individual Zuma, is it any wonder that Africa will forever be the continent of losers?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Democracy won't solve Zimbabwe's ills

The end for Robert Mugabe seems to be in sight. There are increasing signs that Zimbabwe is on the brink of collapse. Let's assume the process happens peacefully, and the MDC becomes the official government in Zimbabwe. Democracy has been restored.

 

Will this in and of itself mean that Zimbabwe's problems have been solved?

 

I doubt that very much. Let us rewind back to the 1960's and 1970's. Black Rhodesians did not have the vote. However, they weren't starving either. Quite the contrary. Their country was known as the bread basket of Africa. Then came the 1980's and the heady days of Zimbabwe's uhuru. And the 1990's, and the 2000's. The wheels came off. Badly. People are dying of hunger. Millions have fled the country. During all this time, black Zimbabweans had the vote and a black government. Democracy was in place, in other words.

 

Zimbabweans are starving today, a generation after liberation. They have the vote, but you can't eat democracy. They were "liberated" to experience hunger, a collapsing economy and cholera. Why are they hungry? Because most white expertise, especially in agriculture, was chased out of the country in an orgy of ethnic cleansing. Farms were invaded by so-called "war veterans", many of them far too young to have ever been in the war.

 

The problem in Zimbabwe is not a lack of democracy or the inability to vote. The problem is the absence of whites.

 

 

The Nigerian Scourge

For the past few months, residents of an area north of Pretoria called Kameeldrift have been terrorized. Kameeldrift is an area of smallholdings and therefore a soft target, similar to South Africa's farms, on which more than 2000 white farmers have been murdered to date. Multiple robberies and murders have taken place in recent months in Kameeldrift. It is being reported that a syndicate has been arrested in a luxury townhouse complex. They are suspected of being involved in the Kameeldrift murders and robberies.

Although South African papers will as a rule not report on the race of criminals, unless they are white, in which case the left-wing press will waste no time in loudly screaming "racism", the Beeld newspaper hints that the suspects are Nigerians. Nigerian currency was found in the suspects' possession. Nigeria is notorious for the corrupt nature of its society and its huge number of criminals. So much so, that a common advance-fee fraud is known by its Nigerian penal code designation, the so-called 419 scam.

The suburb of Hillbrow in Johannesburg, formerly a cosmopolitan area similar to Tribeca or Soho in Manhattan, is these days one of the most dangerous places on the planet. It is a hotbed of vice including drugs and prostitution. It is a well-known fact that Hillbrow's drug trade is controlled by the Nigerians which infest and contaminate the area.

Why are Nigerians being allowed into South Africa at all, given their enormously high rates of participation in crime? It would not be an exaggeration to say that a huge dent would be made in South Africa's crime problem if a) Nigerians were declared persona non grata, and b) all Nigerians rounded up and deported back to their hell-hole of a country.

Why must the innocent citizens of South Africa be exposed to the scourge of Nigerians?

Accountability: Africa's biggest problem

The civil rights group Afriforum is about to sue the South African government over crime. According to Afriforum, the government has failed to come up with any cogent strategy to combat the scourge of crime (no kidding - which African government has ever shown itself able to strategize?) Twenty thousand people are murdered annually but the fat cat politicians of the world's biggest kleptocracy, the terminally corrupt ANC regime, seem more concerned with their blue light convoys and plundering the economy.

During a radio interview, Kallie Kriel, the head of Afriforum, made a very interesting observation. In spite of the rampant crime in the country, not one minister has resigned. The corrupt Chief of Police, Jackie Selebi, had to be fired and would never have considered leaving office voluntarily.

Contrast this with India, where top government officials have resigned after the Mumbai attacks. Such a step would be unthinkable for any African government minister, regardless of his or her criminality or gross incompetence.

The epitome of competence and accountability. Or not.

It is called accountability. Taking responsibility. Something which is totally foreign to African leaders, and seemingly also a concept the idiot voters who continue voting for useless, corrupt, incompetent leaders, seem unable to grasp.

People deserve the government they get. As long as Africans are unable or unwilling to embrace accountability, it will remain the most wretched continent on earth.

The city Johannesburg's - South Africa's largest city - municipal accounts have been chaotic for a number of years now. Ratepayers would receive either no account at all for month, or a sudden, unexpected account for R200,000, which they'd have to pay immediately.


Calling the call centre to resolve billing issues, is reputedly an exercise in frustration. You will be put on hold until 2015, put through to the wrong people or cut off because the operator is going on lunch after holding on for 3 hours.


All the above happened for a well-known reason: the ANC's Afro-fascist commitment to the purging all whites from all levels of government and business, and replacing them with blacks. Competence, ability and qualifications mostly don't matter. This black-on-white racism is known by the euphemism "transformation".

The word sounds very positive, but in reality transformation is akin to the process whereby the Nazis transformed German society to one free of Jews. The parallels are disturbing: whites, especially Afrikaners, are a minority in South Africa. Just like the Nazis, a hostile regime, the former band of terrorists known as the ANC, is actively purging whites from South African society.


For many years before the current kleptocracy took over the billing department worked pretty well, admittedly with occasional glitches, but since the pernicious effects of transformation took hold, it's been downhill all the way. Today's billing is chaotic, and this is a direct result of transformation. This is repeated across the country, in all the transformed municipalities. No-one is surprised: the municipal manager, the most senior appointment in a city council, is often a political appointee, with no financial knowledge whatsoever. Incredibly, fewer than 1 in 5 city councilmen actually understand the relationship between rates and taxes and their city's budget.


In the latest bizarre twist, VAT (Value Added or Sales tax in some countries) is being calculated at wildly fluctuating rates on ratepayers' electricity accounts. The transformed billing department has seemingly lost the ability to multiply an amount by 1.14 to correctly calculate the 14% VAT due on any amount. Instead, VAT is being calculated on electricity bills at anything between 15 and 50%.

Is that DIVIDE by 1.14?

The anti-apartheid activist, Allan Boesak, was jailed for fraud after embezzling Danish donor funds meant for the poor, to fund his lavish lifestyle. He referred to his behaviour as "Struggle Accounting." Are we now seeing the first signs of "Struggle Billing?"

Yet another compelling argument in favour of church unity

The former "white" churches in the Dutch Reformed family, such as the NGK (Dutch Reformed), Gereformeerde Kerk and Hervormde Kerk are under huge pressure from the left to merge with the formerly "coloured" church, also known as the "VGK" (Uniting Reformed Church.)

The head of the VGK, until very recently, was the convicted swindler and adulterer, Rev Allan Boesak, a prime example of New South African criminality. Boesak has been at the forefront of pushing a loathsome piece of anti-white political propaganda, the Confession of Belhar, down the throat of white churchgoers. This document has met with deserved resistance from white quarters.

This article provides yet another compelling reason for the churches to merge. A minister in the VGK (presumably properly ordained), one Billy Rayners, stabbed one of his elders in the head in South Africa's Western Cape province.

Are we to assume that other disagreements in the church, once it merges with the others, for example about gay rights, will be settled in a similar fashion? I can see how a synod will disintegrate into a gunfight about whether gay marriages should be allowed, truly an elevating prospect.

Cheeky Watson wins the Kurt Gödel prize for 2008

Kurt Gödel is widely seen as the most significant logician of the 20th century.

 

In the proud tradition of Gödel, we have our own master logician, one Cheeky Watson. Cheeky Watson, a veteran anti-apartheid campaigner and a legend in his own mind, has just been appointed the president of the dismal Eastern Province Rugby Union. The EPRU has never won the Currie Cup and looks highly unlikely to do so in future. Could this be due to its successful transformation programme?

 

The Eastern Cape, in addition to generally sucking at rugby, is also the home of the powerful Xhosa faction of the ANC, such as Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela, so it is no surprise that Watson would win the presidency there. In addition to being a logician of note as well as a loose forward who would have done any under 11-C team proud, Watson is also a prime exponent of the art of ass-kissing when it comes to the ANC.

 

In his opening address, and in a masterful display of his genius at the art of logic, Watson called for more blacks in top positions in SA Rugby. As many of the replies to this article have pointed out, the fact that Watson himself is a pale male, seems to have been totally lost on this wonderful logician. Lesser mortals like us would have expected that the logical thing for Watson to have done would be to step down in favour of a black president, but clearly Watson's advanced thinking is on a different level and he clearly has his reasons for not doing so. Either that, or perhaps he doesn't own a mirror and doesn't know he's a mhlungu.

 

I therefore have no hesitation in awarding the Kurt Gödel prize (honoris causa) to Cheeky Watson, South African rugby's greatest logician.

 

 

 

Time for Toughlove in Africa?

Toughlove is an approach for the parents of troubled teenagers who are often struggling with a drug problem. Instead of taking a softly-softly approach, Toughlove focuses on discipline and parents' rights, instead of bowing to the demands of unruly children.

 

After World War 2, Germany was in ruins. Cities like Stuttgart were practically flattened. In some city blocks, only one or two houses remained standing. Millions of German men had died in the war. The Allies instituted a massive aid programme, called the Marshall Plan, to revive the German and European economy. Within 30 years Germany's was again the largest economy in Europe. If you drive through Stuttgart today, you can hardly believe that it was in ruins 65 years ago.

 

Since 1960, Africa has swallowed up no fewer than the equivalent of 6 Marshall Plans' worth of foreign aid, with no tangible results. Africa today, 50 or more years after the end of colonialism, is a sorry tale of civil wars, poverty, disease and corruption. As Dr Anthony Turton, the suspended CSIR scientist, has pointed out, it takes approximately 10 years for the colonial infrastructure to start crumbling due to neglect, criminal behaviour and incompetence. One only needs to think about Eskom and the coming water crisis to realize that he has a point. From that point it is all downhill to dire poverty.

 

The West's solution is limited to massive infusions of cash, which promptly gets stolen by a corrupt kleptocracy, as well as vague demands for Western-style democracy. Surely it must be obvious by now that democracy simply does not work in Africa. The reasons for this are not clear, and may include cultural differences. Those who lose elections often simply refuse to leave office - Kenia and Zimbabwe are obvious recent examples. However, democracy in a skills and integrity vacuum which is a feature of African society, is meaningless and a mere Western delusion.

 

Mass starvation is only a few months away in Zimbabwe, due to the above problems. As the comments to this article have pointed out, drastic action - Toughlove - is called for. That is unless the West abandons Africa as a perennial lost cause and allows the Chinese to re-colonize the continent.

 

By Toughlove I mean forceful measures that are coupled to foreign aid. If Africa's leaders continue to behave like unruly children, they should be treated as such. Measures can include, for example, steps to ensure that another Mugabe can never take over the reins of power in Zimbabwe, and to remove him from power if he refuses to leave of his own accord.

 

This could include military intervention as an option. It will take one cruise missile strike to remove Mugabe and his henchmen from power on a permanent basis. Perhaps such an intervention will make other miscreant leaders, like Kenia's, also think twice. Interestingly, this was a real threat issued against the previous government in South Africa. An American-funded airport was built in Botswana, for example, which was a clear threat of military intervention against the then white ruling party.

 

The above may seem draconian, but measured against the lives of millions of Zimbabweans, it's a no-brainer.

 

 

 

 

The Economist, 19 October 2018

Many economies have, in the past few years, started to recover from the deep recession caused by the credit crunch which started in 2007 and hit its peak in 2008, ten years ago. 

As expected, the Chinese and Indians were among the first economies to recover.  The US today is clearly not the hyperpower it used to be. The high rates of taxation under President Obama, used to fund his ambitious but unaffordable healthcare plans, has proven to be a hindrance to the US's growth.

While many have started to recover, to some countries, 2008 was the beginning of a precipituous decline. South Africa is one of them. It started when investors started fleeing emerging economies and the South African currency, the rand, started dropping dramatically.

From a high of R5,50 to the dollar in the mid-2000's, the rand stands today at R100 to the dollar.

South Africa was not only hit by the credit crunch. Its banks, ironically, were in fairly good shape at the time. The double whammy was a combination of the credit crunch and the disastrous policies the ANC under President Zuma implemented. After the split in the ANC in 2008, the left, in the guise of the Communist Party and Cosatu, grew increasingly influential.

Major industries such as steel, Sasol and many mines were nationalized under pressure from the communists. Two mainstays of the economy, gold and platinum mining, were in decline already, and platinum mining suffered under the slump in vehicle sales caused by the worldwide recession. The nationalization of key industries caused a sharp drop in productivity and investor confidence, a flight of capital, increased emigration of skilled individuals, a crash in the currency and inflation approaching 50%.

The 2010 Soccer World Cup, widely expected to have brought a much-needed stimulus, instead turned into a damp squib due to the worldwide recession. Far fewer Europeans could afford to fly south than were anticipated. The event was also marred by at least 50 murders of soccer fans. The vast investment in white elephant stadia to this day continues to haunt the very few remaining taxpayers.

Further exacerbating South Africa's woes was the fast-tracking of the land reform policies. By 2008 it was already clear that land reform was a dismal failure. Blacks without agricultural skills were forcibly placed on former white farms. Within 2 years, these farms died - often literally, in the case of livestock. The Zuma government however sped up the process, leading to a complete collapse in agriculture.

Millions of rural and urban dwellers went into a state of permanent semi-starvation. From being a nett exporter of food a few decades before, South Africa turned into a typical African begging-bowl country, dependent on food aid for its people to survive. The collapse in the currency made importing food much more expensive and unaffordable to the ordinary man on the street.

In short, a country that was once the richest and most developed in Africa, has turned into yet another African basket case.

Your correspondent will leave the last word to a very old black man, who grew up under the apartheid regime: "Come back, PW! At least we had food back then..." 

Another incompetent pig at the trough cries racism

As we have come to expect, any incompetent ANC politician or AA-appointee, when caught with his hand in the cookie jar, will immediately cry racism. Tito Mboweni, the politically-appointed governor of South Africa's Reserve Bank, and clearly an AA appointee who is totally out of his depth, is no exception.

Although Mboweni is a corpulent individual who refuses to be photographed due to his excessive perspiration, "pig at the trough" refers not to his build, but to his naked greed and gravy train riding. South Africa is nowhere near the fifth largest economy on the planet, but nevertheless Mboweni's salary ranks among the top 5 among central bankers worldwide.

The official policy is to keep inflation between 3-6%, but Mboweni awards himself a 25% increase in 2008.

Oink!

At a Reserve Bank shareholder meeting yesterday, shareholders tried to raise the above issues. In the proud tradition of incompetent affirmative action appointees, Mboweni refused to even discuss the issues raised, and immediately accused his critics of racism.

No, Mr Mboweni. They are not racists. They are merely concerned individuals who are entitled to raise their legitimate concerns. It is you who are incompetent and it is you, not them, who is a greedy, racist pig at the trough.

Jimmy Manyi: spokesperson for the fat cats

Jimmy Manyi is once again "disappointed" in the so-called lack of progress in employment equity (EE). According to his latest report, blacks in top management increased by only 3.9% last year. However, the number of blacks in professional management positions declined dramatically by 14.9%.

It is very interesting that the number of blacks in professional management positions declined by almost 15%. No reasons are supplied in the report quoted above, but it would be interesting to speculate why. Are black professionals dying of AIDS at a much greater rate than was previously suspected, for example? Are they also following the white brain drain and fleeing for greener pastures in the UK and Perth?

Jimmy Manyi is of course complaining with a full belly and a huge personal bank balance. He is a senior executive in Tiger Brands, a listed company. Tiger Brands is the same company that was involved in the bread price fixing scandal a while ago. What exactly qualifies him for his exalted position, apart from a propensity to complain and whine, is not too clear. One should therefore take his tantrums with a large pinch of salt.

As Solidarity's Dirk Hermann pointed out, much energy and hot air is expended complaining about the lack of blacks in top management positions. Top management however constitutes only 0.06% of the workforce. There is relatively little noise about the remaining 99.94% of the labour force. Hermann also points out that the number of whites in top positions has declined by a staggering 20% since 2003.

Manyi's focus on top management in a way reveals his true motives. He is quite simply not interested in the problems of the black working class. If he were, he would surely make equally as much noise about the dreadful state of basic education in South Africa. Regardless of Manyi's verbal diarrhoea and tired cries of racism which are utterly devoid of any credibility, the problem is not discrimination on the part of white companies, but rather the fact that many blacks are simply unemployable.

The real issue in South Africa is that the unemployed are simply not equipped for the challenges of a modern workplace, and they are especially ill-equipped to compete with billions of well-educated Chinese and Indians. The root cause can be traced back to woefully inadequate education in childhood, due to the ANC regime's failure to provide decent schooling. No black pupil currently attending school was ever subject to Bantu education, yet the quality of school leavers keeps declining. South Africa spends more than any other developing country on education as a proportion of its Gross National Product. Can the lack of success in education still be attributed to apartheid?

Manyi spends little energy bemoaning the poor state of education, however. Clearly Manyi has very little desire to address the root cause of  unemployment. His true constituency is rather the parasitic class of the elite, the 0.06%, who expect a 6-digit salary in return for their mere presence. Do not expect these members of royalty to work, but do expect to have to pay them a huge salary. Expect to see them living in opulent mansions and expect to see them driving in the emergency lane of the highway in their German sedans costing more than R1.5 million.

Robert Mugabe won't let an affirmative-action doctor operate on him but chooses to fly to Europe to receive medical treatment. Naledi Pandor sends her children to private schools with mostly white teachers. They look for excellence when it affects them personally, but Manyi expects employers to pay a fortune for employees who are somewhat less than excellent.

Most, if not all, employers realize that to appoint this kind of employee is nothing more than a kind of tax, as it were. They do not add value, but it is part of the risks and costs of doing business in South Africa. This acts as a disincentive to do business in South Africa, and makes the country less competitive internationally. Continued complaints by the likes of Manyi can and will only have one effect: it will discourage employers to hire, thereby exacerbating unemployment.

No wonder employers like Nicole Katz simply refuse to hire the Jimmy Manyi's of the world.

Mike Sutcliffe, idiot extraordinaire

Mike Sutcliffe is the town clerk (muncipal manager) of eThekwini - "The Place by the Bull's Testicles" in Zulu. Also known as Durban.

Sutcliffe is notorious for his tasteless, Afro-kitsch dress sense, self consciously favouring gaudy, Madiba-type shirts. Typical of your leftie white liberal, kissing Azanian ass wherever he goes, and generally trying much, much too hard to be in with the right crowd.

To call Sutcliffe monumentally incompetent, would be to flatter him greatly. Under his so-called management, Durban's beaches have literally become cesspools, reeking of human excrement, and have accordingly lost their international blue-flag status.

However, true to his Marxist, totalitarian ideology, and like so many incompetents, Suttcliffe is above criticism in his own little mind. Dare to criticize him, and he is apparently prone to childish temper tantrums and outbursts. How professional can you get?

Incompetent Commie asshole with bad dress sense

The Stalinist ANC city council, enthusiastically supported by the sycophantic Sutcliffe, has decided to rename hundreds of Durban's streets. Amongst those honoured are such luminaries as Andrew Zondo, the simian scum who murdered innocent civilians in the Amanzimtoti bombing. Ché Guevara, a Marxist mass murderer, likewise has a street named after him.

While Durban's roads are degenerating to potholes joined by small pieces of tar, the council is spending millions on renaming streets in honour of terrorists, criminals and other sub-human scum. All of this is happening in the face of vehement opposition from for example the IFP and DA. A huge number of objections - 28000 - have been received.

Sutcliffe, true Stalinist asshole that he is, is unfazed by this. During an SABC radio interview, his recommendation is that those objecting to the name changes "will have to get used to it" (sic.)

Fortunately the citizens of Durban have had enough of this totalitarianism. Some of the new street signs have been defaced already. Well done to those who are responsible. Expressing your displeasure in this way is not a crime - it is justified resistance against an oppressive regime. The only reason why idiots like Sutcliffe are able to impose their will on us, is because we allow them to.

Cutting one's nose to spite your face

Twee jaar gelede in Wiskundige Geletterdheid as 'n skoolvak ingestel vir diegene wat nie matriekwiskunde wou ondergaan nie.

Vandag berig die SABC dat ontevrede matrikulante uit Kabokweni na die Mpumalangase Departement van Onderwys gemarsjeer het.

Hulle klagte is dat Wiskundige Geletterdheid "te moeilik" is. Hulle het vrywillig 2 jaar gelede in Graad 10 gekies om die vak te neem. Die vak is alreeds afgewaterde wiskunde, wat konsentreer op praktiese vaardighede soos persentasies en geldelike berekeninge.

Hulle oplossing vir hulle wiskundige probleme? Kom ons brand ons handboeke (ja, reg gelees - brand die boeke.) Dis 2 maande voor die eindeksamen. Hoe sodanige optrede hulle gaan help om te slaag, sal iemand asseblief aan my moet verduidelik, want alhoewel ek wiskunde kon deurkom, is ek heeltemal te dom om hierdie sonderlinge logika te kan kop.

Aan die ander kant van die aardbol is daar enorme mededinging onder Indiese en Chinese leerlinge en studente wat baklei om by elite ingenieurs-akademies in te kom, leerlinge wat lag vir die moeilikheidsgraad van Amerikaanse Graad 12-wiskunde.

En so ploeter ons aan op pad na die Afrika-Renaaisaans.

Back to the future on agriculture

Measured even by the subterranean standards of the intellectual vacuum represented by the ANC regime, Lulu Xingwana represents a special case. This so-called cabinet minister has to qualify as either one of the most dim-witted specimens of simian life ever to blight the planet with her presence, or one of the most recalcitrant and deliberately obstructionist Stalinist ideologues in history.

Ms Xingwana has occupied the post of minister of agriculture since 2006. In all this time, she has been seemingly oblivious to the fact that the disastrous programme of Zimbabwe-like land redistribution has been systematically destroying the country's agriculture. Or was she perhaps for reasons of anti-white racism and Afro-fascist ideology deliberate in her attempts to destroy agriculture? Either way, either her incompetence or ideological obstinacy has been spectacularly successful in destroying South Africa's capacity to feed itself.

What sane farmer would want to invest in an industry which is constantly under threat? Who wants to build up a viable farm if there is a very real possibility that it will be nationalized and given to peasant farmers, who are sure to ruin it within at most 24 months?

In a typical display of snail-like mental processes, something we have come to expect from the dim-witted ANC regime, it has finally dawned upon the honourable minister that the country actually needs farmers. Read this article which was published in the Business Day. Well done, Ms Xingwana! It only took you, what, 2 - 3 years to come to this realization.

The Ministerial Advisory Council for Agriculture and Land Affairs has been mooted since 2001, but was only launched yesterday. Yet another prime example of the efficiency of the ANC regime - it took a mere 7 years for the transformed public service and regime to establish the council, but at least the public servants are of the right skin colour and that's what REALLY matters, isn't it? Will we wait another decade or two before it actually starts to do anything?

Whereas South Africa was a nett exporter of food in the past, it has turned into an importer. Wait - it's coming to me - yes, it has to be the fault of apartheid. Of course. (Except the reverse is the case, is it not? Under the previous government we could feed ourselves...)The Business Day article blames external factors such as the exchange rate for this, but fails to squarely place the blame where it really resides: the utter incompetence and / or extreme ideologically driven arrogance of the criminal ANC regime.

There is one and only one solution to the looming agricultural crisis in South Africa. That is to immediately halt and indeed reverse the failed land reform programme. Subsistence farming by peasants, which lies at the heart of the land reform programme, is nothing but a romantic dream. In reality it is sure to destroy the country's capacity to feed itself.

What to do when you make an accident in your government vehicle

The following actually happened.

Government Department X, somewhere in South Africa, has a number of employees who have to drive government vehicles in the course of their official duties.

Of course, this being the Azanian banana republic, government vehicles are seen as private property, to be utilized as the "owner" (aka the employee) sees fit. Its official purpose is of tertiary importance. Vehicles are therefore used to ferry kids to school. As an informal taxi. As a hauler of Black Label quarts, which are sold out of the back of the official vehicle. Call it a shebeen on wheels. On some weekends they haul concrete. In a vehicle that is not a bakkie or a truck.

The drivers are almost all under- or unqualified. Most of their licenses have been fraudulently obtained. They are often pissed and mostly reckless. Vehicles are routinely revved to levels that would blow up a F1 engine. They end up as wrecks in former homelands, having been used to transport eighteen people and their luggage for a weekend, this in vehicles intended for 2 passengers. They are parked for hours outside local whorehouses and watering holes, instead of working.

Eventually the few remaining non-affirmative appointees at the employer grow heartily sick of wasting taxpayers' money in this way. They put out a tender and install a vehicle tracking system, similar to Netstar, Tracker or Matrix's products. This records and transmits illegal usage, over-revving, harsh braking and moving the vehicle out of officially designated areas. The idiots driving the vehicles eventually wise up and stop their worst abuses, because suddenly the supervisors are mysteriously able to see when the vehicles go to Qwa-Qwa for the weekend, or stand parked outside Mama Ningi's shebeen.

One fine day, Mr Government Employee and his mate decide to play Schumacher. Pissed out of their skulls, they do 140 km/h in a 60 zone. With the inevitable result. They crash their government vehicle into a private vehicle, killing the other vehicle's passengers.

Now they're screwed, and the horrible realization slowly dawns on them. Their vehicle's black box has recorded their transgression. Their guilt will be easily proved. Hau! Eish! What now? After racking their brains, they come up with a truly Azanian solution to their dilemma:

Nothing for it but to pour petrol on the vehicle and set the evidence alight.

Two problems with the above solution.

1. The movement and engine parameters are transmitted to the base station in real time, so it's already in the server's database many kilometers away.

2. The fire destroys the vehicle, but not the EEPROM in the black box. This is recovered, with the evidence intact.

What do Zuma's supporters expect?

There is a huge campaign from those on the left of the political spectrum, including Cosatu, the ANCYL and the SACP, to support Zuma at all costs. They are threatening to bring the country to a standstill. Shop owners in Pietermaritzburg where Zuma is to be tried, are already complaining about the disruption caused by thousands of locusts descending on their town.

There are obviously problematic aspects around the whole, sorry saga, such as the moronic utterances by Julius Malema, who is surely a miracle human, having survived for years after being born without a brain. The judiciary is being undermined and is under real threat by a party which is increasingly out of control. The above issues have however been discussed at length in the media.

What is getting rather less attention is the question why are they so fanatic in supporting Zuma? Why risk international condemnation, increased emigration, instability and anarchy in support of one man? A man, it must be said, who is intellectually way below average (if not retarded), who should keep quiet on economic matters, who is of suspect moral stature (if not a career criminal), with a Grade 4 education and has more than 9 wives, an unknown number of concubines and common-law wives and God knows how many legitimate and illegitimate children. George Bush is routinely mocked for being unable to pronounce "nuclear", yet he went to Yale and achieved a master's degree. Where did Zuma go? Did he pass the old Standard 3?

Or is the above perhaps the very thing that appeals to the communists - the fact that somebody without real opinions of his own or the capacity to make good judgments would be easily manipulated and influenced, unlike the coldly intellectual Thabo Mbeki? Is Zuma furthermore perhaps the ultimate New South African man and therefore a role model to many - a brain-dead criminal whose genitals override his mental processes on a regular basis?

Let's say they succeed in pressuring the judiciary into submission, and Zuma does become president. Jeremy Cronin of the SACP assures us that Zuma will become president and not go to jail. What kind of policy changes do they expect from a President Zuma, and specifically what does the SACP expect from Zuma?

One suspects that there is a perception in South Africa's paleo-Marxist (those idiots for whom the Berlin wall never fell) circles that there will be a marked shift to the left. There is a chilling trend these days to speak about the revolution, something that was mostly absent in Mandela's and Mbeki's day. Unspecified enemies of the revolution are apparently everywhere. These must be quote eliminated unquote.

A big shift to the left has frightening implications. Expect wholesale expropriation and nationalization. Expect more wastage of resources on social grants. Expect a destruction of private enterprise.

Are South Africans staring down the barrel of a second phase of a socialist revolution, whereby the rampant left wing intends to turn South Africa into another Cuba or Venezuela?

African democracy: a pointless extravagance

South Africa's ANC-dominated parliament is about to rubber-stamp legislation that will disband the Scorpions, an elite crime-fighting unit. The Scorpions are one of the few functional organs of the failing South African state.

Their sin, for which they will now be banished to eternal damnation? Well, they were too effective in exposing the fundamentally corrupt nature of what is still a criminal / terrorist organization masquerading as a political party, the ANC. The Scorpions for example exposed the shady dealings of the criminally incompetent so-called Chief of Police, Jackie Selebi. Selebi was not so much Chief of Police as a consiglieri to the South African version of the Mob.

The regime is constitutionally compelled to call for public participation when it wants to pass laws like this one. Opposition parties were predictably upset about the disbandment of the Scorpions, and went to great lengths to gather feedback and comments. Not only opposition parties, but a majority of the population was opposed to the disbandment, according to opinion polls. These objections were duly presented to the committee tasked with reviewing the proposed legislation. However, without much ado, the committee announced that the Scorpions would be disbanded, regardless of the opinion of the public, because, it said, it was the will of the ANC.

There you have it. The Party knows better than you and me. Your opinion does not matter to the Party. It has decided, yes, amen, and so it shall be.

What was the point of public participation, and what, then, is the real function of parliament?

It is clearly nothing but an organ of the Party, a body whose fat-cat (in all senses of the word) members are there to a) enrich themselves and b) rubber-stamp decisions already made by the Stalinist Central Party Committee. Like their counterparts in other African "democracies" (the latter two words being the ultimate oxymoron), the members of parliament earn huge salaries, but contribute little or nothing in the way of debate, public liaison or in any other field for that matter.

170 kg of useless, expensive fat

This being Africa, there is little or no danger that the ruling regime will be deposed by idiot voters who will continue to vote for a so-called liberation movement, even at their own cost (see previous posts on this topic.)

Does it make sense then to spend R300 000 000 every year on salaries for members of parliament, an amount which excludes their lavish functions, travel expenses and other perks? Why have expensive elections which are nothing but utterly pointless racial censuses, in which most whites will vote for the DA and most blacks for the ANC, 100% guaranteed?

Perhaps Kenya has showed us the way. After a dispute about voting results in the previous election, one of the world's poorer countries came up with a novel solution. It created a bloated cabinet with president, a prime minister, two deputy prime ministers, 40 ministers and 50 assistant ministers. Each of these will obviously have their own contingent of security guards, limousines and the usual perks that go with their exalted rank - gilded toilets, weekly shopping trips to Paris, that kind of thing.








Perhaps it would make more sense for South Africa to do something similar. Seeing that the so-called democracy is a joke and that real debate does not exist inside parliament, let’s disband parliament, get rid of pointless elections, and select 100 or so token members of the cabinet, who don’t really have to do much except travel overseas, attend parties and accumulate fatty tissue.

South Africa's ANC government: a modern-day cargo cult

Many people in South Africa seem to doubt that the ANC will ever relinquish its rule, seeming to agree with Jacob Zuma that: “The ANC will rule until Jesus returns”.

If this were indeed the case, sinners had better start repenting in a great hurry, because the end is nigh, and the Second Coming is upon us.The fatal verb in Zuma’s statement the word “rule”.

Nobody could accuse the ANC of ruling South Africa, even as you are reading this. That privilege possibly belongs to the rampant criminals or the Brett Kebbles of the world, but not to the ANC. To understand this, one needs to understand the true nature of the ANC.

It is not that the ANC doesn’t have the capacity to rule (although that too is a fact), but also that it has no will to rule in the Western sense of the word. It furthermore doesn’t have to rule effectively in terms of for example delivering services, given that African voters can be relied upon to return former liberation movements to political office in election after election, even if this is to their direct, personal detriment, as is the case in Zimbabwe.

What the ANC really is, is a modern day cargo cult. During World War 2, the natives of New Guinea created bizarre cults (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) that were of the opinion that their ancestors would bring them “cargo” – Western goods such as radios and motor vehicles – if only they performed the correct rituals. To this end, the cargo cultists would build airplanes out of straw, make bamboo headsets and perform military-like rituals on landing strips. Cargo cultists would enact mock marches, light signal fires, wear ersatz military uniforms, all in the hope that their ancestors would bring them Western consumer goods. All this proved strangely ineffective...

Similarly, the ANC goes through the motions of Western democracy, but only as some kind of ritualistic charade. They sit in Parliament, and have mock debates about the decisions already made by the core elite of the Party (note the deliberate use of a capital “P”), and rubberstamp these decisions. They pretend to listen to the populace at Imbizos. They hold imaginary consultations with Afrikaners like me, ostensibly to listen to our concerns about name changes, but this is all a charade, and the direct analogy of the rituals enacted by New Guinea’s cargo cults. None of the rituals really mean anything, and serve only to obfuscate the ANC’s real reason for existing: Western goods, Maybachs, Armani suits and money. In short: cargo.

The real reason behind the ANC’s mock participation in the so-called democracy is really to get their hands on cargo. Politics to the ANC is not about service to the public or even to the Marxist ideology to which they pay lip service. It is not even, surprisingly, about ruling the country. No, it is rather seen as a way of getting temporary control over state resources, of having the wherewithal to obtain cargo via the apparatus of the state. They aren’t really interested in actually using these resources in any meaningful way either: the army is weak, the Vaal River is full of municipal sewage, Bedfordview sometimes has no electricity, the police ineffective, but this doesn’t matter, you see, as long as the Treasury is still pulling in taxpayers’ contributions.

Fully half of the sitting ANC members in Parliament have been implicated in the Travelgate scandal, including (and with immense irony) the Minister of Law and Order himself! Forty percent of all MPs have external business interests. So great is the demand for cargo that the ANC’s branch membership often doubles just before elections. Emergency services recently had to be called to Kimberley due to a scuffle involving the mayor, apparently caused by a dispute about a city tender. (http://secure.financialmail.co.za/07/0119/cover/coverstory.htm)

This has happened all over South Africa, including in Vryburg, a town in the Northwest province.

The Honourable ANC Mayor of Vryburg, Ms Ruth Mompati

What this means for whites is that, with or without our intervention, South Africa is headed for exactly the same fate that Zimbabwe and almost all other black, African countries will share. It probably won’t even require a coup d’etat for the ANC to lose all control. Its fanatical pursuit of cargo will make this happen in short order and without outside assistance.

The fat cats will long since have retired to their villas in Cannes, possibly sipping martinis, while the whites in South Africa try to figure out how to pick up the pieces left behind by the ANC, South Africa’s very own cargo cult.

Future ANC politician in wintertime

Houston, we have a problem

Ons as Suid-Afrikaners ly dikwels onder die illusie dat ons op 'n manier uitsonderlik is, of op spesiale behandeling geregtig is. Daardie gevoel was veral sterk kort ná 1994, toe almal met sterretjies in hulle oë hoog opgegee het oor die sogenaamde wonderwerk van die reënboognasie.

Vandag raak dit toenemend duidelik dat die wonderwerk niks van die aard was nie. Die land is een van die mees gewelddadiges op aarde. Eskom het aangetoon dat Afrika se kenmerkende disintegrasie ook in SA gaan plaasvind. Daar is geen politieke toerekeningsvatbaarheid nie, presies nes in die res van Afrika. Die wonderwerk was nie die kapitulasie by Codesa nie, maar eerder dat ons so naïef kon wees om ons te verbeel dat SA nie bloot nóg 'n tipiese Afrikaland sou word nie.

Diegene wat as die verlossers van die massas aangesien is, het heel voorspelbaar geblyk 'n blote versameling korrupte kleptokrate te wees, wat slegs daarop uit is om hulself te verryk. Hoe kon ons so dom wou wees om in 1992 ja te stem, net sodat ons uitgelewer kon word aan 'n bende terreursaaiers en misdadigers? Wat het ons gedink gaan gebeur?

Nietemin probeer mense hulself steeds (of is dit al hoe meer) oortuig dat Zimbabwe homself nie in Suid-Afrika kan herhaal nie. Hier het ons byvoorbeeld weer die verbete poging om onsself te oortuig dat Suid-Afrika ánders is. Ek is bevrees ek deel nie heeltemal in hierdie oortuiging nie. Die opskrif van my inskrywing verwys na die Amerikaanse stad Houston.

As die meeste mense aan groot Amerikaanse stede dink, sal New York of Los Angeles by hulle opkom, maar nie noodwendig Houston nie. Houston is 'n groot stad, geen twyfel nie, maar hy is nie bo-aan mense se denke oor Amerikaanse stede nie. Nietemin is die metropolitaanse gebied van Houston se bruto binnelandse produk groter as die hele Suid-Afrika s'n.

So ook is Wal-Mart, Amerika se grootste winkelgroep, se omset veel groter as Suid-Afrika se ganse BBP. Soos een ou dit 'n tyd terug pikant aan my gestel het, Suid-Afrika is in internasionale terme 'n drol wat in 'n pispot onder 'n bed dryf in een van die huis se slaapkamers - onbenullig. Om ons te verbeel dat 'n gewelddadige rewolusie, 'n Zimbabwiese situasie of selfs 'n rasse-oorlog in Suid-Afrika onmoontlik is, is dus totale wensdenkery. Daar is reeds skrikwekkende voorbodes.

Die minagting wat die ANC tans vir die oppergesag van die regbank toon met die Jacob Zuma-aangeleentheid, is een voorbeeld. Die toenemende anti-blanke, Marxistiese retoriek gebesig deur die ANCYL is nog een. In hierdie uitlating is die verwysing na die DA wat elimineer moet word, uiteraard 'n kwalik-bedekte dreigement teen blankes as geheel.

Rewolusies en burgeroorloë vind plaas in ryker en belangriker lande as Suid-Afrika. Kyk wat het in 1989 met die Sowjet-Unie gebeur. 'n Ysingwekkende gedagte is ook dat die buiteland nie sal ingryp totdat dit te laat is nie. Vier miljoen is dood in Rwanda en Burundi in 1994 voordat die buiteland iets begin doen het.Die ding wat my die meeste bekommer, is of diegene soos wat nog nie geëmigreer het nie, soos ek, nie 'n groot fout begaan het, en dit te lank uitgestel het nie.

Ek begin toenemend dink ons is potpaddas, wat gewag het tot die water te warm geraak het voordat ons lewe gekry het.

Eish, thees ees Azanian plenning...

Mpumalanga is one of the more backward provinces in South Africa, not least in terms of the intellectual capabilities of its politicians. Its school leavers routinely distinguish themselves by their dismal pass rates. They clearly go straight from failing Grade 12 into political or public service careers, earning Mpumalanga its nickname: "Mamparralanga". A mamparra is as slang term for a moron or an idiot.

 

This time the Mpumalanga planners (although these 2 words constitute an oxymoron) have really outdone themselves. They have spent R10 million (approximately US$1million) of the taxpayers' money on a jazz festival. In the 2 days that the festival lasted, however, fewer than 3000 people bought tickets, but only 1500 people actually attended the non-event.

 

This translates to a government subsidy of R3,000 per ticket - in other words, the complete and utter idiots who "planned" (sic) the concert, subsidized the patrons to the tune of US$300 each.

 

This in a province with dire poverty, AIDS, malaria and other social problems, where this kind of money could have built 30 houses or bought malaria medication for thousands.

 

Once again the mind boggles at this brilliant example of African and Azanian incompetence.