Bad Bad Badu

If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s politicians. If there’s an even worse thing it’s dictatorial politicians.

If there’s a third thing that gets my bile rising, it’s idiots who actually abide despotic politicians.

And so we come to Erykah Badu, the American singer who sang recently for Swaziland’s tyrannical ruler King Mswati III, on his 46th birthday. She even gave the despicable “royal” fucker some presents.

King Tits & Tum at a Reed Dance

I don’t really need to elaborate on why King Mswati III is such a douche-bag. He’s just that; an imperial bag of shit. I’m more irritated about why Badu would sing for His Royal Kleptocrat-ness. It’s not like she desperately needs the money.

Up until I heard about this incident, I quite liked Badu’s singing; well one or two songs at least. I don’t know if I could bring myself to listen to On & On ever again. It would make me think on and on about Mswati lording it over the poor sods unfortunate enough to make up his kingdom, and the15-and-counting wives.

To redeem herself, Erykah would have to take back her presents for starters, and write a song about the true nature of the African despot known as Mswati. Better still, writing a disparaging song about all of Africa’s many dictators would win me back for sure.

National Women’s Day will prove to be politically expedient once again

International Women’s Day (IWD) is commemorated on 8 March every year around the world. So why does South Africa celebrate an additional National Women’s Day (NWD) on 9 August?

Officially, NWD is celebrated (literally by many people) to mark the march on the Union Buildings by thousands of women during the Apartheid era, on 9 August 1956, to protest the infamous Pass laws, and was led by Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Sophie WIlliams and Lilian Ngoyi. This act of defiance was a significant event in the struggle against Apartheid; the fact that it was orchestrated by women repudiates the lie that women are the weaker sex.

So is this day worthy of being commemorated? Most certainly! And is the role of women in the struggle against racial oppression worthy of acknowledgement? Off course it is!

But is it necessary to create a separate Women’s Day to that of the rest of the world, as a public holiday to do so? I think not! Especially when the politicians who promulgated the holiday openly exhibit disdain towards womanhood in general.

How can one trust their intentions, especially when their daily behaviour is both dishonourable and contemptuous? It becomes pretty easy to perceive that National Women’s Day, far from being a day to celebrate women, is just an expedient day for politicians (mostly men) to gloat about pseudo-freedom and hitch the event to the bandwagon of political expediency.

Let’s examine some of the reprehensible behaviours of which I write: the President of the country, Jacob Zuma is a polygamist as indeed are many men who revere culture, tradition and religion above the sanctity of womanhood. The President recently granted a multibillion Rand loan (aid) to the despicable neighboring tyrant, King Mswati of Swaziland, another bigot who collects wives: at last count, 14. Mswati is well on his way to attaining the disgusting feat of his father: a harem of 70. Perhaps the loan will help him in his quest for trophies.

Polygamy is disgusting and an outrage towards women. No amount of religious, cultural or social posturing can endorse it.

The ruling ANC government; the ones’ who promulgated this holiday, tend to surround themselves with women who tow the party line and support their self-enrichment schemes; those who are critical of party policy and behaviour, such as Barbara Hogan are quickly silenced and sidelined.

On National Women’s Day tomorrow, the politicians will pay lip service to women, at public events, and use the opportunity to solidify their political power. This much is certain. Only greedy and immoral men will benefit. We must never allow the politicians to perpetuate the exploitation of women.

Women must be celebrated, not because their kind marched against tyranny at some point in the distant past; women must be celebrated because they are fellow human beings, deserving of respect and acknowledgement just as men demand it.

The ANC: The rot within breaks the surface

Image via Wikipedia

There have been many times when I bought a rosy apple, only to later find the ugly rot that lay hidden under the surface. Such is the ANC in South Africa today.

The only difference is that apples don’t try so desperately to hide its rotten core…

I think I’ve now finally seen it all. There is no stunt that the ANC can pull that will ever surprise me again. They just keep getting worse…only now I expect only the worst. You’d have to be one of their really ignorant supporters to not have noticed that the inner rot that is slowly decimating this once-proud liberation organisation, is starting to break the surface in an ugly inflammation that threatens the fragile new order of attempted democracy. The only question is, will the end of the ANC be a dull implosion or a spectacular explosion.

The liberators have become afflicted with the disease they fought so valiantly (so we thought) to destroy – the multi-headed beast representing hegemony, corruption, larceny, self-interest, cronyism, deception, contempt, abuse of human rights. Only now, they prefer to be known as revolutionaries; or is that just the mugs in the Youth League. One never can tell, because the elders work hard at being bigger mugs.

The liberation dreams of Nelson Mandela turned into a Orwellian nightmare by the current leader and his cronies.

Such is the stuff of Hollywood movies, but Africa is living it daily, from Swaziland and Zimbabwe (and now South Africa) to the Mediterranean Sea; the African Peoples both indigenous and settlers, are at the mercy of a coterie of unfeeling, unthinking, self-indulgent, self-interested monsters who masquerade as leaders.

But I digress.

Let’s get back to the ANC and how the rot is finally breaking the surface. In a matter of a few weeks:

1. The President of the country reveals what a religious retard he is by claiming that a ticket to heaven can be secured by voting for the ANC.
2. The ANC-appointed Commissioner of Police is found to have committed some serious transgressions in his management of the Police Services, which the Public Protector, in her wisdom declined to label as criminal. The thinking public however know that when something smells this bad, it sure as hell is not dead roses.
3. Elements of the police try to intimidate the Public Protector in apparent retaliation, but we’re not supposed to make that kind of conclusion.
4. The official spokesperson of the ANC-government demonstrates that racism is not just confined to the pale skins.
5. A senior, but well-respected  Minister in the ANC government has to publicly rebuke the spokesperson for his blatant racism and stupidity.
6. The war veterans of the ANC, popularly known as the MKMVA engage is a war of words with the Youth wing of the ANC, the ANCYL, over the President’s rather dubious relationship with some rich, but seriously dodgy Indian businessmen, and their rather obvious influence over the government. It’s a classic case of the ANC’s waning geriatrics versus their kindergarten delinquents. Off course it’s not hard, for thinking, even non-thinking people to suspect that where there’s smoke…
7. The President still refuses to speak out explicitly against known despots around Africa [one very noticeably on our doorstep], even one that is facing a revolt from his own people who is likely to topple him quite soon. Instead he prefers to bury his head in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that a popular revolt is certainly entirely possible in South Africa – because he has this spectacularly ignorant (or is it naive) notion that we are different to the rest of Africa because we have regular democratic elections.

The last item perhaps is an indicator of why there is such blatant disdain for the citizens of South Africa, from the ANC. They have this arrogant belief that since they were voted into power by the majority of the population, that fact alone lends credence to their claim to “rule until Jesus returns,” and perception of invincibility at the polls. Until such time as more people taste the emancipation that real education delivers, the majority of the South African public are supposed to buy such delusional utterances as that of the Libyan leader, that the  “people love their leader.”

In the South African context, democracy is but an illusion. The fact that we have different leaders who rule govern makes no difference; the ruling Party still pulls the strings here, including those that control the ruler. Why can’t all the people see that – different ring masters, same circus?