Apologies for late posting, but herewith latest Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
HERE at the Mahogany Ridge we tend to punch above our weight when it comes to making sense of the world around us. A couple of jars, say, and there we all are, experts on current affairs and well-seasoned, if not entirely credible commentators on matters of state.
Even so, it did take us a while to finally grasp the logic behind the decision by the Treasury to turn down the popular proposal for a zero-rating of valued added tax on books.
This week, the chief director for tax policy, Cecil Morden, stated that a zero-rating would only benefit book suppliers and middle and upper classes -- and not the poor.
As Morden blithely told the standing committee on finance in Parliament: “Many analysts have demonstrated that in absolute monetary terms the middle and higher income earners benefit more from zero-rating than the poor. One would hope most of the benefit will be passed on to the consumer. In reality it won’t happen.”
This is really muddled thinking. One on hand, it will benefit only the middle and upper classes, and on the other, “in reality” it won’t? Come now, which is it? It can’t be both, can it?
Confusing as it may be, this is not a new line from government. When he was finance minister, Trevor Manuel, was forever saying much the same thing, and often with some churlishness. Appeals to do away with duties on books were usually swept aside with snide braying about those who live in “the leafy suburbs” -- this being the Manuel take on the old adage that nothing succeeds like address.
I am not aware if people like Manuel and Morden actually buy books, but I happen to do so, and on a regular basis. In fact, I bought two on Thursday evening. Now, and unless I’m getting this hopelessly wrong, I rather suspect that I would have paid less for these books if they were exempt from VAT.
Perhaps these analysts that Morden spoke of could now explain why being charged less for books would not be of some benefit to me, the consumer.
In the meantime, here at the Ridge, we believe we have worked out why the poor won’t benefit from zero-rated books. It’s because they don’t buy books. They can’t afford them. They have no money. That’s why they’re poor.
Okay, that’s one reason. There are others -- chief among them being that most South Africans are aliterate. We can read, but we see no point in doing so. Who knows why -- maybe it was apartheid, maybe it came afterwards -- but we are not a nation that places great importance on a culture of reading, of books and of intelligence. This, of course, is of enormous advantage to government. A doofus electorate is one that invariably never fails the ruling party. And, call me a conspiracy theorist, but given the woeful condition of our education system, I suspect that the authorities are actively engaged in preserving the status quo.
That said, it should be noted that, thankfully, we are at least not complete morons. We know, for example, that no good can come from plans by petrochemical giants Royal Dutch Shell, Bundu Oil and Falcon Oil to explore the Karoo for shale gas.
And here I think we cannot protest too loudly about the controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, technique that will be used in that exploration should Mineral Resources minister Susan Shabangu give these companies the go-ahead.
Simply put, fracking first tears apart the earth -- and then poisons it. Think of it as countrycide. Shell’s application alone covers some 90 000 square kilometres. That’s nearly half the Karoo, Bundu and Falcon’s applications cover another 110 000 square kilometres. That’s about the other half.
That’s a lot of territory to frack up -- and make no mistake, if fracking’s miserable record in the United States is anything to go by, fracked up is putting it mildly.
Given the environmental devastation wrought by the search for fossil fuels, it still astounds me why we don’t just opt for nuclear energy instead. It seems far more safer.
I know that’s not quite fashionable, given the hysteria surrounding the Fukushima nuclear accident, but some common sense is needed here.
What happened in Japan was catastrophic. The country faces an epic struggle as it copes with the aftermath of a record earthquake and a massive tsunami. Whole towns have vanished. More than 13000 people are feared dead.
But, judging by some news reports, the gravest threat the country faced was a reactor meltdown which, in fact, has not yet happened.
And because of this we question the safety of nuclear power everywhere? Silly us. We should read more.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Famous Grouse: March 19
Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD
IT was with no small surprise here at the Mahogany Ridge that we noted that the UN Security Council had finally voted to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya and approved a resolution permitting “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers.
“All necessary measures”, by the way, is bureaucratese for “brute arse-whipping military action” -- something the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, hinted at when he told a congressional hearing in Washington: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.”
For those beleaguered rebels in Benghazi, digging in to prepare themselves for Bother Leader Daffy’s much-vaunted “moment of truth”, the security council’s vote was all very in-the-nick-of-time stuff, and there has been much in the way of celebrating in the streets of the eastern Libyan port as a result.
But nowhere, I’d imagine, was the relief more immensely tangible than at Nkandla and, indeed, in the the corridors of Luthuli House.
The no-fly zone ruling means that next week’s high-level African Union mission impossible to Tripoli to somehow sweet-talk Daffy into stop laying waste to those who want to see an end to his rule will, alas and sorry for that, now have to be called off.
Quite how the members of that mission -- which included President Jacob Zuma and his counterparts from Mauritania, Mali, Congo and Uganda -- ever supposed they’d be able to convince an utter nutter like Daffy to do the right thing is perhaps a little beyond our ken.
Naturally, being the top chops on their own patches of turf they are a little dysfunctional themselves, and perhaps one characteristic of their own base urges to power is the delusion they are capable of miracle work.
Here at the Ridge we thought it far more likely that Zuma and his fellow presidents would somehow wind up as Daffy’s hostages.
You could imagine them all held against their will, far from their families and many loved ones, and the unbearable torture they’d have to endure, forced to recline on big cushions in a luxurious tent somewhere in the perfumed desert night with sloe-eyed beauties popping dates into their mouths as they watch an endless stream of Daffy’s henchbabes performing the dance of the seven veils.
But we digress.
There is a tidy symmetry to the prospect of the Libyan air force being destroyed, or rendered incapable of being used against the rebels in Benghazi.
This, after all, is the year in which we mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population -- an atrocity that coincidentally took place in Libya, which was then part of the Ottaman empire.
Italy, with imperial ambitions of its own, had invaded the country in October 1911 and, retaliating to local resistance, an aircraft from its fledgling air force was dispatched to drop bombs on Arab tribesmen at oases outside Tripoli shortly afterwards, thus opening a whole new dimension to modern warfare.
Which brings me, conveniently, to another atrocity -- this time closer to home. Exactly what is this drivel we’re hearing that the disasters from the massive earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan are all part of some karmic come-uppance -- because of the way they fish?
As I was told, one evening at the Ridge, “It’s the revenge of the tuna and the whales and the parrot fish.”
It’s of course nothing of the sort. But why do some of us believe that is the case? Are we that screwed up, that insensitive to the suffering of others?
There’s a fluffy sentimentality out there, and there are people, usually those who eat cheeseburgers and still believe in the magic of Disney, who can comfortably rank certain species -- dolphins, for example -- as being more important than others, like humans. What do these people feel for the rights of the tapeworm, I wonder?
On a related, and perhaps more serious matter, events at Japan’s Fukushima power station have reawakened the fear over nuclear energy, a fear which can be traced all the way back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unsurprisingly, Eskom officials have had to reassure nervous parliamentarians that our Koeberg plant has been designed to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis.
Maybe. But here’s something to ponder. Imagine the worst-case scenario at Fukushima. There’s a complete meltdown with adverse weather conditions and wind blowing radiation over Japan’s most populated areas. Is there a problem? This is what the UK’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo: “The answer is unequivocally no.”
Does he know something we don’t?
IT was with no small surprise here at the Mahogany Ridge that we noted that the UN Security Council had finally voted to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya and approved a resolution permitting “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers.
“All necessary measures”, by the way, is bureaucratese for “brute arse-whipping military action” -- something the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, hinted at when he told a congressional hearing in Washington: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.”
For those beleaguered rebels in Benghazi, digging in to prepare themselves for Bother Leader Daffy’s much-vaunted “moment of truth”, the security council’s vote was all very in-the-nick-of-time stuff, and there has been much in the way of celebrating in the streets of the eastern Libyan port as a result.
But nowhere, I’d imagine, was the relief more immensely tangible than at Nkandla and, indeed, in the the corridors of Luthuli House.
The no-fly zone ruling means that next week’s high-level African Union mission impossible to Tripoli to somehow sweet-talk Daffy into stop laying waste to those who want to see an end to his rule will, alas and sorry for that, now have to be called off.
Quite how the members of that mission -- which included President Jacob Zuma and his counterparts from Mauritania, Mali, Congo and Uganda -- ever supposed they’d be able to convince an utter nutter like Daffy to do the right thing is perhaps a little beyond our ken.
Naturally, being the top chops on their own patches of turf they are a little dysfunctional themselves, and perhaps one characteristic of their own base urges to power is the delusion they are capable of miracle work.
Here at the Ridge we thought it far more likely that Zuma and his fellow presidents would somehow wind up as Daffy’s hostages.
You could imagine them all held against their will, far from their families and many loved ones, and the unbearable torture they’d have to endure, forced to recline on big cushions in a luxurious tent somewhere in the perfumed desert night with sloe-eyed beauties popping dates into their mouths as they watch an endless stream of Daffy’s henchbabes performing the dance of the seven veils.
But we digress.
There is a tidy symmetry to the prospect of the Libyan air force being destroyed, or rendered incapable of being used against the rebels in Benghazi.
This, after all, is the year in which we mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population -- an atrocity that coincidentally took place in Libya, which was then part of the Ottaman empire.
Italy, with imperial ambitions of its own, had invaded the country in October 1911 and, retaliating to local resistance, an aircraft from its fledgling air force was dispatched to drop bombs on Arab tribesmen at oases outside Tripoli shortly afterwards, thus opening a whole new dimension to modern warfare.
Which brings me, conveniently, to another atrocity -- this time closer to home. Exactly what is this drivel we’re hearing that the disasters from the massive earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan are all part of some karmic come-uppance -- because of the way they fish?
As I was told, one evening at the Ridge, “It’s the revenge of the tuna and the whales and the parrot fish.”
It’s of course nothing of the sort. But why do some of us believe that is the case? Are we that screwed up, that insensitive to the suffering of others?
There’s a fluffy sentimentality out there, and there are people, usually those who eat cheeseburgers and still believe in the magic of Disney, who can comfortably rank certain species -- dolphins, for example -- as being more important than others, like humans. What do these people feel for the rights of the tapeworm, I wonder?
On a related, and perhaps more serious matter, events at Japan’s Fukushima power station have reawakened the fear over nuclear energy, a fear which can be traced all the way back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unsurprisingly, Eskom officials have had to reassure nervous parliamentarians that our Koeberg plant has been designed to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis.
Maybe. But here’s something to ponder. Imagine the worst-case scenario at Fukushima. There’s a complete meltdown with adverse weather conditions and wind blowing radiation over Japan’s most populated areas. Is there a problem? This is what the UK’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo: “The answer is unequivocally no.”
Does he know something we don’t?
Monday, March 14, 2011
A Famous Grouse: March 12
Saturday's Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
I READ the following in one of the newspapers this week: “If you spot one rider zipping past in a colourful Pedal Power Association (PPA) cycling shirt, then another and then 10 more, you will not be hallucinating.”
And more’s the pity, I suppose, for here at the Mahogany Ridge, there are a few regulars who fondly recall when the bicycle menace used to pass through the village.
In those days, the cyclists came barreling down Slangkop, hit the rough patches on the approach to the village, left the road altogether and plummeted down the mountain to come to a sticky end in the prickly vegetation specially grown for this purpose. As one old-timer put it, “Shame, but they don’t do fun like that anymore.”
Wisely, the race now avoids us altogether. But even though they don’t race here, the cyclists still practice here. In the last few months, the roads around the village have been thick with them, particularly on Sunday mornings. After doing their best to fall under the wheels of the boat trailers, they’d stop off at the local superette and, leaning against their cycles like cowboys, guzzle power drinks. They’d stare at us through mirrorshade wraparounds and we’d have to explain to our womenfolk that the bulges in the lycra shorts were really padding, a safeguard of sorts against saddle sores. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Sometimes, a few of the cyclists would actually wheel their racers into the superette and, cluttering up the aisle at the energy bars and chocolates section, have a loud debate about sell-by dates. Obviously these people were from Johannesburg and were worried that their ultra-lightweight, titanium-framed jobs would be pinched if they left them outside, and we’d have to tell them that it was okay, we’re all poachers here, we don’t steal bicycles, only fish.
Which is a bit of a porkie, of course. Although we say that’s we do here, just to freak out the visitors, we don’t actually poach fish. In fact, we are rather concerned about such activities, and the danger they pose to the planet’s dwindling fish stocks.
Think of it like this:
In 1968, the population of the planet was two billion. In July this year it will reach seven billion. It is, of course, not a question of space, but whether we can sustain such a population. Right now, potable water tables are falling, soil erosion is rampant, fish stocks are dwindling, and glaciers are melting. About a billion people go hungry every day. By 2025 that figure will have doubled.
Put another way, the world’s population increases by 180 people every minute, and the vast majority of those people -- some 97% of them, in fact -- are born in what is now referred to as the “developing” world, and that’s us, I’m afraid.
Which brings me to the point: can we afford to tolerate ANC Youth League president Julius Malema any longer?
Last weekend, he told followers that, in order to prevent “the revolution” from losing steam, they must have as many babies as possible. “Having babies is a revolutionary thing,” he was quoted as saying, “You must reproduce!”
A week later, and we’re still waiting for the youth league’s spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, to explain to us the “correct context” of Malema’s extraordinary call. But, in the meantime, we may choose to dwell on the news that some 17 260 pregnancies were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal schools last year, according to provincial education MEC Senzo Mchunu. That, by any measure, is a lot of revolutionary things.
However, and this may or may not signal relief for the planet and its dwindling stocks of fish or, indeed, expensive whiskies, but the unhappiness with Malema’s unhinged behaviour is growing within the ruling party.
Thabo Masombika, a former youth league leader who is now a senior empowerment manager with the Department of Trade and Industries, has done a bit of a Trevor Manuel on Malema, and penned an appeal to ANCYL members to vote their foolish president out of office at the league’s elective conference in June.
Although not as harsh as Manuel was in his open letter to government spokesman Jimmy Manyi, Masombika nevertheless makes the point that Malema’s growing arrogance and fascist behaviour, not to mention his utter vapidity and boorish drunkenness, have done the league and the party no favours.
The league, naturally, will draw ranks around Malema in much the same way as the ruling party has done around Manyi, and Masombika may find himself out in the cold for speaking his mind.
But he is correct. It is time we saw Julius off on his bicycle.
I READ the following in one of the newspapers this week: “If you spot one rider zipping past in a colourful Pedal Power Association (PPA) cycling shirt, then another and then 10 more, you will not be hallucinating.”
And more’s the pity, I suppose, for here at the Mahogany Ridge, there are a few regulars who fondly recall when the bicycle menace used to pass through the village.
In those days, the cyclists came barreling down Slangkop, hit the rough patches on the approach to the village, left the road altogether and plummeted down the mountain to come to a sticky end in the prickly vegetation specially grown for this purpose. As one old-timer put it, “Shame, but they don’t do fun like that anymore.”
Wisely, the race now avoids us altogether. But even though they don’t race here, the cyclists still practice here. In the last few months, the roads around the village have been thick with them, particularly on Sunday mornings. After doing their best to fall under the wheels of the boat trailers, they’d stop off at the local superette and, leaning against their cycles like cowboys, guzzle power drinks. They’d stare at us through mirrorshade wraparounds and we’d have to explain to our womenfolk that the bulges in the lycra shorts were really padding, a safeguard of sorts against saddle sores. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Sometimes, a few of the cyclists would actually wheel their racers into the superette and, cluttering up the aisle at the energy bars and chocolates section, have a loud debate about sell-by dates. Obviously these people were from Johannesburg and were worried that their ultra-lightweight, titanium-framed jobs would be pinched if they left them outside, and we’d have to tell them that it was okay, we’re all poachers here, we don’t steal bicycles, only fish.
Which is a bit of a porkie, of course. Although we say that’s we do here, just to freak out the visitors, we don’t actually poach fish. In fact, we are rather concerned about such activities, and the danger they pose to the planet’s dwindling fish stocks.
Think of it like this:
In 1968, the population of the planet was two billion. In July this year it will reach seven billion. It is, of course, not a question of space, but whether we can sustain such a population. Right now, potable water tables are falling, soil erosion is rampant, fish stocks are dwindling, and glaciers are melting. About a billion people go hungry every day. By 2025 that figure will have doubled.
Put another way, the world’s population increases by 180 people every minute, and the vast majority of those people -- some 97% of them, in fact -- are born in what is now referred to as the “developing” world, and that’s us, I’m afraid.
Which brings me to the point: can we afford to tolerate ANC Youth League president Julius Malema any longer?
Last weekend, he told followers that, in order to prevent “the revolution” from losing steam, they must have as many babies as possible. “Having babies is a revolutionary thing,” he was quoted as saying, “You must reproduce!”
A week later, and we’re still waiting for the youth league’s spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, to explain to us the “correct context” of Malema’s extraordinary call. But, in the meantime, we may choose to dwell on the news that some 17 260 pregnancies were recorded in KwaZulu-Natal schools last year, according to provincial education MEC Senzo Mchunu. That, by any measure, is a lot of revolutionary things.
However, and this may or may not signal relief for the planet and its dwindling stocks of fish or, indeed, expensive whiskies, but the unhappiness with Malema’s unhinged behaviour is growing within the ruling party.
Thabo Masombika, a former youth league leader who is now a senior empowerment manager with the Department of Trade and Industries, has done a bit of a Trevor Manuel on Malema, and penned an appeal to ANCYL members to vote their foolish president out of office at the league’s elective conference in June.
Although not as harsh as Manuel was in his open letter to government spokesman Jimmy Manyi, Masombika nevertheless makes the point that Malema’s growing arrogance and fascist behaviour, not to mention his utter vapidity and boorish drunkenness, have done the league and the party no favours.
The league, naturally, will draw ranks around Malema in much the same way as the ruling party has done around Manyi, and Masombika may find himself out in the cold for speaking his mind.
But he is correct. It is time we saw Julius off on his bicycle.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
A Famous Grouse: March 5
Yesterday's Weekend Argus column -- as submitted. -- AD
BACK in the dark days of apartheid, a young woman wrote a weekly column for an Afrikaans newspaper, a column that dwelt on everyday matters that may or may not have been important to people like herself.
On one particular occasion as she prepared to share her thoughts with the world, she found that something was bothering her. It was the light. Directly above her desk, deep in that monolith on the Foreshore, a neon tube buzzed and flickered. It was irritating -- but it also gave her inspiration.
“Except for blind people,” she wrote, “light is very important.”
Her readers were used to such insights. Once, and perhaps more memorably, she had boldly declared that she did not walk in her father’s shadow -- but rather his light.
The comment attracted a great deal of scorn, for the columnist was Rozanne Botha, daughter of PW Botha, the country’s president and a man who was then declaring to his government’s critics, “We have a laager with open doors,” and, more darkly, “I try to be a man of peace, but if people tempt me I can become a Thunderbird.” Clearly the aphorisms were something of a family trait.
Rozanne Botha’s columns were duly collected and published in a book. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to be a guest at a dinner party where the novelist Andre Brink tore into the collection with some gusto. It was hilarious -- but at the same time a bit unsettling. True, everything about the book was dreadful, and deserved a critical hammering, but watching someone of Brink’s stature doing so was rather like seeing the architect Frank Lloyd Wright kick over children’s sandcastles.
All of which was perhaps nothing compared to the pasting that Kuli Roberts has taken over the column she penned for Sunday World last weekend, and there are several aspects to this controversy which have troubled me.
Firstly, the contents of the column -- the crass and derogatory generalisations about coloured people. Here it has been suggested, by Roberts herself, among others, that this was a failed attempt at satire. One commentator, the Mail & Guardian’s Chris Roper, even claimed that “with a bit of editing it would have been funny”, but frankly, it probably needed something altogether more radical than that. Her editors should have simply spiked it.
But, alleged humour aside, Roberts’ comments about “naai masjiene”, the “closest thing” to being white women with their “long silky hair”, also suggest a racial and sexual self-loathing that is unnerving. She appears to be a deeply insecure person, perhaps in need of professional help. Maybe Ronald Suresh Roberts, the towering intellectual and our very own adopted Frantz Fanon, could have a few words with her.
Perhaps the most distasteful aspect of the controversy has been the hysteria with which the chattering classes have laid into Kuli Roberts.
Those who have clamoured for her head on a spike include presumably hardened journalists and politicians -- the most cynical people in the world. One newspaper editor even claimed that she nearly fainted when she read the column she was that disgusted. Oh dear, but not too weak to crank out the self-righteous moral outrage.
But you’d expect newspaper editors to know better. And, of course, they do. They’re aware, for example, that the real issue here is not the misguided air-headed ravings of a brattish socialite who cannot write and only got the job because she looks good on television and runs with a bunch of chaps who like to wear their baseball caps sideways, but the severe lack of skills and resources in our newsrooms. It’s the elephant in the room here.
Frankly, journalism is in a mess, and this sorry saga is just another indictment of the juniorisation of our newspapers.
What the press needs, of course, are writers of the stature of Trevor Manuel, the minister in the Presidency. Manuel’s piece on his government’s spokesman, Jimmy Manyi -- apparently a proper racist and not some dilettante like Roberts -- should be required reading wherever journalism is taught.
As a column, it was topical, pulled no punches in the withering scorn department, was appropriately witty, cynical and dismissive elsewhere and, more importantly, stressed that the “highest echelons of government” had been infiltrated by Manyi’s racism.
Typically, there were those who had problems with it. The ANC Youth League, for example. But so what? You could tell them bananas are yellow, and they’d argue they’re pink. Nothing new there.
However, some newspapers have accused Manuel and the Democratic Alliance, who are making much of Manyi’s utterances about Indians and coloureds, of political opportunism, particularly with regard to the forthcoming municipal elections.
Imagine that -- politicians behaving like politicians. Whatever next?
BACK in the dark days of apartheid, a young woman wrote a weekly column for an Afrikaans newspaper, a column that dwelt on everyday matters that may or may not have been important to people like herself.
On one particular occasion as she prepared to share her thoughts with the world, she found that something was bothering her. It was the light. Directly above her desk, deep in that monolith on the Foreshore, a neon tube buzzed and flickered. It was irritating -- but it also gave her inspiration.
“Except for blind people,” she wrote, “light is very important.”
Her readers were used to such insights. Once, and perhaps more memorably, she had boldly declared that she did not walk in her father’s shadow -- but rather his light.
The comment attracted a great deal of scorn, for the columnist was Rozanne Botha, daughter of PW Botha, the country’s president and a man who was then declaring to his government’s critics, “We have a laager with open doors,” and, more darkly, “I try to be a man of peace, but if people tempt me I can become a Thunderbird.” Clearly the aphorisms were something of a family trait.
Rozanne Botha’s columns were duly collected and published in a book. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to be a guest at a dinner party where the novelist Andre Brink tore into the collection with some gusto. It was hilarious -- but at the same time a bit unsettling. True, everything about the book was dreadful, and deserved a critical hammering, but watching someone of Brink’s stature doing so was rather like seeing the architect Frank Lloyd Wright kick over children’s sandcastles.
All of which was perhaps nothing compared to the pasting that Kuli Roberts has taken over the column she penned for Sunday World last weekend, and there are several aspects to this controversy which have troubled me.
Firstly, the contents of the column -- the crass and derogatory generalisations about coloured people. Here it has been suggested, by Roberts herself, among others, that this was a failed attempt at satire. One commentator, the Mail & Guardian’s Chris Roper, even claimed that “with a bit of editing it would have been funny”, but frankly, it probably needed something altogether more radical than that. Her editors should have simply spiked it.
But, alleged humour aside, Roberts’ comments about “naai masjiene”, the “closest thing” to being white women with their “long silky hair”, also suggest a racial and sexual self-loathing that is unnerving. She appears to be a deeply insecure person, perhaps in need of professional help. Maybe Ronald Suresh Roberts, the towering intellectual and our very own adopted Frantz Fanon, could have a few words with her.
Perhaps the most distasteful aspect of the controversy has been the hysteria with which the chattering classes have laid into Kuli Roberts.
Those who have clamoured for her head on a spike include presumably hardened journalists and politicians -- the most cynical people in the world. One newspaper editor even claimed that she nearly fainted when she read the column she was that disgusted. Oh dear, but not too weak to crank out the self-righteous moral outrage.
But you’d expect newspaper editors to know better. And, of course, they do. They’re aware, for example, that the real issue here is not the misguided air-headed ravings of a brattish socialite who cannot write and only got the job because she looks good on television and runs with a bunch of chaps who like to wear their baseball caps sideways, but the severe lack of skills and resources in our newsrooms. It’s the elephant in the room here.
Frankly, journalism is in a mess, and this sorry saga is just another indictment of the juniorisation of our newspapers.
What the press needs, of course, are writers of the stature of Trevor Manuel, the minister in the Presidency. Manuel’s piece on his government’s spokesman, Jimmy Manyi -- apparently a proper racist and not some dilettante like Roberts -- should be required reading wherever journalism is taught.
As a column, it was topical, pulled no punches in the withering scorn department, was appropriately witty, cynical and dismissive elsewhere and, more importantly, stressed that the “highest echelons of government” had been infiltrated by Manyi’s racism.
Typically, there were those who had problems with it. The ANC Youth League, for example. But so what? You could tell them bananas are yellow, and they’d argue they’re pink. Nothing new there.
However, some newspapers have accused Manuel and the Democratic Alliance, who are making much of Manyi’s utterances about Indians and coloureds, of political opportunism, particularly with regard to the forthcoming municipal elections.
Imagine that -- politicians behaving like politicians. Whatever next?
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Famous Grouse: February 26
Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
TO the shores of Tripoli, where there seems to be no end to Muammar Gaddafi’s bad hair days.
Despite the fact that the Colonel shares a milliner with Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and enjoys a reputation for doing absolutely fabulous things with old Errol Arendz frocks, he has of late been losing it rather badly in front of the television cameras, and the red carpet fizz could well be a thing of the past.
His latest outburst had even the most jaded of the Mahogany Ridge regulars stunned into silence, their flabbers very, very gasted.
Daffy would now have us believe that not only have the Libyan protesters been manipulated by al Qaeda, but they are all teenagers on drugs. “Their ages are 17,” the Siren of the Sands explained on national television. “They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe.”
Oh dear, oh dear. And they’ve probably been listening to pop music as well.
The bad hair days, though, could soon be a thing of the past. This however is not good news for Daffy. Even in his most delusional moments, and there certainly have been a lot of those recently, he must be aware that one of the more prominent traits of the jasmine revolution sweeping the region is that these are not drawn-out affairs, and the killing of civilians certainly won’t change this.
In fact, the swiftness with which the Tunisian and Egyptian tyrannies fell perfectly complements the social networking era. It’s like so digital, man, that if this was The Arabian Nights, it would be a thousand and one tweets. “Meet in square, topl govt, then off 2 Ali’s disco. Rock on, dudes.”
Brother leader’s furious avowal, then, that he would die like a martyr may not be such empty blather after all, and here at the Ridge we’ve opened a book on Daffy’s last days.
True, there is a good chance that he’ll be allowed to leave the country -- but, given the universal condemnation of his murderous behaviour, who would have him? The smart money’s on Zimbabwe.
And should it end very badly for Daffy? Well, the odds are strong that it would be at the end of a rope or by firing squad, and less so by stoning or beheading. Given the mysteries of the Sahara, however, anything is possible up there, and it may well come to pass that a revolutionary tribunal will order him staked out in the desert and be trampled to death by stampeding camels.
Our thoughts, meanwhile, are with the Amazonian Guard, Daffy’s elite force of henchbabes. The 40 members of this bodyguard unit are all virgins, cherry-picked -- figuratively, of course -- by Daffy himself.
These young women undergo extensive martial arts and firearms training. They wear their berets at a suitably coquettish angle, bring a certain something to battle fatigues and jumpsuits and, with appropriate use of lipgloss and other beauty products, smoulder with an intensity that, let’s say, is wholly absent in our female Metro cops.
What is to happen to them when Daffy goes? It would be a shame if the unit disbanded. Maybe they could get film work. As it is, they already look like something out of a James Bond movie. And what about a job at Mavericks or Teazers? A lap dance from a virgin who can kill you in six different ways with an eyeliner pencil certainly has dangerous appeal. When she says no touching, you know she means it.
Closer to home, meanwhile, our attention has been drawn to Jimmy Manyi, the recently appointed appointed government spokesman who appears to have been freely helping himself to Daffy’s Nescafe.
Manyi believes there are too many coloured people in the Western Cape -- “this over-representation . . . is not working for them” -- and it would be better for all if they scattered themselves far and wide across the whole country.
Unfortunately, there are far too many people who think like this in government. Politicans who wonder why large sections of the population regard them with such disgust may well ponder the words of the late writer and philosopher, Auberon Waugh, who once suggested that their distasteful urges to power were personality disorders in their own right, “rather like the urge to sexual congress with children or the taste for rubber underwear”.
Manyi’s racist outburst, however, goes so much further than the mere urge to bother ordinary citizens. It rather ominously echoes all the other social engineering horrors: lebensraum, apartheid, the pogroms, the displacements and the final solutions.
Such people, it hardly needs saying, are well advised to take note of events in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.
TO the shores of Tripoli, where there seems to be no end to Muammar Gaddafi’s bad hair days.
Despite the fact that the Colonel shares a milliner with Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and enjoys a reputation for doing absolutely fabulous things with old Errol Arendz frocks, he has of late been losing it rather badly in front of the television cameras, and the red carpet fizz could well be a thing of the past.
His latest outburst had even the most jaded of the Mahogany Ridge regulars stunned into silence, their flabbers very, very gasted.
Daffy would now have us believe that not only have the Libyan protesters been manipulated by al Qaeda, but they are all teenagers on drugs. “Their ages are 17,” the Siren of the Sands explained on national television. “They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe.”
Oh dear, oh dear. And they’ve probably been listening to pop music as well.
The bad hair days, though, could soon be a thing of the past. This however is not good news for Daffy. Even in his most delusional moments, and there certainly have been a lot of those recently, he must be aware that one of the more prominent traits of the jasmine revolution sweeping the region is that these are not drawn-out affairs, and the killing of civilians certainly won’t change this.
In fact, the swiftness with which the Tunisian and Egyptian tyrannies fell perfectly complements the social networking era. It’s like so digital, man, that if this was The Arabian Nights, it would be a thousand and one tweets. “Meet in square, topl govt, then off 2 Ali’s disco. Rock on, dudes.”
Brother leader’s furious avowal, then, that he would die like a martyr may not be such empty blather after all, and here at the Ridge we’ve opened a book on Daffy’s last days.
True, there is a good chance that he’ll be allowed to leave the country -- but, given the universal condemnation of his murderous behaviour, who would have him? The smart money’s on Zimbabwe.
And should it end very badly for Daffy? Well, the odds are strong that it would be at the end of a rope or by firing squad, and less so by stoning or beheading. Given the mysteries of the Sahara, however, anything is possible up there, and it may well come to pass that a revolutionary tribunal will order him staked out in the desert and be trampled to death by stampeding camels.
Our thoughts, meanwhile, are with the Amazonian Guard, Daffy’s elite force of henchbabes. The 40 members of this bodyguard unit are all virgins, cherry-picked -- figuratively, of course -- by Daffy himself.
These young women undergo extensive martial arts and firearms training. They wear their berets at a suitably coquettish angle, bring a certain something to battle fatigues and jumpsuits and, with appropriate use of lipgloss and other beauty products, smoulder with an intensity that, let’s say, is wholly absent in our female Metro cops.
What is to happen to them when Daffy goes? It would be a shame if the unit disbanded. Maybe they could get film work. As it is, they already look like something out of a James Bond movie. And what about a job at Mavericks or Teazers? A lap dance from a virgin who can kill you in six different ways with an eyeliner pencil certainly has dangerous appeal. When she says no touching, you know she means it.
Closer to home, meanwhile, our attention has been drawn to Jimmy Manyi, the recently appointed appointed government spokesman who appears to have been freely helping himself to Daffy’s Nescafe.
Manyi believes there are too many coloured people in the Western Cape -- “this over-representation . . . is not working for them” -- and it would be better for all if they scattered themselves far and wide across the whole country.
Unfortunately, there are far too many people who think like this in government. Politicans who wonder why large sections of the population regard them with such disgust may well ponder the words of the late writer and philosopher, Auberon Waugh, who once suggested that their distasteful urges to power were personality disorders in their own right, “rather like the urge to sexual congress with children or the taste for rubber underwear”.
Manyi’s racist outburst, however, goes so much further than the mere urge to bother ordinary citizens. It rather ominously echoes all the other social engineering horrors: lebensraum, apartheid, the pogroms, the displacements and the final solutions.
Such people, it hardly needs saying, are well advised to take note of events in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
A Famous Grouse: February 19
Saturday's Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
IT is no small blessing that the rugby season is on us, and at Mahogany Ridge we can perhaps move on from the heated arguments about Bono, the Irish rock star who has taken time out from saving the world to sing us some tunes.
It’s not as if there weren’t more pressing matters to discuss. This week, for example, the village was threatened by fire and some homes had to be evacuated, the flames were that close.
Plus, there were the baboons who climbed through Wilma Bothma’s bathroom window and ate everything in the medicine cabinet, including her chocolate laxatives and anti-depressants. The mess was terrible, but the baboons seemed pretty chilled.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the goiter on Jan Spoelstra’s neck has swollen to such an extent that it looks as if he’s got a second head. To which we could say, well, just as long as it doesn’t have a mouth as well, he speaks enough rubbish as it is.
So quite why we have instead continually moaned on about Bono and that silly news report last weekend that suggested he supported ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and the Kill the Boer song is a mystery. You’d have thought the man had screamed it from the rooftops: “Go on! Slaughter them all! In their beds!”
It was obvious that he had been horribly misquoted by sections of the media. Yet the hysteria continued, and the rivers were choked with U2 concert tickets.
Here at the Ridge we don’t do rock concerts. Our idea of fun is . . . well, for the past week it’s been retelling that chestnut about the concert where Bono clapped his hands together every few seconds, saying, “Every time I do this, a child in Africa dies.” To which a heckler responded, “Well, don’t do it then, you bastard!”
It’s an old joke -- it harks back to the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland and the anti-poverty campaign which focused on the claim that children in Africa were dying of preventable diseases at the rate of one every three seconds -- and I’m only repeating it here in case you have just landed on Earth after a long flight from Mars. And now that we can bait one another about the Stormers and the Sharks, it’s a joke that, hopefully, I will not hear again -- at least not this year. What does bear repeating, however, is this remark from the wonderfully mordant songwriter Randy Newman: “I used to be against world peace. But then Bono came out for it and the scales just fell from my eyes.”
And that brings us neatly to the other fool in this nonsense -- Steve Hofmeyr. As my friend Willem has suggested, it may be some time before Bono throws his Steve Hofmeyr concert tickets in the river.
A few years ago our Steve emerged as a social activist campaigning against the proposed renaming of Pretoria to Tshwane. He argued that there was no historical basis for the change, as Tshwane, a pre-colonial chief, never actually lived in the area, although, as he put it, he may have wandered through the Fountains Valley with a few goats, pausing only to urinate against the nearest thorn tree.
So outraged was he, that -- irony of ironies -- I dubbed him “the Boer Bono” in a newspaper article at the time, and the reference found its way into a dictionary of South African quotations.
I don’t think he was very happy -- perhaps I should have pointed out that it was Bono who was, in fact, the Irish Steve Hofmeyr -- and I rather dreaded running into him again.
He did confront me, one night, in Johannesburg. Instead of punching me in the mouth, though, he gave me a slab of chocolate. It was a puzzling and suspicious gesture, but I did accept the gift.
At the time, I had yet to up sticks and relocate to the village and knew nothing of Wilma Bothma’s medicine cabinet, but I was wary enough to throw the chocolate away. Who knows? It may have been drugged. You know what these musicians are like.
But now Steve has threatened to include “Afrikaans struggle words” in his recordings if the Kill the Boer song is legalised.
He told a reporter: “There are lots of Afrikaans words which we’d like to use again and bring back into the Afrikaans dictionaries but, because they are hate speech, we are all trying very hard to avoid those words.”
That, presumably, is why they’re struggle words -- because of Steve’s difficulty in not uttering them.
But please, no more songs, Steve. Enough torture. You’ve done quite enough as it is, and we must all move on.
IT is no small blessing that the rugby season is on us, and at Mahogany Ridge we can perhaps move on from the heated arguments about Bono, the Irish rock star who has taken time out from saving the world to sing us some tunes.
It’s not as if there weren’t more pressing matters to discuss. This week, for example, the village was threatened by fire and some homes had to be evacuated, the flames were that close.
Plus, there were the baboons who climbed through Wilma Bothma’s bathroom window and ate everything in the medicine cabinet, including her chocolate laxatives and anti-depressants. The mess was terrible, but the baboons seemed pretty chilled.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the goiter on Jan Spoelstra’s neck has swollen to such an extent that it looks as if he’s got a second head. To which we could say, well, just as long as it doesn’t have a mouth as well, he speaks enough rubbish as it is.
So quite why we have instead continually moaned on about Bono and that silly news report last weekend that suggested he supported ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and the Kill the Boer song is a mystery. You’d have thought the man had screamed it from the rooftops: “Go on! Slaughter them all! In their beds!”
It was obvious that he had been horribly misquoted by sections of the media. Yet the hysteria continued, and the rivers were choked with U2 concert tickets.
Here at the Ridge we don’t do rock concerts. Our idea of fun is . . . well, for the past week it’s been retelling that chestnut about the concert where Bono clapped his hands together every few seconds, saying, “Every time I do this, a child in Africa dies.” To which a heckler responded, “Well, don’t do it then, you bastard!”
It’s an old joke -- it harks back to the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland and the anti-poverty campaign which focused on the claim that children in Africa were dying of preventable diseases at the rate of one every three seconds -- and I’m only repeating it here in case you have just landed on Earth after a long flight from Mars. And now that we can bait one another about the Stormers and the Sharks, it’s a joke that, hopefully, I will not hear again -- at least not this year. What does bear repeating, however, is this remark from the wonderfully mordant songwriter Randy Newman: “I used to be against world peace. But then Bono came out for it and the scales just fell from my eyes.”
And that brings us neatly to the other fool in this nonsense -- Steve Hofmeyr. As my friend Willem has suggested, it may be some time before Bono throws his Steve Hofmeyr concert tickets in the river.
A few years ago our Steve emerged as a social activist campaigning against the proposed renaming of Pretoria to Tshwane. He argued that there was no historical basis for the change, as Tshwane, a pre-colonial chief, never actually lived in the area, although, as he put it, he may have wandered through the Fountains Valley with a few goats, pausing only to urinate against the nearest thorn tree.
So outraged was he, that -- irony of ironies -- I dubbed him “the Boer Bono” in a newspaper article at the time, and the reference found its way into a dictionary of South African quotations.
I don’t think he was very happy -- perhaps I should have pointed out that it was Bono who was, in fact, the Irish Steve Hofmeyr -- and I rather dreaded running into him again.
He did confront me, one night, in Johannesburg. Instead of punching me in the mouth, though, he gave me a slab of chocolate. It was a puzzling and suspicious gesture, but I did accept the gift.
At the time, I had yet to up sticks and relocate to the village and knew nothing of Wilma Bothma’s medicine cabinet, but I was wary enough to throw the chocolate away. Who knows? It may have been drugged. You know what these musicians are like.
But now Steve has threatened to include “Afrikaans struggle words” in his recordings if the Kill the Boer song is legalised.
He told a reporter: “There are lots of Afrikaans words which we’d like to use again and bring back into the Afrikaans dictionaries but, because they are hate speech, we are all trying very hard to avoid those words.”
That, presumably, is why they’re struggle words -- because of Steve’s difficulty in not uttering them.
But please, no more songs, Steve. Enough torture. You’ve done quite enough as it is, and we must all move on.
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.
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