Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD
A STUDENT from the University of the Witwatersrand emailed this week with a query about Julius Malema. Was it I who had first called the ANC Youth League president “Jelly Tsotsi”, and if so, could I provide her with the background to this appellation?
I happily replied that, yes, I was the clever pants who came up with that one, and explained that the play on words -- slapping “tsotsi” into the brand name of popular children’s sweets -- suggested that, as a political figure, Malema was both rather immature and something of a thug.
Now that I think about it, there could be other inferences. The “jelly-like” nature of this fruit-flavoured confection -- they’re soft and chewy -- suggests, if not spinelessness, then a certain lack of foundation. A wobbliness, if you will. Figuratively and literally. In Malema, that is, and not the sweets.
But the email pleased me. Not only had she carefully selected the best person to help her with her homework, but here at least was one student who was learning something useful. I began to re-evaluate my opinions about the youth -- perhaps they were not all rubbish and crap, as I’d imagined at the beginning of the week.
What sparked the rancour was a television interview with ANCYL secretary-general Vuyiswa Tulelo ahead of the league’s national conference, in which she burbled on smugly that the youth could no longer be ignored because they have arrived, or some such inanity.
More’s the pity, of course, but the self-importance and arrogance that tripped from the mouth of this slug-like woman was almost too much to bear, and the slough of despond into which I was unceremoniously plunged was yea deep to say the least.
It got worse. Naturally. Jelly himself was all over the place in the run up to the conference, full of belligerent posturing as he lashed out at the Cosatu and SA Communist Party leaderships, accusing them of failing to lead the workers and having the temerity to to criticise the league’s mines nationalisation policy, which they claim is nothing more than a scheme to bail out debt-laden BEE fat cat mine owners.
Another of Jelly’s targets this week was the Minister in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, presumably because he holds the view that, when it comes to the economy, the youth league president is perhaps something of a half-brained, jumped-up windbag who has somehow convinced himself that, because he has an opinion about something, he is an expert. I’m guessing here, of course. I could be wrong. Perhaps Manuel secretly believes that Jelly should be managing the International Monetary Fund.
But moving on, as we must. The youth. What good are they?
Not much, according to the overview of the country recently released by Manuel’s National Planning Commission. Here, indeed, was bleak reading. That slough of despond? It just got slougher. We are deep in the brown stuff.
We have failed to give them a decent education, according to the report. “Apart from a small minority of black children who attend formerly white schools, and a small minority of schools performing well in largely black areas, the quality of public education remains poor. Literacy and numeracy test scores are low by African and global standards, despite the fact that [the] government spends about 6% of GDP on education and South Africa's teachers are among the highest paid in the world (in purchasing-power parity).”
Learners in historically white schools do better, but at most schools with black learners, “the learner scores start off lower, and show relatively little improvement between grades three and five’, the report states.
“[Though] there have been some improvements, as measured by the pass rate of those who sat the 2010 matriculation exam, which was 67.8%, this hides the fact that only 15% achieved an average mark of 40% or more. This means that roughly 7% of the cohort of children born between 1990 and 1994 achieved this standard.”
All of which means that we have another “lost generation” here, a whole bunch of casualties destined to wander the dusty byways of the country, incapable of doing much other than stare at people in cars. It’s a bloody horrible thought.
But there is hope. Consider this: about 40 000 youngsters crammed into Soweto’s Orlando Stadium to celebrate National Youth Day. About 35 000 of them left in disgust before President Jacob Zuma bothered to pitch up, four hours late. They’d learnt a very valuable lesson -- politicians utterly despise people, they really do.
And maybe as he arrived at the almost deserted venue, with its red carpet strewn with rubbish, the president had learnt something as well.
Showing posts with label Jacob Zuma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacob Zuma. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
A Famous Grouse: April 30
Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD
TO Steytlerville, where a shape-shifting monster has apparently been bothering the residents of this sleepy Karoo backwater in recent weeks. Those who have seen it say it first appears as a headless man in a black coat and then it turns into an angry dog, then a pig, and even a bat and a large monkey.
Yes, it would seem that not even this quaint dorp, dubbed the north-eastern gateway into the Baviaans Kloof and noted for its near pristine examples of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, has escaped the attention of the politicians as the national municipal elections approach.
The townsfolk have been ignored for years, but now, suddenly, they’re being bothered by a plague of blatant lies, false promises and fatuous arse-kissing.
It’s no wonder they’re terrified out there and have -- perhaps foolishly, given their irrational propensity for brute violence -- turned to the police for help.
Mercifully, the police chose not to gun down anyone or club them into submission but, instead, asked residents to photograph the shape-shifter. Which, according to one Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani, they duly did after spotting it resting under a tree.
Nelani told Sapa that when the photograph was taken the creature had been in human form, but when the image was developed there was an unknown animal in its place. “It is a very strange thing happening in Steytlerville,” he added, “but no-one has been hurt by it.”
Police are now scanning the election candidate lists for someone to help them with their inquiries. Naturally, we fear the worst.
Here at the Mahogany Ridge, though, much was initially made of reports that a good deal of the Steytlerville shape-shifting apparently occurred in the proximity of a local tavern. Some regulars even pointed out that, far from being paranormal, such activity was quite commonplace at the Ridge, especially on pay days.
But this suggestion was given short shrift and it was pointed out that, in the parlance of the simple fisherfolk that we are, “drinking someone pretty” followed by torrid fumbling and groping in the car park was not the sort of shape-shifting under discussion here.
Indeed, what was happening in Steytlerville appeared to be quite the opposite -- an apparently normal, possibly even attractive person suddenly loses their head, and then turns into a pig, and not the other way round.
But moving on. As we did rather pronto when word reached us that President Jacob Zuma had, rather astonishingly, declared that some ANC candidates would be kicked out of office after the elections to make way for communities’ “preferred” choices.
He was electioneering in Bloemfontein when he told disgruntled party supporters to “vote for the ANC and we will sort out the candidate lists later”.
It didn’t sound very convincing, did it? Was he losing his head? Was this transmogrification? Was he about to take off? Who could say? But here was shape-shifting on a whole other level, and it was much like watching a slothful mastadon splashing about in the swamp as it became a mere whisper of its former self.
More worrying, though, is that this about-turn apparently not only negated the ANC’s somewhat frantic attempts in recent weeks to convince supporters to accept the party-ordained candidates over their own popular choices, but it could throw the poll’s outcome into chaos -- particularly for said party-ordained candidates who will be forced to make way for others.
It is here that things will get interesting, in a very grim way.
In a recent blog, the political analyst Nic Borain raised the point that when the business of government becomes the business of enriching the governors -- and, as we know only too well, the “rewards” of political office are considerable -- then the process of getting onto the party’s candidate list becomes “one of mayhem and murder, endlessly chaotic and contested”.
You can imagine, then, having fought tooth and nail to get on that list and thus into office, the extreme reluctance at now suddenly having to make way for some yokel community leader coming out of nowhere, and without the sort of political patronage, tenderpreneurial connections and predisposition for looting that now characterises our public life.
It’s outrageous, this suggestion that one should hop off the gravy train before they’ve even hooked up the locomotive.
They won’t take it lying down. And it’s here, obviously, that we will see men and women, in fits of atavistic greed, truly turning into beasts. The fighting and backstabbing, the bloodletting and the barbarism of it all, the treachery and brutality, will be something else. Even the police will be scared.
TO Steytlerville, where a shape-shifting monster has apparently been bothering the residents of this sleepy Karoo backwater in recent weeks. Those who have seen it say it first appears as a headless man in a black coat and then it turns into an angry dog, then a pig, and even a bat and a large monkey.
Yes, it would seem that not even this quaint dorp, dubbed the north-eastern gateway into the Baviaans Kloof and noted for its near pristine examples of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, has escaped the attention of the politicians as the national municipal elections approach.
The townsfolk have been ignored for years, but now, suddenly, they’re being bothered by a plague of blatant lies, false promises and fatuous arse-kissing.
It’s no wonder they’re terrified out there and have -- perhaps foolishly, given their irrational propensity for brute violence -- turned to the police for help.
Mercifully, the police chose not to gun down anyone or club them into submission but, instead, asked residents to photograph the shape-shifter. Which, according to one Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani, they duly did after spotting it resting under a tree.
Nelani told Sapa that when the photograph was taken the creature had been in human form, but when the image was developed there was an unknown animal in its place. “It is a very strange thing happening in Steytlerville,” he added, “but no-one has been hurt by it.”
Police are now scanning the election candidate lists for someone to help them with their inquiries. Naturally, we fear the worst.
Here at the Mahogany Ridge, though, much was initially made of reports that a good deal of the Steytlerville shape-shifting apparently occurred in the proximity of a local tavern. Some regulars even pointed out that, far from being paranormal, such activity was quite commonplace at the Ridge, especially on pay days.
But this suggestion was given short shrift and it was pointed out that, in the parlance of the simple fisherfolk that we are, “drinking someone pretty” followed by torrid fumbling and groping in the car park was not the sort of shape-shifting under discussion here.
Indeed, what was happening in Steytlerville appeared to be quite the opposite -- an apparently normal, possibly even attractive person suddenly loses their head, and then turns into a pig, and not the other way round.
But moving on. As we did rather pronto when word reached us that President Jacob Zuma had, rather astonishingly, declared that some ANC candidates would be kicked out of office after the elections to make way for communities’ “preferred” choices.
He was electioneering in Bloemfontein when he told disgruntled party supporters to “vote for the ANC and we will sort out the candidate lists later”.
It didn’t sound very convincing, did it? Was he losing his head? Was this transmogrification? Was he about to take off? Who could say? But here was shape-shifting on a whole other level, and it was much like watching a slothful mastadon splashing about in the swamp as it became a mere whisper of its former self.
More worrying, though, is that this about-turn apparently not only negated the ANC’s somewhat frantic attempts in recent weeks to convince supporters to accept the party-ordained candidates over their own popular choices, but it could throw the poll’s outcome into chaos -- particularly for said party-ordained candidates who will be forced to make way for others.
It is here that things will get interesting, in a very grim way.
In a recent blog, the political analyst Nic Borain raised the point that when the business of government becomes the business of enriching the governors -- and, as we know only too well, the “rewards” of political office are considerable -- then the process of getting onto the party’s candidate list becomes “one of mayhem and murder, endlessly chaotic and contested”.
You can imagine, then, having fought tooth and nail to get on that list and thus into office, the extreme reluctance at now suddenly having to make way for some yokel community leader coming out of nowhere, and without the sort of political patronage, tenderpreneurial connections and predisposition for looting that now characterises our public life.
It’s outrageous, this suggestion that one should hop off the gravy train before they’ve even hooked up the locomotive.
They won’t take it lying down. And it’s here, obviously, that we will see men and women, in fits of atavistic greed, truly turning into beasts. The fighting and backstabbing, the bloodletting and the barbarism of it all, the treachery and brutality, will be something else. Even the police will be scared.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
A Famous Grouse: April 16
Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted. In other words, you'll see "shits" here and not "s***ts" as printed in the newspaper. -- AD
IT was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, unabashed hedonist and daughter of US president Theodore Roosevelt, who once famously remarked: “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
For some bizarre reason, I was reminded of that quote, which the redoubtable Ms Longworth had embroidered on the cushions on her settee, by the images of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the nation’s gogo, and Julius Malema, the nation’s gogga, seemingly inseparable at the latter’s hate speech hearing in Johannesburg.
I mean, you can’t stop him from shooting his mouth off at the best of times, and it’s never very nice, is it? And she . . . well, let’s just say there were jokes about revolutionary cougars on Twitter and Facebook.
But, really, sitting here at the Mahogany Ridge, staring blankly at the pile of newspapers near the door, it’s hard to get excited about any of this simply because we have grown tired of this dreadful saga.
It’s not just Malema fatigue either. There are a growing number of people out there for whom Malema and his vapid rhetoric are anathema but who nevertheless feel that the civil rights group Afriforum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union have done themselves no favours in pursuing this matter of Dubul’ iBhunu (Shoot the Boer).
Far from shutting him up, it’s made Jelly Tsotsi louder than ever. Look at the grandstanding, all the blather about Mickey Mouses, of the struggle and the revolution on trial, and, perhaps most annoying of all, the continued singing of that stupid chant, now belted out with all the belligerent gusto that the young, dumb and violent could muster. That is, when they’re done urinating on lawyers’ cars.
The courts may well rule that the singing of Dubul’ iBhunu is hate speech. But that won’t stop the youth league from singing it. They will continue to do so, because they know it upsets the like of Afriforum and the TAU. It’s that simple. They’ll do so because they’re spiteful little shits. Get used to it.
Your only recourse is to ignore them. Do not, under any circumstances, pick up the telephone and call the nearest talk radio station to mouth off about Jelly and his little potty-mouthed Pecksniff, Floyd Shivambu. Do not join that chorus of whining, braying half-wits. If you do that, the youth league has won. Have a little dignity, and if you really feel you need to talk to a moron talk show host, moan instead about fracking in the Karoo.
Still on matters of freedom of expression -- and, yes, that includes the singing of stupid songs about killing the Boers as sure as it does remarks about people who dance like monkeys -- we now turn to retired Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs, who was apparently on the receiving end of some flak from the cartoonist Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro and the Treatment Action Campaign’s Zackie Achmat at UCT last week.
Sachs had presented a talk on addressing moral tensions around freedom of expression. It was the same talk he’s given a month before, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Time of the Writer festival -- except for one small difference.
In Durban, Sachs had sharply criticised Zapiro’s controversial “rape” of Lady Justice cartoon.
As he put it then -- but not, tellingly, in an abridged version at UCT:
“Can we laugh . . . at a cartoon that might be deeply wounding to millions and millions of other people out there, decent ordinary people who feel we might criticize President Zuma, poke fun at lots of things that he does, but still recognize that he is our President. In their view, you don’t depict the President of the country about to open his fly, with Ministers at his side urging him on, with a woman lying prone and helpless in front of him. For millions of our people that kind of scene is reminiscent of the stereotype of the black male rapist. It ravages the soul, the issue is deep, it’s hard, it’s sharp.”
But then the cartoon was not meant to be a cheery chuckle, a bit of a titter and a snort before we move on to the sports pages. Zapiro had wanted to make a point. “My thoughts were, here is someone who is bullying the judiciary,” he explained. “I knew there were aspects that would offend people, but I thought it was an incredibly important moment. I think it pushed Zuma to say that he actually respected the judiciary.”
And how churlish would it be to point out that the cartoon first appeared in September 2008 -- a full eight months before Zuma became president?
It makes a small difference, I think, getting things right.
IT was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, unabashed hedonist and daughter of US president Theodore Roosevelt, who once famously remarked: “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
For some bizarre reason, I was reminded of that quote, which the redoubtable Ms Longworth had embroidered on the cushions on her settee, by the images of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the nation’s gogo, and Julius Malema, the nation’s gogga, seemingly inseparable at the latter’s hate speech hearing in Johannesburg.
I mean, you can’t stop him from shooting his mouth off at the best of times, and it’s never very nice, is it? And she . . . well, let’s just say there were jokes about revolutionary cougars on Twitter and Facebook.
But, really, sitting here at the Mahogany Ridge, staring blankly at the pile of newspapers near the door, it’s hard to get excited about any of this simply because we have grown tired of this dreadful saga.
It’s not just Malema fatigue either. There are a growing number of people out there for whom Malema and his vapid rhetoric are anathema but who nevertheless feel that the civil rights group Afriforum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union have done themselves no favours in pursuing this matter of Dubul’ iBhunu (Shoot the Boer).
Far from shutting him up, it’s made Jelly Tsotsi louder than ever. Look at the grandstanding, all the blather about Mickey Mouses, of the struggle and the revolution on trial, and, perhaps most annoying of all, the continued singing of that stupid chant, now belted out with all the belligerent gusto that the young, dumb and violent could muster. That is, when they’re done urinating on lawyers’ cars.
The courts may well rule that the singing of Dubul’ iBhunu is hate speech. But that won’t stop the youth league from singing it. They will continue to do so, because they know it upsets the like of Afriforum and the TAU. It’s that simple. They’ll do so because they’re spiteful little shits. Get used to it.
Your only recourse is to ignore them. Do not, under any circumstances, pick up the telephone and call the nearest talk radio station to mouth off about Jelly and his little potty-mouthed Pecksniff, Floyd Shivambu. Do not join that chorus of whining, braying half-wits. If you do that, the youth league has won. Have a little dignity, and if you really feel you need to talk to a moron talk show host, moan instead about fracking in the Karoo.
Still on matters of freedom of expression -- and, yes, that includes the singing of stupid songs about killing the Boers as sure as it does remarks about people who dance like monkeys -- we now turn to retired Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs, who was apparently on the receiving end of some flak from the cartoonist Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro and the Treatment Action Campaign’s Zackie Achmat at UCT last week.
Sachs had presented a talk on addressing moral tensions around freedom of expression. It was the same talk he’s given a month before, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Time of the Writer festival -- except for one small difference.
In Durban, Sachs had sharply criticised Zapiro’s controversial “rape” of Lady Justice cartoon.
As he put it then -- but not, tellingly, in an abridged version at UCT:
“Can we laugh . . . at a cartoon that might be deeply wounding to millions and millions of other people out there, decent ordinary people who feel we might criticize President Zuma, poke fun at lots of things that he does, but still recognize that he is our President. In their view, you don’t depict the President of the country about to open his fly, with Ministers at his side urging him on, with a woman lying prone and helpless in front of him. For millions of our people that kind of scene is reminiscent of the stereotype of the black male rapist. It ravages the soul, the issue is deep, it’s hard, it’s sharp.”
But then the cartoon was not meant to be a cheery chuckle, a bit of a titter and a snort before we move on to the sports pages. Zapiro had wanted to make a point. “My thoughts were, here is someone who is bullying the judiciary,” he explained. “I knew there were aspects that would offend people, but I thought it was an incredibly important moment. I think it pushed Zuma to say that he actually respected the judiciary.”
And how churlish would it be to point out that the cartoon first appeared in September 2008 -- a full eight months before Zuma became president?
It makes a small difference, I think, getting things right.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
A Famous Grouse: February 12
Latest Weekend Argus column, as submitted. Unedited. -- AD
THERE’S an old joke about a visitor to Belfast, Northern Ireland, who finds himself on the wrong side of town. A drunk, spoiling for a fight, asks him whether he’s Protestant or Catholic. Thinking fast, he replies that he is an atheist. The drunk ponders this, before responding, “Yes, but are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?”
In Belfast, it’s not a particularly funny joke. There, whether you’re a Catholic or a Protestant has little to do with religion but depends largely on whether you were born on this or that side of the Falls Road.
I visited Belfast in February 2005, shortly after a Sinn Féin supporter, Robert McCartney, was murdered in a pub brawl there, allegedly by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
On the face of it, the brawl had little to do with politics -- McCartney was defending a friend who had allegedly insulted some women in the pub, Magennis’s, and for his troubles, he was attacked with a broken bottle and dragged into an alley where he was clubbed with metal bars before his throat was cut -- but his death would, in the months ahead, go on to have quite extraordinary political consequences.
The IRA initially denied involvement in the murder, but then later admitted that two of the four men directly responsible for McCartney’s death were IRA volunteers. They approached McCartney’s family with an offer to shoot those involved in the killing. The family, of course, would have nothing to do with this, but instead took their fight for justice to the US, where American support for Sinn Féin was waning.
What struck me about the incident, though, was the “wall of silence” that descended on Magennis’s. I visited the pub three days after the murder, and the reception I got was chilling. No-one would speak to me.
It was worse for the police. They weren’t called to the scene, but had noticed McCartney and his friend in the alley during a routine patrol. They were set upon by a mob of youths, and had to withdraw from the area until reinforcements in riot gear arrived. During this time, surveillance tapes from the bar’s security cameras were removed and destroyed, and the jackets and other items of clothing worn by McCartney’s attackers was burned. There were 71 potential witnesses to the brawl. Everyone of them said they were in the pub’s toilets at the time -- a cubicle that measures a little more than a square metre in area.
Later, I had dinner with a social worker who explained that, among Irish nationalists, contempt for the police was as bitter as ever, and that, since the 1998 Good Friday cease fire agreement, it was to the former paramilitaries that these divided communities looked to for law and order -- with some horrific consequences.
He told me of a Catholic woman, a single parent, who was concerned about her teenage son’s apparent delinquency, so she called in some IRA members to have a word with him. “The first time, the boy wakes up in the middle of the night, and there are these men in balaclavas in his bedroom, telling him to behave himself. It works. For a while. The second time, a few months later, they pull out a gun and kneecap him in front of his mother. Cripple him.”
I was reminded of all this and how religion poisons everything by the frenzied brouhaha following the president’s rather stupid comments about heaven and hell during a voter registration rally in Mthatha.
Here I must side with the ANC secertary-general, Gwede Mantashe, who has described the reaction of opposition parties to Jacob Zuma’s remarks and their charges of blasphemy as “childish”.
As a Catholic atheist -- thrashed and beaten by the best Irish teachers his parents could buy, all holy men good and true -- I’d suggest that anyone making a fuss about such nonsense could well be described as childish. And superstitious. And backward.
Unfortunately, that includes the ruling party as well, as they’ve somehow seen fit to install among their ranks an official ANC chaplain-general, one Rev Dr Vukile Mehana. Quite what his duties are, apart from leaping to the defence of the president in supposedly ecumenical matters, remains a mystery.
Perhaps he makes party members feel better about themselves. All politicians, by definition, have dysfunctional personalities, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be happy from time to time.
A far better response to Zuma’s remarks would have been to suggest that, yes, maybe there is a reward in heaven for ANC voters. But sadly nothing for them while they trudge the vale of tears this side of the pearly gates. Where it really counts.
THERE’S an old joke about a visitor to Belfast, Northern Ireland, who finds himself on the wrong side of town. A drunk, spoiling for a fight, asks him whether he’s Protestant or Catholic. Thinking fast, he replies that he is an atheist. The drunk ponders this, before responding, “Yes, but are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?”
In Belfast, it’s not a particularly funny joke. There, whether you’re a Catholic or a Protestant has little to do with religion but depends largely on whether you were born on this or that side of the Falls Road.
I visited Belfast in February 2005, shortly after a Sinn Féin supporter, Robert McCartney, was murdered in a pub brawl there, allegedly by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
On the face of it, the brawl had little to do with politics -- McCartney was defending a friend who had allegedly insulted some women in the pub, Magennis’s, and for his troubles, he was attacked with a broken bottle and dragged into an alley where he was clubbed with metal bars before his throat was cut -- but his death would, in the months ahead, go on to have quite extraordinary political consequences.
The IRA initially denied involvement in the murder, but then later admitted that two of the four men directly responsible for McCartney’s death were IRA volunteers. They approached McCartney’s family with an offer to shoot those involved in the killing. The family, of course, would have nothing to do with this, but instead took their fight for justice to the US, where American support for Sinn Féin was waning.
What struck me about the incident, though, was the “wall of silence” that descended on Magennis’s. I visited the pub three days after the murder, and the reception I got was chilling. No-one would speak to me.
It was worse for the police. They weren’t called to the scene, but had noticed McCartney and his friend in the alley during a routine patrol. They were set upon by a mob of youths, and had to withdraw from the area until reinforcements in riot gear arrived. During this time, surveillance tapes from the bar’s security cameras were removed and destroyed, and the jackets and other items of clothing worn by McCartney’s attackers was burned. There were 71 potential witnesses to the brawl. Everyone of them said they were in the pub’s toilets at the time -- a cubicle that measures a little more than a square metre in area.
Later, I had dinner with a social worker who explained that, among Irish nationalists, contempt for the police was as bitter as ever, and that, since the 1998 Good Friday cease fire agreement, it was to the former paramilitaries that these divided communities looked to for law and order -- with some horrific consequences.
He told me of a Catholic woman, a single parent, who was concerned about her teenage son’s apparent delinquency, so she called in some IRA members to have a word with him. “The first time, the boy wakes up in the middle of the night, and there are these men in balaclavas in his bedroom, telling him to behave himself. It works. For a while. The second time, a few months later, they pull out a gun and kneecap him in front of his mother. Cripple him.”
I was reminded of all this and how religion poisons everything by the frenzied brouhaha following the president’s rather stupid comments about heaven and hell during a voter registration rally in Mthatha.
Here I must side with the ANC secertary-general, Gwede Mantashe, who has described the reaction of opposition parties to Jacob Zuma’s remarks and their charges of blasphemy as “childish”.
As a Catholic atheist -- thrashed and beaten by the best Irish teachers his parents could buy, all holy men good and true -- I’d suggest that anyone making a fuss about such nonsense could well be described as childish. And superstitious. And backward.
Unfortunately, that includes the ruling party as well, as they’ve somehow seen fit to install among their ranks an official ANC chaplain-general, one Rev Dr Vukile Mehana. Quite what his duties are, apart from leaping to the defence of the president in supposedly ecumenical matters, remains a mystery.
Perhaps he makes party members feel better about themselves. All politicians, by definition, have dysfunctional personalities, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be happy from time to time.
A far better response to Zuma’s remarks would have been to suggest that, yes, maybe there is a reward in heaven for ANC voters. But sadly nothing for them while they trudge the vale of tears this side of the pearly gates. Where it really counts.
Monday, December 20, 2010
A Famous Grouse: December 18, 2010
(Latest Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD)
CALL it progress, but there’s now a car guard outside the Mahogany Ridge, a sign that even here, in our isolated village, we cannot escape the developments and social change that is sweeping across the broader South Africa.
The locals grumble, of course, and mutter on about the inevitability of the spike in thefts from motor vehicles that is bound to come.
The more progressive among us, however, have accepted his presence and have even gone so far as to adopt a pro-active role in the young man’s affairs and we test his vigilance and devotion to the self-appointed task of watching over our rusting hulks by throwing stones at him, usually when he asks us for money.
It does rather keep him on his toes, inasmuch as a person in a wheelchair can said to be on his toes.
But, even so, he’s pretty agile, and he makes a difficult target to hit.
It could be worse, of course. He could be a delegate at the World Youth and Student Festival in Pretoria which, at the time of writing, presumably still had some way to go towards attaining its avowed aim of defeating imperialism.
Reports from Pretoria have not been all that encouraging, but perhaps we should accept National Youth Development Agency chairman Andile Lungisa’s excuse that the bad weather was to blame for the hasty programme changes and the no-shows by high-profile politicians.
Certainly he was very quick to dismiss reports that some of the 30 000 delegates were going hungry by pointing out that even though they weren’t attending a “wine and dine festival”, no-one would be starving as they strove to build a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation.
In this regard, it should be made clear that when students went at each others’ tonsils with their tongues earlier in the week they were not foraging for half-masticated scraps of food but in fact kissing -- an activity that Lungisa has endorsed with some good nature. “They are not prisoners... This is not a prisoners’ festival but a youth festival,” he said. “They will continue kissing each other.”
Not everyone was being so friendly, though. The Israelis have been made to feel a little unwelcome, and a fistfight apparently broke out between the Moroccan and Western Sahara delegations.
Earlier, ANCYL president Julius Malema had touched on the hostility between these two regions when he explained to delegates how “fearless” President Zuma, in exchange for writing off R1.1-billion in Cuban debt, had been awarded the José Martí medal, the highest honour Cuba can bestow on a foreign head of state and, at that price, certainly one of the world’s most expensive.
“Apartheid Morocco”, he said, must decolonise Western Sahara. Failing which, he would then urge the president to remove Morocco’s embassies here. As the chump put it, “We cannot house [an] apartheid regime in South Africa.”
The Moroccan delegation were so terrified at this that they immediately stopped beating up the Western Saharans and, donning what appeared to be Santa suits, sang and danced for a bit before setting up a stand in a corner of Atteridgeville’s Lucas Moripe Stadium to sell rugs, funny slippers, fake leather purses and hookahs made in China. When the festival ends on Tuesday, they will -- for a small fee -- helpfully load other delegates’ luggage onto the buses. If the buses come, that is.
Elsewhere, the country’s youths were also getting on with the business of attaining manhood. At this time of the year, the thickets of Port Jackson on the Cape Flats are choked with the plastic-sheeted hovels used by clay-daubed initiates as they learn to respect others and practise ubuntu.
So far, at least eight initiates, including a 14-year-old boy, have died in the Eastern Cape after being circumcised by apparently unskilled iingcibi and amakhankatha, or traditional “surgeons” and “nurses”. Apparently, the local initiation schools have taken adequate steps to prevent such fatalities in the Western Cape. Let’s hope so.
Which brings us to that act of barbarism in KwaZulu-Natal this afternoon, the ukwesha, in which a fully conscious bull is to be ritually slaughtered in the name of culture by young men who will force it to the ground, rip out its tongue, force earth into its mouth, gouge out its eyes and mutilate its genitals.
It’s outrageous that, in a bid to suppress outrage, the general public is barred from this atrocious and primitive exhibition -- and yet it is funded by taxpayers, as entertainment for the lazy and irrelevant Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini.
There’s a lot of growing up needed out there. Even our car guard can tell you that.
CALL it progress, but there’s now a car guard outside the Mahogany Ridge, a sign that even here, in our isolated village, we cannot escape the developments and social change that is sweeping across the broader South Africa.
The locals grumble, of course, and mutter on about the inevitability of the spike in thefts from motor vehicles that is bound to come.
The more progressive among us, however, have accepted his presence and have even gone so far as to adopt a pro-active role in the young man’s affairs and we test his vigilance and devotion to the self-appointed task of watching over our rusting hulks by throwing stones at him, usually when he asks us for money.
It does rather keep him on his toes, inasmuch as a person in a wheelchair can said to be on his toes.
But, even so, he’s pretty agile, and he makes a difficult target to hit.
It could be worse, of course. He could be a delegate at the World Youth and Student Festival in Pretoria which, at the time of writing, presumably still had some way to go towards attaining its avowed aim of defeating imperialism.
Reports from Pretoria have not been all that encouraging, but perhaps we should accept National Youth Development Agency chairman Andile Lungisa’s excuse that the bad weather was to blame for the hasty programme changes and the no-shows by high-profile politicians.
Certainly he was very quick to dismiss reports that some of the 30 000 delegates were going hungry by pointing out that even though they weren’t attending a “wine and dine festival”, no-one would be starving as they strove to build a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation.
In this regard, it should be made clear that when students went at each others’ tonsils with their tongues earlier in the week they were not foraging for half-masticated scraps of food but in fact kissing -- an activity that Lungisa has endorsed with some good nature. “They are not prisoners... This is not a prisoners’ festival but a youth festival,” he said. “They will continue kissing each other.”
Not everyone was being so friendly, though. The Israelis have been made to feel a little unwelcome, and a fistfight apparently broke out between the Moroccan and Western Sahara delegations.
Earlier, ANCYL president Julius Malema had touched on the hostility between these two regions when he explained to delegates how “fearless” President Zuma, in exchange for writing off R1.1-billion in Cuban debt, had been awarded the José Martí medal, the highest honour Cuba can bestow on a foreign head of state and, at that price, certainly one of the world’s most expensive.
“Apartheid Morocco”, he said, must decolonise Western Sahara. Failing which, he would then urge the president to remove Morocco’s embassies here. As the chump put it, “We cannot house [an] apartheid regime in South Africa.”
The Moroccan delegation were so terrified at this that they immediately stopped beating up the Western Saharans and, donning what appeared to be Santa suits, sang and danced for a bit before setting up a stand in a corner of Atteridgeville’s Lucas Moripe Stadium to sell rugs, funny slippers, fake leather purses and hookahs made in China. When the festival ends on Tuesday, they will -- for a small fee -- helpfully load other delegates’ luggage onto the buses. If the buses come, that is.
Elsewhere, the country’s youths were also getting on with the business of attaining manhood. At this time of the year, the thickets of Port Jackson on the Cape Flats are choked with the plastic-sheeted hovels used by clay-daubed initiates as they learn to respect others and practise ubuntu.
So far, at least eight initiates, including a 14-year-old boy, have died in the Eastern Cape after being circumcised by apparently unskilled iingcibi and amakhankatha, or traditional “surgeons” and “nurses”. Apparently, the local initiation schools have taken adequate steps to prevent such fatalities in the Western Cape. Let’s hope so.
Which brings us to that act of barbarism in KwaZulu-Natal this afternoon, the ukwesha, in which a fully conscious bull is to be ritually slaughtered in the name of culture by young men who will force it to the ground, rip out its tongue, force earth into its mouth, gouge out its eyes and mutilate its genitals.
It’s outrageous that, in a bid to suppress outrage, the general public is barred from this atrocious and primitive exhibition -- and yet it is funded by taxpayers, as entertainment for the lazy and irrelevant Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini.
There’s a lot of growing up needed out there. Even our car guard can tell you that.
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