Nachdem schon längere Zeit nichts mehr von mir zu hören war (was dem hohen Arbeitsaufwand und nicht der fehlenden Motivation geschuldet ist), möchte ich an dieser Stelle nur kurz auf einen Artikel in der Wochenzeitung “Mail & Guardian” hinweisen, die über das weltwärts-Programm berichtet.
Bald gibt es dann auch wieder mehr von mir

When President Robert Mugabe first rose to power United State’s President Jimmy Carter told the London Times Mugabe was a “very gentle man” whom he “can’t imagine … ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone.”

Fast-forward three decades, and the United States position on the Mugabe has evolved quite a bit.

In our final segment on Zimbabwe Newsy will be taking a look at the role and influence of the West in Zimbabwe and their aims to help a failing country under a fanatic leader.

President Robert Mugabe initially received praise for his strong leadership when he first took office in the early 80s.  Now, the West is doing what they can to see Mugabe share power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the newly enacted coalition government.

In a speech given to the U.N. General Assembly this week, President Robert Mugabe said,

“We wonder what their motives are? And we ask what they would want to see us do.

Working strenuously to divide the parties in the inclusive government.  If they will not assist in rehabilitating our economy, could they please stop their filthy clandestine divisive antics.”

Mugabe goes on to state,

“…Where stand their humanitarian principles, we ask, when their illegal sanctions are ruining the lives of our children?”

And then asks for the sanctions on Cuba to be lifted as well.

In 2003 President George W. Bush put sanctions on Zimbabwe that included travel bans, freezing assets, and a ban on more than 250 Zimbabwean individuals and companies from doing business with the United States. The European Union has similar sanctions against the country

In an interview with CNN’s Chrisitane Amanpour last month, Robert Mugabe was asked how he was planning on correcting the current economic crisis, he replied:

“The sanctions … sanctions must be lifted.  And we should have no interference from outside.  The continued imperialistic interference in our affairs is affecting the country, obviously.”

Other South African leaders are also asking for the sanctions to be lifted. Deputy President of South Africa defended the South Africa’s position, stating in Mail & Guardian,

“This call for the lifting of sanctions is not aimed at protecting and defending President Robert Mugabe as an individual.  It is meant to attract necessary investments into Zimbabwe so that their economic recovery plan can take effect.”

In the meantime, Zimbabwe has found another country to help them out- China.  In July Tsvangirai stated Zimbabwe was able to secure lines of credit worth $950 million from country. Zimbabwe needs an estimated $8 billion to rebuild the country’s devastated economy. 

But recently President Robert Mugabe has been attempting to re-establish friendly relations with Western nations,

“Our country remains in a positive stance to enter into fresh, friendly and cooperate relations with all those countries that have been hostile to us in the past.”

Parade Magazine named him 2009 world’s worst dictator, jumping ahead of other notorious leaders from Sudan and North Korea. He has been blamed for the downfall of his once wealthy country, subjecting his people to cholera outbreaks, poverty, starvation, and one of the lowest life expectancy rates.

Robert Mugabe was hailed as a hero when he helped liberate the country in 1980, but since then, has veered far from his first message of democracy.

In 2000 the economy began to collapse when Mugabe began the seizure of almost 4,500 white owned commercial farms for redistribution to Zimbabwe’s black farmers.

At the time whites owned 32% of Zimbabwe’s most fertile agricultural land, compared to one million black peasant families who owned just 38%; a problem that was created in colonial times when blacks were forced off their ancestral land by the Europeans.

But Mugabe has no plans to reimburse the white farmers for the land they have lost.  Instead he states in Mail & Guardian,

“The responsibility of compensation rests on the shoulders of the British government and its allies. We pay compensation for developments and improvements. That’s our obligation and we have honored that. Above all Zimbabwe upholds the sanctity of property rights…. Sure there must be some compensation. Let’s join hands and appeal to the British.”

Other Zimbabweans, such as now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, would beg to differ.

“Some of the land stock that is in the government’s hands has ended up in city government officials or ministers and the people who need the land have been excluded.” (7:43-7:53)

And as a result, food production has plummeted, leaving millions to starve and millions of farm workers have now been unemployed.

Then, between August 2008 and July 2009 close to 100,000 cases of cholera were reported and over 4,000 people died as a result.   Inadequate drinking water and the lack of food fueled the cholera outbreak, a disease caused by eating or drinking contaminated food or water. 

A crisis Mugabe outright denies in the midst of the outbreak during a televised address:

“I’m happy to say that our doctor’s have been assisted by others and WHO have now arrested cholera.  So now that there is no cholera there is no cause for war.” (0:13-0:29)

Mugabe again blames the West for the problem.  Accusing them of trying to use the outbreak as a means to oust him from power.

Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe as a

“…genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British,” likening it to  “serious biological chemical weapon” used by the British…”

But now, even as the cases have slowed down, there is still fear of another round of outbreaks due to the lack of action taken by the Zimbabwe government and Mugabe. 

Inflation has further caused the Zimbabwean dollar to plummet, a soda at one point costing $300 billion.  The fall in value has forced many to use foreign currency.  Currency they have little access to.

“I don’t have that money. I’m Zimbabwean and I just want to use the Zimbabwean dollar.  Most people are saying give me US dollar. Where can I get US dollar if I am Zimbabwean?” (2:06-2:16)

A problem for the estimated 94% of the population that is unemployed.

Still, with starvation, high inflation, and deadly outbreaks there is little hope of new leadership.  Mugabe has long been accused of threatening those who oppose his policies, including the last election.

“Opposition supporters rounded up and forced to vote for Robert Mugabe while gangs roam the country hunting down those who have tried to boycott this poll.  Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who pulled out because of the violence says the results will only reflect the fears of the people.”(0:3-0:28)

Meanwhile, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young believes Mugabe is not the only one to blame for the troubles in Zimbabwe.

“Mugabe is not hurting Zimbabwe. The U.S./ British embargo is hurting Zimbabwe.” (7:00-7:10)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-na_qSoIo2k

]]> http://akanyangafrica.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/it-or-it/ Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:51:45 +0000 Akanyang Merementsi http://akanyangafrica.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/it-or-it/

As a blogger – who has not studied journalism or a writing course, let alone, a degree – there are quite a number of challenges that one faces. This, especially, happens when one has to quote someone or a particular publication. In most cases, it is quoting that I have recently come across as  very challenging.

In an effert to get help from people who have been in the industry so quite sometime, if not years – whether blogging as a profession or just for fun – I then sent this SMS in seeking help as far as quoting or quotations are concerned, which read thus:

Hi Please Help me with this: I am a Blogger (akanyangm.blogspot.com) in my own right and a regular contributor to certain publications (In fact, MyNews24 online is the only publication that comes to mind) and someone who has not studied journalism, but self-taught through reading extensively, from politics- to media-related publications both print & online.

This also includes, opinion articles, debates and interviews. As a confession for being addicted to Mail & Guardian & Sunday Times especially, and other Online publications & Journals, there is something that I am not sure of or that which makes me wonder who’s right or wrong because all publications mentioned before & those that I will mention later do follow these menthods of quoting, including New York Times & The Guardian and Financial Times, especially at the end of the ‘quoted sentence/wording’.

So which of the two is correct or when should one use either or both methods: “Akanyang. . . to go“. OR “Akanyang. . . to go.”

The Johannesburg weekly newspaper, “Mail & Guardian,” recently published its (annual?) “Race Issue.”  The idea of a “Race Issue” seems odd as a topic in South Africa since race define that country’s everyday.  And it sort of implies, although I don’t think they meant it, that now they’ll get back to reporting other things: We’ll talk about race again next year.

Anyway, I finally had a chance to read most of the articles.

So what can we say about them? Amongst others, there’s a lead article about utterances by ANC leaders; we find out that one white reporter does not want to talk about racism and voted for the Democratic Alliance; that there are nice black people in the Democratic Alliance; and there’s a meandering piece by novelist and educator Njabulo Ndebele about white and black expectations, etcetera.  This is all well and good.  But the relationship between race and class (how it stays the same, or changes), hardly comes up. It is all about identity. And about the preoccupations of the black and white middle classes.

But there were highlights. Especially the piece by journalist Pearlie Joubert.

Read that. Here’s an extract:

One recent Friday night I cooked for two very close friends — I will call them the “unmarried couple” — and a couple that we have recently kind of befriended.

The second couple, a husband and wife, I will call the “married couple”.

We drank wine and G&Ts and laughed lots …

The unmarried couple has two small children. These kids are my children’s closest friends. I love them almost like my own and I love their parents.

These two kids are adopted. And they are black. And it’s important that you know this because following on from a conversation about race and race-sensitivity and me once being reported to the press ombud for using the word “jinto” (meaning “slut” in Cape slang) the married woman said something like: “Is it a word for coolies or is it a Hotnot-thing?” In that same context and conversation she spoke about “Kaffirtjies”.

When looking at pictures of the unmarried couple’s two kids, the married woman said something like: “Ag, don’t you just want to kiss them?”

When the married woman said “Kaffirtjies” nobody at the dinner table said anything. But moments later I said: “You cannot speak like that.”

I didn’t shout this. I didn’t even say it angrily. In retrospect I said it a bit sheepishly, actually. Lightly. Conversationally. As one does with the candles gently throwing shadows across the walls and bouncing light off wine glasses. To which she replied: “Ag, man, you must really get over this.”

To which I replied: “You remind me of a caller on Radio Sonder Grense who said to Allan Boesak: ‘Ag, you people … Ag, you know man, I’m so sick and tired of you people telling my people that we must apologise. Now tell me, when are you people going to start apologising to us?’”

I told this story using that thick Boere-accent that only Boere and stand-up comics can imitate. Everybody, including her husband, laughed.

She simply said: “Exactly!”

Later:

Then the subject changed and we spoke about how one of the supper guests had pretended she was deaf to escape having a conversation on a flight between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

But the married woman had another point she wanted to make.

“You know, I hate it when fat people sit next to me on a plane.” She herself weighs the same as a large eggplant. Excuse me, I mean aubergine.

“So I was flying back from our little place in France and I was very tired and was just getting comfortable in business class [!] when ‘this mama’ came and sat next to me. ‘Aaa, no, I thought’,” she said. And she flung out her thin arms to emphasise the point that the “mama” was FAT.

The way she — and other whites — pronounce the word is not “mama” but “maama”, maybe to put a bit of isiXhosa into the pronunciation. So now we all know that the mama was fat AND BLACK.

Of course she must be black because fat white women aren’t called mamas. Only black women are “mamas”.

Again, none of us said anything.

What made it worse was that this thin, Botoxed white woman was talking about KwaZulu-Natal’s former health minister, Peggy Nkonyeni, who happened to be on the same flight — in business class. She was calling a provincial health minister a “mama”. Not because she has given birth to children, but because she was black.

I reckon using the term “mama” is, to her, like saying “Kaffirtjies”: a term of endearment you use when talking about blacks whom you don’t know or have any interest in, yet you somehow feel compelled to soften your prejudice.

Diminutives or words such as “mama” are excellent tricks to hide the brutality of our fears and ignorance, I’ve always found.

But the married woman was still talking: “I thought: noooo, not a mama, but then this mama looked at me and said: my child you look so tired and she held my [small, white -- my words] head against her [huge, black -- my words] breasts and I slept all night long from Paris all the way to Africa and it was the most wonderful sleep and the smell of her was so evocative,” she said.

By now everybody was squirming on the hard wood of my kitchen chairs.

But again we said nothing.

On all levels, the story is ridiculous. Would Peggy Nkonyeni hold some thin mlungu’s head on her tits sitting in business class on an SAA trans­atlantic flight? I don’t think so.

Anyway, you can’t hold somebody’s head, or hand for that matter, across business class seats. Unless you’re an orangutang with very long arms.

 The Mail & Guardian [South African]newspaper published what they called “the Race Issue” over the Heritage Day long weekend.

Reading it one had a rather surreal feeling that the key issue was the “White Issue” or even “the Wit Gevaar” [danger from persons known as “White”, for offshore readers{O.R.}]. It was rather a shock fifteen years after the revolution to discover that white people still apparently controlled all important aspects of life…and blacks were really no more than servants. I hadn’t realised that. I, foolishly thought that those of us who haven’t yet fled, or been driven out of employment by Affirmative action discriminating legislation and/or action, were just getting on with the pursuit of happiness in a post democratic dispensation.

Watching the local news channels one so rarely sees a white person anymore in any position of apparent influence these days it was all to easy to forget that the entire edifice of post liberation South Africa is apparently [really] a giant smokescreen behind which evil white elites still determine all the real truths of our existence.

I found that the big elephants: xenophobic race attacks and their aftermath, mostly unresolved ignored, Lindela detention camp race profiling, unresolved, ignored, Somali trader murders, 3500 unresolved [mainly] Afrikaner farm murders, for instance; contemporary race issues like black on black service delivery corruption, were ignored, in favour of beating an old, old, old, very old drum.

I worry that some ‘Truman’s World/ Matrix” miasma has swept us all along into a state of suspended belief: that we are frozen like yoghurt, in a time warp. I suppose it was Heritage Day after all… not Outcome day.

So I wrote a short letter to the M&G, well after I had written a long letter and then one somewhere in between.

You my dear reader can browse through whichever you wish and ignore what you don’t like.

To the Editor [Letter #3] Thank you for this interesting Heritage Day: “Race Issue”, edition of your newspaper, which has had me stomping around all weekend pondering how to react without gaaning on and on.

My final conclusion is that the entire edifice is little more than a well-wrought navel gazing retrospective, in which you focus mainly on beating a cripple called Hubris cowering prostrate on the floor, while carefully ignoring the big mean elephants who are making sure s/he never gets up again.

Eventually I felt immensely sad thinking about how a ballsy sharp fanged pit bull newspaper called the Weekly Mail, has in our older years morphed into a rather long winded elderly, timid bulldog, with worn down chompers serious myopia and a bad case of grumpy old man syndrome.

Sincerely blogroid

I didn’t send them this next part and in fact i changed the upper part too: they seem committed to their own version of reality and I’ve learned that, like arguing with drunks, there are few things more futile than pointing out inconsistency to those filled with ideological or religious fervour.

PS: I did arrive at this conclusion after writing a long ‘gaan aan’ denotative discursive piece in the belief that most modern readers lack the imagination to understand anything unless it is spelt out in laborious detail… this after all being your trademark style, and me being a probably pedantic schoolteacher [whoops sorry forgot the Newspeak: ie; learning skills outcomes mediator] .

Afterwards, since the weekend was dragging on interminably and I was procrastinating on the real tasks in front of me, I wrote a more connotative exploration of your contribution … well admittedly I had consumed a great deal of congenial liquids. I am not going to bore you with those possibly predictably tedious insights, or more probably tendentious perorations. I understand you are a busy person and I am probably the real grumpy old man.

So I’ll put them instead on the new unknown blog I’ve had to compile since you did away with Amagama and it’s unremembered [better] predecessor Blogspot; and I’ll thank you at the same time for your courtesy in sending me my entire file from those sites in a form that even an aging technomoron like myself was able to reproduce, even if I am still stumbling around trying to figure out how it all works. If you are interested you’ll find it all on:

Http:// blogroid. wordpress.com …

If I had the faintest idea of how to get it onto your Thoughtleader, I may well have gone that route instead: assuming I would have been ‘invited’.

Best regards Nicholas

Letter #1

This is the long tendentious discursive letter:

warning: this may become boring: factually based argument so often is.

The “race Issue”.

To whom it concerns

I have just ploughed through your Race Issue supplement and am left with a deep sense of depression and not a little puzzlement at what seems to be a profound depth of denial on the part of most of your contributors. I hope that what follows does not seem to be a rant… it is not intended to be.

First: the depression.

Some fourteen years ago I [self] published a crime novel called The Buffalo Hunters, in which, under the misguided influence of [pre-Disgrace] J M Coetzee, I set out to completely obliterate the words White and Black from my 98,000 word text… The reasons for this are not germane to this contribution, although I have no issue with discussing it at some other occasion and they were in any event published in the Penguin collection “Soweto inside out” some years ago.

The Buffalo Hunters sold a thousand copies, mostly by me, door-to-door, and attracted bemused responses from local critics most of whom pretended it hadn’t been written. So, for instance I eliminated white lies, black eyes, black marks and white knights and any other reference, however oblique, that associated those colours with people and values. I thought, mistakenly, I also admit now, especially in the light of this disturbing “Race Issue”, that we were entering a non-racial era, and that i was writing for an emerging non-racial audience that never actually materialised: as your correspondent Mr Ngcobo so poignantly observed in his recent Sunday Times peeve.

Later I wrote and published [on the Internet under the pen name Jakari] a follow up novel on the same lines… In the Ashanti Raider no key character was racially profiled, I carefully mixed up all the metaphors so that no one amongst the cast could be readily identified as one race or the other; and in our new non-racial society no publisher would even glance at the text, since, apparently, it had no generic stereotypes upon which “the reader” could hang its prejudices, and pre-determined interpretations… In this I ran deeply into ingrained behaviour and became effectively a social pariah.

Foolishly, then, I believed, along with many others, who supported the 1992, Yes vote, and the subsequent constitutional dispensation, that we were on our way to a non-racial society and a rosy future in which all persons would be equal and we could go forth and conquer the world. We know now of course that this idea was an illusion, that we [naively perhaps and equally perhaps, for many, in rat trapped desperation] negotiated with those who carefully masked their [understandable] hatred and, like Mr Mugabe, simply bided their time until that rage, pent up over 300 years, could not be suppressed any longer; and burst out in the form of a racially enraged President, and the emerging vindictive, retributive onslaught of a newly empowered elite, as a result of which that part of the White community that could do so, fled.

This means, to move from my sense of depression to my sense that many of your contributors are in a state of denial that the population demographic figure you quote on page 23 is of dubious veracity. In other words the idea that the white population [of post-democratic South Africa] is [now] as much as 9.1% of the total is an old and somewhat Potemkinist statistic… the more likely probability is hinted at by the figure for the decline in white tertiary enrolments to 23%. It is more likely that the [so-called] White population is now closer to 7% and falling [ironically in 1952 it was 23% by the way, although that too may have been more Potemkinist than we are wont to imagine].

As evidence in support of this contention the Economist newspaper published a reasonably verifiable report five years ago, to the effect that an evaluation of immigration statistics into five English speaking countries revealed that some 1,3 million persons had migrated from SA between 1994-2000. [Of course not all of this entire exodus was White], and the Economist report was never mentioned in our media.

At the time of the 1992 Referendum the White population was put at 5, 2 million. Adding, conservatively, another 500,000 émigré’s to the Economist evaluation over the intervening nine years, would give us a current figure of under four million honkeys even allowing for natural increase.

There is also a curiously prevalent assumption that the rest of the greater population’s growth has remained stagnant for at least a decade which, notwithstanding the [huge/genocidal]HIV/AIDS toll, is absurd given the relatively greater birth-rate of the greater Black community, [which actually doubled in size between ’74 and ’94, so great was the level of oppression that no one had anything else to do], plus the [unacknowledged] high level of black refugee migration into South Africa over the past fifteen years.

To elaborate; for instance, fifteen years ago I had four black kids in my matric class [final school leaving year class for O.R.] plus one Chinese, and the rest were white. In 2010 I won’t have a single white kid in my final year matric Business class and only a handful in my lower grades: although the school would nominally be classed as a former ‘white’, so-called ‘private’ school. [By the way these kids along with hundreds of other black kids I have the pleasure of working with over the past fifteen years in a variety of social environments as a temporary part time teacher, all seemed pretty well fed, and frequently sport elaborate and expensive hairstyles; and while some don’t have cell’phones they can all find their way around Facebook more efficiently than I can, and are for the most part better informed than most of their white peers, who increasingly reveal the deleterious effects of large scale loss of complementary peers. I don’t want to add to that because I have no wish nor need to offend the innocent. ]

To continue: Twenty years ago there were no black families living on my street. Three years ago when I helped draft a street petition to obliterate an unruly, abusive, disruptive, informal drinking establishment, operating from hijacked premises in the street, mine was one of only four white families out of the 140 households in the street. Never mind Mr Brandon Huntley*, I can tell you when I walk down my street I stand out like a “sore thumb”. [* see The Canadian Refugee blog]

Presumably the 136 new households have traded Mr Mngxitama’s [a correspondent] rather obscure “grammar of black suffering”, which I presume to reside somewhere in the experience of pre-colonial feudal Africa, for the “white grammar of suffering” in the form of mortgage bonds, hire purchase debt, pension schemes, medical aids and rapid upward mobility aspirations [In every respect of which, I might add they have one up on me, who still poddles about in a rusted decrepit 1978 Volksie Beetle on long term loan from an old friend, who now functions as a migrant surgical worker in a euro zone country hospital, having become unemployable in his homeland as a result of the new anti-white person discrimination.]

Now it may be that I’m wrong, and that all the former white residents just moved across town; but frankly I think you are all in deep denial about this “white” thing. My point here is that the game is over… You don’t need this “beat on whitey’ “Race Issue” series, because the game has been played, and we are simply in extra time, before the penalty shoot out with a crook goalie on the white side. Black won this event…BEE…[Black economic empowerment] rulz.

The current ‘struggle’ is a sleight of hand illusion… an exercise in misdirection… the sands of time are moving inexorably towards the overwhelming black hegemony no matter how tightly whitey seems to be keeping his fist on the tiller.

Confusingly the strange problem today is less, white residual knee jerk, and often born-again, racism, but emerging, hotly denied, black racism, black exceptionalism, exclusivism and general xenophobia, in the face of huge competition for elusive opportunity.

The main reason why you still seem intent on fighting the issue is because the final ramparts have not yet been breached, or as Mr Ngcobo [a correspondent] asserts with a bravely un African allusion: “…before we storm the Bastille”.

Nonetheless this will happen… 15 years is but a blink in the eye of history. Another 15 and the white component will reach around five percent before drifting lower. Then, the whiteys you will see will either be those standing at robots*  [ SA speak for traffic lights] holding placards saying: “I am Hungry”, or more probably, Mr Mashele’s * residual white working class grimly smiling our shit eating smiles and trading with each other; or they will be his super rich ‘Weberian’ economically empowered minority who don’t need to leave their compounds, except to hang out in places that only other rich [but black] people can afford to go to.

Either way both white groups will be relatively invisible, as are the whites in Kenya, Uganda and other more francophone regions of the continent. [* another correspondent][

[This idea incidentally that “secret cabals of elites” control the country’s destiny is so old it dates back to before Rhodes and provides… like religion, a comfortable scapegoat for idle thought.]

To conclude: Your grandchildren will look at you with incredulity when you tell them 30 years from now that the whole place was once run by whiteys… because the only whiteys they’ll be familiar with will most probably be tourists and the Robot sentries. And it’s no use trotting out the old “we love South Africa it’s our home” bit… Surplus people have migrated for centuries in pursuit of opportunity, that’s how we all got here in the first place. Thus the newly superfluous white middle class is pretty well on its way. Mr Mashele’s alleged ‘white elites’ apparently no longer need them, they seem to have “the new black grammar of suffering” to exploit.

So the white exodus is not going to stop, short of the Apocalypse: it can’t; they have no choice: the economy is effectively shrinking, a fact masked by stealth inflation, massive debt funded State expenditure and inadequate electricity supply. This together with the expanding nature of BEE means that opportunities for white upwardly mobile aspirants who don’t have access to connections or hereditary wealth are shrinking even faster, while the outside world is truly “alive with possibility’”: current recession notwithstanding.

The trend line is irreversible. The decision to re-racialise our country [with racially prescriptive legislation] has been taken and the die is well cast. The fact that the M&G has seen fit to run this ‘Race Issue’ series is testimony to it. It cannot be stopped; and won’t be stopped because the Africanist agenda rules and the vested interests it carries with it are absolute until the next revolution [which, as we have been told will not happen until after the arrival of the next Messiah].

Those who witnessed the recent film version of Coetzee’s novel: Disgrace” know what the [foreign] director saw, more clearly than we want to: White people are today, in reality, no more than spectators now, at this final feast where the goodies are being redistributed. This is notwithstanding the pretentious “skaam* making” toy toying* Western Cape Premier, Helen “Queen Canute” Zille [someone for whom I did not vote by the way, Ms Dodd*.] [*another contributor][OR Skaam = Afrikaans= shame ,embarrassment… what your kids feel when you take them to school in an inappropriate motor vehicle. Toy toying: a curious shuffle type dance movement that characterizes protest demonstration behaviors in SA]

In case you think I’m being a negative alarmist, bear in mind that the present, post- Africanist-agenda, white population of Zimbabwe is today less than five percent of the 1970 pre-independence figure. Anecdotally there are more Chinese citizens in Zimbabwe today than white people. The Black agenda has triumphed gloriously and now needs to prove it can deliver on the promise of the better life without the honkeys, very few of whom, will ever return, no matter how much nostalgia they feel: that for which they are nostalgic no longer exists… And anyway Africa doesn’t have a monopoly on trees even if it does have one on sunsets.

I could gaan aan but I won’t, this is all well-worn territory. [* OR: Gaan aan: Afr: to agonise endlessly beyond a point of tedium]

What should be really worrying you’re various contributors, is not, whether White people are polite to you in the workplace Mr Mateboge* [we aren’t actually polite to anyone really, why do you think the motivation industry never runs out of customers?] because that is really not important: we are no longer important. What is important is what you think of yourselves, as Mr Mngxitama so confusingly, post-structurally asserts.

The real issue behind the misdirected handshake is why all the black guys who have become obscenely wealthy over the past fifteen years on the untold billions that have evaporated from the public purse since 1994, have not been piling more black owned and empowered businesses onto the JSE, which, in case you didn’t notice [again], has declined from some 700 listed companies in 1994 to about 360 now. Or, why black controlled competition commissions are unable/unwilling to tackle the growth strangling oligopolies that reinforce “the grammar of black suffering” [whatever that evocative phrase means].

There are no rules, I believe, other than the chains in your own minds, to stop black owned businesses from achieving success in a black owned country run exclusively by black people are there? There don’t seem to be any that apply to former black universities, which seem to this casual observer, to be carefully avoiding any [so-called: OR] ‘transformation’ agendas. There are black clubs that refuse to admit white patrons albeit no putative ‘white’ one is allowed to refuse anyone, [in fact so-called ‘white’ clubs no longer exist by law] so why shouldn’t we have many more exclusively black businesses? [Denial again, perhaps].

Of course there is the sub-textual open conspiracy of socialist trade union/big business collaborationist agenda to make life so impossible for small, emerging [especially black] businesses that many are stillborn at birth, or, later, strangled by embittered and corrupt State officials… at least according to many of my many new black neighbours.

Then what else should be really worrying your contributors in our post Polokwane [O.R. see earlier blogs] era where we Whitey’s are reduced to mere spectators, is that, Mr Manuel aside, there is no apparent plan to deal with the post 2010 story, which is almost here and gone. Does no one perhaps want to acknowledge that Mr Manual’s vision for 2025 could be the year of total Black ascendancy… all the hated whiteys gone at last, or at least, relegated to oblivion? I am sure you could just pay us all to leave; [there’s a vision] it would be so much less angst filled, and probably cheaper than struggling with this dubious Africanist agenda, which, like its Afrikaner inspired Apartheid forbear, promises only extended misery, in a forthcoming era of low to stagnant economic growth. At least you would be able to focus on where we are going rather than endlessly agonising over where we have been.

The primary reason why your various contributors have angst about whitey and his alleged control of the working environment is simply because the decision that was taken years ago, to go for the re-distribution of the existing pie, instead of building the biggest pie possible, has been successful; and the shrunken residue is now being grudgingly fought over by those who are still on the outside trying to oust those grimly hanging onto the inside. The yawning wage gap between elites and the rest of us has more to do with an historical undersupply of clever, talented, skilled black management workers, relative to the artificial demand created by legislative fiat, bidding up the price of their labour, than it has to do with white intransigence: [just the iron, economic law of scarcity in practice that we teach in 9th grade].

It also has more to do with the reality that political connections and cadre deployment are more important than knowledge, for emerging black management workers.

However when Mr Manyi* has his way, and he will; and the fat cat Corporates are forced to shed white knowledge workers, because the shrunken pie does not allow for growth, then gradually, but inevitably, the truth, that this resurgent race issue is simply a smokescreen, will become apparent.

[* Manyi: new political commissar of Labour: intent on bulldozing demographic employment quotas on all ‘non-compliant’ businesses ie 93 % all level must be ‘black’]

Thus the 2019 September Heritage weekend edition of your newspaper [assuming it survives a possible democracy meltdown, when black opposition parties become strong enough, to challenge the current hegemonic dispensation, as they will; and/or the world itself does not succumb to the post-depression apocalypse predicted in my new novel “The Jonker Memorandum”] will be about the issue between those workers who belong to the Party [limited membership only] and those who do not.

Race will no longer be an issue at all, except as an ongoing knee jerk diversion for those who are too blind to notice that [again regrettably] almost the only whites left are the tourists.

So can you please prove me wrong?

 Sincerely:

blogroid

Letter # 2

This was the final straw: written in a state of delusional hysteria

My Grandmother’s cousin

My late grandmother had a first cousin who played violin in an orchestra on a ship called the Titanic, and according to family legend the band played on while the ship went down with most of the passengers because, as is well known, the boat didn’t have enough lifeboats for everyone

After reading the M&G “Race Issue” supplement, with its curiously old fashioned ranting on the issue of ‘bad whitey’s, in bed on Heritage Day, over a few guzzles of vodka,  I fell into an exhausted and deeply troubled sleep during which I had a most disturbed dream.

In my dream my extended, late violinist, relative came to me and told me, what he said, was the real story, about the sinking of the Titanic.

He said, that some time before that fateful meeting with a largely submerged iceberg there had been a revolt on board the ship. Apparently the poor people who travelled in the lower decks, known as “steerage”, were incensed. It seems they had not been invited to a concert on the upper decks being held to celebrate the current state of the ‘Blue Riband’ record-breaking journey. They took over the ship and deposed the captain and most of the older members of the crew.

At the precise moment when the iceberg alarm was sounded, a huge debate was raging amongst the newly emancipated passengers, regarding who should qualify to sit in the front seats at the concert. The main point of unanimity was that all the deposed rich folk on the upper decks should be expelled, and stand on the wind exposed deck, while those who had been disadvantaged by the absence of music in their lives, got to see the concert instead.

Therefore at the time of the ignored warning, but before the ship hit the iceberg, orders had already been issued that the expelled passengers, were not wanted on board at all; and were to leave the ship; they were thus busy being loaded onto the lifeboats when the actual impact occurred.

Meanwhile down in the ballroom the argument continued to rage over which were the best chairs; and whether they should be repainted into the newly fashionable red toned hues that were being touted as the future of design, by the more militant members.

The departee’s: Colonels John Astor and Archibald Gracie attempted to convince the steerage passengers that they were in immanent danger, but they ignored him and insisted that the orchestra play the Marseillaise, which struck up just as the icy ocean poured across the ballroom. The band being trapped with all the steerage passengers simply played on.

Colonel Archibald was later rescued hanging onto a newly painted railing: the rest went down with the ship… The rich people who were tossed out of the ballroom onto the main upper decks were rescued by passing ships.

Then my grandmother’s cousin went on to tell me that Ninety-seven years later, a country on the south end of the remote African continent found itself sailing in the troubled waters of the greatest financial meltdown in the history of the human race. Leaders everywhere on the planet were desperately seeking ways to stave off universal bankruptcy, and the treacherous under tips of the ravaging icebergs of financial failure were littered about like corpses on a battlefield. Simultaneously the world’s climates were everywhere undergoing terrifying changes. The general chaos of the financial meltdown was exacerbated by constant flooding, fires and terrible storms.

The world, he said, was entering a time prophesied as Apocalyptic.

Fortunately though, the country’s leadership had substituted grand lies for bold action. The populace, knowing that their leaders lied about most things chose to believe them anyway. Lying was fashionable and acceptable, a comfortable legacy of the politics of resistance to oppression.. The global dilemma was declared irrelevant to their own agendas.

Most importantly, they had to argue over who should have the best seats at a forthcoming concert at the country’s most important airport. They were going to welcome home a victorious, albeit troubled young suffragette, who had recently won a gruelling contest against embittered and jealous opposition. The country’s most promising young firebrand leader had sworn to rally support against those who were the enemies of the young person and therefore the State, and had plotted against them both. These people were publicly castigated for their non-attendance at the concert, notwithstanding that they were not invited anyway.

Other leaders distracted the populace from global floods with the issue of generous promissory notes while knowing they had left the doors open, to allow the water in: and the people cheered and called for the doors to be opened wider….

I woke up in a cold detoxifying sweat and fell off the bed reaching blindly for the vodka bottle that had fallen onto the floor.

Farewell cruel world

Addressing the annual dinner of the American Press Association in 1914 John Swinton, editor of the New York News said “There is no such thing as an independent press in America. Not a man among you dares to utter his honest opinion. We are the tools and the vassals of the rich behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives and our capacities are all the property of these men – we are intellectual prostitutes.” I am asking my countrymen and women who are journalists if they are like the way John Swinton describes them in the foregoing lines or different? They must search their souls and be honest. Are they proud of their reportage vis-à-vis the wretched of the African continent?

Both print and electronic media must do some introspection especially the public broadcaster, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The Sowetan and Mail & Guardian are trying but can do better than they are currently doing. Motsweding FM’s Sekolo Sa Bosigo (Night School) also called Kgogamasigo hosted by Goitsemodimo Seleka is doing exceptionally well and I take my hat off for Mr. Seleka. It is about time that we tell inconvenient truths. Important news stories that never saw the light of day in all the publications and SABC television and radio are mentioned in the paragraphs that follow.

Pam Golding’s company owns prime land in the Cape sea coast which the majority of the indigenes will only dream of owning. The West continues to suck our country dry of its minerals while the majority of the African autochthonous population wallow in poverty and are destitute while there is an ostentatious display of opulence by the noveau riches.

South Africa has been a neocolonial state since its inception in 1994. The white minority government could stand up to the West like in 1983 when PW Botha declared a moratorium on World Bank and Internal Monetary Fund (IMF) debts. The current neocolonial ANC government however agreed to pay an odious debt which China repudiated in 1949 on the basis that the previous regime that incurred the debt was illegitimate. There was a precedent set that the South African neocolonial state could have emulated after the ANC came to power through a rigged election.

Some African countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Madagascar are leasing vast tracks of land to Asian countries such as South Korea and China for agricultural purposes and for bio fuels. The new leader of Madagascar however cancelled the land deal that his predecessor had entered into with Daewoo Company of South Korea. Very recently Israeli jet fighters bombed northern Sudan under the pretext that Sudan haboured Al Qaeda cadres. A small country like Israel can bomb an African country without any consequences and the media fails to report about such a flagrant violation of Africa’s territorial integrity.

South Africa is being used as a gateway to invade other African countries with the dangerous genetically modified organisms which threaten to pollute our natural seeds to make us dependent on Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) thus posing a danger to our food security. But these are issues that do not make it in this country’s reportage. Instead tons and tons of ink and broadcast time are wasted on gobbledygook.

The media should educate the hoi polloi about the impending danger that is about to befall them instead of spending an inordinate amount of time reporting about every little thing that the ANC does, to lament or rejoice over Congress of the People’s (COPE) problems, to harp on the time consuming polemics of both the ruling party and official opposition which result in the polarisation between the Democratic Alliance (DA) and ANC while ignoring former liberation movements like the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Azanian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO). The PAC and Azapo will get the usual crappy and scant coverage again towards the 2014 general elections.

By Sam Ditshego

In the maelstrom that is public service in this country, teachers and learners went back to school today.

It was a frustrating day, filled with paperwork and noise.

I had forgotten just how frustrating a class of 16-year-olds can really be. Delightful late mornings in bed just for three weeks just don’t seem enough of a payoff to deal with what teachers deal with on a daily basis. And when I say ‘delightful late mornings’ I mean that we get up late, and not at 6 o’clock like we usually do, and then we mark the piles and piles of marking that have accumulated over the term.

We didn’t have any swine flu scares, or in fact any allusion to swine flu at all, certainly not the promised teams that I read were supposed to be dropping by. We received various Union news about Occupation Specific Dispensations as well as salary reviews that the Unions are negotiating, and general news about the loads of work that we have to complete before Friday so that reports can be returned.

I think Bart Simpson sang it best: ‘Put your nose to the grindstone!’

-

Since The Star seems to think that every single venerable public and private educational is a breeding ground for bullying and intimidation, I can proudly say that I witnessed absolutely zero acts that might match that description today. But then I’m only one teacher, I’m slightly outnumbered, and I only have one pair of eyes.

I respect this publication, I do. I think it is one of the last standing bastions of journalism in the country, was especially so under Ferial Haffajee.

However, I am disturbed by what appears to be a developing trend of increasing space for pessimistic commentators that appear to be using the venerable newspaper as a platform for their warped world view, now that the  Zuma administration is firmly in place.

Consider an opinion piece by Sam Sole – a few weeks before the elections – entitlted ‘The Nkandla Mafia is Coming’ – which in my opinion was scare mongering of the worst kind (Zuma comes from Nkandla).

The last issue of the MG also carried another piece by him, this time entitled ‘Spooks haunt our democracy’ sadly bemoaning the spookification (whatever that means) of the nation.

Ironic, considering that the very same MG (and Mr. Sole himself)  regularly does investigative journalism and both have been accused of working hand-in-glove with some of the more disruptive elements in our own state intelligence/investigation agencies . It also carries pieces by the famously discredited spook Ivor Powell, author of the Browse Mole report – well not a very succesful spook, that one – perhaps best called a one-time spook and some-time journalist.

I think its new editor Nic Dawes, means well. He appears to have all sorts of fires in his belly, wishes to prove himself and all that -  and I hope he knows enough to know when he is being manipulated. I wish him well.

The tone was

There are a proliferation of blogs by non-Africans about Africans. Some are written by freelance journalists and contracted correspondents, while others are by academics in African studies and international development and aid, and still more by NGO and aid workers. It is rare that you see non-Africans who write about Africa talk about local press and general local literary society. In fact, I can’t think of one blog that I read about Africa written by a non-African that makes me feel like I’m reading part of the same discussion contained in local newspapers published here in Johannesburg.

Of course, this is not just true for blogs but for general international correspondence. A case in point is the way the formation of new president Jacob Zuma’s cabinet was covered by both local and international press. From an international perspective the focus was solely on then-Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. These same sources were, if not satisfied, then at least cautiously optimistic about the news that Manuel would be the head of the new planning commission in the presidency. I wish I had kept a screen shot from the day, but on Sunday, the basic gist of BBC online’s headline about the announcement of Zuma’s cabinet was “Manuel In.” Similarly, the Economist magazine has as its headline on South Africa — one of four stories to make it in to this week’s Middle East and Africa section — “Who Will Call The Economic Shots?“

The most-watched post in Mr Zuma’s new cabinet is the finance minister, who for the past 13 years has been the fiscally conservative, well-respected Trevor Manuel. South Africa’s business establishment and foreign investors have been nervous lest Mr Zuma, as a sop to his many vocal supporters on the left, would get rid of him. The trade unions and the South African Communist Party, both boosters of Mr Zuma on his way to power, have long complained that the National Treasury under Mr Manuel had become too powerful.

So there was an early frisson when Mr Zuma shifted him to another post. But the new president may have been displaying his instinct to try to please all sides. Mr Manuel may have even more authority in his new job as head of a new national planning commission. Along with another minister in the presidency, Collins Chabane, he will oversee the implementation of overall policy—from Mr Zuma’s office. “Manuel understands government very well and therefore he has been given that task,” says the president. The commission, he notes, is a “very powerful structure”.

This issue has also been given great importance in local media, particularly so in publications like Business Day, which have a specialty audience with an interest in the story. However, there is much more to the debate about the new South African cabinet than just the fate of Trevor Manuel in local media. The weekly Mail & Guardian leads with “Zuma’s Cabinet, Inc.” as this week’s print headline. The story is about the many business interests of which a number of cabinet ministers, including Tokyo Sexwale, and deputy ministers must divorce themselves now that they have assumed their government posts. Another intriguing story is the fate of acting head of the National Prosecuting Authority Mokotedi Mpshe and Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, carried today by Business Day.

If these two stories have a common thread, it’s a preoccupation with the integrity of the institutions of democracy in South Africa. While this was a cursory preoccupation of many international news sources, particularly during the Zuma corruption saga, I think local press finds this a more durable concern worthy of attention. Economic policy is an important concern, but not the only one.

I know that most international news sources have little space for news from Africa, and so what does make it out to the rest of the world will be distilled and boiled down to a startling degree. Still, the Internet has allowed for a particularly wide range of writing about Africa, as well as for a greater level of intertextuality between local and international writing about any given place.

I would be curious, then, to see how international journalists, academics, and other bloggers might make better use of the kinds of homegrown analysis and ways of talking about a place that are the more exclusive domain of local press. The one example I can think of, in this regard, is BBC’s occasional practice of posting local articles about a given subject that they also cover online. Across the board, though, more can be done. What are the impediments to a greater role for local press in international coverage of countries in Africa?

First Zaipiro with the shower-headed Jacob Zuma and now laughitoff, a satirical South African blog, has been selling a shower bath product with Jacob Zuma’s name attached to it for the past few months. The label advises: “After intense physical activity use … gel for an invigorating cleansing experience.” With coverage in The Times, the BBC, and other blogs, it seems to be the hot product for this election season. 

Though it might be too clever for the ANC’s liking, and with Zuma riding his political capital at the moment and going after cartoonist Zaipiro, the ANC is said to be considering legal action against laughitoff.. This is just another example in the long list of others, that the ANC pictures itself as above the state, and thus above criticism or satire. Obviously the recent failure to achieve a 2/3 majority in the parliament has done nothing to dent the ANC’s hubris.

One must believe that its not until satirists and critics are accepted by the ANC as part and parcel of democracy that South Africa will take the next step. Obviously simply accepting satire is not the only thing that must be done, but when a cultural exists that accepts criticisms and does not attempt to label it libelous, a atmosphere will exist to promote greater thought, introspection, and debate on the serious issues. 

Where that society can be found in the world today is hard to pinpoint. As much fun as Americans and Britons make of their politicians, there are still a minority of their supporters who will not tolerate the abuse and satire that is thrown at their candidate. 

However it turns out, well-played to laughitoff….now if only it was available in the US. Make sure to check out the advert that is going viral.

That’s right. We are less than 24 hours away from the polling stations opening for what is without a doubt something very exciting: Democracy in Action. Please vote. Please. I am not telling you who to vote for, nor who I am voting for, but please make an informed decision.

Friday’s Mail & Guardian ran an excellent guide to all the major parties, with summaries and criticism on policy considerations, from a very neutral perspective. The paper can be viewed here, and the Election Guide can be found on page 21. Please read it and make an informed vote. In fact, I recommend you buy the paper itself. It’s got a brilliant profile of the feelings among South African voters. Please don’t walk into that voting booth uniformed. That’s nothing short of irresponsible.

If you’ve forgotten how to vote, all you need to do is make the following shape, next to the party you think will lead this country the best. You’ll even get a free coffee.

Ideally, this is the picture you should draw next to the party you want to vote for

Nondumiso Gasa visisted the Washington DC office of the TransAfrica Forum on 10 March to brief on her struggle to attract attention to the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. Gasa, chair of South Africa’s Commission for Gender Equality, is part of the campaign Save Zimbabwe Now and recently completed a 21-day hunger strike in attempts to cause the international community to help the Zimbabwean refugees that are flowing into South Africa as well as those still inside Zimbabwe. 

In her briefing she touched on her experiences of meeting with refugees at the South African border town of Musina. She said that she has seen the crisis evolve along typical migration routes, where in the past the men of Zimbabwe had left for work in South Africa’s mines, then followed by the women as domestic servants, but that now unaccompanied minors ranging from 8 to 17 years old are crossing the border in hopes of finding employment, and more importantly food, in Pretoria or Johannesburg. 

The Save Zimbabwe Now  campaign has criticized numerous actors in the region, from Mugabe to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to the South African government. In that regard Save Zimbabwe NOW has produced a film titled “The Shame of Musina”. It documents the struggle that Zimbabwean refugees have had in South Africa where they must live in the open air show ground of the town. They are not permitted to leave, as the police has established a non-official policy of arresting anyone that goes beyond the ‘border’ that extends 100 yards into the town. This in turn prohibits anyone to seek help from the local police. The impact of this policy is most intensely felt by the women of the refugee ‘camp’ as they are unable to report rapes to the authorities. The film showed how women must endure multiple rapes on their path out of Zimbabwe and also after arriving in South Africa. Gasa said that intergenerational rape is common, and the practicing of ‘mattress’ rapes (where the man must lie underneath his wife while she is raped) is prevelant in Musina. 

Gasa discussed how rape in Zimbabwe has become a political weapon, one that she says SADC has no stand on. She described how child soldiers are initiated through the raping of family members. The closer the family member is to the child, the more ‘brave’ the child is considered. This leads Gasa to call women’s bodies battlefields in this crisis. She also makes the point that the events transpiring in Zimbabwe are not unique to the country and follow much the same path of other crises on the continent such as the Congo and Darfur when it comes to child soldiers, rape, internal displacement, and government killings. The use of appropriation of aid and supplies by the government, specifically ZANU-PF, for political purposes is an issue that must be addressed as well according to Gasa. She believes a special agency that is not under the government is needed to ensure that aid can be distributed. She cites the cholera tablets that were diverted to specific communities as the most recent of government abuses of aid. 

In going on a 21-day hunger strike, which she continued the relay fast after Kumi Naidoo completed his hunger strike, Gasa wanted to highlight the use of a women’s body as a battlefield for this current conflict. She wanted to encourage others to not be passive about this conflict and to learn how to resist through their bodies. On her sixth day she had alarmingly low levels of iron and was forced to hospital where she was administered an intravenous drip for 8 hours. She said of this experience that it showed her that she “had no control over her body” and that she was “not brave at all”. However, she said of her time lying in hospital that it gave her “clarity of thought and conviction” to finish her fast. 

She said that in living in South Africa for the past few years, many believed that South Africa was working towards a solution with Thabo Mbeki’s Quiet Diplomacy. On her visit to Musina and viewing the conditions of life there, Gasa subsequently saw that “we are in [a] much different problem” . She believes that the unitary government that was forced upon Zimbabwe by SADC, which led to the current unitary government between Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, has only legitimized ZANU-PF and what she calls the Mugabe ‘phenomenon’. Gasa however believes that once “government…uses military on its own country it loses its legitimacy”. She says that the presence of the military that currently hangs over Prime Minister Tsvangirai restricts any real change he can implement.

Turning to the solutions that Save Zimbabwe Now and Gasa believe are needed, she said that Save Zimbabwe Now is asking for others to pledge their solidarity and create a “people to people struggle”. She believes more discussion in churches or other forums are necessary to creating a movement where the more voices that exsit the more likely they will achieve their goals. Save Zimbabwe Now calls on the US to join in the struggle, through donations, fasting, and most importantly a political advocacy movement in which the goal of restoring human dignity to the people of Zimbabwe can be acheived.

Gasa asks for Obama to send a special envoy to SADC and to weigh the different options through multilateral discussion on whether or not to lift sanctions. To this end Gasa believes that if donor money is allowed to flood in, the government and Mugabe will be able to ignore the people of Zimbabwe and their vote. Gasa does not have much faith in SADC in terms of delivering wide spread aid as she believes they do not have the capability to distribute a humanitarian package from themselves. She believes the fact that most of these nations are themselves cash-strapped and their cozy relations with the ZANU-PF region will result in wasted aid money. 

In closing, Gasa gave a warning that seemed to stress her belief that the time to act is now. She says that she expects no action to come down from the ANC government in Pretoria as public discontent with the refugees is growing. She said in Johanessburg, the security forces routinely raid the churches where refugees stay when the police “want to have some fun or make some money”. Gasa points to the Democractic Alliance ousting the ANC from the ward in Musina where the refugees stay. Gasa says the DA ran their platform on a xenophobic message in the area because of the refugees. 

In the end, Ms. Gasa did provide a first hand account of the suffering that the people of Zimbabwe endure when they enter South Africa, and she rightly criticized many of the organizations that have been tasked to solve this issue. However, her prescriptions for change were vague, especially when she answered a question from the audience about what the US should do by saying that American’s should pledge solidarity with the Zimbabwean people. This perhaps gives an insight into this complex issue that even the people on the ground who are interacting with these many  different actors do not have a clear plan for solving the problem. Their hope that by attracting more attention will bring an end to the suffering is a difficult task, but as seen with the conflict in Darfur and many others on the continent, more media attention is never the final answer to the conflicts that are troubling Africa.

Over the past week I’ve come across a few useful articles and resources.

Organisations I work with often complain that they struggle to get the news media to cover the issues they’re concerned with — issues related to social development. Newspapers in many countries tend to focus on stories of political infighting, scandal, and sport, with little space for anything else. But in an article that appeared in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper last week, journalist Richard M Kavuma argued that this is starting to change — at least in Uganda.

He says what really began to chance journalists’ attitudes was a series on the Millennium Development Goals that appeared in The Weekly Observer in Uganda in 2006. The series of articles won international awards, and made other journalists and newspapers sit up and take notice.

Kavuma points out though, that newspapers are under financial pressure, so editors often prefer to run with sure-fire sellers such as scandal and celebrity gossip. It’s important for NGOs to remember that editors need to find ways to “capture the imagination of the audience.” This means, NGOs and people working in development need to do the same — find creative and imaginative ways of telling their stories.

How to Talk to the News media

Many organisations do have compelling stories to tell, but don’t know how to go about getting the media interested. And those who have had some interaction with the media, often have sad tales to tell about journalists getting the story wrong.

The Committee of Concerned Journalists offers some really useful tips, in an article titled ‘How to Talk to the News Media’. Their tips look at how to suggest stories for coverage, and how to deal with any complaints and corrections you might have.

A report by Stratfor, tucked away nicely on their members-only page, is titled South Africa: President To Dissolve Parliament – Report. Such a course of action would seem prudent if viewed from a political perspective. While this year’s regulary schedule general election were to be held sometime between April and June, this recent possible action by South African president, Kgalema Motlanthe, could signal the African National Congress’s (ANC) growing concern over the upstart breakaway party, the Congress of the People (COPE). 

ANC may well claim that since the dismissal of Thabo Mbeki from head of state, Motlanthe has been in a care-taking role and that with the current worldwide finicial crisis, it is more appropriate to get a new government seated sooner, rather than later. Motlanthe has certainly kept the ball rolling on certain ANC projects, one of which was the dismantling of the Scorpions, but he has not undertaken any other major endevors as he has no political capital of his own. The looming shadow of Jacob Zuma must also be inhibiting Motlanthe during his Presidency. (To See a Review of his first 100 Days in office, see his interview with the M&G) This claim that a legitimate government is needed to handle the financial crisis would seem to make good sense, as a new government would be able to react to the crisis and use their newly earned political capital to implement their plans.

Oddly enough, another possible reason for the early election might be a new possibility for South Africans abroad to vote overseas. While not all inclusive, the government may want to speed up an election, so that word of mouth of the new provision has not spread sufficiently in time for an overseas vote to be significant. As most of the overseas vote would most likely favor the DA or possibly COPE, the ANC is not exactly advertising this new ability to vote abroad.  

The ANC must also be worrying about any growing influence that COPE is gathering in former ANC territory. It would be rational to believe that the longer COPE has to prepare for the elections and to publicize their platform, the more successive they will be in the election. Whether this plays out in this fashion is still to be seen, but its a fair bet that the 2009 South African election may well be the most exciting since 1994. The smaller parties are sensing the division in the ANC may mean more votes for their platforms, but I believe the actual number of electorate defections will be less than is hyped in the media. In any case, voter participation may rise for the first time in South Africa’s post-apartheid era.

Which ever reason is given by President Motlanthe to call for elections before the normal timetable, there must be a period of 60-65 days between when an election is called and when the actual voting day is established. COPE has claimed that a date of March 25th has been set, denied by Motlanthe, but in reality will one or two months make a difference to COPE’s success at the voting booth? They might argue yes, but in reality I believe that those who were ready to cast a non-ANC vote have already made up their mind about COPE. Those rural people who COPE may try to target for conversion from ANC stalwarts cannot be converted in months, rather years.

While 2009 sees the first formidable splinter group of the ANC pose a challenge to the ANC, no real power change will happen this year. It may be 2014, or beyond, before a COPE, or a COPE-DA alliance, could seriously threaten the stranglehold the ANC possesses over the South African electorate.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s underfire president, has decided that the past year of rigging elections, murdering opposition supporters, and being staunchly against sharing his power, has taken a toll on his nearly 85 year old body and is going to take a one month vacation according to the Mail & Guardian. One must ask where one  would go in Zimbabwe to vacation these days, much less the all-a-round hated leader of the imploding nation. One would hope that he might head to Victoria Falls where we could all pray that the Zambezi might sweep him over the edge, but alas, he’s decided to take what must be the last bit of foreign currency reserves the government holds and use them to vacation abroad. Says his spokesman George Charamba: 

This is more of a retreat than an annual leave. The president is very busy reflecting on the new structures that are needed to deal with the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe as well as working on structures of an inclusive government which must come too soon

These are the times when you wish that ZANU-PF was facing anything but a subjugated press, or at least a media outlet that would ask, “So how far off is ‘too soon’?”

A deeper analysis could reveal two things. One, Mugabe is so secure in his power of controlling power that he knows that whether he is in the country or not, he is able to maintain his iron grip. Two, he knows a coup is coming, and does not want to be caught in the cross fire and is using this ‘retreat’ as a way of getting out of the line of fire and thus living out his days in exile. Or, a more likely third probablity, Mugabe has long been oustered from the real center of power in the party and in the country, and thus is just being used as a figure head for ZANU-PF. The people really in charge of the suppression of opposition and of land redistribution have slowly wrestled power away from Mugabe, though in his old-age they probably still convince him that he makes all the ‘real’ decisions.

Whatever the deeper meaning or reason behind his vacation, this would be the perfect time for outside intervention from the AU or the UN, but that’s more of a fantasy than Mugabe falling off Victoria Falls…

Jay P Wertheim, Lynda and Carlyn D. Solomon

The WSPCCA has scooped two very prestigious awards this year. These include the “Best non-profit organisation” in the Mail & Guardian Investing in the Future awards and an award for “Cost effective community healthcare” from the Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA).

Lynda also made her way to Los Angeles, courtesy of Philip Kelly from Edwards Lifesciences South Africa, to accept an award of excellence grant of US$15,000 from the mother company for the outstanding work that the centre does for paediatric cardiac health in Africa.