Politics gets interesting

It really looks like there is going to be a significant new opposition party to the ANC and unlike all other parties, it will have the same struggle credentials and racial credentials as the ANC. This means that several of the traditional weapons used against the "all white" DP (which isn't) which wasn't part of the struggle are going to be ineffective against the new party. Hopefully this will lead to a new era when the actual policies and performance of the government and opposition get to compete on the public stage and the morons within all parties get recognised for the liabilities they are and get quietly sidelined.

There is a saying that "When things sound too good to be true; they usually are" and I hope that this is not the case with the new party.

US Communist Flag

The US Flag post Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ...



As unlikely as it seems, the Communists win!

Bob is soooo right!

While I am on the topic of Zimbabwe, I fear that Bob is absolutely right when he says that if he goes, all the land appropriated by the ZANUPF people during the last decade will be repossessed. I say this simply because, those with money have a stronger negotiating position than those that don't and who desperately need it. There will be an unequal bargaining position between the two sides and this will inevitably lead to the dispossession of poor Zimbabwean people of their newly acquired land.

All this goes to show is that the redistribution of land, Zimbabwe style, won't work in the long term and in fact, could well place the recipients of the appropriated land in a worse position than they were originally in. If the appropriation of land leads to the economic destruction of a country as seems to have been the case in Zimbabwe, it will simply leave the recipients of the land in a position where they aren't able to bargain from a position of equal power and are therefore open to exploitation.

While Bob is casting it in terms of white vs black, in reality it will be poor black Zimbabweans that will be at the mercy of white, indian, chinese and black people and corporations, basically anyone with money and few morals, ready to take advantage of their misery.

I think South Africa should take note of this before rushing to expropriate land to fulfill political goals however just they may be as there may be unintended consequences to the injudicious appropriation of land.

The problem with Patronage

It seems that the results of patronage are on display in our neighbor up north. Although Bob seems to be the mouthpiece, the people that really don't want him to step down are those that benefited from his patronage during the last 30 odd years. Patronage and corruption are, in my mind, strongly linked and this is a lesson which South Africa would do well to have a close look at. Since we have a list based electoral system it lends itself to patronage problems because some central committee or in the worst case, person, decides who gets to be on the lists and being on the list seems to be the gateway to the good life.

Oh the irony!

Harping on again about the power situation here is proving to a great, if depressing, topic of conversation. Not the least because of peoples reactions but I can't help but think that this was bound to happen eventually. What I am referring to is that for every action taken there are consequences and sometimes there are unexpected and unintended.

Taking our current situation, Cosatu has been on the safety bandwagon with the mines and, I think, legitimately so for quite some time so when the mines said that they were having to close due to safety issues due to inadequate power - Cosatu couldn't really argue with their reasons. Something else that is close to Cosatu's heart is jobs because, quite rightly, they do understand that without jobs being created, this economy like all others is doomed. Unfortunately, the mines closing is probably going to lead to job losses. Possibly not but it probably will, we can only tell as time goes on. Tracing the cause of the job losses backwards to Eskom we have Eskom and the Government pointing fingers at each other but at the end of the day, it seems to me that the lack of power is not simply a matter of lack of investment as requested in 1997 but a sustained lack of maintenance as well with maybe some unfortunate weather thrown in. I think pretty much everyone agrees right now that there is a strong case for arguing incompetence on the part of Eskom during the last 10 years. Now the question is, how did a previously vaguely competent organisation, as in we have never previously had this scale of problem, get to this point and sooner or later someone is going to put forward BEE or Affirmative Action as the culprit. Of course, Affirmative Action and BEE is also close to Cosatu since they are part of the tri-partite alliance that has been ruling for the last 14 years so if it wasn't, how on earth did it manage to get through parliament.

So now we get to see, does Cosatu value Safety, Jobs or Affirmative Action more.

As a disclaimer in case anyone thinks that I am against affirmative action and BEE, I'm not but affirmative action or BEE without due regard for ability to actually perform the job I am definitely against.

Police Brutality ...

Woke up to my morning fix of news websites to the following report where it is clear that Jackie Selebi and spokesperson were delighted that 11 would be robbers had been killed. The twelfth is in a serious condition. That's 12 out of 12 as far as I can read from the article.

The general feeling amongst people both black and white that I have spoken to is that the robbers had it coming to them and that rather this than that they get off on some technicality or in the miniscule chance that they don't escape custody and actually go to jail - that they get paroled in a few years. Harsh but true.

It would seem that society and very definitely the police have past the point of letting the rule of law take its course because it isn't seen to be taking its course and if justice is not both seen to be done and done - eventually people will take it into their own hands. Methinks this is a wake up call for the courts and legal system, sort crime out or society will take charge in a manner which is not going to be fair, just or even handed.

Of course our politicians haven't exactly helped to uphold the rule of law and serve as role models have they.

Freedom of speech - Not

Zapiro's take on a recent occurrence where a reporter was fired for presenting a point of view that differed to those of the some of the readers of the newspaper.



For an interesting debate see here

Brother Ariel and Sister Bob

Aside from their countries of domicile and the fact that they both manage to breathe while at the same time not being able to think, they have nothing to do with this post.

I woke up today thinking about the similarities that exist in between Israel and Zimbabwe and how it is somehow completely acceptable to hold a particular view on one country and the contrary view on the other country. Surely we should be more consistent? This would be the point where Patch would say that he reserves judgement until after the case has been made so here goes.

Several years ago Zimbabwe, ably led by Bob, decided that the Zimbabwean land had originally been stolen by the Farmers from them, the original inhabitants, in the first place so the land was forfeit and ripe for annexation at the point of a gun if required. Well the point of the gun was required as well as some 'legal' skulduggery and intimidation of the judiciary because, strangely, the farmers felt they were being hard done by and fought back with everything they could short of firearms since that was a war they had already lost twenty years previously. Most opinions of this land grab was that the farmers were the aggrieved party and that running people off their land at the point of a gun was not the done thing.

Onto Israel which prior to 1948 was substantially owned by the Palestinians, post 1948 it was substantially owned and more so as time went on by Israelis, the Palestinians having been moved off their lands at the point of a gun or by 'legal' dispossession if required. Most opinions of this land grab is that it is entirely justifiable and just what are the Palestinians complaining about?

My point is that I find that often people are sympathetic to the plight of the Farmers but not to the Palestinians and conversely, sympathetic to the Zimbabweans but not the Israelis. Surely one should be sympathetic to the plight of the Farmers and the Palestinians or on the other side to the Zimbabweans and the Israelis if one is to remain consistent in ones' political leanings?

Three things

This is one of those weeks where the world turns ...

Firstly, I don't find it often that I am proud to be a human being, on the whole we've made a pretty good job of ruining the planet as well as one anothers' lives. We seem to have a real knack for destruction of any kind.

What prompted this was PW Botha's funeral which Thabo Mbeki as well as other well known anti apartheid activists attended. Here we have people who fought tooth and nail against an (elected) dictator, who never repented nor seemed to feel remorse for the suffering he caused, going to his funeral to pay their respects. They didn't have to go to the funeral, the ANC offered a state funeral to the family who declined so there was absolutely no reason for any anti apartheid activists to have gone, they had already gone the extra mile by even offering a state funeral.

Perhaps they just went to make absolutely sure that he was gone and six feet under but either way the message came out loud and clear that it is possible to let the past go and concentrate on the future. All it requires is real people displaying genuine leadership.

Secondly, Schabir Shaik entered prison for a 15 year jail term. Although there is still a long road ahead, there does seem to be a real chance that we have an independent judiciary. In first world countries this might be taken for granted even when it isn't true. Here, it is definitely not a given, so to see an associate with very strong political connections having to go to jail for 15 years for corruption, is such a ray of sunshine.

Thirdly, Bush loses the majority in both Congress and the Senate. It remains to be seen if there is any change following from this, I have my doubts, but anything has to be be better than Bush with a majority in both houses. Personally, I don't expect very much because I reckon that the Democrats are just the Hyde part of Jekyll, they're actually the same underneath. Hopefully I am wrong.