Let’s allow Jacques Rousseau at Synapses.co.za to explain for those who have a mental age below 5, shall we?

It simply highlights the fact that some people would look twice at an inter-racial couple, and reminds viewers of the poster that in the ideal DASO future, this wouldn’t happen.

While it has certainly got (some of) South Africa talking, as I said, the chatter is all rather depressing and I really don’t feel like joining in.
Fortunately, an amusing internet meme (which I am happy to propagate) appears to have risen from this general nonsense and added some amusement to the otherwise miserable proceedings:

Click images to upsize your viewing experience.

UPDATE: Oh – and Jacques sums it up just perfectly here:

What this sort of thing goes to show is that if you want to find a problem, you’ll do so – regardless of the intellectual contortions necessary.

Yep.

UPDATE 2: A point proven by this from the CDP’s Theunis Botha:

In a country with high levels of Aids and an overdose of crime, especially the high incidence of farm murders this year, this poster sends the opposite message to the country than needed.

Yes, when a white man hugs a black woman, farm murders happen. And God kills a kitten.

]]> http://6000.co.za/not-looking-twice/feed/ 2 http://6000.co.za/political-soundbites/ http://6000.co.za/political-soundbites/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:15:56 +0000 6000 http://6000.co.za/?p=7680 Here’s Alex Perry (you may remember him from such articles as “Why Cape Town’s Woodstock Rocks“) in Time Magazine with a scathing piece detailing “How The ANC Lost Its Way“.

To be honest, there’s not a lot of new stuff here for the local audience – we are used to the cut and thrust of the South African political scene around the facts and alleged facts that Perry details. But for the international audience, it must make interesting reading. And two sentences (highlighted in the DTP version of the article) particularly resonate in Perry’s argument.
Firstly, the words of Tumelo Lekooe, a 20 year old street sweeper in Bloemfontein:

I don’t know why we still vote for them.
It’s our grandparents. They say we are here only because of the ANC.

and then Perry’s explanation of the ANC’s continuing electorial success:

With such an underwhelming record in office, how does the ANC win elections?
By invoking its legend.

The DA, our official opposition party, has a good ”better” record on service delivery (or at least, its record is better perceived) , but it has yet to make that record – or that perception – count anywhere outside the Western Cape. That’s because it has the dual obstacles of its (again, perceived?) “white” party status and the massive and emotional history and legend of the ANC to overcome.

That said, it’s widely expected that they will overcome those obstacles, prompting these ominous words from journalist Gwynne Dyer:

The election in 2014 will probably be the last in which it can hope to win a parliamentary majority honestly.
The most important crisis in South Africa’s history will occur when it loses the election after that. Only if the ANC then goes meekly into opposition can we conclude that South Africa really is an exception to the rule that liberation movements don’t do democracy.

The ANC announced at the weekend that it has surpassed 1,000,000 members. But as Perry and Dyer both state, it’s the growing number malcontent amongst the ANC voters that will mean that the political landscape may already be very different by the time those 2019 elections come around.

So all the UK is isolated from is an impending disaster: the eurozone will fragment with countries leaving and debt defaults. It is like being as isolated as a man who failed to get onto the Titanic before it sailed.

That’s from Terry Smith in The Telegraph and comes via Perry de Havilland at Samizdata and is a good reminder that being the odd man out isn’t always a bad thing.

Currently, SA law only made provision for fines of about R200 for failing to use seatbelts, Carlisle said – and children were not differentiated from adults.
He said the provincial government wanted this increased to between R4 000 and R6 000 per child, which was in line with countries such as Britain, the US and Australia.

This is, without doubt, a good idea.
The statistics stated within that report are horrendous and include (but are not limited to):

• 85% of parents do not strap their children in.
• Road accidents remain the top non-natural killer of children in the country.
• Between 200 and 300 children treated for trauma at the Red Cross hospital every year, between 70 and 90 percent had been injured in car crashes.
• About 8 000 children die each year on the roads.
• About 89 percent of those taken to the hospital for treatment had not been wearing seatbelts at the time of the crashes.

So of course, I’m fully in support of any steps taken to reduced these injuries and fatalities. Who wouldn’t be? Reinforcing the laws around kids and seatbelts is a good idea and upping the fines for those who don’t comply is a no-brainer.

The trouble is that it’s illegal to talk on one’s cellphone while driving, to speed and, in fact, to not wear a seatbelt yourself. It’s illegal to drive while under the influence of alcohol. But people still do it. And they do it because they can – and do – get away with it.
Remember this?

The spokesman for Cape Town Traffic Services, Kevin Jacobs, said 4 184 drivers in six months had been fined for the unlawful use of a cellphone while driving.

From which I calculated this?

4,200 in 6 months. That’s 700 a month. Or 24 a day. 1 an hour.
In a city with 3,000,000+ inhabitants. It’s a drop in the ocean.

So the laws are there, but the fact that they’re just not enforced means that the driving public feel that they don’t have to obey them. As Mrs El Presidenté said of the “Buckle up your kids, or pay” article, on Facebook:

Nice idea, but exactly how are they going to police it?

And I agree: this is pretty much worthless without backup. However, I’m also aware that the first step is to at least have decent laws to enforce. At the moment, we don’t even really have that. So this is a move in the right direction.

But perhaps a better way of making the roads a safer place to be is to change driver attitude and raise awareness of the effects of poor or illegal driving practices. And Robin Carlisle has made plans here too, with the new Crash Witness website, featuring genuine CCTV footage of accidents on the Province’s highways.

Described as:

Not for sensitive viewers /Ayilungiselelwanga abaButhathaba / Nie vie sensitiewe kyker nie

it is obviously designed to encourage drivers into thinking before they engage in dangerous driving. When I visited the site yesterday and again this morning, the videos refused to play – which merely served to encourage a lot of frustration here Chez 6000. I had to have a couple a Red Bulls to calm myself down before hitting the M3 into town.

I very much doubt that it will be possible to measure the results that Crash Witness may/will have in the Western Cape. I presume that beneficial effects from this type of thing have been shown elsewhere. But again – anything which improves the safety of our roads has got to be a step in the right direction.

What do you think? Do you buckle your kids up when you are driving? If not, why not?
Do you use your cellphone at the wheel? If so, why? What would make you stop?

Taxi!

Julius et al have 14 days in which to appeal, but the individuals sitting on the appeals committee – chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa, and consisting of National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, national executive committee member Jessie “Happy Happy” Duarte and former public enterprises minister Brigitte Mabandla – won’t be looking too appealing to him: Comrades all, but no allies in sight. Although, as political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi says:

Members of the committee should set aside their personal feelings about Mr Malema should his case be brought before them. It is not because of individuals that the committee will rule in a particular way.

They will reverse the decision of the disciplinary committee if they think the committee did not apply its mind properly and uphold it if they think the committee applied their minds.

Interesting times ahead in South Africa. As ever.

Cuadrilla, the gas exploration company drilling for shale gas in Lancashire, has announced its discovery of 200 trillion cubic feet of gas – a seriously big find.
If only a tenth of that were to be produced, it would still make it far larger than any gas field discovered in the North Sea, with the added benefit of it being accessible from dry land.
It represents a potential lottery win: not just for Cuadrilla, but for UK plc as a whole.

And here we are talking about 200 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas.
South Africa’s shale gas deposits are estimated to be at least 450tcf. That’s 450 000 000 000 000 cubic feet of gas. Putting that into some sort of perspective, Mossgas, the successful refinery in the Southern Cape, was built on the assumption that there was just 1 (one) tcf in deposits under the seabed.

The article continues:

Recent shale gas discoveries in the US have already transformed the North American gas market, changing it from a net importer to a net exporter in just two years, and significantly lowering gas prices there. If the Lancashire discovery turns out to be even remotely as big as has been announced, the UK will be in a position to keep its lights on cheaply – and cleanly – for a very long time to come.

Yes – locally produced shale gas means cheaper, cleaner energy.

The technology for shale gas production is controversial [including] the alleged – but disputed – potential for contamination of groundwater. Again, if the amounts of gas are as large as stated, the highest environmental standards could be imposed on its production and it would still be profitable.

Because abundant shale gas undermines the case for subsidising nuclear and renewable power generation, it faces a well-funded hostile lobby, keen to play up any negatives it can find.
Lurid films of gas-flames shooting out of bath-taps in America have comprehensively been shown to have nothing to do with shale gas production (it is a naturally-ocurring phenomenon in part of the US) but they capture the public imagination.
We can therefore expect largescale anti-shale gas protest from a range of vested “green” interests.

Indeed. I wonder if the British-born Lewis Pugh will take time out from poking his nose into other country’s affairs for long enough to “save” his homeland from an economic boom and cheaper, greener energy like he is trying to do here in South Africa.

This month was different, however.  This month featured opposing columns on fracking in the Karoo (see 6000 miles… passim) from rationalist Ivo Vegter and greenie Andreas Spath. Probably nothing they haven’t already shared in tens of thousands of words on the subject online, but you never know. And so I bought, and I made a Big Issue seller smile. Which was nice.

But oh dear. The progressive stance of allowing a pro-fracking column within their esteemed pages was tempered almost completely by the fact that they chose  put it behind this cover:

Described by Editor Melany Bendix on their website thus:

The illustrated cover features a gas mask-wearing meerkat and his sheepish friends in an imagined post-fracking Karoo setting. “Although this is, of course, a very serious topic, we decided to go with an illustrated and rather ‘cute’ cover to lighten the topic somewhat”

Some of you who may be inactive on the internet over weekends may have missed the fact that I disagreed, and that I tweeted so over the weekend:

But apparently, I was wrong as I got a reply to my tweet from @BigIssue SA:

Ah – the old “making light of the fracking ‘hysteria’” defence, beautifully employed there. And while I agree that people reading the articles will have the chance to make up their own minds, there will be literally millions of others passing through intersections all over the country who will merely see the word “FRACKING” in glorious red graffiti, together with a meerkat in a gas mask, all set against a “post-fracking Karoo” backdrop, for the next four weeks. It’s pretty impressive propaganda, as far as I’m concerned.

And so, dear readers, I have assembled some of the greatest minds worldwide and I am asking them to apply themselves to this issue (NPI). Those minds are yours, my friends. Is this cover biased or is it merely “making light of the fracking ‘hysteria’?

I’d love to hear your opinions.

But why wouldn’t the South African population sling insults around at each other the whole time when those individuals who are elected to positions of responsibility are at it the whole time as well? Honestly, it’s like little kids in a playground, but with real and damaging implications for the country. Like I said, depressing.

And yes, I cc’d Helen Zille on a tweet about this, which I found on a Port Elizabeth DA Councillor‘s timeline:

and it now seems to have disappeared rather rapidly. Which is nice.
UPDATE: Nope – must have been a welcome temporary glitch – it’s still there.

Cue the liberals telling me that after the Malema “Shoot The Boer” verdict, “it’s a slippery slope” and that freedom of expression is being eroded. I feel that they are missing the point.

And that point is this. In my humble opinion, those individuals elected (by whoever) to positions of responsibility, should be act responsibly. Is “Shoot the Boer” really hate speech? Does the image above, captioned “How about this?” amount to incitement to violence? Or should we be asking different questions, like: What does it achieve when role models sing Dubul’ iBunu? How does it help when elected officials put images of prominent and controversial figures in a sniper’s crosshairs into the public space?
And yet these individuals make a conscious decision to do these things. Why? Where is the value in that?

It’s more than just the lack of any positive worth in these actions that depresses me. It’s the fact that these things are divisive and harmful and yet they are completely avoidable. Julius Malema, Councillor Greyling et al simply need to make better decisions.
So, rather allow Malema to sing Dubul’ iBunu and then rejoice when he chooses not to. Don’t stop Mr Greyling publishing dubious pictures on his public twitter stream, be happy when he thinks first and rather sticks the image in his trash can.

Hey! It’s ok.
I do recognise that these are just Utopian pipe dreams. I do understand that it’s not going to happen.

But rather than taking pot shots at each other across the great divide, why not just think before you act? Why not just be big enough to put aside emotions, sit down and talk?
My 5 year old son is getting good at doing these things.
Is it really too much to expect politicians to do it as well?

Of course, “Braai Day” is actually held each year on Heritage Day: “a Public Holiday on which South Africans across the spectrum are encouraged to celebrate their cultural heritage and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people”, but those complaining that the celebration has been hijacked by Jan Scannell and Desmond Tutu should note that their “Braai4Heritage” project does have the backing of the National Heritage Council.

And let’s face it, without their call to braai, we’d all just sit at home and watch the footy on Heritage Day – or er… have a braai.

In a speech at the Black Management Forum young professionals’ summit in Cape Town last week, he threatened the usual people (“Stellenbosch mafia”, government, the DA etc etc etc) with the  usual stuff: We will make SA ungovernable, we will close every street, blah, blah, blah.

And then he threatened something else that made everyone sit up and notice:

If there is a cheese in your fridge, they are going to take it

They’re going to what?!?
Look, as much as I like my countries governable and my streets open, I can manage for a short while if things have to change. But when you start threatening to take the cheese from my fridge?
Well, that’s going a bit too far, Mr Lungisa.

Why not rather begin at Checkers with their much-advertised Cheese World? After all, they bring you more than 400 cheeses to choose from. I’ve just had a quick peek in my fridge and all I’ve got is a bit of week-old Gouda.
Mind you, maybe it doesn’t actually matter what sort of cheese it is, maybe any cheese will do? (There’s a song in there, somewhere…)
Will the issues you have raised only be sorted by a decent Gruyere or a mature Roquefort? Do younger fridge raiders have to go for the Mini Babybels? So many questions.
Anyway, if it’s going to take something a little different to pacify you, Checkers say that if you can’t find the cheese you’re looking for, they’ll find it for you.

Once they’ve got the requisite cheese in their fridge, then you can go and take it.

I accept that youth unemployment is a big issue in SA and that it desperately needs addressing, but I fail to see how the theft of dairy products from private individuals is going to assist this cause. If the youth really do need cheese, why not help them out with a bit of brie bought with some of the R350,000,000 that the SA government gave your organisation this year?
Maybe chuck some cheddar in from your fat R800,000 annual salary, Andile.
I daresay that you might be able to sling in a couple of Salticrax their way as well (after payday, obviously).

But you leave my cheese alone, right?

Sorry. That last line may have seemed a little threatening, angry; a little hot-headed.
But that’s my week old Gouda, ok?
Look, as a gesture of goodwill, Andile, I have signed your email address up for the cheese.com “The #1 resource for all things cheese” “It’s all about the cheese!” newsletter.
I trust that with their expert assistance, you and your organisation can remedy this country’s ills within no time at all.
Good luck.