Paranoid Police

Over the last few years police officers around the world have been found to be increasingly violent and dare I say “unprotecting” of citizens, resulting in unnecessary fatalities.

Around two years ago 44 striking miners were shot and killed by the South African Police at Marikana, a Platinum mine near Rustenburg. This was the most lethal of many such incidents over the years where even innocent bystanders were fatally shot by the police.

More recently, the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri USA, caused huge civil unrest. The aftermath of this shooting is still being felt around the USA, and racism is being singled out as the root cause.

Just last week, Tamir Rice, a 12-year old boy was shot and killed by Cleveland Police, also in the USA, after being reported to be playing with a toy gun in a park. Video evidence seems to show the police shooting the boy less than two seconds after arriving on the scene.

The next story, while not involving a fatality, is really quite absurd and also comes from the USA.

A Colorado man was arrested for pointing an (apparently loaded) banana at two police officers and is facing felony charges. This is where it gets weird. The guy, Nathan Channing is from Fruitvale, Colorado and the arresting officer is called Deputy Bunch. The officer claimed that from training and experience he had seen guns in many shapes and colours.

These two officers were obviously choice mutton-heads, but if a police officer cannot distinguish between a yellow banana and a yellow gun, us citizens are in very serious trouble.

While the police admittedly operate in increasingly dangerous situations, we expect them to protect and serve. Gung-ho shooting of innocent people and even suspects is really very unnerving for any citizen. It really wouldn’t do for people to start getting the crazy notion that we need to start protecting ourselves from our police.

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.