Category: politics

Two Hats in Hat Swap Shock!

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Cape Town Mayor and Leader of the DA, Helen “Two Hats” Zille has been nominated as the DA’s candidate for the Premier of the Western Cape in the forthcoming election.

Speaking with sycophantic radio presenter John Maytham yesterday evening, Zille described the move as being “strategic” and expressed her wish for the DA to work “from the ground up” to “set an example of how good governance can work”.

She said if it could run both Cape Town and the Western Cape, voters across South Africa would realise that service delivery is better in regions where the DA is in power.

“It is a project of national significance. We want to run the city and the province in co-operative governance and demonstrate what it possible under those circumstances,” she said, adding that as mayor she was frustrated by stone-walling on the part of the ANC powers in the province.

This struggle between the ANC controlled Provincial Government and the DA controlled City of Cape Town Municipality has long been cited as the reason for delays in service delivery – most especially housing – and for the objective bystander (that’s me) acts as a shining example of all that is wrong with politics. That is, while the individuals elected to serve the people bicker and attempt to score cheap political points from one another, nothing actually gets done on the ground.
This lack of service delivery is obviously because of the Province, according to the DA and obviously because of the City, according to the ANC. It’s playground politics at its very worst.

Zille’s record as Mayor of Cape Town is undoubtedly impressive. However one must remember that the DA remains a political party and be mindful of spin when looking at her claims of success, which she rolled out one after another in yesterday’s M&G article “The DA Saved Cape Town“.
And even if her numbers stand up to scrutiny (and I have neither the time nor the inclination to scrutinise Helen Zille’s vital statistics) then there is still a lot of work to be done by the DA to overturn the ANC’s Provincial rule. More likely, as Linda Ensorstates in today’s Business Day is the DA holding no overall majority and looking to form a coalition with the ID or Cope: something Zille described as “always complex”.

Whether a coalition (such as the one which the DA have used to run Cape Town for the past three years) represents true democracy is open to debate. But it will be interesting to see how many of those barriers to service delivery are removed should the DA control Province and City. And how many more are “discovered” between Province and National Government. Cynics might suggest that the problem will merely be moved upward and onto a larger scale – something that would hinder service delivery to even greater numbers of needy citizens.

Trevor Mallach – fake letter

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It seems to me that the unacceptable practice of propagation of deliberate falsehoods to attain various objectives is becoming entrenched in our country.

Thabo Mbeki, January 2009

A letter – which initially appears similar to Alan Knott-Craig’s brilliant first and not so great second – has been doing the rounds here in SA. It purports to be penned by the hand of one Trevor Mallach, “a Shoprite Group executive” and comes with his request to “please pass on to just five friends with the request that they do the same”. Do I hear the faint sound of alarm bells?

The letter is a plea for South Africans to vote in the upcoming elections. Good idea. No problem with that: Want democracy? Use democracy.
In fact, I almost agree with the sentiment:

I swear on my grandma’s grave… if I hear someone (who didn’t vote or couldn’t vote because they were too lazy or hungover to register) complaining at a braai about the government, I will come in from the side with a flying head-butt which will leave you so brain-damaged you’ll join the ANC youth league and vote for Julius Malema in 2013.

But sadly, the rest of it is utter tosh: standard disingenuous “facts”, thinly-veiled comparisons of Jacob Zuma to Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe, promises that SA will become another Zimbabwe, that Zuma will commit murder during his tenure without fear of prosecution and will be President “forever”.

And then, when the election comes, vote for anyone except the ANC. You can vote for Vernon Koekemoer or Skippy Peanut Butter for all I care, just as long as no one gets a two-thirds majority!

Is that official Shoprite policy, then?

So, it’s fake – but how fake is “fake”? Well, Trevor Mallach does exist and he does work for Shoprite. I know this, because I spoke to him this morning. It’s not difficult to do this, but it’s no use googling his name – all you get is daft blogs worshipping “his” letter and using cut-and-paste because they have nothing more interesting to share. Instead, I went to the Shoprite website, rang the number on the page and asked to speak to him. Tough.

And that’s where the sad side of this sordid tale comes in. Because Trevor Mallach does exist and he didn’t write this letter. But it’s his reputation and his name which is getting dragged through the mud each time this rubbish is forwarded (and it’s being forwarded a lot!). As soon as I mentioned the letter, there was both resignation and anger in his voice – I’d describe it as a kind of angry, resigned tone. He asked me not to forward the email, asked me to delete it, said he was fed up of hearing about it and that it was all a lot of nonsense. Of course, it’s a futile effort, this thing is whizzing around South African cyberspace like a SAA crew on coke. Just wait til it hits the ex-pats – they’ll have a field day with its rampant misinformation and scaremongering.

Dude, it must be true, Trevor Mallach said it and he’s a Shoprite group executive!!!!!!!

So – if you get this letter – don’t forward it.
Rather forward this explanation and remind people that behind a fake letter is a real person.

SARS – where is your money going?

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Postage, mainly.


Thirteen letters where one would have done

The South African Revenue Service (the equivalent of the Inland Revenue or the IRS) actually has a pretty good reputation over here. They rarely get stuff wrong, they get things done quickly, quietly, efficiently. And then they give all the money (all R627,692.8 million of it) to the highly respected Trevor Manuel and he spends it wisely.

This find in the PO Box wasn’t quite so impressive though. Is this what you mean by Stamp Duty, Trevor?

Keep dreaming, Helen!

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Incoming on twitter:

@JacquesR Zille calls on JZ to step down: http://tr.im/gAkc.
The comments after the article are scary (besides mine, of course).

And yes, she did:

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille has called on her ANC counterpart Jacob Zuma to step down as his party’s presidential candidate in the coming elections.
“Put your ambitions aside and act in the interests of the country and the constitution by publicly stepping down,” she said in an open letter to Zuma on Thursday.

Zille then went on to call on pigs to fly, bears to defaecate away from areas containing large numbers of trees and the Pope to tell us the truth: that the whole “God” thing is made up. Just what she is trying to achieve with this is beyond me. 
More seriously, her hint at legal action should JZ become President concerns me. I don’t see that that course of action would help at all. It would surely destabilise and further divide the country at a time when what the people need is more stability and unity in politics. But going through the courts seems to be how the DA is working just recently – perhaps because they realise that those are the only battles they stand a chance of winning. 

And yes, the comments after the article are a bit scary, but assuming that the things people say after an emotive political story on the Times website are representative of the views of your average South African is like assuming that what’s written in the Daily Mail is how all British people think. It’s just silly people saying silly things.

George Bush is Dead

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Well – not really.
But if you were watching the pisspoor South African Sky-wannabe eTV News (or more especially, their annoying little rolling banner thing across the bottom of the screen) then you would have seen those exact words on your TV.

The “misbroadcast” happened when a technician pressed the “broadcast live for transmission” button instead of the one for a test-run.

“The technical director pressed the wrong button, it took a second for the words to appear and then the words were on screen for only three seconds before they were taken off,” said spokesman Vasili Vass.

The station said test banners would now be done in “gobbledegook”.

Given the general standard spelling on their rolling banner, quite how they are going to separate the gobbledegook from the real stuff is a complete mystery to me and their other viewer.

The mistake was first reported on by the Afrikaans language newspaper Beeld, and on the media group’s website, News24.com.
“Its unfortunate, because we never comment on their mistakes,” said Mr Vass.  

Well, of course not. You’re only a 24 hour news channel.
Take on that sort of onerous responsibility and you’d never have time to tell us about ex-world leaders popping their clogs. Or not.