Vick Momberg, Justice and the Thought Police

South Africa experienced a dramatic leap in the direction of injustice, or, should one say, unidirectional justice, with the sentencing of Vicky Momberg to three years imprisonment for the repeated use of the ‘K-word’ while she was in a state of shock and anger after she had experienced a smash-and-grab attack in Johannesburg. She has today been granted bail pending her appeal against the conviction and the sentence.

The facts of the case are simple. Momberg was stopped in traffic in her car when a Black thief broke a window and stole some goods from it. When she called the Police Emergency, she used the K-word, and then again when she was being assisted by the Police.

There can be no doubt that her aggressive nature was aggravated by the smash-and-grab. These attacks are common in many cities of South Africa, to the extent that motorists, particularly lone women drivers, are repeatedly warned in the Press to beware of men loitering at intersections, particularly exits from motorways. Disregarding these potential attackers is a routine in Police circles. Many motorists near Police vehicles have counted as many as thirty or forty ‘vendors’ loitering in these crime hotspots, all of whom appear to be invisible to the Police. A smash-and-grab attack on one’s car is always expensive, with the window in question having to be replaced, and it is not uncommon for a lone motorist who resists the crime to be physically assaulted with a knife or other sharp object, or with a club. The criminals who ‘earn’ their living in this way do not wish to endure the inconvenience of being arrested and then having to bribe the Policeman in order to continue with the night’s work. A smash-and-grab attack is not a petty crime, yet nothing seems to be done by the authorities to prevent it, and very few, if any, criminals are ultimately brought to book. However, it appears that the use of a single word is enough to galvanize the ‘justice’ system into action.

One can easily understand Momberg’s state of agitation after the crime. The facts of her ‘assistance’ by the Police have not been published, but anyone who has dealt with the Police in South Africa must know that it can be a harrowing experience. Not every Policeman is incompetent or corrupt, but there are enough of those deviants in the SAPS for an average citizen to hold the view that the Police are not there to help you. Virtually everyone has a tale to tell, of being asked for a bribe, standing in a queue in a Police station to report a crime while the cops eat lunch, pick their teeth, sleep or converse between themselves, or getting no reaction to such report. Whatever the facts of the event may be, Momberg’s state of agitation was not ameliorated by her dealings with the Police, and she gave vent to that state by demanding that she be dealt with by a White Policeman. One can only speculate whether that would have improved matters. Generally, a good cop is a good cop, whether White, Black, Indian or Colored, and a bad cop is a bad cop, but even the good cops are not generally known for their intelligence or understanding of the laws. The writer has personal experience of calling three Police Generals to get them to perform their clear duty as set out in a statute, only to be told by the ‘Legal Advisor’ that the Police policy prevents them acting in accordance with the law. An associate was arrested at a order post under a Warrant of Arrest for a ‘crime’ that could not be explained by any policeman, only to find, after spending a night in the filthy cells that the supposed ‘crime’ did not come onto the statur=the books until nearly a year after its supposed commission, and that date of commission fitted neatly into a four-year absence abroad, when it could not have been committed, and that to the clear knowledge of the Captain who swore out the Warrant.

Momberg was ordered by the Equality Court to pay R100 000 to the offended Policeman, and she was then brought before the Magistrates Court for the same offence, and sentenced to three years imprisonment, with one year suspended.

While one cannot sympathize with Momberg, who used a racial slur, one cannot fail to be shocked by these judgments, particularly in light of the fact that no Black, such as Julius Malema (“we’re not threatening to kill all Whites – yet”) and Jacob Zuma (“one Boer, one bullet”, “White Monopoly Capitalists” and numerous others) have been ordered to compensate the aggrieved victim of a racial slur, or been sentenced to prison. It is even more disturbing in the light of the sentence initially handed down to Oscar Pistorius for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, by shooting four times at her through a closed door. He was sentenced to five years, and the parole conditions required that he spend only ten months – less than a third of Momberg’s sentence – in prison. The Pistorius sentence was increased on appeal, when the finding was changed to murder, but it seems to make little sense that a simple word, albeit one that has gained a particular meaning, quite different in post-Apartheid South Africa, from its original meaning, which was quite innocuous, has a greater impact than the intentional firing at close range of four bullets, designed to kill or maim, with the result that a young woman died. The Court also seemed to ignore the effect of the extreme stress in which Momberg found herself after a life-threatening experience. That stress is a normal state for many South Africans, with murder at the highest rate of any city in the world, rapes occurring every four minutes, and a Government that seems to be bent on enriching the few connected persons at the cost of the vast majority of the people. The Court also seemed to ignore the gross disproportionality of the sentence to the offending act, as well as the fact that the ‘victim’ had already been granted a disproportionately high compensation for his suffering – how many of your words are worth R100 000 (nearly $10 000) each, to the person listening to you?

There seems to be no doubt that Momberg will appeal, but the question remains: Have the Thought Police become effective in South Africa, when all other forms of law enforcement, including the Priority Crimes Investigative Unit, the South African Police, the National Prosecuting Agency and even Parliament have proven themselves to be close to valueless in combatting real crime, and when the Minister of Police was appointed after he had been dismissed as Commissioner of Police when he was closely implicated in a number of corrupt leases of Police premises, involving a loss of millions to the Fiscus? Has the precedent now been established that only White people can be racist?

This judgment is the start of a long and slippery slope into a condition of biased and arbitrary laws in South Africa, aimed at the White population (this case is not the first in this line. The Black Empowerment laws have done a very good job of depriving virtually any qualified young to middle-aged White man of employment) This is reverse Apartheid by stealth, one step at a time. This happens at a time when similar laws protecting certain classes of person against criticism are being enacted in several African countries, a time when even the President of the United States can be called a moron by the Secretary of State without a right to redress.

And Africa wants a Permanent Seat on the United Nations Security Council?

Cry the Beloved Country.

Modern Myths

It seems that some political slogans and catch phrases, originally developed to garner votes from the classes affected, have become axioms, statements that are never questioned for truth or validity, and so acted upon without any real understanding of their effect or evaluation of their validity.  Many of them result in substantial structures affecting all citizens and shaping an economy being built upon a base of shifting sand.  The potential for a collapse of disastrous proportions increases as more storeys are added to the structure without any attempt being made to strengthen its foundations.  Some of these are discussed below.

The poorest of the poor.

A large proportion of the funds available to governments are allocated to projects, activities and policies to alleviate the suffering of the poor.  The argument is that the poor are not in that state because of their own fault, and so deserve to be given assistance by the wealthier in an attempt to give them an opportunity to enjoy what the rest of us do.  Funds are allocated to provide medical services, to support their children, to prevent starvation, to provide free housing, free water, free electricity, free or subsidised transport. 

These supports have, almost everywhere, achieved a proliferation of the poor, with exploding numbers of welfare recipients, huge amounts being spent on services, and a rapid growth of the poor population.  Morally, these expenditures appear to be justified, but are they really? 

It is a fact that the numbers of poor increase considerably more quickly than the numbers of well-off.  While Africa has a birth rate in excess of 3,7%, Germany, a generally wealthy country, has a declining population, and the same phenomenon is seen within a country.  The problem that arises here is that the poor are the least economically productive, yet they consume a disproportionate (in economic productivity terms) share of the wealth produced by the society.  The allocation of a portion of the wealth of the society to the poor produces a lower economic return that the same allocation to the more wealthy, and so represents a drag on the economic growth of the society.  While the diversion of a part of the wealth of the country to the poor may be justifiable in different ways, from an economic point of view, the greater the proportion allocated to the poor, the more slowly will the economy of that country grow.  That allocation, in recent times, has increased because the numbers of poor voters have made them an irresistible pool for the governing Party, so that the hand-outs to them per capita have tended to grow, and the numbers have grown at the same time.  In South Africa, the number of recipients of social assistance far exceeds the number of taxpayers, and the ratio of recipients to taxpayers is growing.

If the total of the funds distributed by Government to the poor were to be diverted to investment to grow the economy, the effect would almost certainly be that the economy would grow sufficiently quickly to shrink the numbers of the poor.  Obviously, this could not be done, but the lesson is clear.  The growth of an economy is directly related to the funds invested in it, and the reduction of that investment has a profound effect on the rate of growth, and so on the creation of economic activity that will provide earned income to the participants in the economy.

The other aspect is that social assistance in the form of social grants, such as pensions, support to the indigent, support for children, free housing and services, and similar, provide a magnet to attract those who might have earned a living by subsistence farming, by selling their labour as farm workers, and in similar ways, to the cities, where they do not have the infrastructure or the job opportunities to live a ‘decent life’, requiring that the Government provide free or subsidised housing and services.  Living in this way tends to break down the fabric of the society, resulting in an increase in the number of children born to teenage mothers and to single-parent families, with the result that those children have fewer opportunities to work their own way out of the poverty trap.  An indiscriminate increase of support to the poor, usually undertaken by a Government as a means of attracting their vote, will almost always result in an increase in the number of the poor and so in an increase in the amount of funds, which otherwise would be applied to the development of the economy, being diverted to this economically unproductive use. 

The existence of a number of poor tends to attract an increase in that number and, if not harnessed at an affordable level, it will result in a slowing of economic growth until that growth starts to decline.

The concentration of the Government on the poor is misdirected.  In a team sport, there will be some effort expended on developing a selected group of players with potential, but the greatest pay-off for effort expended will be achieved by improving the quality of the performance by those players who have proven their capability.  So it is in industry and in business.  An undue concentration of effort and expenditure to develop people who have not proven their potential will distract from the development of those activities that are already producing results.  It is much easier to grow a proven business than to develop a start-up business, and the bang for the buck will be much greater in assisting proven businesses and people than in attempting to bring those who do not have any of the skills, experience, capital or developed abilities to the level of those who are already there.  Those with potential will tend to find a way to realise that potential, at least to the extent where the society will find it economically justifiable to expend scarce resources to develop that potential further.  An attempt to force the creation of a potential that does not inherently exist is doomed to failure.  This is even more so in an economy in which there the availability of investable funds is severely limited. 

 

Income redistribution is a moral imperative.

There is no natural law that entitles a person who produces less to take from the high producer.  In Nature, a lion that is an inept hunter starves: he is not subsidised by his more successful colleagues.  An antelope that cannot outrun the predator becomes a meal for the predator:  his colleagues do not attempt to block the efforts of the predator if the result will be that they are eaten.  So it is in less developed societies.  Only when the democratic system comes into play does the need to protect the weaker arise, largely because the people who hold the purse strings realise that, by encouraging the potential voters by transferring some of the wealth of the more successful (and generally fewer in number and so less vote-strong) members of the society to the economically lower performers, those lower performers will vote them into power to continue the redistribution of wealth that they would not otherwise enjoy.  The wealthy generally go along with the redistribution, happy to share their good fortune to a reasonable extent, encouraged by the religious and moral attitudes they absorb as part of their culture.  However, a limit to this largesse is reached when the demands grow to the point that the economic success of the wealthy is threatened by the diversion of too much to the poor, and, often, by the development of a belief by the poor that they are entitled to more as a right based on nothing more than the fact that they are poor.  At that point, the means of transferring the wealth, taxes, becomes oppressive and something to be avoided by any means possible.  At that point, generally, the numbers of the poor are such that the wealthy have effectively lost control of the ability to limit the politicians who use the redistribution to shore up their pool of voters, and so the wealthy are forced to find other means to hold onto what they earn.  This may take the form of tax evasion, of setting up businesses in other jurisdictions in which the rules are more friendly to those earning their wealth, rather than being the recipients of redistribution of the earnings and wealth of others, and, ultimately an emigration of the business to such a jurisdiction, to the loss of the country which believed that the wealthy represent a tied pool of largesse.  This process started in South Africa with the departure of some of the mainstays of the economy, such as Anglo American, SA Breweries and Gencor, as well as the emigration of many skilled professionals, businessmen and industrialists (e.g. Egon Musk of Tesla fame), all of whom could see the writing on the wall.  In many cases, the real reasons for the emigration were not stated, in order to protect what remained behind from the wrath of the politicians, but the result becomes clear over time.  Anglo American is a prime example.  In the past, this company was a driver of industrial development, with a strong interest in more than half of the industrial companies listed to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.  Now it is in the process of downsizing its South African operations to a tiny fraction of what it used to be.  The loss of those companies and people should be a matter of serious concern to the Government, and urgent action should have been taken to stem the outflow, but the imperative to secure re-election by number of votes, rather than by quality of economic performance was too great, and the result is now clear to see – a declining economy, a skills-base wasteland and an economy in crisis.

 

SA and the AU

The announcement that South Africa will fund the operations of the African Union to the tune of R700 million per annum comes at an interesting time. 

The AU leaders have shown great annoyance at the fact that the leader of Sudan, the subject of an international Warrant of Arrest issued by the International Criminal Court on a charge of genocide, should be arrested by South Africa, a signatory to an international agreement binding it to give effect to that warrant.  They have proclaimed that the ICC is intent on bringing African leaders to trial, ignoring all other nations.  They appear to ignore the fact that Angela Merkel and David Cameron are not known to have committed genocide, or to have killed 300 000 of their own people, or to have spent R246 000 000 of public money on their own properties in contravention of their obligations under the Constitution.  They seem to be oblivious to the lack of a civil war in Europe or the United States, in which tens of thousands of citizens are displaced, forcing them to flee to other countries.  They do not seem to understand that criminal charges are brought only in regard to large-scale criminal conduct.

At the same time, Zimbabwe has announced that it is redeeming Zimbabwe dollars at the rate of 175 000 million Zimbabwe dollars for US$5.  The AU is acting at the direction of its President, Robert Mugabe, a dictator who was responsible for the killing of about 45 000 Zimbabwe citizens, and the man who managed to bring the economically powerful nation of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia, named after the man who set the basis for the economic growth of that country, but who has now become an object of hatred and mirth by Mugabe and his sidekicks, Zuma and Malema), to its knees.  A noteworthy achievement of the man who is now the President of the African Union, is the achievement of an inflation rate of five hundred billion per cent!  Is it possible that the people who claim to be the leaders of Africa can look up to this man?  Can they be so blind, so brainwashed, that they cannot see that what he did to his own country will inevitably be the result of following his insane propaganda?  The answer, apparently, is that they do not understand the linkage between the causes and the results that are there for all to see, that they are intent on following the Mugabe route to destruction.

There might appear to be some foundation for the desire of the AU to renege on the obligations of the treaty under which the African, and other, nations agree to hand over those suspected of criminal behavior to an unbiased and just Court for trial for their crimes!

Africa has long been known as a homeland of criminal leaders of nations.  It is almost not possible to list the names of five leaders of African nations without including at least one who is guilty of serious crimes against humanity or against the Constitution of their own countries – Mugabe, Gaddafi, Amin, Bhokassa, Zuma, Mobutu, the list is endless.  The announcement by the AU that the places occupied by the leaders of its constituent nations are subject to diplomatic immunity, effectively removing any meeting of the AU on South African soil from the jurisdiction of the South African Courts and the operation of South African law, is surely unconstitutional, and sets an extremely dangerous precedent.  It will, if applied as seems to be likely also to the South African President, put him above the law, as he already seems to view himself.  It will place all of those parasites out of the reach of international laws that were put in place to protect the citizens of their respective countries, and of their neighbor countries from the consequences of the unbridled power that they arrange for themselves.  It has long been apparent that any leader of a movement who comes to power as a result of violence, whether by military coup or terrorist action, is not capable of abiding by the laws of a civilized nation.  Such people have accepted that might is right, and they have difficulty in transforming their beliefs and understanding of how the world works in a civilized society, in which even the leaders, and most importantly the leaders, are subject to a set of laws which should control their excesses.  It can be no surprise that, even now after more than twenty years of ‘democracy’ in South Africa, members of the ANC, of Cosatu and its affiliated Trade Unions, and of several other ‘struggle-derived’ Parties settle their disagreements by murder and violence, that Jacob Zuma can feel free to rig a series of investigative bodies to come to the conclusion that he does not have to ‘pay back the money’ spent by the taxpayer on his home at Nkandla, that Thabo Mbeki can sit in a Commission of Enquiry into the Arms Deal, in which he and the Speaker of the House of Parliament colluded to prevent any discussion or investigation by the body set up to prevent an abuse of power by the Executive, and deny that any wrongdoing took place, when the Police hold over five million pages of evidence, and the German Police investigation was stopped by a steadfast refusal by Mbeki’s Government to cooperate..  A declaration by the African Union Heads of State that any of their number is immune to prosecution will, after all, only be a recognition of the de facto state of affairs, and make it unnecessary for the individuals concerned to go through the wearisome process of denial of charges and the rigging of investigations into their conduct.

And all the time, the South African economy, teetering on the edge of being downgraded to junk status, in which it will join the States headed by the enlightened Members of the august body of Leaders of African States attending a meeting of the African Union, people like Mugabe, will agree to fund to the tune of seven hundred million Rands per year that body of parasites, the meeting place of people like Mugabe, Gaddafi and Zuma, while eleven million children go to school each day without a decent meal, while thirteen million of its citizens live below the breadline, while ESKOM demands another fifty-six billion Rands of funding to correct the bungles it has made under ANC direction, and while the ANC continues to bleed the country dry.

As should be the case with ESKOM and with SAA, the ANC and the AU should be required to show that it is capable of using the funds paid to them by the taxpayer correctly, efficiently and honestly, before they become entitled to demand more.  They should show clearly and publicly that they use the money for the benefit of the citizens, in a manner that is approved by the taxpayers, before they ask for more.  They should realize that the taxpayer is not a public well with an inexhaustible supply, to be plundered and wasted to soothe the egos of the criminals and the incompetents who, unfortunately, seem to make up the bulk of the members of the spending elite.  If they do not do that, those taxpayers will be forced to follow the example of the Trades Unions and go on strike.  They must understand that the real power of a nation is I the hands of the people.