South Africa

...doesn't it? :

The words of Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States envoy to Iraq, were so chilling last week because they gave voice to a growing fear. He warned that “we have opened a Pandora’s box’’ that “would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child’s play’’. He was referring to the nightmare scenarios of civil war provoking wider regional conflict drawing in Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Afghanistan’s violence is on a smaller scale but still vicious. Last year 1 400 Afghans were killed. The choice of targets is particularly cruel -- teachers and schools have been attacked, along with administration officials. The introduction of suicide bombings indicates new outside support, which prompted the gloomy recent assessment to the US Congress by the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency that attacks are likely to increase.

The war on terror has failed -- it has been the most catastrophic blunder in half a century of British and American foreign policy. Ill-conceived and spectacularly badly implemented, it was redolent of an old-fashioned understanding of conflict and quaint faith in superior military technology.

It has had precisely the opposite impact from that allegedly intended, by significantly increasing the threat of terrorism while alienating Muslim opinion across the globe. Yet the politicians who made the decisions, who lied, and ignored and manipulated expert opinion are still in power and uttering the same platitudes.

 

Does liddle-baby-Thabo need protection fwom da big bad man? Don't worry Mamma Mbete's here baby, she'll protect you from the bad man from the DA with his nasty, nasty questions :

National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete has rejected as "outrageous" claims by an opposition MP that she sought to protect President Thabo Mbeki at the expense of parliament's constitutional obligation to hold the executive to account. Mbete's political adviser, Lulamile Mapholoba, said that questions put to members of the executive, including the president, must comply with parliamentary rules and practices. If this did not occur, the question would be disallowed.

Mapholoba was reacting on Friday to a statement issued by DA MP Eddie Trent last week, criticising the Speaker for rejecting a question about whether Mbeki had met the head of Thales International, Jean-Paul Perrier, in May last year. Thales and its South African subsidiary, Thint, are facing trial later this year, along with former deputy president Jacob Zuma, for alleged corruption. Mapholoba confirmed that the question had been disallowed because some of the words used were "sarcastic and hence offensive", and the fact that it was not in order to suggest a member might have acted improperly.

 

Oh boo-friggin'-hoo, if the Prez. can't handle a bit of sarcasm in a question he should get out of politics now. I haven't watched Parliament Live recently but I do remember the boo's and cat-calls that emanated from the ANC back-benchers each time a member of the Opposition was making a speech.

Dry your eyes Baleka, I think that joyride official trip you took to Liberia has clouded your judgement.

When you're on fire you're on fire :

With the municipal elections safely out of the way, our political life is subsiding back to normal. An eternally grateful Mr Mbeki has been released from his disagreeable four weeks of country-arrest, and is back striding the world stage on our behalf. SABC news department loyalists no longer have to traipse around the lower end of the democratic compass recording their master’s every piety for reproduction in inspiring quarter-hour instalments each evening at seven. But for Eskom, these would have been electrifying as well.

Relieved of the exigencies of the municipal hustings, members of the central executive of the African National Congress are now able to get back to more crucial matters. And none more crucial than deciding who from among ANC ranks is going to be elected to lead the party’s new and imaginative campaign of moral degeneration.

This extraordinary volte-face has become necessary by force of circumstance. The mandarins of the ANC are acknowledging that, from among their ranks, only someone of Jacob Zuma’s singular qualities could ever have been charged with the regeneration and reinforcement of a nation’s moral texture. There was good reason for appointing him to flush out and purify the national soul. He was the only one among the ranks of the ruling party -- or their hangers-on -- of the requisite ethical fortitude. He was top of the heap, the very acme of probity and restraint. Together with his disciples in the ANC Youth League, Jacob Zuma jealously occupied South Africa’s moral uplands. Sadly, with his attentions now diverted by other and graver personal issues, he has left both his political brothers and a nation bereft. We now have only one way to go: back down into the sewers. If the ANC Youth League have their way we won’t even have a bitch to burn on the way....

 

Brilliant! Be sure to go read the rest for yourself...

Something needs to be said.

The latest revelations about just how dirty Brett Kebble was and how he had a number of senior ANC heavyweights under his little finger is indicative of a serious malaise affecting the ruling party. I remember a while back some ANC Youth League functionary declaring something to the effect that Kebble was "our white man". In other words the ANC Youth League believed that they were the ones calling the shots and Kebble was just some happy-go-lucky fat white guy who they (the league) could go to to get some cash when they needed it. 

But Kebble was the player, the puppet master who used these idiots ego's and lust for the latest Visa platinums to suck them into his world of chequebook politics. You wonder why Kebble managed to avoid paying tax for so long, or why he seemed to always be one step ahead in the PR war with the Scorpions? It's because he had all of these fools dancing to his tune as he changed his personae to suit whatever the situation - generous donor to the arts/africanist/patriot/BEE pathfinder - it's easy to do all this if you're using other people's money!

But of course the blowhards at the ANCYL didn't see this. No, instead they just focused on those "babe magnet" cars, designer suits and pampering their juvenile ego's. The same can be said for all those listed in Kebble's loan list - what the hell does crooked Tony Yengeni need R1.4m for? Doesn't he have enough cash from Thales already? It is really starting to seem that the political elite in the ANC are playing a one-upmanship game with each other to see who can buy the best silk-tie/exotic trip on government money/latest luxury vehicle, all the while the majority of the population lives in poverty.    

Here's an adage I think should be stapled onto the forehead of every Party crony who thinks he's hit the big time when a "friend" from big business wants to lend him some cash "no strings attached" -

                  "I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts" - Virgil

- Dirrrrty! Brett Kebble's evil empire and all of its morally bankrupt connections have finally seen the light of day in an auditors report commissioned by institutional investors Allan Gray and Investec. The heady stink of greed and corruption hangs heavy over the report and a number of Party big-guns are named. Top receivers of Kebble's ill-gotten gains were the ANC who he apparently "loaned" R18-million to, other ANC heavyweights on the payroll who were loaned money included :

• Mac Maharaj, former Transport Minister (R280000);

• Popo Molefe, former North West premier (R768000);

• Former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni (R1.4-million);

• Dali Tambo, son of late ANC president Oliver Tambo (R11.096-million)

•Sello Rasethaba, director of Matodzi (R9.667-million);

•Eric Molefe, former chairman of Exel Petroleum, the black-owned oil company (R431000);

•Chris Nissen, former Western Cape ANC leader (R370000);

•David Barritt, Kebble’s former spokesman (R10.295-million);

•Sharif Pandor, husband of Education Minister Naledi Pandor (R979966);

•Dominic Ntsele, a Kebble business associate (R2-million);

•Lunga Ncwana, a prominent ANC Youth League member (R7.060-million); and

•Andile Nkuhlu, a Youth League leader and former JCI executive (R333000).

 

The forensic report recommended that : 

•Criminal charges and civil claims be laid against the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC);

•Criminal charges and civil claims be laid against former Randgold directors and officers; and

•Randgold claim back about R390-million from Kebble’s estate.

 

Where did all this money come from? Well, it is alleged that Kebble siphoned off R2-billion in Randgold & Exploration shareholders’ money through a series of deals he orchestrated.

Is anyone else starting to get a bit tired of the ID’s a) blatant political opportunism b) swaggering around like they were the ones who took the most votes in CT c) making statements about “doing things their own way” and then acting like an ANC front organization?  This past week the DA offered the ID the following in an attempt to get it to join the coalition :

The DA, which holds the executive mayoral position, said the ID were offered two seats on the mayoral committee, three chairmanships of sub-councils and three positions on the bargaining council, in exchange for a commitment to promote stability and consensus-seeking in the city.

In the opinion of this humble blogger - a pretty good deal for the ID in light of what happened last week! So what did the ID when faced with this offer to join the grand coalition and bring stability to Cape Town (for at least the short term) :

The Independent Democrats (ID) are to launch a motion at the Cape Town council's next full sitting to replace the executive mayoral system with an executive committee based on the proportional support received by political parties. It is a move the African National Congress says it will support, given that this would give it representation on the committee.

ID leader Patricia de Lille said that if the DA did not agree to the executive committee system by March 29, her party would go ahead with the motion which, if it succeeded, would wrest decision-making authority from executive mayor Helen Zille.

Short-sighted. Egotistical. Childish

I could understand this motion being tabled if it became apparent that Zille was doing a bad job. However, by doing it so shortly after her (Zille's) election, the ID shows that it has nothing to do with helping the City of Cape Town and everything to do with scoring some cheap political points (not to mention sour grapes)!

...the ICC has concluded that the racist abuse from Australian fans towards South Africa's cricketers was "premeditated, coordinated and calculated to get under the players' skins". Here are the key finding of the report (Reuters) :

I find that racial abuse of South African players has taken place during their tour of Australia," ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed quoted the report as saying on Tuesday."Herschelle Gibbs, Shaun Pollock, Andre Nel and Boeta Dippenaar were all subjected to racial abuse in different places. "It would be wrong to attribute racial abuse to South African expatriates living in Australia. It was premeditated, coordinated and calculated to get after the players. It is a serious matter," he told a news conference.

 

"It is the first complaint made by a cricketing nation and it must be taken very seriously. The chief executives of the Australia and South Africa boards and I will come back with recommendations for a change, if any, to the ICC anti-racism policy during the April 30 meeting," Speed said after a meeting of the ICC board.

 

Now I don't want to crow too much, but to all those Aussies who sent me mail (after this post) about how I was "well off the mark" or "misjudging the Australian sports mentality", because "hell it is obvious that these fools were South African expats" - all I can say is read the ICC report for yourself! 

Today is Human Rights Day. Today forty-six years ago the Nationalist regime signalled it was not interested in negotiation nor in slowing down the pace of Apartheid implementation. A day of infamy probably only equalled by what happened 16 years later in Soweto.

By 10 in the morning almost 5,000 protesters had congregated in the centre of Sharpeville, from where they walked to the police compound. Similar groups (about 4,000 in total) walked from Bophelong and Boipatong to the police station at Vanderbijlpark, whilst a larger gathering of almost 20,000 people formed at the police station in Evaton.

 

The crowd at Evaton was dispersed by low-flying Sabre jets, and that at Vanderbijlpark was dispersed by a baton charge and tear gas. One person was killed at Vanderbijlpark when the police opened fire in response (the police claimed) to stone throwing by the crowd. At Sharpville, with a number of PAC officials in the crowd, the low-flying jets had no effect. The crowd remained around the police compound, waiting for a PAC statement to be read out.

 

In the official TRC version of events the police remained passive until one-fifteen. Despite claims in the press in 1960 (and still in many reports) that squads of police went out into the crowd to arrest PAC officials, no action was actually taken by the police against the PAC at that time. "The police refused to arrest PAC members who presented themselves for arrest."⁴ Police accusations that the PAC leadership refused to instruct the crowd to disperse, however, were deemed false: various officials did in fact ask them to move away from the compound's fence. Only 300 or so protesters were still in the vicinity when the shooting started (this means, however, that the police managed to shoot almost all those near to the compound). By mid-day the small contingent of police normally present at the station (12 in all) had been boosted significantly: nearly 300 armed police and five Saracens (armoured vehicles) were present.

 

No one knows why the first shot was fired. The police claim it was in response to stone throwing by the crowd, and although this is mostly dismissed, such debris is visible amongst the fallen bodies and discarded footwear in photographs of the aftermath. The first shots being fired in response by inexperienced and nervous officers. (Rarely mentioned in contemporary reports is that the police were nervous because, only a few weeks before, nine policemen had been killed by a mob at Cato Manor, a township outside Durban.) Eyewitnesses from the crowd claim that an order was given to fire, or that the banging of a Saracen door was mistaken for gunfire from the crowd. No firm evidence for any weapons amongst the crowd (guns or traditional spears and knobkerries) has ever been given. The TRC concluded that there was a "degree of deliberation in the decision to open fire at Sharpville" which indicated "that the shooting was more than the result of inexperienced and frightened police officers losing their nerve."⁵

 

Somewhere between 50 and 75 of the police opened fire. The crowd initially confused, and perhaps thinking the police were using blanks, stood still. It was not until the bodies started to fall that they ran. The police continued to shoot the protesters even as they fled from the site. Of the 180 injured, only 30 had been shot from the front. The injured included 31 women and 19 children, while among the 69 killed, eight were women and ten children.

 

It took a while for emergency services to arrive (the telephone lines had been cut) and the police were slow to provide help. Following the massacre, the police made 77 arrests, including several people still receiving treatment in hospital (they were placed under guard until they were fit enough to be detained). Of those arrested, 55 were later released.

The TRC report on the Massacre concluded :

The Commission finds that the police deliberately opened fire on an unarmed crowd that had gathered peacefully at Sharpville on 21 March 1960 to protest against the pass laws. The Commission finds further that the SAP (South African Police) failed to give the crowd an order to disperse before they began firing and that they continued to fire upon the fleeing crowd, resulting in hundreds of people being shot in the back. As a result of the excessive force used, 69 people were killed and more than 300 injured. The Commission finds further that the police failed to facilitate access to medical and/or other assistance to those who were wounded immediately after the march.

 

"The Commission finds that many of the participants in the march were apolitical, women and unarmed, and had attended the march because they were opposed to the pass laws. The Commission finds, therefore, that many of the people fired upon and injured in the march were not politicised members of any political party, but merely persons opposed to carrying a pass.

 

"The Commission finds that many of those injured in the march were placed under police guard in hospital as if they were convicted criminals and, upon release from hospital, were detained for long periods in prison before being formally charged. In the majority of instances when persons so detained appeared in court, the charges were withdrawn.

 

"The Commission finds the former state and the minister of police directly responsible for the commission of gross human rights violations in that excessive force was unnecessarily used to stop a gathering of unarmed people. Police failed to give an order to disperse and/or adequate time to disperse, relied on live ammunition rather than alternative methods of crowd dispersal and fired in a sustained manner into the back of the crowd, resulting in the death of sixty-nine people and the injury of more than 300."

    - From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol 3, Chapter 6, October '98

 

There are two types of "people" (I use this term extremely loosely) that I despise above all others. These scum (a more accurate description) never fail to turn my stomach when I hear of their disgusting deeds. I am of course talking about child abusers and those that are cruel to animals. It takes a person with a particularly warped personality to abuse a position of power over those that are weaker than themselves in order to gain some twisted kick or financial gain. So, when I read this story I could literally feel my blood pressure rising as the litany of abuses these animals endured was listed.

Needless to say I would love to see this John Visser scum forced to experience the same horrors he exacted on those creatures!

A special kind of hell for you JV...!

- The Coca-Cola Colab Massive Mix festival sounds like it had major problems with preparations by organisers falling far short of what was needed.

- In a shock win the Sharks downed Highlanders in their Super 14 clash at the House of Pain in Dunedin on Saturday. Coach Dick Muir had the following to say  "We needed that win and we deserved it. I don't want to say I'm relieved ... but, yes, well, I am relieved. This win was overdue."

-  The presidency has responded to the story in the Suntimes (about the Minister's various undeclared business interests) by stating that "A preliminary investigation indicated that most of the directorships found to have been undeclared involved defunct or dormant companies that aren't operating, or companies from which they had resigned"