mhambi

Mhambi has now moved

2008-07-08T00:51:00.003-04:00

To Mhambi.com There is no need to chnage your feed subscription, I shifted it to the new blog.

Mhambi.blogspot to move to Mhambi.com

2008-07-03T18:23:00.016-04:00

It's been a great two and a bit years since I started this blog.

Because of the Blogger platform limitations I decided a while ago to switch to a self hosted version of the open source Wordpress platform. But the longer I wait the harder this will be to do. No least since all the Google Pagerank juice I have acquired.

So this is my last post. I will keep this blog, and definitely link to it, but all new writing will go onto the new site.

So how popular was Mhambi?

Here is a pic of my Google analytics stats from April 2006 to now. (My tracking code was down for a month but the figures are still more or less correct).

Not bad hey. 24,371 Absolute Unique Visitors. Lets break this down a bit. How many people came how often?

Unfortunately almost 70% came but once, and never again (A number I hope to improve on with a Wordpress blog).

But quite allot (more than 3500) of people have visited the site more than 9 times. A whopping 470 people have visited the site more than 200 times. Whey! Want to buy Mhambi t-shirts guys?

Content

So what's my most popular posts? Well that's a bit unfair, some posts have been out there for more than 2 years, while others are barely a month old.

Still its quite interesting.

The General De La Rey's music video trumped all. I suspect that most of those visitors that came once came for that.

Two of my better posts, His big white self and Quito: A background to a battle are in the top 10.

Other posts I rate like Are Afrikaner's the planet's worst racists?, The unbearable whiteness of being, and De la Rey the left wing icon also has done well.

Some posts that I would recommend you read if you have not includes Afrikaner vs Cuban: the irony of Cuito Cuanavale, Of generations, arseholes, Israel and volkstate and Apartheid reporting and moral double standards. It was written before the well publicised xenophobic violence.

With regards to this recent violence I am particularly proud of the analysis I did in The rainbow racists are nationalistic and not that poor and Mbeki's ANC is Africanist not Nationalist.

A number posts with racey pictures or about sexuality have done well, much better than they should have.

But when MP Andries Nel responded to a post on my blog, I decided its time to clean up and get serious - Mhambi has entered high society.

(I also noticed my older sister had subscribed via email ;) ).

Where did all my traffic come from?

Besides the obvious candidate, Google, a surprising amount came via Blik.co.za, the Afrikaans link recommendation site.

Amatomu, the South African version of Technorati has not been that great at all at driving traffic, that's despite Mhambi being in their top 30 South African political blogs for ages.

Other sites of note that drove traffic to me is Pierre De Vos's Constitutionally Speaking blog and Moneyweb who featured one of my articles, as well as a Dutch TV station's site.

As soon as my new site is live I will let you know.

In the mean time, a 25 part documentary series on the Angolan Border War called Grensoorlog starts on Sunday on Kyknet. It features over 200 interviews with ordinary grunts (including the very first Swapo insurgent), the operators like Jan Breytenbach, to the big boys like Pik, Chester Crocker and Gorbachov.

You can watch it over the Net at Kuduclub. I directed two episodes and researched and help write the program structure. Watch it if you can you'd be surprised how compelling this part of South African history really is, and how much of what happened you don't know.

And yes there's a whole two programs dedicated to Quito Cuanavale.

Mhambi

South Africa is going down

2008-07-01T20:38:00.007-04:00

Mhambi is really depressed. If you have been following this blog it's a no brainer to figure out why. South Africa is going down.

When things started to go awry round 1997 (ok, their were earlier signs but we all chose to ignore them), Mhambi was one of those who put the blame on the ANC's neo-liberal economic policies. I read Patric Bond, and nodded at the sage words of Sampie Terre'blance.

Spiraling crime, the lack of government could all be laid at Mbeki's laissez faire door. The fact that respected anti-apartheid campainers like Dennis Davis were being sidelined for criticising black apartheid sycophants should have warned us that more was rotten.

Unfortunately, the reality of the new racially exclusive Africanism of Mbeki and its pervasive acceptance amongst the black elite only dawned on many when he made his two nations speech. Even then the business world and whites choose to ignore it, the economy was doing just swell, and if you were wealthy so were you.

Aids? Well nobody really knew what to make of that. To ghastly to contemplate. It had me seething with rage and incomprehension.

Corruption? Debilitating. Well it was a Mbeki, a neo-liberal thing. The arms deal, Travelgate and so many more happened under his watch.

Zuma and the left seemed to be a universal panacea to me. He was not a racialist, not a denialist and he was left inclined. At last we could get the state to take care of its citizens.

It was not to be...

Then Shaik and the arms deal transpired, and Zuma was tainted. And the rape case.

Still I believed nothing could be worse than Mbeki. Besides the evidence against Zuma in the rape case was flimsy.

...but... the nagging doubts...

...legal technicalities aside, what does it say of Zuma's supporters that they still wanted a man so tainted as president? Is this a movement or a one man hagiography?

Some influential supporters would not wait any longer for us to make inferences of their character. ANC youth leader Julius Malema is threatening the Constitutional Court with promises to die for Zuma. Not to worry, don't take me literally he avers.

How are we to read that?

Even more worrying is Zwelezima Vavi's parroting of murderous threats. We are used to idiotic statements from the Youth league. We expected allot more from the leadership of an workers organisation like Cosatu.

Zuma's own lawyers have now stooped to a level where they are trying to degenerate the reputation of the court.

Now I am wondering. Is the Zunami a genuine left movement for the benefit of poor South Africans or a cult of personality ready to usher in a new elite?

Is the Zunami going to give us a social compassionate state at the expense of the rule of law? Unfortunately the first is always dependent on the latter.

All of us must become activists in the service of our Constitution

2008-06-26T23:59:00.003-04:00

It's time to take a stand.

Kader Asmal has drawn up a Deceleration in defense of our Constitution.

This significant moment in our history requires that all of us become activists in the service of our Constitution.Each of us must act as a steward, if not as an owner.

We, the undersigned, take note of recent threats to kill uttered by a youth leader and a trade union federation official in the context of cases presently before the Constitutional Court.

We abhor and reject such intimidatory and threatening tactics in a constitutional democracy such as South Africa.

Just as we condemn the anti-democratic and violent practices in Zimbabwe, we must condemn South African leaders who threaten to kill to achieve political objectives.

You can read it all here, or download it (PDF) sign it and fax it to (27) +11 250 2505.

African Union has its hands full

2008-06-26T14:21:00.005-04:00

Mandela yesterday, to his credit, referred to Darfur and South Africa, besides Zimbabwe as crisis hot spots. It so happens that the African Union will have a summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from Monday.

In reality there's allot more going down at present. I have made a map with the main conflicts and crises under way in Africa ahead of the African Union summit.

Click on the icons for more details. (The information on this map come from here.)

Foreign policy magazine has also just release their Failed states index. 4 or the top 5 is in sub-Saharan Africa.

View Larger Map

Mandela - a tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe

2008-06-25T22:03:00.005-04:00

"We watch with sadness the continuing tragedy in Darfur. Nearer to home we have seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe."

Nelson Mandela condemned Robert Mugabe at a dinner in London last night. Judging from comments on UK websites many think its too little too late.

But as I posted yesterday, considering the history of antagonism between Mandela and Mbeki's ANC, I think people should cut Mandela slack.

It is also encouraging that he focussed not only on Zimbabwe, but on Darfur, and our own countries problems. Thabo Mbeki will no doubt be furious at Nelson's interference and 'pandering to the West'.

Is Nelson Mandela's silence on Zimbabwe OK?

2008-06-24T22:01:00.010-04:00

Much is currently being made in the British Press of Nelson Mandela's visit to the UK for the concert celebration of his 90th birthday.

Not because of the planned star studded line up mind you. But because Mandela has not condemned Robert Mugabe's government of late. There's even talk on a mini protest by the likes of activist Peter Thatchel. Thatchel wrote in the UK Independent that Mandela's "silence is connivance". Christopher Hitchens has joined the chorus in Slate, asking, why the Lion has not roared.

I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela's lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince—that Mandela is now a very old man—and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn't know what's happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn't understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise.

Hitchens is wrong. A word or two, or a torrent of condemnation would make no difference whatsoever.

Mugabe has no time for Mandela. The Mbeki government, which has some influence over Mugabe, detests Mandela's interference more than it detests human rights abuses.

In 2000, at the the time of the first Zimbabwe farm invasions Mandela was trying his best to go quietly into retirement. But events in Zimbabwe and Mbeki's Aids madness proved too much. Mandela spoke out.

In May 2000 when Mbeki controversially embraced Mugabe at a trade fair Mandela attacked 'tyrants' who cling to power: 'We have to be ruthless in denouncing such leaders' he said.

Mbeki was livid.

Mbeki's disagreement with Mandela over foreign policy and quiet diplomacy had gone some way back. In 1995 When Mandela was president Mbeki persuaded an outraged Mandela not to condemn Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha (who wanted to execute writer Ken Saro-Wiwa) and give quiet diplomacy a chance.

When Abacha went ahead and executed Saro-Wiwa, Mandela, his voice quivering with anger, pledged that South Africa will lead the campaign to isolate Nigeria.

Mbeki thought that Mandela had made a mistake. What's more he was just pandering to the West. To Mbeki this condemnation by South Africa would only serve to loose influence with Nigeria. It turned out that Mbeki was wrong. Nigerians resented South Africa's silence. Abacha's regime would not last long.

There is no doubt that Mbeki resented Mandela deeply, and not just because of him being in the right. But because Mandela was larger than life. And because Mandela enchewed Mbeki's racial Africanism for reconciliation in South Africa.

As a result Mbeki tried to ignore Mandela during much of the time of his presidency. Mandela would joke that he had no trouble speaking to any president in the world but his own.

According to Mark GeVisser, many of Mbeki's acolytes believe that Mandela took up the issue of Aids in order to break with his quiet retirement and join battle with Mbeki. This he did at an Conference on Aids in July 2000 in Durban, saying the dispute over the cause of Aids was distracting the battle against it.

Apart from this comment Mandela refrained from publicly criticising Mbeki, instead he wanted to meet the President. After being fobbed off my Mbeki's government for over a year, Mandela took action.

In December 2001 while visiting a treatment center during World Aids Day he said Mbeki was "in dereliction of duty".

Finally in early 2002 he was granted a meeting, but according to GeVisser Mbeki was so dismissive that Mandela decided to take the most provocative action to date.

The Mbeki government was just busy appealing a court ruling compelling it to distribute an Aids anti-retro viral drug called Nevaparine.

On the night before Mbeki was supposed to give the annual state of the nation address, Mandela gave a prize for two South African doctors championing the drug. At the awards after loosing his place and stumbling over his words Mandela looked up and said: "At least I am willing to admit when I have made a mistake."

This was serious.

So serious that matter was duly debated in March 2002 at the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) with Mandela present. 'Speaker after speaker stood up to admonish the former president for being "undisciplined". No one came to his defence.

But although chastined, Mandela had won the Aids battle. In April 2002 the government, forced by the party changed it policy.

This, combined with his increasing frailty, says GeVisser made Mandela take his foot of the throttle. In July 2003 came the reconciliation between Mbeki and Mandela.

In a draft message for Mandela's 85th birthday Mbeki lauded Mandela as an example of "the triumph of the human spirit". When Mandela read this his eyes welled up with tears and he asked his assistant to get 'my President on the line.'

Should Mandela break the truce and speak out on Zimbabwe again? In Southern Africa there's little doubt where Mandela stands on the matter. His voice is unlikely to carry any weight with Mugabe, and serve only to antagonise Mbeki - the only person outside Zimbabwe that could lean on Mugabe.

I hope Mandela does say something Friday, but if he does not, I for one won't hold it against him. He has done far more than his fair share.

Mbeki and the South African government is the one that deserves the opprobrium. If there is a protest it should be outside the South African embassy and not in Hyde park.

BBC looks at SA reconciliation success and failure

2008-06-19T10:47:00.006-04:00

This week Mhambi's favorite radio station BBC Radio 4 has flighted two good documentaries about reconciliation in South Africa. The one, is positive and represents all we could hope to have achieved. It tells the story of musician Roger Lucey and security branch policeman Paul Erasmus. Paul effectively destroyed Lucey's career.

Today they are close friends.

The second, Race and Reconciliation, tells the depressing tale of the rise of racism in South Africa. It includes interviews with students from the University of Pretoria and the Skierlik killer's pastor. It was made before the outbreak of xenophobic violence but is good none the less.

The bitterswet taste of Chinese chocolates

2008-06-19T10:14:00.010-04:00

Mhambi read two interesting articles this week, both relating to the Chinese and blackness. The first is a Chinese reporters account on a blog of 'Chocolate City'. Chocolate City is the name Chinese taxi drivers have given to a 10 square kilometer area centered around Hongqiao, the area in Guangzhou China where Africans have settled.

Touch Africans in China
Originally uploaded by triciawang 王圣㨗.

'Many taxi drivers aren’t willing to take on “chocolate” customers. They don’t like the nose-irritating perfume, nor the constant bargaining on every trip. Some drivers will use excuses that “you’re too big, the car won’t fit you”, or “I don’t understand your foreign language”; but some don’t care, “driving anybody is just business.”

Based on official statistics, since 2003, the number of Africans in Guangzhou has been growing at 30-40% annually. Based on a report in the Guangzhou Daily, there might already be 100,000 in the community. They come from Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Liberia, and Mali. Amongst these, Africa’s most populous country Nigeria claims first place.'

The other is news that South African Chinese will at last be considered 'black' under Black Empowerment legislation.

'The Pretoria High Court on Wednesday granted a landmark ruling that Chinese South Africans are to be included in the definition of "black people" in legislation designed to benefit previously disadvantaged groups.

Judge Cynthia Pretorius granted an order in terms of which Chinese South Africans are included in the definition of "black people" in the Broad-Based Economic Empowerment Act and the Employment Equity Act. Both laws cover Africans, coloureds and Indians.'

Update

SA labour minister Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has been accused of racism for his remarks about the classification of South African Chinese as black.

He said he believed the Chinese who brought the application were targeting the benefits of black economic empowerment.

"That's why other people are having fears, because the fear is that they are business entrepreneurs. I hear people for instance saying, 'We are going to be flooded by everything from China.' We don't know whether that's one of their objectives, that they flood us and then we don't challenge them because they are coloureds. So I suspect that on the BEE front, there could be some serious challenges there."

"On the labour market, I don't think they have given it careful thought, because there they are going to have some serious difficulties in relation to the way they are treating the workers in the workplaces."

"Because in some workplaces, that we have visited together with some of the inspectors, they even refuse to speak English. They say, 'We can't speak English.' Chinese pretend to be dumb when they are not. We know they are not. Chinese are very clever people."

Mdladlana said 90% of Chinese factories inspected by his department had been found "wanting".

"I suppose if I stand up now and say I want to be classified as pink, so maybe a court will agree that you are pink, even if you are not pink."

The Star on Wednesday quoted Patrick Chong, chairperson of the Chinese Association of South Africa, as saying that he was disappointed by the minister's comments.

"I don't think he has missed the point; I think he has missed the entire community. The community that went to court are as South African as the next person and speak English and Afrikaans fluently. We had to learn these languages. Also, the South African Chinese don't own many factories. I can think of only four, and they are in the Western Cape," Chong told the newspaper.

Hlophe - the slope just got slippier

2008-06-15T23:48:00.016-04:00

"But where's the hope going to come from?"...

Hardly two weeks have gone by since FW de Klerk in an BBC radio interview declared to a concerned Evan Davis that South Africa's legal institutions are sound, and that these legal institutions would be the ballast, the anchor of our ship South Africa, to the certainties and protection of constitutional democracy.

constitutional court
Originally uploaded by saajana.

Hardly had he and today we have the biggest Constitutional Crisis in the country's history. How did it come to this?

Is it because ours is a Constitution born slippy? A slip-shod job at the negotiation table in Kempton perhaps? Were all the legal nuts and safeguarding bolts not fastened? Did we not need more rules on legal decorum and regulations to bolster the importance and sanctity of the judicial institutions?

Sadly, Mhambi does not think it would have made a difference.

All functioning societies require the actors in it to buy into the social contract. To step back from the brink in times of friction for the sake of the whole. It's a kind of rational thing to do.

No state can police everybody. For the great and the good and the great unwashed alike, rules should be obeyed more by way of self imposed deference for them, than by enforcement.

It's supposed to be only crooks that the state has to hold in check through force. And these felons should not be able to count on silence and even acceptance from sections of the ruling elite and society at large.

But ours is a country where Police Chiefs and Judges toy with the law. Ours is a country where senior public officials denigrate their office by refusing to resign until they are proven guilty. Ours is a country where big men are more than big laws.

What exactly transpired when the Constitutional Court decided to release a media statement that they will complain against Judge Hhlophe to the Judicial Service Commission instead of just complaining is unclear as of yet.

But with the benefit of hindsight it was most probably a mistake.

But far greater was the mistake of the JSC not to give Judge Hhlophe the boot earlier, which was after all a clear cut case on more than one serious ground.

But Judges like Bernard Ngoepe seemed more concerned about how it would look to the public if it came to be known that a Judge had not filled in his tax forms than whether he was fit for office.

Transcripts of the hearings show that Judge President Howie asked whether Hlophe had declared his income from Oasis (the company he was earing money from for which he could not produce written consent) for for tax purposes.

When Hlophe sought to evade the question, saying “I have not had any queries raised from the tax authorities”, Howie refused to let him off the hook, demanding that he provide the relevant information to the commission.

Ngoepe later tried to get Howie to back away from this line of questioning, saying he was “quite uncomfortable about such direction because what if someone hears that he has not disclosed that in his tax returns, which means a criminal offence ...”

Er... yeah

That a Judge would approach members of the Constitutional Court Bench in such a brazen fashion and threaten them as is alleged (That he would be the next Judge President and therefor keeper of their judicial fortunes), boggles the mind. I mean if somebody had told me that would happen circa 1994, I would have thought them deranged or racist rabbit hole fantacists.

That the two new Constitutional Court Judges Nkabinde and Jafta allegedly approached by Hlophe now sent a statement to the JSE that they are in fact not complainants and don't intend to give a statement (other than this one), is of course also the stuff of rabbit holes - a very deep stomach turning one.

According to City Press, this came as a surprise to the rest of the Court. I bet.

The JSE has in the meantime asked for the Court whether they should proceed, it can not operate without evidence. That both of the statements made it to the public domain is also extremely peculiar and irregular as they were both intended for the JSE's and parties concerned eyes only.

According to City Press the Constitutional Court wants to fight on, claiming that the two Judges do not have a right to remain silent in this context. I would think that Legal Philosophy would support that view. How could two Judges' silence hold the countries future at ransom? Their silence makes a mockery of Constitutional Court Judges's roles as protectors on the Constitution.

And legal philosophy is what we will need to look to because this is legal terrain so new that little precedent exists.

Bayart points out in the Criminalization of the State in Africa that strong states is antithetical to how much of power is organized in Africa. Real power is often wielded in opaque networks behind the scenes. And power is all that matters.

Open Constitutional Courts have a tendency to get in the way of this kind of power wielded to benefit predatory elites.

This is another sign post on the road to hell.

We might well ask again, where will the hope come from?

No Afrikaans - Would it be a loss to the planet?

2008-06-09T13:56:00.015-04:00

The other day jewish South Africans on It's Almost Supernatural were in a tizz about a letter.

"The letter entitled “We fought apartheid; we see no reason to celebrate it in Israel now!” angers me on so many levels, but none more so than the official endorsement of the letter by the ANC."

Commentator after commentator criticised the ANC as if the end was nigh.

"The logic is quite simple. The ANC (rightly) hates supporters of South African apartheid. If they believe that Israel is an apartheid state then they will hate Israel and its supporters. So if you are a Zionist, let it be known, the ANC officially hates you and would probably prefer it if you left South Africa. If there was no affluence in the local Jewish community, I wonder whether we would still have our place in the South African sun?"

And then I replied:

'This is not logic guys. How can you infer that they would probably prefer that you all leave?

Get a sense of perspective. Jeez. Gary goes on about the murders in Israel. There's no accurate tally but it's been suggested that more than 2000 farmers have been killed in this country since 1994.

You guys are not half as threatened as Afrikaners are and your going on as if the world has ended. If I was you I'd concentrate on defending what you have already achieved - Israel - by making some justified concessions and ignore the ANC.

At the rate things are going now your going to be a minority in your own country and you'll be screwed. Get rid of the illegal settlements for your own sake.'

My point was that Afrikaners are more at peril, because it's a language based identity. The Jews have a state and besides they have a religious based identity and not a language based one. The children of Afrikaner emigrants won't speak Afrikaans.

But a certain contributer, Blacklisted dictator commentated pointedly:

""Afrikaners "have a language based identity" which would be lost by emigrating. If that is the case, it might be better to lose your culture rather than your life?...

If speaking Afrikaans is the be all and end all of your culture/existence, then you should perhaps have a re-think about the meaning of your life. However, I have a clever solution to your dilemma..learn Dutch and emigrate to Amsterdam. It is a great city. Much better than Pretoria or Stellenbosch...

If being Afrikaans is "more than a language", what else does it include?

I supposes, it is primarily direct contact with other Afrikaners in South Africa? The question still unfortunately arises whether Afrikaners have a sustainable future in South Africa. I believe that they don't. As I have previously stated all colours and all faiths should make plans to get out."

And then the coup the grace.

"Would it be a loss to me if this planet lost the Afrikaans culture?

I think that you should put this question in context. Many many cultures are being lost annually throughout the world. It is a sad fact of life."

Indeed, would it be a loss to the world? Would it be a loss to Afrikaners? Does it matter?

I decided not to answer the Blacklisted Dictator. Instead, inspired by Andries Bezuidenhout I made a little compilation of Afrikaans songs about emigration, loss, verlange and heimwee.

Andries was queried about Afrikaans by Wits Phd student Mandisa Mbali recently. Mandisa asked him why he sings in Afrikaans, a dying language? Andries replied, "We want to give it a beautiful funeral."

Enjoy.

Afrikaner diaspora songs (best when flying or driving)

When things are going well...
Originally uploaded by j.dubb.

Playlist

Rian Malan - Trekboer (About missing Africa but being scared of it)

Gert Vlok Nel - Epitaph - (About dreaming of being as far away as possible)

Koos Kombuis - Vêr Van Die Ou Kalahari (About feeling guilty about running away)

Valliant Swart - Banneling (About being an exile)

Andries Bezuidenhout - Bus na Toronto (Remembering the struggle and wars from the safety of the North)

Gert Vlok Nel - Moenie My Hier Vergeet Nie, Dixie (The angst of being left behind in a country where whitches are still burn't)

Gazelle - Die Verlore Seun (Bright lights big city - cause there's a whole world out there - Careful, includes hidden track)

Mbeki's ANC is Africanist not Nationalist

2008-06-06T02:52:00.012-04:00

...and that is the problem.

Nationalism - A double edged sword?

This week Ivor Chipkin, Wits Professor and author of Do South Africans Exist? roundly denounced African Nationalism in a commentary The curse of African nationalism published in the Mail & Guardian.

Chipkin argues that everything from the denial of the current spate of xenophobic attacks to the government response to Aids can be laid at the door of anti-white sentiment driven by African nationalism.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that government responses since 1994 to as diverse a range of challenges as macroeconomic policy and HIV/Aids have been informed by a preoccupation with race and white racism in particular."

The reason for a pre-occupation by the ANC with whites is obvious he says. "Apartheid was a phenomenon of mass, institutionalised white racism sustained over many decades."

But says Chipkin, because whites held all the human and financial capital - economic development and racial redress were contingent on managing white racism.

This of course makes sense. But the problem was the wildly divergent ways of seeking redress and managing white racism between the Mbeki and Mandela governments.

Mbeki holds the view that whites can not escape their racism. In exile Mbeki even lobbied to deny Joe Slovo leadership of the South African Communist Party on the basis that he was white.

Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission whites could, so the theory goes, "by recognising their personal and collective complicity in this violence, resurrect their humanity and enter the new South Africa."

But even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was to be whites' bapticism of fire is insufficient for Mbeki's racial view of the world.

Chipkin is on the button when he says that one of the key ideological tenets of the Mbeki administration has been - "if whites could not escape their racism, then they could not be trusted in public life." This is the essence of what the government transformation policy is says Chipkin.

This thinking is closely associated with "African nationalism" he ads.

"It is distinguished from the politics of non-racialism by its insistence that the post-apartheid government is a black government."

And he diagnoses the negative fall out of this kind "African nationalism". The dismissal of all criticism which is invariably equated as racism. And it works quite simply like this:

1. the government is a black government;
2. criticism of the government is, therefore, criticism of blacks; and
3. criticism is racist.

"The inability to come to terms with the agency of black people is, ironically, the hallmark of African nationalism. It is driven to reduce the actions of blacks to the machinations of others (white racists, in particular). Claims of a "third force" are merely instances of this political logic -- a refusal to come to terms with the racist nationalism of those committing ethnic cleansing throughout the country."

And this is where Mhambi disagrees.

Yes, it's endemic of not just the ANC but also white left-wingers like law blogger Pierre De Vos to present black South Africans as marionettes and to routinely abrogate them from responsibility. Rhoda Kadalie was right when she said that black South Africa has clothed themselves as perpetual victims that makes them oblivious to their own hate.

My problem with Chipkin's piece comes from the description of this phenomena as African nationalism and equating the xenophobic events in the townships with the government's ideology.

As I pointed out in another post it may well be a chauvinistic nationalism that drove the xenophobic violence. It may well be that the fantastical Africanist ideology of the government made for fertile xenophobic soil, by not controlling immigration. But the xenophobia should not be confused with the government's "dominant racially exclusive Africanist ideology" as Van Zyl Slabbert describes it.

Even if this racial Africanism tries to excuse the chauvinistic nationalism, the nationalism actually stands in opposition to much of Africanism.

I would argue that this Africanist ideology is not classically nationalist at all.

Anthony D. Smith of Nationalism and Ethnicty School at the London School of Economics, is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies.

According to Anothony Smith, the preconditions for the formation of a nation are as follows:

A fixed homeland (current or historical)
High autonomy
Hostile surroundings
Memories of battles
Sacred centers
Languages and scripts
Special customs
Historical records and thinking

Those preconditions may create powerful common mythology. It's easy to see why on a massive continent with so many divergent culture's, and such weak transport and communication links, the drive for one African Nationalism is a fantasy and out of kilter with reality.

Smith also posits that nationalisms are formed through the inclusion of the whole populace and not just elites. And nations can me multi-ethnic. It's easy to see how the joint fight, often organised on a civic basis, by the grass roots against apartheid could have contributed to a uniting of our different ethic mythologies. Combine this with labour mobility, good transport, and even achievements like winning the rugby world cup and it's easy to see how South Africans can begin to see themselves as a nation.

Although Smith thinks that nations often have some much earlier pri-mordial base that helps the building of the national myth he recognizes that nationalism as a powerful force first presented itself in the 19th century as civic nationalism. It was an age when the winds of change blew through Europe.

When the uniter of Italy, the nationalist Garibaldi arrived in England he was welcomed by English radicals as a progressive. Why?

Because this is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy from the active participation of its citizenry, from the degree to which it represents the "will of the people".

This nationalist movement had it's base in the people, uniting them against autocratic rulers.

It is often seen as originating with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and especially the social contract theories. Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and liberalism.

When Jacob Zuma was warned to wild cheers to shape up or ship out in a township in Springs, we witnessed perhaps the benign side nationalism introduced to Europe in the 19th century that is normally so lacking in Africa.

A nationalism that not only makes it citizens ask, what can I do for my nation, and not what I can get from my nation. It makes it's people citizens in the first place.

Compare this to Africanism with its woolly insistence of African unity and it's often criticised disrespect for Africa's difference. In this respect the Africanists are much like the Euro centric westerners they despise, they all see Africa as a country.

Africanism is elitist, and sees the whole African continent as the domain of the powerful. The people itself, nevermind their will is all but ignored. Practical evidence of this is for all to see. African leaders at African forums rarely choose the side of populations in opposition to their elite piers.

This clash between nationalism and Africanism explains the ANC and Thabo Mbeki's acute embarrassment when well organised xenophobic nationalism burst his Africanist dream. The people attacked were not white. And allegations of the attacks being driven by Zulu's not withstanding, the hatred united South Africans across - until recently very divisive - ethnic and regional lines.

Intellectually Mbeki would have been allot more comfortable if it was white South Africans being attacked. It would have fitted neatly into his grand narrative of incurable white racism as the source of the countries ills.

After all his biography, A Dream Deferred, references a favourite Mbeki poem used by him to sound a warning to whites in parlaiment.

What happens to a dream deferred?

It explodes.

What happiness science can teach SA on xenophobia

2008-05-30T11:58:00.015-04:00

Wealthy people have a greater potential to suffer than the poor.

A True Smile
Originally uploaded by ~FreeBirD®~.

Think that statement is controversial? Here is some more:

Being more wealthy than others, and particular your peers, makes you feel happier; Being poorer than others, particular your peers makes people unhappy. One of the greatest sources of happiness are sound relationships.

These and other revelations came from a book I recently read. The book Happiness, Lessons from a new science, from the pen of Richard Layard, a Professor in Economics at the London School of Economics makes claims that will annoy and please left and right wingers alike.

And it makes for interesting insights when applied to South Africa.

The study of happiness in economics is very new but growing rapidly world wide. But why study happiness?

Traditionally, especially in western democracies and Japan, politicians and economists have aimed for maximising economic growth. The argument was that the greater wealth of the population, the greater the feeling of well-being.

For some time now however, economists have noticed that although wealth have increased in the west, levels of happiness have not. In fact in most western countries levels of happiness have actually started to decline even when levels of wealth has grown.

It would seem that once a population reaches a certain level of wealth, becoming richer does not add to a sense of well-being.

Adaptation: As people get used to higher income levels, their idea of a sufficient income grows with their income. If they fail to anticipate that effect, they will invest more time for work than is good for their happiness.

Layard explains that reason why happiness is decreasing in wealthy societies is exactly that in attempts to earn more money, individuals have less time.

And less time means a decline in relationships in general and the quality of relationships. And quality relationships along with good health is one of the prime ingredients of happiness.

Another problem is that earning more often requires individuals to move and settle in different places. This movement and displacement is unsettling and also impacts relationships. It makes individuals unhappy.

A sense of belonging is also central to happiness. This militates against the idea of individuals alone in the big cosmopolitan city.

Layard's research is a strong argument for government intervention to make society more equal. As I mentioned above being poorer than your peers is one of the main causes of unhappiness.

Social comparisons: In contrast to what traditional economics predicts, happiness is derived from relative income as well as from absolute income. That is, if everyone gains purchasing power, some may still turn out unhappier if their position compared to others is worse. This effect may not turn economic growth into a zero sum game entirely, but it will likely diminish the benefits people draw from their hard work. In an economy where not only companies, but individuals are constantly forced to compete with each other, life and work are experienced as a rat race.

But Layard's studies suggests caution:

Loosing what you have, is a greater cause of unhappiness than if you are already poor. A state should therefore be sensitive when introducing re-distributive policies as it can make a part of the population very unhappy.

There are many indicators that in the period 1994 - 2002 South Africans have become poorer. But since 2002 when many socials grants were introduced or broadened, the poor's wealth have indeed increased.

But inequality has increased throughout 1994 to now, and none more so than in between blacks themselves. As the closest peers to poor black SA, the huge difference between rich black SA and poor black SA is a huge potential cause of unhappiness.

There is another key insight Layard provides that might help to explain some of our own xenophobic violence. As I have pointed out, places where the violence broke out were poor, but not the poorest townships in South Africa.

The science of happiness would suggest that once you have a developmental state that looks after the poor, this poor will be less willing to accept outsiders that threaten what they have.

This is wholely consistent with the findings published in the Sunday Times that Mozambiquecans and Zimbabweans are less xenophobic than their neighbours - the relatively wealthy Namibians or South Africans.

Layards research can also be used in other ways to advance the cause of restrictions on immigration. Unstable populations where inhabitants do not know each other, are unhappier places than familiar tight knit communities.

De Klerk BBC Radio Interview

2008-05-30T11:11:00.008-04:00

The BBC's Today program interviewed FW De Klerk (Audio) about recent events in South Africa this morning.

a book and a word3
Originally uploaded by madamofo.

He is asked, "where will the hope for political change come from?"

De Klerk is "not loosing sleep". He puts his trust in the courts and the new top leadership of the ANC he says who is showing encouraging signs.

He condemned the xenophobic violence but says the root causes is unemployment and crime.

Mr. De Klerk is a bit too sanguine and simplistic in his analysis me thinks. But I digress.

Asked whether the seeds of this violence lays in the legacy of apartheid, De Klerk retorts that apartheid was developmental and that such a claim would be a great over simplification.

Asked whether if apartheid ended earlier it would have made for a smoother transition in South Africa, De Klerk claimed that would not have happened because of the ANC links with and the risk of expansionist Soviet Communism.

Beware stumbling blocks

2008-05-27T06:19:00.008-04:00

The people shall govern - a man confronts Zuma in Bakerton

"If you are a stumbling block, we are going to kick you away"

Mhambi is perplexed. In vain I have waited for the media to cover this warning on their front pages. And nobody connected it to the Sunday Times research findings that claimed that nationalism is driving xenophobia.

We had one or two analytical pieces, but nothing matching its potential import.

Is this stark warning to the leader of a governing African party and the rapturous applause in which it was received, not totally novel on this continent?

As Mhambi reported at length in the post, Rainbow racists are Nationalistic on Sunday, what happened in Bakerton, Springs might possibly be the most striking example of an attitude that could change South Africa for the good.

Thabo Mbeki is a disgrace
How strange to see Mbeki visibly upset and outraged at the violence in the country.

What about your own citizens Mr. Mbeki? And how about the Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe? Or the Burmese? I don't understand you Mr. President.

Ah, I get it. The killing of other Africans by South Africans in South Africa have violated your Pan Africanist ideologies. Shame.

Mr. President you are a disgrace, it is all your fault.

Anti-xenephobia march video

2008-05-27T03:10:00.005-04:00

Here's a video of the march against Xenophobia in Hillbrow Johannesburg. In it you can see how happy these immigrants were to see South Africans take a stand.

You have to feel for these people, many who come from the most desperate countries imaginable.

There are many reports of thousands of Mozambiquecans leaving South Africa. Their country is stable and economy booming (although from a small base). Many other immigrants don't have that luxury.

Yeoville still a haven for immigrants

2008-05-27T02:31:00.010-04:00

A while ago I wrote about my meeting with Kleinboer, the award winning Afrikaans author that lives and has lived in exotic Yeoville, Johannesburg for many years.

The view from Kleinboer's porch

Kleinboer took me on a tour of his hood.

Kleinboer reckons the area has already hit rock bottom and is now on the way up. Not to long ago his house was worth R100000. Now he thinks its three times that. It's all because of the immigrants he reckons. Especially the Congolese, and the Nigerians. He says that although only about 50% of the blacks in the area are South African, 80% of the businesses are run by immigrants.

He also reckons the variety and kinds of foods to be found in the various new restaurants, trumps the local fare.

I also told you about the mustachioed Congolese gentleman that welcomed us to a Congolese bar.

"Welcome to our country!" he said, while shaking our hands vociferously.

"You must come back in 2010."

Kleinboer protested, but not too much.

During another visit we encountered one of those dramatic high-veld thunderstorms, and were forced to braai in Kleinboer's garage. It was here that a South African neighbor of Kleinboer told me in no uncertain terms.

"You just wait, one day we will rise up and kill all these foreigners."

The neigbour was evidently regarded as a well adjusted member of the community. With a lovely house, children and a wonderful wife.

I spoke to Kleinboer on the phone the other day. Apparently Yeoville has not seen any violence. Immigrants try and stay off the streets at night.

He opinioned its probably because in this area the immigrants are a majority.

Kenya's The Nation on South Africa

2008-05-25T00:03:00.005-04:00

One of the most interesting and correct assesments of the xenophobic troubles in South Africa comes from Kenya's Daily Nation.

"The country’s reputation is now in tatters, more so in Africa where it likes to be seen as special."

The rainbow racists are nationalistic and not that poor

2008-05-24T20:40:00.045-04:00

Much have been written of late as to the root causes of the wave of xenophobic violence that has rocked the "rainbow" nation.

Press reports of comments by the marauding attackers themselves gave the reasons as follows:

* Foreigners commit crime;
* Take our jobs; and
* Sleep with our women;

Clever commentators have embellished on these prosaic themes: It's due to poverty, increased inequality, rising food prices, followed closely by government neglect and widespread corruption by the state when dealing with township dwellers. I endorsed and still do endorse these views to an extent.

Another view was expressed by the likes of Rhoda Kadalie. Kadalie argues that black South Africa has clothed themselves as perpetual victims which makes them oblivious to their own hate. Foreigners that are successful threaten this victim edifice.

Some pointed at a nation brutalised by apartheid.

Xolela Mangcu reckons the nature of the violence is the ANC's fault for using and creating a theatrical and terrifying form of violence to attain political hegemony.

Some commentators have pointed fingers at negrophobia. Black South Africans are hating themselves and projecting this hate onto people that are perceived to be more black.

Others have suggested that its a Zulu thing, and that Zuma's acendency have made the marginalised more bold.

Certain members of the ANC has pointed a finger at a "third force" with links to apartheid agents.

"Third force"

A third force
Let's deal with the last reason first. These events might have been organised. Yes.

But that does not make this some kind of a 'third force'. Mhambi worked as an investigator at the TRC, and South Africa did have a real 'third force' in action come 1989 to 1993.

How organised they were was never properly established but we do know this. From ordinary policemen to senior police generals were complicit in everything from destroying evidence against Inkatha operatives (like Themba Khoza who was caught red handed at a massacre in Sebokeng) and gangs, to supplying IFP members with Ak 47's and hand grenades.

Perhaps Krappies Engelbrecht is dishing out golf clubs from the back of his boot in Boksburg. But I doubt it.

All the other reasons advanced above are probably true to some extent, but there are also a few myths to be busted. Alexandra where this latest bout of violence started is not one of South Africa's poorest townships.

More importantly its one of the few townships surrounded by wealthy suburbs and therefore a very desirable address for job seekers. Most township dwellers spend a significant amount of their pay traveling to and from work.

So far there have been very few incidents of attacks in the Northern Province, South Africa's poorest region. Or in KwaZulu and the Eastern Cape, the other really poor provinces.

The Sunday Times publishes today two interesting pieces of research:

* The World Values Survey on International Attitudes to Immigration
* The Southern African Migration Project (Samp)

I have never met a nice South African
This song aimed at white apartheid South Africa is probably actually true for all of us.

We are according to these reports the most xenophobic nation in the world. Add that to the biggest man made hole as a feather in our cap.

The reports show that Mozambicans are far less xenophobic than we are. But it ads, they are also allot poorer.

The most unequal neigbours
We have the report says “perhaps the most lopsided regional economics in the world”, in which, per capita, Mozambicans earn 36 times less than South Africans, and Zimbabweans far less than that.

An imbalance that was greater even than that of some of the world’s most unequal neighbours – such as that between Mexico and the US, or Burma and Thailand.

It also mentions -

# An 81% food price hike in three years;
# The reaching of the “tipping point” of more than 25% of residents in informal settlements estimated to be illegal migrants;
# Widespread corruption at the Department of Home Affairs (Foreign nationals have been buying South African ID's and government subsidised homes for the poor.);
# The failure of the government to heed isolated xenophobic attacks and regular warnings from the SA Human Rights Commission, Idasa and the National Intelligence Agency; and
# “A perpetuation of negative stereotypes of migrants in the South African press” — and from public figures — according to a major report by Queens University, Canada, and Samp, which found that 52% of press reports on migration from 2000 to 2003 included negative references to migrants.

It confirms that all of South Africa is very xenophobic but: "For black South Africans, it’s personal. The 2006 World Values Survey showed that 21.3% of black South Africans did not want an immigrant living next door, compared with roughly 1% of whites, coloureds and Indians."

Black South Africans were significantly more suspicious of black African migrants than immigrants from Europe or North America.

Is this Negrophobia then?

Money makes you nasty
Well the report makes for some further interesting reading. It says that all of this happened in a context of an existing xenophobia.

One of the most severe in the world in fact - born of an acute nationalist pride over the “Rainbow Nation” and the fear that poorer African nations wish to plunder a rare African success.

And it says, South Africans are not xenophobic against all comers. Citizens of Botswana are sharp. But “positive views” of Zimbabweans, at just 12%, and Mozambicans, 14% and Ghanaians, at 11%, contrasted sharply with the 44% registered for Botswana.

Nationalism, the silver lining in a dark cloud?
And Botswana and Namibians, who earn close to the average South African wage, showed levels of xenophobia almost as high as our own.

The report says that South African xenophobia is a unique brand in Africa; distinct from that in Botswana. Its xenophobia of the nationalist stripe.

The questionnaire included an apparently arbitrary category – “It’s our country – keep out!”, which recorded scores of 3 and 4% for most SADC countries.

However, researchers were astonished to find that this was the most important factor for over 15% of South Africans – higher, even, than concerns about foreigners importing crime.

Could this outbreak of violence, actually be an unforseen part of what Idasa's Steven Friedman has called a flowering of democracy? He recently said in reference to the Zuma ascendancy:

"IS THIS the best of times, or the worst?"

Perhaps it is both.

And just today the studies assertion of South African nationalism was confirmed, as was its democratizing potential, when Jacob Zuma visited the trouble spots.

"While the leader was loudly welcomed by the crowd -- packed into a small community centre -- he received an unusually tough response as members demanded the government deal with the influx of foreigners.

A young man shouting from the back of the hall urged Zuma to ensure government kept out foreigners from neighbouring countries.

"You talk to (Zimbabwe President Robert) Mugabe, you talk to (Mozambique President Armando) Guebuza. Tell them to tell their people they must not harass us in our country. This is our country."

He said foreigners in the country were "riding on the gravy train".

"We are looking to make you our president (in 2009 elections) so beware. If you are a stumbling block, we are going to kick you away," the man warned, as the crowd erupted with deafening support for the sentiments."

Mhambi has written before on how lack of nationalism is one of the biggest impediments to African development. Could there be a lining around this dark cloud??

When nationalism first flashed onto the European scene in the 19th century, it was seen as a progressive force. Strengthening and uniting the people against the power of hereditary monarchy and ushering in democracy.

In his book The Criminalization of the state in Africa Bayart points out that - counter to popular belief - African culture is hyper individualistic. This individualism causes all manner of social ills such as corruption and state failure.

Nationalism is an antidote to the rampant individualism found in African culture.

It's an antidote to big-man syndrome, tribalism, corruption and predatory elites. But only if harnessed and channeled correctly. Nationalism can breed fascism in certain conditions. Many of whom are all to present in South Africa.

Conclusions
If this survey is correct, we should draw the following conclusions. The xenophobes are acting rationally on what they believe is true. They acting in concert because of government inaction.

This report suggests that if the white cliffs of Dover towered just South of the Limpopo, and if the English border control resembled a sieve, and their police and home office was corrupt, then perhaps Conservative British MP Enoch Powell's Rivers of blood speech would have become true. Yes, even in England's green and pleasant land.

Western lefty inspired slogans adopted by our anti-xenophobia marchers with slogans like "no one is illegal" are romantic but misplaced and insult the intelligence of the poor.

Yes, the US and Europe can afford and carry many more unskilled migrants, but South Africa, whose future is far from certain can hardly be a successful developmental state without population control.

If South Africa uplifts its poor as the new pro-poor ANC intends, the impetus will be even greater for others to come.

Or look at it this way. If South Africa with a GDP of more than 40% of the continent fails and becomes a failed state it will drag all of Southern Africa and parts of East Africa with it. South Africa surely will fail if it can't better the lives of its poor. The levels of inequality is not politically sustainable.

So what should we be campaigning for?

We should be campaigning for anti-corruption measures, proper border controls, efficient officials, political asylum, prosecution of xenophobic attacks, action on the crisis in Zimbabwe, for the legal status for those foreigners that have been living here and attracting immigrants with skills.

We could also conclude that the attacks won't readily spread along tribal lines, and also will not become black on white.

That is if the ANC stops it's startling non-management and non-rule, if they don't, all bets will be off.

Zuma can not say he has not been warned.

For another interesting perspective, hear what Professor Sakhela Buhlungu has to say. (Audio)

Violence reaches Cape Town

2008-05-23T01:11:00.006-04:00

Die Burger reports that at least one Somali was killed last night in Cape Town, while up to 50 shops were looted. Foreigner's shops were burnt to the ground in Brits, North West Province, and 5 Somali shops were torched in Knysna.

News 24 also has a Google map plotting where incidents have taken place.

K-words are stil alive

2008-05-23T01:00:00.002-04:00

K-WORDS
Originally uploaded by jaysen.

Mhambi found these anti-xenophobia posters on Flickr.

The intent is good, but Afrikaans speakers might feel it's prejudicial to them. Fokof is Afrikaans for Fuck off, and Kaffir came to South Africa via Afrikaans from Arabic.

MaKwerekwere is the derogatory onomatopoeic word South Africans use for foreigners.

Or is the end justified?

PS: Don't show this to Xolela, he'll be really upset.

The New Apartheid - YouTube video

2008-05-23T00:03:00.006-04:00

Mhambi has found this incredible documentary made two years ago by Channel 4 in the UK. Startling in fact. Nothing in it is news to me but its weird to see what we South Africans have become, on screen.

And in the context of what has happened afterwards - the xenophobic eruption - even more compelling viewing.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

PASSOP civil society is back and this time it's personal

2008-05-22T16:50:00.009-04:00

SATAWU made us proud when they refused to unload Mugabes's guns. Before them the Treatment Action Campaign made us pround when they forced government (and still are) to provide anti-retrovirals for HIV sufferers.

xenophobia Wits demo
Originally uploaded by Christo Doherty.

Tomorrow Cape Town will host a vigil against Xenophobia. Mhambi calls on all my readers (all 98 of you who come every day, yes and you to Afriforum & Solidarity supporters) that's in Cape Town to try and go.

Civil society is building up a head of steam. And we sure need it. The next stop? The battle for the Scorpions.

We need to make the biggest statement that we can. We need to get the message out that we are against xenophobic violence. Please bring your partner, child, work-mate, friend, whomever you can think of bringing along. We need to lift the atmosphere of fear! We need to persuade ourselves that poor turning against poor is not the answer. The poor need to be united to collectively solve their problems.

Please print out this e-mail and make posters to place up where you work, learn or live for the benefit of those without e-mail. Place this advert on or in any forums you are aware of.

AbaForeigners AbaRefugees Sawubona iSouth Africa ! Foreigners and Refugees are Welcome in South Africa!

Called by Cape Town Action Forum Affiliates: - COSATU, SA Municipal Workers Union, National Mineworkers SA, Walmer Estate Civic, Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign, Right to Food Campaign, Keep Left, APDUSA and others

Outside Parliament, Plein Street corner of Roeland Street on Friday 23 May 2008 from 5pm to 6pm

Die stryd duur voort!

Reitz condemnation shows the road to xenophobia

2008-05-22T13:52:00.006-04:00

"And so when that video from the University of the Free State emerged, the government, the media, writers and certain institutions went to town, condemning the entire university as racist, barbaric and anti-black, instead of doing a thorough investigation into how the video was made, why black women participated, and why it was released at the time it was."

Mhambi is a bit busy, but I thought I would link to two of my favourite commentators posts on our recent racist... oops sorry, xenophobic violence.

The above quote comes from the brave pen of Rhoda Kadalie. Kadalie argues that black South Africa has clothed themselves as perpetual victims which makes them oblivious to their own hate.

She continues:

"This one-sided portrayal of victimisation perpetuates and feeds into the “woundedness” of black people and breeds an entitlement often lacking in refugees and immigrants. It breeds an ethos in victims that they can never be wrong and, given the circumstances, are “owed” a livelihood. And when refugees and foreigners leave their countries for whatever reasons and come here and make it, it challenges the victim status quo. The lesson these outsiders teach us — not to depend on the government and not to expect handouts — goes against the inclination of those done hard by to find a solution to deprivation."

My other favourite commentator with the sharp suits, Mr Xolela Mangcu chimed in. He mentions what many other commentators have as why the violence is the governments own fault. Corruption, lack of service delivery, a whole plethora of factors that amount to this - non governance. And then Xolela says:

"the violence is the leadership’s own creation in one other important way. Long before we had xenophobia, the leadership of the liberation movements planted a violent culture in our communities in the 1980s. They legitimised violence as the mode of political practice in the townships in the name of organisational and ideological hegemony. There is something about this violence reminiscent of that period. This is the impi-like organisation, the open brandishing of weapons, the dancing around burning people. The criminals who were recruited into the revolution are now in control of the state.

The past is making its presence felt in a frighteningly ferocious way. And that is because the brutalisation of any group of people is not a tap the leadership can turn on and off as it pleases. And now they are afraid of their own political Frankensteins. What we have been experiencing has been as much about xenophobia as it has been a demonstration that we do not have a government in this country. We do not have a leadership that can attend to the wounded and brutalised soul of this nation."

Tendai Biti of the Movement for Democratic Change will deliver a lecture on the crisis in Zimbabwe and the related xenophobia at the Wits University Great Hall at 6pm tonight. Go if you can.

Indololwane - your elbow can save your life

2008-05-20T12:46:00.003-04:00

Yfm reports that Indololwane, the Zulu word for elbow is being used to identity foreigners in South Africa.

Says Yfm:

"Knowing this word could have saved hundreds of people from being hacked to death in so-called black-on-black violence.

The same word is back and darker skinned Africans in Jo’burg better know it and pronounce it correctly."

Death revives Live in Joburg video

2008-05-19T20:59:00.005-04:00

Mhambi almost forgot about Neill Blommenkamp's Live in Joburg video. But after the xenophobic violence around Johannesburg of the past few days, it's as relevant.

A mixture of actual SABC TV footage, live action and excellent special and computer generated effects makes for great sci-fi social commentary.

Xolela Mangcu - all human beings are not capable of racism

2008-05-19T19:18:00.009-04:00

Mhambi really likes Xolela Mangca, South Africa's celebrity intellectual-cum-assassin. His acerbic assault on and sharp analysis of Thabo Mbeki was entirely warranted and long overdue.

Xolela Mangcu
Originally uploaded by BOOKphotoSA.

But I find his recent hairsplitting statement about the current violence very odd. He said in the article Calling a spade a pick digs a big hole.

"...which tends to be the way many white people treat racism. It is simply the view that all human beings are capable of racism. This then makes it easy to dismiss the black experience of racism by simply saying “you were not the only ones affected”. What I would counsel Wolpe is that we need to respect the integrity of all of our historical experiences.

Racism was a specific historical experience invented by white people to subjugate black people. The Holocaust was not racism, it was the Holocaust; ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia was not racism, it was ethnic cleansing; genocide in Rwanda was not racism, it was genocide; tribalism in Kenya was not racism, it was tribalism; xenophobia in Alex is not racism, it is xenophobia."

OK then Xolela. Can we have a term then for discrimination against Palestinians by Israel, what Afrikaners suffered from the British, a name for the massacres of Matabele's in Zimbabwe. The discrimination against Tibetans by the Chinese.

To say that a view that all human beings are capable of racism is wrong is very odd. Unless you want to use it to justify something, something horrible.

I noted that on the UK' Guardian's Cif blog site today somebody called Horrorshow commented in relation to our violence:

I find it interesting that mainstream news organisation in Britain often describe "native" white attacks on white immigrants as "racist", example.

Yet they have NOT used this terminology in reporting the current violence in South Africa, instead calling it "anti-immigrant" or "xenophobic".

Since this is treating what is essentially the same situation differently on the basis of skin colour this double standard of the BBC and others would indeed meet the definition of racism itself. So what does it say about how the British media establishment view the concept of racism and do not apply it equally irrespective of skin colour?

What do you make of that Xolela? Seems the media agrees with you. The same media that ignored these racist oops... sorry xenophobic attacks for months.

It's true to an extent however, I myself have argued that not all examples of racism are the same.

But let's not split hairs when people are dying.

Time to call the army?

2008-05-18T14:48:00.011-04:00

A policeman pulls a blanket off an unidentified man who was set alight in Reiger Park, south of Johannesburg. (AP)

Mhambi is refreshing his news feeds, and the news is getting scarier and scarier. Should the government not deploy the army? We need to stop this violence against foreigners now.

A policeman guarding a victim of the attacks in Johannesburg. Photograph: Kim Ludbrook/EPA

Mhambi this evening spoke to a friend in the know and they cautioned against the use of the army. The SANDF is not trained to deal with these kinds of situations and there are serious question marks over the armies current training in general.

Much better to deploy more police apparently. The Police have more local knowledge and can deal with the subtleties of each situation. The army is a blunt instrument and could make the situation worse.

But perhaps the SANDF could be deployed to guard certain areas while the police go to work on the mobs.

Imtiaz Sooliman of the Gift of the Givers, a charity group that has been handing out blankets and food to affected people all week, said his organization had been called in to help at a police station in Germiston, east of the Johannesburg city center.

He said that violence had raged for four hours overnight and that by the end of it 2,000 people were waiting for help.

"My staff said it was like a war zone," Sooliman said. "There was lots of police, and stones being thrown. They said it looked like the police couldn't cope."

Eric Goemaere, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières in South Africa, said his staff was helping to treat people with bullet wounds and back injuries - the result of being thrown out of windows.

He said that the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, home to hundreds of Zimbabweans, had been under siege overnight and that the police had told people they should be prepared to defend themselves.

"It's a crisis," Goemaere said. He called on the government to declare Zimbabweans - there are believed to be up to three million in South Africa - as refugees and give them proper protection.

Apparently the Johannesburg CBD is a war zone.

PASSOP's Braam Hanekom has expressed fears that the violence will spread to the Cape.

People Against Suffering Suppression Oppression and Poverty (Passop) spokesperson Braam Hanekom said what foreigners in Alexandra had experienced was appalling.

Hanekom went as far as comparing the treatment foreigners received in parts of South Africa to the treatment the Jews suffered in the early years of "Hitler's rule in Germany".

"They are hunted down, searched for their IDs and chased away. The state needs to take a fair share of blame as they are the ones who do not give the immigrants the necessary documents they need to live in this country.

"By not giving these immigrants the necessary documents, communities interpret that as if they are criminals. We've got a huge problem of thousands of immigrants not having documents to be in this country."

He said he hoped the latest string of xenophobic attacks would not spread south, although he feared there was a good chance they would.

In defence of racist Alex

2008-05-15T23:56:00.015-04:00

Is black SA irredeemably racist? No, of course not.

Many of the mitigating reasons listed this week as to why the brutal xenophobic attacks happened, have more than a grain of truth in them.

Alexandra and places like Diepsloot and the Brazzaville settlement in Atteridgeville are desperately poor. As in so poor you won't believe.

Other commentators mentioned that South Africans at the bottom of the social ladder are getting even poorer, and that must also contribute. Job creation has just not kept pace with the growth in the population.

Add to this potent mix of deprivation the nearly doubling of essential food commodities like cooking oil.

Are foreigners involved in crime? According to security specialist Anthony Altbeker many are. Almost all of the individuals involved in the massive shoot out with police in Jeppestown that left four policemen dead were indeed Zimbabwean. The fact that we accord foreigners no legal rights whatsoever is bound to make some of them loose canons in an explosive society.

More importantly, the world over, even in comparatively wealthy and proudly tolerant England, an influx of strangers into an area causes friction. It breaks down public trust. It's fertile soil for the nasties. Read this How racist in Britain if you want a lowdown.

And Winnie Mandela had a point when she said it's because of a failure of service delivery.

Not just a lack, but there's untold corruption going on. It's service delivery in reverse. And the poor, being the weakest, bear the brunt.

Corruption like this by the police erodes the social fabric and trust like very little else does. It makes Margaret Thatchers' harsh brand of "there is no thing like society" capitalism feel like a caring hippie commune in comparison.

Society has broken down in Alexandra. The sun may shine but it's Dickensian in the extreme. Life is nasty and brutish, and you can depend on nobody.

No wonder the crowds did not respond the the ANC leadership's calls for three whole days.

None of this really excuses the levels of violence and hatred on display.

But the biggest defense I could offer for the people of Alexandra's racism is this: Our governments racism.

In this country there are people with the skills to be effective town clerks, detectives and bureaucrats. People with skills to make the governments social programs work.

But they are the wrong skin colour.

For another perspective, read Reggies blog.

Aubrey Matshiqi has also written a great article on Alex.

Zonke Majodina in Alex - denial, incompetence & prejudice at the SAHRC

2008-05-14T12:17:00.013-04:00

In this SABC video Zonke Majodina, is in Alexandra. Next to the police station where women and children are cowering after having been chased from their homes and some raped.

Zonke Majodina, Deputy Chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission is completely unsuitable for her important job.

No wonder the SAHRC has had such a terrible record of addressing racism and equality in South Africa over the last few years. A toothless Chapter 9 institution (Of the SA constitution) if ever there was one.

Why? What did she say?

They came up with a number of strategies to address the violence she says. Asked who's responsibility this is? Ms Majodina says its the International Red Cross, and the United Nations and the City of Johannesburg's responsibility.

The people can't come back she says because the locals don't want them to; But not to worry, they will set up a mediation team Ms Majodina says.

And this is the clincher, the coup the grace: "Of course we will come out with strong media statements condemning this."

Fantastic, that's sorted then.

The SABC interviewer asks "do we understand why the attackers were so brutal to make women bleed, women with children?"

Then Majodina tells us that this had been taking place for so long, and there has been no concrete solution.

And then comes the socio-babble laced with prejudice.

"When we talk xenophobia in this country, you have to look at the socio-economic status that influences the way xenophobia plays itself out.

Socially we can't expect South Africans to immediately embrace foreigners, you know. If we do so we will be ignoring or denying the most elementary facts of our history.

And so its understandable to some extent... and then we have the problem of unemployment and poverty and where people are seen to take jobs from South Africans."

An exasperated SABC interviewer asks "yes press statements, yes the government, but what about the people here?"

"You have got to understand" she says, "the xenophobia has a perceptive element to it.

People have fears, prejudices, it's racially motivated in the sense that we don't perpetrate xenophobic attacks on white immigrants, but we only do it to Africans."

Zonke Majodina has been with the SAHRC since 1999.

Update

Meanwhile this has been going on today in Alexandra. Zwelinzima Vavi has warned that if the situation is not adressed we will have many more Alexandras. Can we put him in charge of the SAHRC?

Update 2
The Times report that there has been some incidents of shooting in Diepsloot Soweto.

Late last night, Metro police spokeswoman Superintendent Edna Mamonyane confirmed that men in several bakkies, apparently from Alexandra, drove to Diepsloot and opened fire on residents.

She said: “ It seems like it is the same thing that is happening in Alexandra.”

Racist attacks in Johannesburg

2008-05-13T10:56:00.012-04:00

The news of yet more xenophobic attacks and killings in Johannesburg is sad, but part of a familiar pattern . The only silver lining this cloud has is that the press both locally and internationally has at last picked up on the race riots.

Here is a Voice of America radio report. And that of the International Herald Tribune.

And so its should, this act is far worse than what happened at the Reitz hostel. In reaction to Xolela Mangcu's denial and attack on white racism who said recently:

"But right now, racism is not a black people’s problem, ridiculous charges of reverse racism notwithstanding."

I wrote this:

I spent a month in Yeoville recently and many black South Africans admitted brazenly - in a manner that would raise an eyebrow in a Ventersdop kroeg - that they were going to wipe out all the African foreigners there. We must just wait and see I was told.

Anybody in doubt about the seriousness should read this report. Or this one where one where Yvonne Ndlovu from Zimbabwe was taunted by four women to go home while blood was streaming from her face. A Malawian who had lived in Alexandra for 25 years was also beaten up. One Zimbabwean women was raped four times.

According to The Times, in an act resembling the passover, terrified South Africans have started to mark their shacks with South African names like, Madondo, Ndlovu, and Masinga.

Three persons are confirmed dead, and the chief executive at the Alexandra clinic, Abel Mangolele, said that between Sunday night and Monday morning alone 58 patients had been brought in with injuries sustained during the attacks.

He said an additional 56 were brought in on Monday and a further 39 were brought in for treatment between Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Last night I found the website of the Somali Association of South Africa, it cronicles the violence foreigners faced in South Africa.

The association claims that more than 100 Somalis have been killed in South Africa the last few years.

Cosatu and the SACP has come out strongly against these attacks. On its Allmostsupernatural, a South African Jewish site, these attacks are condemned. I hope that organisations representing other minorities (like Afrikaners) will do the same.

Pictures: News 24

Of generations, arseholes, Israel and volkstate

2008-05-10T20:04:00.013-04:00

'Don't you think your a bit too idealistic about Afrikaners?' alleman asked me the other day.

I had the pleasure to meet alleman for the first time. I have admired alleman's blog for some time now. And I find it hard to disagree with most he says.

This week a 'hewige' (heavy) debate raged on my blog. Somebody even called alleman a communist. A certain Marthinus, a young AWB sympathiser nogal, told us:

'Forgive me for getting worked up, but when i speak to older whites in south africa that still advocate this 'democracy' that we so suffer in, it just makes me see red. You wil have to go very far to find a liberal white youngster here in sa. Putting all political convictions aside, we will have to work together if we want a future here in africa. The only way 4ward for us is to create an exclusive afrikaner state. A simple fact is that we are white so the volkstaat will be white too otherwise its just another mini new sa, with all the same issues.'

I won't repeat all that was said in that debate wholesale. Go read it yourself.

But I thought about what alleman asked allot lately. Perhaps Afrikaners are irredeemable arseholes and I'm really wasting my time.

I mean Marthinus feels insulted that I said that the old ZAR Transvaal Republic was liberal. Which it patently was. The word liberal is a swearword to him. Incredible. Marthinus agrees with all those that say we were always arseholes. And apparently we should be proud of it!

My pro-Afrikaner arguments on this blog is probably over egging it on occasion. Marthinus has a point. Afrikaners are conservative. But I don't think Marthinus has been paying attention to the news lately.

The current government has been supporting the Burmese, a military dictatorship, the Sudanese, an ultra conservative Islamic state with a taste for genocide, and have been advocating beetroot as a cure for Aids instead of scientifically tested drugs. How do you out conservative that? Last time I checked a Kenyan tribe refused to give up power even though they lost an election. Time to learn a lesson from Afrikaners perhaps chaps?

What I find interesting is that somebody like Marthinus actually bothers to debate these issues with us. Recently (warning: name drop) I was speaking to Andries Bezuidenhout. Andries said its 'quite weird, when we were students, before the end of apartheid when we rode into a town with our long hair and boerepunk clothes we were made to feel distinctly unwelcome. Even in Pretoria you had men hanging out of windows shouting "Sny jou hare!" (Cut your hair!)

Now when traveling the small towns in the Free State your welcomed with open arms. Invited to braai's and fetted in the kroe (bars). But we still kinda look the same. '

It was true.

Afrikaans dorpies like Parys are pinning for more gays to move there, because nothing regenerates and ads cool to a town AND pushes up the property value like gay neighbors.

So what's changed? Power has changed. Power has a tendency to make you ugly. Lack of power makes people so much more accommodating.

But back to Marthinus. Apparently young Afrikaners are tired of us older ones telling them to give the new SA a chance.

We too felt fed up with our elders circa 1989. We listed to Johannes Kerkorrel singing "Ons is moeg vir apatie, ons soek anargie, ons soek 'n nuwe energie"

And boy did we get what we were asking for. Anarchy galore. I have often wondered where I would have stood politically then if I knew what I know now. I might make that a subject of a post sometime. But if you think this is a Damascus blogging moment, your out of luck. I would still have campaigned for the end of apartheid.

But I have to concede that many of the things the Afrikaners Nationalists had learn't from a 300 year history in Africa should probably not have been so easily been dismissed by us.

My message to the likes of Marthinus would be. Sure, we made some mistakes, but there's much you can learn from the ouer garde. We know what a white state of repression was like. We know that apartheid did not work practically and it was wrong.

And we helped lay the foundation - in a modest way - for Afrikanerdom to live and indeed perhaps to die in justice.

Coincidentally yesterday was the 60th commemoration of the founding of the state of Israel. Despite its power and military success the web is littered with articles of Israelies fearing for their countries future. Israel has secured its future and in the process of going about this securing they lost the moral high ground. Metaphysical rats are gnawing at the mighty Israel's soul.

And its having practical results. Increasingly educated and secular jews are choosing to emigrate. The country is becoming more fundamentally religious, more intransigent, less a hotbed of innovation and research and stretching the patience of even the USA. It's a vicious circle, if it spirals out of control it will threaten to reap a whirlwind that could destroy Israel from within.

Afrikaans poet N P van Wyk Louw wrote a long time ago that it's better for a nation to cease to exist than to live forth in injustice.

But of course nations don't just die. Not just like that.

In this era when it seems that half of white middle-class SA is contemplating emigrating I have been thinking of that concept that was in vogue shortly before 1994. An Afrikaner Volkstaat.

Personally I think the idea is premature. We have to see to what extent the new ANC can change it ways. There has been some encouraging signs. More importantly South African civil society has started to flex its muscles at last. If South Africa could work. It would be a remarkable country. It is an idea worth fighting and holding out for.

Most of my Afrikaner friends aver that they would not like to live in a Volkstaat. Some have an ideological objection to one. Personally I feel that if your contemplating emigration you can not really object to a Volkstaat per se. Many Afrikaners are not in a position to emigrate.

But the shape and conduct of such a state will matter very much to all Afrikaners whether you live in it or not. Just ask the jews.

PS: There's now an interesting blog form a BoereJodin. (An Afrikaner jew)

Zanu ain't no heroic Cubans

2008-05-07T11:29:00.010-04:00

In the last week two interesting more pieces have been written about Zimbabwe and what it portends for South Africa.

In the first, Gavins Evans, former journalist, and member of the ANC underground tells of his travels to Zimbabwe in the 80's. Evans worked and recruited for MK the ANC's armed wing.

He tells of the ANC's difficulties with ZANU and the awareness of ZAPU persecution, but that Real politik made them look the other way. Evans has a little sympathy for ZANU. Afterall Britain had not met their obligations for land reform he says.

Evan's lists why he thinks South Africa will be different. And the answer is primarily a much more active civil society.

Jeremy Cronin
Originally uploaded by BOOKphotoSA.

In the second, Jeremy Cronin, the South African Communist parties deputy general secretary, echoes much of Evan's thought. South Africa's battles were fought by trade unions, journalists and a plethora of other civil society groups he says.

And interestingly he alludes to the fact, as I mentioned in a previous post, that it is precisely because MK was unsuccessful militarily that one of he primary engines of potential ZANUfication is not present in SA. The ANC had to rely on the broad South African public.

Cronin also has this to say about Mugabe's insistence that its Britain's fault the land reform program failed.

We are told, for instance, that ‘land reform’ did not succeed because the British failed to meet their financial obligations as agreed in the Lancaster House negotiations. But what kind of heroic anti-imperialist liberation movement is this? Can you imagine the Cubans arguing two decades after their revolutionary breakthrough that they had not implemented land reform because the US refused to subsidise it?

Well said.

AWB now in Amazon

2008-05-05T20:39:00.006-04:00

Mhambi was amazed when he did a search for the term 'Afrikaner' on the Amazon UK site. Up popped none other than the facist Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging (AWB) flag as a fridge magnet.

The company selling the magnet sells everything from Rhodesian to post liberation Angolan flags.

I have written to Amazon to complain. It's up to everybody to fight intolerance and facism everywhere we find it. Even in the electronic jungle.

Hitchens on Zimbabwe and South Africa

2008-04-29T04:27:00.006-04:00

The former left wing polemicist Christopher Hitchens this week published a very interesting piece about Zimbabwe, Mugabe and South Africa.

He said that the actions of the Durban dock workers (Satawu) "made me remember very piercingly how good it sometimes felt to be a socialist."

Formerly a Trotskyist and a fixture in the left wing publications, Hitchens departed from the consensus of the political left in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the European left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie.

Hitchens recently courted further controversy by supporting the Iraq War. He is a vociferous critic of what he calls "fascism with an Islamic face".

Hitchens said of the South African Union action in Durban: "...it improves the chances of democracy worldwide. This is how socialism began, with Karl Marx and his allies organizing a boycott of Confederate slave-harvested cotton during the American Civil War, and however often a thieving megalomaniac like Robert Mugabe claims to be a socialist, there are still brave and honest workers who, by contemptuously folding their arms, can deny him the sinews of oppression."

Hitchens also sheds light on the different roots of Zanu PF, the ANC and the non racial influence of South Africa's Communist pParty.

"...the distinction between the Zimbabwe African National Union (Robert Mugabe's vaunted ZANU-PF or Patriotic Front) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union, or ZAPU, which had been led by veteran Joshua Nkomo. Not only did this division reflect the ethnic makeup of Zimbabwe as between the majority Shona and the minority Matabele, respectively. It also involved the Russo-Chinese split in the world Communist movement, with Nkomo being backed by Moscow and Mugabe by Beijing. The same split was evident in the larger South African liberation movement, though in that case Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, with its heavy Communist Party influence, effectively dwarfed the renegade Maoist forces of the Pan Africanist Congress, which stood for an unreconstructed form of blacks-only Stalinism and which was to be obliterated in the first South African elections."

Hitchens remembers when Mbeki and other ANC members settled in liberated Zimbabwe. "Thabo had come to Zimbabwe to be as close to the dramatic developments across the frontier as he could manage. But the life of an ANC official in Robert Mugabe's Harare was not an easy one. "The regime openly prefers the PAC," he told me, "and they treat us with contempt." At the time, also, supporters of Joshua Nkomo, an old friend of the ANC, were going in fear of their lives as Mugabe's North Korean-trained special forces vengefully roamed Matabeleland.

So all this invites a question: Knowing what they knew about his primitive politics and even more primitive methods, why did the leaders of the ANC continue to tolerate Mugabe when they themselves succeeded in coming to power democratically in the post-apartheid state? The answers are both illuminating and depressing."

One reason is says Hitchens that Nkomo sought help from white South Africa. This alienated him from the ANC who felt betrayed.

On ahistoric inventions, patronising and China

2008-04-24T09:37:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, the most interesting things you read are within the comments on blogs.

This week I found two, which I think its worth highlighting. The first relates to the Bullard saga and was made by Michael Osborn on the Constitutionally Speaking blog in reaction to a debate under the post On free speech and the firing of David Bullard.

Osborn argues forcefully that whites are indulging black myths which in itself is patronising.

This is very pertinent in the light of Xolela Mangcu's article today Bullard’s apology and other white lies.

Re: Dlamini contra Bullard

Take a look at Jacob Dlamini’s swipe at Bullard in the Sunday Independent today (“White SA’s Pride is Misplaced,” p. 7.)

Dlamini is a very thoughtful columnist. His sophistication sometimes puts Bullard to shame. Yet today, Dlamini responds to Bullard by spinning a tall tale about a pre-colonial “transportation network.” He rhetorically asks: “[H]ow do you think Africans transported ivory and gold mined in the lowveld and
today’s Zimbabwe to the Mozambican coast for trade with east India, Omanis, the Chinese and Indians in pre-colonial times?”

But it is just absurd to compare the system of roads, bridges and rail constructed in the 19th Century with a pre-colonial “transportation network” — one that operated without the benefit of the wheel. Yet anyone who dares point that out runs the risk of being dismissed as another Bullard.

To indulge Dlamini’s flights of fancy is itself a patronising racism. Bullard depicts “tribal” Africans as simple-minded children. Yet, when liberals panders to Africanist mythology, they too treat blacks as infants. (Don’t tell the kids Santa does not exist, lest we damage their fragile dreams and hopes.) If the white chattering class does not challenge people like Dlamini and Mangu when they are plainly talking rubbish, they are in effect refusing to black writers seriously. That is liberal racism more insidious than anything Bullard is guilty of.

For there is nothing racist in noticing that, on any index of science, technology and economic development, sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind Europe. No more does it insults whites to point out that Europe was stone age backwater for 4000 years, while civilizations flourished in North Africa, Sumeria, Persia and China. Anyone who thinks that Europe’s subsequent ascendancy reflects white racial superiority, or that Africa’s having falling behind demonstrates blacks’ inherent inferiority, is indeed a racist, and an abject idiot to boot.

The Nazis felt the need to need to invent stories about an ancient Aryan civilization, fearing that to admit that their ancestors huddled in caves while non-European civilization flowered would be a grievous attack upon the dignity of the white “race.” Is it inevitable that Africa’s renaissance be bolstered by equally ahistoric inventions?

A while back I wrote a post on what South Africa could learn from China. Well the following post from the BBC's blog Pro-China protests sweep the web (let's talk?) by somebody called rymnd2008 makes my point in a different way:

'The entire western world has the following mis-conceptions about China

Chinese people can only be happy by adopting western style of democracy. False.

Chinese people desire to have right to vote to decide their own government. False.

Chinese government has not done a single useful to the country it governs. False.

Westerners enjoy unlimited freedom. But Chinese think you earn your freedom. Freedom comes at a price tag.

This is why when westerners lecturing Chinese people about Freedom. The Chinese has not got a clue what they mean.

Nowadays, ordinary Chinese can choose their work, can choose the way they live their life, can go aboard, can travel freely, can get passport, can own proprety, can publish books, can go to TV shows.

Comparing with life 30 years ago, ordinary Chinese enjoy unprecedent freedom. Most importantly, China's political system is evolving all the time at slow pace.

Finally, my point is that a country where you can travel by trains running every hour for 350km in 2 hours , is not a poorly managed country. China just started building a railway link between Beijing and Shanghai. The train will run 350km/hr and takes 5 hours to cover a distance of 1200km running every 5 mins. Breath taking.'

SATAWU makes us proud

2008-04-19T09:45:00.011-04:00

Viva Satawu Viva
Long live international solidarity
Viva Rubin Phillip Viva!
Panzi lamsak Mbeki panzi
Viva Afriforum Viva!
Amandla ngawethu!

Mhambi feels so pround of Satawu (The South African Transport and Allied workers Union) today. But not only them, but plaudits go to Rubin Phillip, the Anglican archbishop of KwaZulu-Natal, and Gerald Patrick Kearney, ably assisted by the Southern African Litigation Center and Judge Pillay.

Consider the evidence. When the Chinese 'gun' ship An Yeu Jiang's deadly Zimbabwe bound cargo was exposed, our president Mbeki was asked if he knew:

"Well, ask the Chinese ambassador," he said. "Durban harbour handles goods for many countries on the continent. If you say there are weapons that have arrived from China in the Durban harbour, I think you should ask the Chinese. There might be a consignment of coal that is being exported to the Congo or something; it is a port, those weapons would have had nothing to do with South Africa. I really don't know what Zimbabwe imports from China or what China imports from Zimbabwe."

Cue Randall Howard, general secretary of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union. He said the dock workers had no intention of allowing the cargo to be unloaded. “If they bring in replacement labor to do the work, our members will not stand and look at them and smile,” he said.

Very refreshing and to the point. Not a little Macho. On the side of right. I like it. Bravo!

“For the South African government to actively facilitate the transfer of arms in these circumstances is a violation of its constitutional obligations and an abdication of its regionally mandated role to bring about a peaceful resolution of the crisis,” said Nicole Fritz, who heads the litigation center. Say it again sister.

The government had not only approved the shipments, they had arranged for their transport. And one Sydney Mufamadi, one of the mediators in the crises was involved in approving the shipment.

It's almost a pity that the arms was never allowed to leave port. Because Afriforum, the Afrikaner civil rights organisation had promised to make life hard for it all the way to the border. What a tantalising visual spectical that would have been.

As rugby has shown, theres nothing like a bit of controlled violence for a good cause to bring South Africans together.

Seriously.

This was an important victory for civil society in this country and more proof of how strong it is. Sociologist Andries Bezuidenhout has said before that it was a blessing that the ANC 's Mk was such a poor military force, and that the UDF was forced to make the case against apartheid internally and did so successfully.

Compare with Zimbabwe, where Mugabe won power by military means, and not by the people. How seductive that military instrument became.

Power through the people tends to be a bit harder to control. It has a mind of its own.

As Frederik van Zyl Slabbert says, we don't even know who is head of the SA army is today. We are not a militarised society. Were a society where citizens can have their say. So say it loud and clear.

On Xolela Mangcu and the flames of anger

2008-04-17T10:58:00.018-04:00

The whole David Bullard incident has put South African 'white' racism on the post mortem table again. It's prodded, dissected, analyzed. It's very repulsive everybody says. And part of the problem is that its not dead.

I agree.

My own view is that Bullard should never have been allowed to write the article, because of its extreme offensive and vicious tone. Given our history it is unacceptable and he should have been fired.

I agree with basically everything that the Caxton Professor, Anton Harber has said in regard to the Bullard incident.

I also share the view expressed by Xolela Mangcau, that it was the offensive and crude insinuations of lazyness and violence, and not the notion that Africans have benefited from colonialism that is the problem with the article.

Mhambi has made no secret of the fact that I dig Xolela Mangcu's columns. Mangcu is deeply hurt about the Bullard incident and especially many white people's reaction to it. I can understand why.

Today he wrote a piece Racism relapse: white SA on brink which is very worrying.

Mangcu says: "I still have the hope that sanity will prevail in the white world. I still have the hope that the all-too-easy defensive reflexes of racism will give way to long-term thinking about the safety of all those defenceless children, who will be left to reap the whirlwind of hate.

But right now, racism is not a black people’s problem, ridiculous charges of reverse racism notwithstanding. No white people are being sent to the guillotines in this country, which was routine practice throughout all those years they kept quiet as we survived the hellhole of the real racism of apartheid. We need visible action from the white community, perhaps a march against racism organised and led by white people.

But is it really possible that the events of the past week would not rouse white people into action? If so, then I’m afraid my friends will have been proved right. There will be no coconuts left to defend white folks from the flames of anger that could still come to engulf us all in “the fire next time”.

Mangcu extols Max du Preez as a leader who whites should follow.

"Max du Preez responded to this social reality thus: “The Polokwane show and Zuma-mania didn’t upset me, nor did the Selebi/Pikoli/Scorpions debacles. Not even Eskom’s disastrous outages shook my faith in my nation’s future. But the possibility that there is a large section of our nation still producing the likes of the Video of Shame Four, the Skielik killer, the Waterkloof Four, is the most depressing thought I’ve had in decades. Especially because that community is my own.” "

Mhambi hoped the Afrikaans community to react strongly to the Reitz video, which thankfully they did. I have had a careful look at the nature of Afrikaans racism on this blog. It's rife and its ugly.

But I think Mangcu and Du Preez are expecting whites to behave in a manner which just does not accord with how humans are.

I have said this before and I will say this again. In the UK, a country that sees itself as a model of racial tolerance, if all the things happened that Du Preez list here, racial incidents will ignite. The army would be on the streets.

Why do 'white' South Africans have to act to a different standard?

It's not just Eskom, Selebi, Pikoli cases thats fueling the flames. Even more damaging of white perceptions of black government is Mbeki's Aids denial, the Frere incident, the collapse of our schools, the xenophobic killings of African migrants and now again the callous behaviour towards Zimbabwe. If an ANC government does not care for black people, what kind of a message does that send out?

For Mangcu to say racism is not a black problem is to take a very limited view of the way South Africans treat each other. Racism does not have to aimed against whites for whites to take note of it and draw the obvious conclusions.

I spent a month in Yeoville recently and many black South Africans admitted brazenly - in a manner that would raise an eyebrow in a Ventersdop kroeg - that they were going to wipe out all the African foreigners there. We must just wait and see I was told.

As I have said before, I think racism is indeed on the increase. And we should fight it. A march against all racism is a very good idea.

What we are seeing is not a relapse. Although very nasty people will latch on to these moments. The Bullards will out. But we have something new as well.

I have witnessed grave doubts and even bitterness in whites about the ANC government from the most unlikely sources. From people who when I was a student reached out to black South Africa, who physically battled right wing students bigots. Who went into the townships, and wore African pendants and ANC colours proudly around their necks at risk of their personal safety, at right wing universities in an Afrikaner Pretoria.

It's a whole new tribe of 'racists', Rian Malan style. They like black South Africa but have ever decreasing faith that the ANC can govern the country and a rising fear.

And now these doubts are being expressed by the likes of Ferial Haffajee.

In some ways its strange we have not reached this point earlier. Writers like Anthony Altbeker has warned for some time now that crime is driving us apart. Andre Brink predicted a massacre two years ago.

Perhaps the only reason racist whites have been quiet is exactly the fear of what Mangcu is threatening.

Ferial Haffajee - Our government can not govern

2008-04-16T16:34:00.010-04:00

There is in Mhambi's opinion only a few South African commentators that ask the really difficult questions.

Facile excuses and clever theories for the abyss were staring down come a plenty. There are those that claim that a form of apartheid and colonialism still reigns our country. This explains our falling per capital income ratio, our increasing inequality, the falling standards in our schools, the rising violence.

Patrick Bond and Ferial Haffajee
Originally uploaded by BOOKphotoSA.

A small minority amazingly still think the ANC is some Marxist front.

Ferial Haffajee, Mail & Guardian editor says its time to ask the really hard questions. Apartheid, colonialism and right wing government is no more she says. She points to the fact that SA spends more on schooling and health that Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution.

Government policies are not to blame. It's the execution of these policies which is the problem.

We have to admit says Haffajee, 'our government cannot govern'.

Mugabe worse than Smith, Verwoerd, Vorster, Botha

2008-04-16T09:06:00.004-04:00

Peter Thatchel the prominent gay left wing activist who twice tried to execute citizens arrests on Robert Mugabe while the latter was in London has written a hard hitting piece comparing Mugabe to apartheid leaders and finding him worse.

'Mbeki wanted international solidarity when he and the ANC needed it, but he is denying solidarity to Zimbabweans when they need it. This is rank hypocrisy.

For me, it is a big personal disappointment. I liaised with Thabo Mbeki in the struggle against apartheid during the 1980s. He even sent me a telegram thanking me for my (rather modest) campaigning against the white racist regime. I saw him as a man of vision, compassion and sincerity. Power, it seems, has since corrupted him, like so many others. His principles and idealism have faded fast.

Mbeki cannot feign ignorance. Mugabe's human rights abuses stretch back many years. The writing was already on the wall in the mid-1980s, when Mugabe's men slaughtered 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland. This is the equivalent of a Sharpeville massacre every day for over nine months. Yet Thabo Mbeki and most other top ANC leaders said nothing about this bloodfest - and nothing about the many subsequent murders by Zanu-PF.

Mugabe is worse than the white supremacist leader, Ian Smith, who he overthrew. He has murdered more black Africans than the apartheid villains Hendrik Verwoerd, John Forster and P W Botha. Yet we never hear a squeak of protest against Mugabe from Mbeki. He and his fellow ANC leaders sit on their hands and look the other way while Zimbabwe burns.'

China move into Congo while Zim farmers go Nigeria

2008-04-15T18:15:00.005-04:00

Two very interesting documentaries by the BBC came out this week. In one, a video about the massive investment by China in the Congo there is talk of much optimism.

China is promising to build about 2,400 miles of road, 2,000 miles of railway, 32 hospitals, 145 health centres and two universities in the war ravaged country. In return they want access to the vast mineral wealth.

Large sections of the Congo is impassible today after its roads and railways have falen into disrepair.

There's also been a radio documentary about white Zimbabweans farmers in Nigeria who lost their land in Zimbabwe's political turmoil. They have been invited into Nigeria in the hope that their expertise will help to kick-start commercial agriculture.

Nigeria imports much of its food from Europe while it can be self sufficient.

A month ago the BBC's excellent From our own Correspondent series reported from Cape Town. It featured disgruntled ANC members, energy crisis, corruption and emigration.

'Another friend said she went to a leaving party almost every weekend.'

Afrikaner vs Cuban: the irony of Cuito Cuanavale

2008-04-09T02:29:00.009-04:00

Once tentative talks between South Africa, Cuba, Russia, and America commenced early 1987 about the end of the Angolan War and Independence for Namibia, Pik Botha, South Africa's long serving foreign minister thought it time for the Cubans to get a history lecture.

This article continues from Cuito Cuanavale - background to a Battle.

In a rhetorical flourish at one of their meetings Botha made it abundantly clear to the astonished Cubans that Afrikaners have a proud history on the battlefield. After all, they had withstood the might of the British Empire, no less than a half a million troops, for 3 years. Don't underestimate our resolve, don't mess with us, was the message.

But Afrikaners would have done well to also learn and understand the history of their opponents, the Cubans.

The Nationalists had form in this regard. They had consistently underestimated the role of the Cubans, thinking they were mere pawns of the Soviets. When in 1975 Cuba jumped to the rescue of the Angolan MPLA, Pretoria thought it was at Russia's bidding. In fact it was, at least originally against Russia's wishes.

But to be fair, neither did the US believe the Cubans were acting on their own initiative. Nobody believed that such a small developing country would project military power at such a range.

Nevertheless, a bit more knowledge about the Cubans could have given the Afrikaner Nationalists pause for thought about the motives that drove their enemy. Perhaps a clue as to their intent, their determination and the way they would react in battle.

More importantly it could have given them a glimpse of what Afrikaners themselves could have been. A chance imagining themselves differently.

But why would Cuban history have resonance with Afrikaners?

Come the mid 1980's Afrikaner leaders might not have admitted it, but they felt sullied. Their intellectuals were decrying them, their writers were claiming 'Ons is nie almal so nie'. (Were not all like that).

Strange because Afrikaners had part of their identity a grand sense of being a people battling injustice. They had, as Pik pointed out, fought a fierce anti-colonial war of liberation against a European superpower. An act that had become part of the core of Afrikaner identity.

But so had the Cubans. And at more or less the same time at the turn of the previous century. In fact the Cuban and Afrikaner struggle dovetailed and even influenced each other.

But for all his huffing and puffing Botha knew they were not seen as freedom fighters but as apartheid: they were racial domination and colonialism personified.

The Cuban delegation lead by Jorge Risquest did not suffer this fate. Increasingly they reveled in the role as the anti-colonial, anti-racist revolutionary force in the world.

Considering all this, that it came to be that from 1975 Afrikaner and Cuban came to face each other in Angola, is a surpreme irony. An irony that both sides were blissfully unaware of.

Cuito Cuanavale the last big battle of the Cold War would be a fitting grand finale.

Raising the stakes

Make no mistake, although the MPLA's Fapla, and UNITA's army represented by far the majority of troops on the ground, and suffered the majority of the casualties, they were the light weights in this crowded ring. The SADF's Colonel Breytenbach had famously described his allies Unita as "useless". No doubt thought the same of the MPLA's troops who he routinely routed. The only Angolans in the conflict whose military prowess he valued was those fighting in his 32 battalion.

The Soviets's never really stepped into the ring but preferred to provided ample resources, intelligence training and weapons. The US also provided resources and weapons, but they did it in secret and at a much smaller scale.

It was the Cuban and South African army that raised the military game at crucial junctures. Without one of them the war would be over in weeks. The South African army was made up mostly of both English and Afrikaans speaking whites. But it was Afrikaner controlled, it spoke Afrikaans and had gone into this conflict at least partly at the behest of Afrikaner interests.

But where is the irony?

But lets go back to 1901 to the second Anglo Boer War. South Africa's Boers' military guerilla exploits were making world news. But the world was also startled about the shocking reports of non combatant mortalities.

Boer Commandos

In a report Concentration camps in November 1901 in the New York Times the link between South Africa and Cuba is made.

The nearest prototype of the camps of concentration established by Lord KITCHENER in South Africa were those established by Gen. WEYLER in Cuba.

The newspaper speculates that at the rate of mortality all the South African "reconcentrados", (the Spanish word used in Cuba) will be dead in 4 years time:

'When South Africa ceases to be in a "disturbed condition" It seems that it will be because the invaders "made a solitude and called it peace." '

The New York Times were of course comparing events in South Africa in 1901 to those that had gone before in Cuba's Third War for Independence from Spain that started in 1895.

Spanish tactics were remarkably similar to what the British followed in South Africa from 1900. Most probably because the British emulated them. First they used trochas to limit the movement of the Cuban rebel army. The History of Cuba website explains the trocha system.

The trocha was "a broad belt across the island," about two hundred yards wide and fifty miles long, designed to limit rebel movement to the eastern provinces. Down the center, a single-track military railroad was equipped with armor-clad cars, and various forts and fortified blockhouses were built alongside. A maze of barbed wire was placed so that every twelve yards of posts had 450 yards of barbed-wire fencing. The fortified houses featured loopholes and trenches on the outside, and many encircled windows from which Spanish soldiers could observe and fire.

This was not at all dissimilar to the British Blockhouses that carved up the South Africa landscape, when the Boers started their guerrilla campaign. The British linked the blockhouses with barbed wire fences to parcel up the wide veld into smaller areas easier to control the marauding Boer Commandos.

Next came a "Scorched Earth" policy under which they targeted everything within the controlled areas that could give sustenance to the Boer guerrillas with a view to making it harder and harder for the Boers to survive.

As British troops swept the countryside, they systematically destroyed crops, burned homesteads and farms, poisoned wells, and interned women, children and workers in concentration camps.

But this too had its antecedent in Cuba. Spanish General Weyler implemented a system of what he called “re-concentration”. In this system various fortified areas were designated, and all inhabitants were given eight days to move in, including cattle and other animals. Anyone caught outside was considered the enemy and killed. It is estimated that up to 200,000 Cubans died in these Concentration camps.

By the end of 1897, there were 240,000 regulars and 60,000 Spanish irregulars on the island. Like the Boers, numerically the Cubans was supposed to have no chance.

Winston Churchill had travelled to South Africa to cover the Boer war. But a few years earlier he was in Cuba.

Writing in New York's Saturday Review, Winston Churchill expressed reluctant concern at the fact that "two-thirds of the Cuban rebels were black," adding that it would be beneficial to US. interests if Spain kept control of the island.

Cuban figthers

But the Americans were concerned by the deaths and suffering in Cuba. But the way in which this concern was expressed had made the Cuban rebels suspicious. Not that the USA would follow Churchillian advice and support the Spanish mind you.

They suspected that the Americans had other ulterior motives. The fears proved well founded when the US joined the War against Spain and annexed the island.

By then Cuban commanders had realised the importance of sizing the west of the island. Failing to get the west was partly why they had not managed to won in the previous wars of independence. In a daring mission lasting ninety days, the invading army went from its eastern tip to the western end traveling a total of 1,700 kilometers and fighting 27 battles against numerically superior forces.

The History of Cuba website explains the situation when the US entered the War:

'By the time the US entered the war in 1898, Spain was running for cover, and a Cuban victory was certain. The Spanish troops had been forced back into the urban areas, making them easy targets. The rebels controlled the countryside, and the Spaniards found it impossible to retreat.'

On August 11 Spain accepted the peace terms, in which the US received control of 4 new territories: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

Although the treaty officially granted Cuba's independence (anti-imperialists in the Senate had made sure that laws were passed excluding Cuba from becoming a US territory), it was the US flag, not the Cuban flag, that was raised over Havana, and during the surrender ceremonies in Santiago de Cuba, US General William R. Shafter refused to allow Cuban General Calixto García and his rebel forces to participate.

In December 1898, one year before Boer forces thwarted British dreams to be home in Britain in time for Christmas, Cuba faced a new invasion.

A US newspaper wrote “Whatever may be decided as to the political future of Cuba, it’s industrial and commercial future will be directed by American enterprise with American capital.”

The American provisional military governments, which controlled Cuban money, refused to provide loans to farmers and landowners.

Foner a historian wrote:

“This was the legacy of American military occupation, and the refusal to permit the use of the funds belonging to the Cuban people to assist the small farmers and planters to retain their land and rebuild their properties, damaged or destroyed during the Revolution.

…Americans were most ‘energetic’ in picking up land at low prices from people who were without means, and for whom the Occupation government refused to provide loans so that they could develop their property.”

Concessions for the railway was won by American companies, and soon the sugar and tobacco industries once controlled by the Spanish was American. American newspapers and Generals urged their government to incorporate the island into the US against earlier legal provisions.

Like Lord Milner who governed South Africa after the Boer War, and who regarded Afrikaners as ignorant and who wanted the country to be incorporated into an English Empire for its own good, US news papers were plugging for much the same in the case of Cuba.

An editorial in the New York Sun, on April 13 1900, summed up the pro US point of view. “The attitude of the people of Cuba toward annexation seems to be this in brief; the wealth and intelligence of the island are generally in favor of it, and the agitators and their tools, the ignorant Negroes, are opposed to it.”

Black or mixed race Cubans had allot to worry about. The US view on race now held sway on the island. It was even suggested that black Cubans had not made an equal contribution to the war.

In 1901, US military governor Wood expressed the need to "whiten" the Cuban population.

Governor Wood's attempt to create an all-white-Cuban artillery corps led to strong opposition from veteran leaders of the Liberation Army. According to Pérez, "white (Cuban) veterans made it clear that there was a blatant contradiction between the integrationism of Cuban nationalist discourse and the segregationist policy of the U.S. Government of Occupation."

In the objection of white veterans to this attempt to exclude black Cubans lies much of what makes Cuba exceptional, not just to South Africans, but to other nations as well.

Cuba had already long history of struggle for racial unity. In fact it could be said that this search for racial unity had already by 1901 become integral to Cuban identity.

But why was Cuba so different? Why this commitment to non racialism that has bedevilled so much of the rest of the world? A comparison with the identity formation of Afrikaners is instructive.

(To be continued)

What's Mbeki doing in Watford?

2008-04-06T21:45:00.006-04:00

This Saturday saw a Progressive Governance Conference of centre left leaders in leafy Watford.

And Thabo Mbeki, the single person with most influence on Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe was there, surreally opting to be in the Hertfordshire county rather than in Southern Africa.

What on earth could he achieve there, the lamest of all lame duck presidents with no support of his party ain't going to get to do allot of progressive governance in his last remaining year.

At least Zimbabwe presents an opportunity to salvage a bit of his reputation before he retires. But that is proving a forlorn hope.

Mr Mbeki did tell eager journalists that the present situation in Zimbabwe is “manageable” and this is “not the time to interfere”.

He refused to criticise Zimbabwe's conduct of the elections and rejected a call by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change for international intervention to prevent bloodshed.

Mind you, Mbeki did claim that a previously dubious election was free and fair. Mr. Mbeki is consistently unfathomably horrendous in matters of morality, governance and statecraft if nothing else.

According to AP the closing press conference he became increasingly exasperated at the repeated questions on the issue, declaring: "Zimbabwe is not a South African province, Can we agree about that?"

Nope, but Mbeki will most certainly be au fait with what a previous South African leader, John Vorster, did in precipitating regime change across the Limpopo. He simply cut off all supplies but in particularly oil.

Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa, but the power to do something about this tragedy lies within Mbeki's hands.

In today's UK Guardian the MDC makes a credible claim that Mbeki is seeking to protect Zanu PF.

The MDC feels badly let down by South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, and other regional leaders, in particular. In the party's view, Mbeki has played a deceptive role in which he has projected himself as an honest broker but sought to engineer a result in which Mugabe leaves office but Zanu-PF remains in power.

A summary of Mbeki's legacy can now be headlined:

Responsible for at least 300,000 avoidable aids deaths;

Leader of the ANC and Government when it became infested with corruption;

Leader of the Government when it mismanaged the countries power supply, health and educational system;

Second most responsible person after Robert Mugabe for the crisis in Zimbabwe.

A new dawn in Zimbabwe?

2008-04-02T23:57:00.007-04:00

By the time you read this Robert Mugabe may have stepped down. We already know that Zany PF, the party that ruled Zimbabwe with Stalinist intent no longer has the majority in parliament.

President Robert Mugabe and first lady Grace during the run up to the March 29, 2008 national elections in Zimbabwe.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

Mhambi has just been listening to an interview by John Simpson with a senior member of Zanu PF. His analysis was simple. Mugabe had made a strategic mistake by not claiming victory earlier.

It was a moment of weakness. A moment in which doubt settled in the minds of state aparatchiks. And so Mugabe fell fowl of the golden rule of African politics - be ruthless.

Now suddenly these erstwhile sycophantic bureaucrats are falling over themselves trying to demonstrate how even handed and fair they are. Not a little reminiscent of recent events in the post Polokwane South African parliament.

The best Mugabe can hold out for now is a run off AND an intervention by the military. Because in a a run off he is even more likely to loose.

Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

In March 2007 I opined in an article titled In Cosatu the ANC sees a potential MDC:

'Allot of people are often depressed by events in Zimbabwe, but Mhambi sees reasons for optimism. A largely non-tribal city based middleclass is revolting against the party and leader of liberation. This is largely because Zimbabwe has (or had) substantial industry and therefore a middelclass and organised labour.'

Recent events in both South Africa and Zimbabwe had me beginning to loose faith. But some commentators like Steven Friedman kept banging the drum - the struggle in Zim, Kenya and Polokwane are the birth pangs of genuine democracy in Africa he said. Not many were listening.

'The pattern is clear. The “right” of African presidents to rule for as long as they like, regardless of what their people may think, is under threat.'

If indeed this is the end of Mugabe it is very good news for Africa and South Africa. Already investors are looking to move back into the stricken economy. Consensus is that their economy can be rehabilitated fast.

Many Zimbabweans will be overjoyed at the opportunity to move back over the border from an increasingly xenophobic South Africa. Many South Africans will be glad that they won't have to compete with Zimbabweans over jobs.

But its in the realm of ideas that a huge shift is occurring. An MDC government's foreign policy is likely to put South Africa's foreign policies in an even more unflattering light.

Internally its likely to seek racial reconciliation and economic harmony before the ideology of racial exclusivity at the cost of the economy.

Beware ANC.

Principled and brave Ivan Toms dies

2008-03-27T11:05:00.005-04:00

Sometimes brave and principled individuals can make a difference. This week Dr. Ivan Toms died. He is one of those people we seem to have to such a dearth of in today's South Africa.

Ivan Toms shot to prominence when he agreed to be the public face of resistance to conscription at a time when it was very critical for the SADF. He very publicly refused to go to the SADF and went on a hunger strike. Ivan Toms, against the advice of ECC organisers, was also openly gay. And for this he was pilloried as much as for his objection to military service.

Toms had done time on the Namibian Angolan border as a medic. But it was upon his return to South Africa, when violence erupted in the townships and he witnessed troops involved in this violence that Toms decided not to serve in the army again.

On 3 March 1988, Toms was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment of which he served nine months in Pollsmoor Prison as a 'criminal' prisoner, after which he was released on bail.

At the time of his sentence the Judge said although he had no option but to follow the law and sentence Toms:

“You are not a criminal. Our jails are there for people who are a menace to society – you are not a menace to society. In fact you are just the opposite, you have always been an asset to society in the services you have rendered.”

According to Richard Steele another ex conscientious objector:

Further to the finding that Ivan died due to infection with meningococcal meningitis:- Some pieces of the puzzle may be that Ivan had his spleen removed some years after his ECC fast, due to the damage incurred during the fast. According to the medical literature on meningitis, lack of a spleen can be a risk factor for the rapid progress of meningitis. Another risk factor may have been the fact that he had recently completed the Argus cycle race. Such a strenuous event can deplete the immune system and make one vulnerable to infection.

I once spoke to Toms to get an interview with him for a documentary on the Border War. He was humble and although helpful, felt that other ex members of the ECC also deserved credit and gave me their details.

Read a good summary of some of Ivan Toms achievements here.

Or try to get hold of the Eat my Call Up documentary by Naashon Zalk to see an intimate portrait of Ivan Toms.

Cuito Cuanavale - background to a battle

2008-03-20T12:23:00.018-04:00

Recently progressive politician Van Zyl Slabbert pleaded with South Africans “not to fall for an invented history”. This included what he called the myth that Cuban and Angolan forces had defeated the South African Defence Force (SADF) at the Angolan battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

Underlining its resonance just this week the president of the ANC, Jacob Zuma and a delegation from the South African parliament is visiting Quito Canavale.

Why is Cuito Cuanavale seen as so incredibly important and the site of so much argument? It is said the battle which commenced in September 1987 was the largest land battle in Africa since World War 2. Is that it? What exactly transpired there, and what was at stake then and is now?

Slabbert claims that South Africa’s struggle past was being selectively used to establish a racially exclusive Africanism as “the new dominant ideology”. And the debate over Cuito is part of this trend.

A massive argument now rages about who actually won at Cuito. Right after the incident Fidel Castro had already achieved several media coups with his claim that Cuban forces had secured major victory for the Angolans over the racist apartheid army.

South African generals deny this claim to this day by pointing to its low casualty rate (just over 20) compared to the Cubans and Angolan MPLA. And they claim that its army never intended to take Cuito Cuanavale.

Several assumptions and points of departure in the argument about Cuito Cuanavale are however misguided.

One glaring mistake that is often made in the debate about Cuito is not mentioning the role of Unita on whose side South Africa fought. Another is not explaining the background and what lead to it. More specifically:

the spectacular South African military victories up until then,

the change in weaponry,

the pressures on both South Africa and Cuba,

the Nationalist's aversion to taking casualties.

Why Cuito Cuanavale

Cuito Cuanavale is a town a few hundred kilometers inside Angola and towards the vast countries east. It is a gateway of sorts to the whole South eastern region. It was also importantly barely within range of South African fighter planes.

It is situated on the banks of a river and had been a centre from which Angola's MPLA had launched attacks on Mavinga in south east Angola for a number of years.

Each season starting 1984 when the rains allowed them they struck out south east along the Lomba river.

The actual target was Jamba, Unita's bush head quarters. This south east of Angola was sparsely populated by the ethnic group loyal to Unita, with nothing much else but bush. On the South African side of the Namibian border there was not much else either, except the base of crack SADF units like 32 Batallion.

Jamba, a magnet for trouble

Many SADF personnel including Jan Breytenbach the maverick head of 32 battalion had for some time questioned the wisdom of setting up a formal fiefdom by Unita at Jamba.

It would encourage just these kinds of large conventional attacks by the MPLA it was thought. It presented a prize target, and if taken would be a massive propaganda coup. It was argued that it would be much better if the movement remained as a guerrilla army.

As apartheid South Africa suffered from an international arms embargo it wanted to avoid conventional warfare. On paper the Russian backed MPLA had superior weaponry in many areas, not to mention its tank capability.

The Russian military loved these large formal troop movements, and actively encouraged the MPLA to attack in this way. The Cubans on the other hand, who also had a strong presence in Angola, and had so heroically and audaciously helped the MPLA in 1975 begged to differ. They thought the Russian strategy to be ill conceived.

The Angolans often fled in the face of South Africa attacks, and so landed Unita with valuable Russian military hardware.

To the Cubans the Angolans would be much better served if they also followed a guerrilla strategy. And if they were to strike with conventional power, they thought a strike down the south west would be much more effective than the south east.

This is because South Africa presented more targets in this area, one of which was the Calueque hydro electric dam. It supplied much of Northern Namibia's electricity and was built with South African money. There were also many settlements and the odd town on this side of the Namibian border.

But since 76, the Russian opinion held more sway with the MPLA. In September 1984 one of the first large attacks by the MPLA from Cuito Canavale towards Mavinga took place. It was stopped in its tracks.

The SADF supporting Unita - primarily with their Mirage fighter airplanes - destroyed the advancing MPLA columns. The MPLA was pursued, but importantly not all the way back to Quito itself.

Much the same would happen the next year in September 1985 when the MPLA backed by the Russians attempted exactly the same. Their columns were disrupted, they were pursued, but Quito was not attacked.

The question has to be asked why Quito Cuanavale was not attacked as it tells us much of what transpired later.

The pressure mounts

If the South Africans were enjoying military success outside of the country, inside South Africa the situation had changed dramatically. Swart September 84, which began in, Sharpeville caused riots throughout the country. In 1985 more than 30,000 SADF soldiers would be deployed to quell the riots inside the country. This drew heavily on the resources of the SADF.

The country was also being crippled by economic sanctions. The occupation of Namibia was gobbling up a large proportion of the South African budget. And increasingly white soldiers were not showing up for compulsory military service.

Earlier on in the conflict the Nationalist Government indicated to its military that it was risk averse. Risk averse in the sense that it thought the white voting public in the Republic would not tolerate much by way of white casualties.

This is probably the main reason why the SADF had not sent large numbers of ground forces to destroy Cuito Cuanavale. It was just not prepared to take that political risk.

Instead it fell back on the services of the South African air force and mainly black guerrilla units like 32 Battalion to defend Unita's Jamba when needed.

In Namibia the conflict against Swapo's Plan army had been contained but at great financial cost. Swapo, starved of resources had been an exceptionally brave opponent. Although Swapo fighters crossing the border on foot were almost always captured or killed, they just kept coming.

1986 saw much the same pattern of conflict emerge. But a few other changes was afoot. The South African government's arms project had began to deliver. The South Africans now had some of the best long range canons in the world. In two more years time they would also see the fruition of even more sophisticated weaponry.

The Cold War winds down

But the world was changing as well. Come 1987 the Russians had already indicated to the Cubans that they were interested in some negotiated peace. The Soviet Union was in retreat. So too was Cuba and its economy suffering come 1987. The treat of diminished Soviet economic support loomed large for Cuba. Internally there was much talk of dissent to the Castro regime.

PW Botha had already started a tentative secret process to talk to Mandela, while the Russians, Americans, Cubans, Angolans and South Africans had started tentative talks about ending the conflict.

It is here where to me it seems two fierce characters, PW Botha and Fidel Castro, and their inflated egos took the decisions that would shape what transpired at the now mythical accounts of Quito Cuanavale. One of them would do better than the other. A victory of sorts was on the cards.

Afrikaner vs Cuban the irony of Cuito Cuanavale

Obama makes nuanced, complicated, risky race speech

2008-03-19T21:37:00.009-04:00

Barack Obama delivered on Tuesday the kind of speech rarely seen in Western politics. It sounded heartfelt, and certainly treaded on dangerous ground for his candidacy. Because it was nuanced, sophisticated and eschewed shallow sound bytes.

Said Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.

Most people, of course, aren't sitting around watching speeches on morning cable. They will form impressions of the speech from the TV coverage and the newspaper headlines. In short, a long, discursive rumination about race will be sliced and diced by our sound-bite culture.

I don't know whether this defuses the Wright problem or not. Obama seemed absolutely determined not to disavow him, and that won't help him politically, no matter what the chattering classes say.

And the New York Times said:

"The speech violated several conventions of campaign discourse -- for one, the injunction that all politicians must speak about racial and ethnic groups in upbeat stereotypes.

Presidential politics usually requires candidates to either wholly adopt or reject positions and people. Mr. Obama did neither with his pastor, rejecting his most divisive statements but also filling in the picture of Mr. Wright and his church... He admitted that his pastor is both a divisive figure and an inspiring one."

Obama claimed that he could not disown his ex black pastor Mr. Wright, who caused the furore by lambasting a racist and corrupt America, like he could not disown his white grandmother. She once confessed a fear of black men to him and made derogatory remarks on more than one occasion he said.

The reason he could not reject them is Obama said, because they are all part of him and of America. Because these racial views is the reality for many black and white Americans outside of polite company. It can't be wished away.

Sjoe, Mhambi wonders if any South African politician will have this ability to see the anger and fears of all sides any time soon? A bit like mister Mandela.

Let's hope this complicated honesty has not sunk Obama, who increasingly seems like a rare political animal. Principled, brave and intelligent. One I increasingly like.

If the USA still elects Obama, South Africa will seem light years behind with its crippling racial politics.

Obama's ex pastor and church say they campaign for black self determination. Obama still defends the reverend Mr. Wright saying he has always treated whites with respect. Sounds a bit like Afrikaners defending Karel Boshof.

As a minority is the US I have allot of sympathy for black Americans. It's interesting that how in the US, if you have some black blood, your considered black by the majority of the population. And in South Africa, if you have some non black blood, you are considered not African.

Obama would have been considered coloured (mixed race) in South Africa and not black enough to become president.

Apartheid morality, one for Afrikaners and one for the rest

2008-03-14T18:03:00.018-04:00

Thank goodness for people like Rhoda Kadalie. As an Afrikaner I was outraged by the abusive Reitz video made at the Free State University. So was many other Afrikaners and Afrikaner organisations.

But simmering all week was a nagging feeling that the way this has been criticised from certain quarters is so disproportionate when compared to other incidents. This hypocrisy in itself reeked to me of prejudice. Some commentators like Michael Trapido have spotted the same.

The reaction of celebrity South African society and the international media is unquestionably disproportionate when compared to other incidents in this country, and now it seems some organisations like Cosatu and the ANC are trying to make political capital from it.

I don't for a moment think lambasting these students for arrogant racist abuse and taking strong disciplinary action against them is unwarranted. Neither don't I think the University management at the UFS should take stock of how they deal with racism and change its structures if it must. But can we have similar for all abuse suffered by different groups in this country, on campuses and off it?

And, yesterday Rhoda Kadalie said exactly that in a hard hitting article Video uproar betrays culture of double standards.

Take violence against women at our Universities says Kadalie.

"...we forget that sexual violence and rape are prevalent and covered up on so many campuses. Ask me, I know about sexual violations at so-called progressive universities, where student leaders were involved in the sexual harassment and rape of fellow students. These campuses were not billed as “campuses of rape”, and whole campuses are not painted with the same brush because of those who routinely perpetrate such acts of violence against female students at only one."

What is Rhoda referring to? To these reports of rape at a Durban campus? Perhaps, who knows, because besides this report very little else was written about this particular incident or any others. It certainly did not reach the Sowetan, The Star, Die Beeld, The Sunday Times etc.

Perhaps because it has a female editor The Mail and Guardian gave a UKZN lecturer Lubna Nadvi the opportunity to write a further article on the rapes at the UKZN campus.

For her trouble the newspaper got a stinging rebuke from the university management including the deputy dean, Professor Nceba Gqaleni accusing Nadvi of racism. Incredibly the report was attacked because there had been none before on other similar incidents:

“A number of African students have died or been mugged in residences.”

And there had been no media coverage he said.

Ferial Haffajee, the Mail and Guardian editor sprang to Lubna Nadvi's defence:

“A number of African students have died or been mugged in residences.” The writers throw in this statement as evidence of Nadvi’s alleged racism and charge that she only cared when an American student was raped, not because it is deeply shocking that places of learning have become places of horror.

Shocking yes, but still the story barely registered at home or abroad.

But shocking events ignored is par for he course it seems. Kadalie goes on and lists racism and abuse by black South Africans that go unreported or that spectacularly fails to rack up the column inches:

Equally, at many predominantly black universities, racial segregation at residences is the order of the day, but nobody speaks about that because it is assumed here that freedom of association is a right . Do you remember the coloured man who moved into Khayelitsha and was hounded out by blacks for daring to go and live in a black area?

You probably don't remember it, but there was a report of the coloured man's whose house was stoned by a crowd of 400 people.

But this of course is small fry compared to the xenophobia foreign blacks encounter in this country and often pay for with their lives. Kadalie again:

And how many hundreds of Somalis in Western Cape have been killed by other black people for simply being successful business people? Where are the headlines about this? Where is the Human Rights Commission when it comes to taking up these plights?

Here is one account of the suffering of Somalis at the hands of Xhosa's in Masiphumelele Visoek.

Kadalie is however wrong. The killings of Somalis is a country wide phenomena and not limited to the Cape. Attacks on Somalis have been recorded in Knysna, Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, Diepsloot in Gauteng and Khutsong in the Free State, among others.

The first death was in 1997. Jacob van Garderen the new director of Lawyers for Human Rights have been dealing with cases of Somalis killed in Parys in the Free Sate as well. There have been no news reports of these killings in Parys whatsoever.

In October 2006 as many as 40 Somalis were killed in one month, and all we have to show for it is this article by Pearly Joubert. Where is the international media?

I could list more instances of abuse where the international media peculiarly let South Africa off the hook. Compare this to what happens elsewhere. Russia is regularly in the news when racist attacks take place where individuals are hurt or killed. In another article the BBC follows up on a Amnesty International report that as many as 28 people could have been killed in Russian racist attacks during 2005.

When a polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, recently was tazered to death by police in Canada the world was aghast.

When Adonis Musati, a young Zimbabwean asylum seeker died of hunger, a few meters away from the department of home affairs on the glitzy Cape Town foreshore, after he had queued there for days, there was barely a whimper. It did not register internationally.

Very recently The Sunday Times commissioned research from Plus 94 Research on racism in this country. Futhi Ntshingila reported on the front page of the Sunday Times that most black South Africans experience other black South Africans as most racist.

The poll found that Indians were the most likely recipients of racial hostility from Africans, with three out of four Indian respondents claiming first-hand experience of this.

The sentiment was most obvious in Durban and academic and activist Ashwin Desai said this was not surprising. “You tend to compare yourself with somebody across the road from you. Therefore the conflict between Africans and Indians happens ironically in places where they live next to each other,” he said.

A scintillating story and controversial to boot, but well researched and including some excellent commentary and analysis from the likes of Professor Adam Habib, Dan Ncayiyana, activist Ashwin Desai and Professor Charles Villa-Vicencio.

I challenge you to try and saddle up Google and find the original story on the Sunday Times website or any follow ups by any other media organisation. The only reference to the original story is to be found on a sad right wing website, where it has been copied and pasted wholesale.

Why do we suffer from this two faced reporting? Why this hypocritical public gushing and regurgitating on the one hand and conspiracy of silence on the other? The world and we have our South African narrative fixed and we won't let facts get in the way of our emotional reaction.

For lack of a better word I will call it apartheid reporting, because that is exactly what it is. There are two sets or moral codes operating in South Africa.

The consequences of these lopsided reactions is to encourage Afrikaner denialists of racism. Because agreeing is seen as giving carte blance for the rising new wave of prejudice, sweeping all in 'transformative' path.

Should we condemn Reitz less? No. But lets take up the cudgels elsewhere where people are abused and killed. This is after all about human rights and not persecution, right?

Stellenbosch police raid pictures emerge on facebook

2008-03-12T13:26:00.008-04:00

Facebook is proving to be an interesting template for people to organise themselves around issues.

The Facebook group in response to the raids in Stellenbosch is proving to be a great place for victims to share information, resources, pictures and videos.

A few journalists also have joined the group as its a great source for stories.

This is a picture of Louis Joubert, who incidentally is a 1st Dan in Karate, but he says on Facebook, "daar is nie veel wat jy kan doen as jy op die grond le nie, veral na 'n sarsie pepperspray."

You can't do much if your lying on the floor with peper spray in your face.

He told Mhambi today:

"i was kicked in the face about 4 times while lying

on the floor."

Where's the M & G?
What Mhambi finds rather strange is that the Mail and Guardian has not covered this story at all.

Police raids in Stellenbosch and Johannesburg

2008-03-10T10:22:00.022-04:00

I just got a message from Adriaan Pelzer of the band Nul on Facebook. Apparently this weekend the police violently raided three music venues.

In one incident Afrikaans folk singer Bacshus Nel's equipment was 'confiscated' at the Bohemian in Johannesburg, where a protesting band supporter was allegedly called a "white pig" by Metro police.

I just messaged Lizelle Smit who attended the gig, she said it was "...soos in die 90's. Kon dit nie glo nie." Like in the 90's I could not believe it.

According to Smit the incident was relatively calm until the police took Bacchus Nel - who is blind - instruments. The crowd reacted in protest.

But the incident was not nearly as violent as what transpired in Stellenbosch.

In the Bohemia in Stellenbosch police raided military style. You can watch for yourself what transpired. One cop can be seen firing a shotgun wildly into the air, apparently oblivious that the bar has an upstairs area.

It was captured on the venue's CCTV cameras.

There was also a raid on the Mystic Boer where a video is available but we are still trying to get hold of a video of that.

There is a Facebook group about these incidents of police brutality.

Also read a Beeld report about one of the incidents.

Update Nel has got all his equipment back.

This video was made by Cape Town based Afrikaans paper Die Burger and contains allegations of police assault on the student bar patrons. And of police confiscating mobile cameras when students took pictures of the police to identify them.

And The Independent reports that The Springbok bar was also raided.

One student, who asked to remain anonymous, had a blue eye and several bruises on his face, after being kicked four times in the face, allegedly by a police officer, after he and his friends were ordered to lie on the ground in the pool room in Die Mystic Boer.

"They told us to stop drinking and smoking. My friend lit up a cigarette and they slapped him in the face. I yelled: "Dude, what the f**k are you doing to my friend? That's when they hit me and kicked me four times in the face. Then they sprayed mace or pepper spray in my eyes." Niel Bekker, a journalism graduate and son of Koos Bekker, the chief executive of Naspers, said he saw a man from the Netherlands who had been invited to speak at the Woordfees and his Belgian friend confront the police.

The Belgian man and his girlfriend, who tried to intervene, were knocked against a wall.

He also saw how a girl, who was having an asthma attack and who tried to use her phone, was hit with a baton. Stefan Sessa, the marketing manager at Cia Media, also at Die Mystic Boer, said police hit him and threw him to the ground. Johan Blom, who was at Springbok Pub with his friends, said a police officer shouted at everyone to "put away your f**king phones" and when he asked her why she was swearing at him, he had pepper spray sprayed into his eyes.

"I had to rely on my friend to lead me home, because I was blinded." Bevan Williams, who was also in the Springbok Pub, said his doctor confirmed his eardrum had ruptured when a police officer hit him after he tried to take a picture of him.

Update

While the investigation into the controversial police raids on mainly student night spots in Stellenbosch at the weekend was handed over to the Independent Complaints Directorate on Tuesday, the news of two European writers caught up in the raids raised international attention.

Acclaimed author Breyten Breytenbach, in an open letter in Die Burger on Tuesday, apologised to the two authors for how "our pigs in bulletproof vests" treated them.

Flemish poet Dirk van Bastelaere and Dutch author Tommy Wieringa, speakers at the annual Woordfees cultural festival, were among those allegedly manhandled.

Comment

Mhambi reckons this was an example of standard SAPS behaviour and not that far removed from the 'ordinary' police raid on a shebeen in the townships. But white middelclass kids ain't use to this kind of thing.

It does not make it right of course.

Update

The incident's Facebook group has been mobilizing students to file complaints.

"Guys and girls, PLEASE leave the race issue out of this!!! There were white, black, coloured cops and costomers/students involved!!!!!! This is not a racial thing, its a human rights issue. Its not black vs white, its police vs public! PLEASE focus on the topic.

Please come into Bohemia or Mystics and give them your account of what happened or yoo can follow these steps:

First thing would be for the guys to open criminal cases.

If you were hit or kicked - Assault
Pepper Sprayed - Assault GBH
Woman searched by males - Indecent Assault
Phone damaged - Malicious Injury to Property

If you were assaulted first go to the nearest police station and get a J88, it's a form that a doctor needs to complete in order to note the injuries that you sustained. This is very important as it can also be used in any future civil claims.

After that type out your statement and go open your case at the police station.

Lodge a formal complaint with the Independant Complaints Directorate (http://www.icd.gov.za)

Getting charged with Assault is nothing for a policeman. Having the ICD all over your ass, is hell."

BBC radio on the arms deal and Zuma

2008-03-09T10:20:00.009-04:00

Listen to quite a good BBC radio documentary on that arms deal, and Jacob Zuma. It includes interviews with Andrew Feinstein (ANC whistle blower), Gavid Woods (former head of the parliamentary watchdog of public accounts, Scopa) Beki Jacob (ANC intelligence), Same Sole (journalist), Rear Admiral Chris Bennet (SA navy), Patricia de Lille (Leader of the ID), Richard Young (Arms tender).

corvette SA navy
Originally uploaded by nic777.

It also includes a good explanation of how Zuma first supported and then turned against the investigation into the deal.

And this turning of Zuma by French arms company Tales would never have come to light if it was not for a fortuitous moment and an encrypted fax fell into the lap of investigators via a spurned secretary.

Oh, and theres some great singing as well.

It's time to peg the Rand low like China

2008-03-08T22:59:00.006-05:00

One of the last remaining shoe factories in Cape Town.

Just the other day I was musing with friends why South Africa has not decided to peg its currency at a lower rate, so our manufacturing and services could blossom.

I have of late taken a keen interest in shoe manufacturing, as my girlfriend is a shoe maker. We have investigated manufacturing a range in Cape Town's dwindling shoe factories.

Besides the now growing skills and equipment shortage there is one startling fact that illustrates the South African problem. The average Indian factory worker gets paid about $24's per month. Compare that to a South African factory worker that gets $100 per month or higher.

In yesterday's business day Michael Power argues strongly for just the remedy we were talking about. Pegging the Rand low for the sake of being competitive.

My essential view — which I have doggedly maintained for more than a decade — is that the rand remains structurally overvalued. The main reason I give is that the rand’s current trading range is trapped in the straitjacket of what works for SA’s first economy. But, at this elevated rate, the overvalued rand prevents the second economy from having even the remotest of chances of working, literally and metaphorically.

Let’s start with the basics. SA is living way beyond its means; we have a current account deficit of 7,8% of gross domestic product (GDP). To balance our national books, we need inflows of foreign capital of about R3bn a week, or R600m a working day. Those economists who say it is “natural for a successful developing country to run external deficits and so import capital” need to read pretty much any post-1980 book on real-world economics. Even at the risk of generalising, no, it is not natural to run a deficit if you want to be successful. The emerging economies that have grown most — essentially the east Asian Tigers and now the waking dragon that is China — have been the ones that have put export-led growth first by adopting a hyper-competitive currency; this puts current account surpluses at the centre of their development strategy.

I feel sorry for those economists who simply cannot accept that the “developing countries run deficits” piece of conventional economic wisdom is precisely wrong. Sure, occasionally when global liquidity is abundant you can run deficits and get away with it. But, to paraphrase Warren Buffett, when the tide goes out, then you see who has been swimming naked. And boy, did that tide go out! And sure enough, now everyone can see that SA dispensed with its (no doubt Chinese-made) swimming trunks years ago.

It is time to catch a wake-up, SA. Is this roller coaster we are riding going to be the way we continue to run our economy for ever and a day? Is our economic development plan to become little more than a case of surfing the ebb and flow of the credit cycle, while all the time being subject to the capricious kindness of strangers and their capital?

Will we ever remain little more than a slave to America’s unhealthy rhythms? Must we wait for the planets to align in our favour again, enjoy the party that follows, only to rue the hangover that follows thereafter? And worst of all, by far worst of all, are we in the first economy going to continue to avoid addressing the plight of those trapped in the second economy, unemployable in today’s global economy given today’s rand’s exchange rate? And do we practise this last denial by turning a blind eye to the economically disenfranchised, buying off our consciences with the equivalent of an annual 3% of GDP transfer by way of social grants for 12,7-million people? (If you answer “yes” to the latter, shame on you.)

So now it is my turn to play a game with you, dear reader. Think carefully before you answer this question. I offer you the following choice. Do we build SA’s economy by sticking with the “First Economy First” approach and go with a strong rand? Or do we do what east Asia did and adopt a “Second Economy First” approach, using a more competitive and so much weaker rand? You know which option I would go for.

Motherland Azania

2008-03-07T13:41:00.003-05:00

Motherland Azania
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

It's weekend and time for more South African photography. This is a nice little Polaroid of non other but myself in Cape Town.

Polaroid recently announced that it will stop manufacturing this amazing film format. A format that flattens space and does magic to colour. So buy some film soon and stock up.

Are Afrikaners the planet's worst racists?

2008-03-04T10:58:00.016-05:00

Imagine you are walking down the streets of London, Amsterdam or New York. You randomly ask passers by, name a place, person or people that most strike you as racist. Chances are* that a number of them will say, South Africa, white South Africa, the Boers, or "that chap with the beard and the horse".

(* Provided those you ask are not African immigrants or Asian).

To many in the Western world, white South Africa, and Afrikaners in particular are associated with racism par excellence.

David Goldblatt

Johannes van der Linde, farmer and major in the local army reserve, with his head labourer 'Ou Sam'. In the manner of respectful indirect address used in Afrikaans as between a parent and child, van der Linde asked, 'Old Sam, does the Baas swear at you?' To which the reply was, 'No Baas, the Baas does not swear at me.' Near Bloemfontein, Free State, 1965.

The policy of apartheid, western reaction against colonialism, and continued media coverage of racist behaviour of Afrikaners have over decades cemented this belief amongst Westerners in particular - Afrikaners are racist to the core.

I will examine the negative media coverage of Afrikaners in the Western media in some detail in another post, but today I want to explore the extent and nature of Afrikaner racism.

There is no doubt in my mind that many Afrikaners are deeply racist, and that some of this racism is in a very ugly way. But I will argue, that they are not more racist than the English or any other Western country considering their particular context.

I will argue that the kind of racism amongst Afrikaners is a very particular kind of racism, but also that the kind of racism Afrikaners are prone to are changing.

Afrikaner racism & intimacy with black South Africa

Celebrated jewish South African photographer David Goldblatt recognized and captured the peculiar nature of the racism of Afrikaners in the 1960's.

Goldblatt had grown up on the West Rand town of Randfontein in the 1940's:

"At school, Afrikaans was a compulsory subject that I disliked intensely; it was a harsh language, like the people who spoke it. It is ironic that my mother sent me to Krugersdorp High only after I experienced serious incidents of anti-Semitism and even sadism, first at Pretoria Boys High and then at Marist Brothers in Johannesburg, both English-medium schools. I was happy at Krugersdorp High, also an English-medium school. I finished high school in 1948, the same year the National Party came into power. I remember on their election poster outside my father's shop in the main street of Randfontein a caricatured Hoggenheimer, the archetypal Jewish capitalist. Besides the swart gevaar, Jewish capitalists were the ultimate evil in the eyes of the party.

In my father's shop, serving Afrikaners, I found, almost in spite of myself, that I liked many of them and, to my surprise, that I was beginning to enjoy the language. There was a warm straightforwardness and an earthiness in many of these people that was richly and idiomatically expressed in their speech. And, although I have never advanced beyond being able to speak a sort of kombuistaal, I delighted in our conversations. Yet, withal, I was very aware that not only were most of these people Nationalists, strong supporters of the Party and its policies, but that many were racist in their very blood. Although anti-Semitism was now seldom overt, they made no secret of their attitude to blacks, who at best were children in need of guidance and correction, at worst sub-human. I was much troubled by the contradictory feelings of liking, revulsion and fear that these Afrikaner encounters aroused in me and felt the need somehow to come closer to these lives and to probe their meaning for me. I wanted to do this with the camera."

David Goldblatt -
Making a coffin for the body of a neighbour's servant whose family could not afford to buy one, Bootha Plots, Randfontein, Transvaal (Gauteng), 1962.

Goldblatt was onto something - the peculiarity of Afrikaner racism.

Kinds of racism

Racism is a one size fits all word to describe many kinds of behaviour of one group to another. Often these concepts overlap. The form racism takes often has dramatically different results.

There is something like competitive racism. The racism where two groups compete over resources or cultural hedgemony. Like the Kikuyus and Luo's in Kenya today. Or the Turks and Greeks in Cyprus.

There is chauvinistic racism where one group perceives themselves to be superior to another group. This is often how most people interpret the term racism. The Nazi's treatment of the Gypsies can be used as an example of chauvinistic racism.

Theres is the flip side to chauvinistic racism, this is where one group sees themselves as having been oppressed and inferior to another group - the inferior racist. The Hutus in Rwanda and their resentment towards and genocide of Tutsis spring to mind as an example.

And then there is paternalistic racism. It is a racism where the racist sees the other as inferiors in need of guidance. It's a peculiar racism, because it militates against separation, and often is combined with intimacy and even a certain warmth between the various parties. Quite often the two groups in question are dependent on each other.

Goldblatt again:

"I had begun to use the camera long before this in a socially conscious way. And so I began to explore working-class Afrikaner life in our district. I drove out to the kleinhoewes around the town. I would stop and ask people if I might do some portraits of them or spend time with them while they went about whatever they were doing. In this way I became intimate with some of the qualities of everyday Afrikaner life in these places, and with some of its deeply embedded contradictions.

An old man sits for me. A black child comes and stands next to him, looking at me with curiosity. The man turns and says to the child, 'Ja, wat maak jy hier, jou swart vuilgoed?' (Yes, what are you doing here, you black rubbish?), the insult meant and yet said with affection. How is this possible? I don't know. But the contradiction was eloquent of much that I found in the relationship between rural and working-class Afrikaners and blacks: an often comfortable, affectionate, even physical intimacy seldom seen in the 'liberal' circles in which I moved, and yet, simultaneously, a deep contempt and fear of blacks."

David Goldblatt
The farmer's son with his nursemaid, on the farm Heimweeberg, near Nietverdiend in the Marico Bushveld, Transvaal (North-West Province), 1964.

Comfortable, affectionate, physically intimate but also deep contempt and fear

Afrikaner racism is often misconstrued to be similar to that found in the West, say to the Klu Clux Clan, or France's National Front.

Superficial western reporting clearly demonstrate this misinterpretation of Afrikaner racism. Just last week the Red Star Coven blog recorded an instance of this:

"I just watched the episode of Tropic of Capricorn that deals with South Africa. It was on TV last week, but I missed it.

The programme includes a visit to Louis Trichardt (I think it's still called that - I know there was some kind of mix up about name changes recently). The 'journalist' - who's name I didn't bother to catch - walks through the streets of the town and wonders at the fact that there are so few white faces around, playing spot the Boer - "look, there's one, coming out of the bank with money". He choses to misinterpret his Black guide's explanation and muses "under apartheid this would have been different. You wouldn't have seen Black faces on the streets".

What horseshit. Even in the darkest days of apartheid, the town centres - the streets and pavements - were thoroughly multiracial.

Recently a colleague of mine misinterpreted an event in South Africa as being outrageously racist, while it was actually a more benign paternal racism he witnessed.

When foreigners visit South Africa they expect to see racism they know well. Recently a prominent left wing activist and academic sociologist Kim Scipes visited South Africa. In an article comparing Venezuela and South Africa he said:

"What I saw -- and remember, I only saw a tiny bit of the country -- surprised me. There was much less racial tension than I had expected to find. There was almost none among the political activists that I met. It was somewhat mind-boggling as an American white male to be hugged by blacks after they had been only told I was a "comrade," but it happened a couple of times. And even when it didn't, it seemed to take almost no time at all to create bonds solid enough for deep and critical conversation about the current situation. Among the general public, too, whether on the street or in a few malls that I ended up visiting, the level of overt racial tension was amazingly low (at least to my eye, though the blacks in the same situations might notice what I didn't. Nevertheless, while this was my first trip to South Africa, I have lived most of my adult life in multiracial, if not people of color-dominated, areas in the US, in both African-American and Latino communities, so I have some experience on which to make these observations.) "

Even when mining and industrialisation had taken a firm root in South Africa and black and white South Africans flocked to the cities from the country side, Afrikaners, were the primary interface between white and black South Africa.

As the working class to wealthy English South Africa, they were the nurses in the black hospitals, the policemen in the black areas, the railwaymen who kept Soweto moving.

In a recent documentary about Eugene Terblanche and the far right Afrikaner Weerstand's Beweging (AWB), His Big White Self, director Nick Broomfield ends the movie on a positive note. This ending, is a great narrative device for the director, because it shows that the characters have gone through some transformation. At the very least they have realised that they have to fit into the new South Africa and are working to better the lives of blacks.

Broomfield shows former AWB member JP, an ambulance driver picking up black patients, while Anita, also a former AWB member, is nursing black kids in a hospital. The problem is of course that Anita and JP has always done exactly this as working class Afrikaners under apartheid.

I recently travelled to the little rural town of Trompsburg in the Free State. In the local hotel many a racist remark was made about the government's competence. The town's water supply was off that day. But one of the racists told me:

"Spare a thought for the (black) township, they have not had water for a month. My daugther who teaches at the coloured school has been transporting water to the pupils using our mobile farm tank."

The much publicized and very recent racist video by University students at the Free Sate University is yet another case in point of this peculiar Afrikaner racism. It is clear from the casual interaction that the university cleaners and staff knew and trusted the students. The workers were not coerced into making it. There is a strange familiarity between them. The young students arrogance and their sense of entitlement to mastership is a given for them.

Even the condemnations by many Afrikaans pundits included the oft expressed indignation that these boys were brought up by women like those in the video.

Why do Afrikaners loath and fear and still live among blacks?

What can explain this peculiar kind of racism?

It is the Afrikaner's context that gave them this attitude.

No other white group with Western roots have spent so much time in and amongst black Africans than Afrikaners. Afrikaners lives are integrated with black South Africa to the extent that they are dependent on them.

It is precisely this intimacy and everyday interaction with black Africans and black culture in particular that has helped drive the fear and loathing.

Goldblatt explains how on his travels, he discovered Afrikaners and how they colonised South Africa even in the remotest places:

"Travelling through vast, sparsely populated parts of the country with my camera became a major part of my life at that time. I think that our landscape is an essential ingredient in any attempt at understanding not just the Afrikaner but all of us here. We have shaped the land and the land has shaped us. Often the land was unforgivingly harsh. Yet, the harsher the landscape the stronger the Afrikaners' sense of belonging seemed to be."

Colonisation was a violent process. Black tribes would not always let them in unopposed. If you live by the sword you die by the sword. Afrikaners have lived for long in mortal fear, deep in the country side, without state protection. They were scared of death at the hands of black marauders. Still, never did they travel without their black servants and slaves.

Does familiarity breed contempt?

But the violent nature of colonisation does not explain this fear completely either. Other continents were colonized in the same fashion, but has no comparable post-colonial history of violence and racism.

About one year ago the supposedly tolerant UK erupted with indignation when Jade Goody (a white English lass with a working class background) had a racist tirade against Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood star on Celebrity Big Brother.

The press initially crucified Goody, but after a week many commentators especially on the left, in papers like the Independent and the Guardian jumped to Goody's defence.

The basic argument was this. Goody is working class, lives in South London and is much more likely to have lived in a multi-cultural Britain than her liberal detractors in the broadsheet papers. She is the one with Jamaican neighbors, and a Pakistani shopkeeper, and has had to ride in buses where she might well be the only white.

The Guardian published a very long opinion piece ‘How racist is Britain’ by philosopher Julian Baggini, in which he defended Goody's attitude as prevelant amongst Britains and to be expected:

"But understanding is and will always be limited, not least because almost everyone - including, especially, the liberal middle classes who pride themselves on their openness - lives in a distinct social niche, largely cut off from whole sectors of society."

Afrikaners are not cut off from the whole of South African society. They are immersed in it.

Afrikaner fear and loathing of black African culture stem from their everyday close interaction with it.

To Afrikaners in contact with black Africa, African culture seemed then and seems now decidedly dangerous. Afrikaners see in African culture the antitheses of progress, they see greed and they see a lack of concern for life of others, even the lives of other Africans.

Are these extreme fears justified? Any student of African history can see that some of these fears are not unreasonable.

Does Afrikaner's particular racism excuse Afrikaner racism? No, it does not. But it does put it into context. Afrikaners are no different from the English with respect to their propensity to be racist, but they do live in a totally different society.

It helps one understand why even under the apartheid Nationalists (particularly Vorster and Botha) a massive transfer of wealth from whites to blacks took place through progressive taxation and social spending. Afrikaners saw their role as guardians of the interests of the inferior black South Africans. Compare this to Kenya: the Kikuyus have not done anything similar in respect of the less connected black tribes in that country.

This integration and dependence on black South Africa shows why, unlike other colonial examples, annihilation and genocide of the local population was never attempted by Afrikaners.

It also is the main reason apartheid proved to be unworkable. As FW De Klerk noted, try as they might, apartheid strategists could not unscramble the multi-cultural South African egg.

Does this mean Afrikaner racism is not chauvinistic, inferior or of a competing kind? Some Afrikaner racism clearly do fall within these categories, but in the past it has primarily been paternalistic.

Afrikaner racism is changing

Andries Bezuidenhout, a singer and sociologist has recently remarked that the nature of Afrikaner racism is changing.

Increasingly pushed out of the public service and with the loss of political power this is perhaps inevitable. They are in no position to be paternalistic, and they think - sometimes rightly - that they have ample reason to be resentful.

Where in the past they saw themselves as the providers of wealth, leadership and education, they are coming to see that they are now competing for resources, status and power.

Ironically it might come to be that the new South Africa, outside of the corporate boardrooms and consumer adds, could become less integrated than the old.

Afrikaner groups come out against video

2008-03-04T10:06:00.007-05:00

What was depicted in the video was “particularly bad” for those Afrikaners who were acutely aware of the apartheid past and were trying to “reinvent and re-imagine” themselves, Du Plessis said.

The Business day reports what Tim du Plessis editor of Rapport had to say about Afrikaner reaction:

“It was flashed all over the world, and everyone is thinking that all of us are responsible. Not all of us are the same,” he said.

It was indeed flashed all over the world. Mhambi spent this weekend in New York, and an Afrikaans friend of mine who works as an editor in Brooklyn was queried by her black colleagues about it. She was surprised that all of her black colleagues got to know about it, before she did. It demonstrated the how keenly this incident is felt by the global black community in particular.

Mhambi is therefore very pleased Afrikaner groups made a strong joint statement this weekend condemning the racist video made at Free State Universities Reitz hostel.

Eleven Afrikaans organisations issued a joint statement at the weekend condemning the video.

The incident, in which the students made workers at the university take part in “disgusting” initiation rites, was “unconditionally rejected”, the organisations said.

It was signed by the civil society lobby group AfriForum; the Afrikanerbond; the Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging (the Afrikaans Language and Culture Organisation); Dames Aktueel; Dames-kring; Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurorganisasies (the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations, or FAK); Regslui vir Afrikaans (Lawyers for Afrikaans); Rapportryers- beweging; trade union Solidarity, SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (the South African Academy for Science and Art) and the Voortrekkers, a youth organisation.

They denounced the incident as a misguided way to highlight legitimate concerns about decisions taken by the university’s management.

“Afrikaans students in SA have valid democratic goals.

These ambitions encompass the future of mother tongue education, unlimited access to academic institutions and the quality of education.

“Incidents such as this damage these strivings,” the organisations said.

Reitz students 'gedra hulle soos varke'

2008-02-27T12:27:00.006-05:00

Pissing on Afrikaners - Reitz racists

Mhambi had to say that in Afrikaans. The Reitz students behaved like pigs. If you don't know this already, white students at the University in Bloemfontein have humiliated some university workers on video, making them eat and drink food that had been urinated in. These workers are people who's trust the students obviously had, and had grossly deceived to make the video.

This despicable act, demonstrated clearly the kind of racism and arrogance found amongst some Afrikaners. And now its up to Afrikaners to incisively clean up this mess else it will be a festering sore. These guys should be punished and punished good.

As an Afrikaner I am angry and ashamed. I am glad Afriforum and the Vryheidfront has condemned these acts in the way they have. The more protest from Afrikaners the better. In fact Afriforum should organise a march against this behavior and ask for the strongest possible sanction.

AfriForum, the civil rights initiative linked to the Solidarity trade union, strongly condemned the incident. "The group of students' actions was inexcusable," said Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, adding he was sure that the small group's behaviour would be condemned by the majority of the students of the university.

He hoped the incident would not be used to portray all students at the university in a bad light.

Freedom Front Plus (FF+) youth leader Cornelius Jansen van Rensburg distanced the organisation from the "atrocities screened on a video reportedly produced at the University of the Free State". He said in a statement that the FF+ youth would never condone nor justify the violation of the human dignity of any person.

Expanding Israel is heading for apartheid

2008-02-25T22:13:00.012-05:00

US foreign policy is utterly in the grip of a loose but extremely effective group of pro-Isreal lobbyists. And this is not only bad for the US of A, but for Israel as well.

"Shema israel"
Originally uploaded by ido1.

Mhambi attended a speech on Friday evening by John Mearsheimer, who recently together with Stephen Walt, published a highly controversial book called 'The Israel lobby'. Controversial it should not be. It was a well argued but actually rather obvious point he made.

But the fact that it is so controversial just underscores his point. The lobby is stifling an open exchange of ideas around Israel's future.

Unconditional support

Mearsheimer argues that the USA is the only country with any real influence in the region. Consecutive US Governments have thought that the only possible successful resolution of the conflict, is a solution based on the Two States, and would entail the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Yet even though Israel is the largest recipient of US Aid in the World, has been shielded by the USA in the security council, against express US wishes, Israel has continued to build and expand on Palestinian land.

So, what's the rational explanation for this unconditional support that the USA is giving Israel? It's not justified on strategic grounds. On the contrary, it's a strategic liability because the unconditional support is creating considerable resentment towards the USA in the Muslim world and elsewhere as well.

It can not be explained by US electoral pressure either. Surveys done in the US have shown that although US citizens have sympathy for Israel, this sympathy is not unconditional. They would rather their be a resolution to the Middle East conflict.

Is it not justifiable due to the fact that Israel is a democracy? There are many democracies, like Spain, and New Zealand, and they do not get unconditional support he argues.

So what explains this seeming irrational US foreign policy? The lobby he says. Who is this lobby? They are an extremely successful example of a typical American form of political organization. Another good example is the National Rifle Association.

The lobby consists of many groups, they are not centrally controlled, but are extremely well organized, well funded and very influential. Many of the are in fact Christian Zionists and other fundamentalist Christians and not Jews. And one of their most effective weapons is the smear.

Like for instance calling critics of Israely policy anti-Semites. As an example Mearsheimer mentioned Jimmy Carter, who's book which compared Israely policies with apartheid, was greeted with accusations that he is in bed with clansman David Duke.

So effective is the lobby, that no sitting US politician would dare criticize Israel. A few have, but very few have survived in their posts or progressed in their careers.

The lobby is harming Israel

But the result is not only bad for the USA, its actually harming Israel as well. Why?

Israel has basically three options if it does not choose the way of the Two State Solution and continues to pursue the path of a greater Israel.

The first is that greater Israel becomes a regular democracy affording all its citizens, including the Palestinians equal rights.

But says Mearsheimer, if he was a Jewish Israeli he would not be too excited by this option. Bi-national states do not have a very good track record. And what's more, soon the Palestinians will outnumber the Jews. (I would hazard a guess that not many Afrikaners would endorse this option as a sensible course for Israel to take.)

The second option is a kind of ethnic cleansing. This does not have to necessarily mean mass killings. But the expulsion of all the Palestinians from Palestine. It's unlikely that the Palestinians would leave without considerable resistance though. I say.

The third option is to have the Palestinians as second class citizens, so that they can not gain power even if the Jews are a minority. This option inevitably leads us to apartheid state.

Not great choices are they?

The FBJ's intolerance and exclusivety reminds of Afrikaner Nationalism

2008-02-24T11:58:00.013-05:00

Mhambi has for some time now been going on and on about the creeping racial exclusiveness among black South Africans. As the latest furore about the barring of white journalists from a meeting of Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ) rages, it might be worth remembering similar happenings in our past.

David Goldblatt
On Monumentkop at dawn: preparing for the parades and speeches of the Republic Day festival, Pretoria, Transvaal (Tshwane, Gauteng), 31 May 1966.

And unfortunately, if your an Afrikaner, it makes for uncomfortable reading. If your a black South African it is instructive and so to if your an English speaking white.

Alan Paton, South African liberal and writer, could speak Afrikaans fluently. In 1938 he was excited about the centennial celebrations of the Great Trek. Knowing Afrikaner history, he had sympathy for the resurgence of Afrikaner Nationalism.

On the 16th of December ox wagons would converge on Pretoria from all over the country. This day would also mark the opening of the big Voortrekker Monument, on a koppie just outside of town.

Patton decided to go. He even grew a beard and got him some Voortrekker dress. He completely got with the program, besides the beard and the clothes, he organised two ox wagons for his group. Flying the Vierkleur flag of the defeated Transvaal Republic, Paton rolled into Pretoria. In 1970 he wrote:

"We arrived on a hot day, and I went straight into the showers. Here I was greeted by a naked and bearded Afrikaner patriot, who said to me, 'Have you seen the great crowds?' I said 'yes'. (There were a quarter of a million people there.) He said to me with the greatest affability 'Nou gaan ons die Engelse opdonder'. [Now were gonna give the English hell].

The great day was full of speeches, and theme of every meeting was Afrikanerdom, its glories, its struggles, its grief, its achievements. The speaker would only have to shout 'vryheid', to set the crowd roaring, just as today a black speaker who shouts 'Amandla!' [power], would send a black crowd roaring.

A decedent of the British 1820 settlers who gave Jacobus Uys a Bible when he set out on the Great Trek was shouted down because he gave his greetings in English as his forebears had done."

They were not asked to leave like the white journalists in Sandton, but it was "a lonely and terrible occasion for any English speaking South African who had gone there to rejoice in the Afrikaner festival."

"After the laying of the stone I left the celebrations and went home, I said to my wife, 'I'm taking off this beard and I will never wear another'. That was the end of my love affair with Nationalism, I saw it for what it was, intolerant, self centered, exclusive."

A part of this story makes me feel ashamed. But a part makes me think, after what had been inflicted on Afrikaners by the English, what did he expect from such a big crowd?

Part made me think, why did some Afrikaner leaders, not show others the folly of their ways? After all, Paton was associating with Afrikaners in a way that very few English people did.

No creeping racial exclusive ideologies? Really?

2008-02-22T11:05:00.003-05:00

In the light of my recent post on black racism, jvr and my recent debate as to the real colours of the ANC, and what Van Zyl Slabbert said a while ago, that we are seeing a creeping racially defined Africanist ideology, I read this today with interest.

Chairperson of the newly formed forum's steering committee Abbey Makoe, said the FBJ was an association "who would politically in the South African context be defined as of African descent, coloureds and Indians".

Makoe said the body's "modus operandi" was to "redress inherent past imbalances which affect journalists as they attempt to work in the public domain".

Any member of the media could join the forum, as long as they are of African descent, coloured or Indian.

Trompsburg

2008-02-22T09:00:00.008-05:00

Trompsburg
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

Trompsburg is a peaceful little town in the Free State where a number of friends of mine bought this house for R250 000 (less than £15 000's or $30 000).

The town has one famous inhabitant, writer Karel Schoeman. I have only read one of his books, By Fakkelig, which was about the Irish struggle for freedom from the British, and an allegory for the Afrikaner but also black South African's struggle for freedom.

According to my friends, the best book written in Afrikaans the last couple of years is also one of Schoeman's books - Afskeid en vertrek. (Take leave and go)

In The New York Times George Packer described it thus:

" "I AM trying to keep a soul alive," says the dying narrator of J. M. Coetzee's novel "Age of Iron," "in times not hospitable to the soul." In the violence and decay of Cape Town, the setting of Karel Schoeman's "Take Leave and Go," the time is now and the times are the concern of the novel: how one can continue to live inwardly, love and create in a society that appears to be disintegrating."

Do even Afrikaners have a right to their Proust?

I was quite struck the last paragraph of Packer's review and what it shows about views of Afrikaners circa the 90's.

"Those readers of "Take Leave and Go" who expect some token of protest or guilt will be disappointed; perhaps even protest and guilt are assumed. Adriaan and his friends aren't ignorant, nor are they apologists. They're bewildered by the destruction going on around them; they neither approve nor disapprove, but find themselves painfully estranged from a country they once knew.

Do even Afrikaners have a right to their Proust? Do their inner lives, too, deserve autonomous treatment? I would have had doubts; I would have heard the passionate voice of Nadine Gordimer proclaim the unity of private and social destiny. But then I read Karel Schoeman."

Was I wrong about the Zunami?

2008-02-22T08:32:00.005-05:00

Mhambi has gone on record a number of times that Jacob Zuma might be a better president than Mbeki. He would struggle to do worse. He is more approachable, direct and that he would be a better candidate for the South African poor, because he is left leaning.

Well, is the new ANC more left? Or are we due for some more talking left walking right?

Two recent pieces of commentary and the actions of the ANC themselves have made me have serious doubts.

John Kane-Berman said earlier this week that several commentators argued that the real opposition to the government now comes from within the ruling party, not from opposition parties.

"There is a grain of truth in this, but it is mainly nonsense.

...on matters of policy, the Mbeki government seldom faced much opposition from either his parliamentary caucus or his party at large. Former education minister Kader Asmal last year spoke out against President Robert Mugabe. This belated lone voice aside, Mbeki’s policy of appeasement towards Mugabe has all along had his party’s support. Steal elections, ruin the economy, destroy the rule of law, squash human rights and ruin lives — none of this stopped the ANC, taking its cue from Mbeki, from cheering Mugabe when he jetted into town.

Nor was there much dissent on AIDS. Mbeki flirted with dissident theories and employed an equally misguided health minister, but nobody in the ANC spoke out while they thus trifled with people’s lives.

No dissent either when the government stifled the probe into the 1999 arms deal by the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa). Scopa started off its probe in a non-partisan manner. Then Mbeki and the deputy president, Jacob Zuma, weighed in with the help of ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni and the acquiescence of the speaker, Frene Ginwala. Mbeki was not prepared to permit an independent investigation.

Nobody in the ANC was willing to stand up for the right — and duty — of Parliament to hold the executive branch of the government to account for its expenditure of the public’s money. Since holding the executive to account is a parliamentary function prescribed by the constitution, this means that the majority party’s willingness to stand up for the constitution is open to doubt.

Nor is there much prospect that anyone in the ANC will object to plans to destroy the independence of the Scorpions or to undermine that of the judiciary.

These are all matters of principle, not party-political issues. But there has been little dissent on key areas of policy either. This includes the pervasive policy of racial preferencing. If black empowerment policies have been criticised, it has been on the grounds that they benefit an elite rather than the poor.

In Beards only sign of a move to the left Aubrey Matshiqi agreed:

This shift to the left is supported neither by the resolutions of the ANC’s December conference nor by the content of the budget speech, unless an increase in social spending should be seen as the victory of Marxist-Leninist-Hugo Chavezist thought over Hugo Boss-inspired policy orientations.

In my view, any shift in the short term that may occur in the ANC’s economic policy trajectory will most likely fall within the 1996 macroeconomic paradigm. This flows from my belief that the clash between newly elected ANC president Jacob Zuma and former party head Thabo Mbeki was more about a rift within the establishment and less about tensions between the establishment and an anti-establishment impulse.

Further more, the forces that united behind Zuma’s presidential ambitions should not be given some mythical leftist agenda — the support for Zuma by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) had no ideological basis.

Zuma is much closer to Mbeki in ideological terms than he is to Zwelinzima Vavi of Cosatu and Blade Nzimande of the SACP. This is why he went to the World Economic Forum in Davos and told investors there would be no change in economic policy.

Aubrey is also concerned about the increase in the budget surplus because of unspent Government money.

"What I know is that I am less excited about the budget surplus than I was before. It seems a large chunk of the surplus comes from money that the government departments fail to spend.

...This is the same Parliament that has very little influence in determining budget priorities. The problem is that the budget continues to be the tail that wags the policy dog."

But the problem is of course that the government do not have the staff and the skills to implement their budget allocations. This will be a subject of another post of mine.

What should South Africa's intellectuals do?

2008-02-21T15:26:00.005-05:00

Xolela Mangcu today writes about the role of intellectuals in current South Africa. To him, they have three choices, emigration, loyalty to the party and making themselves heard.

Now let me get back to the relationship between the intellectual on the one hand, and the party and the nation on the other. While it is relatively easy for intellectuals to opt out of party belonging, it is virtually impossible for intellectuals to define themselves out of the nation — unless they do one of three things.

ALBERT Hirschman described these three things as exit, loyalty and voice. The intellectual can divest himself or herself of national belonging through exit, which is often through emigration.

However, there are those intellectuals who remain behind but express their national loyalty through what Thandika Mkandawire calls “incantation of the thought of the leader”. And then there are those who also remain behind but do not belong to the party. They do not belong to the party because their insistence on critical autonomy soon runs up against the protocols and strictures of the party.

For example, it strikes me that the bankruptcy of the political party as an instrument of democracy and nation building has never been more exposed than it is in our country right now.

Wheres the good people?
To Xolela the choice is stark, and would require more good people to speak up.

An idea that has received little attention is the role of prominent personalities or civic notables from the progressive movement itself in speaking up for the values of the constitution. In short, a rebellion against the thuggery that often comes shrouded in the name of party and nation.

That would require good men and women to speak out more often than they have done over the past decade. The alternative is certain ruination.

In the last few days some have already spoken out. Lets hope this number grows.

Of the ANC and black racism

2008-02-20T18:08:00.009-05:00

In reference to Mhambi and jvr's lively debate yesterday, I would like to point you to two recent posts both from Thought Leader. (Jvr argued that the ANC was always like this, an organisation only for black interests and we should have realised this before 1994.)

In one post Christi van der Westhuizen, a former supporter, lashes out against the ANC for derailing our democratic dream, chronicling some events where we went wrong.

Maybe this is why the ANC still likes insisting that it is a liberation movement engaged in a “national democratic revolution”, rather than just another political party. This insistence is a final grasp at the mythology that many of us believed about the organisation when it was still banned.

As tales of the real ANC in exile emerge, it is sliding seemingly irrevocably into exactly the same morass of expedience, patronage and power-mongering that has led citizens from the United States to most of Africa to disengage from politics. Indeed, when questioned about unsound practices, the response from ANC spokespeople has sometimes even been: “So what? It is done elsewhere.” Did we not, as South Africans, set a higher bar for ourselves than what exists “elsewhere”?

Now Mhambi never believed the ANC would be better than political movements in the US and UK, but at least similar: self interested, conniving, deceitful. But I think the ANC behaves far worse than that Christi. Their delinquent behaviour is off the charts, to the extent that it threatens the whole body politic.

Perhaps its only our uncritical voters that separates our ANC from that of parties in the good old US of A. But I doubt it.

In another post Sandile Memela, speaks out against black racism. He writes in Callous ‘black diamonds’ and the poor white problem

It is time that we asked the question whether the non-racial struggle has, ironically, delivered its anti-thesis of black racism.

In a strange way, there is an unconscious disposition among privileged black Africans — now called the “black diamonds” — to be unkind in a racist way towards fellow South Africans who happen to be white.

I'm glad people are speaking up about this at last. Unfortunately Mr. Memela its not limited to black diamonds. A recent study commissioned by the Sunday Times confirmed racism is is rife amongst all of black society.

Afro-pessimism is spiralling out of control

2008-02-18T12:04:00.011-05:00

In today's Business day Prof Anthony Butler of UCT's Public policy department sets forth that simultaneous events have conspired to seriously dent confidence in South Africa, both internally and externally. These dents were possible in the context of widespread perceptions of crime, corruption and problems in the health service.

Apparently the Financial Times have talked of a “loss of faith” and the Wall Street Journal has been lamenting a “Dark South Africa”.

He sees the emigration accelerating and investment falling, and that this will feed a vicious circle that will make skills even dearer and harder to find, this in turn will exacerbate the problems of corruption, service delivery, crime, public health and especially Aids.

He also warns of white fears becoming irrational bleak.

Such multifaceted uncertainty about the future can open the door to a more profound, irrational terror. Some whites, in particular, when they reflect on their deepest fears, discover a submerged expectation that poverty and pent-up frustration must eventually result in a vast social explosion.

Others fuel their fears with a vague and unarticulated sense that the postcolonial African state must always fail. In minds where such doubts lurk, there is always fertile ground for apocalyptic visions to grow. Practical challenges become interlinked in a vicious cycle of crime, skills loss, moral breakdown, AIDS, political instability, panic, and emigration.

More South African photographers on Flickr

2008-02-17T20:28:00.006-05:00

xxxx1
Originally uploaded by alet pretorius.
Mhambi has found a number of really cool photos by South Africans on Flickr. Some like Alet Pretorius I have featured before. Others like those of Arnold Erasmus (which I can't import) is amazing, dream like, otherworldly.

He says: "I use photography as an expressive tool rather than an documentary instrument. Obvious influences are diverse artists such as Man Ray, Edward Weston, Sally Mann and Nobuyoshi Araki but hopefully my art has its own voice."

Another photographer Ohjaygee, took his Lomo camera to Johannesburg's skyline and suburbs. The result is a gritty colour feast.

Now if only these gents will change their Flickr settings so one could import their pics.

Ag please Zwelinzima Vavi

2008-02-15T09:22:00.009-05:00

Mhambi was very disappointed to hear about Cosatu's support for the disbanding of the elite South African anti-corruption unit, the Scorpions.

Originally uploaded by Egui_.
1989 poster celebrating May Day and COSATU's Living Wage Campaign in South Africa.

I have to admit that I am a bit amused about the relative fuss about the Scorpions in the press and the public. Is the preventable Aids deaths of thousands, the lack of service delivery to the poor, what happened in the hospital in Frere, the murder of foreigners in our country, the corruption in that Arms deal - documented in After the Party, to name but a few examples, not enough reason to be up in arms? Should people not have been in the streets a while ago?

Having said that, its clear there is a sea change in public opinion around the issue of the Scorpions. And this should be nurtured.

What can one do? Well perhaps organising a public protest is in order? Mobilise people, make posters, stickers, SMS, write songs, wear t-shirts, create a web site.

A quick Google and I found the email addresses for Cosatu's Secretariat and other departments. And here is a feedback form for the SACP. Both organisations supported the disbanding of the Scorpions but both will (hopefully) be more susceptible to criticism than the ANC had been. Now if all of us sent an email to them that would be a start.

Mhambi sent a letter to the General Secraty of Cosatu Zwelinzima Vavi.

Cosatu Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi has been taken to task by the African National Congress
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

Dear sir

I have been a staunch believer that Cosatu will be able to influence our government to be more pro poor in its policies. I was very optimistic when I heard of the election of someone like Gwede Mantashe to the ANC top structures. I have been gladdened that after the Polekwane conference government already seems to be making pro-poor policy decisions.

However I was shocked that Cosatu has expressed its support for the disbanding of the Scorpions. This reeks of politics as usual and not of the usual principled positions Cosatu is renowned for. Please make us proud and stand up again for what is right.

Yours faithfully
Cosatu supporter

Wessel van Rensburg

Don't imagine, just do it

2008-02-14T10:19:00.011-05:00

Richard Barbrook, has published another book, called Imaginary Future's. Essentially it's an argument against technological determinism. An argument against the belief that superior technology is going to make the world a better place. It's still up us to decide how to use technology best he says. It's for us to shape the technology.

Richard wrote a great polemic a few year's ago in which he claimed that most New Media/ Internet fundies, techies and entrepreneurs are beholden to an ideology, which is a hybrid belief system that mixes left inspired libertarian philosophies like feminism and civil rights, and right wing market capitalism. He called this the Californian Ideology.

In the video Barbrook explains a bit about his book, which he says is "a history of the future".

BBC Panorama reports on South Africa

2008-02-11T22:39:00.001-05:00

...and it ain't good. View the South Africa Panorama report (video stream) here. Or read about it here.

Called No more Mandela's and made by long time Africa correspondent Fergal Keane, it is at times over dramatic and at times it contains faulty and shallow analysis, but its tone is right.

Hardly had Mhambi predicted that the ANC will suffer from left wing international attention two damning reports have come from the BBC.

Update
Fergal Keane did an interview on the BBC World Service about the documentary. Listen to that here.

Zimbabwe refugees under the spotlight

2008-02-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

This morning on the BBC's Radio 4's Today program Mike Tomson started a 5 part series on South Africa for the station.

The first program is titled ZIMBABWEAN EXILES (Audio download). It paints a grim picture of thousands of refugees, unwanted in South Africa, risking life and limb and living in fear.

It tells of how they are resented by South Africans for causing crime, how they have been forced by locals to flee townships like Shoshanguve. And of police brutality: female police officers with crowbars and belts beating refugees in the Central Methodist church, Johannesburg.

An estimated three million refugees from Zimbabwe
are living in South Africa, pouring over the border at the rate of several thousand a day. There is widespread resentment about their arrival amongst many South Africans who blame them for rising crime and taking their jobs. On arriving at the border many of them are attacked by Zimbabwean gangsters. Robbery, rape and murder is common.

The difficulties of meaningful human connection in spiritually vacant environments

2008-02-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

In a previous post Mhambi was telling how he felt guilty for two reasons. One was that I'm not in South Africa.

Mistress Storm, brothel, Slough, UK, 2002, from No Love Lost by Michael Grieve.

The second guilty feeling is my fascination with sexuality, with beautiful nude people, in particular women. I'll explore my guilty feelings (perhaps for a last time, because my blog is now being read by respectable people) in a next post.

Porn shoot, Cuffley, UK, 2006, from No Love Lost by Michael Grieve

But not today. Today we'll take a peak at Michael Grieve's photographic project, No love lost.

He describes it as a complex work about the difficulties of meaningful human connection in spiritually vacant environments. Mhambi recently accompanied a South African writer to a brothel in Hillbrow Johannesburg. I'm doing a documentary about him. After he had seen one of the girls they came downstairs togther and proceeded to eat pap and sous together, from the same plate. It was pretty endearing, yes intimate seeing them (client and prostitute) eating like that. "This is not like Europe the writer assured me."

Michael Grieve on his project:

No Love Lost is a visual project that inhabits sexual environments in contemporary Britain. People featured are active in the increasingly entwined and performative worlds of pornography, prostitution and stripping. What they share is a measured psychological engagement with strangers in close proximity that is a purely physical and sexual union lacking in affection. Fantasy is played out within the frame of constraints and closeness is kept at a distance. Menace is always present, control is often threatened. These are emotionally charged settings, both plastic and primitive, where the ‘stuff’ of life is all too present.

In essence, No Love Lost is a complex body of work that is about intimacy and dislocation in a theatre of sexual commodity. No Love Lost does not attempt to be a statistical documentation but works as a lyrical documentary metaphor in a factual world about real fictional encounters and conveys a sense of the difficulties of meaningful human connection in spiritually vacant environments.

Break in porn shoot, London, UK, 2003, from No Love Lost by Michael Grieve

— Michael Grieve

What South Africa could learn from China

2008-02-06T23:29:00.000-05:00

Recently Mhambi was following another afro-pessimist debate (What's wrong with Africa) on the Mail and Guardians's Thought Leader blog.

Residents opposed to an encroaching train line in Shanghai were warned that gatherings like the one above could result in arrest. (Ryan Pyle for The New York Times)

The defenders of Africa's problems averred - "Hey! The troubles are because Africa imported western style democracy that's not suited locally". Others retorted that democratic rules had not been implemented properly, and yet others yearned for apartheid.

A friend of Mhambi loves China. He speaks Mandarin and travels there regularly. On one of his sojourns in the poor Chinese hinterlands an incident occurred that clearly had made an impression.

He was buying some food from an old Chinese gentleman, a street vendor. As this deal was in progress a passing youngster started shouting at the old man. "You are charging the foreigner too much! How can you exploit him like that?! What will he think of China!"

My friend was a little surprised but did not really mind the 'extra' expense. The 'dear' food was dirt cheap to his pound based purse.

He stayed in a local In that night. Early the next morning he was woken with a knock at the door. It was the old man who had brought him a free food parcel for his days travels, all the while apologizing profusely.

Last week Mhambi was listening to a report on Radio 4's From our own Correspondent. China has in the last few years been racked by hundreds of mini protests. Many Chinese feel left behind in the countries incredible race to economic riches, there is reports widespread corruption, while there is no democratic outlet for the people's grievances.

Recently the government has clamped down mercilessly on corrupt politicians and businessmen.

But reported Radio 4, there has now been two protests, where the Chinese government has set up dedicated telephone lines to deal with grievances. One of them the International Herald Tribune reported on.Said the IHT:

"under President Hu Jintao's policy of "harmonious development," the state has made tentative efforts to solicit public opinion."

China is now in the midst of an icy weather storm, and reports the BBC:

As China froze, and its electricity and transport lines failed, and millions huddled and shivered in train stations, China's top leaders rushed to calm and reassure their people.

And not only did they apologise - they empathised.

At Guangzhou railway station in the south - where hundreds of thousands were stuck - Prime Minister Wen Jiaobao addressed the crowd.

"Comrades, I'm Wen Jiabao," he shouted through a loudspeaker.

"I am here to comfort you. You have suffered a lot and I feel your pain."

It might be autocratic, but the Chinese government is obsessed with the collective welfare of its citizens. As the population is getting richer, this obsession is driving them to be more consultative.

But it's not just the authorities that feel and act responsibly. The Chinese population themselves are fiercely patriotic and obsessed with the good image of their society.

The result of this and this is the sad fact: Your average Chinese is better off governed by autocrats than your average South African in today's democratic South Africa. The average Chinese seems to feel more responsibility for their society than the average South African citizen.

And this brings me to my point. The problem South Africa is facing is not just one of which rules to implement. Rules will only bring us that far. Our challenge is changing an attitude and culture. We are still looking for Ubuntu.

Go Obama

2008-02-05T04:57:00.000-05:00

Obama Listens
Originally uploaded by sumrow.

Mhambi is routing for Barack Obama today when Americans go out to vote during Super Tuesday. What amazing symbolism if the USA becomes the first predominantly white country to elect a 'black' president. And Oprah agrees with me.

The global left haunts the ANC

2008-02-04T03:23:00.000-05:00

A week ago John Minto, the man responsible for organising vociferous protests in New Zealand against the Springbok rugby tours in the 80's, told the South African government: If you ever thought of giving me an award, not to bother.

John Minto
Originally uploaded by farrioth.

We protested to fight apartheid and were proud of that and then Minto continued:

However while political rights have been won and celebrated, social and economic rights have been sidelined. It is now 14 years since the first African National Congress government was elected to power but for most the situation is no better, and frequently worse, than it was under white minority rule.

The number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day more than doubled to 2.4 million in the first 10 years of ANC government. Despite strong economic growth overall poverty levels have not improved and the gap between rich and poor has increased with many black families being driven more deeply into poverty. Unemployment remains high at around 26%.

At times I feel just a little sorry for Thabu Mbeki and the ANC. Why? Because of what John Minto said next:

"Apartheid was accurately described as a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations and the ANC. I could not in all conscience attend a ceremony to receive an award conferred by your office while a similar crime is in progress."

"Long batons fly in Newtown as riot police block protestors in Rintoul Street from reaching Athletic Park for the second test, 29th August 1981".

Apartheid was very very bad. But it has to be said, the Nationalists had some very stiff competition if one wanted to judge governance, exploitation and violence in this part of the world.

And quite frankly they never made it into the premier league of any of these categories. Want violence I'll name you tow dozens other countries that were worse. Governance? I'll name even more, exploitation? You kidding me? The governments of Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo, Algeria, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Angola to name but a few, were all at times much more bloody, corrupt and in greater neglect of the well being of their citizens, than apartheid South Africa.

In short apartheid does not deserve the moniker of a crime against humanity, in the context of what was going down routinely all across Africa, unless you want to concede the title to half the countries on the continent.

For various but very particular reasons (left wing moral relativism, simplistic analysis, historical Anglo antipathy towards Afrikaners) South Africa got the lion's share of the global left's opprobrium. Opprobrium that was completely out of proportion if one considers the suffering caused by an array of brutal regimes and the scant attention their actions received.

This 'exaggerated' attention morphed into uncritical support for the ANC. This helped the ANC enormously. It helped them set up office and organise. It helped them hide the Stalinist closed authoritarian nature of the organisation's external operations. It helped them cover their incompetence, and it helped them cover the torture and disappearance of their own members.

A woman show signs of battle after protesters and red squad police clashed at the Luxford Street-Rintoul Street intersection during anti Springbok tour demonstrations in Wellington, 1981."

It helped obscure the fact that for many black ANC members the organisation was, not the creature of the Freedom charter, not liberal or progressive either. But a black Nationalist organisation at best, and for yet others it was just an instrument to attain power and resources.

But it helped the ANC secure negotiations and it helped them beat the Nationalists during negotiations.

But most importantly it also helped all South Africans, but particularly black ones get rid of the apartheid system. And less important, but also significant, it helped Afrikaners get rid of the Nationalists stifling and controlling morals and strictures.

After 1994 this global left's 'gaze' helped hold open debate in the country in a vice of silence, nobody dared criticize the ruling party. That was until the Aids deaths of thousands, creeping levels of inequality, blatant corruption and the intolerant battle for control of the ANC finally broke the spell.

But this progressive spot light has not gone away. As enamored as the Spanish speaking and American left of the world is with Venezuela, the English speaking world's lefties are fascinated by and have invested intellectually in South Africa. They are looking in a new way and they do not like what they see.

And as unfair as comparisons as the one above is in absolute terms (especially when compared to our neighbors) - they are still going to be made.

It's no help for Mbeki to point out that particularly since 2002 his government has with robust growth and an array of social grants - grants that very few developing countries have - managed to address poverty levels.

We are still measured with a different yard stick. The sword that helped struck down apartheid turns out was double edged. It will be wielded against the ANC. Their every move will be monitored like no other African government's actions will. But for South Africans by and large, like with the battle against apartheid, this is still a good thing.

John Minto again:

Receiving an award would inevitably associate myself and the movement here with ANC government policies. At one time this may have been a source of pride but it would now be a source of personal embarrassment which I am not prepared to endure.

Hear hear says Mhambi.

Goeie genugtig - The end is nigh?!

2008-02-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Adding insult on top of injury. The Mail & Guardian reports that an ANC front company, Chancelor house, has a huge stake in the build of new power stations that is now planned.

Chancellor House’s 25% stake in Hitachi Power Africa, which will perform 60% of the contract, translates to about R2,8-billion of the R18,5-billion total value. Coming on top of its R3-billion stake in the Medupi contract, this almost doubles the ANC company’s known stake in Eskom’s capacity expansion programme to about R5,8-billion. How much of this will be profit is not known.

In another report it was claimed that some mines are already planing job cuts as a result of the power loss induced closures.

And just to make sure we spread the doom with the gloom, a Finweek report claims an educational crisis is at hand. And it's getting worse, not better.

For the past 16 years, fewer than 7% of Senior Certificate candidates passed higher-grade maths, according to a 2007 Centre for Development Enterprises survey on maths and science in schools. But in 2006, only 4,8% passed higher-grade maths, and only 5,7% passed higher-grade science, Finweek's report says.

The prognosis for the matric classes of 2010 and 2011 is not much better.

When the class of 2010 (now in grade 10) was in grade three in 2001, the national survey of performance showed that 30% did not achieve the required standard in numeracy, and 54% did not achieve the required standard in literacy.

For the class of 2011, the 2005 grade-six evaluation showed that only 28% performed at the required standard in numeracy. For literacy, it was only 38%.

In addition to the education crisis, South Africa is losing skilled professionals to other countries that use South Africa as a hunting ground for recruitment, says Finweek. A study recently found that the loss of one skilled professional in South Africa costs up to 10 unskilled jobs.

Then theres a report of a water contamination crisis. According the Mail & Guardian the report is the latest of several recent indicators that the government is no longer able to monitor effectively and manage its vast infrastructure of dams, pipes, pumps and treatment facilities.

Adding to the stink is this report of sewerage flowing into Durban harbour.

And in another Mail & Guardian report, refugees arrested inside the Johannesburg Methodist Church, have claimed that they have been mistreated, denied medical treatment and bribed by police.

Never mind all this says Xolela Mangcu. The intolerance the ANC is now showing to the Mbeki backers within the party is the real bell weather of the problems our country if facing.

The Afro-pessimists are restless

2008-02-03T03:26:00.000-05:00

The Mail and Guardian blog sections have published two interesting posts yesterday. In one Percy Zvomuya pessimistically asks, in reaction to events in Kenya What is wrong with Africa?.

He should have been more careful because in another post, The new is not yet born: The battle for African democracy, Stephen Friedman calls these "Afro-pessimists — a long, fancy word for people who don’t believe black people in Africa can run anything." But concedes that they have no shortage of ammunition right now.

In the first comment underneath Steven post Ivo Vegter retorts: "The real problem is that in all the racist analysis, everyone gets cast as either an Afro-pessimist or an Afro-optimist. Critics and racists alike go into the first category, and those who vote their racial loyalty or guilty conscience go in the latter. Oddly enough, this feeds off the notion that Africans are somehow different, that the question of whether Africans are capable of self-government is still unanswered. Of course Africans are capable of self-government. Why wouldn’t they be?"

Ivo wants us to argue about the policies of these governments and put the lables behind us.

For a long time Mhambi has agreed with Steven's central contention however. What has transpired in Zimbabwe and in the ANC were signs of democracy. He states this case better:
"In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s government ruled largely unchallenged until 2000, when it lost a constitutional referendum, a thinly disguised signal that the people wanted it gone. This forced it into a lengthy attempt to stay in power despite the people’s judgement. Since then, politics in Zimbabwe has been about the elite’s desperate and often violent attempts to shore up their power in the face of democratic forces’ attempt to win change.

In Kenya, tensions were suppressed (but simmered below the surface) while Daniel arap Moi imposed his will on the people for two decades. Democracy was partly achieved when some members of the elite, most notably current President Mwai Kibaki, went over to the opposition and won the last election. But the Kibaki government proved far more like the one it had replaced than Kenyan democrats had hoped and so the ODM emerged to challenge Kibaki. Despite the mealy-mouthed response of the international community, the evidence suggests that the ruling elite thwarted this attempt to deepen democracy by creatively embellishing the election results. Again, the conflict is caused by democratic pressures and the old elite’s response to them.

In Nigeria, a new push for greater democracy began with the fall of the Abacha junta. Previous president Olusegun Obasanjo was elected at the polls but tried to change the Constitution to give himself a third term. Parliament rejected the attempt and so he relied on a strategy also tried in some other countries — he stayed on as head of the ruling party and hand-picked its presidential candidate. But he continues to face resistance, both because the election in which Obasanjo’s choice, Umaru Yar’Adua, won was riddled with irregularities and because Yar’Adua has not turned out as compliant as his predecessor had hoped (a problem that also faced some other presidents who tried to control their successors after their terms were up). Again, the cause of the conflict is the push for more democracy and the elite’s reaction to it.

Here, Jacob Zuma’s victory was prompted by claims that Thabo Mbeki was not accountable enough to the ANC — and fears that a third term would entrench him further. We do not know whether the new leadership will be more democratic than the old — but it remains possible that ANC activists will hold it to account if it is not.

The pattern is clear. The “right” of African presidents to rule for as long as they like, regardless of what their people may think, is under threat.

Mhambi hopes Steven Friedman is right, Mhambi himself is struggling to keep the faith at times.

Where's the power to the people?

2008-01-31T21:12:00.000-05:00

Mhambi has just returned from an exhilarating 2 month visit to South Africa. Friends of Mhambi might smirk at that. Exhilarating perhaps if your a student of social trends they might say. Scary or downright depressing if you happen to live in South Africa.

Derelict cooling towers
Originally uploaded by Leorex.

And it has to be said, very few of the whities - including old lefties - I met were not envious of me living overseas. And a few of the black South Africans and other blacks I met expressed similar concerns. The only optimistic whitey I heard of was my one nephew. He's a successful businessman.

At a dinner party with committed and very informed lefties I was left in no doubt. It was good that I left when I did they said. There was the Zuma, Mbeki battle, the Selebi shenanigans. But the power black outs were the straw that broke the brave optimistic camel's back, they said.

"It's symptomatic of the retreat of the state." The once mighty South African state is in free fall. South Africa now has more than 3 times the number of private security officers than police. The state gave up any pretense of ensuring its citizens physical safety. And now its the power. "Now people will start to supply their own power". Their is no confidence in public policy and the state. "It's every one for themselves".

This is the type of world where the rich will flourish and the poor will suffer. Not a comfortable world for those of us with a social conscience.

It should not be lost on anybody that it was first recommended to this government that it needs to invest in power generation circa 1998. That is a few months before the government embarked on a multi-million Rand arms deal, that turned out to be highly corrupt.

Even if not corrupt the wisdom of this deal was questionable in some respects. South Africa faces little by way of a conventional military threat. But the corruption involved catapulted the costs while introducing more hardware of dubious use to the Republic. What is clear now is that energy generation was not on the agenda.

Compounding the depression has been the response of the government AND the opposition. Government has claimed that we are suffering because of a growing economy and greater demand and that other countries, the US, Canada and Brazil has suffered similar issues. Meanwhile the opposition, besides rightly labeling the government as inept, pinned for privatisation.

Government claims to have planned and directed this kind of economic growth so surely this can not be an excuse? Besides, a 1998 white paper acknowledged the need. And as the Mail and Guardian pointed out, current power usage is actually below peaks of a year before, but none of the existing power stations are running at full capacity anyhow, probably because of a lack of staff shortages.

As for the US, Canada and Brazil argument. Yes, they have had black outs. Mhambi has little knowledge about what transpired in the Brazilian case, but in the others I do.

In the US and Canada the problem was caused in 2003 by a lack of spare capacity on a particularly hot day, coinciding with an accident. The power was restored everywhere within two days. This can not be compared to a decade of neglect in South Africa.

California however did have a more protracted crisis. It coincided with being the first energy market in the world to be deregulated. According to Wikipedia:

State lawmakers expected the price of electricity to decrease due to the resulting competition from deregulation; hence they capped the price of electricity at the pre-deregulation level. Since they also saw it as imperative that the supply of electricity remain uninterrupted, utility companies were required by law to buy electricity from spot markets at uncapped prices when faced with imminent power shortages.

When the electricity demand in California rose, utilities had no financial incentive to expand production, as long term price were capped. Instead, wholesalers such as Enron manipulated the market to force utility companies into daily spot markets for short term gain. For example, in a market technique known as megawatt laundering, wholesalers bought up electricity in California at below cap price to sell out of state, creating shortages. In some instances, wholesalers scheduled power transmission to create congestion and drive up prices.

The energy crisis was characterized by a combination of extremely high prices and Rolling blackouts that lasted for 12 months from 2000 to 2001.

Here, it is predicted that our problems will last for at least 8 years. Privatisation will not necessarily solve South Africa's problems as should be clear from the above example. It will most certainly lead to more expensive energy. It will be bad news for the poor.

People seem to forget that the Nationalists' nationalised Eskom provided South Africa with the cheapest energy in the world. They forget that a nationalised Telkom provided us with cheap phone calls, and that the privatised version is the most expensive internet service provider in the world.

As with the police, you can expect the ANC not to object to the creeping privatisation of power. As was pointed out in fascinating book The criminilisation of the state in Africa, privatisation in Africa often leads to more opportunities for corruption.

No wonder my friends are so depressed. Round here you are on your own and only the very rich and ruthless are still smiling.

Siener - Rian Malan's comical take the future

2008-01-30T06:55:00.000-05:00

Talking of Music videos, here is Rian Malan's Siener video - a little sweetner for those Afro pessimists out there.

Malan's dog Tommie can see the future. Don't say you have not been warned.

It ends with the line, even if everything goes wrong for 50 years, in the end we will have a jol in Africa.

NuL - the online superstars

2008-01-30T06:32:00.000-05:00

NuL has recently released an video to accompany their song, Online Superstar. As with everything else NuL does, they made the video themselves, in downtown Pretoria South Africa nogal.

NuL also has an excellent website where you can download all their tracks for free through the creative commons license.

Read more about NuL on wikipedia.

And Nul is great live.

Your an optimist and I'm Canadian

2008-01-30T05:22:00.000-05:00

Mhambi is feeling guilty.

There are two reasons for this, but in this post I will highlight only one: Chicken run guilt.

Ver van die ou Kalahari
aan die grens se verkeerde kant
eet ons weer nou calamari
en lag oor die dalende Rand.

Sang Koos Kombuis in the 80's.

I'm not laughing. Mhambi is sitting snug in a little cute (actually quite large compared to London) wooden house, while outside the temperature is -10 and the porch is under inches of pure white powdery snow.

Yes Montreal Canada is very cold, but it is so very sorted.

After two months in South Africa where I worked on two documentaries, myself and my partner have come to Montreal for a job she could not refuse. We promise its only for a while. Really.

It's too easy to pontificate from here, when your so far removed from the reality of South Africa's riots en hel. I suppose everything acerbic or sweet that I pen is tinged, watered down by this fact. I'm not there.

Rian Malan also has a song - Trekboer - about us Saffas living in Canada. The bottom line of the song is this: We miss you.

Trekboer
(Listen to Trekboer here or buy the album Alien Inboorling here).

Liewe Marie
Hier's dit winter al weer, ennie wind ... o jinne
Ek lewe al weke betrap hier binne
Swart reën hamer teen die vensterruite
En die ys lê ses duim diep daarbuite

En jy weet ... op aande soos dié vra ek myself al weer -
Alles in ag geneem, wat die hel maak ek hier?
Weer is ellendig, dollar's amper niks werd
En SA pronk innie koerante soos 'n spogryperd

Ek lees julle het selfs misdaad bekamp
'n Paar jobs geskep en inflasie op sy kop gestamp
Is dit leuens, Marie, of issit werklik waar?
Soos jy weet ... ek twyfel oor alles in Afrika

Trekboer o mamma ek wil huis toe gaan
Ek verlang maar ek is bang
Vir Afrika, o Afrika

Saterdag het ek vir Piet Basson besoek
Daar was wors en tjops en pannekoek
En 'n klomp verlore Boere wat vriende soek
Almal het bewend langs die braai gestaan
Terwyl ons gasheer oor die swart gevaar aangaan...

Ou Piet kry e-mails van sy regse tjomme
Volgens sy bronne gaan dit nou sleg daaronder
Hy sê die Mandela-jare was net 'n wittebrood
En oor die langtermyn maak hulle al die witmense dood

Ek was lekker getrek, so ek sê, Piet, ou maat,
Jy's my vriend, maar eish, dis bog wat jy praat
Ons is net bang om te erken ons het fout gemaak
En Suid-Afrika verniet verlaat
Ja - hy't my gedonder

Trekboer o mamma ek wil huis toe gaan...

Jy weet, Marie, toe ek emigreer...
Ek het gelieg toe ek sê dat ek niks omgee
Ek dink aan jou gedurig, amper elke dag
En droom van jou in hierdie eindelose noordelike nag

Ek droom van die maanlig in Stellenbosch
Ons twee loop huis toe na 'n jol by die Dros
Daar's iets wild in jou oë, jy sê jy wil liefde maak
En ons kruip weg in die donker daar langs Dorpstraat

Ek droom van 'n strand ... moerse wit branders
Die son op my rug, jou lyf onder my hande
Ek lê op my bed, luister Madiba Bay
Strek uit my hand en daar lê jy langs my

Ag Marie...Ek wens alles kon anders wees,
Maar jy's 'n optimis, en ek's nou Kanadees
So ek wil net verneem hoe gaan dit met jou
En vra of jy ook nog vir my onthou

Die uwe,

Trekboer

Andries Nel responds

2008-01-29T23:28:00.000-05:00

Mhambi recently wrote a blog post in which I critisised deputy chief whip Andries Nel. He has kindly responded to the blog post which I publish in full and to which I will respond to in good time.

Dear Wessel,

In your blog of 24 December 2007 (“Party Pooper: Andries Nel – Sies!”) you accuse me of having, “contributed to the demise of the moral fibre and the growth in corruption of the ANC.” You base these accusations on Andrew Feinstein’s book, After the Party.

These accusations are very serious – so much so that one would have expected you to have heard my side of the story before deciding to, “expose, to hound and to damn.”

You say that, “those who are mentioned and named are of course, welcome to reply.” I would have expected more than a cyber kangaroo court from you. Hanging first and hearing evidence later just isn’t good enough.

When you were busy with your film project on the “border war” you found time, on numerous occasions, to correspond with me by email, seeking assistance in tracing activists in the anti-conscription movement. I gladly responded to these requests and also met with you to discuss your project. What made it so difficult to contact me regarding this matter?

This kind of behaviour goes against the traditions of comradeship, rigorous, honest intellectual engagement and common decency that existed amongst the activists you mention. You say that, “charity (and putting right wrongs) should start at home.” I agree. I would add that the same should apply to getting things - like facts – right.

The implication of the statements that I have been, “quietly climbing the ANC ranks” and that my “loyalty must have been noted early on, as he was appointed to the Party’s whips office” is disappointing, especially coming from someone who should know better.

I have never hidden or been ashamed of my loyalty to the liberation movement. It is a loyalty based on deeply held convictions that I have maintained during times when doing so held no prospect for material reward. I will continue to be a loyal and disciplined member of the ANC – also in the democracy for which so many of its members died.

Returning to the charges of, "contributing to the demise of the moral fibre and the growth in corruption of the ANC." The only evidence you adduce is Mr. Feinstein’s account of the matter involving former Minister Penuel Maduna and (the late) former Auditor General Henri Kleuver and my participation in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA.)

You quote/paraphrase Feinstein to the effect that the ad hoc committee dealing with this matter – which I chaired - blocked “a full investigation” and “despite hearing damning evidence against the Minister, the Committee found in his favour.” You also say, “Yengeni told them ‘I don’t think a public hearing is a good idea, this matter should be dealt with internally, like the Maduna matter.’”

The facts, in highly abridged form, go something like this:

During Parliamentary question time Maduna accused Kleuver of aiding and abetting certain oil sanction busting activities of the apartheid regime. The matter was referred to the Public Protector. An extensive investigation, lasting many months and costing millions of rands came to the conclusion Maduna’s allegations were not true. There was, therefore, no need for a further “full investigation.” The Public Protector briefed the ad hoc committee on his findings in a series of open and transparent meetings - no inkling of the matter being “dealt with internally.” The committee did not, “find in favour” of Maduna, but accepted the Public Protector’s findings. What is true is that we did not hang, draw and quarter Maduna as many had wanted. By the time the Public Protector’s report was presented to Parliament Maduna had long withdrawn the offending remarks (something the Public Protector missed.) In terms of the rules of Parliament, there was no further sanction to apply.

In relation to SCOPA, you make the statement that, “the new members of the Committee were openly hostile to Feinstein. As far as Scopa was concerned the arms deal would be investigated no further.” Firstly, I don’t recall ever being “hostile” – openly or otherwise - to Mr. Feinstein. Tellingly, you provide no examples. Secondly, it is simply not true that, “the arms deal would be investigated no further.” There was an extensive investigation conducted jointly by the National Prosecuting Authority, the Public Protector and the Auditor General on the recommendation of Scopa.

There are ongoing investigations and prosecutions of alleged wrongdoing relating to the arms procurement process. The democratic government, led by the ANC, has made no attempt to interfere with these processes.

If you are writing your blog in good faith you will go back and tell your readers whether you ever bothered to study any of the basic original source documents relating to this matter - such as the Public Protector or the ad hoc committee’s reports. All of this information is readily available on the internet. You undermine your statement that “there's no escape from information on the superhighway” by ignoring easily accessible information. We escape easily on this highway by skidding on the oil of our own intellectual sloth.

At the start of your blog you remind us that, “quite often important information is revealed in books, information that never makes it to a wider audience.” Very true, but how much important information never even makes it into books?

Laudable as your approach of trying to disseminate information might be, you end up trapping yourself in the vicious downward spiral that is impoverishing our public discourse. Information is uncritically recycled from newspapers into books back into newspapers onto the internet back into newspapers and so on and so on. How many journalists, public intellectuals etc. actually go to the trouble of investigating, analyzing debating what they write about? How many media companies provide those that write with the space and resources to do so properly?

You will remember how, during the 1980s and early 1990s, Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Pretoria organized internal political education workshops and public seminars, held public meetings where speakers came to give first hand accounts of what was happening in the country, published Skryfskiet – a monthly newsletter etc. We were trying to provide alternative information and to give students tools to analyse, understand and change their society. We actively opposed the regime’s propaganda and the established media and provided alternatives.

We trusted each other and resisted the lies the regime spread about us. We built and developed each other through debate and discussion.

Let us continue engaging in this tradition of honesty, integrity and respect.

Yours comradely,

Andries Nel

Mhambi's South Africa 2007

2008-01-29T22:14:00.000-05:00

Mhambi is very late with this posting, my summary of Mhambi 2007.

Last year I described 2006 as a watershed year for South Africa in my posting Mhambi's 2006. A year in which open debate returned to South Africa.

If you remember, as Steven Friedman explained, this was not because of a new found commitment to democracy amongst our ruling political class, but because of the battle for control of the ANC and the state between the Mbeki and Zuma camps.

So 2007 started off with many of these 2006 debates carrying into the new year. In these debates Xolela Mangau was one of 2007's most acerbic and eloquent voices against creeping country wide corruption. Others like Rhoda Kadalie waded in.

Steeds De la Rey

There were more heated exchanges at the beginning of the year about the De la Rey song. What did it mean? What would it bring?

Leeu van die Wes Transvaal
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

Tim du Plessis changed his mind (and not for the last time in 2007) . In 2006 he warned of deliberate Afrikaner civil disobedience, but now announced the arrival of a more confident participatory breed: the New Afrikaner. Pallo Jordan, the minister of Arts and Culture, warned against De la Rey song inspired treason.

The song reached the press in both the UK and US. And in the process it served as an amusing outing of international prejudices about Afrikaners.

But nowhere was its meaning as debated as among Afrikaners. Lefty journo Max du Preez saw in it the worst: racism, atavistic nationalism, a longing for the past. But poets and writers Antjie Krog, Koos Kombuis were not convinced with that line of argument.

But before you think South African 2007 debates were dominated just by a pop song. They were not. By years end it was out of the news completely.

In the US, a debate raged over what extent apartheid could be compared to current events in Israel.

Angola the country South Africa helped wreck celebrated 5 years of peace.

Britain and racism

Rather arbitrarily the BBC decided to screen a blatantly racist tribute to colonial writer Rider Haggart. Perhaps not surprising as in 2007 it transpired that Britain is a society with little self awareness when it comes to racism.

2007 was a year when racism boiled over on British TV, when Jade Goodie and other white Big Brother contestants ganging up on Indian star Shilpa Shetty. The incident had the country in a tizz. The press especially were aghast, while admitting at the same time that the opinions expressed were prevalent in British society.

Many left commentators defended Goody: she was working class, and more likely to be exposed to multi-cultural Britain than her critics they claimed. A good example was Philosopher Julian Baggini who spent six months living in Rotherham, Yorkshire. In the Guardian he professed that he doesn't believe most white Britons are racists - even though he heard racist language almost everywhere he went.

On the cultural and media front trade union solidarity won the global award for the best union website. Gazelle released a funky a stomping Afrikaans electro track, while two movies cataloging life in gay South Africa, screened in London.

Facebook took the world by storm in 2007. Also in South Africa, despite the privatised national telecoms provider Telcom's parasitic and damaging impact on the countries internet ecosystem.

Bad news aplenty

Bad news about the break down of trust and public institutions came a plenty. Many of which, like the Hlophe affair and the scandalous neglect at the Frere hospital Mhambi never wrote about himself.

Wabenzi
Originally uploaded by Wildebeast1.

I did write about the alleged corruption of the National Health minister, who was not fired, even after it was claimed that she was an alcoholic and a thief. Instead the government tried to muzzle the press. There were other posts of Afro-pessimism. Events like the casual destruction of monuments in Standerton helped to spread the gloom.

The astounding growth of crime and the corruption inside the South African police continued to make waves internationally. Journalists like Jonny Steinberg tried to make sense of the corruption and crime.

In 2007 there were less reports of xenophobic attacks on other Africans by South Africans like which transpired in 2006 when scores of Somalis were murdered. Now the focus shifted to extreme indifference towards other Africans best illustrated by the death of Adonis Musati in Cape Town.

There were valiant attempts from South Africans to reach out to each other, like when Hansie Diffenthal tried to save Halaletsang Nkome.

The Rugby World Cup

But so too did the Rugby World Cup loom large. It became clear that racial make up of the South African Springbok team would be an issue. In fact, the ANC also wanted to change the teams ' iconic name.

As the first big match of the cup approached, between SA and England, the English press went to town with prejudicial reporting: South Africans were stupid and not "every inch Western gentlemen". The verbal barrage did not save the English from a battering on the pitch however.

Neither could the spectre of Che Guevarra help the Argentines against a rampant Springbok side.

Jusr before the final The Guardian published a curious rugby article by Gavin Evans, which was duly pulled apart by readers.

Then, despite all this, the Springboks won. And Mbeki tried to surf the wave of glory. The Bok name became non issue.

Mbeki vs Zuma

He certainly needed it. Such was the the growing opposition to his control freakery that too many it seemed that he would loose the election for ANC presidency the end of the year. That placed many South Africans between a rock and a hard place who wanted neither Mbeki or Zuma in charge. Cyril Rhamaphosa entering the race was one of our great hopes.

Mbeki could and did continue to point out how the economy has grown under his leadership. But doubts remained about his success in addressing poverty.

But his Aids denialism still hung over him like a shadow, with Mark Gevisser confirming and explaining it upon the publishing of his monumental biography of Mbeki. 2007 was also the year in which a minimum number was put to the deaths caused by Mbeki's Aids inaction: 300 000.

Another book, Andrew Feinstein's After the Party, cataloged the ANC's move away from democracy and decent into grand corruption. Mhambi cerealised some of it.

By the end of the year it became clear that Mbeki would hit a wall. Some of us, Mhambi included, were optimistic. The inability of the incumbent holding on to power was that the openness had prevailed, a sign of democracy. And so Mbeki did hit a wall. Karplaks!

Better the devil you know?

Down went Mbeki, and enter stage 'left' Zuma. 2008 will no doubt be as interesting.

Selebi 0 Judicial process 1

2008-01-11T00:27:00.000-05:00

The South African Commissioner of Police Jackie Selebi has failed to stop him from being charged when the Pretoria high Court through out his unusual application today.

You can read a pretty good summary of the links between Selebi and Glen Agliotti in today's Guardian, while the BBC gives a good summary of Selebi's career.