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…

The only reason culture is sacrosanct, is because you say so…

I have in fact said this before, but not in those same words.

Well, at least one other person believes the same thing. Online editor Chris Roper, writing in the Mail & Guardian about football culture, sums it up pretty nicely in his opening paragraph:

A useful rule of thumb is to avoid anybody who uses culture as an excuse for doing something stupid. From wearing neckties to picking brides out of a line-up of bouncy little breasts, from showing respect for your elders to hunting a whale, it’s all a bunch of bullshit. Yes, I’m sure your culture is vitally important, and we have the right to practice whatever nonsense we want, but really. The only reason it’s sacrosanct is because you say so.

The rest of the article mostly makes reference to Manchester United players, one of which goes like this:

Park, Park, you’re an ugly fuck, you’ve got a face like a crispy duck; could be worse, you could be gay, getting bummed by John O’Shea.

Football culture aside, if you want your culture to not be ridiculed, leave it at home where nobody else can see it or be bothered by it. It goes without saying that it is not deserving of any respect.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

I belong to that group of individuals who believe that banning something only serves to push it underground and make it more desirable.

So it is with this in mind that I’m a little disturbed by an article in the Mail & Guardian about the banning of witchcraft and exploitation emanating from superstitious beliefs, by a political lobby group in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Chanting to cure snakebites, claiming to be a reincarnated spouse to obtain sex, and charging for miracles could soon be banned by an Indian state seeking to stop charlatans preying on the vulnerable.

Many superstitions are widely held in India but a campaign group is lobbying hard for a new law in the western state of Maharashtra to outlaw several exploitative activities, with penalties of fines or up to seven years in jail. [more here]

According to the article, religious groups are already arguing that the banning is an attack on their religious freedoms. They will undoubtedly find support in the large Hindu population who thrive on superstition and archaic religious belief. The banning will ultimately only give their primitive needs added impetus when it becomes taboo.

While the proponents of the legislation known as Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and Other Inhuman, Evil Practices and Black Magic Bill, mean well, they could in fact be causing more harm.

It’s not a pleasant situation to be in, and is a damning indictment on mankind which is still prone to being deceived by religious charlatans, mostly through their own ignorance.

The rest of us are damned if we do something about it and damned if we don’t.

How about a Spokespersons handbook?

Take a bow Dumisani Nkwamba. You’ve just joined a long-lost of ANC government spokespersons who are absolute masters at scoring own goals.

There must be a school somewhere in South Africa that’s churning out these idiots by the dozen. Every government department seems to have one or two of them. I’m beginning to wonder if that hare-brained political school that Malema so proudly launched a few years ago, has anything to do with the current crop of foot-in-mouth-diseased spokespersons who have been let loose in the halls of power.

Dumisani happens to be the spokesperson for the Minister of Public Service and Administration. Yes, the self-same bureaucrats who saw fit to keep the Ministerial Handbook secret for the four years since its approval by Cabinet; a document that governs Ministerial expenditure and that should have been rightfully in the public domain.

Needless to say, the only reason the Ministerial Handbook is such hot property right now is because of highly questionable and extravagant expenditure by the members of the ANC government.

The esteemed spokesperson thinks that it was illegal for the Mail & Guardian to publish the Handbook. How strange for a spokesperson of the party governing (or so it seems) this country to accuse someone else of undermining the Constitution? Presumably the ruling Party think they have sole rights to undermining the Constitution?

Dumisani’s hissy-fit about the Mail & Guardian jumping the gun in publishing the document is probably justified seeing as how the remarkably efficient Ministry of Public Service and Administration have been hard at work “in the process of declassifying the document”…for the last four years.

But seriously, these idiots in government are clueless about how the South African public and the world is laughing at their every act of utter stupidity.

Perhaps it’s time they published a Handbook for Spokespersons. They can keep this handbook SECRET as long as they abide by the rules and we are spared their silly statements.

It’s either that or STFU. Somehow I can’t picture them keeping their lips sealed for too long; that much inanity can’t be kept in.

You've met SA's Police Disservice, now let me introduce you to SA's Public Disservice and Maladministration Ministry

Richard Baloyi is the man at the helm of South Africa’s Ministry of Public Disservice and Maladministration.

This department like so many others festering under President Jacob Zuma’s presidency, has a history of covering themselves in the splendour of incompetence and corruption which are coveted ideals in liberated South Africa.

Following the disclosures of wasteful and possibly fraudulent expenditure of state funds by the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka [a department which supposedly cooperates in upholding the coveted traditional ideals of incompetence and corruption it seems], the Department of Public Disservice and Maladministration were adamant in their refusal to reveal to the public the guidelines on Ministerial expenditure which they insist is classified or TOP SECRET.

Indeed, they were furious when the Mail & Guardian obtained a copy of this TOP SECRET document otherwise known as the Ministerial Handbook, and published it online.

If you’re wondering why a guideline on expenditure of taxpayers money is CLASSIFIED in a democratic country, then you’re like me also wondering what else is CLASSIFIED that should be public knowledge. And I’ll bet you also now know why the government is trying to push through further legislation such as the ridiculous Protection of Information Bill, to make the veil of secrecy water-tight.

Hopefully more departments like Public Disservice and Maladministration FAIL in their mandate to uphold CORRUPTION and defraud the public.

But that's what I've been saying…

Editor of the Mail & Guardian Online, Chris Roper is facing facts…like me. While his take on [SA] politicians, following the most recent boorish outburst by Master Ignoramus otherwise known as Julius Malema may be common knowledge in enlightened circles, it may not go down so well in the halls of arrogant power and privilege.

It’s time we faced the fact. The default position for most South African politicians is “scumbag”, and their automatic level of discourse is “childish”. I had to think carefully about using the word childish. It smacks of paternalism, and of that endless Western quest to stereotype Africans as children and noble savages. But thankfully, youthful leaguer Julius Malema has freed us all up to be as rambunctiously offensive as we wish, as long as we don’t name names.

Catch the rest of his eloquent reasoning here.

The [imagined] crisis in African, Indian and Coloured unity

The crisis in African, Indian and Coloured unity: written by Sandile Memela, this blog post published under Thought Leader in the Mail & Guardian is an absolute disgrace.

My response posted to his blog comments section:

Sandile,

Utter hogwash. Whatever tension there is between Africans, Indians and Coloureds is natural, and to be expected among people of different races and cultural backgrounds.

Your ignoble attempts to make it seem sinister and absolutely divisive, is yet another manifestation of the utter desparation on the part of the ANC to whitewash their many failures.

You and your cohorts in the political hierarchy are a disgrace to the decent hard-working Africans who don’t actually harbor any resentment towards their fellow South Africans; true South Africans who neither ask for hand-outs, nor play the victim at the drop of a hat.

Why don’t you change your profile* to reflect the truth: that you’re just another ANC apologist whose real intent is to sow division where there is none.

In hindsight, my heated response, especially the closing line, was perhaps an ad hominem attack on Sandile. However, I’m not at all apologetic for saying it. The guy’s got a bug up his arse about White people – always rubbishing them while portraying non-Whites as the perennial victims.

* Sandile’s profile on Thought Leader described him as an ANC funk. He changed it when some readers saw the lighter side of this description.

Media Appeals Tribunal – What would Churchill have said?

In spite of the overwhelming opposition to the implementation of the absurd Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT), it seems quite certain that the South African government intends pushing on with its dastardly plan to snuff out free speech.

President Jacob Zuma, quite apparently hurt by constant media reports on his philandering habits and questionable abilities to lead, defended his government’s (read ANC’s) plans to implement MAT before parliament last week, saying “It’s not fair…” and “…a lot of pain has been caused…” Oh, how pathetic was that. 

And off course, we did not fail to recognise the disingenuous manner in which he tried to paint a picture which made it seem that the reporting was affecting mostly “poor people” who were defenceless in the face of the media onslaught. Come come, Mr. Zuma, the only time the media reports negatively on poor defenceless people, is when for example some idiot donates his monthly insurance premium to Ray Mcauley’s Rhema Church. Ordinary people are hardly affected by media expose’s; its public figures such as yourself and off course anyone else who willfully abuses the trust of the electorate.

Incidently, Zuma also went on to state that the ANC would not suppress press freedom, which sounded eerily like some of the unfulfilled election promises he made, prior to becoming President. Really Mr. Zuma, the uneducated masses, still drunk on freedom from Apartheid, and hooked by the personality cult that became effective since your term of office commenced, may fall for that; but not the rest of us.

Today, while reading an excellent article titled Betraying the revolution in the Mail & Gaurdian by author Kole Omotoso, I was reminded of the most inspiring segment of that famous speech by Winston Churchill during the Second World War, which went on to inspire victory by the Allies:

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,…

This speech was given on the 4th of June 1940, but Churchill also gave another speech earlier, on the 13th of May which I believe should inspire us South Africans to fight the government, tooth and nail, on this (MAT) and other draconian laws that they intend promulgating:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.

The fight Mr President? Believe it, it is here!!!

Oh my followers, please protect me!!!

Oh, the sorry state of the supernatural world. Once again, the gods and prophets are begging for protection from their very own creation, not in person, but through their earthly clerical representatives and die-hard supporters.

The latest cry for protection against the creative minds of the supposedly created, emanated after a South African cartoonist caricatured the prophet of a certain religion as a patient of a psychologist, bemoaning the lack of humor evident in his followers. In keeping with the suppression of free thought and expression, I have carefully avoided mentioning the religion, the prophet and the cartoonist because certain religions would have us believe that such immense greatness cannot be described in mere words, let alone graphically.

The interesting thing about this latest pathetic attempt to stifle freedom of thought and expression is that the clerics of this particular religion lost the urgent interdict they brought against the Mail & Gaurdian newspaper, to prevent it from publishing the cartoon. The interesting part is not that the clerics lost the application in the High Court, but that the presiding judge was of the same religious persuasion as the applicants. It’s rather ironic that one of this particular god’s own, ruled against his prophet’s vanity.

It’s high time that religious zealots lightened up and realized that their gods and prophets are not immune to criticism. All-powerful, all-mighty deities and prophets should not have to rely on mere worship-fodder for protection. Those fabled lightning bolts from the sky must be put into operation immediately, to prevent the unnecessary carnage and collateral damage from man-made bombs and other weapons of destruction [used by the self-appointed protectors of the apparently impotent gods]. It is the divine thing to do.

The truth is, the gods and prophets do not need protection from the people; the people need protection from the gods and prophets, and the clerics…especially the clerics.