South Africa

In my last post on this topic I noted that one Colonel Tim Spicer was investigating the video that apparently showed South African Danny Heydenreycher firing indiscriminately at Iraqi motorists (the post can be found here). At the time I knew Spicer's name was familiar but I couldn't quite recall why. Well, while looking round the 'net I stumbled onto this article and now I know why. I would strongly suggest reading the article in its entirety, but for those just looking for a summary it basically details the goings on of Spicer as a "manager" of various mercenary front organisations.

Spicers involvement with South African's began with a now infamous organisation, the local mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes (EO). Spicer took the lead in rebranding EO as "Sandline International" when the Mandela government moved to crush local private military operators. In 1997 Spicer and the group of mainly South African mercenaries he led were arrested on arrival in Papua New Guinea after being hired by that government to "fight dissidents on the island of Bougainville and to re-open a lucrative copper mine." Spicer also has very close ties to Simon Mann (serving time in Zim for the mercenary debacle last year) and Mark Thatcher (bankroller of the said mercenary debacle). 

And this is the guy leading the "investigation"?

Niamaat Gamildien, she of questionable strategic vision has decided to pack her bags and head to greener pastures after looting the kitty directing the pork laden SS Cancer Association (CANSA) for the past year. Under her sterling leadership the Cancer Association has evolved from a charity aiding those afflicted with Cancer to a charity aiding those CANSA staff afflicted by a low bank balance. Witness this fine breakdown of exemplarary financial management :

[Of the] R64-million raised by the association, less than R7-million had been allocated to patient care. Almost half, R31,6-million, had been used for salaries for its 300 employees, including about R1-million for Gamildien. (IOL)

 

Now that's what I'm talking about!! Of course there are always those jealous of "success" and this story is no different. Apparently the former head of CANSA called these salaries "obscene"! Bah, some people know nothing about effectively wallowing in the tough self motivation!

Waddle on Niamaat!!  

It hurts doesn't it? After years of having the government cheerleaders SABC journalists at your beck and call, following your every moving and reporting on each and every single one of your horrendously boring speeches now to be told "sorry old boy but you are just not quite the brilliant guy we once thought you were". What's a former Deputy President to do?

What indeed, but to try get Snuki on speed-dial.....asap.

But unfortunately it would seem His Master has already spoken, and if there's one thing the boys at the SABC are good at, it is playing ball exercising sound editorial judgment.

The latest news coming out of Australia is that South Africa's cricketers were racially abused and called "kaffirs" and "kaffir boeties" during the first Test in Perth. This kind of behaviour is completely unnacceptable and should be dealt with severely by Cricket Australia. The current punishment of simply ejecting offenders from the ground, is insufficient and a mere slap on the wrist.

Any person heard shouting things like that should be thrown out the ground and face a charge of crimen injuria (or whatever the Australian legal equivalent is). I remember in 2002 when the Australians toured South Africa a spectator spat at Steve Waugh as he left the field, that incident led to a charge of crimen injuria being laid. Using the K-word is the verbal equivalent of spitting in a persons face and should be treated just as seriously.

This stuff has got to stop and CA needs to be more forceful in hammering this racist element out of the game.

So its just before Christmas and (as usual) the office is complete chaos. My partners in Korea are also starting to lose it, big time :

Mr Kim from Seoul : Now, Someamongus we need payment for that cargo ASAP.

Me : Well Mr Kim I'm afraid getting things done this end during this time of year is very difficult.

Mr Kim : What do you mean "this time of year"?

Me :  Well you know - Christmas, New Years etc. many local companies close and take a long holiday.

Mr Kim : ........

Now repeat process for Mr Lee in Daejon, Mr Choi in Busan and so on and so forth. Riveting stuff. But I do digress, back to the matters at hand.

Saw a top movie last week (between moments of office insanity) Lord of War. It turns out that there is a big South African connection to the movie with maybe 40% being filmed inside South Africa and the Department of Trade and Industry funding a portion of the production budget. Nicholas Cage does a great job playing the part of Yuri Orlov a morally challenged Arms Dealer. The two characters who really caught my eye though, were that of the murdering thug Charles Taylor Andre Baptiste Sr. and his sociopathic son Chucky Taylor Andre Baptiste Jr. - brilliant acting. To think as I write this that idiot is sitting in palatial splendour in Nigeria. Where's the justice...

Speaking of arms trading checkout this very interesting piece on South Africa's complicity in the burgeoning small-arms trade. This one is a real eye-opener...

He giveth and he taketh away.

Around the middle of the year Jay-Z was commenting on how the ANC government was sent by God : 

“I agree with the priest [who had officiated during the opening of the roadshow] that the government is elected by God. Its way is the same way chosen by Jesus. Because the Father and Son elected this government to run the country, this government will do so forever.”

Four days later he was fired.

It's simple Math dammit!

Using his outstanding powers of deduction that have made him the bane of all South African criminals, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula delivered his judgment on why there are so many hijackings taking place :  

“A boost to the economy resulted in people buying more vehicles, thus increasing the availability of such vehicles to offenders.”

 

Now there's detective work!

This of course is the same Charlie who convened an entire Press Conference just to announce that some wet mud had been found on some tires...

On the front-lines of the Class-struggle

Then we have those fearless defenders of the poor who are always prepared to move against class-enemies and repel any assault on the revolution!

"The hottest item for this summer are definitely All Star sneakers, Lacoste golf shits [sic] and the latest BMW M3, this toy promises to be a babe magnet wherever you travel to this summer.”

 

Yes, that would be the ANCYL. The same ANCYL who commented on the following :

“... they forget that this very ANCYL has in the past forsaken cheap popularity in defence of the president of the ANC when he was under intense attack from the media, labelled as neo-liberal, deranged because of his views on Zimbabwe and HIV/Aids. We were labelled parrots, conveyor belts, drum majorettes and henchmen, but we stood our ground because we believed in the principle.”

 

Conveyor belts, Drum majoretes, Henchman....hmmm

You put your right foot in...

Commenting on the dire situation in Delmas, DA MP Dan Maluleke railed against governmental incompetence and failure :

“No amount of clever government spinning or high-level visits will make a very simple fact go away: the outbreak of typhoid in the Delmas area could have been prevented. The people of Delmas have been given a raw deal because of bad planning and greed. They deserve better.”

 

Two days later he crossed the floor to join the ANC government.

Ask and you shall receive

Our man Jay-Z trying to get a little bit of 'rule of law' cred :

“The media speculation increased. It was impossible for me to defend myself. While the respondents did not hesitate to raid the premises of other persons for evidence and to summon persons to give information, no such investigatory tools were used directly against me. This, I have learnt, was on the grounds of ‘deference’ due to my position as deputy president. “Such deference was clearly misplaced. The respondents are under a constitutional duty to act without fear, favour or prejudice.”

So they did.

And the rest, as they say, is history!

If you want to add more of your own don't be shy skat!

Today marks the 10th anniversary since the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  The TRC was set up in terms of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34 of 1995 with a mandate to "bear witness to, record and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, reparation and rehabilitation."

In theory the commission was empowered to grant amnesty to those charged with atrocities during Apartheid so long as two conditions were met: The crimes were politically motivated and the entire and whole truth was told by the person seeking amnesty. No one was exempt from being charged...5392 people were refused amnesty and 849 were granted amnesty, out of 7112 petitioners (Wiki)

 

As a South African I know many whites were and still are in denial regarding the horrors of apartheid. I am not talking about some sort of revisionist history that has taken place.....it is, how do I say this, just not spoken of. It is acknowledged as having happened, it is acknowledged that it was bad but there is virtually zero acceptance of personal complicity in what happened. There is a twisted joke that floats round South Africa in that "you can never find a single white person who voted for the Apartheid Government." Ever. This is the denial I am talking about, it is like 1994 rolled round and suddenly the consciences and memories of millions of white South Africans were washed clean. For black South Africans it is the opposite struggle -- a struggle to get acknowledgment for what they suffered and continue to suffer due to the residues of the apartheid system. When I talk about acknowlegement I am not talking about the government of the day making hollow speeches in Parliament, but real acknowledgement. BEE and affirmative action have been the two most visible efforts of the ANC to adjust the status quo and address the mistakes of the past. These efforts have in some ways addressed the financial and economic residue of apartheid but haven't come close to addressing the core "emotional" problems of apartheid.

Let me explain this in a different way. After the Second World War the two defeated nations of Japan and Germany took very different paths towards reconciliation and atoning for their past wrongs. The Germans fully acknowledged their guilt for the crimes they committed and made substantial efforts to mend relations with the peoples they had wronged. The Japanese did much the same although they seemed to stop at the final step, they allowed aspects of their militarised and imperialistic past to exist (the Americans bear complicity in this). That is part of the reason why we see protests breaking out all over Asia when Prime Minister Koizumi visits the Yasakuni shrine (containing the remains of convicted wall criminals). Or the recent massive protests in Korea and China over newly released Japanese school textbooks that sanitised Japan's wartime record. None of these things have happened in or with Germany. Sure you have the fringe group neo-nazi groups but nothing that approaches the mainstream like you have in Japan.

This brings me back to SA. Like Germany and Japan, white South Africa has made an effort to give back both financially and economically to black South Africans. However, I don't think the majority have taken that final step and made the connection between themselves and what happened under Apartheid. Whether consciously or not they have not made peace with the past.

This is why I believe the TRC was the most important organisation to grow out of the post-apartheid government. People needed to see and feel what happened to fellow South Africans under apartheid, the needed to be taken to the torture cells, they needed to be shown the inner working of Vlakplaas, they needed to feel the rage, sorrow and hate that those times caused so many people. One of the best books I have read about the TRC was Country of my Skull by Antjie Krog, an emotional and honest book that I think comes close to summing up what the TRC meant to many people. For others it was an inconvenience "let bygones be bygones, why bring up the past", the people who said this were 99.9% of the time people had the least knowledge about apartheid really was or the evil it represented. Soon many of them were singing a different tune when they started hearing the atrocities that were committed in their names.

Many today still question the whether the TRC was a good idea. Undoubtedly, it did have many problems but I think with the amount of ground it had to cover and the subject matter it dealt with it did a fine job. If anyone failed it was the government who ultimately seemed to lose interest and the drive to see things to an effective conclusion.

-  The former Judge President of the Cape, Edwin King (yes that Judge King - from the Hansie hearings) will apparently be studying allegations that SA rugby boss Brian van Rooyen has breached SA Rugby's code of conduct. "A provisional investigation by advocate Jannie Lubbe found that there is a prima facie case to be made against Van Rooyen and other members of SA Rugby's presidents' council."

- Remember those emails that were making the rounds with various allegations against high ranking ANC and Opposition members, Journalists and members of various law enforcement agencies? Well the M&G has a nice round-up of just what the emails contained and the political fallout that has followed. See here and here

- SA apparently had a new richest man, for 30 minutes that is. So, how many of you bank with Standard Bank?

Well I see our nations finest are hard at work again. Fresh from being taken hostage by an irate citizen, the geniuses at Home Affairs have managed to "lose" about 200 people who had just flown into the country onboard an SAA flight from Nigeria. Of course this kind of disaster, the compromising of our national security will be harshly punished right? Right? 

Department of Home Affairs spokesperson Nkosana Sibuyi told the Mail & Guardian Online on Thursday afternoon that the managers responsible, including the head of immigration at the airport, have reported to him about the situation.

 

That's it? End of story? No disciplinary hearings etc. Of course not, this is Home Affairs where inefficiency and base stupidity go hand in hand. I am really sick of reading stories about the disaster that is Home Affairs, who along with the Department of Health must be the most useless governmental Departments in our current administration. Anyway back to our story, how will Home Affairs track down the passengers of that flight :

"We now work very closely with the airlines, because these people are here illegally. It is easy for us to trace them; SAA has a list of the passengers' names."

What the hell are you going to with a bunch of names, stop people in the street and ask "Excuse me are you Mr X, who just flew in from Nigeria?" The level of logic or the lack thereof is epic in its proportions.

A. National. Disgrace. 

You can't make this kind of stuff up :

"He may be revered by some and reviled by others but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's skills as an orator are rarely in doubt, prompting a local record company to put his speeches on tape for "good home entertainment", a newspaper reported on Thursday.

 

The compilation is entitled "Mugabe Speaks" and is to be released by recording firm Gramma Records, the state-controlled Herald said. Minister of Policy Implementation Webster Shamu said the recordings "would not only provide good home entertainment but would be useful to scholars", the paper said. Some of the speeches date back to the late 1970s, when Mugabe and other key nationalists were waging a guerrilla war against the former white minority government of then Rhodesia.

 

Shamu said the record "will assist our children and will also educate people on where we came from and where we are going".

 

(Props to bob.co.za for the photo.)