Angie Motshekga: An awful example to women everywhere

I really meant to title this post “A women who should neither be seen nor heard.” But that would have been truly awful…

Let it be known that I would be proud to be called a feminist. I strongly support gender equality and care about gender issues. I truly feel for women who invariably have to work twice as hard, if not harder, to earn the respect that men get for doing little or nothing. It’s a shitty, lopsided world – where women have to prove themselves daily.

And it shouldn’t have to be like that.

But when a woman has been entrusted with a position of power, a position of national importance, and then proceeds to make light work of totally fucking things up, then I have to speak up yet again – in the interests of those directly affected and for good woman everywhere who make a success of their position against major odds. Such a woman is Angie Motshekga, the South African Minister for Basic Education.

Not only has Angie set education back many years in South Africa, she continues to blunder ahead with an arrogance that will put many men to shame. No doubt Angie has ample talents, but furthering the interests of education in post-apartheid South Africa, is most certainly not one of them. She seems to have the knack for stumbling from one crisis to another, the latest being her Ministry’s failure to ensure that more than 64 500 teaching positions are filled in one Province alone.

This act alone while being extremely detrimental to the educational needs of South Africa’s children, should be declared as criminal. How her gross incompetence is allowed to continue in a country having what we are assured is a democracy, is beyond comprehension.

Angie Motshekga also serves as the leader of the ANC Women’s League, an organization whose relevance in a modern society is rather dubious, when for most intents and purposes, they seem to serve only as the cheering section for the glut of incompetent men in the ANC government. A recent report in the Sunday Independent suggests that this wing of the ANC, much like the ANC Youth League, is in some disarray. Another report in the Daily Maverick suggests that the ANC Women’s League under Angie are “slavishly loyal to the ANC at the expense of women’s rights.”

Angie’s recent call for action against patriarchy was rather hollow considering her die-hard support for President Jacob Zuma, who’s undoubtedly an icon of this reprehensible social malaise in South Africa. The recent furore over the Spear painting highlighted this fact most convincingly.

In short, Angie is a pathetic example to good women everywhere. One hopes that she is removed from the spotlight before she does more damage to both our education system and the plight of women.

Zuma’s zizi

I’m pretty certain that news of the well hung painting in the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg by artist Brett Murray of President Jacob Zuma, is spreading like wildfire and causing great consternation and anger in certain circles.

Well that’s to be expected, but beyond the issue of freedom of speech which this whole episode has evoked [yet again], is the deep-seated anger that resides in an artist who was inspired to depict the President in a manner that is shocking, but yet speaks of an alarming truth about the political nature and moral character of the man, that many South Africans share.

Art is meant to elicit strong emotional responses; shock being a prized reaction. This particular work titled The Spear very effectively portrays the foreboding that is playing on the minds of many disgruntled South Africans at the moment.

Opinion is divided on this issue, with liberals generally agreeing that it should stay hung, citing freedom of speech as the determinant, to genuine Zuma-haters buzzing with absolute glee [and who could blame them] and the conservative types expressing shock and disgust. I imagine that there are some who are unsure about this one, but nobody takes fence-sitters seriously. By and large freedom of speech is winning.

However one of government’s spin doctors waxed disingenuously about rights and dignity and other claptrap, saying that the painting:

…perpetuates a shocking new culture by some sections of the artistic world, of using vulgar methods of communicating about leading figures in the country, including especially the president.

But Mac Maharaj, who’s been known to lose his foot in his mouth on more than a few occasions, is clearly forgetting the shocking culture of rampant corruption, incompetence, arrogance and bigotry that his government, represented by Jacob Zuma, perpetuates with gay abandon since coming into power.

Yes Mac, we hear you, but please go hang yourself next to the painting of your master.

zizi, French for penis.