Go figure! Women who support patriarchy

You’d think that women would be averse to supporting patriarchal attitudes, but it would seem that’s not the case when it comes to religion and politics. There’s probably a fairly unpalatable number of women all over the world who see no problem in rationalizing the acceptance of patriarchy when it conflicts with their religious, political and cultural beliefs.

And we have them right here in South Africa too. The ANC Women’s League (ANCWL), who for all intents and purposes function merely as the ANC’s cheerleaders, are adamant that the time is not right for a female leader of the party, and by extension, President of the country. Why?

Well according to the League leaders, it’s against processes, traditions and does not support continuity and healing of a visibly broken organization.

So that makes it alright to continue supporting a male leader who is without doubt one of the worst (in all possible areas) that South Africa has ever had the misfortune to have as a President. And believe me, this guy makes some of the apartheid era Presidents and Prime Ministers look positively angelic.

But does the ANC have the calibre of women in their ranks who could become a future President? According to Jen Thorpe writing in Thought Leader, the pickings are mighty slim, and if one looks at the track record of ANC women in key government positions, the picture is dismal indeed. There are however one or two who have done quite a good job at running their portfolios, but would they be up to running a country?

The only way to find out is to give them the opportunity. Hell, I sincerely doubt they could do a worse job than the sod who’s currently lauding it over his subjects… even if they tried.

But, it seems that they will have to wait until processes and traditions change, and the ANC heals itself. You know as well as I, that that is not going to happen until Jesus returns.

It therefore leaves women with just two more options if they want to see a female President. Either vote for the opposition Democratic Alliance or Agang, both parties having fairly strong women leaders.

And since female voters probably outnumber male, that is quite an appetizing prospect, one that South Africa sorely needs.

SA Police Disservice

Image via Wikipedia

Police brutality in South Africa is hardly new. Most people probably avoid speaking out about it publicly, fearing the unwelcome sound of jack-boots outside their front door in the early hours of the morning, or late hours of the night – just as the police under our former apartheid government were inclined to manoeuvre.

Or perhaps most people are caught in two minds about our police: they would rather have them as a barrier between us [the presumably law-abiding citizens] and the rampant lawlessness engulfing the country – brutality, corruption and incompetence notwithstanding, as opposed to being totally exposed.

Even as I read this blog yesterday by Llewellyn Kriel in M&G’s Thought Leader which describes his personal ordeal of being bullied, manhandled and humiliated by the police at a roadblock, I had no idea of the drama that had unfolded earlier in the day, in Ficksburg in the Free State, also involving our out-of-control police service.

In the latter incident, police brutally assaulted and killed murdered a protestor who was participating in a public demonstration against the ANC-government’s poor record of service delivery in the area.

As Pierre de Vos argues on Constitutionally Speaking, this is not  a very healthy state of affairs for our democracy, flawed as it is:

Where the police becomes a law unto itself, where it sees itself as at war with the community, where it is politicised and sees its task a protecting the leaders of a specific faction of the governing party (as the apartheid era police did), then the police becomes a threat to democracy. Instead of working in partnership with communities to solve crimes, they take sides and see any kind of political protest as illegitimate and as part of a plot to overthrow the government. When that happens the police stops being an institution in service of democracy and starts being an institution in service of itself and of that faction it serves.

Read the full article 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.

Don’t drink and drive…you may run into some police officers who haven’t mastered the decimal system yet

I came across this blog post in Mail & Gaurdian’s Thought Leader titled Fuck the police and realized we’re in much more serious trouble than I thought. I think it’s pretty much accepted by now that our police officers are not the brightest, most honest or competent men in uniform, but it is just plain ludicrous when policemen accountable for handling an alcohol testing instrument cannot tell which is a higher number, 0.04 or 0.010.

On a related note, only recently I wrote about how ANC spokesperson, Jackson Mthembu was arrested for driving under the influence, and how the police at the Mowbray police station were reluctant to process him because of his political connections. Well, it now turns out that there are moves to suspend the use of the Dräger breathalyzer machines (one of which was used to test Mthembu as being over three times the legal limit) because of concerns over its certification and calibration.

This development coming so soon after the arrest has led to suspicions that the ANC-aligned National Prosecuting Authority are trying to influence the outcome of the impending DUI case against Mthembu. It brings back memories about how a certain President escaped prosecution from fraud and corruption charges when the law was conveniently circumnavigated in his favor. Do rats smell?

May I suggest that the entire police force be recalibrated to perform the duties expected of law-keepers, and all our ruling politicians be certified as manipulative, thieving assholes?