THE TALK BANDIED AROUND THAT OFFICIAL CORRUPTION SHORTCHANGES South Africa's poor is absurd. We have to reject it outright; reality is not coached in these words. The poverty-stricken communities have tax numbers reflecting R 0,00 owed to Mr. Taxman. The self-appointed "politicians" tend to fuel such fallacious talk themselves, as a vote-harvesting expedient. The point is that the so-called poor don't pay the institutionalized tithe.

Moral convenience has gotten to be a sickening reality. And as political parties are now prepping and gearing up for next April's elections, we are sure to be fed that rubbish at regular intervals, and with deafening frequency.

The socially disadvantaged are a sad sector of our economy. No doubt about that. However, constant reference to their status, without meaningful and honest intervention, is all the more demeaning.

The inequalities we are used to are a political baggage from our past engineered race relations. Social engineering has delivered us from past to present. It was the whale that offered us its back and delivered us to evil. And that is the very reason South Africans rose up, came together, and defeated their common tsunami of racial hatred and discrimination. 

Touche, politicians who involve themselves in graft are legally intolerable--they do not pay their taxes; what they put in this side of the state machine, they draw out on the other. 

However, and whether or not charity cases do exist, official corruption does not steal from the country's poor, it steals directly from the Principles and Values that got us here in the first place. It seeks to subtract from our nationhood and to diminish us all. It is the enemy of "We, the SOUTH AFRICAN PEOPLE"; and it is an immovable anchor strangling the human condition, itself a crime against the whole of humanity.

All ethnic groups, tribal communities, nations, countries, and the family of nations cannot stay put whilst the universe swings about, breeding new and harder challenges in its aftermath. The progress of man, woman, and child is at stake.


The moral dimension to the corruption dilemma is misplaced, or at least, misconstrued. I will flesh out this point. If South Africa did not count among her population any citizen subsisting on or below the poverty line, would corruption not become a hot potato? Had our employment rate been 100%, would one of our talking points not be corruption? I say, yes definitely. Because corruption is eats away at the potential of the power of a state and a people. And, ironically, it is doing to our future what Apartheid did to our past. It perpetuates man-made inequalities and injustices, predicating these ills on the electoral mandate by a majority vote. By the way, a majority voice carries with it the seeds of potential destruction. Reason. Wild self-interest.      

Morality can only be admissible in this context if it is submerged in our Founding Documents, putting South Africa's Founding Principles and Values on a pedestal.

Then we are posed to fashion our living standards with the whole people, elevating every South African out of the scourge of poverty, and permanently.

   

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE: "A GOLD STATUE SHOULD BE ERECTED TO [THOMAS PAINE] IN EVERY CITY IN THE UNIVERSE."  

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer...” 
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

 

“WE NEED TO BE CLEAR, THE NDP IS NOT THE FREEDOM CHARTER. The NDP is not a strategy and tactics document of the ANC, and its not a guide book for national democratic revolution. It is rather a national program that  guides our action inside and outside of government”.

The deputy president of the centenarian political Goliath recently came out with guns officially blazing touching the flak leveled at the omnibus schedule outlining the 20/20 vision by the ruling party as its proposed twenty-year goal. Ramaphosa said unequivocally that the NDP is a product free from insinuated contradictions. For this reason, the document merits patriotic cooperation from every sector of our society.

No single citizen, no organization of national politics, no former president, no elder statesman is keen on the idea of espousing the charter of South Africa's FREEDOMS. Fair question: When will the time for the FREEDOM CHARTER come, and who should usher it in?

The break of the new dawn in South Africa was made possible by the now rejected Freedom Charter. In the preamble to the charter, "We, The People of South Africa," made it absolutely clear when we "declare[d] for all our country and the world to know, that South Africa belongs to all who leave in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people."

Today, the African National Congress is intent on moving away from this "will of the people". Safe to say, the ANC has lost its official "claim" to "authority". It then, should it continue in the three capitals of state organs, becomes the enemy of "We, the South African People".

If the National Development Plan will emphatically not fulfill the promises of the Kliptown Perspective, why the f*** does it hog the national debate? How long shall the South Africa People wait to build their "beloved country" along the lines of the charter? Who needs must face the proverbial music for three decades to secure for us our promised land? The list of whos and whys is perennially long.

When the still-born Freedom Charter was adopted as embodying the aspirations appropriate to the times, the representatives present were supposed to have love for their people and country, much so that this ultimate battle-cry was to spur them on, and to lead them to the resolution that "THESE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY".   

 

 

SO THE FIRST CITIZEN OF SOUTH AFRICA DOES NOT BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY AFTER ALL. From where Pres. Zuma is standing, the ills facing the South African people can only be corrected through the instrument of abominable dictatorship. Through his political lens, the democracy his organisation helped achieve, with his own contribution, falls deplorably short.

 

As he got the ball rolling regarding his party's campaign trail this past June, Zuma articulated that the Kliptown perspective (The Freedom Charter) seems to have failed to live up to the expectations of liberation activism. The perspective, we all are aware, elevates "the government of the people, by the same people, [for themselves]" above any other on the landscape of being politically up and about. 

 

It appears the African National Congress, via Zuma its chief mouthpiece, is being consumed by an hectic desire to retrogress. Speaking to troubled mothers, eager young people, and the elderly in Soweto, the president opined that if it all depended on his monopoly of wisdom, there would be zero social discomfort resulting from criminal ill-discipline. In isiZulu, he went on to tell his audience about his newly found inspirations for the "rainbow nation":  

 

"If I were a dictator, I would force all members of the population in our jails today to acquire a diploma or a degree from an institution of higher education. This condition I would impose as the passport to legal amnesty. Inmates would comply and walk free, otherwise perpetuate their state of incarceration. Well, I am not a dictator. So they are all off the hook."  

Effectively, democracy is bad for the rest of us. With a 20/20 hindsight, we were mistaken to think that it would unchain us. And all of us are to blame. Because everyone chipped in to the struggle, across all demographics, well, a second round of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is in order. We all need to account for our aspirations from the past. And TRC II should absolve us all. 

If indeed Zuma deems democracy to be inadequate, it comes as no surprise. After all, he is not a veritable democrat: his circle of  friends is untouchable; his waving of the official wand is Apartheid-like; and criminal charges never seem to stick on his slick personality. All this proves right Plato's theory that human power and goodness are mutually exclusive endowments. If he thinks that the South African people are keen on the past setting and feeling an intense sense nostalgia, he is wrong. I mean, the electorate needs to balk at that sicking suggestion. CUT! Says a producer on set if she feels things are getting out of control.

In his critically acclaimed book THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, Karl Popper treats this historical phenomenon of opposition against civilization. He cites Plato as one of the enemies of this "open society". On that consideration, Plato and Zuma, and all others, occupy various planks on the same platform.

Popper wrote: "it is high time for us to learn that the question ‘who is to wield the power in the state?’ matters only little as compared with the question ‘how is the power wielded?’ and ‘how much power is wielded?’ We must learn that in the long run, all political problems are institutional problems, problems of the legal framework rather than of persons, and that progress towards more equality can be safeguarded only by the institutional control of power."

So not only is Zuma off the mark about the power principle, he is also mistaken on the context within which that power subsists. Plato slated a democracy for having persecuted his mentor, Socrates. In our own era, and in his first term in office, Zuma is slamming the democratic paradigm for not being enough of a corrective dynamic in comparison to the problems which plague it.  

Another aspect about the Zuma character which warrants a mention is the fact that what he expresses in isiZulu, he never repeats in the English language.

So the populist ideologues are continuing to play with the emotional apostasy prevalent across the country. We have lost the art of substantial engagement. We have upped and gone "awol" from our national life. And we have abandoned our civic duty on feeding healthy and nutritious fodder to the national debate. Little wonder our body politic is starving to death.    

  

 

 

  

 

Exactly thirty-six years ago, on September 12, 1977, the Black Consciousness Movement philosopher lost his activist young life in Apartheid police custody. He had been captured "lawfully" the previous August. The charge against him had not been enunciated unambiguously when he died.

 

James Thomas "Jimmy" Kruger, Minister of Justice and the Police at the time of Steve Bantubonke Biko's passing, enthused at the development that Biko was no more, in his own living words: "It leaves me cold". Need I say that Kruger's expression was in their beloved Afrikaans. Practically the whole of Afrikaner population applauded that inhumane apathy.

 

The logic by which Biko deduced his conclusions concerning the conditions of respective "non-whites" should count amongst the most accurate in the history of "Ideas Agriculture". It rivals, arguably, that of the Ancients as Plato, Aristotle, and them. Yet it is was driven by the legendary source of energy--disarming anger. The cancer that is anger has disarmed good and honest men throughout recorded history of their much needed problem-solving capabilities.

 

"Black man, you're on your own!" 

 This is the one theme that really typifies the point I am driving at. It seemed to have declared supposedly way beyond the shadow of a doubt that the analysis of the human condition in pockets of "Black South Africa" in "White South Africa" had been cut and dried. Far from it. And I argue that the facts will lay bare my contention. Just two should suffice.

First, when any reader, anywhere in the world, sits down and opens the book titled I WRITE WHAT I LIKE, the images conjured teem, or should teem, with Donald Woods. He was personal friends with the theorist of the famed Black Consciousness Movement. He did his true friend Biko the ultimate act of loyalty ever, surpassing biology itself. And the world is the grateful heir.

Biko did not, as innumerable others before him, write a book. To be sure, Socrates didn't. Yet the legend that has become Biko is immortalized in the addresses that he had delivered, or was to deliver at the time of his arrest. And between Biko's utterances and the publisher's desk some where in Europe is the man of undeserved obscurity--Donald Woods. Woods acted wisely on the Apartheid stage of uncertainty and distrust. He arrogated the unclaimed right of being a conduit between two consecutive scenes; old and new, transitive and durable. So Biko, the black man, was not on his own entirely. Even he had Donald Woods. 

"A person is a person by mere coexisting in a community of other persons". The adage is as current as the HUMAN PROJECT to better the human experience. The archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has perfected a version of his own, "I am because you are, for we can only be human together". This African tag will always hold, even to the last syllable of recorded time. 

The principle means that every human being has the right to exist for as long as the community into which he is born holds the right to perpetuate itself legitimate. It proposes to give each human the opportunity to account in the mist of the community for the decision to act or not. It actually deprives any one being to shuffle off their own mortal coil, this judging by the outrage displayed by a community regarding the act. Principles cannot be broken, we are able only "to break ourselves from principles"

A parent who is no good and treats their offspring like dirt is frowned upon by their neighbours. A nation that makes of their own sub-humans receives alienation from the world community. The human feeling of sharing guards our interests, while we may feel wise enough to belittle it from time to time.        

Facts are on the table. Anybody who is not impaired in any way will be able to read and to hear about them. Can I get a witness?
 

 

 

 





 

The National Development Plan (NDP) is supposed to be the omnibus blueprint to take South Africans from the abyss of underdevelopment to the soaring heights of a creative economy of technical industry, cutting-edge services, and better aligned agriculture.   

 

But alas! That opportunity has been missed again; and how embarrassing does the pongy Humpty Dumpty feel on our faces.

 

The opportunity was missed for two all-important reasons, i.e. on the diagnostic and on the whole dimension of modernism.

 

At the gut-feeling level, the ANC government purports to know the social scene of every nook and cranny of every community, in all of South Africa. The Zuma Adminitration seems to have conducted a country-wide research (who knows the duration of it) behind our back. And it's now shoving it down everyone's throat. 

 

Once again, and considering the e-tolling system on Gauteng's motorways, we are being dictated to. We are being told of our own condition and future without us ever making "grassroots" contributions. Suppose that's what the recent census-taking did for the Rain Nation. Point is, that consultations are not a part of this country's order of democratic day. Our problems are what the ANC tells us they are. And we are to accept that outcome as the only truth, the whole, and nothing but the truth. So help us hopelessness.

 

We are and must always be a resource-intensive economy. This is one of the dictates contained in the schedule for development. The NDP can be safely depicted as just a semantic document--big technical words that sound nicer than the problems they're communicating.

 

The NDP does not touch--not one bit--on how to improve the appalling education paradigm which the ANC has messed up so badly. It doesn't say how to industrialize this economy with enthusiasm and rigor, after thrust it in with the big industrial powers. It ignores the productivity aspect of agriculture and arable land use.

 

The buzzword seems to be getting all adult South Africans in to jobs, and at whatever pay--the quality of these jobs flies out the window. And entrepreneurship is spoken of as the snake oil to each problem at hand. At its core, the entrepreneurship is predicated on the fact that economy will pick up momentum once each South African hangs their shingle.

 

South Africa is the "s" in the economic formation called BRICS. All other BRICS nations are manufacturing economies and export their products. Except for us. We just consume what we are not producing ourselves--as charity cases are suppose to. To be fair, we hand over to them our raw materials at nominal prizes, and pay exorbitantly for what we need from them. Our textile industry is fast going south.

 

"Cry the beloved country" indeed.    

 

 

 

       

THE NEXT ROCKSTARS

To be a computer geek or not to be is soon to be a social question. The question is to be answered by everyone who's got a huge urge to stay cool. But wait, how about the guys who are depending more and more on the internet either as entrepreneurs or just as students. I dare say that these people too, by their own standards, are themselves geeks; they simply define it way too loosely.

 

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee of the UK weaved the internet in 1989. He could be now said to be the greatest humanitarian of our precarious age. And judging by the knighthood he received from the British Royalty in 2004, this observation is not far off the mark.

 

Now the world wide web has spawned a whole new "Big Bang". These days you are sure to eavesdrop on private conversations about business ventures online. And you would be excused for doing so too-digital migration is a legitimate buzzword. In several countries, and on all seven continents, falling behind while the world marches on as it picks itself up and dusts itself off in the aftermath of this "Big Bang" will be a guaranteed suicide by nukes.

 

Only this time will the "Big Bang" be properly mathematized. Only this time will the laws of physics be democratized. Only this time will everybody stand a chance at being a true superstar scientist.

 

In the States a short film has been shot with the intent to socialize this very idea. The film is called WHAT MOST SCHOOLS DON'T TEACH. It is available for viewing on YOUTUBE.

 

Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder and CEO, had been computer illiterate. In the film, computer programming is touted as the "new literacy". The meaning should be obvious: each one of us is in dire need of an education all over again. We can ill afford to embrace complacency. So the next time you find your hands being weighed down by a load of unoccupied hours ticking away, just contemplate the fact that coding is a fresh sing-along to rock to.

 

Yet kids need more of this kind of literacy than adults do-they have a longer stretch ahead of them. Along with math and science, coding ought to be taught in school. In maintaining the human civilization, problem solving will be in greater demand. And one territory to be conquered is Artificial Intelligence (AI). It's going to be a necessary tool to possess. Just as the free world needed the nuke energy to stop Hitler's Germany and her menacing comrades in their tracks, so will the human condition require us to be active more, to think more creatively, and to educate the human mind more along the lines of computer power.