Category: in the news

What now?

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Even as the Easter Bunny (me) was busy laying bunny tracks and eggs in the back garden at dawn, news was filtering through of the murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche. Now, while Eugene was not a terribly nice bloke by any stretch of the imagination, he was still (genetically, at the very least) a human being and he met a horrible and unnecessary end. His death is a bad thing for his organisation, his family and his friends. It could be a very bad thing for South Africa.

That said, I don’t think that Terre’Blanche’s murder will be a trigger for mass racial violence. For all his bravado and words, he actually wielded very little power. His ideas were outdated and laughably extreme, his organisation largely ignored. For this reason, I don’t believe that there was anything more to his death than meets the eye. Whatever they may wish to believe, the AWB is nothing more than a fly on the thick skin of the ANC elephant – not even acknowledged as an irritation. So why bother?

The concern for me is some possible retaliation for Terre’Blanche’s death. That some idiot goes out and – unilaterally – avenges the murder with some act of mindless violence. And so it escalates: quickly.
Branko Brkic paints the perfect scenario for the start of a  civil war, citing Yugoslavia and Rwanda as examples. Many of the ingredients are worryingly present in the current SA. As he points out, South Africa needs to think clearly now.

Many will blame this murder on Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of the ANC Youth League. Some already have. But the truth is that we will never honestly know whether Malema’s words and alleged hate speech were a factor in this attack. But the continuing simmering racial tension is undoubtedly being heightened by his actions. As Helen Zille remarks:

“The singing of songs such as ‘kill the boer’ creates a climate in which violence is seen as an appropriate response to problems, whether personal or collective.”

This is a potential turning point for South Africa and it’s important to choose the correct direction. Sense should prevail.
Jacob Zuma could aid in this by reining Malema in. Whether or not Terre’Blanche’s death was due to Malema’s much-publicised recent comments, his words are divisive and unhelpful, just as Terre’Blanche’s were. The only difference is that Malema is getting as much free publicity as he wants to spread his gospel. And that has to stop.

It’s time to take a step back, a deep breath, some time out. And listen again to the sense of Branko Brkic:

White people should understand that their black friends are not going to kill them tomorrow because two frustrated, drunken youths killed Terre’Blanche somewhere in North West.
Black people should understand their white friends will not form the Ku Klux Klan just because a couple of hotheads are threatening revenge.

I hope that South Africa has come far enough to overcome this latest and difficult hurdle.
Watch this space, I guess.

Dan and Dan on the Daily Mail

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We’ve had more than a couple of run-ins with the useless tabloid rag which is Britain’s Daily Mail here on 6000 miles…
There was that Peter Hitchens racist nonsense, their laughably inaccurate reporting on the Fishhoek shark attack and then, more recently, the whole Jacob “Vile Buffoon” Zuma thing during JZ’s state visit to Britain.

It is, without a doubt, the most disgusting piece of racist, middle-England, scaremongering purveyor of  bullshit that I have ever had the displeasure to read.
And, as Britain goes down the drain, it’s steadily getting worse.
So I was hugely amused to see that Dan & Dan have done a little ditty entitled The Daily Mail Song.

The “cancer from your…” verse is just perfect.

Now, I think I’m going to go and wash my computer.
And, to be honest, so should you.

UPDATE: Right click/Save as to download the mp3 here.

Striking nastiness

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Not much from me tonight, but here is an interesting story on the current British Airways dispute.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t paid a huge amount of interest as to what is going on between BA and the Unite Union, but as this is slowly boiling down to workers (and the public) taking sides in what seems to be becoming a personal scrap between BA’s Willie Walsh and Tony Woodley et al of Unite, I’m getting more interested.  

Sky News was reporting some pretty nasty stuff going on and reading the Telegraph article brought back some vivid memories of the 1984 Miners’ Strike. I lived in Sheffield at the time, and the papers were full of the violence that surrounded that strike, not least the infamous Battle of Orgreave on the other side of the city. And yes, again there was that personal element at the top – Thatcher versus Scargill.
But that was the dirty, grimy mining industry and these are the guys that offer you drinks on the night flight to Heathrow. That was 1984, in the rough North of England; this is 26 years on in the shiny corridors of Terminal 5.

So why on earth do I find myself reading stuff like this?

It can be revealed that some female cabin staff braved the threat of intimidation by union workers to go to work as normal yesterday.
Some of those who worked had received threatening emails on Friday night, one of which read: “If any of you go into work tomorrow, your life won’t be worth living.”

Nice.

There’s obviously more to this than just a row over whether hot towels should be dished out on short-haul flights. With the UK general election around the corner and Unite funding the Labour Party to the tune of £11million, with Charlie Whelan as Unite’s political director and with these ridiculous threats flying around, this is going to be a story worth digging deeper into.

I’m off to polish my spade.

UPDATE: Started reading on the Miners’ Strike instead of the BA one. But there are some thought-provoking and salient lines in there, relevant to the BA dispute:

Those who called the miners “the enemy within” might have won the war, but they did not win many hearts or minds.

Trouble is, I’m just not sure which side they’re relevant to.

6000.co.za relaunch

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After this bit of apparent FIFA silliness, I have decided to relaunch 6000 miles…

We are now The Unofficial National Blog of the You-Know-What

 

Just don’t tell Sepp, ok?

UPDATE: Here’s the offending ad, which Kulula state on their facebook page, has got:

Nothing to do with the WC. Just to be clear.

Well, if by “WC”, they mean “World Cup” (and do they?)
Ja… right. 

My take now, having seen the ad (but not the letter)? I’m with FIFA. They have every right to protect their partners’ rights on this.

Unpopular view, maybe – but as I said in this comment, Emirates must have paid a small large fortune to be the airline associated with the tournament and this is blatent ambush marketing by Kulula. 

To be honest, the only whining we should be hearing from them should be from their plane’s engines.

Zuma’s Spousal Budget – Calm Down!

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Huge uproar around South Africa today as it emerged last night that the country pays a “massive” R15.5m per year to support President Jacob Zuma’s three wives. According to Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane, the money is spent on:

“…personal support staff – secretary and researcher – domestic air travel and accommodation, and international air travel and accommodation for official visits abroad approved by the President.”

The budget has increased from just over R8.1m in the previous year, when Kgalema Motlanthe was in charge – although he kept his private life private and his wife did not attend any public engagements.
In 2007/8, when Thabo Mbeki (remember him?) was in charge, the budget stood at R8.4m.

Everyone is up in arms, because obviously, if Zuma had less wives, we wouldn’t be paying as much, innit? How dare he follow his cultural path of polygamy. Of course, there are a couple of things that have been forgotten in all the fuss. Aren’t there always?

  • SA is effectively paying R5m per wife per year. Two years ago, we were were paying R8.4m for a wife we rarely saw.
    Last year, we were paying R8.1m last year for a wife we weren’t even sure existed.
    So where were all the complaints then?
  • R15m per year amounts to about R0.30 ($0.04 or 2½ pence!) per head of population per year. That’s 2.5c per month.
    And since you were already paying half of that without complaint before, you’re actually moaning about an increase of just over 1 cent per month.
    Tell me, in all honesty, did you have big plans for that 1c? Did you?

I don’t disagree that there are other things on which the money could be “better spent”: hospitals, education, housing etc etc. But isn’t that always the case? Why the huge uproar over this? 
No, this is just another misinformed and opportunist attack on Zuma’s lifestyle by the media, helpfully egged on by the DA.
When are they going to realise that their efforts would be better served on matters which they have the power (and democratic right) to challenge? Zuma’s polygamy is not one of them.

And if you’re one of those people who are being swept up by the sensationalism of it all before you’ve actually looked at the facts, well, maybe you need to sit down and think why you’re so upset: is it really that 30 cents a year you’re having to fork out or is there actually something else driving that anger?