ANC – Page 3 – praag.org

Malema promises to shut down Joburg businesses

Julius Malema, EFF leader is planning a mass action that will shut down businesses in Johannesburg when his supporters return to protest against the ban on overalls in the Gauteng legislature.

According to the Sunday Times, Malema’s planned protest will make Tuesday’s chaotic rally look like a picnic in the park.

In an interview with the newspaper, Malema said: “We will shut down business in this Johannesburg. Once business in Johannesburg is shut down, it means business in the whole of Africa has stopped.”

Malema told thousands of supporters on Saturday at Thokoza Park in Soweto that celebrated the party’s one year anniversary, of the ANC shortcomings.

“Even if they die, there is nothing you will remember about them except that they were making babies,” said Malema.

He said the formation of the EFF had shaken the political landscape in the country and the ANC was feeling the pressure being exerted by the organisation.

“… Now you can’t listen to the media without the mention of the EFF. That is because EFF is a giant,” Malema said.

“We don’t care what people wear. We care about their will to resolve issues of people on the ground. We want people who think and not ‘domkops’ (idiots) from the ANC,” said Malema.

Source: News24

Current activities of ANC and Communists in SA

By Johann Theron.

It is known that the ANC driven Government of South Africa has opposing external to internal relational policies.

Its general purpose is to confuse both the foreign investor and local citizen. However, according to the ANC’s website – the NEC (National Executive Committee of the ANC), calls for the following:

“—destroy the old order”

Clearly they have been advantaged by the old profitable order, but they plan on moving forward soon to destroy it in exchange for an as yet undefined socialism without it actually being a socialist approach. This “officially” comprises the development of jobs through micro-, medium, large companies and cooperatives to be sponsored by the Post Office.

On the other hand the Umsebenzi Online available from the SACP website describes how the world battle for hegemony should locally be engaged via a more robust SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation), with certain implications for other local media organizations (and news sites).

It is quite clear that the SACP is more intellectual, where it even attempts to describe the entire “world balance of forces” leaning towards the left – something Albert Brenner from Praag touched on earlier.

In this same period a recent BMI Strategic Workshop was held with some 100 white haired white gentlemen with facilitators like Llewellyn Lewis and presenters like Theo Venter from North West University. During the day interesting statements were made such as that the general discourse is determined by the small parties with the EFF on the one side and FF on the other.

A well-known (local Indian) economist with “political connections” was asked why the government is going the wrong way despite being advised correctly, pointing to low growth figures compared to countries across its borders. His answer was that the ruling party simply does not have the capacity to understand such advice.

Connecting the dots described above paints an uneasy picture, sometimes known as a “scenario”. Various such scenarios have recently seen the light of day, delivered by the likes of by Frans Cronje and Sampie Terreblanche, and before them Clem Sunter.

Someone said the discourse is determined by the ruling class, and maybe they believe that and want that to be true, but the private sector communications and technological advantage rules the roost, because the infrastructure is independent of the State.

Therefore, while Venter and his ilk are entertaining a highly educated crowd, the fact of the matter is that the old order is going to be destroyed and the only advantage we have is to communicate more effectively.

Not tomorrow like the typical State Owned Enterprise, but today, like driven private and commercial citizens.

Modise bought farm for boyfriend

Abdul Mogale, is Thandi Modise’s former boyfriend and an ANC councillor for the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality, neighbouring farmers told amaBhungane.

The black former ANC premier Modise has been charged with the death of up to 80 animals and euthanasing of a further 117 by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) after they had been denied food and water for two weeks.

Modise purchased the 488 hectare farm with a R4.9-million Land Bank loan in 2011 for her black boyfriend say insiders.

Farmworkers aslo claim they had been underfed and underpaid, and that they had begged for food on the black-owned farm.

The former romantic relationship between Modise and Mogale was confirmed this week by Modise’s spokesperson Neo Moepi.

Long-term neglect and plundering of the farm was evident when amaBhungane visited the farm.

The ANC is currently pushing for laws to disown white farmers, much like in Zimbabwe where the black landgrab has resulted in famine.

According to the SPCA and a well-informed veterinary source, the pigs had been underfed for longer than two weeks.

Neighbours also said that the cattle on the farm had gathered at the electric fence around the farm, well before the SPCA’S intervention, desperate for food and water.

The desperate starving pigs could be heard squeeling for water from kilometres away.

Andries Venter from the SPCA said various things pointed to long-term neglect that would be probed for a possible criminal case against Modise. “There is definite evidence of overall neglect that has gone on for months,” he said.

The water pumps were out of order and amaBhungane saw fences in disrepair. According to Daan van den Berg, the farm’s previous owner whom amaBhungane interviewed this week, the pump failure was because of an electrical short circuit that the SPCA asked him to rectify.

Modise suggested that the water and electricity supply to the farm had been cut off, saying that she wanted an investigation to determine who had done this.

Previous owner Van den Berg said that on two occasions shortly after Modise bought the farm, Mogale had asked him to source feed for the pigs. Mogale did not explain why he could not source the feed himself.

Van den Berg said the tractor and implements he sold with the farm did not seem to have been used for years.

Source: M&G

Black ANC official commits ‘worst farm cruelty’ with scores of dead animals

Police and officials from the SPCA have found animals either dead or starving at a Potchefstroom farm belonging to former North West premier and newly-elected National Council of Provinces chairperson, Thandi Modise.

It appeared that the over 100 pigs, sheep, chickens and goats had been without water and food for a week, possibly two.

The SPCA was called to Thandi Modise’s farm in the North West after receiving a tip-off that animals on the land had been abandoned. What they found shocked them.

Andries Venter of the SPCA said, “It’s the worst farm cruelty that I’ve come across in the twenty years that I’ve been with the SPCA. Its horrific. We’re all at a loss for words.”

He said, “From the carcasses that we’ve seen and confirmation from the vet it could be seven days. But the information that we have is that the farm has been abandoned for two weeks.

“However, we found carcasses which are strewn around the property which indicates it has been going on for much longer than two weeks.”

The SPCA decided to euthanise the remaining pigs on the farm after it was discovered they were cannibalising the dead pigs.

Attempts to dispose of sheep carcasses by workers brought in after the grisly discovery led to a fire on the farm.

Modise has owned the property for several years.Her associates, who were on the farm, claim the farm manager left his post to deal with a family emergency and his interim replacement had disappeared, leaving the farm with no water or electricity and the animals to fend for themselves.

Modise did not respond to several requests for an interview.

The SPCA intends to open up a criminal case against Thandi Modise. It says as the owner of the farm she remains ultimately responsible for the cruelty that occurred.

Source: eNCA

SAIIR says state actively discriminating against whites

Public service managers are being encouraged to keep posts vacant rather than fill them with whites, an SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) says.

“In the name of transformation, managers in the public service have actually been incentivised to keep whites out for racial and ideological reasons. Better to leave a vacancy unfilled than to put a white person into it,” SAIRR consultant John Kane-Berman said in the newsletter, published on Tuesday.

He said this was a “lose-lose-lose situation” and “madness”.

In the newsletter, Kane-Berman was responding to the death of three babies in Bloemhof, North West, due to water contamination caused by a sewage spill.

Earlier in June, the SAIRR reportedly blamed affirmative action for the deaths, and said the policy should be scrapped.

The institute said black empowerment policies had seen unqualified people appointed to positions where their incompetence affected poor and vulnerable communities.

“The Bloemhof municipality lost its capacity to maintain the sewer plant,” chief executive Frans Cronje was quoted as saying at the time.

“There is no doubt that the officials responsible for these deaths were appointed, at least in part, on grounds of race-based affirmative action and that a direct causal link therefore exists between the policy and the deaths.”

Kane-Berman said those appointed to posts were unqualified and were appointed only because they are black.

“Posts are sometimes left vacant if the only person available to fill them is white. It further means that experienced people who happen to be white get out of the public service because they are denied promotion or encouraged to take early retirement.”

The problem is further complicated by a lack of accountability in government, with politicians accountable to party headquarters, rather than to the electorate.

“People who fail to do their jobs, or who defraud the state, do so because they know they can get away with it,” he said.

The mix, he said, was toxic.

“Our system of government is indeed poisoned by a toxic mix of affirmative action, cadre deployment, and impunity.

“Filling a racial quota or supporting the right party, or the right faction within it, are often more important.”

South Africa was suffering from a crumbling health system and a rising disease burden, he said.

“Hospitals and clinics don’t run themselves. They are run by people. When things go wrong… it is not the result of happenstance or bad luck or just one of those things. It is the result of decisions made or actions taken, or not taken, by those people.

“So it is a logical inference that something is wrong with the criteria according to which appointments in these facilities are made.”

He said healthcare management was in crisis, infrastructure and equipment in health facilities were in a desperate state, facilities in rural areas faced dire shortages, and those in urban areas were under severe strain due to a growing population.

“Again, it is a reasonable inference that affirmative action and cadre deployment in the public service compound the problems arising from the country’s skills backlogs, and failure to train government professionals,” he said.

Kane-Berman said anger at nepotism, corruption, and lack of accountability were behind numerous protests across the country.

Quoting from a report by the Commission for Employment Equity, he said Africans presently held 69 percent of top management jobs in government.

“But Africans within the 35 to 64 age cohort from which one would expect top managers to be drawn make up only 36 percent of the economically active population, while only 4.1 percent of over 20s have post-school training.

“This suggests that affirmative action has been rigorously implemented in the public sector regardless of levels of experience or formal qualification.”

He said it was widely recognised that South Africa was plagued by corruption, nepotism, incompetence, and lack of accountability.

“A few people are beginning to identify cadre deployment as a problem. Very few people are willing to identify affirmative action as part of the problem,” he said.

“South Africans need to wake up to the tragic results of the policies being implemented in their name.”

In the shadow of the red buffoon

South Africa has just set a new record for itself in terms of public lunacy, which is not really surprising. Ever since the ANC took over they’ve outdone themselves many times in terms of foolishness.

This time it concerns the corpulent firebrand Julius Malema who made his first speech in the House of Parliament on the 18th of June. This brand new MP shuns the idea of wearing neckties or pressed suits, and prefers to be seen in red coveralls, effectively heightening his status as laughing stock of South Africa’s new ruling elite.

Julius Malema has already been much caricatured and lampooned by cartoonists and other public figures, even in his years as leader of the ANC Youth League. Regardless of his flair for red berets and coveralls, he certainly is not a man of great talent. In fact, if this one trick pony has any talent at all, it would be to rile up the masses of unskilled, ignorant and bloodthirsty peasants, something he appears to be quite good at. While on the one hand demanding that whites should speak an African language, he prefers to give his own speeches in English, probably due to his white English speechwriter’s inability write in Sotho – Malema’s mother tongue – or any other African language.

I recall an incident in primary school during those bad old days of white rule when our entire class had to roll up at the headmaster’s office for failing a Sotho test, which was a mandatory five year subject back then. Our welted derrières put a quick end to that apathy and our Sotho language skills took a turn for the better after that. No doubt, the erstwhile government did more for nation building than Malema would like to admit. In any event, had the African people produced more literature of a Goethe, Shakespeare or Proust, I’m sure the African languages would have enjoyed a higher standing with the world’s foremost literati, effectively making Malema redundant.

It would be important to mention that one would be deluded into believing that we are dealing with some brain-dead offshoot renegade. If that had been the case, Malema never would have made it past the ANC’s Hitlerjugend in the first place. There are a few clues indicating that his band of thugs are a front for a more grandiose Communist takeover, a second revolution in the making. If the study of history has any meaning at all, we should apply it here and now. Lest we forget that the other proud paragon of Communist scheming – the exalted Nelson Mandela – was secretly contrived as long ago as 1953, known amongst the initiates as “Plan M”.

As Franklin D Roosevelt once said, nothing in the world happens by coincidence…especially not when the far left is involved, one might add.

Firstly the level of organisation that his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party has built up in only a short year or two indicates that there’s more than meets the eye. A formal political party cannot be drawn if there is no clear goal or mission statement. Therefore, regardless of whether his parliamentary circus acts have any merit, his party has a clear mission known perhaps to only a small group of insiders. The other party members only follow orders and convey hot air to the public. The way in which he adorns himself with various luxury goods, the mass-produced red berets, his wide-ranging publicity and other party political paraphernalia implies that he has some financially capable sponsors. It would therefore be a mistake to assume that Malema simply is a nobody who became a somebody by chance. He is a leader of a radical political party because someone wants him to be there.

Secondly, it appears as if he has changed his tune since his entry into main stream politics. His anti-white vitriol is now replaced with mainly anti-capitalist outbursts, only occasionally showing his true colours by inconsequentially depicting whites as racists and thus deserving of contempt. He also did some window dressing by including some white useful idiots into his ranks to hide his true intentions. Anybody with a basic understanding of Marxist theory can see how his party has secretly been shaped by intellectuals leaning towards the left. Once again these schemers from the shadows employed their favourite Commie party trick, the Hegelian dialectical principle. In short, Hegelian dialectics imply that when there are two opposing forces, a thesis and an antithesis, they need to be fused together in a mutually beneficial synthesis.

In Malema’s case, he wants to eliminate the whites (thesis). This would obviously meet up with resistance by whites, not to mention possible legal sanctions (antithesis). The synthesis would then be to include some whites by insisting that they themselves would benefit from this agreement. Uncooperative whites would be branded as capitalists, land owners, colonials or similar terms implying that they have a choice in handing over their hard-earned belongings. This obfuscates the fact that their white skin is his real eyesore. In practice, the net outcome for honky is the same: they are to be rendered powerless and open to victimisation. By slightly covering up his true intentions makes it hard to legally pin them down and thus highly treacherous.

Thirdly, his experience with black youths at his former job has left him with the understanding that they are the ideal candidates to help foment any war or revolution that one sees fit. As Lenin once said, the best revolutionary is a youth devoid of morals. All party members should work together to make the young, both male and female, anti-social and immoral. The black youths from the Eastern Cape in the 1950’s to the Sharpeville massacre, the Soweto riots and the “Comrades” in the mid 1980’s have all demonstrated the validity of Lenin’s observation. It would not surprise if their next step would be to train dim-witted young whites alongside blacks in paramilitary training camps, a peculiarity perfectly in step with Communist principles.

Not to mention the obvious red colour of his attire, which has a clear allusion to Communism. Red being the colour of blood, anger, youth, war, revolution and comradeship.

Another one of Communism’s dirty tricks is to participate in illegal activities, but also have a front organisation that is legal. One should therefore operate on two bases, one legal and one illegal. The emotionally charged speeches in parliament demonstrating his passionate involvement with his cause while the number of whites murdered on farmsteads has increased dramatically since the World Cup Soccer event of 2010. In some instances it is known that young African marauders chanted “Viva Malema” when attacking a white farmer in his home.

Strictly speaking it may not be possible to infer a direct involvement between Malema’s EFF and the killing of whites, yet there doesn’t really need to be one. The firing up of basic emotions and filling the minds of young Africans with odious ideals would suffice to give this killing spree a life of its own. Recall how during the French Revolution the level of barbarism peaked with peasants mocking and dancing in the streets with beheaded corpses…and all the while longing for the Noble Savage ideals as laid down by Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was in fact the real source of this revolution.

Understanding the Hegelian dialectic is of utmost importance to grasp the workings of the shadow government, which is toiling day and night to encroach on our freedoms and dignity. Having learned from Communist Eastern Europe and Asia, the world’s elite has found ways to refine their strategy for global control. Malema is only the umpteenth pawn in their game. Where he is today, the West would follow suit.

By that same operation, it would only be prudent to use internet and various social media to counteract these forces, and we have no time to waste.

Our survival depends on it.

Raping an organization

by Johann Theron

South Africa may be the rape capital of the world, for not only personal rapes of men, women and children, but also for organizational rapes. This article is not however, about individual/personal rape cases but of organizational rape, although pretty much the same conditions and effects apply – such as the requirement to say NO. The difference is that while everybody in the world seems to abhor the act of rape, the act of raping an organization seems to be fair play. A simple example is the South African constitution where individual protection against rape is promised, while the rape of Afrikaner institutions is seen as fair discrimination.

It is also not about the West raping the earth with carbon dioxide or the popular intelligence rape someone like Angela Merkel may have experienced as per Edward Snowden.

This article is not about a political party such as hypothetically the ANC raping its own country/continent or the big money powers such as hypothetically Goldman Sachs raping a country such as South Africa (for gold), or the Ukraine (to get at Russia), but it is at a lower level of organizations affecting people in communities. The assumption is that raping such organizations would effectively rape and tear a community apart, resulting in effectively a traumatized society. Where a personal rape affects one person or family, organizational rape which can be caused by one person, affects thousands of people.

Initial thoughts of prospective organizations at the community level are companies like Woolworths or Shell. For the most part these companies are modelled on Walmart that actually provides cost-effective goods even to rural areas and they are also represented in industry institutions that interface with governments, providing some form of quality and governance. That they provide unnecessary goods pushing the consumerist envelope is another topic.

Another possibility is financial institutions where the rape verdict becomes slightly warmer because of the long-term effect of inflation that banks may capitalize on or the insurance companies that may make more money out of the constant premium stream than their subscribers do. It is true that in countries where financial community co-ops are used, inhabitants get more value, but having that option and not exercising it prevents inhabitants from crying rape from centralized banks. However, some actually already do that in South Africa.

Another possibility is communications companies with cell towers everywhere. They appear to control the municipalities where no limit is set on the maximum number of cell towers per area. This is clearly a shortage of intellectual capacity and although radio waves have medical effects on humans, it is not yet seen as rape, unless a price such as unreasonable cost/minute contributes to this distress. The positive effect of improved productivity for communities, if harnessed, should also come into play where some communities such as Irene (close to Pretoria) or Sandhurst (close to Johannesburg) are examples.

One type of business that ratchets the possibility of rape up a notch or two are land developers. Their spreadsheets dictate what they do and customer cashflow (towards their own pockets) determines how fast they do it. Without proper town planning or architectural design, they deliver houses that were planned around the cheapest materials they can get instead of aiming for the South African ideal, as derived from 300 hundred years of building experience. One could say that surely the house prices are cheap due to cheap materials applied, the question is, were quality standards actually applied such as damp proofing or proper cement mixes? In my own case – not – so I feel used, cheated, etc.

But the latest contender to the best organizational rapist crown appears to be the Church. One overt example is the new Pope Francis appointing McKinsey to fix the Vatican Bank’s corruption – how much corruption we will never know but if it is at the same scale as Pastoral “rape” of young boys, then it probably becomes unbearable.

A covert example is the South African Dutch Reformed Church, facing a substantial loss of members across the country after 1994. A lot of qualified pastors or dominees lost their jobs and the drop in pension affected many more. Universities are doing away with Afrikaans-language training which means that the Church may on its own decide to move its entire congregations to the English version in some secret future time schedule – as Doxa Deo is doing. Apart from that, the actuary of the Church is probably doing fine adjustments and long-term planning to protect the dominees currently employed. What this amounts to is that as individual congregation turnover gradually drops at say 5% per year, the incumbent dominee’s salary increases by 5%. Let’s say that a general guideline is that salaries are 50% of turnover, then the guideline may change to 55% the next year. However, to lessen the visible effect of this on congregational spreadsheets, the dominee will be quite happy to only increase his pensionable salary and nobody will be the wiser. All this happens while the congregational turnover drops and by the time it drops to R900 000, the salary percentage might be 80%, with a pensionable portion 200% more than originally contracted. The insidious effect is that the dominee will, without really knowing it, manage the turnover downwards in order to get more benefit. The congregation will also not realize it, but once the turnover drops below R900 000, the church may be sold or handed to the Synod. From past examples, selling a Church is an emotional issue and has a heart-wrenching effect on people. Especially if they do not understand how they got there in the first place.

The devastating effect on communities is psychological and heart-wrenching because theologically, the structure of congregations over the world forms a body, aptly called the “Body of Christ” and when that gets raped, serious outfall will be the order of the day.

This comparative description of the raping of organizations can also be found in literature. For example a book by Howard F Stein: Nothing personal, just business – A guided journey into organizational darkness. While it generally describes commercial organizations, there are a few cases of non-profit organizations from which comparisons can be drawn. Essentially it describes the psychoanalytic effect of thoughts inducing a physical outcome. Where a positive example is happiness resulting in the clapping of hands, a negative example is defensive thoughts resulting in self-enriching by crippling the client. In both cases though, the person does not really know that he/she is doing it.

A system that rewards confidence-gaming sociopaths

By Charles Hugh Smith.

What is the shelf life of a system that rewards confidence-gaming sociopaths rather than competence?

Let’s connect the dots of natural selection and the pathology of power.

In his 2012 book The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, author Kevin Dutton described how the attributes of sociopathology are in a sense value-neutral: the sociopathological attributes that characterize a dangerous criminal may also characterize a cool, high-performing neurosurgeon.

As Dutton explains in his essay What Psychopaths Teach Us about How to Succeed(Scientific American):

Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless and focused. Yet, contrary to popular belief, they are not necessarily violent. Far from its being an open-and-shut case–you’re either a psychopath or you’re not–there are, instead, inner and outer zones of the disorder: a bit like the fare zones on a subway map. There is a spectrum of psychopathy along which each of us has our place, with only a small minority of A-listers resident in the “inner city.”

While there is obviously a place for high-functioning sociopaths in professions which reward those characteristics, what about sociopaths who substitute deviousness and deception for competence? For some context, let’s turn to the Pathology Of Power by Norman Cousins, published in 1988.

Cousins was particularly concerned with the National Security State, a.k.a. the military-industrial complex, which at that point in U.S. history was engaged in a Cold War with the Soviet Empire. Cousins described the pathology of power thusly:

Connected to the tendency of power to corrupt are yet other tendencies that emerge from the pages of the historians:
1. The tendency of power to drive intelligence underground;
2. The tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it;
3. The tendency of power to distort and damage the traditions and institutions it was designed to protect;
4. The tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent and irrelevant;
5. The tendency of power to set the stage for its own use.
In broader terms, we might add: the tendency of power to manifest hubris, arrogance, bullying, deception and the substitution of rule by Elites for rule of law.

Natural selection isn’t only operative in Nature; it is equally operative in human organizations, economies and societies. People respond to whatever set of incentives and disincentives are present. If deceiving and conning others is heavily incentivized, while integrity and honesty are punished, people will gravitate to running cons and embezzlement schemes.

What behaviors does our Status Quo reward? Misrepresentation, obfuscation, legalized looting, embezzlement, fraud, a variety of cons, gaming the system, deviousness, lying and cleverly designed deceptions.

Let’s connect the pathology of power and the behaviors selected by our Status Quo. What we end up with is a system that selects for a specific category of sociopaths: those whose only competence is in running cons.

No wonder we have a leadership that is selected not for competence but for deviousness. What’s incentivized in our system is spinning half-truths and propaganda with a straight face and running cons that entrench the pathology of power.

What is the shelf life of a system that rewards confidence-gaming sociopaths rather than competence? Unless we change the incentives and disincentives, the system is doomed.

Rupert laughs at Malema

Two parties? Rupert denies Malema’s claims

Julius Malema has accused billionaire businessman Johann Rupert of controlling the ANC and DA and being behind the EFF leader’s tax and political woes, the Sunday Times reported.

When Rupert was contacted for comment by the paper, he laughed uncontrollably before asking: “Did he really, really say that?”

Rupert told the newspaper that he funded neither the DA nor the ANC.

Malema accused Rupert of supporting both parties as well as the SA Revenue Service.

“The ANC and DA are one thing. They agree on everything. The ANC is a black DA and the DA is a white ANC.

“All of them are controlled by Rupert and friends,” the Economic Freedom Fighters leader told supporters at a rally in Khayelitsha in Cape Town on Saturday.

Malema told the crowd that Rupert wanted the ANC to deal with him when he was its youth league leader. He also said that Rupert controlled the SA Revenue Service.

“Rupert said the ANC Youth League is like an irritating mosquito in a room and it needs a Doom. President Jacob Zuma became that ‘Doom’.”

Source: Sapa

Malema targets big spenders says FT

The Financial Times carried this story titled: Malema targets big game in ANC’s heartland on the front page:

Sitting in a plush lodge on the edge of Kruger National Park, the self-styled

revolutionary and spokesman for South Africa’s dispossessed outlines calmly his plans to expropriate land from white farmers, and nationalise banks and mines in Africa’s largest economy.

“We are worse than the way we were during apartheid,” he tells the Financial Times during a 90 minute interview. “The only thing that has changed is the government of white people has been replaced with a government of black people.”

The stout, boyish-looking 33-year-old, dressed in black tracksuit and black trainers, is a highly divisive figure. To critics, including many businesspeople, he is an opportunistic rabble-rouser tainted by corruption allegations. To supporters, he is a rare voice speaking to the divisions enduring in one of the world’s more unequal societies despite strides taken since the end of white rule.

Campaigning to the left of the ruling African National Congress he aspires to steal votes from the ruling party’s heartland, the rural and urban black poor, in elections on May 7. They are widely expected to be the most closely contested since the end of apartheid 20 years ago.

Mr Malema described president Jacob Zuma – the man he helped propel to the country’s top job – as a “monster”, and denounced the ANC’s 20-year record in power. He formally launched his Economic Freedom Fighters in October after being expelled from the ANC – where he led the militant youth league – for indiscipline in 2012.

He makes the point that while under the ANC more black people may have gained access to water and electricity, the water is often not clean and the electricity connection does not guarantee power. “So you are actually in more pain because these things are closer to you and, close as they are, you cannot use them,” he says.

This message resonates with the frustrated black majority in a country where youth unemployment is at least 50 per cent, and almost 40 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. It also carries weight with blacks of all classes who believe they are still economically marginalised in a country where the corporate world remains predominantly in white hands.

The challenge for Mr Malema is to turn disgruntlement into votes and survive court cases that could derail his career.

The politician, whose penchant for designer watches has come to symbolise his perceived opulent lifestyle, has had his properties auctioned off as the revenue authority has pursued him for R16m ($1.5m) in outstanding taxes. He is fighting a sequestration order and says he is willing to make a revised offer to resolve the matter.

Mr Malema has courted controversy in the past by saluting President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe but he says the EFF would not follow the path of Zimbabwe, where the forced and often violent seizure of white-owned land triggered a collapse of the economy.

But he says he wants government to be the custodian of land that grants licences to users and insists the state should control 60 per cent of mines.

“Foreign investors who are prepared to share with South Africans are more than welcome,” he says. “But if it is about individualism and maximisation of profit to the exclusion of indigenous people, such a foreign investor will not be entertained.”

Mr Malema and the EFF have brought a new dimension to the country’s political landscape. Pallo Jordan, an ANC intellectual, has said the ANC “might opt for more radical policies” if it faces an effective challenge from the left, “realigning South African politics in directions that few will have anticipated”.

The other threat to the ANC comes from the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party. But it is still viewed by many – fairly or not – as a largely white party.

Yet for all his outward confidence Mr Malema acknowledges the campaign against the well-oiled ANC election machinery is a difficult one. And touting his radical policies can be a hindrance when seeking financial backers.

“It is a very difficult campaign in that we do not have resources and our policies are such that those who own resources will never finance us,” Mr Malema says. “Elections are very expensive things in South Africa, but if we had resources we would remove the ANC from power tomorrow.”

Source: FT. By Lionel Barber, Andrew England & Javier Blas

Vortex, war novel by Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin

The lengthy novel focuses on the U.S. deployment of force, and gives an excellent sense of the problems and limits of power projection in an underdeveloped theater, a type of setting Americans are likely encounter in such deployments, writes a critic. The US clearly needed an extremist right-wing excuse to launch the exercise which the novel provides in the guise of Afrikaners.

In a South Africa set in the early 1990s, the apartheid government of State President Frederick Haymans and the ruling National Party seek to negotiate democratic reforms with the African National Congress (ANC). However, the talks have bogged down because the ANC refuses to properly disarm and cease planning terrorist operations. Most of the white politicians are not too keen on the idea of allowing blacks a wider role in national politics.

South African paratroopers raid an African National Congress base in Zimbabwe. The raiders uncover plans for “Broken Covenant,” an ANC plot to assassinate the government as they travel back to Pretoria from Cape Town aboard the Blue Train for the legislature’s summer recess. The raid comes at a time when the government’s talks with the ANC are approaching a major breakthrough; the ANC decides to abort Broken Covenant, not knowing that the South Africans already have information on the plan. Seeing an opportunity to take power with the leadership eliminated, Internal Security Minister Karl Vorster deliberately excuses himself from the trip. A courier assigned to transmit the abort signal to the ambush team is also killed in a hit-and-run.

With Haymans and his Cabinet killed in the attack, Vorster assumes the presidency and declares martial law with backing from diehard apartheid supporters as a major Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) member. The security forces begin brutal crackdowns on anti-apartheid organizations, and those suspected of having ties to ANC affiliates are executed or moved to isolated internment camps. The South African Defence Force is ordered to invade newly independent South-West Africa (Namibia) under the guise of destroying ANC base camps. Cuban Army units in Angola answer the Namibian government’s call for help and deploy combat forces to stop the South Africans short of Windhoek; they also conquer Walvis Bay to bring in reinforcements.

Conditions at home begin to worsen. Armed police massacre white students protesting conscription at the University of the Witwatersrand, while certain Afrikaners disgusted at Vorster’s abuse of power launch secessionist movements in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The regime is also confronted with tribal insurgencies after a Zulu chieftain is denaturalized for condemning apartheid. Attempts to brutally stamp dissent leads to greater unrest, such as a violent uprising by Durban’s Indian population. An SADF garrison in Cape Town rebels against the leadership and intervene to protect civilians.

Loyalist SADF troops in Namibia rebuild their strength for a major counteroffensive as the Cubans run a public relations campaign about their forces raring to fight a Marxist-Leninist “war of liberation.” The media mileage is actually part of a bigger plan: Supported by the USSR and certain African countries, the Cubans invade South Africa using three brigade tactical groups from out of staging areas in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Mozambique. The invasion catches South African intelligence by surprise, having concentrated on the Namibian front and even dismissing reports by black spies in the three countries.

The Cubans sweep aside token resistance by reservists and local Afrikaner militias, with Vorster ordering the deployment of South Africa’s nuclear arsenal. One Mirage F1-CZ drops a nuclear device on the brigade tactical group pushing on Johannesburg from the west. Cuba launches Sarin gas on SADF defenders at the mining town of Potgietersrus; appalled by the carnage affecting innocent civilians, the ANC elements in the invasion force try to desert but are taken into custody. Havana authorizes the use of civilians as human shields against more South African nuclear strikes.

The situation in South Africa triggers much higher prices of precious metals; international support for the country evaporates when the truth about Broken Covenant makes global headlines. Realizing the war’s long-term effects on the global economy, the United States and Britain authorize direct military intervention in South Africa. The operation, codenamed Brave Fortune, kicks off with a Ranger commando assault on the South African nuclear facilities at Pelindaba, with the intent of capturing all remaining South African nuclear weapons. With the nuclear threat eliminated, American and British forces land in Cape Town and Durban, then gradually push north. The allied forces get wind of Vorster’s last-ditch plan to irradiate the Witwatersrand diamond mines with exploded uranium stockpiles. A team of US, British, and rebel South African troops assault the State Council offices in Pretoria and capture the entire Cabinet before the order can be given. Other South African Army units arrest all AWB members.

The remaining Cuban formations are pounded by American airstrikes as they inch closer to Pretoria and are later forced to withdraw from the country. Because the Cubans sold them on a communist victory in South Africa, a humiliated Soviet leadership vows never to be involved in the continent again. Apartheid is formally abolished in the months after the fall of Vorster’s government and a conglomerate of various political parties are brought to the table for establishing a second, multiracial, republic with Johannesburg as the capital. Vorster himself is later meted life imprisonment for his crimes.

Source: Wikipedia

Can South Africa properly be called a ‘democracy’?

by Dan Roodt dan[at]praag.org

I find it interesting that professor Anthony Butler of UCT should point out potential tribal schisms within the ANC in Business Day. According to Stephen Ellis in his book External Mission: the ANC in exile 1960-1990 there had been a gun fight between Xhosa and Zulu members of MK in the Tanzanian camp, but this got buried under the avalanche of details concerning the heroic life of Nelson Mandela.

Many South African and British academics seriously analysed South African ethnicity using the Soviet term “the national question”. For years we were made to believe that, unlike the rest of Africa, this country had no real tribes, only artificial ethnic “divisions” imposed by the Nazi-like “apartheid regime”, at gunpoint as it were.

Likewise, the rise of the South African identity was more or less coterminous with the Book of Genesis, and everything else was just an “imagined community” or a “social construct” like race which would dissipate as people turned into global, brand-conscious consumers.

The uncomfortable truth is that South Africa is no different to any other multiethnic or multinational state where the most numerous group will capture the state through the ballot box and then use clientelism to retain power.

The current system was designed not to ensure efficient or accountable government, but to disenfranchise minorities, especially Afrikaners who do not even rule the tiniest rural municipality anymore.

Machiavelli’s dictum that the prince should be particularly generous in distributing largesse paid for by others will ensure that Afrikaner assets will be plundered to the last cent. Eventually the remaining family-owned farms of Afrikaners will have to go and South Africa will experience a Zimbabwean-style rural melt-down although it might not lead to hyperinflation as long as the mines keep earning foreign exchange. No-one in the City of London will even wince when it happens.

Xhosas and Zulus do not like each other, but they are locked into a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. Given current demographics, neither Kwazulu-Natal nor the Eastern Cape may rule the rest of the country without some degree of cooperation from its sister province on the East Coast.

Together, these two Nguni “dominant tribes” constitute 40% of SA’s population but their respective regions produce just over 20% of our GDP. So the benefits of power are obvious, especially to politicians from impoverished rural areas whose access to the state could turn them and their families into billionaires almost overnight.

Buy Dan Roodt's book through Amazon.com — Buy Dan Roodt’s book through Amazon.com

Many people scoffed at the term used by Dr. Piet Koornhof in the 1970s when he referred to the homeland system as a “plural democracy”. I suppose those same cynics are cackling today when they hear that South Africa is no longer a plural, but a “model democracy”.

Given the demographics of the current South Africa there is no way in which even an alliance of minority ethnic groups could ever outvote the ANC. Those opposition politicians, such as the DA, who are pretending otherwise, are not only deluding their supporters but also themselves. Even in the unlikely event that ANC support had to slip among ethnic Zulus and Xhosas, it would be inconceivable for South Africa to ge be governed by a coalition exluding the ANC.

First of all, the outbreak of violence and riots by ANC supporters would far surpass those which occurred in the aftermath of the Kenyan elections of December 2007. ANC potentates who have been treating the state as their private preserve would be very reluctant to leave office. The ruling party would not have to stage a coup because it has already erased any separation of party and state. In the unlikely event that it should ever lose power through the ballot box, it has maintained its militia known as Umkhonto we Sizwe which could be equipped from government military stockpiles. On the other hand, its militia commanders are already in control of the South African National Defense Force, so there would be no need for that.

In fact, the opposition coalition having triumphed at the ballot box would have to stage a coup just to assume office, or summon outside militarry intervention. Given the example of Zimbabwe where ZANU PF has held onto power through a spell of electoral weakness, the outcome seems predictable.

For all intents and purposes, South Africa is a one-party state or one-party dominant state ruled by the East Coast tribes. Event at the University of Cape Town with its British and quasi-British professors who have long denied the existence of ethnicity in South Africa, that reality is finally sinking in.

A shorter version of this column appeared as a letter in Business Day.

Ramphele the DA Joker?

Ramphele with the headgear that landed het the World Bank job — Rampi the Joker?

DA leader Helen Zille announced that Agang SA’s Mamphela Ramphele will be the DA’s presidential candidate in the general elections, hoping to lure ANC voters away from the governing party.

“Good people in the ANC have reached out to us but are scared. Good business leaders have reached out to us but are nervous,” Ramphele told reporters during the announcement of the merger.

The merger will not change the DA’s fortunes however, as Ramphele lacks a constituency and no ANC history because she has never been a member.

Agang was a non-starter, one analyst said, as Ramphele’s appeal lay with people who were already supporting the DA and she was unlikely to lure away ANC voters.

Ramphele promised to consign race, the main staple of South African politics, to the dustbin on Tuesday.

“We are taking away that race card and putting it in the dustbin,” Ramphele said.

“This is a historic moment. We are going to take away the excuse of race and challenge the ANC to be judged on its performance.

Ramphele has previously shown a disregard for sound analysis.

The ex-World Bank employee who is best known as the girlfriend of a dead Black Consciousness activist, the late Steve Biko, launched Agang SA after initially rejecting an offer of replacing Zille as DA leader.

Instead she blew millions on her own party despite surveys predicting very limited support for the venture.

She said she was “honoured” to accept the DA’s invitation to join, saying: “I believe that this decision is in the best interests of South Africa as we head into turbulent waters.”

North West premier hopes race-baiting will save her

A white farmer who allegedly had a water valve closed was to blame for problems with the water supply in Swartruggens and the Borolelo township on Sunday, said North West Premier Thandi Modise.

“It is alleged that the farmer, accompanied by a police officer, instructed the operator on site not to pump water to allow water to reach his animals downstream.”

Modise made these outlandish race-baiting claims while still awaiting a report on the incident.

According to maintenance staff however, the municipality never had the waterpumps serviced which led to the breakdown.

“We appeal to our communities not to be provoked to anger by this supposed act of sabotage and racism that need to be thoroughly investigated.”

The water shortage in Mothotlung, near Brits, sparked protests which turned deadly this week.

Two protesters were shot dead, allegedly by police, on Monday during a service-delivery protest.

Another man died after he allegedly fell out of a moving Nyala police vehicle in a bid to escape. His family says he was pushed from the moving vehicle after he was badly beaten.

Residents of Mothotlung had apparently been without water for about two weeks. The premier promised service delivery earlier but never delivered.

Meanwhile, Agang SA reported on Sunday that the Jericho community in the Madibeng municipality had been without water since last year. Madibeng is 40km from Mothotlung.