Show him the finger!

An enterprising individual or group of individuals, exhausted of being shown the finger by our horrid incumbent President, has come up with a novel approach to the upcoming general elections in 2014.

It’s a long shot… a near impossible hope really, that he’s likely to be toppled given the predilection of the  South African electorate to being duped into voting for very shifty politicians. But if anything, it’s worth it just for the laughs it raises in these troubled times when there is so little to enthuse over our politics.

The Un-Vote

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!

Just an aimless post

Human Rights Day!

Thursday. I hate public holidays in the middle of the week.

I’ll bet the politicians love it though. They’re all at Sharpeville – on their high horses, electioneering. The massacre by police of 69 protesters outside a police station here, back in 1960, during the dark days of apartheid, has become just another useful bandwagon to climb onto – after getting off their high horses off course.

I despise politicians!

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What shall I do? Facebook! Same ol’, same ol’… YouTube? Yes! Google claims that more than one billion people a month are visiting their video site, so let’s put in an appearance.

Saw this trailer for a remake of Evil Dead. The original film was released in 1983. Just had to go look it up. Found the original film online and watched all 126 minutes of it. Gawd, it was awful. Another hour and a half of my life wasted…

Looks like the special effects alone will carry this one though.

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What to do! What to do!

Post a pointless blog. Yeah! That’s it.

Please save me Friday…

The most expensive WordPress template in the world?

Would you pay a web development company R40m [$4.41m] to create a website for you? Surely not!

That’s what the Free State Provincial Government [which is led by the African National Congress] in South Africa, forked out to a web development agency which strangely does not even have their own website. Actually the amount is in dispute, with the Provincial government claiming it was R40m while the newspaper that leaked the story reported an astounding R140m.

But that’s not all. It appears that the designers used a WordPress theme called London Live, to create the website which goes for $40, or at the latest exchange rate, around 362 South African Rands. [Read one such report here].

That makes London Live, the most expensive template ever designed… or there are some serious shenanigans at work here. If you consider that WordPress themes are really easy to use and one need not be an expert at using a CMS to make design changes, it would take an experienced web designer a few days or less to create a really stunning site. So either the design agency has pulled off the mother of all web-design con jobs, or there’s some sort of fraud involved here.

With the ANC having a well-known history of fraud and corruption up to the highest levels in government, I’m going with MASSIVE FRAUD.

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Update, 13 March 2013:

The woman who handed out this ludicrous tender to the design agency, a Director-General at the time, has been promoted by the Provincial Premier to Minister of Finance. Now don’t this beat all?

One Billion Rising South Africa

I attended the Rising at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, one of many held around the country. It was an emotionally charged evening of poetry, song and dance.

The poetry mostly spoke of personal experiences, and was very moving. It’s so sad and horrifying, this scourge of rape and gender violence. I’m left deeply mortified at how helpless woman, mostly, must feel at this onslaught.

Just a few pictures which don’t tell the real story…

May the rising continue until patriarchal attitudes are deemed a crime against humanity.

Education continues to take a back seat in South Africa

Not so long ago the liberation forces in South Africa entrenched the idea that the people should forgo their education in favour of fighting for freedom from the yoke of apartheid. Slogans such as “liberation before education” were common in the townships where the majority of South Africans were confined to live.

It was perhaps not the wisest of decisions because it burdened the country with a whole generation of people not quite ready for the demands of a free and democratic society. Leaders such as Nelson Mandela realised that education was a necessity to ensure a stable and prosperous democracy, but sadly that seems to fallen by the wayside as our current leaders embrace immorality and avarice as a means to an end.

It is hard to not notice how standards in education have fallen year on year, and while the people complain, the leaders just thumb their noses at us in response. The choice of Angie Motshekga as Basic Education Minister by President Jacob Zuma, was just another in a series of atrocious decisions by him. Choosing Blade Nzimande as Minister of Higher Education was no less abominable. When Angie does not bury her head in the sand in the face of warranted criticism, she has it jammed firmly up her backside. Blade on the other hand spends more time regurgitating obsolete revolutionary rhetoric, than doing anything worth mentioning for education.

The choice of these two incompetent wastrels, is a clear indication that the ANC government is not serious about taking education forward. Indeed, they seem to neither have the faintest idea how to accomplish this, nor the inclination to at least try.

Meanwhile the penchant to denigrate western standards of education by some apologists of Zuma and the government, don’t help matters at all. This writer believes that spending time behind a classroom desk should not be the only option available to learners. He seems to think that “…gathering plants for food, hunting wild animals, rearing cattle, planting crops, running initiation schools, slaughtering cattle or goats for ancestral rituals, paying tribute to kings, attending traditional courts, even engaging in war,” constitutes a viable alternative.

South Africa is headed for serious calamity in the near future if something drastic is not done to advance the cause for education. It’s a great pity then, that our current crop of leaders seem to favour majority rule as a means to change the world.

Is your President as contemptible as ours?

I felt rather vomitus today after digesting yet more revelations about our scandalous President in the media.

I think we’ve become immune to the daily exposés about President Jacob Zuma’s depraved life, because they usually come in small doses. I think South Africans are beyond being shocked and disgusted by his loathsome behaviour. We’re just exhausted learning about every nasty bit of larcenous, incompetent and immoral deed he’s done since taking office.

Off course it all started before he took office. And today’s revelations touch on some of these, and so much more. So much more…

Auditors KPMG have compiled a 500-page report on the alleged acts of corruption that Zuma has been involved in dating back to 2006. Follow all the links provided on this news article posted in the online version of the Mail & Guardian.

What many South Africans are disgusted with though, is the apparent impotence of the various arms of the law and justice system to do anything about it. Even more galling is the prospect of living another 5 years under the (mis)rule of this miscreant. By all accounts he’s clearly manipulated his way (with acts of violence in some reported cases) into securing the vote to remain head of the ANC, which in effect guarantees him the Presidency at the next elections. Unless off course the masses who vote for the ANC with crass predictability, have a sudden rush of comprehension (by whatever miracle), and vote for Opposition Parties.

In light of the above, the rather candid admission by a senior ANC official that ordinary ANC members are mere “voting cattle” whose main purpose seems to be to keep the elite in power, is even more infuriating. However, this is perhaps the most honest thing we’ve heard from the ANC in many years, but is very disturbing all the same.

Looks like troubled times ahead for South Africa. Is there a Banana Republic on the horison?

In Women’s Month: Selling Women Down the River

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths. – Lois Wyse

It was bad enough that the President committed the dreadful blunder of patronising women on national television during Women’s Month in South Africa. It’s then really lamentable when an organization that is supposedly in place to promote equality and women’s rights, supports this patriarchal madness.

The ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) which is headed by Angie Motshekga [remember this inept woman who doubles as the Education Minister?], today defended the atrocious comments by President Zuma, claiming that they were taken out of context, because he was referring to his daughters only. Judge for yourself if these statements were misconstrued:

I was also happy because I wouldn’t want to stay with daughters who are not getting married, because that in itself is a problem in society. I know that people today think being single is nice. It’s actually not right. That’s a distortion

You’ve got to have kids. Kids are important to a woman because they actually give an extra training to a woman, to be a mother.

League spokesperson Troy Martens’ attempts to rationalize these absurd statements is a disgrace. She performs a huge disservice to women everywhere. How is that out of context when Zuma clearly refers to it being a problem with society?

The ANCWL continues to emphasize what a toothless organization they really are. Their only function seems to be as cheerleaders for their “ruler” and the other incompetent ANC Ministers in government.

Considering this, shouldn’t the ANCWL be renamed ANC Woman in League with Hypocrisy, Patriarchy, Misogyny and Dirty Politicians?

The President is hands-on… Bwahahahaha!

I read with disbelief, this response to a blog post in Mail & Guardian, an online publication, from the government’s Communications department.

We read, with disbelief, the tirade by William Saunderson-Meyer supposedly on the performance of government, entitled “The Zuma government is floundering about” (August 18 2012).

Saunderson-Meyer tells us that the President “has been preoccupied with ensuring a second term at the African National Congress’s elective conference in December”. The writer provides no scientific evidence to back up this assertion. He has taken gossip that he has read elsewhere, and presents it to readers as analysis.

Also worrying, is the tone of the article, which is very condescending. It demonstrates that the writer has no respect for the South African head of state.

Well actually, my initial disbelief was replaced with howls of laughter, because the jackass who wrote that, one Sydwell Mabasa, is not only just another government stooge, but he has a little understanding of the scientific method, not to mention logical fallacies.

Saunderson-Meyer’s article was written from observation of government’s performance over a number of years, and even the most optimistic supporter will have to honestly admit that “it is floundering.” While President Zuma staggers from one political and personal  blunder to the next, his government seems to imitate him, with dizzying acts of inferior performance in almost every department of government.

Sydwell commits a cardinal fallacy by selectively picking a handful of the achievements (dubious though some of them are) of the ANC government’s tenure, and blatantly ignoring the multitude of failures, and acts of gross incompetence that have sullied the country’s reputation on the world stage. He arrogantly asserts that the piece of paper [Constitution/Bill of Rights] that guarantees certain freedoms coupled with the right to vote, is equivalent to the holy grail that the South African population have been seeking since Apartheid times.

Big fucking deal. These rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution are being trampled on daily, by none other than the very government created to protect them. And what of the right to vote? Democracy South African style, guarantees you the RIGHT to be beguiled into making your choice for those with the most expensive marketing campaigns and creatively subtle threats. And if Sydwell needs the so-called “scientific evidence, it’s there for all to observe, unless you’re willfully blind, deaf or ignorant.

Saunderson-Meyer is quite correct. Zuma has surrounded himself with woefully inept Ministers and scheming acolytes whose only intention seems to be in securing their vertiginous rise from revolution to royalty. They may punt the bill of rights in public, but in private they’re secretly counting the bills that they have managed to line their pockets with.

Yes folks, as one commenter in the article said, Zuma is hands on alright – his hands are on the taxpayers money. What the commenter didn’t mention is that his hands are also on a lot of women too…

Heatmaps to give a f@@k about

Fuck you!

A common enough phrase. But would you care how often it was being said? Would you actually keep count?

Seems a company called Vertaline did just that. They tracked tweets from 100′s of locations across the USA containing the phrase “fuck you,” over a 10-day period in July this year, and created a heatmap that recorded its distribution.

And the results?

New York City and Los Angeles take a bow. It seems you do indeed give a fuck about the usage of flowery language.

However this doesn’t mean shit according to the article from where I got this crap, because the heat signatures correlate with high population densities in those areas, and hence does not make for a very scientific evaluation.

Now after reading this, I wondered how this use of heatmaps could be put to use right here in South Africa. Since we’re all pretty much fucked under the current government, I wondered if Vertaline could find another way to use heatmaps that would amuse us, and keep us busy until our turn comes to bend over.

What if they could creat heatmaps that measured levels of bigotry and sophistry. We could then have hours of fun as we uncover the gatherings off our politicians, and posh meeting venues they favour. No points for figuring out which political party is raising the most “heat” – we all know don’t we; we’re just curious about how much more than the others. Naturally, Parliament would have to be excluded; we all know what a hothouse of “fuck the people,”  that place is.

Would you be interested in my fairly brilliant idea? Do you actually give a fuck?