Infantile ANC

It’s been a while since my last political rant, but a number of incidents this week involving South Africa’s ruling party the ANC, has left me shaking my head in dismay… yet again.

Earlier this week, the ANC called for a boycott of MTN, a cellular service provider, after the opposition DA used airtime vouchers printed by a third-party (not MTN) to advertise a pre-election campaign message. The second incident also involves the opposition DA, but this time President Obama was drawn into the mix as well. Pending President Obama’s first visit to the country, the DA has invited him to accept the freedom of the city of Cape Town and address parliament.

Inexplicably an ANC spokesperson has condemned the invitation, calling it a publicity stunt. Both actions by the DA are for all intents and purposes totally above-board. These actions are simple politics, opportunistic though they may be. The childish reaction from the ANC tempts one to conclude that they’re kicking up a hissy fit simply because their propaganda machine did not think of it first.

The third incident which was literally crappy, involved the youth wing of the ANC, otherwise known as the ANCYL (ANC Youth League). While the ANCYL has a long history of perpetrating the most vile acts of anti-social behaviour, this latest incident is particularly nasty. Members of the ANCYL resorted to dumping human faeces collected from portable toilets, on the steps of the Provincial Legislature building in Cape Town, and then a day or so later, hurled more of the stuff at a bus carrying the DA party leader, Helen Zille.

The ANC have publicly distanced themselves from these latter two despicable incidents, But I can imagine them secretly laughing behind closed doors, such is the mentality prevalent in this rotten organization which has the morals and ethics of a squashed cockroach fermenting in a jar of horse piss.

With the recent diarrhoea outbreak in the coastal city of Durban, one wonders if the ANCYL will be in attendance, collecting more ammunition for their future protests.

These are by no means isolated incidences of madness on the part of the ANC. They perpetrate gross acts of misconduct, indulge in scandalous behaviour and petty squabbles and bully critics, on a daily basis. Their one major accomplishment is managing to convince the majority of the people of South Africa to keep them in power for so long, despite their many alarming acts of depravity.

Corruption Wars xxx – Return Of The Phantom Handbook

Over the years the Presidential Handbook which allegedly contains the rules for expenditure on perks such as cars, housing and travel for the top-ranking government officials, has come under fire from various quarters, especially when used by ANC members to justify some of their more gratuitous and ostentatious spending.

Strangely, from what I could gather, no one apart from the ruling members of government have laid eyes on this elusive, yet much referenced Handbook. And presumably this is a different Handbook from that which governs Ministerial perks, which also begs the question of why there are two different Handbooks.

Following demands from the opposition Democratic Alliance to make the Presidential Handbook public, it has been revealed that it is still in draft form – since being compiled in 2007. So it would appear that public officials have been using a draft document which is not yet official policy, to spend lavishly, and defy accountability for at least five years. And this in a state in which the ANC touts as one of the most advanced constitutional democracies in the world.

The voters have been repeatedly duped and have been somewhat passively accepting it much longer than five years; in fact since corruption on a massive scale by government officials suddenly started being unearthed following the Arms Deal Scandal of 1999.

But voters are notoriously stupid gullible. Take this cretin for example, commenting on the latest iteration of the Handbook saga:

He claims to know the facts – that governments pull money out of the air to fight wars, and that attacks on the ANC is a Corporate agenda. With voters like these, is it any wonder that the ANC is enjoying a corrupt hegemony that threatens the future of beautiful South Africa.

Aluta continua!

He’s White and he’s right

Wikipedia

This is South Africa, post-apartheid… 18 years to be precise. It’s come to this. No, no, no. Actually it’s been like this for 18 years.

Whenever a White person speaks out against the Black government, about the sad state of the nation, the sad state of democracy, they’re labelled whiners, or worse, apartheid denialists and racists. Sometimes you’d hear the popular refrain “White is not right.” When a Black person does the same thing, they’re labelled coconuts, traitors and worse things besides.

I speak out as often as I can; not always expressing myself with the same finesse as newspaper columnist William Saunderson-Meyer. But he’s one of those who are White and right. Truth has no colour…

No skaam. The dire state of an increasingly brazen SA

South Africa is in a dire state. Incompetence and irresponsibility are rife. Bad behaviour is the norm and few dare challenge it, which contributes to the undermining of democracy.

No, that’s not opposition Democratic Alliance leader, Helen Zille, on song. Boiled down, that’s the view of Auditor-General Terence Nombombe. He was this week lamenting the collapse of the public service at every level, from municipal to national, saying that the government’s lack of support for his office was making it irrelevant.

His concerns echo those of the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela. She speaks of how the ‘silent thief’ of corruption has stolen the constitutional dream and how the secrecy Bill would derail her constitutionally mandated role.

As a nation, we should blush at the hash we are making of freedom. Unfortunately, South Africans are not big on embarrassment. Our instinct is to brazen it out.

The popular phrase, ‘S/he has no skaam‘ — one of those subtle Afrikaans words that encompasses being abashed, humbled and ashamed, even humiliated, but also penitent — should be emblazoned on the country’s coat-of-arms. In Khoisan, of course, so that not too many understand it. No one wants their nose rubbed in the national affliction.

Read the rest of this brilliant article here. It’s the right thing to do.

I care about the future of my country…not the future of a political party

It’s finally here. One more sleep until the election that’s being billed as a watershed event in the recent history of South African politics. But will it be?

Oh, it’s just a local government election, nothing as dramatic as the election of the first Black President in the USA, but it’s a very important event in the history of South African politics. Seventeen years of democratic [I'm not amenable to that word] elections has produced a pattern of voting that hasn’t changed all that much.

But tomorrow, will South Africans vote with maturity for the first time, or will they continue to vote emotionally along narrow racial and egotistical lines like they’ve always done in the history of voting in this country?

The two main contenders up for elections are the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC). The hundreds [yes, democracy tends to become farcical] of other parties and independent candidates vying for contention will get a small percentage of the vote, but will become irrelevant in the larger scale of things. But they’re important nonetheless, catering for either refined thinkers on the one hand and self-seeking interests on the other.

The DA and the ANC have both conducted intensive election campaigns in the run up to this elections. While both had their unsavory moments, one in particular conducted a particularly nasty campaign that set new standards of low for electioneering, in this country at least.

The ANC being the dominant party continued to make the same promises which they have been making for the last 17 years and broken repeatedly. Their campaign featured elements of the bizarre on far too many occasions - contending that a vote for the ANC was a guarantee of a ticket to heaven, and pandering to the superstitious inclinations of the older generation of the vast Black population by stating quite falsely that their deceased elders would be angered if the ANC was not favored in the election. These were among the more despicable acts perpetrated during their increasingly desperate campaign. The ANC campaign was also noteworthy for the manner in which it manipulated emotions and entrenched racial divisions in the country. In short, the ANC did a remarkable job of promoting themselves, at the expense of the country as a whole.

The DA campaign on the other hand, while not standing out as a shining beacon for morality and potential good governance, was at least realistic and concentrated on what local elections are all about – service delivery. They did not stoop to the abominable depths of using religion and culture to gift-wrap their campaign; instead they focussed on highlighting their successes at local municipalities where they were in control. The important thing for me was that they were convincing about their concern for the future of the country.

And that is where the ANC failed dismally. They merely managed to convince me that they were more concerned about protecting their own self-serving interests by retaining power both nationally and locally. Anyone who actually bothers to analyse performance and can see through the myriad deceptions that politicians routinely employ, will realise that the ANC does not deserve to be trusted with a vote of confidence.

For this reason, I will not vote for them tomorrow, but will trust the DA to prove that they deserve a chance at local government.

The party that erected the least number of open toilets stinks the least…

The saga of the open toilets continues…

Seems like politics in South Africa has finally found a home where it belongs…in the toilet. The recent revelation of an ANC administered local council erecting open toilets in informal settlements [exceeding the number revealed as erected by the DA in the Western Cape] was compounded by the revelation that the Mayor of the district was the Director of the company awarded the contract for the construction. Let’s forget for a minute about this whole situation being immoral, illegal and dishonest, but the fact the ANC top brass were aware of the irregular tender makes the situation monumentally disgusting.

It indicates the absolute and utter disdain that the ruling ANC has for the population at large.

Popular cartoonist Zapiro made a commendable effort to sum up this pile of steaming manure:

M&G Online, May 13, 2011

But, this editorial in the Mail & Guardian Online sums things up nicely too:

Put party poopers on the spot

Since this local government election has been reduced to voting for the party that stinks the least, it follows that the votes should go to the one that erected the least number of open toilets.

Is the Media in opposition to the government?

Times Live, April 19, 2011

Within the space of a week, ANC Secretary-General, Gwede Mantashe and Juvenile Youth League leader, Julius “Kill the Boer” Malema have stated quite strongly that the [printed, mostly] Media are the ANC’s foremost opposition in South Africa.

Not only is that a blatant insult to the Democratic Alliance who are the official opposition party in South African politics, it is also a patent misrepresentation of the truth. Off course, the truth is something the ANC under Jacob Zuma’s leadership, treats with utter disdain, so it’s perhaps no real surprise.

With the ANC still clinging to militaristic sounding titles such as that of Mantashe, it’s clear that they have still not quite made the transition yet from militant, revolutionary freedom fighters, to full political party status in a Democratic dispensation, and therefore still view anyone criticizing them as the enemy. Indeed, they don’t lose an opportunity to remind their detractors that they are still Revolutionaries.

One striking thing about the ANC is that they still have a stranglehold on the vast majority of the population, who no doubt still believe the bullshit being fed to them. The other striking thing about the ANC is that even they are starting to believe their own bullshit – as is evident by the conviction in which they make the utterly mind-boggling utterances such as the one by Malema and Mantashe, on a daily…sometimes hourly basis.

I wonder if the ANC realise who their real opposition truly is? Do you?

It’s those who still have an ounce of decency, morals, ethics and values left in them. Perhaps you’re one of them…

Denial ≠ Shit, we've been caught again!

The ANC are paragons of virtue and honesty!

I’m not shitting you; they honestly expect you to think that because you’re so fucking ignorant, right? Right? We all know that everything they’ve told us about how they run the government is true, right? Right!

The newspapers always lie right? Right! How can you believe such dreadful accusations that are levelled daily – no hourly - against these icons of virtue? Shame on you!

The NIA have just denied tapping the phone conversations of  Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA). A National Intelligence Agency spokesperson has stated quite clearly that:

Our work is strictly governed by legislation and we have a number of oversight structures that ensure we execute our mandate within the prescripts of the law.

We all know that the ANC spokespeople are amazingly honest, right? Right! We all know that these oversight structures are beyond reproach, right? Right! And we all know that the prescripts of the law are the most effective deterrent against criminality, right? Right!

Just wanted to clear that up.

Another middle-finger to the chumps in power

Image via Wikipedia

I’m finally registered and rearing to vote in the local elections on 18 May 2011. It’s been more than 16 years since I’ve been this enthusiastic about voting.

You see this time I’m really looking forward to the pure pleasure of voting AGAINST THE ANC. I have no illusions that my single vote coupled with those of the thinking public, is going to make any difference to the hold on power that the ANC has somehow managed to retain despite its woeful track record, but at least I get to show them the middle-finger in the most diplomatic way possible.

So the big question is, who to vote for?

I’ve been thinking about this carefully; I don’t want to just vote for anyone in opposition to the ANC. That would be tantamount to not voting at all. As usual there is no shortage of choice. There are a total of 164 political Parties registered by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to contest the vote. That’s a lot, but is there any quality there?

Having eliminated the ANC by default, I have had a cursory look at the other parties on the IEC’s website. Some stand out for curiosity value, others give me the chills for what they represent, and at least one has the cutest name for a Party – Keep It Straight and Simple (KISS).

There is an astonishing number of political Parties riding on the religious ticket, mostly Christianity. One wonders why they all couldn’t get together and form a united Christian front. But I suppose it is merely an extension of the fractured nature of the Christian community at large – too many disparate denominations competing to sell the same discredited ideology. I did notice at least one Party with Muslim leanings, but I’d be dumbfounded if they have more that a smattering of support.

There is one called the God’s People’s Party (GPP). But let’s not even go there!

The large number of political Parties with religious affiliations/leanings is rather disconcerting. It’s been a long, bloody and painful journey on which the world finally ousted religion from politics, and here in South Africa they’re all clamoring to get back in again. Has Church [and other religions] attendance dropped so low, that they need their old platform to proselytize from again, and indeed, potential new sources of revenue generation?

Another Party that I eliminated as a matter of course, is the Congress of the People (COPE). The ugly public spat between its leaders for control of the Party, discredit them immediately; it’s blatantly obvious they’re more interested in the power, prestige, influence and trappings of wealth that political office can bring (especially in South Africa with its largely naive political mentality). To go with COPE, there’s the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). This is a Party of has-been’s that is slowly but surely falling apart, very publicly. Enough said!

Another which looks enticing is the Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party (AITUP). Off course, we all know what a pipe dream that is.

All in all a large choice, but unfortunately very little with any decent track record of “for the people.” Politicians, unfortunately by and large cannot be trusted. But we do need someone who have at least a modicum of decency and trustworthiness. Someone who understands that they govern for my benefit, not their own. To my mind the only Party that have demonstrated a willingness to serve the people with a semblance of honesty and integrity is the Democratic Alliance (DA).

I have therefore selected the DA to receive my vote of confidence. If and when the DA decide to betray my trust, I will be showing them the middle-finger too.

Blasphemous? Hell no! Desperate? Good heavens yes!

There was much consternation this weekend over President Jacob Zuma’s moronic utterance while campaigning for the upcoming election, that a vote for the ANC will get one into heaven.

While many people, including Church leaders saw this statement as blasphemous, others were perturbed that a politician, especially one who wields the ultimate power could so callously drag religion into politics when the constitution clearly demands a separation of Church and State.

I on the other hand can distinctly discern not a blatant abuse of the constitution, but rather a pathetic desperation on the part of Zuma and the ANC. Coming ahead of the State of the Nation address and the release of a document by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which meticulously lists 50 of President Zuma’s broken promises, I have no hesitation in concluding that the ANC [and Zuma] are fresh out of promises, and with this idiotic statement are now resorting to idle religious threats; the kind we are all familiar with through e-mail and pamphlets: repent or else or follow Jesus or else.

Promises. Yes, these con men have made them all and broken them all. And now they promise the impossible; a ticket to imaginary heaven!

It’s inconceivable that in a so-called civilized democratic country, 50 promises [apparently there were in reality much more than 50] made by a political leader in public, could be so shamelessly broken. Most people would forgive a few, but certainly not 50. But that’s what we as South Africans have done. We have been shamelessly tolerant of lies and deceit. We have allowed these calculating bastards in power to pull the sheep over our eyes.

We need to redeem ourselves…

Kanye West’s tribute to Jacob Zuma’s government

When I first heard the song Runaway by Kanye West on the radio, I thought it was the most atrocious thing I had heard for a long while. Since then……………I have not changed my mind; however I do believe that it could be the most appropriate tribute for Jacob Zuma’s cabinet, especially after the Democratic Alliance’s 2010 rating of this obscene collection of misfits [the only notable exception being Pravin Gordhan for demonstrating exceptional competence in turning the South African Revenue Service around, and now running a functioning Finance Ministry].

Off course, the Finance Ministry has always been a shining light in the ANC government’s cabinets since Nelson Mandela [another exception] appointed Chris Liebenberg in 1994. The obvious reason being that money seems to be the most important concern of our liberators from Apartheid; money that can’t seem to stop finding its way into the back pockets of these revolutionaries and their cronies.

Anyway, you know the whole sordid story of how liberators liberate us from our wealth…

Here’s the chorus of the song Runaway; I don’t want to bore you with the rest of the crappy lyrics and ridiculously long video.

Let’s have a toast for the douchebags,

Let’s have a toast for the assholes,

Let’s have a toast for the scumbags,

Every one of them that I know

Let’s have a toast to the jerkoffs,

That’ll never take work off

Baby I got a plan

Run away fast as you can