Donald Trump’s Republicans, Jacob Zuma’s ANC and Pope Francis’ Catholic Church

The people and groups named appear to be a disparate bunch – a renegade Republican President of the United States, a renegade ‘Freedom Fighter turned plunderer of his people and a leader of one of the largest religious organizations. Yet there are many similarities that need to be looked at closely by anyone seeking to understand what is going wrong with our world.

Donald Trump is a president who is proud of his inability to understand details of situations and the nuances that have enabled the world to function effectively until recently. In his world, everything revolves around him. Even truth is what he says it is. He has captured the populist imagination of a group of people very much like him. They see everything in black and white. They do not understand the other sides to each story, and they do not want to understand them. Trump appears to be happy to lead his nation into a bigoted ignorance, maneuvering his way through the facts, blaming others for what is going wrong, ignoring what is clearly failing, in the blind belief in his own incomparable abilities to bluster and blackmail every opponent, including people who would like to help him to achieve the best for his people, into submitting to his will. It is already clear that this President has taken the international standing of his country several large steps backward. He is willing to hand over dominance over, and influence in, the Asia Pacific region to China, by backing out of trade treaties and negotiations which, in his ignorance of the wider context, he describes in his usual exaggerated and uncompromising terms as ‘the worst ever’. He is willing to alienate his country’s closest allies in Europe by his oafish words and his false claims, that ‘they must pay their share of the NATO budget, they must increase expenditure on the military’, disregarding the fact that a large part of expenditure by, for example, Germany, on elements that are not strictly military are designed to avoid the situation that could easily turn those situations into pressing military problems. Roman Herzog, the then-incoming German President, recognized that the way to peace did not necessarily involve artillery and fighter jets when he told the German nation that ‘we must take steps to resolve the problems of Africa in Africa, because, if we do not, they will become European problems.’ Trump, notoriously ignorant in matters of history, does not understand that view. In his eyes, military might is THE way to exercise influence in the world. His background as a student at a military college goes a long way to explain that shortcoming, yet other military men, such as President Jack Kennedy and Senator John McCain, did not suffer from such a defective understanding. They understood that prosperous friends will generally not be willing to sacrifice that prosperity in order to gain a military superiority, a situation which, at best, will be temporary, enduring only until the opponents, fearing the threats contained in a military build-up and working to match that military capability. They knew that a two-times overkill capability, coupled with an active support of friendly countries, and countries that might become friendly, is more than enough to maintain a status in which a potential enemy could recognize that a military adventure would be a sure loss. They knew that diplomacy, not unfounded bombast, was the only way to maintain a peaceful world. They were also able to recognize that courting the association of manifest enemies, to the detriment of proven friends, was to place their country on a slippery slope to global catastrophe.

The fact that the Republican Party has, for so long, tolerated the buffoonish antics of Donald Trump is a question that must raise the suspicions among Party supporters about the leaders of the Party, who are responsible for holding the excesses of the leading Party members in check and forming the opinions of the Party rank and file. It appears that those leaders are not willing to speak out against the most divisive and destructive man in American politics since the McCarthy era.

Strangely enough, the rule of Jacob Zuma in South Africa bears remarkable parallels to the rule of Donald Trump in the United States. Like Trump, he had no hesitation in lying outright to suit his purpose. He had no sense of shame in dividing the nation to achieve his nefarious ends. He had no sense of the damage he was doing to the nation and to those who identified themselves with him, needing only to achieve his personal objectives. Like Trump, Zuma had no understanding of history, or of how the flow of it resulted in the present and will result in the future. Like Trump, he had only the barest understanding of the interrelationship of events, of how pushing here has the potential to bring about a huge distortion there, and he has no feeling of personal responsibility for the outcome of his maneuvering, beyond the desire to achieve something for himself. Like Trump, he relies on native cunning and animal instinct, not on understanding and careful evaluation. Like Trump, he surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men, people who are always reluctant to stand up to the perceived excesses of their chief in the interests of their personal benefit. Like Trump, he was always willing to throw those ‘dear friends and trusted confidants’ under the bus when the time came, and, like Trump, he was unable to comprehend that those people would be just as willing to throw him under the bus when that became expedient in the preservation of their own safety and comfort.

Pope Francis, on the other hand, is an organization man. The Catholic Church continues to hold onto the illusion that it is the representative of God on Earth, that it speaks the words of God and is therefor infallible in its pronunciations. It ignores at every turn the fallacy of this view, disregarding the evidence, or, at best, explaining it as a ‘human failing, excused in each case by a benevolent God. It ignores the long-held Church belief that the Earth was flat, that it was the center of the Universe, that only those baptized by itself were good enough to enter Heaven. It ignores the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition, perpetrated in the name of the Church. It ignores the constant stream of acts of inhumanity perpetrated by the representatives of the Church against children, men and women over many years. It ignores the fact that the Papacy, the very leadership of the Church, acting under the authority of God, was the subject of a competitive tender in the not-so-distant past, that favors of the Church were the subject of payments. The present tour of Ireland by the Pope has shown itself very clearly to be little more than a public relations exercise, planned to boost the flagging membership of the Church in the face of the revulsion against its actions and inactions. The Pope remains unwilling to confess the sins of which it has clearly been guilty, to make public reparation to the thousands, possibly millions of its adherents, for the gross misconduct of members of the Church. The Pope would have the members of the congregation believe that such misconduct was not known to the senior management of the Church. Such a claim is disingenuous in the extreme. At the very least, the supposedly all-knowing God which the Church claims to represent must have made the ‘indiscretions’ of the clergy known to those at the top of the Church, even if it was possible for those responsible for such a well-organized pattern of conduct to have hidden it, in the face of the policy of ‘confession and forgiveness’ exercised by the Church. It is hard to conceive of a situation in which a substantial number of senior clerics, across many countries, could have succeeded in maintaining the lie that had been exposed, over and over, by the people who had suffered at the hands of the Church.

Yet the Pope continues to uphold the fiction that the Catholic Church is the upholder of virtue and spiritual rectitude. He continues to avoid handing over to the criminal prosecution agencies every single priest and bishop suspected of sexual offences against those who entrust their spiritual guidance to the Church. He prays to God for forgiveness for the sins of the Church, yet he fails to pray to the members of the congregation for such forgiveness. Of course, it is easy to pray for forgiveness for such heinous behavior, when you, yourself, claim the right to dispense such forgiveness. If the church were a formal company, the shareholders would long since have sold their shareholding on the basis of being fed such obvious lies and disinformation by the Directors.

What are the grossly obvious similarities between these people and the organizations they represent? Some answers leap out of the facts.

None of the persons in question truly believes that they are responsible for their actions to the people they claim to represent. Every one of them has an ability to interpret the events and their actions solely in relation to themselves, twisting the facts to present a picture that they need to show themselves in the right light. They all have an ability to manipulate the views and beliefs of their constituency to their own ends. They all have enormous power, a power that could as easily be used for good as for the evil that has been their choice, and they all have a hunger for such power, to the extent that they are willing to lie and twist their story to ensure that they are able to hold onto such power, regardless of the views and advice of better people. None of them is prepared to face the world openly, to confess that what they are doing is against the interests of Humanity and of the world. None of them is willing to accept the loss of their leadership role, and the power and wealth (in their terms) that comes with it, in the interests of the greater good.

Worst of all, each of these men and the organizations they represent is willing to continue to inflict on the world the incalculable harm that they have done in the past.

Perhaps the most glaring similarity is that none of these men and their organizations have any discernible set of principles by which to measure their actions and which can truly be said to be devoid of personal interest or benefit. None of them is willing to stand up to wrong if there is any possibility that they will be harmed by such a stand.

In the words of Jo Stevens (‘Connection’ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N1XTDYD): “her dislike for Mr. Jenkins Jr. would not cause her to abandon that principle now. That was what principles were for. If one felt free to abandon them at will, it made no sense to have them at all.”

What is wrong with our world?

It seems that the crisp answer is that the people we allow to represent us do not have principles that are understood and accepted by the majority of us, and, by their example, we allow them to degrade the principles that we as people consider important for civilization to work.

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.

The Death of Democracy

Democracy means different things to different people. The definitions range from a system of government in which the State is responsible for providing every necessity of life, and even many of the conveniences of life, to one in which the citizens are exhorted once every four or five years to vote for a Party that makes promises that everyone knows they have no intention or prospect of keeping. The ancient idea of democracy – that it is government of the people by the people – does not seem to exist and, in fact, probably never did exist. In those ancient democracies, the people who participated in the system were those who had the most to gain or lose from the decisions made by the politicians who acted on their behalf.

In modern times, democracies seem to have evolved into a system of government under which professional politicians are voted into high-paying positions, in which they exercise the power of those positions to gain wealth for themselves with little or no ultimate responsibility to the people who voted to put them there. In most cases, they have earned nomination for those positions not by service to the people, but by service to the Party, which chooses those candidates on the basis of their perceived loyalty to the Party lie, rather than on their capability of making a meaningful contribution to the welfare of the people. In some cases, that nomination is bought by cash contributions, present or promised, or by the offer to make lucrative opportunities available. Generally, the support of the public is gained by extensive marketing, either paid, in the media or by ‘street parties’, or by means of promotion by door to door canvassing. It is seldom that a candidate is elected as a result of realistic, well-considered policy proposals – consider the campaigns by Barack Obama, who stated almost solely ‘Yes we can’, and Donald Trump, who promised to ‘Make America Great’. Neither of these campaigns offered a considered argument or a sound way of honoring the promise, but were based on a denial of the value of the previous incumbent’s achievements. In the case of Obama, the administration was marked largely by ‘more of the same’, with a hesitation to offer any bold moves for consideration by the people, and in the case of Trump, the administration has been marked by a series of lies and obfuscations, bombast and threats, and ill-considered and potentially deadly dangerous decisions, without any consideration being given to a range of expert opinions. In the case of South Africa, the election of Jacob Zuma was based on his selection by a small group of Branch delegates, most of whom had, and have, no understanding of the basic issues involved in the effective management of an economy but who understood well the politics of buying favor with key people by promising lucrative posts or contracts, to be delivered once he was in power.

The examples are legion, and one fact becomes abundantly clear to a dispassionate observer. In all but one of the modern democracies, there is no meaningful participation by the people in the processes of government, or in any important question faced by government, beyond the four or five-yearly election, in which the issues are seldom meaningfully canvassed, and the manifestos of the Parties are carefully blurred, with the intention of accounting for the performance by the winner only in respect of promises and policies which, in most cases by chance, the Party making the promise has at least partially performed, and the elected representatives of the people are selected by the powerful few in the Party on the basis of their capability and desire to toe the Party line. Only in Switzerland can one see a meaningful participation in the activities of the government by the people who put them there.

Why is this so? Why has democracy strayed so far from the original intent?

The first reason is that democracy offers a concentration of power to those who are willing to sell their souls in the gaining of wealth. It is very seldom that one can point to a politician who truly believes that he or she is there for the good of the people. Few politicians leave office with less wealth than they had on taking office. Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, entered office with, reputedly, only a sports jacket and two pairs of trousers, but, some years after he was forced out of office, he died with a sizable fortune, including a farm in the Western Cape, South Africa. Few politicians consider themselves to be bound by their fervently-expressed views when they leave office. Malcolm Fraser, the Australian Prime Minister, often railed against supporting foreign businesses when he was in office, yet, when he left office, he wasted no time in taking the Australia franchise for Volvo, a totally foreign manufacturer that competed head on against Australian Ford and Holden. One cannot help comparing modern politicians with the Popes of old, who tendered for the office of Pope. One does not invest substantial money and effort in competing for a position that merely pays a living salary!

The second reason is that, in the modern understanding, a democracy implies the election of individuals as representatives by the mass of voters. By definition, ‘average intelligence’ implies that half of the measured population has a lower than average intelligence, and the other half an above-average intelligence. However intelligence may be measured, it is known that people with lower intelligence respond better to emotive statements and arguments than to statements that require reasoned evaluation and consideration. They succumb more easily to simplistic slogans and arguments that appeal more to their emotions and unconsidered views. That, of course, means that the speakers who rant, who repeat meaningless slogans, who espouse policies that do not necessarily address the complexities of a modern country, are more likely to be elected. An example in point is the debate on ‘expropriation without compensation’ in South Africa. Why ‘without compensation’? No government in South Africa has ever shied away from using the public purse for any purpose that may suit their book, so why not now? It is clear that this demand is attached to a racialist desire to ‘punish the Whites’. Several surveys have shown that the average Black – nearly 89% - does not want or need land. They do not know how to farm it, and have no desire to do so, and would much prefer a cash settlement of any claim to dispossession of land. However, a repetition of the demand by the extremist Economic Freedom Fighters has brought about an acceptance of the view that there is a desperate hunger for land in the Black population. The fact that giving every Black person a small piece of land (if, in fact, that is the intention, in the face of a statement by the leader of that Party that the intention is for the government to hold that land and grant a lease on it to persons they consider ‘suitable’ to derive benefit from it)is a sure means of condemning a large proportion of the Black population to a life of serfdom, tied to a peasant farming existence, at a time when the world is preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which intellectual capabilities will have to be maximized if the country is to regain its position as a leading industrial nation. The thought that the land held by the tribal Kings and Chiefs – one of the least democratic systems of government possible – brought a quick response from the Zulu King, who, dressed in his animal skins, threatened to break away from the South African Republic. That, in turn, brought a groveling apology from President Ramaphosa, who stated that it had never been the intention to interfere with the tribal lands. He did not state whose lands he intended to interfere with, but it does not take much imagination to conclude that it can only be the lands, and subsequently the other assets, of the Whites, who produce the bulk of the food and wealth, including the economically-productive jobs, in the country. The fact that the Zulu King’s hereditary position is derived from the despotic and blood-drenched subjugation of other Zulu clans by King Shaka only two centuries ago does not seem to figure in any discussion of democracy in South Africa.

A third reason for the non-ascendancy of the principles of democracy is the fact that modern democracies are too large for the average citizen to believe that his or her input, by participation in a discussion or by casting a vote, can have any meaningful effect on the outcome. Even the communities that routinely resort to violence, such as the burning of twenty seven schools in Vuwani in order to force the tarring of a road, forget their anger at the ruling Party when it comes to time to vote, when the sweet-talk and promises that ‘we will do better this time’ carry the day. As a senior SA Communist Party leader said some years ago, if the average voter could read a newspaper, this Party would be out of power.

Probably the main reason why democracy does not work as it should, is that the politicians are empowered, and willing, to transfer the wealth of the society from those who earn it – the taxpayers – to those who vote for them. There is no system of punishment for those who transgress the rules of civilized society. Those who burn schools cannot be forced to pay more taxes to rebuild them because they do not pay taxes. The handing of social grants to 19 million recipients who are indigent is no more than a means of taxing the generators of wealth in the nation to buy the votes of the non-wealth-generating recipients, so reducing the ability and the motivation of the tax-payers to create more economic activity that would assist the present recipients to earn a living. The ‘giving’ of a fee-free university education to those who can’t pay the fees has gone a long way to degrade the value of that education, by cutting research, a critically important function of universities, and by inviting those, who are either incapable of gaining a degree or unwilling to do the hard work that a degree should entail, to take a free holiday for four or five years. The objective of supporting the higher education of the nation could more sensibly be achieved by granting a loan to deserving students, with the condition that the loan would be written off at the end of each year to the extent that the educational achievements required are made. That would permit the deserving students to gain their degrees while not imposing a needless financial burden on the universities and the taxpayers. However, the need to win the votes of the fractious university students overrode the need to achieve the real goal of achieving a better educational standard.

Perhaps the failure of the modern democracy can best be summed up in an old story. A politician on the campaign trail wrapped up an hour-long statement of his promises. “Well, folks,” he said. “Those are my heartfelt policies, but, if you don’t like them, I’ve got others.”

Perhaps the time has come for the voters to demand the right and the opportunity to hear and debate the questions of government, and the selection of all the senior people who will implement the will of the people. At the same time, we need the honesty and goodwill of citizens who are willing to make the decisions for the good of all, even if that costs them some opportunities for themselves.

Vicky Momberg and Justice

South Africa experienced a dramatic leap in the direction of injustice, or, should one say, unidirectional justice recently, 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.

The facts of the case are simple. Momberg was driving 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. 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 known for their intelligence or understanding of the laws.

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? 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.

The Vote of No Confidence

The eighth vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma has been rejected by a margin of twenty-one votes. What does the vote show?

Although the numbers show that a number of ANC MPs voted against the President, 198 MPs voted to keep the most corrupt President the country has known in power. They voted against a background of hundreds of thousands of emails, showing that he and his Ministers, and the people they have appointed to manage the State Owned Entities have been involved in a systematic corruption and robbing from the people of South Africa. They knew that the President they supported still faces 783 charges of fraud and corruption, which he has continued to dodge through his manipulation of the justice system. They knew that the Constitutional Court has declared him to have been in breach of his Oath of Office, and of his duties under the Constitution. They knew that the country is in an increasing state of collapse, as a result of the rampant corruption, the incompetence of Government to do anything effectively, unless it offers personal benefits to the chain of command, and the Marxist policies The President and his followers espouse, disregarding the clear proof that these policies continue to drag down every other country that applies them.

And yet they voted to keep him in power.

It would be reasonable to assume that many of the MPs voted to protect their jobs, the large salaries and the many perks they enjoy, which most of them would be incapable of earning in the real world, where capability and competence are required, rather than slavish devotion to a Mafia-style leader. This highlights the limits placed by them on their commitment to serve the people, rather than themselves. The vote is a clear statement that the majority of ANC MPs are willing to let the country bear the depredations of a corrupt and incompetent leader, provided they can hold onto power and receive their salaries.

The speeches by the ANC MPs before the vote were a mixture of outright lies and misleading statements, highlighting the extreme lack of capability of these people who were, presumably, the best that the Party could muster, given the importance of the debate to them. One notable observation that could be made of these speeches is that they all took the form of propaganda, speaking to the emotions and prejudices of the hearers, without any attempt to address facts and come to a conclusion on the basis of those facts. Those facts, if faced honestly, must lead any thinking person to a view that the present situation is a formula for disaster, and needs urgent and comprehensive correction. That applied, to a large extent, to the speech by the Leader of the DA, which was a disappointment to many of the listeners. It was an opportunity to set out in the highest forum a detailed statement of the derelictions of duty by the President and his Party under his leadership. The speech unfortunately turned out to be a sermon, demanding that the listeners believe and act. One might have expected that, given the background of the man. However, one would expect more from the Leader of the Opposition of a country in crisis.

In summary, the vote of no confidence showed clearly that our politicians are not a credit to the people of the country. The inescapable conclusion is that the country is in desperate need of good men and women, of leaders and representatives of the people who are willing to set their own interests aside, and to really understand what has happened to our democracy, to accept that horrific mistakes and acts of criminality have been made under the disguise of tending for the poor, and to take well considered and unselfish steps to correct what is now patently wrong.

It is highly unlikely that this will happen in a country in which the vast majority of the people are willing to be led by the lure of self-benefit, rather than national interest.

Does the SOE version of BEE comply with the Constitution?

Both Eskom and South African Airways, State-Owned Entities, are on record as having a policy that favours Black-owned businesses in granting of contracts. Those contracts run into hundreds of millions of Rands value, and they are granted to businesses that are owned, according to Eskom, as to 50%+1 by Blacks. Not previously disadvantaged persons, as the South African public was led to believe to be the intention of the Black Empowerment policies, but Blacks. It appears that the State-Owned Entities view the requirement of the Constitution that all persons shall be treated equally, regardless of race, as not being applicable. In case they don’t recall the relevant provision, here is the preamble to the Constitution:

 

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to-

Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;

Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;

Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and

Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

 

The relevant sections are the following:

3. Equality.

(1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

(2)    

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

*(4) No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

 

217. Procurement.-(1) When an organ of state in the national, provincial or local sphere of government, or any other institution identified in national legislation, contracts for goods or services, it must do so in accordance with a system ( 1 ) which is equitable, transparent.

( 2 ) competitive and cost-effective.

( 2 ) Subsection ( 1 ) does not prevent the organs of state or institutions referred to in that subsection from implementing a procurement policy providing for-

 ( i ) categories of preference in the allocation of contracts; and

 ( ii ) the protection or advancement of persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination. j'(3) National legislation must prescribe a framework within which the policy referred to in subsection (3) must be implemented.

 

While there may be an argument that preference should be given in allocating contracts to members of the previously disadvantaged groups, it is clear that a policy of a SOE that ensures that large contracts at grossly inflated prices be given only to companies owned 50%+1 by Blacks is both unduly discriminatory against all other groups of previously disadvantaged, and also economic insanity.

The granting of large contracts to Black-owned companies that already have net assets in excess of R10 000 000 cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as ‘leveling the playing field’, or ‘providing restitution to people who were disadvantaged by Apartheid’. That argument could apply to a contract valued at R100 000, where one could see it as a means of enabling a previously disadvantaged person to get a foot in the door, but when the recipient of this State largesse is a substantial business, that argument falls away, and the concession can only be seen as retribution against the Whites, or as a means of corruption, in which the favoured few are handed lucrative contracts at public expense. There is no shortage of examples of flagrant abuse of this good intention in SOEs like Eskom and SAA.

Even worse, the giving of huge benefits in relation to pricing is economically depraved. A pricing advantage of, say, 10% might be acceptable, if the beneficiary group were seen to be the ones intended under the Constitution, but a pricing advantage of up to 90% above the White or other non-Black competition is both economically and socially unsound. It is unsound in economic terms, because it disrupts severely the operation of the economy in promoting efficiency, ensuring that the least efficient supplier (not to mention the one with the best political connections) provides services to the Government in all its manifestations. It is well known that Governments do not rank high on the efficiency index, and this example of snouting exacerbates that. Under the BBEEE regulations, a price advantage of up to 90% is acceptable, even where the tender is fairly awarded under the law. That, of course, cannot be guaranteed in South Africa. The ANC Government is presently aiming to ensure that the greatest possible share of its R500 billion procurement is misspent under these provisions, implying that the cost of Government will increase in this aspect alone by R450 billion per year! That waste represents 34% of the annual Budget! It is not surprising that the GDP of the country is in negative growth territory. The rapid growth in the number of unemployed, now nearly 28% (probably over 50% of the work-able population), is a clear testament to the effect of this economic insanity. The policy does not seem to have created any substantial number of jobs amongst the poor, presumably those entitled to benefit from the purpose of the exception to the Constitutional right of equal treatment, regardless of race, while it has certainly contributed to the ability of the son of a goat-herder to purchase a palace in Dubai and of his (Indian) friends to reach the top of the list of wealthy persons in South Africa, after having started work as a shoe-seller at a flea market. Meanwhile, the taxpayer subsidises the unprofitable SOEs by transfers or guarantees in the hundreds of billions, while the State heads for insolvency, and the households, mines and industries subsidise the electricity monopoly via an electricity tariff that has increased 400% during the currency of the policy, and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost due to the very high cost of power.

These arguments, of course, ignore the equally disastrous effects of the State driving away thousands of well-wishing investors by imposing impossible conditions for the establishment of their businesses, by stealing huge shares in their business to hand to the connected few, and by demanding bribes to provide even the basic services, such as rail transport.

Any sane person wishing to invest funds in a country where they can expect fair treatment would do well to strike South Africa off their list of investment destinations to consider.

Susan Shabangu hits the spot

For once, a Minister in Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet has made a statement which practically every South African can accept. Susan Shabangu, the Minister for Women, today made a statement about the true state of affairs in South Africa.

“The situation in South Africa is not right!”

Hmm, well, yes. It’s about time someone in the ANC Government has noticed that.

“There is evil in South Africa.”

Now you’re talking, madam Minister.

“It seems that the Devil is loose in South Africa. We need to do something about it.”

How did this usually obtuse Minister know that? She must have been listening to my informant, a driver for a motor dealer, who ferries me from the dealership to my office while they work on my car. He has told me his opinion, and that of many of his friends. This Black gentleman, a man truly deserving of the designation, has a firm opinion on the cause for the devastation brought about in the politics, the economy and the racial relationships of South Africa in recent years.

“That man is evil,” he said. “I think that he must be the Anti-Christ. He promises us many good things, but he brings nothing. He lies, he misleads, he causes problems between us. He talks of God blessing him and his Party, and yet, look at what he does.” He thought for a minute as he steered us carefully through the heavy morning traffic. “I think he is the Anti-Christ.”

I nodded my head in understanding. I can understand his reasoning, but, the Anti-Christ? Is that not a bit extreme? Even so, I feel desperately for this good man, for the fact that he feels compelled to tell me, a White, that his leader, the man who has appropriated the mantle of near-holiness that enshrouded Nelson Mandela, is the worst of all possible men.

And then Susan Shabangu made it all clear to me, and to the nation. She must be close enough to the man to know him. And she has said it in unambiguous terms. “There is evil in South Africa. It seems that the Devil is loose in South Africa. We need to do something about it.”

There is a saying, that the fish stinks from the head. The top man in an organization sets the tone for all his subordinates, and they follow that lead religiously. We have clear evidence of that in South Africa. It is practically not possible to talk with people without the subjects of economic collapse, racial tension and corruption coming up. They are like the weather. Everyone talks about them, but no-one feels that she can do anything about them. It seems that the problems are just so huge that no single person can do anything about them. And the worst of it is that practically everyone feels the same. Blacks and Whites do not hate each other. In fact, with the rare exception of ANC or EFF-motivated weak minds, they get on well together, and they want nothing more than to have those lunatics stop blathering about their differences, so that they can put their shoulders to the wheel and rescue our shared country from the bleak depths it seems to be headed towards. There are no differences. We are all South Africans, and let’s leave it at that. When Zuma blathers on about how evil the Whites are, how White Monopoly Capital is at fault for the unemployment flowing from the insane Communist policies of the ANC, how he and his Party have a policy to fight corruption, we all, Black and White, feel like throwing up, not because the statement has even a semblance of truth, which it does not, but because he occupies a position that we should all respect. And cannot. And now we know, from the horse’s mouth, why that is so.

I hope that Susan Shabangu survives long enough to tell the ANC NEC about it. And that they are not yet so ensnared in his wiles that they can believe her. Phineas, the driver, and his friends will be ready to confront the Anti-Christ if that is needed to save our beloved country from the evil that has beset it since Jacob Zuma became the President. As will I. We would all be willing to give our lives, if, by doing that, we could make the country what it should be, for our families and friends, All of them, Black and White.

I hope that it will not be necessary. We will know by next week.