I Luv SA

Why Africa has gone to hell

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:37:00 +0000

This article is over two years old, but still valid today.

by James Jackson – Taki’s Magazine:

White Zimbabweans used to tell a joke—what is the difference between a tourist and a racist? The answer—about a week.

Few seem to joke any more. Indeed, the last time anyone laughed out there was over the memorable headline “BANANA CHARGED WITH SODOMY” (relating to the Reverend Canaan Banana and his alleged proclivities). Zimbabwe was just the latest African state to squander its potential, to swap civil society for civil strife and pile high its corpses. Then the wrecking virus moves on and a fresh spasm of violence erupts elsewhere. Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, even Kenya. Take your pick, for it is the essence of Africa, the recurring A-Z of horror. And as surely as Nelson Mandela took those steps from captivity to freedom, his own country will doubtless shuffle into chaos and ruin.

Mark my words. One day it will be the turn of South Africa to revert to type, its farms that lie wasted and its towns that are battle zones, its dreams and expectations that lie rotting on the veldt. That is the way of things. Africa rarely surprises, it simply continues to appal.

When interviewed on BBC Radio, the legendary South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela spoke of the 350-year struggle for freedom by blacks in South Africa. The man might play his trumpet like a dream, but he talks arrant nonsense. What he has bought into is a false narrative that rewrites history and plays upon post-colonial liberal angst. The construct is as follows: white, inglorious and bad; black, noble and good; empire, bad; independence, good; the west, bad; the African, good. Forgotten in all this is that while Europeans were settling and spreading from the Cape, the psychopathic Shaka Zulu was employing his impi to crush everyone—including the Xhosa—in his path, and the Xhosa were themselves busy slaughtering Bushmen and Hottentots. Yet it is the whites who take the rap, for it was they who won the skirmishes along the Fish and Blood Rivers and who eventually gained the prize.

What suffers is the truth, and—of course—Africa. We are so cowed by the moist-eyed mantras of the left and the oath-laden platitudes of Bono and Geldof, we are forced to accept collective responsibility for the bloody mess that is now Africa. It paralyses us while excusing the black continent and its rulers.

Whenever I hear people agitate for the freezing of Third World debt, I want to shout aloud for the freezing of those myriad overseas bank accounts held by black African leaders (President Mobutu of Zaire alone is believed to have squirreled away well over $10 billion). Whenever apartheid is held up as a blueprint for evil, I want to mention Bokassa snacking on human remains, Amin clogging a hydro-electric dam with floating corpses, the President of Equatorial Guinea crucifying victims along the roadway from his airport. Whenever slavery is dredged up, I want to remind everyone the Arabs were there before us, the native Ashanti and others were no slouches at the game, and it remains extant in places like the Ivory Coast. Whenever I hear the Aids pandemic somehow blamed on western indifference, I want to point to the African native practice of dry sex, the hobby-like prevalence of rape and the clumps of despotic black leaders who deny a link between the disease and HIV and who block the provision of antiretrovirals. And whenever Africans bleat of imperialism and colonialism, I want to campaign for the demolition of every road, college, and hospital we ever built to let them start again. It is time they governed themselves. Yet few play the victim card quite so expertly as black Africans; few are quite so gullible as the white liberal-left.

“On the eve of this millennium, Nelson Mandela and friends lit candles mapping the shape of their continent and declared the Twenty-first Century would belong to Africa. A pity that for every one Mandela there are over a hundred Robert Mugabes.”

So Britain had an empire and Britain did slavery. Boo hoo. Deal with it. Move on. Slavery ended here over two hundred years ago. More recently, there were tens of millions of innocents enslaved or killed in Europe by the twin industrialised evils of Nazism and Stalinism. My own first cousins—twin brothers aged sixteen—died down a Soviet salt mine. I need no lecture on eggplants and neck-irons. Most of us are descendants of both oppressors and oppressed; most of us get over it. Mind you, I am tempted by thoughts of compensation from Scandinavia for the wickedness of its Viking raids and its slaving-hub on the Liffe. As for the 1066 invasion of England by William the Bastard…

The white man’s burden is guilt over Africa (the black man’s is sentimentality), and we are blind for it. We have tipped hundreds of billions of aid-dollars into Africa without first ensuring proper governance. We encourage NGOs and food-parcels and have built a culture of dependency. We shy away from making criticism, tiptoe around the crassness of the African Union and flinch at every anti-western jibe. The result is a free-for-all for every syphilitic black despot and his coterie of family functionaries.

Africa casts a long and toxic shadow across our consciousness. It is patronised and allowed to underperform, so too its distant black diaspora. A black London pupil is excluded from his school, not because he is lazy, stupid or disruptive, but because that school is apparently racist; a black youth is pulled over by the police, not because black males commit over eighty percent of street crime, but because the authorities are somehow corrupted by prejudice. Thus the tale continues. Excuse is everywhere and a sense of responsibility nowhere. You will rarely find either a black national leader in Africa or a black community leader in the west prepared to put up his hands and say It is our problem, our fault. Those who look to Africa for their roots, role-models and inspiration are worshipping false gods. And like all false gods, the feet are of clay, the snouts long and designed for the trough, and the torture-cells generally well-equipped.

I once met the son of a Liberian government minister and asked if he had seen video-footage of his former president Samuel Doe being tortured to death. ‘Of course’, he replied with a smile. ‘Everyone has’. They cut off the ears of Doe and force-fed them to him. His successor, the warlord Charles Taylor, was elected in a landslide result using the campaign slogan He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him. Nice people. Liberia was founded and colonised by black Americans to demonstrate what slave stock could achieve. They certainly showed us. Forgive my heretical belief that had a black instead of a white tribe earlier come to dominate South Africa, its opponents would not have been banished to Robben island. They would have been butchered and buried there.

When asked about the problem of Africa, Harold Macmillan suggested building a high wall around the continent and every century or so removing a brick to check on progress. I suspect that over entire millennia, the view would prove bleak and unvarying.

On the eve of this millennium, Nelson Mandela and friends lit candles mapping the shape of their continent and declared the Twenty-first Century would belong to Africa. Whatever. Meantime, the vast natural resources have been frittered and agricultural production since independence has halved. A pity that for every one Mandela there are over a hundred Robert Mugabes.

Visiting a state in west Africa a few years ago, I wandered onto a beach and marvelled at the golden sands and at the sunlight catching on the Atlantic surf. It allowed me to forget for a moment the local news that day of soldiers seizing a schoolboy and pitching him head-first into an operating cement-machine. Almost forget. Then I spotted a group of villagers beating a stray dog to death for their sport. A metaphor of sorts for all that is wrong, another link in a word-association chain that goes something like Famine… Drought… Overpopulation… Deforestation… Conflict… Barbarism… Cruelty… Machetes… Child Soldiers… Massacres… Diamonds… Warlords…Tyranny… Corruption… Despair… Disease… Aids… Africa.

Africa remains the heart of darkness. Africa is hell.

Rising cases of corruption

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:07:00 +0000

This from the Sowetan:

INVESTIGATIONS into corruption and financial mismanagement involving provincial government departments are piling up.

Provincial departments throughout the country face a collective 1,640 investigations as a result of irregular activity, particularly in supply-chain management - a division through which contracts and tenders are awarded to national and provincial departments.

Auditor-General Terence Nombembe this week revealed a shocking number of probes into these departments, hinting that corruption might be spiralling out of control.

Leading the pack is KwaZulu-Natal, which is sitting with about 1,103 investigations for the year ending March 2011.

The province is under investigation for 710 incidents of fraud, 138 incidents involving supply-chain management and 255 other incidents of financial misconduct.

The auditor-general's report notes that "the extent of investigations commissioned suggests a control environment where fraud and financial misconduct are not prevented".

President Jacob Zuma's home province is listed in the report as one of the places with high rates of unauthorised expenditure.

The KwaZulu-Natal department of health reportedly underspent its budget by R1.4-billion, and that was because of "several lengthy tender appeals and delays on construction ..."

The two provinces that follow after KZN are Eastern Cape with 250 cases and Western Cape with 154. North West is the lowest with eight cases.

Another shocking aspect of the report is about the departments of Education, Health, Human Settlements, Public Works and Social Development - which account for 85% of provincial governments' annual spending. They were responsible for incurring R16.3-billion of the R20-billion in unauthorised, irregular as well as fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

The R20-billion squandered by the government in the year ending March 2011, was an increase from R16-billion the year before.

The auditor-general's results have not gone down well with labour unions.

Nehawu spokesman Sizwe Pamla said: "For a country that is struggling to pay its workers decent wages and failing to provide basic necessities to its citizens, this is scandalous and not acceptable.

"South Africans deserve better than this and their patience has already run out."

Individual provincial results showed that KwaZulu-Natal had the most departments receiving financially unqualified audits with 23, followed by Gauteng with 14 and Eastern Cape 11.

However, there was some progress as 31 departments retained clean audits while another 15 managed to receive clean audits.

Cadres blamed for failing departments

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:53:00 +0000

It must be fairly clear that the corruption of the ANC is clearly visible through all levels of government, from local municipalities (of which hundreds are essentially bankrupt) through provincial to national government.

Since the Auditor General is not white and couldn’t thus possibly be one of the “racist, previously advantaged at the expense of others, longing for Apartheid, people who should rather leave the country” crowd, I wonder what is wrong with him? He doesn’t seem to blame the previous white government. He seems to highlight systemic issues with awarding government contracts.

And, like with the crime statistics and everything else reported by this regime, you have to remember that this is what has been audited. You cannot audit something which has not been documented. And the proof exists of the number of municipalities and provincial departments not being able to supply accounts worth auditing.

You would be forgiven for thinking the current regime is running out of excuses. But then again, they only need one. The previous white, racist government.

from Citipress:

Cadre deployment and nepotism are the main causes of under-performing government departments, the Christian Democratic Party said today.

“The Auditor General’s consolidated report on provinces clearly demonstrates that government must reconsider its continued blaming of apartheid for various woes,” party leader Theunis Botha said in a statement.

“The main problem lies with the present, not the distant past.”

According to the report, 69% of provincial departments employed non-competitive practices and 35% of tenders were awarded to government officials or family members, he said.

“Wasted expenditure increased from R189 million to R850m.”

Botha said that as long as the AG’s reports were not taken seriously and real efforts made to drastically improve the situation, the country would continue to underperform.

“Ridiculous election promises will remain pie in the sky and apartheid will once again be blamed. Some political maturity is seriously lacking,” he said.

Auditor General Terence Nombembe released his 2010/11 General Report on National Audit Outcomes in Pretoria on Monday.

He voiced concern about all but three of the 39 national government departments. The three were environmental affairs, public enterprises and science.

More than R20 billion spent by national and provincial departments has been found to have been unauthorised, irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure.

Nombembe highlighted supply chain management, a division through which contracts and tenders are awarded at both national and provincial departments, as a key problem area.

On Monday, the Federation of Unions of SA urged the government to stop “cadre deployment” and to curb corruption in local, provincial, and national government.

The Dubious Creators of the Apartheid Museum.

noreply@blogger.com (Ron.) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:10:00 +0000

Further confirmation that things are often not quite as they seem. I do not know if it has been mentioned here before but: the creators of the so called Apartheid Museum [ which is contested by a previous owner of the term Apartheid Museum who insists that he has the legal rights to the term ] are about the most unlikely candidates for having created it as they only did so in order to obtain the legal right to open a casino which is adjacent.

The following excerpt is from page 61 of a thesis entitled: Making Memory Space: Recollect io n and Reconciliation in Post Apartheid South African Architecture.

Truth is often stranger than fiction.

The Apartheid Museum is the brainchild of Abe and Solly Krok, entrepreneurial brothers who wished to take advantage of legal revisions that allowed for the establishment of casinos and gambling in a country previously constrained by conservative values that denied such activities. As if to highlight the dubious origins of the museum, the brothers made their fortune during Apartheid by selling toxic skin lightening cream to black women.190 The Kroks wished to develop a casino within an existing theme park and pseudo-mining town on the outskirts of Johannesburg - Gold Reef City, a successful and popular tourist attraction. In order to gain approval for the casino’s construction from the City of Johannesburg, the brothers had to produce a ‘social development’ project. After considering a variety of options, the idea of a museum was identified as a means to increase tourism, stimulate the economy and create employment.191 It is positioned in open field, on a seven-hectare site which consists of natural recreated veld and indigenous bush habitat containing a lake and paths, and on the edge of a car park, adjacent to the roller-coaster and other rides that make up Gold Reef City theme park and casino.

This revelation is further substantiated at: Apartheid: Now in Museum Form. It's almost like having a Voortrekker Monument created by Sir Alfred Milner or some other figure who capitalized on British Colonialism. [ Though oddly enough the Voortrekker Monument was designed by Gerard Moerdijk a son of Dutch immigrants who spoke English at home during his formative years. ] The ironic & downright cynical creators of this museum sort of compromises the entire project.

Reverend Waters: “Kill whites” on same page as Mandela feature

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:38:00 +0000

On the same page IOL has a little thumbnail link to a special feature on Nelson Mandela, is the report on yet another black man in the public eye calling for “a material number of whites” to be killed. In the same series of tweets from this man who calls himself a preacher, father and truth seeker, he proclaims that he is busy with Biblical studies.

Now I wonder if he is a bit confused on what the Bible teaches us about our fellow brothers and sisters or if it is pure irony that this report on IOL sports a link to Nelson Mandela, the terrorist who masterminded the killing of white and black civilians in South Africa.

Update: In true South African ministry of lies tradition, IOL has already removed this article – the cached version is here: IOL cached link

from IOL:

A reverend used Twitter at the weekend to call for white people in South Africa to be killed.

The man singled out Helen Zille as among those who should be killed.

The Reverend Kemo Immanuel Waters runs a business called the KemoTherapy Institute of Truth and is an active member of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. He is a DJ and describes himself on his Twitter profile as a preacher, author, poet, father and truth seeker.

From his previous tweets, Waters sounded like an intellectual, spiritual person, who occasionally discussed politics, but not with any controversy.

Then suddenly in the early hours of Saturday morning, this changed.

At 1.33am, the reverend wrote: “The only way to end racism is to kill a material number of whites. @helenzille your indifferent and patronizing stance is a double dare… ”

The tweet caused an uproar, with many responding angrily.

Zille said the tweet was hate speech and that she would be laying charges against Waters.

Tweeter @bronwynnielsen asked if he had lost his mind.

Waters replied: “No I have not lost my mind. But it is sad that this is what it takes to give racism the attention it deserves?”

In response to @Sibusisomtungwa, he tweeted: “You missed the gist of my msg… which is the only time a black man is afforded a dignified audience is when he pulls a gun.”

Waters also discussed the ANC centenary: “Happy 100th year anniversary to @MyANC_. You (sic) job is not done… but, a job well done in the past 100 years… You will rule till the rapture”.

Since his rant on Saturday, Waters has received many death threats. He said he had received five phone calls on Sunday morning from people wanting to kill him.

“All the people who gave me death threats have a racist undertone. Someone, a boer, said to me that everyone close to me will die,” Waters said.

“I will never back down. I will never take it back and I will never apologise,” he added.

Waters said he had been upset after his family had been made to sit at the bar in a busy restaurant in Camps Bay, Cape Town, for half an hour.

“In Joburg, you can go anywhere and you feel welcome.”

Waters said he would never kill anyone but knew black people who would. - The Star

Malema continues hate-speech whilst praising Mandela

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:14:00 +0000

from Farmitracker

JANUARY 6 2011 -- THABA'NCHU, FREESTATE, South Africa.

Journalists Willem van der Berg and Pieter Steyn of Volksblad newspaper reported that the “suspended” ANC youth league leader Julius Malema, now elected as a senior member of the influential Limpopo ANC's executive committee, and thus more powerful than ever before, has launched into one of his by now world-infamous rampages against “white owned” mining houses and repeated his demands that all “white-owned” land must be confiscated.

He repeatedly sang the banned song “KILL THE BOER”, to the delight of his 1,000 followers present at the meeting in Thaba'Nchu. Just a day earlier about 700 people held a violent demonstration in which they protested vehemently against the ruling ANC. This caused SA president Jacob Zuma to cancel his planned visit.

Yet only a day later a 1,000-member crowd cheered Julius Malema, who has since his suspension as president of the ANC youth league after a disciplinary hearing, been elected as a senior member of the Limpopo ANC executive committee.

The journalists present at the meeting said Malema continued making the same anti-white hate speech statements and again incited his followers to sing the banned song “KILL THE BOER”.

Malema reportedly also said at this meeting that he doesn't want to “chase all the whites into the sea”: on the contrary, he wants whites to work for him as domestics, he wants to humiliate them instead: “Within ten years I want whites to work as domestic labourers”, he said in a rousing speech, often breaking into his infamous “KILL THE BOER” song.

And then he added: “domestic workers are raped in the boss' and madam's bedroom but they cannot say anything because they will lose their work.”

He also spoke of his suspension as ANC youth league leader, and said “individuals make mistakes and leaders shouldn't then threaten with disciplinary actions. You can never suppress a revolutionary”, he yelled.

He ranted against banks, mining houses and white-owned land and said: “the media mustn't tell me I own land. I own a little bit of land”. He praised ex-ANC president Nelson Mandela for “his visionary leadership which convinced the ANC to drop its peaceful resistance and start the armed struggle”.

“Mandela told us it didn't help to write letters to the Queen of England. He said we must take up the weapon - and he said this when he was a member of the ANC youth league. And we will have to do the same thing if we want our economic freedom today”, MALEMA said.

After his speech, the minister of sport Fikile Mbalula, also attacked the ANC in a fiery speech and said that the ANC youth league was “AN AUTONOMOUS AND MILITANT organisation. The mother-body should not try to change that, they will never be able to do that.”

Mbalula was lavish in his praise of Malema. “There have been many great youth-league leaders before Malema and they all became great leaders. They all went through the process to reach the top. So why can't Julius?”

Mbalula also said it wasn't relevant that the ANC's lavish year-long party would cost R100 million. “What's money, it's f—k all,” he cursed. Throughout this meeting, the crowd was constantly encouraged and inspired to sing “KILL THE BOER”.

Meanwhile just 20km away from this venue, SA president Jacob Zuma paid a flash-visit to the Botshabelo former mission-station township. He promised residents “piped water” soon.

The Tokoloshe

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:47:00 +0000

from Wikipedia: In Zulu mythology, Tikoloshe, Tokoloshe or Hili (from the Xhosa word utyreeci ukujamaal) is a dwarf-like water sprite. It is considered a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by swallowing a pebble. Tokoloshes are called upon by malevolent people to cause trouble for others. At its least harmful a tokoloshe can be used to scare children, but its power extends to causing illness and even death upon the victim. The way to get rid of him is to call in the n’anga (witch doctor), who has the power to banish him from the area.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have referred to certain individuals exhibiting mud hut mentality before, meaning people who don’t understand the world outside the boundaries of their little “huts”. This is nothing to do with race or people living in a specific abode. Malema is a very good example of an individual exhibiting mud hut mentality and we also refer to them as mud hut dwellers.

Now read the following piece written by Vusi Mabaso. Here you see the opposite side of the spectrum. A person capable of thinking beyond the limitations others want to impose on him. It is a real pity that the views expressed here aren’t common amongst South Africans, regardless of race or background.

I always think of Americans as the benchmark for patriotism. The majority of them always refer to themselves as Americans with pride, without fear of losing anything of their heritage. Whether you are talking about Irish Americans, Italian Americans or African Americans. They are proud of their heritage. But they always are American patriots. I don’t think this is something which was ever really achieved in South Africa, however many times you heard “Rainbow Nation” or the “New South Africa”.

I don’t agree with all the sentiments or statements made, but it is still a worthwhile read. I say that I don’t agree with all the statements for a reason – for one, the white race certainly didn’t start slavery nor was it ever the only race to commit this savage deed, but it sure as hell was the first race to put an end to it.

400 years ago Africa might as well been another planet in our solar system.

We were living in peace in our thatch huts. The 10 piece of cattle were grazing under the African sky. The head of the family sat in the shade of a tree drinking beer, the wives were working the land and the kids were making clay oxen to play with.

Every man’s dream, even to this day, no matter where on this planet you might come from. It sounds like the African version of the Playboy mansion. You sit in the shade and your multiple wives work for you.

Then the Europeans arrived and laughed at our people who had no education and thought our way of life was savagery. We had to fight them with spears to survive and ultimately lost the battle. They took our land and made us their slaves. They sold us to America and we became a trading commodity.

That is, what it is. We can’t change the past. So now 400 years later, what now?

We had to learn through bloodshed that we were not a planet of another solar system. We are part of this world and in this world there are certain rules that can’t be broken if you want to have food. Whether we like these rules or not, they are a reality. We can fight them like Mugabe does but it would only result in hunger.

Too many Africans are yearning for life as we knew it back then…but they just love the white man’s BMW and Lear Jet. The donkey cart is way too primitive for their liking and the cow hides that once covered our loins are not as “cool” as a Hugo Boss suit. We are a race that conveniently wants to fall back on our traditions when it suits us.

Not everybody has the ability to be as black and white as I am, and I mean that in more than one sense. I accept and acknowledge that. But I had to ask myself where do I fit in? Do I want to go back to my ancestral land in Dundee and demand this land be given back to me so I can acquire a few wives and create my own Playboy Mansion or do I like it here in Sandton with a Blackberry?

You would be horrified if you read all the messages I get on Facebook of people swearing at me, calling me a traitor, a disgrace to all black people in South Africa and that whites are paying me to blog my views.

What they don’t know is that I have been very blessed to come from a long line of fighters that have fought from the days of the spear right up to the AK47. They fought for my freedom and as sure as this sun is going to come up tomorrow, I am not going to mess up all they have fought for.

I have to address this cultural jail that stands between my people and true freedom.

Let us look at the Tokoloshe first.

You slept with your bed raised up on a few bricks so that when the Tokoloshe comes at night, he could move freely around your room without knocking his head against any object. For those that know this superstition will know it is a small mystical hairy thing that looks like a psychotic angry little bear and catches you at night. But if he knocks his head against your bed, you are going to get this menace all over you and he has a temper like no other on earth. Stop laughing, I’m dead serious!

I haven’t seen him yet. I badly wanted to see him when I was small because while others feared him, I thought he sounded cool and wanted to befriend him. My grandmother would look at me in absolute horror when I wanted to see the Tokoloshe. She would tell my mother “Eish this child scares me”.

When my Grandfather returned from exile, he brought me a Teddy Bear from London. I looked at the Teddy and instantly knew this was the Tokoloshe I always wanted to meet. So my bear got named Tokoloshe. I got smacked a few times because I would jump on my Grandmother when she takes her afternoon nap and scare her with Tokoloshe.

But the modern new reborn Tokoloshes sit in Parliament.

Parliament…hmmmm… let us discuss running this country, being an example to the citizens and our traditions.

In a new African landscape how practical is it having multiple wives? Nice idea, being a man. Come on you guys reading this, admit it!

But 20 children? Not so good because if I see what my university education and all the sundry trimmings are costing my father I would hate to think he had to make 20 of us. He would need to join the bank robbers to keep us at university.

My mother didn’t come cheap either, so he would have had to start stealing cattle from the white farmers if he wanted more wives. She cost him 40 head of cattle back in the 80’s. But wow, was she worth every cow! You should see her today in her Chanel dress …but 5 of them?

That is the humorous side of our tradition, but the more serious side is the following reality. There are only two of us and not twenty. So from my first breath my father has been there every step of my way thus far. We are his life and the reason he works this hard. He has spent every moment available guiding me into manhood (without sending me to a bush so some traditional butcher can slaughter my stuff beyond repair) How, as a father will you possibly find the time to devout this kind of attention to 20 kids? I don’t even want to think what life would have been like without my father. Unthinkable.

But what would I have been, if my father happily cavorted around claiming it is his culture and tradition?

I probably would have been marching with Malema on the road to nowhere and my father would have been dead by now. I would be visiting a graveyard and trying to find life’s answers from a stone. Back in the 80’s when he married my mother us blacks haven’t heard of HIV/Aids and those enlightened ones that did know about it, thought it was a homosexual disease.

So unbeknown to us we were killing ourselves. Merrily living out the principles of our tradition, not knowing we are committing suicide and resulting in 2 Million orphans just in South Africa alone, let alone the rest of Africa.

Wouldn’t this be a far more worthy cause to march about than march to get stuff you deliriously think should be given to you for free?

Imagine what must be going through the mind of a 4 year old kid, who is left all alone tonight, with nobody to take care of him or her? None of these orphaned kids asked to be here, so imagine how a child has to try and make sense of all of this?

So why do I still have my parents? Because my father knew he can’t run around making babies that he can’t provide for. He had to think soberly about life with a new millennium looming. He had us because he wanted us. We were to become his legacy. We weren’t conceived in a moment of uncontrolled lust or in the name of an outdated tradition.

We won’t discuss the merits of the social grant for mothers with kids and absent fathers but alarmingly condoms are still very unpopular accessories amongst the population of Africa. Until recently we had that scary old Bat as a minister of health. Tokolosh personified. Beetroot juice and cabbage leaves will cure the disease, while the Chief would shower after a bit of inyama.

What did my father do 7 years ago when I reached puberty? He sat me down and told me the facts and how it all happens. Every time I leave the house he jokingly says he will draw blood when I return and have me tested. He jokes, but it has sunk in so deep now, I think about the consequences every time I see a gorgeous girl.

What do my people do? Until recently it was better swept under the table than discuss the matter. It became unlawful to state a person has died of AIDS on his death certificate. How big is this denial?

Please don’t make a comment after you have read this and tell me this disease was invented by the Apartheid rulers to wipe us out. I’m not even going to discuss that old stale story! And speaking about Apartheid, get over it. It has no relevance in 2011. Dead, gone, born 31-05-1961 and was executed on 27-04-1994. Our ultimate justification for everything that we do wrong can’t come back so we can stone it.

The most bizarre superstition was invented to “cure” the disease. Rape a girl and it goes away. By girl, I mean little ones that had to helpless have their lives taken from them without their consent. Grown men believing in rubbish like this. How in the name of God can you possibly justify this, no matter what your traditions or beliefs are?

We have now for far too long shrugged our shoulders and hid behind our traditions on the one hand and on the other we want to sit at the UN and pretend we have the wisdom to help decide the fate of other countries. In this world we need to merge with, you have:

1. One wife. You sleep around, you die.

2. You have more kids than you can provide for, they starve and when they grow up they will steal to survive because you didn’t have enough money to send them to a decent school. The government schools are a complete waste of time because the teachers are never in class.

3. You can’t sell or trade with your daughters. They are not consumer goods.

4. You study or qualify as an artisan so you can earn your own keep and build your own house. There isn’t enough money going around building 40 Million free houses. You can wait until the sun burns itself out, it is not going to happen. So live with it.

5. Forget the white man’s wealth. It has long gone been transferred to Sydney. There isn’t any left here. Create your own. Forget about redistribution. Use your logic. The wealth of 5 Million whites was never going to send 45 Million blacks into a blissful retirement. The white wealth Malema cries about daily, was only in the hands of a few whites.

So until we move ourselves forward and merge ourselves with the world, we will remain primitive. 17 Years after independence you don’t dance from Beyers Naude to the stock exchange and have foreign journalists film your insanity in the name of freedom. We were freed 17 years ago, embrace it and use your freedom to trade with the world, not crash your own stock market.

We can march up to the Union Buildings until the cows come home. We are not going to move ourselves forward until we free ourselves from ourselves!

R250m pay-outs to former councillors

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:08:00 +0000

You couldn’t make this up if you tried. All over the country, municipalities are bankrupt due to corruption and outright theft, the infrastructure is falling apart and citizens have expressed their outrage with dozens of protests. But that’s what you get when bafoons run the show…

Alicestine October, Die Burger

Cape Town - Taxpayers will be coughing up about R250m for former councillors who were not re-elected in last year’s local government elections.

This despite research by Municipal IQ, an independent online information service on local government, showing that between 2006 and 2010 there were 277 protest marches against bad service delivery.

Mbulelo Musi, spokesperson for the co-operative governance and traditional affairs department, said the money will be used to compensate former councillors who had served their full five-year terms for their “hard work under extremely difficult circumstances”.

“The payments are in recognition of the great contribution to service delivery made by former councillors to improve people’s lives.”

He said about 5 000 councillors from all political parties from all over the country will qualify.

Joint decision

Musi said the department, the Seriti commission for the remuneration of public office-bearers, the SA Local Government Association (Salga) and the national treasury had taken a joint decision on this.

The treasury has budgeted R256m for this purpose.

Musi would not say whether the payment, which equates to three months’ pensionable salary, will be performance-related.

“The commission did not say anything about performance, but we foresee no problems in this regard.”

Municipal trade union Samwu spokesperson Tahir Sema said they oppose the payments.

“It is a waste of money that could be spent on service delivery. It would be better at least to link it to councillors’ performance. If they had performed well, there would not have been any protests about service delivery, would there? How does one compensate such people?”

Derek Luyt, an analyst with the Public Service Accountability Monitor, also said the money could be better spent elsewhere.

“I can find no justification for something that was not budgeted for and with which aggrieved councillors are now being pacified.”

Luyt said this set a dangerous precedent. “They should get nothing. This represents everything that is wrong with our political system, where office-holders see their work as just one more way of making money.”

- Die Burger

Police Rapes: Who guards the guards?

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:32:00 +0000

What more do you need to say about the SAPS than a report is required into the number of officers accused and convicted of rape? Considering there are officers with homicide cases against them still employed, I wish the civil servant in Community Safety the best of luck in getting anywhere with his requests.

Source: AllAfrica

press release

Reports that two police officers in Nelspoort are amongst those accused of rape, statutory rape and sexual exploitation of four minors is most concerning and warrants serious attention. This matter will top the agenda of my meeting with the Provincial Police Commissioner on Monday.

The police are entrusted with protecting the inhabitants of South Africa and with upholding and enforcing the law. Whilst the majority of police officers are law abiding and are at the forefront of the fight against crime, we simply cannot tolerate a scenario in which certain South African Police Service (SAPS) officers are perpetrators of grievous crimes themselves.

In terms of my oversight role over the police, this matter will top the agenda at my next meeting with the Provincial Police Commissioner, General Lamoer, on Monday. I will be requesting that the investigation into this matter is properly conducted, considering that police will be investigating the police, and that the full might of the law falls on these individuals should they be found guilty.

I will also request from the SAPS a full report into:

the number of SAPS officers accused of rape in the Western Cape in the last year
the number of officers that have been convicted of rape in the last year
the number of these officers that are now behind bars
what measures have been taken to ensure that police stations are not sources of crime themselves, and
what measures are being taken to ensure that vulnerable minors and victims of crime are protected when they seek help from the police.

The police service is entrusted with powers to protect South Africans. We cannot allow these powers to be abused for crimes and destructive behaviour. Strong action is needed and the SAPS must be accountable to the citizens of the Western Cape.

Issued by: Western Cape Community Safety

The truth is always out there

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:31:00 +0000

We hope you had a wonderful time with your loved ones this Christmas. There are hundreds of thousands of South African emigrants who were most likely far from family and friends. I can tell you from my own experience that this is something you never get used to. Not being able to see family and friends at a snap decision.

You can ask any citizen from any country who has gone down this route just how difficult it is. Whether you do it for career prospects or lifestyle. It is ten times worse when you do it because the country you have helped developed is being systematically raped and plundered, by its own government and civil servants. Let alone the criminal elements who engage with these corrupt officials in order to enrich themselves. It is worse, because you inevitably have to leave behind family and friends in an environment which you know is deteriorating on a daily basis.

Now you can listen to arguments all day about how things have improved since the ANC’s version of Marxist democracy was implemented in 1994. What you have to keep in mind is that South Africa has historically been the strongest economy in Africa. The only proof you need of that fact is that hundreds of kilometres of electrified fences had to be erected on South Africa’s northern borders during the “evil Apartheid regime’s” tenure, not to keep citizens from leaving like in the good old Soviet occupied East-Germany, but to keep keen Africans out of the country. Africans with enough grey matter to realise being second class citizens in South Africa was far better than first class citizens in their respective black government African countries. I dare you to mention this fact alone to the bunch of libtards and wait for their response. Just don’t hold your breath whilst waiting.

The libtards will tell you how the ANC built houses and gave utilities to thousands living in squatter camps. They just forget to mention that the people living in squatter camps was a result of scrapping influx control. That the government has no idea how many illegal immigrants are in the country today. One of the reasons for numerous xenophobic attacks on other black immigrants is the fact that they obtained jobs rather than the locals, because they were prepared to work harder (or work at all) in light of their experiences in their own black government run African countries. The libtards won’t mention that the thousands of houses and schools built by the previous government were of better quality than what the ANC provides today. We posted some of the statistics of the previous government a few weeks ago – research done by Mike Smith. Read it again and ask yourself what makes sense, what sounds like truth and what is propaganda. You should know by now that propaganda is the only tool of the libtard. The only truth you will hear from these people, is their own admission of smoking pot and using drugs, something they are usually proud of.

I recently came across a video clip of Carte Blanche, one of the few sources of some trustworthy journalism from South Africa. Please watch it and take note of certain parts. The fact that people are often murdered for no reason at all, like we and others have stressed so vehemently before. That it is nothing to do with crime, but rather hate crimes against whites and also other races. Just like farm murders have nothing to do with theft or poverty, these crimes are committed by elements which know they’ll get away with whatever they do. That in the worst case scenario where they get caught (and you can research the minute minority of cases actually solved), there will be an official prepared to take a bribe to make a case docket disappear.

Also note how a previously disadvantaged individual compares the inferior environment his teenage children has to grow up in to what he was used to. Note how some whites proclaim that they are prepared to work together if there was a government interested in building a country.

Or believe the propaganda of your local feathered LSD crack-head who tells you that all people emigrating from South Africa are racist supremacists. Racist supremacists with the kind of advanced education and skills necessary to make a success in countries where even being politically incorrect isn’t tolerated, let alone racism. Imagine that.

Dr. Peter Hammond (1 of 2) My meeting with Nelson Mandela

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:50:00 +0000

Dr. Peter Hammond (2 of 2) My meeting with Nelson Mandela

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:49:00 +0000

ANC supports Zanu-PF

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:56:00 +0000

Just like Thabo Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy towards Mad Bob Mugarbage’s dictatorship, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has now pledged support to him and his Zanu-PF party for next year’s elections in Zimbabwe.

Nothing says more of the nature of the ANC than this. Like we said before, they couldn’t give a rat’s bum about the poor and “previously oppressed”. They’re in their so-called democracy for self-enrichment and that’s that.

For those who still cannot see, we suggest you join the demented chicken, his vile lapdog and their crack-head friend’s little circle. They openly invite people to join them in their LSD-induced fantasy trips and in that company you don’t have to worry about losing a few million brain cells. You’ll still be the genius of the crowd.

HT: Censorbugbear

from Citipress:

Mandy Rossouw

Bulawayo – ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe yesterday pledged the ANC’s support to Zanu-PF for the national elections in Zimbabwe, expected to take place next year.

At the opening of the Zanu-PF’s yearly national conference, Mantashe said the two parties have a common history that cannot be wished away.

“We belong together, we don’t have the luxury of thinking that we don’t,” Mantashe told the conference, which drew thousands of Zanu-PF delegates from across the country.

Zanu-PF and the ANC form part of the frontline states, which pride themselves as being ruled by former liberation movements.
“Our relationship is steeped in blood, the ANC wishes to affirm her commitment as a trust-worthy neighbour,” Mantashe said.

He pledged support for Zanu-PF for the elections, saying it is payback for the support Zanu-PF gave the ANC “when we needed it most”.

“The ANC will wait for Zanu-PF to come to us for advice about elections. Our teams stand ready to share experiences. You must do it now so that there is still time to change things before the elections,” Mantashe said, referring to the ANC’s recent election campaign for the municipal polls in May this year.

“It is important for us that Zanu-PF regains the lost ground and again represent the interests and aspirations of all Zimbabweans. We must fight the imperialist project because if it succeeds here, we are all in trouble.”

Mantashe also urged Zanu-PF to continue talking to “those who don’t agree with us”, referring to the MDC.South Africa is the mediator in the years-long conflict between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

When asked by City Press whether the ANC’s support for Zanu-PF does not complicate that process, Mantashe insisted the two processes are separate.

“That is government. We are liberation movements. The government was appointed by SADC to mediate, and we are liberation movements that have a history,” he said.

President Robert Mugabe called the Global Political Agreement (GPA), signed by Zanu-PF and the MDC, “illegal” and said elections must take place urgently to “restore democracy”.

Mugabe gave a two-and-a-half-hour-long keynote address which took the conference into the night.

He derided “imperialist forces” that want to rule Zimbabwe and took issue with the way Libya was dealt with by the United Nations (UN) and Nato.

Although he claims to be sad at the demise of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, he showed that Gaddafi was not the leader he purported to be.

“When we asked him [Gaddafi] to invest in Africa, he gave camels to some countries. Here in Zimbabwe we received four camels,” Mugabe said with a hint of sarcasm.

South African Police Farce part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:34:00 +0000

I’ve said it before. I admire the honest, hard working and noble individuals still doing their best, endangering their lives on a daily basis, to provide effective policing in South Africa.

Reality of course is that they are fighting a losing battle. How can it be any different though when the leaders are setting such good examples? One after another is suspended, in most cases with full pay, while the court cases drag on for a year or more. At the taxpayer’s expense. It is no surprise then that the infrastructure in South Africa is falling apart, because funds are wasted on crap like this.

I am not even going to attempt to state in my own words what Mike Smith has so eloquently written in the last few days. I will just note the links here and you can read how two women were raped by uniformed police officers and the criminals at work INSIDE the South African Police Service.

When the sheep dogs bite the sheep
South Africa’s criminal police force – this article has numerous links to various sources stating the awful truth
The shocking truth about South Africa’s useless and incompetent Police

I will leave you with a few photos taken of South Africa’s police force in action.

Judging by the background, this photo was taken at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg

Carbon Tax

noreply@blogger.com (Angulus Calx) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:46:00 +0000

With the COP17 currently trying to put pressure on the major polluters of the world, and the hysteria around global warming, I have to share the below with you.

It is as if all common sense is thrown out the door, and in SA, where common sense is not always displayed in abundance by the current government, it becomes even more needed to think more about some of the claims made by these wonderful people that has the well being of earth on their agenda.

And strangely enough, here where I stay, wind, solar, and nuclear power is very evident everywhere. The article made me think.

The article is by an Australian for Australia, but it applies to all and everybody. Enjoy reading it.

Carbon Tax

First I should clarify, my name is Terence Cardwell. I spent 25 years in the Electricity Commission of NSW working, commissioning and operating the various power units. My last was the 4 X 350 MW Munmorah Power Stations near Newcastle. I would be pleased to supply you any information you may require.

I have sat by for a number of years frustrated at the rubbish being put forth about carbon dioxide emissions, thermal coal fired power stations and renewable energy and the ridiculous Emissions Trading scheme.

Frustration at the lies told (particularly during the election) about global pollution. Using Power Station cooling towers for an example. The condensation coming from those cooling towers is as pure as that that comes out of any kettle.

Frustration about the so-called incorrectly named man-made 'carbon emissions' which of course is Carbon Dioxide emissions and what it is supposedly doing to our planet

Frustration about the lies told about renewable energy and the deliberate distortion of renewable energy and its ability to replace fossil fuel energy generation. And frustration at the ridiculous carbon credit programme which is beyond comprehension.

And further frustration at some members of the public who have not got a clue about thermal Power Stations or Renewable Energy. Quoting ridiculous figures about something they clearly have little or no knowledge of. First coal fired power stations do NOT send 60 to 70% of the energy up the chimney. The boilers of modern power station are 96% efficient and the exhaust heat is captured by the economisers and reheaters that heat the air and water before entering the boilers.

The very slight amount exiting the stack is moist as in condensation and CO2. There is virtually no fly ash because this is removed by the precipitators or bagging plant that are 99.98% efficient. The 4% lost is heat through boiler wall convection.

Coal-fired Power Stations are highly efficient with very little heat loss and can generate a massive amount of energy for our needs. They can generate power at efficiency of less than 10,000 b.t.u. per kilowatt and cost-wise that is very low.

The percentage cost of mining and freight is very low. The total cost of fuel is 8% of total generation cost and does NOT constitute a major production cost.

As for being laughed out of the country, China is building multitudes of coal-fired power stations because they are the most efficient for bulk power generation.

We have, like, the USA, coal-fired power stations because we HAVE the raw materials and are VERY fortunate to have them. Believe me no one is laughing at Australia – exactly the reverse, they are very envious of our raw materials and independence.

The major percentage of power in Europe and U.K. is nuclear because they don't have the coal supply for the future.

Yes it would be very nice to have clean, quiet, cheap energy in bulk supply. Everyone agrees that it would be ideal. You don't have to be a genius to work that out. But there is only one problem---It doesn't exist

Yes - there are wind and solar generators being built all over the world but they only add a small amount to the overall power demand.

The maximum size wind generator is 3 Megawatts, which can rarely be attained on a continuous basis because it requires substantial forces of wind. And for the same reason only generate when there is sufficient wind to drive them. This of course depends where they are located but usually they only run for 45% -65% of the time, mostly well below maximum capacity. They cannot be relied on for a 'base load ‘because they are too variable. And they certainly could not be used for load control.

The peak load demand for electricity in Australia is approximately 50,000 Megawatts and only small part of this comes from the Snowy Hydro Electric System (the ultimate power

Generation) because it is only available when water is there from snow melt or rain. And yes, they can pump it back but it costs to do that. (Long Story).

Tasmania is very fortunate in that they have mostly hydro-electric generation because of their high amounts of snow and rainfall. They also have wind generators (located in the roaring forties) but that is only a small amount of total power generated.

Based on an average generating output of 1.5 megawatts (of unreliable power) you would require over 33,300 wind generators.

As for solar power generation much research has been done over the decades and there are two types.

Solar thermal generation and Solar Electric generation but in each case they cannot generate large amounts of electricity.

Any clean, cheap energy is obviously welcomed but they would NEVER have the capability of replacing Thermal Power Generation. So get your heads out of the clouds, do some basic mathematics and look at the facts, - not going off with the fairies (or some would say the extreme greenies.)

We are all greenies in one form or another and care very much about our planet. The difference is most of us are realistic. Not in some idyllic utopia where everything can be made perfect by standing around holding a banner and being a general pain in the backside.

Here are some facts that will show how ridiculous this financial madness is that the government is following. Do the simple maths and see for yourselves.

According to the 'believers' the CO2 in air has risen from .034% to .038% in air over the last 50 years.

To put the percentage of Carbon Dioxide in air in a clearer perspective;

If you had a room 3.7 x 3.7 x 2.1 metres the area carbon dioxide would occupy in that room would be .25 x .25 x .17m or the size of a large packet of cereal.

Australia emits 1% of the world's total carbon Dioxide and the government wants to reduce this by 20%t or reduce emissions by 0.2 % of the world's total CO2 emissions.

What effect will this have on existing CO2 levels?

By their own figures they state the CO2 in air has risen from .034% to .038% in 50 years.

Assuming this is correct, the world CO2 has increased in 50 years by...004%.

Per year that is .004 divided by 50 = ...00008%. (Getting confusing -but stay with me).

Of that because we only contribute 1% our emissions would cause CO2 to rise .00008 divided by 100 =...0000008%.

Of that 1%, we supposedly emit, the governments wants to reduce it by 20% which is 1/5th of .0000008 =...00000016% effect per year they would have on the world CO2 emissions based on their own figures.

That would equate to an area in the same room, as the size of a small pin.

For that they have gone crazy with the ridiculous trading schemes, Solar and Roofing Installations, Clean Coal Technology Renewable Energy, etc, etc.

How ridiculous it that?

The cost to the general public and industry will be enormous.

Cripple and even closing some smaller businesses.

The Evil Apartheid Regime

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:26:00 +0000

The following was sent to me in an email, without citing the original source. Even though some of the statistics seemed familiar, I could not quite remember where I had seen it.

Turns out the source is Mike Smith’s “Opening Pandora’s Apartheid Box” -series of articles. It doesn’t surprise me. He is the type of guy who will do painstaking research into any topic he writes about. His series on Apartheid South Africa is well worth the read.

But then I am a bit biased. Because Mike Smith and Uhuru Guru occupy top positions on my most-admired bloggers list.

You have probably heard all the propaganda about the “oppressive” white government in charge in South Africa before the Marxist ANC regime took power. The millions of blacks killed by the white government. When in actual fact more died at the hands of other blacks than the government. There is no proof of that phenomena in the “new, improved” South Africa, with the astonishing crime rate, is there?

Look, any right-minded individual will tell you that there were some silly laws that required filing in the dustbin. Some sooner than later. But if you know anything about the history of South Africa, you will know that many of these silly laws were ditched long before the criminal ANC could implement their self-enriching, embezzling regulations from 1994.

So how about these interesting statistics about “Apartheid South Africa” then?

From Mike Smith’s “Pandora’s Apartheid Box”:

The Apartheid government built ten Universities for blacks including Medunsa, which is a unique medical university that turned out 200 highly qualified black doctors every year. All at state costs, paid for by the white taxpayers. It also trained paramedics and nurses.

Since 1970 the budget for black education was raised by about 30% per year, every year. More than any other government department.

In the period 1955 -1984 the amount of black school students increased 31-fold from 35,000 to 1,096,000. 65% of black South African children were at school compared to Egypt 64%, Nigeria 57%, Ghana 52%, Tanzania 50% and Ethiopia 29%.

Amongst the adults of South Africa, 71% could read and write (80% between the ages 12 and 22). Compare this to Kenya 47%, Egypt 38%, Nigeria 34% and Mozambique at 26%.

In South Africa, the whites built 15 new classrooms for blacks every working day, every year. At 40 children per class it meant space for an additional 600 black students every day.

In 1985 there were 42,000 black students at 5 universities in South Africa, about the same amount at the universities of the homelands. But many foreigners have never even heard of the homelands.

In an article called "Die Afrikaner", 11 Feb 1987, the quarterly magazine called "Vox Africana Nr 29 4/87 stated that South Africa had 4.8 million whites and 18.2 million blacks in 1987. The whites paid 77% of the taxes and the blacks only 15%. Despite this, 56% of the government budget was spent on blacks.

During the time of Dr Verwoerd, the living standards of blacks was rising at 5.4% per year against that of the whites at 3.9% per year. In 1965 the economic growth of South Africa was the second highest in the world at 7,9%. The rate of inflation was a mere 2% per annum and the prime interest rate only 3% per annum. Domestic savings were so great that South Africa needed no foreign loans for normal economic expansion.

Even Lord Deedes admitted: "White South Africa grew to become the economic giant of the continent, the other members of the Commonwealth virtually sank into poverty."

At the height of Apartheid in 1978, Soweto had 115 football fields, 3 rugby fields, 4 athletic tracks, 11 cricket fields, 2 golf courses, 47 tennis courts, 7 swimming pools built to Olympic standards, 5 bowling alleys, 81 netball fields, 39 children play parks and countless civic halls, movie houses and clubhouses. In addition to this, Soweto had 300 churches, 365 schools, 2 Technical Colleges, 8 clinics, 63 child day care centres, 11 post offices and its own fruit and vegetable market.

There were 2,300 registered companies that belonged to black businessmen and around 1,000 private taxi companies. 3% of the 50,000 vehicle owners in 1978 were Mercedes Benz owners.

Soweto alone had more cars, taxis, schools, churches and sport facilities than most independent countries in Africa. The blacks of South Africa had more private vehicles than the entire white population of the USSR at the time.

Malema guns for pro-Zuma premiers

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:44:00 +0000

He’s finished, right?

from News24:

2011-11-27 16:45

Carien du Plessis, Sizwe sama Yende and Cathy Dlodlo

Johannesburg - Suspended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is gunning for provincial premiers sympathetic to President Jacob Zuma in a bid for political survival.

Last week, youth league leaders stripped the league’s Mpumalanga secretary John Mkhatshwa of his powers after he snubbed Malema’s call to work towards unseating Premier David Mabuza.

In Free State, where Malema has been since Thursday, the league said it is going to march against Premier Ace Magashule this week.

Half of the Mpumalanga league’s provincial executive committee resigned in protest against Mkhatshwa’s suspension on Friday.

Outgoing deputy secretary Themba Masombuka said the province did participate in youth league programmes, but had to support Mabuza as this was part of their provincial congress resolutions last year.

But league spokesperson Magdalene Moonsamy denied that Mkhatshwa was kicked out because he supported Mabuza.

Rather, she said that it was because of his “inability to carry out the tasks of the youth league. Everything else is just a rumour”.

Pro-Zuma
A few weeks ago, the league’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee – which was sympathetic to Zuma – was dissolved.

At the meeting attended by Malema in Bloemfontein on Thursday, provincial league chairperson Kgotso Morapela told the crowd: “Away with Magashule.”

Morapela accused Magashule of corruption and said the long-standing provincial ANC chairperson, who is pro-Zuma, should be replaced at the province’s conference next year.

While Malema is firing on all cylinders to overturn the sentence, there are serious concerns that one of the grounds of his disciplinary appeal could land the league in more trouble.

Malema’s lawyers handed in papers to the ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeal on Thursday, asking them to reconsider his five-year suspension from the ANC.

One of the grounds of this appeal is an amendment to the youth league’s constitution, which many in the organisation claim was not done at its congress in June, making it illegal.

Some league leaders fear that such an amendment could give the ANC a reason to dissolve the league altogether, but Malema has denied that the amendment was illegally done.

Shore up support
One of Malema’s opponents said they have asked Luthuli House to intervene.

Malema warned that he would continue fighting for the issues he had been campaigning on, regardless of whether his suspension is held.

The league has the support of many ANC provincial secretaries, themselves former league leaders, but it is still trying to shore up support from provincial chairpersons.

This could help Malema if his appeal is ultimately reviewed by the ANC’s national executive committee, on which provincial secretaries and chairpersons serve.

Malema – flanked by party spokesperson Floyd Shivambu, who has been suspended from the ANC for three years – hinted on Thursday that he would not take his suspension lying down.

“I don’t care if whether I go or not, I will defend the decisions of the ANC Youth League until I see my grave,” he told the crowd in Bloemfontein.

“Whether I am a member of the ANC or not, in my little corner of the bundus, looking after cattle, I will convince those who are there looking after the cattle with me about the decisions of the ANC Youth League.”

- City Press

South Africa’s Malema admits he’s “finished”

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:38:00 +0000

I don’t believe this for a second.

from Reuters:

Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:37am GMT

JOHANNESBURG Nov 27 (Reuters) - South Africa's Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of the ANC's Youth League, has admitted his political career is over after his suspension from the ruling party for breaking its internal rules, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The paper said Malema, the main force behind a push to nationalise the mines and banks in Africa's biggest economy, had admitted he was "finished politically" and had decided to go into cattle farming.

"I have 20 cattle now," he told the paper. "We will breed them, take them to the abattoir, slaughter them and then sell the meat."

The African National Congress (ANC) suspended Malema for five years earlier this month for causing rifts in the party and undermining foreign policy by calling for the overthrow of the elected government of neighbouring Botswana.

He lodged an appeal against the ruling this week, although the report in South Africa's Sunday Times suggests he is not optimistic about the outcome.

"I am not this religious person who believes that some intervention will come from heaven. I have looked at the trends. I have listened to the speeches. They are all pointing in one direction," he was quoted as saying.

Malema looked tired during the interview and declined to be photographed, the paper added.

The 30-year-old rose to prominence with calls to seize white-owned farm land and nationalise mines in the world's largest platinum producer, alarming investors.

The calls also won him legions of supporters from the country's poor black majority, who hope to see more wealth from the land and also envision him as a future leader.

Malema's absence from the political scene is also likely to smooth President Jacob Zuma's path to re-election as head of the ANC -- and therefore a second term in office -- at a major party congress in a year's time. (Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Secrecy Bill hits Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:44:00 +0000

Wikipedia link

Apparently Jacob Zuma was approached for comment. You can read his comments below:

South Africa passes Secrecy Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:24:00 +0000

from The New York Times:

South Africa Passes Law to Restrict Reporting of Government Secrets

JOHANNESBURG — Brushing aside protests by press-freedom advocates and heroes of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, Parliament overwhelmingly passed a contentious bill on Tuesday that will severely restrict the ability of journalists to report any information deemed to be a government secret.

The legislation, which still must undergo further steps to become law, would make it a crime, punishable by lengthy prison terms, to disseminate anything that any state agency regards as classified. Critics have called the legislation a throwback to the apartheid regime’s harsh repression and say it is meant to protect corrupt officials from press scrutiny.

Anger over the legislation was embodied by the presentation of an article published last week in The Mail & Guardian, a major weekly newspaper here, about Mac Maharaj, the spokesman for President Jacob Zuma. Most of the text had been blacked out. This outcome, the paper’s editor said, was what loomed for South Africa’s press if the legislation became law.

The Protection of Information Bill, as the legislation is called, must still clear a national council of provinces before it takes effect. Critics have said they will challenge it in South Africa’s constitutional court.

“The bill in its current form does take us back to pre-1994,” said Elston Sippie, executive director of the country’s Freedom of Expression Institute, referring to the year South Africa became a democracy. “I do think it is a setback in that we fought hard and long to get our bill of rights accepted amongst all South Africans. And it is that bill of rights that is now under threat.”

The onerous implications have some members of the media here feeling under more pressure than at any time since the fall of apartheid.

On both sides of the debate, people have said the battle between the press and the ruling party speaks to the fact that this country, less than two decades after the fall of apartheid, is still figuring out just how to get democracy right.

“Like the United States, it took many, many decades to have your Constitution developed to where it is now,” said Moegsien Williams, the editor of The Star, a daily newspaper based here. “We are now in that kind of process where we’re trying to kind of live up to and entrench the Bill of Rights.”

The news media and civil rights groups had fought unsuccessfully to get the ruling party, the African National Congress, to include an exception in the law that would allow for the revelation of classified information if it were in the public interest.

On Tuesday, protesters urged people to wear black, calling the day “Black Tuesday,” evoking memories of a similarly titled press crackdown in the 1970s under white rule. Demonstrators picketed outside of Parliament in Cape Town and in front of A.N.C. headquarters here.

Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate and leading figure in the fight to end white-minority domination, said it was “insulting to all South Africans to be asked to stomach legislation that could be used to outlaw whistle-blowing and investigative journalism.”

The office of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first post-apartheid president and emblem of the struggle for democracy, said the legislation was “not yet at a point where it can be said to have met” constitutional standards.

But A.N.C. members stood firm in their support of the legislation, arguing it was repealing a harsher 1982 protection of information law.

“It is our experience that most opponents of this bill have not actually read this bill,” said Luwellyn Tyrone Landers, an A.N.C. parliamentary member. “Today’s events confirm that view.”

The bill will make it a crime punishable by 5 to 25 years in prison for anyone to reveal information that the state labels classified.

Journalists also have expressed concern about a looming proposal by the A.N.C. to create a tribunal that would hear and adjudicate citizen complaints against media outlets over issues of fairness and accuracy.

“These are the toughest times,” said Ferial Haffajee, the editor of City Press, a weekly newspaper here. “Across the board, I think you see attempts to curtail media freedom and free expression.”

Ms. Haffajee said she believed that the legislation reflected the vulnerabilities felt by the A.N.C., which has been the dominant party in South African politics since 1994. It is instinctive, she said, “for people in power to attempt to stifle the media when it makes exposures that are uncomfortable.”

But the protection bill “is not about suppressing the media or corruption,” Siyabonga Cwele, the minister of state security, said through an e-mailed statement from his spokesman, Brian Dube.

“The South African government is clear on the role of the media in our democracy, and our Constitution provides expressly for freedom of expression,” the statement continued. It added that the bill sought to balance “the right to access to information on the one hand, and the critical issues of national security.”

In a bluntly worded report released last year, a media watchdog established by Parliament and led by an A.N.C. member suggested that the media needed greater regulation.

“Freedom of expression needs to be defended, but freedom of expression can also be a refuge for journalist scoundrels, to hide mediocrity and glorify truly unprofessional conduct,” the report read.

The conflict between Mr. Maharaj and The Mail & Guardian came to a head when the paper told him it was publishing information from a confidential interview that Mr. Maharaj had with corruption investigators almost a decade ago. The information proved that Mr. Maharaj had lied to investigators, who were examining allegations of corrupt payments made to Mr. Zuma, who was then a high-ranking official, during a major arms deal in the late 1990s, said Nic Dawes, the paper’s editor in chief.

But under a little-known South African law, it would have been illegal for anyone to reveal the contents of Mr. Maharaj’s statements to investigators because they were made during a process in which he had to waive his right to remain silent. Even though the paper withheld the statements, Mr. Maharaj filed a criminal complaint, saying that it had intended to publish the information.

Mr. Maharaj said the media could not hold freedom of the press above his individual rights.

“There’s no single right that stands in a hierarchy,” he said. “It’s a balancing of those rights, and the process of building a democracy, is an ongoing exercise.”

Mr. Maharaj said he believed that The Mail & Guardian was using him as political football to raise opposition to the protection bill.

Indeed, the day before the blacked-out paper was published, Mr. Dawes posted a photo of the newspaper page on his Twitter feed with the note “A glimpse of life under #secrecybill.”

Mr. Dawes also posted a copy of The Weekly Mail, the Mail & Guardian’s former name, from 1986 in which lines of an article were blacked out because of government censorship. It was routine practice in those days, Mr. Dawes said.

“For all of the problems that we have now, we still live in a democracy now and we didn’t then,” he said. “But you can’t avoid the kind of awful analogy that arises in these circumstances.”

South African Police Farce part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:40:00 +0000

HT: Censorbugbear

The problem with criminal thugs running the SAPS, is that it sets a good example for mindless twats. Like a certain Juda Dagane. Juda was or still is a forensic investigator at SAPS.

Below is an extract of his comments on the Julius Malema Facebook page. He hates whites. He wants to be part of a genocide against them.

We kindly ask that you report the relevant posts on these profiles as offensive.

South African Police Farce part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:07:00 +0000

Just when you thought losing 20,000 firearms in 3 years, 10,000 cops in jail and a criminal former police commissioner and Interpol president being handed a 15-year sentence couldn’t get any worse for SAPS track record…

From News24:

Taxpayers fork out R1.3m for Cele's salary

Johannesburg - Taxpayers will spend at least R1.3m a year on suspended national police commissioner Bheki Cele's salary, according to reports on Sunday.

Police spokesperson Tummi Shai said the current salary of the police commissioner was between R1.3m and R1.5m a year, the Sunday Tribune reported.

Taxpayers were also expected to fork out millions more on Cele's legal fees.

Cele was suspended on October 24 on full pay, for his alleged role in the procurement of two police leases worth R1.6bn.

Taxpayers had already spent more than R30m on the legal costs for former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi and former Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride, according to the report.

Selebi was convicted of taking bribes from drug dealers in July 2010 after being suspended between February 2008 and July 2009.

McBride was convicted of drunk driving in April this year after being arrested in December 2006. He was dismissed in September 2008.

Selebi and McBride are both appealing.

Meanwhile, the board of inquiry into the leases was taking formative steps, with the three-member board meeting to receive important documents, the Sunday Tribune reported.

The last Boers of Patagonia

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:48:00 +0000

An old article from the Mail & Guardian, but interesting reading nonetheless.

Source: Mail & Guardian online

"Ek verstaan 'n bietjie Afrikaans, maar te praat is nie maklik vir my nie [I understand a bit of Afrikaans, but it's not easy for me to speak it]," says Juan Blackie matter-of-factly.

Nothing about this would be strange if it wasn't coming from a third-generation Boer descendant who has never been to South Africa. Blackie, a jovial, unshorn fellow in his early 40s, lives in Argentina's Chubut province in the small farming town of Sarmiento, about 160km inland from Comodoro Rivadavia, a dusty, wind-swept patch of earth on Patagonia's east coast where the Boers landed in 1903.

The kettle on the stove whistles and he takes it off the boil. He pours hot water into a gourd filled with bitter herbs and takes a sip of his maté, a traditional Argentine drink, before passing it around the room, which is filled with relatives who have been called in from around town to meet the South Africans who have ventured into the heart of Patagonia to track them down.

His aunt, Ana Schlebusch, a woman in her 50s with a broad, toothless smile and a farm-ruddied face, bursts into the living room a few minutes later. "Wie is die Suid Afrikaners?" she asks excitedly, a blush spreading outwards from her too-pink nose. She had received a phone call just minutes before to tell her the news and invite her over. Her eyes fix on the journalist stretching to remember pleasantries in his second language. She grins broadly and launches into a diatribe about how good it is to meet "regte Suid Afrikaners".

The Blackies and the Schlebusches are two of roughly 600 Afrikaner families who came to Argentina in the early 1900s after the Boers' overwhelming defeat to the British in the Anglo-Boer War. They aren't exactly Boers any more -- more an amalgamation of Boer and Argentine, who themselves are a hodgepodge mix of their European, mostly Spanish and Italian, forefathers. Traces of Afrikaner culture remain -- they make biltong from guanacos, a small type of llama native to Patagonia, spice up their Spanish with the odd Afrikaans word and love their brandewyn and Coke -- but over the generations it has obtained a distinctly Argentinian flavour.

Listening to this woman's flawless Afrikaans, you'd be forgiven for assuming you were sitting on a stoep in Blikkiesdorp or Bapsfontein. But she is an exception, one of only a handful of Boer descendants who still keep the language alive.

In 1965 Sunday Times journalist Peter Schirmer visited the town and wrote that in Sarmiento "more Afrikaans than Spanish is heard in the shops, bars and offices", but that is no longer the case. Today names such as Kruger, Van der Merwe, Botha, Van Wyk, De Bruyn and Eloff are still around, but the people who hold them are a far cry from the Afrikaners in South Africa and maintain little of the cultural heritage of their ancestors.

The last great trek

Patagonia's east coast is a dry place, not all that dissimilar to the Karoo, which is why the Argentine government, under General Julio A Roca, gave the Boers the land in 1902, thinking that the hard-working South African farmers could draw fruit from the earth. Argentina wanted to attract settlers to Patagonia and the Boers wanted a patch of land in the sun that they could call their own after the British had burned their farms in the Anglo-Boer War.

The first ones arrived in 1903 -- the bittereinders who refused to cede to British rule -- and looked out at the barren horizon on a cold June afternoon. Many couldn't believe this was their new land, bleak sandstone cliffs rising sheer from the icy Atlantic.

It wasn't easy going. There were no houses, no infrastructure and, most importantly, no drinking water. More soon followed and, by 1907, there were more than 600 Boer families in the region, although almost half returned to South Africa in 1938, the centenary of the Great Trek, which saw a huge resurgence in Afrikaner nationalism. Sara De Langer, a third-generation Boer descendant in her early 60s living in Comodoro, says the closest water source was 36km away and it had to be brought in by wagon. She wears the khaki of her forefathers and her face is deeply grooved, weathered by years in the Patagonian wind.

"The Boers used to call this place 'Die of Thirst'," she tells me in word-perfect Afrikaans, which is tinged with a Spanish accent. For a long time they lived in tents and tried to do what they knew best -- work the land -- but the climate in this far corner of the Earth is cold, arid and unforgiving.

The Boers were among the first settlers to arrive in Comodoro. The population in 1903 was just 140; now it's the biggest city in Patagonia with a population of 300 000. They soon began to build roads and telegraph lines so that they could link their land, as well as schools, bridges and dams -- all through their own efforts and resources. They worked hard, subsisted poorly and lived up to their hardy reputation.

In 1907 the Boers' pleas to the Argentine government to search for water were heard and a drilling machine was sent down from Buenos Aires. But instead of water they hit oil, vast deposits of it, much of it on the land they had been given. The drive from Comodoro to Sarmiento today is littered with mechanical giants, limbs reaching into the earth to pump 25% of Argentina's total oil deposits. Had the regulations been different, the Boers may well have developed into an elite enclave of Argentine society, but Argentine law decrees that all mineral rights belong to the state.

"The story of the Boers in Chubut is a remarkable one, in terms of privation, hardship and loss," says Tony Leon, the former Democratic Alliance leader and now South African ambassador to Argentina, who, with his wife, has been living in Buenos Aires for just over a year.

Many Boers trekked further into the hinterland, reaching Sarmiento, where they found arable land and running water. The area is an oasis compared with the harsh Patagonian semidesert surrounding it and reminded the Boers so much of their abandoned South African farmland that they decided to set up camp permanently. They planted willows and elms for windbreaks and to prevent erosion, and Sarmiento bloomed.

Lekker op die plaas

In Bruce Chatwin's 1977 seminal text on the area, creatively named In Patagonia, the renowned travel writer describes the Boers as such: "They lived in fear of the Lord, celebrated Dingaan's Day and took oaths on the Dutch Reformed Bible. They did not marry outsiders and their daughters had to go to the kitchen if a Latin entered the house." De Langer is quick to dispel this notion. The Boers were forced to acclimatise to their new land, they had to learn the language and the customs of the native people. Certainly, these days Chatwin's assertion holds little weight. Every Boer descendant the Mail & Guardian spoke to had married an Argentine. If their politiek, as Chatwin claims, was once separatist, it is no longer.

Back at the Blackie house, a DVD is put into the machine and the whole family gathers round to watch a documentary made in the 1970s about this intriguing sect of Argentine society. Schlebusch points at the TV: "Those are my brothers," she says in Afrikaans, gesturing to three men seated on a bench. "The one in the middle is dead. The other two still work on the farm, but they struggle a lot." At one time there were several families living on their sheep farm -- about 30 to 40 people in total, Schlebusch says -- but now her brothers are the only ones left.

The documentary comes to an end and a home video of the yearly Afrikaans fiesta is put on. Every February until 2005 about 300 Boer descendants gathered in the veld near Sarmiento, setting up their tents in a big kraal for a weekend of athletics, rugby, braai vleis and sokkie (dancing). In the video an elderly man sits on a stage playing Sarie Marais on his accordion while the youngsters whirl around the dance floor.

Up until a few years ago it was typical for many Boer families to live on a single farm. The festival was a way to bring all the Boers in the region together and because many of them lived in relative proximity it was easier for them to get together. But families gradually began to leave the farms -- their children often got jobs in the city -- and the festival's attendance dwindled. By 2005, with so few families willing to make the trek and attend, it, more than anything else, just petered out.

108 years of solitude

At one time the Boer community in Patagonia was the biggest community of Boers living outside South Africa, but exactly how many Boers now live in Comodoro and its surrounding areas is unclear, although Graciela Àguila Hammond, another third-generation Boer, claims a 2008 survey puts the number at about 1 200. Martin Blackie puts the number at about 500.

Leon says "the embassy has no accurate estimation of the number of Boer descendants, simply because, according to our records, none of them are South African citizens. However, during my visit to Comodoro Rivadavia last November, I met about 35 Boer families and was told by them that the community numbered 'several hundred'."

Leon went to Comodoro to address the Boer community shortly after he was made ambassador in August 2009. He said to the congregation (in Afrikaans, of course): "I hope that this community and its heritage and language will survive in Argentina" and was fed some of Hammond's melktert. Hammond runs Die Kleep, a koffiehuis in the town. She started the place eight years ago to mark the centenary of the Boers' arrival here.

At the time the first-generation Boers had almost all died out and she wanted to find a way to preserve Afrikaans culture. She did it through soetkos. On the menu are treats you'd be likely to find at any tuisnywerheid: melktert, koeksisters, konfyt, ardekoekies, sjokolade koek and such. The worn linoleum, the plastic chairs and the warm welcome remind you of a good vetkoek paleis in die Vrystaat, although no vetkoeks are for sale here.

In Hammond's home-cum-coffee shop she proudly displays a bottle of Amarula, some kitsch tribal masks and a print of a lion, all trinkets her cousin brought back when she visited South Africa on holiday last year. Her Afrikaans is almost unintelligible through her thick Spanish accent and the Spanish words she frequently throws into sentences, but she manages to get her point across in her congenial manner, stumbling when she tries to think of an Afrikaans word she can't remember.

"I learned Afrikaans at home -- it was my 'kitchen language' -- but now I speak mostly Spanish," she says. At 18 she left home to study, got married to an Argentine soon after and spoke Afrikaans only at Boer gatherings. Spanish became her new kombuistaal and her children never learned it. Juan Wright (69) lives in Sarmiento. He spoke Afrikaans when he was a child, but has long since forgotten the language. All he can remember are the bad words.

"Damn it!" he shouts suddenly. "What does 'damn it' mean?" The closest approximation I can offer in my sketchy Spanish is diablo -- or devil -- although I know the essence is lost in translation. "I never knew what it meant. My father used to say it when we had done something wrong," he explains through our interpreter, Luis, raising the back of his hand in a mock swipe.

His niece, Ana Wright, says her grandparents didn't allow her father to learn Afrikaans. "Spanish lessons cost a lot. My grandfather said he didn't want to waste his money on his children learning a language if they weren't going to use it." Juan Wright chips in: "When my mother and my aunt came here, they couldn't speak any Spanish. When they went to the shops, they had to point at the things they wanted. Our parents wanted us to be Argentinian so that we didn't have to go through that."

The Argentinian Boers left South Africa before the language was formalised. As a result, none seems to know how to read or write in Afrikaans, although the community hopes to get an Afrikaans teacher to keep the language alive -- at least for one more generation. "Last year we asked Leon for an Afrikaans teacher but we still haven't heard anything," says De Langer. Leon says the embassy is working on it, but in the past year, promoting the Fifa World Cup took priority.

Martin Blackie, Juan's seventysomething uncle, a second-generation Boer whose mother was among the first batch of settlers and whose father was detained in a concentration camp during the Anglo-Boer war, was honorary vice-consul of the Boer descendants in Chubut for 20 years, a position he held with much pride, but with the decline of an authentic Boer community there was no longer need for a consul and his position fell away last year. His children also speak little Afrikaans.

Though the language may disappear, he is right in thinking the Boer descendants in Patagonia will retain many aspects of Boer culture, even if in "20 or 30 years Afrikaans is not spoken here".

They are losing their language, but they express the vibrant spirit of their culture in the Spanish they were thrown into. Their forefathers, with stubbornness and gall, had the courage to venture across the Atlantic in a rusty vessel and today's Boer descendants in Patagonia are following their example, burgeoning forward in a country at once emphatically foreign and completely theirs.

Malema kicked out–with pay

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:10:00 +0000

Suspended with full pay. In other words a paid vacation. I wonder if he will spend more time managing his “family trust”, you know, the one which receives bribes for government tenders…

from IOL:

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema had to “vacate his position”, the party's national disciplinary committee said on Thursday.

“The respondent shall vacate his position as the president of the ANC Youth League,” said chairman Derek Hanekom in Johannesburg.

Malema was suspended for an effective five years.

“Malema damaged the standing of the ANC and South Africa's international reputation,” said Hanekom.

The ANC has kicked Youth League leader, Julius Malema, out of the party for five yearsafter finding him guilty of sowing division.

Julius Malema was found guilty of provoking divisions within the ruling party and of bringing the organisation into disrepute on Thursday.

His statements on Botswana were “reckless” , the party's national disciplinary committee chairman Derek Hanekom said.

This was after Malema said earlier this year the ANCYL would send a team to Botswana to consolidate local opposition parties and help bring about regime change there.

Malema later apologised for the remarks, but they were widely believed to have caused serious diplomatic embarrassment for the ANC.

He was earlier on Thursday found guilty of interrupting a meeting of national ruling party officials that included President Jacob Zuma.

That guilty finding related to Malema, ANCYL deputy president Ronald Lamola, treasurer general Pule Mabe, secretary general Sindiso Magaqa and deputy secretary general Kenetswe Mosenogi.

On that charge, the group was suspended from the ruling party for two years on Thursday. The sanction was suspended for three years.

Malema, who was busy writing exams in Limpopo on Thursday, had 14 days to appeal against the ruling.

He would remain on full pay until all the appeal processes were completed, ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said. - Sapa

SA-295–Helderberg

noreply@blogger.com (Islandshark) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:03:00 +0000

On November 28 1987, a South African Airways 747-244b aircraft (Aircraft Identification ZS-SAS) with 159 passengers on board crashed into the Indian Ocean, 160 miles north east of Mauritius. All passengers and crew perished.

Official inquiries into the incident and cause for the disaster never yielded definitive resolution. The previous government in South Africa, lead by the National Party, was either grossly incompetent in its fact-finding mission or deliberately obstructive. Then there is also the part played by the ANC. One “official” cause supplied was that a fire caused by fireworks on board resulted in the disaster.

What follows here is a personal account of a very distinguished gentleman. A very intelligent man. But that is only my opinion. You decide for yourself.

Source:

With Malice and Forethought

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
- Clarke's First Law -

Preamble

In the late fall of 1987 I was approached by Colonel Jorrie Jordaan to produce a rather nasty weapon system that would be used in the war in Angola. Since I was already designing the security systems for military bases, borders and key points, and I had worked on advanced and non-conventional systems in the past, the “marriage” of my previous experience with this new ‘purpose’ was a natural transition, as far as Jorrie was concerned.

Jorrie wanted a way to take down the Migs that were giving us so much grief, but he wanted to do it in a way that would make it look like pilot error and keep the Russians and Cubans guessing. The best technological ‘fit’ I could work out at the time was an accelerated laser weapon with a nuclear source. We could constrain a highly energized particle stream inside a “tube” or “ring” laser, bring its energy level up to a few trillion volts and send it into a Mig. It would be like a focused EMP Cannon with a 1/4 wave frequency anywhere from hundreds of yards to thousands of miles in length. The result of a hit on a plane (and the pilot it contained), would be catastrophic, but almost undetectable unless one found the energy transfer point.

A few months after the request had come through to develop the weapon, and the prototypes of smaller units had been constructed as a proof of concept, it came time to build the working device that would be deployed in Northern SWA (now Namibia). There were however problems with the acquisition of parts and materials for the larger device. You can’t walk into a hardware store and buy a few megawatts of Class IV lasers or highly enriched u239. These kinds of components and materials had to come from overseas. Armscor already had a working relationship with SAA (South African Airlines) to move armaments and even though a weapons embargo was in place, it was not being seriously managed by it’s most staunch supporters (ref. 1988 US/Iraqi arms deal with French support delivered through SA for direct shipment to Saddam, for the invasion of Kuwait, this was after the Helderberg catastrophe, but nothing was really any different in 1987 as opposed to 1988) ⁽¹⁾.

Colonel Jordaan needed to get the materials into SA, so he did what any loyal Boer would, he handled the purchase and transport himself. After all, this was a very sensitive and highly illegal operation and the success of the operation meant success for all of South Africa. What follows is a bit of the story...

The Events Surrounding the Helderberg Specifically

Jorrie was allegedly at a science conference, that was the cover story and having his wife with him made it look perfectly innocent. What he was really doing however, was between him and very few others. The cover was that Armscor had told him they wanted him there to examine new technology, possibly for security applications. That’s what he told everyone, like Andre and I, before he left.

I knew a couple of things though, both PMP and Somchem wanted a new Ammonium Perchlorate (APC or AMP) accelerant mix for the solid fuel propellant in SAMS. Atlas needed a contained fissile source for something I had designed for Jorrie and Armscor to take down the Migs in Angola. The Minister and Armscor were not adverse, to ‘strong-arming’ SAA pilots to move weapons and material shipments to get around the arms embargo, by using commercial airlines. To make matters worse, they had ‘bought men’ in the airports to expedite their ‘packages’ and ‘sanitize’ the paperwork.

Then there was the underlying problem with Armscor and the government, both of which had two internally warring factions Jorrie had told me. Armscor was politically fractured, he called the two sides, the hawks and the doves. And either side was capable of doing anything to the other side to further their positions, including killing fellow officers.

The day before Jorrie left Taiwan, he received his “samples” shipped from North Korea through China. Plenty enough material to replicate for PMP and Somchem. He handed this off to an operative for vacuum packaging and transport on the plane. He went back to the hotel, showered and threw out his day clothes. He wouldn’t want the “sniffers” to pick up a problem in the airport. He might not be able to fix that ‘little’ situation.

The next day at the airport, while Jorrie was waiting to clear his tickets and his baggage, one of his “trusted” operatives approached him with guarded urgency. This was a man who should not have been there. He motioned Jorrie aside, away from the crowds and the line of people. Recognizing him, Jorrie told his wife to wait in the queue while he thought, ‘it must be important’.

The displaced operative whispered to him, “you have to stay, tell her there is a problem with the baggage, I’ll wait”, and that was all he said.

Jorrie turned and visibly checked his wife. When he turned back, the man was moving away and into the crowds of milling people to stand against the outside wall. He would have to think fast.

He had not checked his bags yet. He took his wife out of the queue to sit down and told her, “I will take care of the bags, you can just stay here and read, relax for a bit.”

He had positioned her sufficiently far enough away, in a quiet area where she wouldn’t be able to see exactly what he was up to. Jorrie stood in plain sight for about 10 minutes, then he bypassed the desks and took his bags to his displaced operative standing at the outside wall.

He said, “take these outside, put them in the trunk of a close cab and wait in it, when I come out, I’ll find you, wait till I am at the cab and get out, get your car and follow me to the hotel, take my bags from my cab, wait one hour and drop them off at the front desk, say you are from the airport, give them apologies or something.”

The man raised his hand and nodded in acknowledgment and confirmation, took the bags, found a cab, loaded them in the trunk and waited. Jorrie headed back towards the ticket counter and baggage check area and started waiting, to make his move.

After about fifteen minutes he went over and complained to his wife, “they said there is something wrong with our luggage, it has been taken by security to be checked, can you believe it?”

She asked, “what could be wrong, dearie?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know, yesus, these bloody Chinese, they said to go back to the hotel.”
“But we’ll miss our flight,” she worried.

He responded, “then we will, they said they would honour the tickets, don’t worry, they will sort it out,” he said, “ach, let’s get out of this stupid place.”

And he walked her out the front door to the waiting cab. His associate exited, Jorrie and his wife entered. They made their way back to the hotel and checked in for another night. His wife didn’t notice, she was waiting near the hotel doors, but Jorrie had told the driver to wait five minutes and he would send someone down for the bags. Once upstairs he scheduled his re-return flight to Johannesburg. Downstairs, in front of the hotel, his associate had removed the luggage and was waiting in his car.

One hour later, his operative delivered the luggage to the front desk. He said he was delivering for South African Airlines, there had been a mix up, “please give them our apologies.” The front desk called up. The Op was gone. The desk had the luggage sent upstairs and Jorrie’s wife didn’t know a damned thing about what had just transpired.

On the plane, it was a different story. The pilot and two crew members knew something nasty was coming on board. They didn’t know exactly what even though they had suspicions, they did know it wasn’t ‘good’. As every time before though, there would be a handler and “he” would take care of the cargo. Prior to take-off, the pilot noticed an irregularity, the handler had not boarded. Imagining the worse, with good reason, he refused to take off ^(3a).

Then the threats came from Pretoria, it was the one call that would change 159 lives. A Minister called and told the pilot that if he didn’t take off they wouldn’t just “release” him from his duties, they would “release” his family and anyone else he cared about for that matter. With his back to the wall, he taxied out and took off, not knowing the two missing passengers names were being purged from all records relating to his flight.

Follow the link to continue reading the rest of this fascinating account…