South Africa ... and the hand grenade

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MOELETSI MBEKI: Wealth creation

I CAN predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded.

For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes.

The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkering s with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed.

A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200,000 people were killed.

The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.

- Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power;

- In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its history;

- The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600,000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and

- The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA’s poor and foreign African migrants.

What should the ANC have done, or be doing? The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA’s strengths were; identified what SA’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses.

A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels.

What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE). [See post - http://coginito.blogspot.com/2010/11/twin-towers-of-south-africa.html]

BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations.

Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE.

The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business.

The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. That was the design of the big conglomerates.

Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates.

But what is wrong with protecting SA’s conglomerates? Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.

- The economy has a strong built- in dependence on cheap labour;

- It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources;

- It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population;

- It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and

- It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass.

Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates. [My note - explains why earnings for the rich have gone up even though labour is less productive]

The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos.

My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground.

But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates.

The third worrying trend is that the ANC- controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed.

What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment.

So what is the correct road SA should be travelling? We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. 

Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.

[My note - The fatal flaw in the current socio-economic model is that it is not "Small and Medium Enterprises" centered]

- Mbeki is the author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise. Published by Business Day. Published: 2011/02/10 07:01:41 AM

Ethnicity … Homo Sapiens and the Black aberration.

Like so many others, Halle Berry, that incredibly beautiful version of the female species, has just fallen flat on her face as a member of homo sapiens. So has Gabriel Aubry, the father of their beautiful  young daughter.

Halle insists that their daughter is “black”. Gabriel insists that the child is “white”.  The simple fact that the child is neither “white” nor “black” , as a matter of anthropological/genetic/visual reality, is completely lost on these two bright sparks, as they sound off from their respective corners.

Others have joined the fray, whilst tens of thousands are already also locked into their respective corners on this now vexed issue. And what is the issue? It is all about the ethnicity about folks of “mixed” race.

During the immediate past it has become politically correct for anybody who has even “one drop” of black blood in their veins to “proudly” classify themselves as black. The result is the visually absurd situation where even folk who are visually quite “white” are referred to as “black”, because somewhere in their pedigree there was a contribution of black sperm or egg. The one drop rule is a Jim Crowe-era notion that a person is "black" if they have even a single drop of black blood. It is all powerful. Just one drop trumps even 99.99% "whiteness!". Wow! 

Barrack Obama is the quintessential example. The guy has a black father and a white mother. So he simply cannot be regarded/classified as either white or black. Well you can’t do this, and still claim to be a member of a sentient (cognito, ergo sum) species on this planet, concerned with simple truth. What renders the thing even more absurd, is that Barrack was brought up by his White mother. But somehow we contrive to say he is black? Are we all coo-coo?

The grim reality however is that there are millions who proudly take this stance, that a man who is not black, is black. The cognitive process is – “yes, as homo sapiens, I know that he is not black, but because I have good reason to deny this, that makes him black!!!!”. That’s it!

That’s the justification, in terms of which simple truth is converted and metamorphosized into something else, something other than truth. We do this even though, unlike other creatures, we are possessed of the great gift of intellect. We then use that gift to deny, distort and obfuscate truth … because we say we have good reason to!

And in this process, we quite comfortably ignore so many lessons from history, that prove that so much evil starts with truth being denied, distorted and obfuscated, on the basis of a claimed good reason. The list is endless, but includes the apartheid government justifying its brutalization of Black people on the claimed Biblically based justification that Blacks were ordained to be hewers of wood, and drawers of water. The Holocaust was founded on a whole host of claimed justifications to submerge and destroy simple truth that all human beings are equal. All injustice starts with a lie ... usually a big one!

Now what is this good reason? Why do so many subscribe to this “one drop is enough to make me Black” dogma? Surprisingly it is really is quite simple. It is a hangover from a time when White folk quite brutally indulged themselves in the same “denial of truth” mindset and went about quite viciously  forcing us to accept the “one drop” rule … which we have since voluntarily elevated to a somewhat sacred dogma!.

Wow! We take the grossly cruel and misguided philosophy of the oppressor, and voluntarily elevate it to a sacredly held dogma! Are we mad … or incredibly stupid … or delusional … or all three?? Why, in the name of heaven, are we adopting the evil culture of the oppressor?

Look, the reason why we once needed to all be Black is perfectly understandable. . We once had little or no option. A racist dominant group pretty well made sure of this … in trying to contend for its own supposed superiority, based on supposed  racial purity, as justification for gross social injustice.   In the fight for social justice we were indeed forced into one camp. Our heroic leaders, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were indeed Black. It was all too easy and natural for all of us “one drop” lot to coalesce into one big Black camp.

However, the world has moved on. Times have changed. We have shed the yoke of oppression. We are free to be who we are! We are free to be who we are! We are free to be who we are! White driven racism has, by and large, been overthrown. White folk have moved on.

Yes, White folk have moved on. Do we not understand that it is White folk who put Barrack Obama in power? Do we not understand that this proves beyond any doubt that they have moved on? They voted him in as President of the most powerful country on this planet because they have moved on. Right there, they proved that merit, not race or colour coding, was the criteria if the interests of mankind were to be advanced. In South Africa, and other African countries, the Black majority is now dominant. There is simply no reason to coalesce into one “black grouping”.  Why do we allow our minds to remain imprisoned in the racist past?

We are free to be who we are!

Now please ask a 5 year old child  to match the following persons to the colours black, brown and white – Barrack Obama, George Bush and Michael Jordan.

Are you now going to dispute the simple truth that is going to emerge from the uncluttered, unprejudiced, unencumbered mind of the child? Are you going to lie to the child … and justify the lie with a long story that should really be relegated to the dustbin of history?

When Halle Berry starts lying to her beautiful brown skinned  daughter that she is actually black, what is she doing to the mind of that child? What is she doing to the child’s self-image? A child absolutely knows when you are lying. For God's sake, the child can see itself in the mirror. And here you are lying about something critically important to the child - its self-image! Psychologists and criminologists all agree  that self image is critically important to all human beings, particularly children. It ensures proper development and militates against deviance and criminal propensity. That much is no longer rocket science. So too as regards the fact that self image starts (and ends)  with knowing and accepting WHO YOU ARE! That is why it is now the legal norm that an adopted child has a legal right to know who its natural parents are! So I think parents who do this to their children need to be horsewhipped!

So can we please, please, please dump this herd mentality and stop insisting on putting ourselves in colour coded camps? Even the worst hangover eventually passes. Let us stop confusing our children. Let us, instead, infuse them with pride and confidence in who, and what, they actually are. Lies are lies, howsoever packaged.

You see, when Halle Berry insists that her child is Black, she is according her 50% White ethnicity no value … and thereby being quite racist … the very thing she supposedly does not subscribe to! So too as regards Gabriel Aubry. Both are being overtly racist!

Personally I am a very nice shade of honey brown, and very proud of it. I do not think of myself as either black or white. I acknowledge that I am "a person of colour" ... but it is not a preoccupation.  It is also quite bemusing to see how all the supposed "black" folk are now nearly all also a nice shade of brown, (with Coloured type hair to match)  on account of cosmetic interventions. Concomitantly so many White folk "roast" themselves to get to my colouring.

What angers me is that, in order to secure socio-economic rights in South Africa (naively aping the US), under Affirmative Action and Black “Empowerment” laws, I have to claim and prove that I am Black. So we have the gross obscenity that during racist colonial days, many “Coloured folk” had to “play white”,  so as to secure socio-economic rights. Now we have to “play black”, … even though we have supposedly been liberated at terrible human cost??? Right there our "new free South Africa" has embedded the racist culture of its previous apartheid oppressor! ... whichever way you want to bake it! WOW!

It is obscene. It is vomitus stuff.

Again, as homo sapiens,  do we not know that justice, particularly social justice, can never be founded on lies.

We are free to be who we are. We need to get off the Jim Crowe plantation.

Unlike the Tunisians and Egyptians we are free to  now just claim our freedom?

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Order --- theother.orgfree.com.

Jasmine and Lotus ... in truth the ordinary becomes extraordinary

An ordinary life becomes extraordinary

 when you seek truth

setting your face against deception and lies.
Find it. Defend it.

Then your life will have meaning to others.
It will make a difference; howsoever small.
And the world will change; for the better.
Yes we can.

The above is the first page impact statement in my book –"The other – without fear, favour or prejudice -" published on Lulu.com in 2010. At the time I imagined that the time had come for ordinary people to pursue truth in order to effect real change.

Change is needed … badly needed. It is blindingly obvious that the world is pretty well messed up. It starts with the United Nations. The UN, operating at unbelievable costs, does not stop wars, genocide, mass rapes and all kinds of brutalization of people by all kinds of despots, tyrants and corrupt regimes. It is a club for leaders, where they hold a brief for themselves, as leaders, to conduct deal brokering in power, influence and assets ... for themselves. They do not hold a brief for humanity … but for themselves.

So the culture of “we are the bosses … and here to stay … regardless of the cost to ordinary human beings” cascades down to other “leadership camps and cabals” like the African Union, SADC and the Arab League.

In the result human rights, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, sanctimoniously subscribed by all of the so-called leaders at the UN, count for very little when in competition with those of the snouted ones at the trough of power and self-enrichment. So, led by one leader, Thabo Mbeki, SADC and the AU had no trouble at all in providing security, comfort and support for Robert Mugabe, killer of some 20, 000 Ndebeles in his Gukuranhundi pogrom, and architect of one of the most brutal regimes of modern times. As regards Thabo Mbeki, over 320, 000 of his own people died on account of him denying them antiretroviral  HIV/AIDS drugs. For this no one has suggested that he be brought to account.

Zackie Achmat

So in a situation where leaders look after leaders, I imagined that ordinary folk needed to do something.  They needed to do something about social injustice, which is the price paid for corrupt leadership. So the book makes the point that the key is for ordinary folk to seek truth, set their faces against deception and lies. Central to all this is that leaders propagate and maintain social injustice by routinely peddling convenient untruths and suppressing inconvenient truths.

Full credit must be given to Zacki Achmat, an ordinary human being, who led the Treat Action Campaign, to force an end to the Mbeki sponsored denial of anti retroviral drugs to HIV/AIDS victims. He, and his team, were simply not prepared to believe the obscene obfuscation of truth, trotted out by leadership to justify a most pernicious example of social injustice.

Now we have Mohamed Bouazizi. He was a 26-year-old university graduate without a steady job, trying to support his family. This ordinary man decided that “enough was enough” . and set himself on fire. As my book says – “when you take a stand, as an ordinary human being, it will have meaning to others and will make a difference”. 

In this case it did just that … on an unprecedented and incredible scale. Other ordinary people, ordinarily conservative and highly respectful of authority,  rose up in the “Jasmine Revolution” and rid themselves of 23 years of oppressive rule by one of the most senior members of the leadership club.

AP

[The picture shows soon to be deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali trying to save the situation by visiting Mohamed Bouazzi in hospital]

Since then the world has watched, in wondrous fascination, as ordinary people, rose up in  Jordan, the Yemen and Egypt, in order to reject long-standing deception, lies and social injustice, make a difference and free themselves from oppression. At the heart of this revolution is a new phenomenon of change, social networking, proving a powerful vehicle for replacing lies with truth.

Fundamental, to this new state of things for the world, is the fact that ordinary people have been greatly assisted in finding truth on account of this being the "information age".
As a direct result of this phenomenon, it has become impossible for other leaders to come to the aid of their despotic counterparts, who stand completely exposed for what they are.

As regards Egypt’s Lotus Revolution the revelation(s) is quite sickening. The United States, bastion of democracy and self-proclaimed “world policemen” on human rights has been supporting a despot, Hosni Mubarak, in its own interests , without so much as a squeak about the fact that this leader has been denying his own people basic human rights for some 30 years under a “state of emergency”.  The notion that a man who is raping his own daughter is a friend is truly remarkable, but absolutely obscene. In the result, poor President Obama has been caught with America’s pants down. He and Hilary have struggled to find a “dignified and acceptable” way to abandon America’s erstwhile ally, Hosni Mubarak, who is finding it even more difficult to simply accept the simple truth that the Egyptian people just don’t want any more of he and his kind.

In addition, it has now emerged that Israel, supported by the US, has routinely rejected quite unbelievably benevolent concessions made by the Palestinian negotiating team, trying desperately to bring a bloody conflict to an end and secure social justice for a whole people.

The game is up. Ordinary people are no longer prepared to accept lies and deception. Leaders will be held to account on the basis of truth.

China has been the first leadership clique to react to this new threat to the camp. So it immediately shut down all internet and media access to news on the revolution occurring in Egypt. To China what is happening in Egypt is an inconvenient truth that it does not want its dispossessed people to know about. The Mubarak regime had vainly tried to persecute and emasculate Al Jazeera and to deny ordinary people truth by shutting down internet services.

It will not work. The world has changed forever. 

Ordinary people will no longer be denied information. 

They will no longer be denied access to truth, and the right to act on it, 

in order to make a difference and bring about social justice!.
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PS: The above was posted at the beginning of the "Arab Spring", in 2011.
In 2016 Donald Trump secured the American presidency, even though he lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes to Hillary Clinton.
During his first year of presidency, the world has witnessed this man emerge as the biggest liar recorded in history. His central message and slogan is "Make America Great Again" that has no other meaning than that America be returned to its disgraceful era of racial and gender oppression.
Despite being constitutionally obliged to "defend the realm", as his first duty, Trump has a blindingly obvious liaison with Vladimir Putin leader of Russia, America's biggest enemy.
It is therefore no surprise that he has mounted a sustained attack against the "information age" by bellowing, grunting and snorting out the concept of "fake news" in referencing our purveyors of information.
America is now in its most disgraceful period since the days of slavery.