The evolution of the ANC excuse

South Africa’s government, the ANC has done a lot right in 20 years of ruling running the country. But they have also done a lot wrong.

However, every wrong was brushed aside with excuses. Rather amusing ones too. Meanwhile, it’s patently obvious ANC politicians reward themselves for every right with self-enrichment. Or because successfully pulling the wool over the eyes of the voting fodder deserves a pat on the back, they’re maybe  rewarding themselves for both. Who knows?

While they initially start with outright denial when confronted, the ANC are growing their list of excuses:

Apartheid

White people, also known as the race card

The Third Force

Colonialism

The official opposition in Government

Apartheid (yes, they use this one liberally)

Jan van Riebeeck

Economic growth

As you can see from the last two, it’s desperate times for the ANC. I’m giggling in anticipation at what they’re going to dream up next.

The ANC’s perception of democracy is terrifying

It is my belief that democracy is failing in South Africa, and the reason for this is two-fold: first, the incumbent government’s perception of democracy is out of kilter with the traditional meaning, and secondly, the voting public is largely politically immature.

Before I get stuck into this little rant, let me be clear that when I talk about the ANC, I am referring to the fat-cats who are at the top of the organization. That is to say, those who through an elaborate patronage system, gets a ticket to stand in the queue at the feeding trough; or to put it bluntly, the ANC politicians on national, regional and local government levels.

Over the course of 20 years of ANC rule (let’s be frank – they govern on increasingly rare occasions), I have come to realize that they have a fundamentally flawed understanding of what democracy means. Those who are ANC supporters, sympathizers and collaborators may not necessarily have the same flawed understanding – indeed many have rather romanticized notions of what democracy is – are nonetheless complicit in the failure of the system by virtue of their association with this organization.

The traditional meaning of democracy is according to one source, government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. There is off course that famous line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech which most people recognize more readily “… government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

The ANC, more so by their behaviour since Jacob Zuma became the leader and President of the country, have however demonstrated a radical departure from these principles. It would seem as if their understanding of democracy is much simpler: the majority rules, or to put it sarcastically, those who get the most votes by whatever means, gets to decide what’s best for everyone.

And this folks, is how the ANC functions. Their fanatical intolerance of anything proposed by anyone outside the ANC, no matter how just or moral is shocking to behold. For them it’s the ANC way, or the highway. In pursuit of retaining total dominance and control, the ANC are willing to do just about anything – stack the judiciary, security forces, civil service and police in their favour, and railroad draconian legislation into force.

Just this week a minority party dared to ask the President a question in Parliament, which he refused to answer (which incidentally is becoming the norm; either that or replies that are obfuscated) , and they were censured by the ruling ANC. Admittedly this minority party behaved rather shabbily after the President refused to answer, but the question was valid and pertinent to the lives and well-being of the population as a whole.

The ANC’s Deputy-Secretary-General, Jessie Duarte even had the temerity to state that a party that had only garnered six percent of the vote, had no right to question a party that had managed to get sixty percent at the polls. How is this democracy? And what the fuck is a Deputy-Secretary-General anyway? It just sounds so dictatorial; belonging in a long discredited Communist era.

And let’s be fair. The ANC can hardly be considered Communist. They are just so enamoured of the bling and high lifestyle. The long-suffering public have simply lost count of the incidences of corruption involving the ANC, and have sadly become immune to new revelations which are an almost daily occurrence.

If the ANC believes they know what democracy is all about, they’re either delusional or wilfully ignorant. I hope it’s the former, because the latter suggests an agenda that has frightening consequences for this country.

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.

More Mandela Memorial Musings

Seems I missed a few things that went down at the Mandela Memorial yesterday.

President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuba’s Raul Castro and some sections of the USA have their panties in a twist about it. Politicians shake hands with rival politicians all the time; it’s no biggie. Hell, I once saw Angela Merkel kiss Jacob Zuma. It’s all a show – I’m pretty certain she loathes the swine and had lip surgery afterwards.

And then there’s this brouhaha over Obama taking a group selfie with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and the UK’s David Cameron. It’s a fucking non-event. Anyway Michelle Obama seems to have sorted it out, if this series of pictures can be trusted.

And finally the one that’s making headlines at the moment: seems the sign-language interpreter (SLI) on stage was bogus. Yeah, according to all those who know about such things, the guy hired to interpret for the hearing-impaired was just waving his hands and arms about randomly. Take a look at this:

I have a perfectly feasible explanation for this whole mix-up. See, the guy was not hired to sign; he was hired to chase the flies off the stage, what with so many rotten politicians from so many different shitholes of the world sharing the same platform and all. He must be pretty embarrassed for being mistaken as the SLI, and he did a pretty good job because I didn’t see a single fly in TV footage.

Anyway, enough about these silly politicians. Here’s something to really smile about. A flash mob paying tribute to the man.

Your ass is grass

The South African political landscape is littered with voting fodder on the one hand and politicians who contemptuously make hay on the other. All this grass makes one long for some good weed…

 

I don’t like Mondays

Yep, another one of those damned Mondays – haven’t had a good one, except when it was an extension of the weekend.

Here’s a though for you miserable reprobates in government. How about making Mondays a compulsory day for recovery… or partying on? If you could just give us that instead of toll roads and stupid speeches, I’d absolutely vote for you sleazeballs.

And now for something completely different…

Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats doesn’t like Mondays for a different reason. He wrote this song after reading about 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer who went on a shooting spree at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego in 1979, killing two adults and injuring a police officer and 8 schoolchildren.

That’s no reason to hate Mondays, but it does make for a cool song.

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…

To err is human, but to obfuscate is divine…

I readily admit that I rant a lot about the wrongdoings of government and politicians, but lately I’ve been wondering if it is actually achieving anything. I’ve come to realise that the more you denigrate these people, the more it tends to make them retreat into that comfortable shell of denial and obfuscation.

Let’s face it, politicians are generally slimy scumbags. There are probably a few honest politicians somewhere… like on another galaxy maybe.

The way I see it, the problem we have is that when we criticize these slime balls, we tend to speak on behalf of the many who are wronged by their actions, but either don’t have the cojones to speak out, or do anything about it, or can’t be bothered. And let’s not forget that there are always a few who are advantaged (at the expense of the many, off course) by their nefarious activities, because where there are politicians, there’s always cronies. Shit always attracts flies…

I often come across critics who ask this question of government (the politicians): “Do they honestly believe that we are that gullible or stupid?” The simple answer is “Yes, they do.” Because the numbers that continue to return them to power at the voting polls speaks volumes about our apathy, ignorance, fears, and yes, gullibility and stupidity.

Mocking and incensed dissonance is well and good. It’s nice to blow off some steam. But we need to understand that it is ineffectual in the end. Our real (and probably only law-abiding) power lies in tossing these bastards out at elections.

The Unfathomable Lightness of Being… the Creator, or, The Mosquito

Last night I lay in bed in the darkness, a mosquito incessantly buzzing around somewhere over my head.

I asked myself why the mosquito doesn’t get on with biting me silently and just fuck off somewhere else. Instead it needs to first torment me by buzzing around, leaving me wondering when it is going to strike.

Now that kind of behaviour is just plain malicious.

If you look at the other things that bug me, like rats, cockroaches and politicians, then I have to conclude that either the Creator has a really twisted mind, or that Creationism can’t possibly be true…

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?