Zuminating the shit we’re in

While addressing a gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town yesterday, President, Jacob Zuma regaled the gathering with how effective South Africa was at fighting corruption.

Zuma told this apparently unenlightened team of world leaders that his government had put in place institutions of graft-busting that were unbelievably non-existent during the apartheid era. Shocked members of the WEF were then led into a further secret:

There is a feeling that taxpayers’ money cannot be taken by other people. No matter if you are big or small, if there is a problem we have a structure to look at it.

Then in a moment of amazing candour the miscreant President revealed how he had valiantly hand-picked a team of ruthless investigators from his own cabinet and party to investigate the allegations of corruption against him. Unsurprisingly he was cleared.

Citizens of the country listening to Zuma’s address and reading about it later, were horrified, not because he was vindicated by this thorough team of investigators, but because the President had the audacity to take a gathering of international leaders for the fools he takes his own flock. Once again Zuma had shown not only his own countrymen the middle finger, but the rest of the world as well.

Eh eh eh eh eh…

Update: Found a recording of the WEF address by Jacob Zuma. Don’t you think Schwab, to the right of Zuma, is trying very hard to keep a straight face? The rest of us couldn’t.

Civil Twilight

That period before dawn or dusk when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon and Venus, the brightest observable planet from earth appears in all its magnificence.

Or…

An awesome 4-piece rock band out of Cape Town South Africa, singing Letters From The Sky.

December Road Trip

It’s time to hit the road. Tomorrow we embark on an epic South African road trip.
Johannesburg – Graaff-Reinet – Plettenberg Bay – Cape Town – Colesberg – Bloemfontein – Durban – Johannesburg
A total of 3886km, excluding the local trips in each destination. That takes care of nearly the whole of December.
And so I got to go pack and catch some zzzzzz’s…

Freshly Played #26: Abdullah Ibrahim

To kick off the week, something local…

Abdullah Ibrahim is a South African jazz pianist and composer, born Adolph Johannes Brand in Cape Town, he performed under the name Dollar Brand both locally and internationally.

After his conversion to Islam in the 70’s Brand changed his name, and chose to live in self-exile in New York because of the apartheid system in effect in South Africa. He has since returned to South Africa and lives in Cape Town.

Probably the best known “Dollar Brand” recording is Mannenberg which was inspired by the Cape Flats township Manenberg, and later came to be associated with the struggle against apartheid.

This is a shortened version of the much longer track which runs for nearly 14 minutes.

Freshly Played #23: Machineri

Another in the series of music from my collection is long overdue. This time I’ve chosen a local band who hail from Cape Town.

Personally I think South African music especially the rock and alternative kind, rates up there with the best in the world, if not better. We’ve produced some incredible artists who don’t always get the recognition they deserve.

Machineri was formed in 2008 by vocalist Sannie Fox who also writes and plays guitar. Andre Geldenhuys on guitars and Daniel Huxham on drums complete the trio. They play a bluesy kind of rock, with Sannie reminding me of Janis Joplin. Their influences range from John Lee Hooker, Led Zeppelin and The Black Keys to none other than Jimi Hendrix.

Big Bad Machine

 

 

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.

Human thieves fine, animal thieves not…

Repost from my sister blog ScumWatch:

Assuming there is indeed a god, HE is a real twat. I say HE because I cannot visualize a female god being such a vicious bastard; vindictive and scornful yes, but not so sadistic as to cause harm to an animal, but tolerate gross human misconduct.

Off course, if we consider that there is no proof of a supernatural being, then the often assumed highest form of evolutionary life, namely HUMANS, have a long way to go on their evolutionary journey.

By now, you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m ranting about?

Well, you see there is a baboon in the Cape Province of South Africa, nicknamed Fred, who has become infamous for “opening closed car doors and robbing tourists of their bags and food.” Fred does this for a living. However Fred’s idea of living is very basic – he just wants to survive from one day to the next. He views the tourists who venture into his domain as nothing more than his next meal ticket.

Fred gave up his natural diet because silly humans who encroached on his territory, thought it would be fun and amusing to feed him their carbohydrate rich food. Since Fred took a liking to this food source, the humans have not been as generous. Frustrated, Fred became a tad more energetic in his determination to get at this food source.

The silly humans cried foul and lodged many complaints about the behaviour of Fred, which as you know was directly caused by human stupidity in the first instance.

This led to the team responsible for managing the baboon population in the Cape Peninsula The Baboon Operational Group (BOG), making a shitty decision to capture and euthanize Fred.

The moral of this tragic but true story is that it is okay to be human and steal from the treasury as our government leaders do, but you’re fucked if you’re a baboon. Breaking it down further, it implies that stealing to enhance your lifestyle is cool; stealing to fill your stomach as even some humans are forced into doing, is punishable with imprisonment and even death.

Fred’s gonna be dead; the human scum ahead…

Human thieves fine, animal thieves not…

Assuming there is indeed a god, HE is a real twat. I say HE because I cannot visualize a female god being such a vicious bastard; vindictive and scornful yes, but not so sadistic as to cause harm to an animal, but tolerate gross human misconduct.

Off course, if we consider that there is no proof of a supernatural being, then the often assumed highest form of evolutionary life, namely HUMANS, have a long way to go on their evolutionary journey.

By now, you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m ranting about?

Well, you see there is a baboon in the Cape Province of South Africa, nicknamed Fred, who has become infamous for “opening closed car doors and robbing tourists of their bags and food.” Fred does this for a living. However Fred’s idea of living is very basic – he just wants to survive from one day to the next. He views the tourists who venture into his domain as nothing more than his next meal ticket.

Fred gave up his natural diet because silly humans who encroached on his territory, thought it would be fun and amusing to feed him their carbohydrate rich food. Since Fred took a liking to this food source, the humans have not been as generous. Frustrated, Fred became a tad more energetic in his determination to get at this food source.

The silly humans cried foul and lodged many complaints about the behaviour of Fred, which as you know was directly caused by human stupidity in the first instance.

This led to the team responsible for managing the baboon population in the Cape Peninsula The Baboon Operational Group (BOG), making a shitty decision to capture and euthanize* Fred.

The moral of this tragic but true story is that it is okay to be human and steal from the treasury as our government leaders do, but you’re fucked if you’re a baboon. Breaking it down further, it implies that stealing to enhance your lifestyle is cool; stealing to fill your stomach as even some humans are forced into doing, is punishable with imprisonment and even death.

Fred’s gonna be dead; the human scum ahead…

*March, 27: Latest news reports suggest that Fred has already been captured and put down. If only I could read the same about some of our politicians…

From Wikipedia

What! No camping out, Julius?

You know what they say about politicians and the promises they make? They say something similar about rules too!

With that in mind, I wasn’t expecting too much to come of Juluis Malema’s boast that “some of us” would be camping out in the Western Cape to win back the Metro for the ANC, which it lost quite convincingly to the Democratic Alliance in the last elections. However it did accur to me that this dumbass was crazy enough to actually pull such a stunt.

So while one would have expected Malema to have spent the week shopping at Outdoor Warehouse or some similar place for a tent and other camping essentials, we were informed that he was indeed in Cape Town over the weekend, notably without a backpack and hiking boots. In fact, camping was far from his mind as he joined another degenerate to celebrate the pre-opening of his posh nighclub.

And then they waded into a storm. Apparently the nightclub owner, Kenny Kunene has a penchant for eating sushi off the bodies of half-naked women. And Malema has a penchant for talking absolute rubbish. That combination created a little stir which the ANC tried to wash over, rather unconvincingly, it must be said.

While pondering what to write about this whole saga, editor of the Mail & Gaurdian Chris Roper helped me out with aplomb:

Yes, yes, I know. “We didn’t struggle to be poor.” Absolutely. No question. If there’s one thing democracy guarantees, it’s that to the victors go the spoils. Except, of course, most people in this country apparently did struggle to be poor — although at least they’re free and poor. And in a country where the average monthly income per struggle hero is around R3 375, we need as much free as we can get.

And

As Penny Punani, the famous entrepreneur and feminist, plaintively says when people complain about Kenny Kunene sucking fish off a babe’s body while pouring bubbly into her bek, “Why is it that white people didn’t complain when apartheid ministers were chowing wors out of a hot boeremeisie’s cleavage, but now, suddenly, because black people are doing it, it’s wrong? Why?”

Very good point, very good point. Alas, the answer is simple. In apartheid South Africa we were ruled by morons, now we’re not (mostly). In apartheid South Africa, we didn’t have one of the finest constitutions in the world, now we do. In apartheid South Africa, the only women in government were the ones cleaning the spittle and baccy off the floor, now we have actual women ministers. To sum up — and this is going to come as a shock to Kenny Kunene and Julius Malema, the Mutt and Jeff of Japanese cuisine — I think Winnie Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, Helen Suzman, Lindiwe Sisulu and others did in fact struggle to be politically correct.

Catch the whole hilarious article here.

Helen Zille Quote

Leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance and President of Cape Town, Helen Zille was quoted this morning during a radio interview as saying that the ANC was a:

small, elite kleptocracy masquerading as a liberation party

I thought it was pretty funny, even though Helen is generally a very earnest women, not known for being humorous. Perhaps she was not trying to be funny at all, because those words are chillingly true. It’s a real pity that most South Africans won’t read this quote or even understand what it means. I’m pretty sure Julius Malema, President of the ANC Youth League won’t, because he’ll claim that kleptocracy is not a word in the Pedi language. [According to my spell checker, Pedi is not a word in the English language; Julius must be fuming]

It’s also a pity that Helen is a white women, because that seems to be the only valid reason why she is not South Africa’s President. Most South Africans will not vote for a white person, let alone a white women, because the damage caused by apartheid seems to still run very deep. And that too is a real pity.