Vote.Them.Out.

I’ve been nursing this cold for a whole week, and it’s mildly annoying. On reading this article about President Zuma’s visit to a squatter settlement in the Western Cape (WC), I became more than a little infuriated. So I guess it’s time for another political rant before I log off and start watching Cloud Atlas which will hopefully calm me down.

The President exclaims that he is “…shocked to see my people live in these conditions.” He was referring to the Democratic Alliance (DA) who he says claims that “…things have improved.” The DA is in opposition to the ANC and is governing the WC – the only Province which is under their control, the rest being under ANC control.

The reality is that there are nine Provinces in South Africa, eight of which is governed by the ANC, of which Zuma is the leader. There are squatter settlements in all these other Provinces, in which people are living in squalid conditions that are equivalent to those of the WC, or worse. Zuma must think that “his” people are as ignorant as this poor woman (Pumla) from the WC squatter settlement who declared that she will vote for the ANC in the upcoming elections and stated that,

It’s just promises probably, but even if the promise is empty you still want that hope.

The reason the ANC are still in power is because there are far too many Pumla’s in South Africa, and far too many people who still believe in the ANC that once was. These people are misguidedly content to live on the hope that some day our politicians will make good on their many promises.

My anger turned to full-blown disgust when a statement was released to the press later this afternoon, in which the ANC stated that public statements that insult the President are “an abuse of the constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of expression.”

The spokesman went on to issue a veiled threat to the effect that:

…Elsewhere in the world, it is a criminal offence to insult a sitting head of state, and South Africans must, together, forge a common understanding on how we halt this impunity and abuse of democratic privilege.

The only countries I know of which actually prosecute and harass their citizens for criticising their President are those rune by demagogues, tyrants an tin-pot dictators. I’d like to think that South Africa is a proper democracy, but there are many, including influential people such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu who think we are on the slippery slope to tyranny.

The ANC that led South Africa to freedom from Apartheid is very different to the one led by Jacob Zuma. It has become in so many ways, a mirror-image of the apartheid era despots, under his leadership, or more accurately his abysmal lack of it.

It is abundantly clear that Zuma’s ANC must perish, so that the real ANC may rise in triumph once again. This can only be accomplished at the voting polls next year; it’s a pity we have to endure his Presidency in the interim.

End of rant; time for that movie…

And so it shall come to pass; there shall be no more bad-hair days in Iran

You might be forgiven for thinking that the banning of “decadent Western hairstyles” for men in Iran, is some sort of piss-poor, belated April Fools’ joke. You might be wrong, for it is true.

Yes, Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (no kidding; that kind of bullshit Ministry really does exist) has declared that only certain types of haircuts will be permitted in this holy cloud-cuckoo land in future; after the Modesty and Veil Festival to be exact (yep, no kidding either – that is indeed a festival held in Iran)

This is the type of patriarchal degeneracy that results when depraved clerics, wallowing in the past, are allowed to interpret dubious religious texts and make decrees that infringe on the human rights and dignity of ordinary people. And when politicians latch onto the mad ramblings of these religious nut-jobs, and appropriate it for their own devious ends, you have the makings of a tyranny.

Why they didn’t go the whole hog and declare that Iranian men should just wear hot-and-sticky pergolas over their entire heads, is not clear at this stage; but one can safely assume that that horror is in the pipeline, for when men become too uppity for their god-fearing boots.

I seriously think that we should all be very concerned that a country with religious and political freaks such as these, are claiming the right to develop nuclear weaponry. I’m not comfortable thinking about those grubby fingers which page through archaic religious nonsense, being held nervously over the little red buttons that make things go ka-boom.

Mad Bob and Malema’s Excellent Weekend

Today Mad Bob Mugabe celebrates 30 years as Tyrant in Chief (TIC) of Zimbabwe. But he was not always a tyrant; for a while he was revered as a liberator of his people from colonial domination. However, for now, he has set himself up to be a TIC for life, just like the parasite that settles on a dog’s back, until squashed to death.

In 30 years he has taken his country from an agricultural powerhouse to a beggar nation. The country now survives on handouts from the imperialist nations that Mad Bob so despises in public, but secretly covets. His disastrous land re-distribution policies have only benefitted his family and cronies in government and elsewhere. Yet today, he leads both the deluded and disillusioned peoples of his country in celebrations – of utter failure.

Zimbabwe will regain freedom and a foothold to former prosperity only when Mad Bob dies naturally, or is squashed to death, just like a TIC. That much is certain.

Further South, Julius Malema, fresh from taking lessons in Zimbabwe on how to ruin a country in short shift, is rabble-rousing around the country, spreading the gospel of land-redistribution to the sheeple. As promised only a week or so ago, he is touting the failed policies of Mad Bob to any fool who will listen during this latest idiotic crusade:

You need land to do everything. Without land, voting means nothing. You vote and you still go beg

No Julius, you don’t need land to do everything; you need intelligence and a willingness to work to do everything. Voting for the incumbent ANC means nothing anyway, whether you have land or not. In half the time it took Mad Bob to totally ruin Zimbabwe, the ANC is well set to do the same to South Africa. The signs are all there. The tyranny of ANC rule is becoming all too apparent 16 years into South Africa’s own liberation from the tyranny of Apartheid. As in Zimbabwe, the liberator first liberates the country of its wealth, then it turns into the despicable monster that it liberated you from.

It’s quite evident that Julius has delusions of grandeur about being the TIC who presides over the 30-year celebrations of South Africa’s liberation from Apartheid, and re-enslavement under ANC tyranny.

South Africans must beware the TIC on the dog’s back which grows fatter every day, or suffer the consequences.