Power, freedom and other less-noteworthy stuff

The power utility Eskom, had a further mishap at one of their plants yesterday which resulted in a blackout that lasted nearly four hours where I live. That was time in which I meant to download all the photographs from the two cameras I had taken on my recent road trip around the country.

Luckily it was only four hours, which meant I could catch up on the latest news following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris by what is believed to be Muslim fundamentalists. Looking around the interwebs, it is disconcerting to note the scale of hatred being directed at ordinary Muslims and Islam. This is pretty unfair as they are as much victims as the rest of us. The whole of Islam cannot be blamed for the misguided actions of a minority of fundamentalist idiots.

I managed to get in a post yesterday which was meant to show my solidarity with the victims and also my stance on freedom of speech which should of course be inviolable. It must be recognized that yesterday’s outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo, was an attack on our freedoms.

On to other less important things…

I’m back at work and it sucks after such a long vacation. This week has been draining. It seems as if there was a conspiracy to hold back completion of all projects for me to return and take care of them.

Today I managed to download all my photos and will start cropping etc. The one above is one of them taken while driving, as we descended from the majestic Karoo down to the Eastern coastline of George.

I hope to start posting some of them here soon. Until then…

State Of The Nation Dress

While many politicians were today attending the State of the Nation Address (SONA) by President Jacob Zuma in Parliament, I’d venture that a whole lot more astute South Africans decided to give it a total miss.

Why anyone other than journalists unlucky enough to get this pissy assignment, politicians and economist types would want to watch this drivel, is beyond me. I do know that quite a few people I’m acquainted with would have watched if only Zuma would have used the occasion to say, “You were all right. I’m a poor excuse for a leader. I quit.” But we all knew that was never going to happen.

From the newspaper reports, SONA did live up to expectations: another drab, meaningless affair crammed full of rhetoric and promises drifting on a stream of hot air spewing from the President’s untrustworthy mouth. He could have rehashed any previous SONA, and only the most discerning would have detected any difference.

However what interested me the most was the outfits these politicians chose to wear to Parliament. It smacked of pretentiousness.

While many chose traditional African outfits, one even came barefoot. Another MP’s wife arrived clad in a blue, red, yellow, and black Ndebele blanket, claiming that it was her culture. Perhaps her culture is only manifest at Parliamentary shindigs, because I’m willing to bet that you will find her dressed in European haute couture, the rest of the year. One female MP bought her traditional dress in Ghana because it symbolized freedom. Seemingly there are no South African equivalents.

Julius Malema of the infamous Economic Freedom Fighters attended in a red workman’s overalls, which has become his party’s dress of choice for Parliament because it symbolizes their (supposed) affiliation to the working class. The idiom “a jackass wolf in sheep’s clothing” has never been more relevant. But that was not all: an observant journalist noticed that Malema was wearing a normal suite under these red overalls. You can be sure that those red digs will be ripped off like a stripper does, just before the SONA after-party, safely out of sight of his doting, but gullible constituents.

Then off course there were the others, whose fashion sense were about as deficient as their honest political intentions.

And so concludes my report on another hollow State of the Nation Address.

Essential Voter Information

The South African General Elections are mere days away now, and your political parties are canvassing up a storm, regurgitating many old promises, and inventing enticing new ones.

Mostly outrageous lies off course. But you know that, right? Right?

These are the ones making the most noise, yes, noise…

The incumbent African National Congress (ANC), are handing out t-shirts and food parcels, just in case the promises aren’t inventive enough, or the people can’t hear through the ullulating women and men’s chants of Viva. All knowledgeable know that they’re merely digging in for another five years of brazen theft, incompetence and cronyism. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are promising Nationalization of the land and sea, and just about anything stupid that comes on the spur of the moment to bloated heads. If they promise the air as well, then that will complete the Nationalization trifecta. Their leader Julius Malema is… the embodiment of a buffoon and wants nothing more than to lord it over like the ANC does.

And the purported voice of reason…

The Democratic Alliance (DA) are preaching to a small choir, because almost nobody else understands reason and logic, or trusts them. The new kids on the block, Agang, are mostly mimicking the DA, and essentially clueless about policy, but do have a woman leader who would make the perfect President.

No other party (and there are lots) matters. It seems that for every half-baked ideology, there’s a political party crusading it.They’re all worthless shit. That’s not to say that those above are not shite as well. But you just have to remember one thing.

This.

Vote wisely folks. After the 7th of May, these politicians will all crawl back under their steaming piles of horse shit, and you’ll be left wandering a trail of broken promises for another 5 years.

See you at the polls…

EFF: #ProudlyBroughtToYouByTheANC

Julius Malema, former Reichsmarschall of the ANC Youth League launched his own political party at Marikana this weekend, where he was anointed as Commander In Chief.

The EFF was formed a little earlier, probably as an afterthought in the depths of political hell when Malema fell out with Jacob Zuma and the ANC, after losing most of his ill-gained wealth and the patronage of the deservedly despised President.

And so we have one more party to contest the elections next year. This now brings the grand total of political party’s in South Africa to “blimey! that fucking many?” [230 by this official count]

You might think that having this many political party’s is indicative of a healthy democracy. And you might be dead wrong. It’s not healthy, it’s fucking insane! Democracy has become a useful plaything, a vehicle for the politicians to hitch their self-serving wagons to – it’s just something that sounds nice to mostly ignorant people. And oh boy, do we have ignorant people?

And that is why the EFF is being embraced by so many people; not a lot, but a small fart’s worth. People are emotional and desperate, and unfortunately the EFF’s cringe-worthy offerings resonates well with them.

You see, all the party’s offer different shades of the same things. Yes, they offer, but the reality is they never make good on those offers. Not a single one of them. Oh agreed, they do manage to achieve bits and pieces, but never is any pre-election promise honoured in its entirety.

But the EFF promises something totally different; not good, just different. Actually they’re promising to drag South Africa back to pre-colonial times; to a parallel Dark Ages if you like. And render South Africa a pariah, like Zimbabwe.

Among other distasteful policies, the EFF promises to nationalize key sectors of the economy such as mines, and confiscate privately owned land from Whites without compensation. Their manifesto describes them as a “radical, leftist, anticapitalist and anti-imperialist movement.” That’s so retarded, it’s straight out of a dictator’s manual.

Now that’s some scary shit.

South Africa’s only redemption is that the EFF is unlikely to make a big enough dent in the elections next year, let alone win… for the simple unsavoury fact that the voting fodder will with fair certainty still cling to the devil they know, the ANC.

All hail Julius, the Caesar of the economy

Julius Malema, President of the ANC Youth League, devil-child of the ANC, should be the undisputed twit of the new millennium; but considering their aspirations to rule until Jesus returns, I suppose it’s not inconceivable that they’ll produce a few other dumb-asses.

Julius has been mouthing off again; nothing unusual for a blow-hard of this magnitude, but this time he’s surely gone off the deep end.

Remember how he grabbed every opportunity to tell everyone what a big-shot revolutionary he was? And how together with the other ANCYL brats, they were going to transform South Africa into la-la land by banishing imperialism and implementing the ideals of the antiquated Freedom Charter.

Well, it seems that we’ve seriously under-estimated this lard-arse. He’s been hard at work, not at improving his woodwork grades, but at adding some new words to his stunted vocabulary. Julius now has pretensions to becoming an economic freedom-fighter too. He’s now taken to threatening the owner’s of mines with seizure of 60% of their shareholdings. Last Friday while spewing the usual clichéd rhetoric at a gala dinner about political freedom being useless with economic freedom, he stunned everyone with this ripper:

We’re now economic freedom fighters. The revolution started to get food. We don’t have to apologise, or be shy about this struggle.

But that’s not all. It’s been reported that he went on to encourage people to keep the revolution going by having as many babies as possible. Apparently:

Having babies is a revolutionary thing. You must reproduce!

Some logic! I guess these ANCYL bright-sparks figured that 60% of all the mines in South Africa should be enough to feed, clothe, educate and keep millions of new babies happily on Social Welfare…until Jesus returns. I wonder if they’ll run this show from Luthuli House, also known as Loot Freely House by ANC detractors; or as Julius likes to call it Revolutionary House? Maybe they’ll even consider renaming it Treasure Island.

Off course, it’s a no-brainer why Julius didn’t bother to explain to the masses ever-eager to hear his vitriol, why he and the rest of that scummy lot in the ANC have temporarily delayed the “revolution to get food,” to help themselves to fancy cars, houses, liquor, clothes and other bling.

So for now we render unto Caesar that which he thinks is his, but real revolution is not far on the horizon to start the next chapter in the history of South Africa…