Weblog
Jozi22 April 2009
There is a quaintly Luddite quality to the South African Taxi Industries belated response to the impending introduction of the Bus Rapid Transport System and its impact on their revenue stream. In the general babble it is difficult to evaluate whether much consultation took place, and quite possibly it didn’t; probably to forestall an inevitable opposition to an inevitable event.
For offshore readers South Africa’s/Azania’s most important cities: Cape Town, the national legislative capital, Tshwane, the national executive capital and Jozi [The Big J] : the magnificently materialistic financial capital of the continent, have for decades been dependent on a savage breed of entrepreneur: predatory in every sense of the essential capitalist spirit; for the mass movement of less affluent citizens who need to commute daily to and from work, and perform other chores.
Globally prestigious newspapers like for instance the economist have over the decades written paeans about one of the world’s most successful [so-called] Black capitalist developments and by and large it is a justified source of pride.
It leapt into a gap presented by the disintegration of the sclerotic Apartheid era cronyist dominated publicly sponsored mass transport system and provides fast, efficient, time dependent citizen movement. They are also terrifying to fellow road users, through whose space many hurtle with reckless abandonment,[and always did: my childhood was shot through with the reality of crossing the road in front of my parents house, to the park beyond, dodging speeding taxing driving lunatics in big Plymouths, Dodges, Chevrolets and Ford Galaxies.] The annual death toll from minibus taxis crashes with other road users, or just passing furniture, probably makes up a large part of the annual road slaughter that is part and parcel of an era of mass movement. Personally I prefer to use routes that are less populated with minibus taxis unless I feel specifically, the need for an adrenaline rush.
Nowadays it is an over traded and frequently violent industry in the ‘slippery slope’ stages of its product life cycle. It is being forced by legislative fiat to modernise its fleet, at about the time in a product life cycles stage where it is over -commoditised and the return on capital is negative. It managed to see off the prospective competition from the new high-speed rail line being created between Jozi and Tshwane by seeing to it that it only drew audiences from the private car sector. It is now faced with competition from an unanticipated source; a mass movement bus rapid transit system that runs on dedicated high-speed routes that are being carved out on all the major arteries serving the Big J [presumably all over Tshwane and Cape Town too.].
One remembers that there was a time when stagecoaches kept the cities and the citizens lined. They fell prey to the coming of trains in the late 19th century. Presumably ‘they did not go quietly’ into that dark night. The same is true for the taxi industry facing regulation and competition. There has been violence, sticks are routinely waved, shots are routinely fired in rage, frustration or whatever and now the new President has agreed to simply stop the whole business for awhile until the election is over [technically he is only the new president after the election, which is a foregone conclusion unless something remarkable happens over the next 48 hours. So I am making an assumptive statement].
Of course next week when the election is over the BRT process will continue, Contracts are signed, work is in progress; the entire region is being routinely disrupted by a battery of roadwork programmes, that are well under way; and are fortuitously helping to propel us along the upper surface of this Great Global Recession, gripping the planet currently. To stop this BRT process now could have catastrophic financial repercussions and would undoubtedly impact on exchange rates and market confidence.
Then there is the question as to whether the interests of the State are synonymous with those of an unelected business consortium? We await Mr Z’s position after the election when I am sure the entire matter will be delegated to people who will simply carry on regardless. This is a pattern of behaviour that has become predictable and impervious. Why abandon a winning formula? Especially when you have just been given what, subject to an unanticipated “Lie” factor, looks to be an 80% majority.
The real answer here is that the minibus taxi has reached its commoditisation date and must yield to the more efficient system. That does not by any means mean the end of the taxi industry. Rather that the smart money will move to something more lucrative. Others will search out niche markets and cross town routes linking parts of the city that currently require multiple journeys to reach. They will have to practice running around the web rather than down the main lanes to the hub and out again, we are in any event no longer that type of city really… We are an edge city and most city planning hasn’t worked that out yet.
A big competitive issue will be to improve the quality of the journey and develop more credibility and exploit the natural advantages the minibus has over the BRT; Nimbleness, flexibility, linking routes between BRT lines. That is how you deal with market competition… not by demanding protection from progress.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Tale of Two Cities.
weblog
Jozi
22 february 2009
Three mornings ago I was channel surfing in the small hours and I chanced upon the news that the American government has issued a travel advisory, warning its citizens to beware when visiting one of their favourite destinations. They were enjoined against rampant muggings at airports, rampant muggings in tourist venues and most disturbing the spiking of drinks in pubs and rape or other molestation in freelance taxi cabs. I thought they were referring to my hometown of Jozi [aka Johannesburg].
The problem must be bad when a travel advisory is issued.
And then gave a sharp cry of surprise. It must be most embarrassing when you know that the place concerned is London.
The programme was the BBC’s ‘Fast Track’ travel weekly for those who, like me, prefer to travel in virtual reality.
I was stunned.
I was even more stunned when the presenter went on to draw a comparison between my home city of Jozi [aka Johannesburg] explaining how we, the residents, have learned how to avoid being the primary subject of an anti-social citizen’s attentions. This means that there are only a few neighbourhoods where kids can ride their bikes without them being hijacked.[ ironically in those few places kids are at risk from mobile traffic that is unfamiliar with the fact that kids ride their bikes on city streets.]
It also means that it is only poor neighbourhoods where the homes are not heavily walled of from their neighbours and the passing parade, and are topped off with barbed wire and /or electric fencing. Many neighbourhoods are cordoned off into private suburbs accessible only to residents and approved visitors [naturally criminals do rent homes therein to gain the necessary access: but that would be a digression.]
I remembered living in London in the late 60’s. I stayed with a travel companion on a boat belonging to his brother who was away in Canada for a few months. The houseboat was moored off a place called Cheyne Walk near the famous Battersea Bridge. We would routinely walk up a few blocks to the Kings Road search out a pub that sold drinkable beer, and toddle off to the famous Carnaby Street, always so disappointing in its shabby media-hyped pretentiousness.
Sometimes when walking home late at night or early in the morning from some or other night of fun we would be routinely harassed by policemen in little motorcars who would pull up, and shout inarticulate questions at us in the native dialects of London, and which we could not understand. When asked if they could please speak English they would ask, suspiciously where we were from and we would tell them that we were tourists from Africa and we were going home to bed in our place on Cheyne Walk.
They would immediately become polite, and on the odd occasion would offer us a ride home, which occasionally we would accept. Coming as we did from a mean and savage police state where the police were invariably the enemy we found them and London itself polite, congenial and even convivial. It was a shock to know that it is so bad a criminal environment that advisories must be issued by friends..
From what I gathered now from the travel advisory chat to which I listened after recovering from my surprise, one surmises that perhaps we [SA] have been exporting our surplus criminals to London on the fake passports recently declared null without a visa by the British/ Pomeranian government.
This is of course feasible and understandably the Poms are unhappy. What the presenter left unsaid was that our crime rate is diminishing on a downward curve while that of the Poms is on a fast escalating curve. A friend who works in a large London hospital told me two Christmases ago that he felt at times that he was back in one of Jozi’s public hospitals back in the bad post- revolution days, he was having to deal with so many bullet wounds.
Since then we have had horror reports of knifings and stabbings and kids killed by the disturbing phenomenon of binge drinking female street gangs all happening in London, and in many other Pomeranian cities and urban wastelands in the United Kingdom generally. You know when a trend is well established, when such a scene of folk violence is represented on a programme such as ‘Skins’: the new entertainment series from BBC Entertainment. Truly the old axiom that when you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have them seems to apply to Pomerania today… another of Mr Blair’s legacy issues.– hopefully they [the outlaws] are only killing each other.
A city in which the common citizen has been disarmed is now awash with guns, crime, daggers and rapists… not on our scale of course but the trend is up. When I told my medical friend, who once lived in my neighbourhood and is now a migrant worker in a London hospital, that I only occasionally hear gunfire these days from my veranda … in fact less than once or twice a month… where once in the receding past it was continuous all day, he remarked that if I were nostalgic, I should visit the neighbourhood in London where he shares “digs” with other migrant workers from the Philippines, South Asia and West Africa. There the gunfire is routine, he said.
Now we know that what he shared that day two years ago is at last formally true…the spin days are over; The Americans have apparently issued a travel advisory warning their less sophisticated travellers that London is officially a bad place to visit for innocents abroad programmed to believe in the sanctity of life under a British star.
Much safer, I would suggest, to be visiting Jozi, a place in which you are programmed to be careful and we’ve learned to fuss over the safety of travellers.
Cheers
Blogroid
Jozi
22 february 2009
Three mornings ago I was channel surfing in the small hours and I chanced upon the news that the American government has issued a travel advisory, warning its citizens to beware when visiting one of their favourite destinations. They were enjoined against rampant muggings at airports, rampant muggings in tourist venues and most disturbing the spiking of drinks in pubs and rape or other molestation in freelance taxi cabs. I thought they were referring to my hometown of Jozi [aka Johannesburg].
The problem must be bad when a travel advisory is issued.
And then gave a sharp cry of surprise. It must be most embarrassing when you know that the place concerned is London.
The programme was the BBC’s ‘Fast Track’ travel weekly for those who, like me, prefer to travel in virtual reality.
I was stunned.
I was even more stunned when the presenter went on to draw a comparison between my home city of Jozi [aka Johannesburg] explaining how we, the residents, have learned how to avoid being the primary subject of an anti-social citizen’s attentions. This means that there are only a few neighbourhoods where kids can ride their bikes without them being hijacked.[ ironically in those few places kids are at risk from mobile traffic that is unfamiliar with the fact that kids ride their bikes on city streets.]
It also means that it is only poor neighbourhoods where the homes are not heavily walled of from their neighbours and the passing parade, and are topped off with barbed wire and /or electric fencing. Many neighbourhoods are cordoned off into private suburbs accessible only to residents and approved visitors [naturally criminals do rent homes therein to gain the necessary access: but that would be a digression.]
I remembered living in London in the late 60’s. I stayed with a travel companion on a boat belonging to his brother who was away in Canada for a few months. The houseboat was moored off a place called Cheyne Walk near the famous Battersea Bridge. We would routinely walk up a few blocks to the Kings Road search out a pub that sold drinkable beer, and toddle off to the famous Carnaby Street, always so disappointing in its shabby media-hyped pretentiousness.
Sometimes when walking home late at night or early in the morning from some or other night of fun we would be routinely harassed by policemen in little motorcars who would pull up, and shout inarticulate questions at us in the native dialects of London, and which we could not understand. When asked if they could please speak English they would ask, suspiciously where we were from and we would tell them that we were tourists from Africa and we were going home to bed in our place on Cheyne Walk.
They would immediately become polite, and on the odd occasion would offer us a ride home, which occasionally we would accept. Coming as we did from a mean and savage police state where the police were invariably the enemy we found them and London itself polite, congenial and even convivial. It was a shock to know that it is so bad a criminal environment that advisories must be issued by friends..
From what I gathered now from the travel advisory chat to which I listened after recovering from my surprise, one surmises that perhaps we [SA] have been exporting our surplus criminals to London on the fake passports recently declared null without a visa by the British/ Pomeranian government.
This is of course feasible and understandably the Poms are unhappy. What the presenter left unsaid was that our crime rate is diminishing on a downward curve while that of the Poms is on a fast escalating curve. A friend who works in a large London hospital told me two Christmases ago that he felt at times that he was back in one of Jozi’s public hospitals back in the bad post- revolution days, he was having to deal with so many bullet wounds.
Since then we have had horror reports of knifings and stabbings and kids killed by the disturbing phenomenon of binge drinking female street gangs all happening in London, and in many other Pomeranian cities and urban wastelands in the United Kingdom generally. You know when a trend is well established, when such a scene of folk violence is represented on a programme such as ‘Skins’: the new entertainment series from BBC Entertainment. Truly the old axiom that when you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have them seems to apply to Pomerania today… another of Mr Blair’s legacy issues.– hopefully they [the outlaws] are only killing each other.
A city in which the common citizen has been disarmed is now awash with guns, crime, daggers and rapists… not on our scale of course but the trend is up. When I told my medical friend, who once lived in my neighbourhood and is now a migrant worker in a London hospital, that I only occasionally hear gunfire these days from my veranda … in fact less than once or twice a month… where once in the receding past it was continuous all day, he remarked that if I were nostalgic, I should visit the neighbourhood in London where he shares “digs” with other migrant workers from the Philippines, South Asia and West Africa. There the gunfire is routine, he said.
Now we know that what he shared that day two years ago is at last formally true…the spin days are over; The Americans have apparently issued a travel advisory warning their less sophisticated travellers that London is officially a bad place to visit for innocents abroad programmed to believe in the sanctity of life under a British star.
Much safer, I would suggest, to be visiting Jozi, a place in which you are programmed to be careful and we’ve learned to fuss over the safety of travellers.
Cheers
Blogroid
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A moment's silence
A moment’s silence for the victims of the Victorian bushfires.
That was the sign plastered on the screen as I walked into the house this morning at the beginning of the game between a team called the Hurricanes and another called the Warratahs in the opening round of games in this year’s Super 14 professional rugby competition between teams from Oz, New Zealand and the glorious Republic of South Africa/Azania: the blog’s home turf.
The bushfires are a horror story and this bloggist’s sympathies go out to those worthy citizens who were cooked in their homes while watching the Sunday roast simmering in their ovens. Should it transpire that the fires were indeed started deliberately then may the perpetrators rot in jail for the rest of their miserable lives and may they be shagged up the rear twenty times daily during that time, with a mechanical shagger. Why only twenty times you may ask … indeed.
However I felt that a moment’s silence would be more appropriate here at home, for the death of reason. We have this week witnessed the assassination of a crucial part of our judicial system by a collection of miserable party hacks, whose best contribution to the furtherance of our society would have been, never to have been born; failing which may they all die soon… not necessarily roasted; and of course: naturally.
All week I have heard a new mantra being trotted out to rationalise an unruly termination. The head of the National Prosecuting Authority [NPA], one Mr Vusi Pikoli, was fired because of considerations related to NATIONAL SECURITY.
Precisely what it was that constituted a threat to the national security condition was never spelled out notwithstanding umpteen investigations, and so we, the ignorant masses, are left with this conundrum:
Mr Pikoli’s sin was to charge the National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi with corruption. Surely an allegedly corrupt police chief is a threat to national security? Mr Selebi has yet to have his day in court and like a good many other prominent citizens caught with their hand allegedly inside a cookie jar they are fighting all the way to the court room [and in the process creating a great deal of useful democratically inspired precedential law.]
During this same week the Pomeranian [UK] government announced that from next month no person with an SA passport would be allowed into the UK without a new shiny visa. Explaining their reasoning, this week a spokesperson for the Pom local administration offices said it was because our passport control procedures were so lax they effectively posed a threat to the National Security requirement of the Pom government.
Surely this incompetent handling of passports should have all the perpetrators on the carpet for violating national security, since their evil ways are demonstrably more problematic for the country that the arrest of an allegedly corrupt policeman.
Again during the week, the chief executive of the National Airline: an airline that is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer and consistently loses huge sums of money, was ‘sent on leave’, in the words of a pole poster, because of an alleged scandal involving the cronyist issuing of airline food supply tenders to preferred special bidders. This comes after a furore involving the issuance of a shuttle service tender to other alleged cronies, to move passengers from the airport to other venues. It turned out that the winning bidder in the transport case had no transport facilities and consequently had to hire them from the losing bidders, apparently. Maybe they took over the losing bidders. Perhaps the food delivery tender winner similarly anticipates buying up his loser rivals, and using their facilities.
Surely the possibility of mal-nourishing foreign travellers and then leaving them stranded in random places inter-airports constitutes some form of threat to national security? Shouldn’t the errant CEO be fired for causing such havoc? Why does he get to have a paid holiday for so obviously damaging the country’s affairs when Mr Pikoli is to be fired and have his career ruined simply because he did the job he was hired to do? Can you understand the conundrum I face here?
I think we should have a moment’s silence for the absurdity of an unclarified threat to National Security.
On another scale of proportions this week, a man called Julius Malema made a series of speeches in which he serially insulted, firstly a long established figure in the local political lexicon, an Amakosi [Chieftain] called G. M. Buthelezi, whom he described as a Mugabe style dictator and vowed to recruit the man’s relatives to his own party. Then he turned on a minister from his own party, Mrs Naledi Pandor [Min’ of Education] and rebuked her for not attending to educational matters over the closing of a major educational institute, the Tshwane University of Technology [TUT]. [TUT students and staff have been rioting and demonstrating for some weeks. The police broke up demonstratyions with shotguns and rubber bullets which a cameraman caught being fired by a prostrate cripple at point blank range… nasty.]
He then made some needlessly hurtful remarks regarding the Minister’s “fake American accent”… I was uncertain watching him on television making his assertion whether he was being ironic or genuinely believes Mrs Pandor’s ‘toney’ colonial type Received English presentation to be a fake American accent.
He is supposed to have conveyed his apologies unconditionally and privately to Mrs Pandor for what Mrs Duarte, one of the ruling party’s chief spokespersons, called unacceptable rudeness to an elder – Mr Malema is the ageless head of the ruling party’s youth wing: an unruly and demanding part of the party structure, and generally pretty independent of the party from all accounts.
Public opinion seems firmly against Mr Malema.This I noted while following the various phone-in shows randomly whilst driving around the city during the week. Allowing for the possibility that the radio talk back shows orchestrate the responses to support their position, which seems difficult to achieve; then an overwhelming majority found him to be either rude, arrogant or unschooled. Perhaps that latter is why he finds Mrs Pandor’s upper, upper middle class English dialect intimidating: it does that to people.
Now generally I agree with the common view that Mr Malema seems rude, arrogant insensitive and disrespectful. We are after all a society that does the Ubuntu thing which, as I understand it is all about our essential humanness: and thus identification. Every person is my person. Okaay! Way to go. [I don't really understand it. It seems a bit like Zen… the moment you think you can describe it, it becomes something else],
Is Mr Malema however a “Naughty Boy”, as one newspaper demeaningly suggested in one of its headlines this week?
Surely in a free society there is no obligation on any citizen to be polite.
This random idea that the revolting Mr Malema is somehow obliged to show respect to people whom he obviously despises, perhaps, for instance, for: age or class or gender reasons, is inherently feudal: the antithesis of democracy. There is no mention of such obligation in the Constitution.
Undoubtedly we prefer to live in a polite society and Ubuntu rulz in that respect. Even some guys that shot me once said good morning first. We also understand the old movie industry dictum about being nice to people on your way up because you may need them on the way back down again. [We also note the dissenting observation that one meets a completely different class of person on the descent.].
Given all these things, he still has the right to say what he wants, no matter that he is abrasive in his manner. It is his right to tell the truth as he sees it in plain blunt language that leaves nothing to the imagination. In truth his target market is too famished through malnourishment and poverty and endemic unschooled ignorance to comprehend subtlety on any but a limited scale.
They all understand rage.
Ultimately Mr Malema’s boundaries should be determined by the laws pertaining to defamation and libel, on the basis that ‘if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen’. They should not be; and under our Constitution they are not constrained by, any feudal obligations to appreciate “Noblesse Oblige” on the part of those perceived to be supplicant “royals” pursuing actions of which one disapproves.
While referring to Mrs Pandor though I note that her accent seems to be rubbing off in the world overwhelmed by her charges… schoolchildren. During the week whilst boredly channel surfing on my DSTV system, I fixated for its last twenty minutes on an inter-schools dance competition. [What, where, I don’t know: I was surfing.] The programme in which I dropped so unexpectedly was retrospective, featuring short clips of a series of umpteen competing secondary schools, presumably from what are referred to as “previously disadvantaged” areas around the country. Not one name rang even a tinkle of familiarity. Thus I presumed them to be the much despised “township/rural” schools.
Well: Bravo. What a superb series of performances. Each dance routine taking the viewer from some traditional or quasi-traditional heritage interpretation to contemporary Kwaito and MTV inspired hip hop-dance. Given what we are led to believe about 'disadvantaged' schools the moves were mostly good, slick and surprisingly professional in both timing and movement, [notwithstanding that they were inevitably, ultimately, same old same old after the fifteenth or so school]. I would imagine that choosing a winner was a crapshoot [to borrow an American cliché] It was though the carefully rehearsed introductions from a veritable legion of name by name presenters, as each school promoted itself and blew its trumpet, that really blew me away. They were, each and every one of them, pure Pandor.
I imagined squadrons of elocution trainers being despatched from her Ministry to all the country’s model T secondary schools with a mission to extend the use of best practice English, and I joyously guzzled down a bottle of Johannisberger red, in happy tribute to a damm fine twenty minutes and a job well done..
Have a great week
Nik.
That was the sign plastered on the screen as I walked into the house this morning at the beginning of the game between a team called the Hurricanes and another called the Warratahs in the opening round of games in this year’s Super 14 professional rugby competition between teams from Oz, New Zealand and the glorious Republic of South Africa/Azania: the blog’s home turf.
The bushfires are a horror story and this bloggist’s sympathies go out to those worthy citizens who were cooked in their homes while watching the Sunday roast simmering in their ovens. Should it transpire that the fires were indeed started deliberately then may the perpetrators rot in jail for the rest of their miserable lives and may they be shagged up the rear twenty times daily during that time, with a mechanical shagger. Why only twenty times you may ask … indeed.
However I felt that a moment’s silence would be more appropriate here at home, for the death of reason. We have this week witnessed the assassination of a crucial part of our judicial system by a collection of miserable party hacks, whose best contribution to the furtherance of our society would have been, never to have been born; failing which may they all die soon… not necessarily roasted; and of course: naturally.
All week I have heard a new mantra being trotted out to rationalise an unruly termination. The head of the National Prosecuting Authority [NPA], one Mr Vusi Pikoli, was fired because of considerations related to NATIONAL SECURITY.
Precisely what it was that constituted a threat to the national security condition was never spelled out notwithstanding umpteen investigations, and so we, the ignorant masses, are left with this conundrum:
Mr Pikoli’s sin was to charge the National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi with corruption. Surely an allegedly corrupt police chief is a threat to national security? Mr Selebi has yet to have his day in court and like a good many other prominent citizens caught with their hand allegedly inside a cookie jar they are fighting all the way to the court room [and in the process creating a great deal of useful democratically inspired precedential law.]
During this same week the Pomeranian [UK] government announced that from next month no person with an SA passport would be allowed into the UK without a new shiny visa. Explaining their reasoning, this week a spokesperson for the Pom local administration offices said it was because our passport control procedures were so lax they effectively posed a threat to the National Security requirement of the Pom government.
Surely this incompetent handling of passports should have all the perpetrators on the carpet for violating national security, since their evil ways are demonstrably more problematic for the country that the arrest of an allegedly corrupt policeman.
Again during the week, the chief executive of the National Airline: an airline that is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer and consistently loses huge sums of money, was ‘sent on leave’, in the words of a pole poster, because of an alleged scandal involving the cronyist issuing of airline food supply tenders to preferred special bidders. This comes after a furore involving the issuance of a shuttle service tender to other alleged cronies, to move passengers from the airport to other venues. It turned out that the winning bidder in the transport case had no transport facilities and consequently had to hire them from the losing bidders, apparently. Maybe they took over the losing bidders. Perhaps the food delivery tender winner similarly anticipates buying up his loser rivals, and using their facilities.
Surely the possibility of mal-nourishing foreign travellers and then leaving them stranded in random places inter-airports constitutes some form of threat to national security? Shouldn’t the errant CEO be fired for causing such havoc? Why does he get to have a paid holiday for so obviously damaging the country’s affairs when Mr Pikoli is to be fired and have his career ruined simply because he did the job he was hired to do? Can you understand the conundrum I face here?
I think we should have a moment’s silence for the absurdity of an unclarified threat to National Security.
On another scale of proportions this week, a man called Julius Malema made a series of speeches in which he serially insulted, firstly a long established figure in the local political lexicon, an Amakosi [Chieftain] called G. M. Buthelezi, whom he described as a Mugabe style dictator and vowed to recruit the man’s relatives to his own party. Then he turned on a minister from his own party, Mrs Naledi Pandor [Min’ of Education] and rebuked her for not attending to educational matters over the closing of a major educational institute, the Tshwane University of Technology [TUT]. [TUT students and staff have been rioting and demonstrating for some weeks. The police broke up demonstratyions with shotguns and rubber bullets which a cameraman caught being fired by a prostrate cripple at point blank range… nasty.]
He then made some needlessly hurtful remarks regarding the Minister’s “fake American accent”… I was uncertain watching him on television making his assertion whether he was being ironic or genuinely believes Mrs Pandor’s ‘toney’ colonial type Received English presentation to be a fake American accent.
He is supposed to have conveyed his apologies unconditionally and privately to Mrs Pandor for what Mrs Duarte, one of the ruling party’s chief spokespersons, called unacceptable rudeness to an elder – Mr Malema is the ageless head of the ruling party’s youth wing: an unruly and demanding part of the party structure, and generally pretty independent of the party from all accounts.
Public opinion seems firmly against Mr Malema.This I noted while following the various phone-in shows randomly whilst driving around the city during the week. Allowing for the possibility that the radio talk back shows orchestrate the responses to support their position, which seems difficult to achieve; then an overwhelming majority found him to be either rude, arrogant or unschooled. Perhaps that latter is why he finds Mrs Pandor’s upper, upper middle class English dialect intimidating: it does that to people.
Now generally I agree with the common view that Mr Malema seems rude, arrogant insensitive and disrespectful. We are after all a society that does the Ubuntu thing which, as I understand it is all about our essential humanness: and thus identification. Every person is my person. Okaay! Way to go. [I don't really understand it. It seems a bit like Zen… the moment you think you can describe it, it becomes something else],
Is Mr Malema however a “Naughty Boy”, as one newspaper demeaningly suggested in one of its headlines this week?
Surely in a free society there is no obligation on any citizen to be polite.
This random idea that the revolting Mr Malema is somehow obliged to show respect to people whom he obviously despises, perhaps, for instance, for: age or class or gender reasons, is inherently feudal: the antithesis of democracy. There is no mention of such obligation in the Constitution.
Undoubtedly we prefer to live in a polite society and Ubuntu rulz in that respect. Even some guys that shot me once said good morning first. We also understand the old movie industry dictum about being nice to people on your way up because you may need them on the way back down again. [We also note the dissenting observation that one meets a completely different class of person on the descent.].
Given all these things, he still has the right to say what he wants, no matter that he is abrasive in his manner. It is his right to tell the truth as he sees it in plain blunt language that leaves nothing to the imagination. In truth his target market is too famished through malnourishment and poverty and endemic unschooled ignorance to comprehend subtlety on any but a limited scale.
They all understand rage.
Ultimately Mr Malema’s boundaries should be determined by the laws pertaining to defamation and libel, on the basis that ‘if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen’. They should not be; and under our Constitution they are not constrained by, any feudal obligations to appreciate “Noblesse Oblige” on the part of those perceived to be supplicant “royals” pursuing actions of which one disapproves.
While referring to Mrs Pandor though I note that her accent seems to be rubbing off in the world overwhelmed by her charges… schoolchildren. During the week whilst boredly channel surfing on my DSTV system, I fixated for its last twenty minutes on an inter-schools dance competition. [What, where, I don’t know: I was surfing.] The programme in which I dropped so unexpectedly was retrospective, featuring short clips of a series of umpteen competing secondary schools, presumably from what are referred to as “previously disadvantaged” areas around the country. Not one name rang even a tinkle of familiarity. Thus I presumed them to be the much despised “township/rural” schools.
Well: Bravo. What a superb series of performances. Each dance routine taking the viewer from some traditional or quasi-traditional heritage interpretation to contemporary Kwaito and MTV inspired hip hop-dance. Given what we are led to believe about 'disadvantaged' schools the moves were mostly good, slick and surprisingly professional in both timing and movement, [notwithstanding that they were inevitably, ultimately, same old same old after the fifteenth or so school]. I would imagine that choosing a winner was a crapshoot [to borrow an American cliché] It was though the carefully rehearsed introductions from a veritable legion of name by name presenters, as each school promoted itself and blew its trumpet, that really blew me away. They were, each and every one of them, pure Pandor.
I imagined squadrons of elocution trainers being despatched from her Ministry to all the country’s model T secondary schools with a mission to extend the use of best practice English, and I joyously guzzled down a bottle of Johannisberger red, in happy tribute to a damm fine twenty minutes and a job well done..
Have a great week
Nik.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Weblog 17 January 2009
Jozi: Southern Azania/ SA
It’s the middle of the month and Mr O is about to take over the ‘saving of the world’ job in the USA and is aided in his task by a miraculous piece of demonstrable flying skill on the part of an airline pilot called ‘Sully’, not to be confused with a tv character called Scully from a tv series about miraculous and awesome feats. Mazel tov Sully.
In the Middle–East the Israelis have reached the end of their free time, and in order not to rain on Mr O’s parade are declaring a unilateral ceasefire in their Armageddon prelude. Perhaps they are hoping against hope that the stunned Palestinians of Gaza will be cowed into some form of agreement to live better lives than they presently enjoy. I for one shall not hold my breath in anticipation. The ‘rapture’ mob are out calling ‘the end of days’.
The whole Baghdad, Grozny rerun has been an interesting media blitz really. The world stopped while we watched to leaven the vicissitudes of the so-called “silly season”. It didn’t have the same sense of heart-warming joy we all got a few years back from pouring in aid [presumably largely “evaporated” by now] when that wonderfully scripted and timed Tsunami, swamped the south-east Asian region. There are people, I believe, who have just lost all their money, who are still paying off that largesse.
No: this Christmas venture brought no cheer. It was nasty and brutal; and gained the Israelis few friends, even amongst those who understand that brutalising someone is an effective form of deterrence, and must occasionally be given free rein, in situations that are otherwise intractable.
Logic and reason suggests that the disputed territory should be shared. Nonetheless, precedence, evidence: well beyond circumstantial, common histories and uncommon histories all indicate that this is an improbable event. What happened in South Africa was a one off event. The Afrikaner hegemony was broken, the nation split asunder and has been absorbed into a collectivist mindset that has devalued their position considerably. In practice there are many winners, philosophically there are more losers. Who would want to emulate that without causing unspeakable pain for the winners?
Anyway my main thought is about the 800 billion dollars that President O is going to chisel out of the US Congress. Ostensibly the point is to kick-start the American economy with a huge ‘jobs for upgrade’ scheme. It sounds like, and is, a huge amount. However, City Bank took about 300 billion from the State a month or two ago, and now we discover that it has vanished, simply vanished, into Accounting heaven and the hand is out for more: precedents having been set: let us milk the cow.
I can’t help thinking therefore that if 300 billion can simply vanish without trace into this steaming cauldron of global financial stew then what will be the fate of a figure only two and a half times greater.
As a consequence I am sceptical that Mr O’s scheme can have any impact on the American economy, the tide is flowing… [coming in], and just because the king has been replaced on the beach there is no reason for the tide to ebb. I don’t think 800 billion will even touch the surface, and will be gobbled by more as Mr O attempts to inflate his way out of trouble. In a year more or less he will have to raise taxes and then we will understand a slowdown.
At home the interminable saga over the aspirant president in waiting Mr J Z has moved like a bad soapie into extra time and will no doubt drag on. It is either back to court for Mr Z to face more than 700 charges according to press reports or toss his case to the Constitutional Court for final adjudication. On the principle espoused by the late WC Fields [I think] that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” I predict a solid win for Mr Z in the forthcoming election, the date of which is yet to be announced… but may be before the Constitutional court deliberates…
I also think there is a possibility that the governing party could lose the key provinces in the country: Gauteng [ aka Zone One] and also the Western Cape. These are not strong possibilities you understand, more like medium odds, depending on what rabbits the Government can bring out of the woodpile before election day: or what bad news thy fail to bury.
I would imagine that anyone attempting to get something as parochial and mundane as a driving licence test appointment, for instance, would vote for anybody but the government. The latest appointment for the bloggers's child took 52 phone calls and six weeks. And then once you get one [an appointment] imagine standing in a queue at a place like the Germiston testing grounds from 13.45 to 16.20, hoping to pay to confirm a hard won appointment. The line was interminable. It drudged on waiting to be served by a single slow moving cashier, who was wilting under the stress [ not to mention the heat and humidity].
Then at 16.40… after long boring hours of nudging forward one at a time, a supervisor appears and boldly asks why no other cashier point is open… There were a number of points occupied by slow moving uninvolved people, none of which were serving the public. Of course they needed to clear the day’s haul of abused citizens from the halls by 16.30 so they could all go home, hence boldness
Now I can’t imagine too many people wanting to vote for a Party that puts incompetent people in charge of important functions, and then abuses the citizen… however as we know the memory is paper thin and as the old cliché goes “Time will tell”.
Like it’s doing in Zimbabwe which has just launched a One Hundred? Trillion dollar note. How does one even begin to figure out that? Presumably a matchstick costs about a hundred million. The idea of even printing currency in those denominations is a joke… the country is a slave state by default. I remember once hearing Carl Sagan say that it would take forty years to count to one billion, how does one count to a hundred trillion.
I can only imagine we need to poach Zimbabwean talent, since we are apparently doing an ineffectual job of producing our own. It can only be this short sighted idea that provides a sub- text for our curious unwillingness to engage Robert [Bob the Roz] Mugabe and clouds our inaction. Our failure to remonstrate with the bad guy Mugabe has brought catastrophe to our borders and the idea that it can all be fixed with a few aid packages from the UN and a couple of donors once The Roz is nudged aside is a delusion.
Like the delusion that 800 billion is going to repair America.
The good news is that we all had another day of loving.
Cheers.
Jozi: Southern Azania/ SA
It’s the middle of the month and Mr O is about to take over the ‘saving of the world’ job in the USA and is aided in his task by a miraculous piece of demonstrable flying skill on the part of an airline pilot called ‘Sully’, not to be confused with a tv character called Scully from a tv series about miraculous and awesome feats. Mazel tov Sully.
In the Middle–East the Israelis have reached the end of their free time, and in order not to rain on Mr O’s parade are declaring a unilateral ceasefire in their Armageddon prelude. Perhaps they are hoping against hope that the stunned Palestinians of Gaza will be cowed into some form of agreement to live better lives than they presently enjoy. I for one shall not hold my breath in anticipation. The ‘rapture’ mob are out calling ‘the end of days’.
The whole Baghdad, Grozny rerun has been an interesting media blitz really. The world stopped while we watched to leaven the vicissitudes of the so-called “silly season”. It didn’t have the same sense of heart-warming joy we all got a few years back from pouring in aid [presumably largely “evaporated” by now] when that wonderfully scripted and timed Tsunami, swamped the south-east Asian region. There are people, I believe, who have just lost all their money, who are still paying off that largesse.
No: this Christmas venture brought no cheer. It was nasty and brutal; and gained the Israelis few friends, even amongst those who understand that brutalising someone is an effective form of deterrence, and must occasionally be given free rein, in situations that are otherwise intractable.
Logic and reason suggests that the disputed territory should be shared. Nonetheless, precedence, evidence: well beyond circumstantial, common histories and uncommon histories all indicate that this is an improbable event. What happened in South Africa was a one off event. The Afrikaner hegemony was broken, the nation split asunder and has been absorbed into a collectivist mindset that has devalued their position considerably. In practice there are many winners, philosophically there are more losers. Who would want to emulate that without causing unspeakable pain for the winners?
Anyway my main thought is about the 800 billion dollars that President O is going to chisel out of the US Congress. Ostensibly the point is to kick-start the American economy with a huge ‘jobs for upgrade’ scheme. It sounds like, and is, a huge amount. However, City Bank took about 300 billion from the State a month or two ago, and now we discover that it has vanished, simply vanished, into Accounting heaven and the hand is out for more: precedents having been set: let us milk the cow.
I can’t help thinking therefore that if 300 billion can simply vanish without trace into this steaming cauldron of global financial stew then what will be the fate of a figure only two and a half times greater.
As a consequence I am sceptical that Mr O’s scheme can have any impact on the American economy, the tide is flowing… [coming in], and just because the king has been replaced on the beach there is no reason for the tide to ebb. I don’t think 800 billion will even touch the surface, and will be gobbled by more as Mr O attempts to inflate his way out of trouble. In a year more or less he will have to raise taxes and then we will understand a slowdown.
At home the interminable saga over the aspirant president in waiting Mr J Z has moved like a bad soapie into extra time and will no doubt drag on. It is either back to court for Mr Z to face more than 700 charges according to press reports or toss his case to the Constitutional Court for final adjudication. On the principle espoused by the late WC Fields [I think] that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” I predict a solid win for Mr Z in the forthcoming election, the date of which is yet to be announced… but may be before the Constitutional court deliberates…
I also think there is a possibility that the governing party could lose the key provinces in the country: Gauteng [ aka Zone One] and also the Western Cape. These are not strong possibilities you understand, more like medium odds, depending on what rabbits the Government can bring out of the woodpile before election day: or what bad news thy fail to bury.
I would imagine that anyone attempting to get something as parochial and mundane as a driving licence test appointment, for instance, would vote for anybody but the government. The latest appointment for the bloggers's child took 52 phone calls and six weeks. And then once you get one [an appointment] imagine standing in a queue at a place like the Germiston testing grounds from 13.45 to 16.20, hoping to pay to confirm a hard won appointment. The line was interminable. It drudged on waiting to be served by a single slow moving cashier, who was wilting under the stress [ not to mention the heat and humidity].
Then at 16.40… after long boring hours of nudging forward one at a time, a supervisor appears and boldly asks why no other cashier point is open… There were a number of points occupied by slow moving uninvolved people, none of which were serving the public. Of course they needed to clear the day’s haul of abused citizens from the halls by 16.30 so they could all go home, hence boldness
Now I can’t imagine too many people wanting to vote for a Party that puts incompetent people in charge of important functions, and then abuses the citizen… however as we know the memory is paper thin and as the old cliché goes “Time will tell”.
Like it’s doing in Zimbabwe which has just launched a One Hundred? Trillion dollar note. How does one even begin to figure out that? Presumably a matchstick costs about a hundred million. The idea of even printing currency in those denominations is a joke… the country is a slave state by default. I remember once hearing Carl Sagan say that it would take forty years to count to one billion, how does one count to a hundred trillion.
I can only imagine we need to poach Zimbabwean talent, since we are apparently doing an ineffectual job of producing our own. It can only be this short sighted idea that provides a sub- text for our curious unwillingness to engage Robert [Bob the Roz] Mugabe and clouds our inaction. Our failure to remonstrate with the bad guy Mugabe has brought catastrophe to our borders and the idea that it can all be fixed with a few aid packages from the UN and a couple of donors once The Roz is nudged aside is a delusion.
Like the delusion that 800 billion is going to repair America.
The good news is that we all had another day of loving.
Cheers.
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