New York TImes – praag.org

Ilana Mercer: The-camel-ate-my-homework theory of culpability

The most famous advocate of the-Camel-Ate-My Homework theory of criminal culpability is Barack Obama.

The Fourth Estate has moved the country into the Third Dimension. The media lie so much, that when stuff happens that scares them, they no longer know where to turn for the truth.

For now, mainstream media have stopped meditating on Charlie Hebdo, and moved on to the weather and other woes. But something changed after this month’s strike, carried out by French recruits to Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, on the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

The frightful events that unfolded in Paris seemed to have triggered something of a come-to-Jesus moment among members of the media. For example, before Charlie Hebdo, supernova Megyn Kelly’s everyday “expert” on Islam was one Brooke Goldstein. Unless good looks qualify one to expatiate on Islam, Goldstein was—still is—gormless about the vexation that is the Muhammadan faith.

However, right after Charlie Hebdo, Kelly traded Goldstein for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is both victim of and expert on Islam. Even CNN’s Anderson Cooper quit beating about the bush. Cooper listened without interruption when Hirsi Ali mentioned the “absolutely immoral” proclivities of “the Prophet Muhammad, especially in his years after Medina.”

Lo and behold, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch made the rounds, myth-busting about the aforementioned muses for murder: Islam and its Prophet. The New York Times was really running scared: Its editors solicited a piece from the pen of Marine LePen, leader of France’s rightist Front National. While she did not quite counsel pulling the drawbridge up, LePen questioned the wisdom of inviting “waves of immigration, both legal and clandestine” into the West.

Like lab rats, media are maze-bright, no more. Other scribes found solace by levitating in the Parallel Universe, pretending that in the Hebdo massacre we had a Whodunit to unravel. “Both the motive and the identity of the perpetrators are still unknown,” intoned a cipher at Slate. For a while, Wolf Blitzer of CNN was all wide-eyed wonderment, too. Across the pond, the constabulary in Hamburg, north Germany, informed its citizenry that the motive for an attack on the Hamburger Morgenpost, a newspaper that published the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, was “still under investigation.”

Just as some mediacrats still pretend the phrase “radical Islam” is not a redundancy—Islam is radical!—others make believe that the motive for shooting up a place of business while yelling praise for the Prophet Muhammad is a mystery. Unless authorities say otherwise.

Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic “thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society.

The most famous advocate of the-Camel-Ate-My Homework theory of criminal culpability is Barack Obama. Obama’s flabby assumption has it that the poor barbarians of France’s burbs have been deprived of fraternité. “Europe needs to better integrate its Muslim communities,” lectured the president.

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Also guilty of a social determinism that flouts their philosophy of individual freedom are libertarians. For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society and libertarian saddle the state: U.S. foreign policy, in particular. A war of aggression, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and torture are thus “principal catalysts for this kind of non-state terrorism,” argued Ray McGovern.

“The-state-made-me-do-it” argumentation apes that of the left’s “society-made-me-do-it” argumentation. Both philosophical factions, left and blowback-libertarian, are social determinists, in as much as they implicate forces outside the individual for individual dysfunction.

Myself, I despise U.S. foreign policy as deeply as any Muslim. But it would never-ever occur to me to take it out on my American countrymen.

In the context of free will, and in a week in which we remember the Holocaust, Viktor E. Frankl rates a mention.

Dr. Frankl came out of Auschwitz to found the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The philosopher and distinguished psychiatrist said this of his experience in the industrial killing complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau: “In the camps one lost everything, except the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

To plagiarize another Jews (myself): “You can see why liberals have always preferred Freud to Frankl [my family included]. They retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian fiction that traumatic toilet training is destiny.”

Dr. Frankl lost his beloved young wife in Auschwitz, yet told poignantly of finding her, if figuratively, in a tiny bird that flitted close by. If this man was able to discovered the reality of free will and human agency in a laboratory like Auschwitz; so too can Muslims find the will to respond adaptively to events that enrage them and are indeed unjust: Western foreign policy.

The idea that the Brothers Kouachi and thousands of their coreligionists in the West who’ve joined ISIS were driven by “disaffection” to do their diabolic deeds conjures a skit from the “Life of Brian,” John Cleese’s parody of Judea under Rome.

In what is a typically Jewish dialectical session, Reg and his band of anti-Roman rebels are debating the merits and demerits of the enemy. So, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” asks Reg. “The aqueduct,” ventures one rebel. “Sanitation” pipes-up another: “Remember what the city used to be like?” A third praises the roads. A fourth, the public baths. Exacerbated by the growing list of Roman improvements, rebel-in-chief Reg responds: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health—what have the Romans ever done for us?”

By the same token, what have those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” ever done for their Maghrebian immigrants (les beurs, as they are known)—apart from replacing the mud huts of their ancestors with subsidized housing and modern plumbing, giving them schools, job-training institutes, cradle-to-crypt welfare, health care and, my personal favorite, the Musée du Louvre?

While Obama sounded a bum note, British Prime Minister David Cameron acquitted himself well with this take on criminal culpability: The Muslim murderers in our midst “have had all the advantages of integration,” they’ve “had all the economic opportunities that our countries can offer.”

Indeed, Western foreign policy is a necessary but insufficient reason for Muslim aggression.

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‘Left’ and ‘Right’ bamboozling you on Benghazi

by Ilana Mercer

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“Us against al-Qaida”: This has been—still is—the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that played out in the Benghazi affair, in which the American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed).

Hillary Clinton, the woman who cracked the whip at Foggy Bottom at the time, had clearly resolved to run the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, as one would an open community center. This was meant to signal that her war on Libya had been a success, when in fact Hillary’s adventure there had as much “host-nation support” as George Bush’s faith-based forays into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, “a central figure in the attack,” reports David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, “was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala.” Once persecuted and imprisoned by Gadhafi, Abu Khattala is a Libyan Islamist from the el-Leithi region, who considers “the United States not far behind Col. Gadhafi on his list of infidel enemies.”

Understandably, Fox-News neocons have been fuming over “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi,” Kirkpatrick’s exposé in the Times. In their focused blindness, Republicans believe religiously that, to quote Kirkpatrick, “Mr. Stevens died in a carefully planned assault by al-Qaida to mark the anniversary of its strike on the United States 11 years before.” Accordingly, the Obama administration has been “covering up evidence of al-Qaida’s role to avoid undermining the president’s claim that the group has been decimated, in part because of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.”

Uncovered by The Times’ investigation, however, was a very different reality in Benghazi—”murkier than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi,” contends Kirkpatrick, “was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.”

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the findings that “turned up no evidence that al-Qaida or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” and that “the attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Gadhafi.”

How can that be? Easily: The history of Libya is festooned with similar ransacking and burning of consulates by angry local mobs. Alas, in the ignorance it cultivates about the past, America is Cicero’s perpetual child. By the definition of the great Roman statesman, “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.”

Based on the annals of U.S. intervention in the region, it is fair to say that, to the extent the American-made video lampooning Islam triggered the hatred harbored by the invaded Libyans for the invading Americans—to that extent it is true that the YouTube clip, more so than the mythical al Qaida, was a catalyst for the attack on our embassy in Benghazi.

Still, the NYT has hardly been unsparingly honest. Rather, the Gray Eminence is as dishonest and politically provincial as the opposing faction.

Discounted in the Kirkpatrick essay is that al Qaida has devolved into many decentralized operations that mirror the aspirations of the indigenous population to be free of meddling Westerners—unless of course said militia and tribesmen (the Ansar al-Shariah, for example) can get us to bankroll their Baksheesh economy.

Predictably, the double-crossing neoconservative and neoliberal entities cross-pollinate each other.

So wrong was the Times on Iraq that the reporter who piped lies straight from the Bush White House to her Times readers was recruited to Fox News: She is Judith “Chalabi” Miller. (Ahmed Chalabi was the Iraqi exile who agitated for American intervention in Iraq. In the ramp-up to war, Chalabi fed Ms. Miller, the New York Times’ birdbrain now perched at Fox News, with the pro-invasion “intelligence” she then presented to the public.)

The facts in the Benghazi affair have likewise been unwoven and retied into two contradictory narratives to suit the respective sides.

Think of lab rats racing through a maze, as you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel “dialogue” conducted on the teli. Hosts Stephanie Cutter (left-wing, social-democratic rat) and S. E. Cupp (right-wing, social-democratic rat): Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a “maze-bright” rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth.

“Left” and “right” are bamboozling you on Benghazi.

The New York Times takes down the Clintons

By Tim Stanley

The New York Times has taken down the Clintons. The killer quote is this:

For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

Over a year ago Bill Clinton met with some aides and lawyers to review the Foundation’s progress and concluded that it was a mess. Well, many political start-ups can be, especially when their sole selling point is the big name of their founder (the queues are short at the Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center). But what complicated this review – what made its findings more politically devastating – is that the Clinton Foundation has become about more than just Bill. Now both daughter Chelsea and wife, and likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton have taken on major roles and, in the words of the NYT “efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs Clinton’s political future.” Oh, they’re entangled alright.

The NYT runs the scoop in its usual balanced, inoffensive way – but the problem jumps right off the page. The Clintons have never been able to separate the impulses to help others and to help themselves, turning noble philanthropic ventures into glitzy, costly promos for some future campaign (can you remember a time in human history when a Clinton wasn’t running for office?). And their “Ain’t I Great?!” ethos attracts the rich and powerful with such naked abandon that it ends up compromising whatever moral crusade they happen to have endorsed that month. That the Clinton Global Initiative is alleged to have bought Natalie Portman a first-class ticket for her and her dog to attend an event in 2009 is the tip of the iceberg. More troubling is that businessmen have been able to expand the profile of their companies by working generously alongside the Clinton Foundation. From the NYT:

Last year, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, Muhtar Kent, won a coveted spot on the dais with Mr. Clinton, discussing the company’s partnership with another nonprofit to use its distributors to deliver medical goods to patients in Africa. (A Coca-Cola spokesman said that the company’s sponsorship of foundation initiatives long predated Teneo and that the firm plays no role in Coca-Cola’s foundation work.)

In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

This is typical Clinton stuff. The second thing I ever wrote was about how corporations invest in politicians as a way of building their brand and raising their stock price. It can lead to some funny partnerships. This, from 2011:

Just this month, bedding manufacturer Serta announced that it will be sponsoring Bill Clinton’s keynote address to an industry conference in August. “To us,”’ said the head of the company, “Clinton represents leadership. This appearance shows Serta is a leader and is taking a leadership position. This singles us out.” Some might say that it is beneath a former president to basically endorse Serta’s new “Perfect Sleeper” line, even with its “revolutionary gel foam mattress”.

The cynical might infer from the NYT piece that the Clintons are willing to sell themselves, their image, and even their Foundation’s reputation in exchange for money to finance their personal projects. In Bill’s case, saving the world. In Hillary’s case, maybe, running for president.

It’s nothing new to report that there’s an unhealthy relationship in America between money and politics, but it’s there all the same. While the little people are getting hit with Obamacare, high taxes and joblessness, a class of businessmen enjoys ready access to politicians of both Left and Right that poses troubling questions for how the republic can continue to call itself a democracy so long as it functions as an aristocracy of the monied. Part of the reason why America’s elites get away with it is becuase they employ such fantastic salesmen. For too long now, Bill Clinton has pitched himself, almost without question, as a homespun populist: the Boy from Hope. The reality is that this is a man who – in May 1993 – prevented other planes from landing at LAX for 90 minues while he got a haircut from a Beverley Hills hairdresser aboard Air Force One. The Clintons are populists in the same way that Barack Obama is a Nobel prize winner. Oh, wait… The Telegraph

Mugabe understands democracy well

by Dan Roodt

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Is it not astounding that so many people are criticising the outcome of the Zimbabwean elections, when that country went through an official poll in which Zanu (PF) won a clear majority?

In addition, Robert Mugabe’s view of democracy is entirely commensurate with that of most western leaders, especially those of Britain and the US. There exists a dichotomy between the spectacle of campaigning and voting – the soap opera of elections – and the real business of power that is normally settled outside of public scrutiny, in proverbial smoke-filled rooms.

Democracy is what follows a “state of exception” (Carl Schmitt) during which one regime is replaced by another. Both the American and French revolutions were examples of such states of exception. In the case of Zimbabwe, Britain virtually appointed Mugabe as permanent president during the state of exception known as the Lancaster House Conference of 1979. Every election since in Zimbabwe has merely confirmed Britain’s support for revolutionary change in the ex-Rhodesia, hence the hypocrisy of complaints about largely minor deficiencies in the Zimbabwean electoral process.

Writing in the UK Daily Mail two days ago, columnist Stephen Glover said:

“Instead of expressing his anxieties, the Foreign Secretary could offer the Zimbabwean people a heartfelt apology on behalf of the British Government for inflicting Robert Mugabe on them in the first place, and then standing aside as he pillaged his country, murdered his enemies and ruined the economy… What has happened in Zimbabwe is to Britain’s eternal shame.”

Mr Mugabe is a self-styled “strong leader”. In so doing, he is simply displaying the “leadership” that everyone talks about, and that they even teach in business schools.

Modern democracy is indeed a process whereby the voter surrenders his freedom of action to members of the elite who may act on his behalf, tax him and even impoverish him to their heart’s content. During the banking crisis, we have seen how Western governments did the same and have burdened future generations with mountains of debt, simply to save their sponsors and cronies among members of the corrupt banking fraternity.

In most third-world countries, including Zimbabwe, you first queue to vote and then you stand in line for bread or some or other hand-out. The one is good practice for the other.

In South Africa, of course, those who queue to vote are rewarded with poverty, joblessness and grants of R250 a month, enough to buy beer and air time. Just look at the 10 biggest companies by market capitalisation on the JSE, and you will notice that smoking and drinking beer dwarf all other forms of economic activity, followed by mobile telephony.

Democracy is all about talking, drinking, smoking and making babies, for which you get child-support grants. The notion of freedom as defined by the philosophers of the western enlightenment is, of course, slightly more complex and subtle than subsisting for the sake of a pay-as-you-go cellphone connection.

Sadly, such classical ideas of freedom and what some people refer to as “higher ideals” have been derided by so-called “liberals” and Marxists as being tantamount to fascism. Taking pride in one’s language or culture, showing patriotism or constructing a society where people are not sheep to be lorded over by professional politicians, are all very suspect notions that are regularly denounced as “right-wing extremism”.

Aspiring to be one’s own master, holding one’s leaders accountable for public expenditure and the quality of their decision-making is reminiscent of the Tea Party programme in the US.

As the New York Times has assured us, the Tea Party is a racist movement of soon-to-be-outnumbered white Americans who hanker after the halcyon days of the Ku Klux Klan.

Private property, too, is a decidedly reactionary concept, which Mr Mugabe has “democratically” dispensed with. Most white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were bought after 1990 and after ZANU (PF)’s accession to power, yet the rights of these property owners were forfeited in favour of a revolutionary “land-reform programme”.

Most university professors in the West and in SA probably applauded him for trampling upon private property. Not to mention the nongovernmental organisations for whom starvation is big business and whose customers, the voters, will queue up again for hand-outs.

The destiny of man is to be a shopper. Everything else is Nazism, even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel still attends the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.

No doubt the professors and media pundits will soon have Wagner banned worldwide and then everybody will just listen to Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Democracy entails the lowering of intellectual and aesthetic standards down to the basest level.

The verbiage of Barack Obama on “democracy” resembles the kitsch of fast food, wearing track suits and sports caps in public and the obsessive, banal voyeurism of most TV programmes. We are living through a modern version of Nero’s mob rule whereby a few powerful political and financial dictators occupy the minds of the masses with “bread and circuses”, an election being the ultimate circus, of course.

As Pat Buchanan has said somewhere, democracy cannot be foisted on people by carpet-bombing them from 40 000 feet. Zimbabwe is but one among a number of societies that have been destabilised by so-called democracy. In North Africa and the Middle East, the West has not balked at supporting Al-Qaeda and related fundamentalist movements in a kind of anti-modern fervour. The paradox is that modern democracy so often leads to fundamentalism, mayhem and even primitivism.

Systems of ethnic domination whereby one group is victimised by another are routinely approved as “democratic”. In fact, there is an element of sadism in South African democracy with its endemic violence, torture and persecution of ethnic minorities about which international silence is maintained. Far from making people free, democracy often leads to greater coercion and oppression than more traditional forms of rule. It seems that democracy may only be established through terror, coercion and war, while the most democratic countries, such as the U.S. and the U.K., are also the most aggressive when it comes to foreign military adventures and attacking other countries.

Not for nothing did the Russian leader Mr. Vladimir Putin state that he was revolted by the “pro-democracy rebels” of Syria who devoured the organs of their enemies. Under democracy, more and more such cannibalistic incidents are also occurring in South Africa.

Not only does Mr Mugabe understand democracy and its empty theatrics well, but his wife Grace has mastered the art of shopping better than any New York socialite.

Surely the elected leader of Zimbabwe deserves a better press?

This is an extended version of a letter published today in Business Day.

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If Africa is more like Singapore, why are we getting so many refugees?

by Dan Roodt

Living in South Africa, one gets used to being called a moron by every visiting foreigner, especially ones of the liberal to left-wing persuasion. After all, they seem to reason, we do not know anything about our own history. We do not understand our own country or our own continent. Nor do we have any grasp of Africa or African culture, despite many of our people speaking African languages and compiling dictionaries in those languages.

The same goes for what is called the mass media. The bigger and more influential they are, the more you will find the view that the average Afrikaner or white commentator in this country is a barely literate buffoon. Many a time I have come across the phrase about this country: “Apartheid destroyed South Africa.”

If you had flown in an aeroplane over South Africa in 1994, shortly after Nelson Mandela became president, you would have seen just how “destroyed” South Africa was. We had more roads and railways than Great Britain. Having a far bigger surface area also helps, I suppose. At one time we were one of the few countries exporting more food than we imported, notwithstanding being a semi-arid country.

The criteria for measuring progress in Africa seem to differ from other places. Economic growth, income per capita, life expectancy, quality of life, infant mortality, the level of education, all those ordinary measures of a country’s success or progress are suspended in favour of focussing on, well, some racial element.

The racial element could be the mystique of Africa, its smiling, simple people happily singing to some merry tune like the coffee plantation workers on Karen Blixen’s farm in the Hollywood movie “Out of Africa”. Or it could be the successful eradication of Western influence, the confiscation of land owned by white farmers, the imposition of racial job quotas to prevent whites from working in South Africa, and so on.

Organising a successful pogrom against whites in Africa is always cause for celebration. Whichever dictator or strongman is involved in such an operation, may be assured of vast amounts of Scandinavian aid money before, during and after the operation.

A few weeks ago, the correspondent for the New York Times in Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen, wrote a more or less glowing account of the Zimbabwean tobacco industry. Since nationalising the farms of white farmers and replacing them with “small-scale” black farmers, the country has taken a great leap forward, it appears.

Enthused Polgreen: “The success of these small-scale farmers has led some experts to reassess the legacy of Zimbabwe’s forced land redistribution, even as they condemn its violence and destruction.” Read the whole article: In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining.

One week after the publication of this article, the UN’s World Food Programme announced that Zimbabwe was in dire need of food aid for 1,6 million people. This is the result of Zimbabwean “land reform” and “restoring the dignity of the African who no longer toils for a white boss”. Of course, up to half the Zimbabwean population has already fled to South Africa in search of food and jobs where they continue to toil for white bosses in restaurants, on farms and as cleaners and gardeners in suburban houses.

Zimbabweans have voted for Robert Mugabe for years. He has rewarded them with the kind of policies that they preferred: crypto-Marxism, confiscation of white assets, robber capitalism, cronyism, a small elite lording it over an impoverished majority enduring increasing hardship, environmental degradation, collapse of infrastructure, hyperinflation and economic crisis.

However, in South Africa these Zimbabwean voters who have democratically chosen to saunter down the road to national disaster, are considered “refugees”. Not only that, but according to a recent article on The Daily Maverick website, South Africa is the country in the world receiving the most refugees. Last year we took in a whopping 219 368 of them. By contrast, the USA only got 40 000 refugees. In many West-European countries, refugees are considered a major problem when about 20 000 announce themselves at the border posts in any given year. Yet we are supposed to endure the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees across our borders, together with many more illegal aliens, as part of our fate.

But the biggest paradox of all is the following: Why would any African want to leave his democratic, prosperous, economically booming home country for the not so bright lights of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban or Cape Town? After all, according to the world’s mass media, we are “the destroyed country”, the least successful on the African continent.

Perhaps the New York Times correspondent in Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen, could solve that conundrum. This is all the more remarkable in the light of recent pronouncements by American academics that the image of poor sub-Saharan Africans holding out a begging bowl for help or Bono to organise an aid concert is very passé. Malthus was wrong. Unbridled population growth is the road to riches and Africa’s “youth bulge” represents a “demographic dividend”.

This may sound like satire or sarcasm, but it is not. On the CNN website, I came across a piece asking the rhetorical question: Is Africa the new Asia? Written by Professor Richard Aidoo from the Department of Politics and Geography, Coastal Carolina University, the article asserts that Ghana has had a 13,5% growth rate recently, portending an “African miracle”. On the demographic issue, Professor Aidoo writes:

“Africa has another potential advantage – a youthful population with a hunger for change. Many of the uprisings in support of democracy across the continent have been championed by disaffected young people bitten by the technology bug and anxious for opportunities. For these young and driven Africans, change isn’t a distant hope, but something achievable. The memories of colonial exploitation are receding further into the rearview mirror as young Africans look forward.”

Aidoo cites the British Economist in support of his views. Howard W. French, a New York-based African expert who teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a former senior writer and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, concurs that the continent is already way up the economic scale. He writes in The Atlantic:

“Africa, with a population expected to roughly double by mid-century, has become recognized as the world’s fastest growing continent. But the less-told story is of Africa’s economic rise. In the last decade Africa’s overall growth rates have quietly approached those of Asia, and according to projections by the IMF, on average Africa will have the world’s fastest growing economy of any continent over the next five years.

Seven of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are African. The continent is famously resource rich, which has surely helped, but some recent studies suggest that the biggest drivers are far less customary for Africa, and far more encouraging for its future: wholesale and retail commerce, transportation, telecommunications, and manufacturing.”

After 18 years of ANC rule, South Africa’s formerly first-world infrastructure is crumbling. Raw sewage is flowing into our rivers. The roads are full of holes. Our previously superb health care system is in a shambles with patients left to die in state hospitals. Despite record spending, the education department cannot deliver school books to some of its schools. South Africa has two million mostly white and corporate taxpayers who supply a welfare state for 50 million people. We are definitely not an Asian tiger economy, but by traditional measures SA is still the biggest economy on the continent.

But those are traditional measures. Clearly, people in the know and pundits associated with The New York Times, have decided otherwise.

If someone could just explain to me why so many Africans are still flocking to this country which suffered so much damage in the past and has still “not quite recovered from apartheid”, I would be really glad. After all, why would you leave one of the fastest growing economies in the world seething with bright young technology entrepreneurs, to settle in our country still blighted by white, Western influence?

New York Times and UN at loggerheads over state of Zimbabwean agriculture

zimbabweans — Rural Zimbabweans in need of UN food relief after Mugabe's 'successful land reform' Photo: WFP

Whereas the New York Times sang the praises of Zimbabwean “land reform” only a few weeks ago, the UN food agency has just said that hunger was worsening in Zimbabwe after erratic rains, shortages of seeds and fertiliser and “poor agricultural practices” in the troubled economy.

This, the UN said, had led to a reduction in fields planted with the main staple foods. The World Food Programme said cereal harvests in the current season were down by an estimated one-third compared with last year. It said about 1.1million rural people would need food aid up to December, rising to 1.6million in the traditionally “lean months” to March.

The agency’s latest bulletin yesterday said $119-million was needed for upcoming food assistance. It said food shortfalls were becoming especially critical in arid southern Zimbabwe where Matabeles live. The Zimbabwean leader has previously been accused of genocide in Matabeleland where 20 000 people were killed in the early 1990s, with a large proportion of the inhabitants fleeing to South Africa.

Irregular rains, poor agricultural practices and ongoing economic challenges have pushed Zimbabwe into an increasingly critical food security situation, the United Nations food relief agency warned.

polgreen_lydia — Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times Photo: Twitter

However, the New York Times’s correspondent in Johannesburg, Lydia Pogreen, differs from the WFP assessment and sees a “golden lining” amid any dark clouds over Zimbabwean agriculture. On 20 July 2012 the New York-based liberal paper wrote:

“The success of these small-scale farmers has led some experts to reassess the legacy of Zimbabwe’s forced land redistribution, even as they condemn its violence and destruction. “

The paper also stressed that the illegal confiscation of white-owned land does not necessarily lead to greater farming productivity but creates greater equality. It quoted a Zimbabwean pro-Mugabe researcher as saying: “But does it share wealth more equitably? Does it give people a sense of dignity and ownership? Those things have value, too.”

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the past several weeks have provided signs of growing distress across the African country with high food prices, empty silos and granaries, and a reduced cereal harvest, aggravating the country’s food security outlook.

“Late and erratic rains, poor agricultural practices, constrained access to inputs, and a reduction in planted area have all contributed to reducing the national cereal harvest by 33 per cent this year,” WFP said in a news release on its Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment (ZimVAC). It further noted that a lack of diversified livelihoods and the rising cost of living were combining to create a perfect storm of income and food insecurity.

WFP, in fact, pointed out that according to the ZimVAC, over 1.6 million Zimbabweans will be in need of food assistance during the peak hunger period spanning January to March 2013.

ZimVAC is an annual study conducted by the Government of Zimbabwe in collaboration with UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in order to estimate national food insecurity levels.

In response to the deteriorating food situation, the UN agency announced it was scaling up operations in conjunction with the Government and other stakeholders to provide a combination of food distribution and cash transfers to those in need.

The WFP further noted that it would require approximately $119 million to complete its operations in Zimbabwe until the end of March 2013, though it said that almost three-quarters of the funding has not yet been accounted for.