Category: politics

Don’t be fooled

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We’re less than 6 months away from elections in South Africa. This process will unfortunately result in one (or – worse still – more) of the local political parties trying to form a government. But in the run up to those elections, we can expect populism, bribery, misinformation, disinformation, violence, scapegoating, xenophobia, and a whole raft of untruths and empty promises.

All of which will be lapped up and amplified by a fully dysfunctional, AI-assisted social media, and those dodgy anti-SA sites like Daily Investor and TheSouthAfrican.

It’s started already, with one certain divisive political figure spouting bullshit to anyone who will listen in an effort to be controversial,

Maybe he was thinking of the very similar sport of Nqanqarhu: named for the posh school in the Eastern Cape where Wandile Qwebe-Mwelis first picked up the football and began running with it.

And while this is so clearly and demonstrably incorrect, it’s actually laughable, there are plenty within his party who will believe him. And sadly for us, and the country in general, the polarisation of politics is so great at the moment, that they will then go on to believe him on more serious matters, never mind the fact that he’s merely doing it for clout and votes.

And yes, he got his name into the headlines again. Just what he wanted.

I guess that the positive side of this is that the polarisation of politics is so great at the moment, that it’s unlikely that he will sway anyone into voting for the EFF while talking this sort of nonsense. But it is rather scary that there’s a good possibility that the EFF and this clown may become Kingmakers next year, should the ANC’s demise be as bad as everyone expects.

It’s not like anyone else is doing much better. You’d think that with such a proven disastrous government in place, it would be easy pickings to win the election. But things are more complicated than that: there’s a whole lot of history to overcome for a start, and then there’s the infighting and instability amongst the opposition parties, the ridiculous pipe-dream (is there such a thing as a “pipe-nightmare”?) of “Cape Independence” and the power-crazed individuals driving it, and even the unnecessary stances on the Israel situation.

The aftermath of the elections promises to be a complete mess, but there’s not a lot we can do about that. The run-up to the elections will also be horrific, but keep your calm, don’t believe everything you hear or read, and don’t be fooled into shouting for one side or the other. It won’t get you anywhere.

Not what I was going to do

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I had – I still have – a plan for a “proper” post about politics. But wow. While I’m on the mend from the nastier symptoms of that virus, the brain fog, the breathlessness and the fatigue.

It’s really draining and it’s not prompting me to get involved with anything serious or requiring thought this afternoon. (Breathlessness was not a factor here.)

Do narcoleptics feel tired all the time? Or is it just an “I feel fine zzzzzz” thing? I ask because I am constantly on the cusp of falling asleep today. And the dangers are real: a comfortable couch at the piano lesson. The subdued lighting at tonight’s dodgeball practice.

These things don’t help…

So the political post will wait for another day. Sadly, it’s not time sensitive: politics isn’t going anywhere.

Me? I’m going to bed.

Meanwhile, in South Africa…

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Here’s today’s news:

> Stage 5 loadshedding: meaning an average of 10 hours without electricity each day.

Here’s our local supermarket’s tongue-in-cheek repsonse:

Yes, those are candles. A huge array of many different types of candle.
And yes, that light top right was being powered by a generator.

> There’s a massive fuel price increase this week because the government has f*****d the Rand:

“Motorists are in for a shocking fuel price increase from Wednesday. The price of petrol will go up by R1.71 per litre, diesel by R2.84 and paraffin by R2.78.”

> The President is attending the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s President, even though the entire world knows that the election was more rigged than a particularly complex 19th Century tea clipper:

…the elections were marred by controversy – including issues with the voters’ roll, the banning of opposition rallies, reports of biased state media coverage and voter intimidation.

> Cyril will then be heading home to “address the nation”, and tell us that the enquiry by the SA government into whether the SA government supplied arms to Russia has found out that the SA government didn’t supply arms to Russia, but the SA government can’t show us the SA government report exonerating the SA government, because that would “jeopardise the work of the SA armed forces”.

> And all this is being rubbed like salt into an open wound as the ANC shitterati dance with each other while the country falls apart:

“The mood [fire emoji] [fire emoji]”?
Is it,? That’s weird, because the mood is very different across everyone else in the country. But then I guess that it’s easy to be happy and dancey when your continual mismanagement, gross incompetence and widespread corruption only negatively affect other people.

Ugh. Trash.

Strike One

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Of course, the intended effect of a strike or any other industrial action is to demonstrate the value of the service that industry provides, simply by withdrawing it. And there’s no question that the taxi industry in Cape Town (and South Africa) provides a very valuable service.

However, if you then have to resort to intimidation and violence to prevent people from circumnavigating your withdrawn service, then that does rather undermine the message that your service is irreplaceable.

And not allowing individuals to make their own decisions about how they choose to get around has implications far beyond the apparently spurious reasons for calling the strike in the first place.

But it’s all become a power game now, and the taxi bosses don’t care that hundreds of thousands of breadwinners aren’t able to get to work, get paid and put food on the family table. They’re happy to overlook the fact that kids can’t get to school with exams just a couple of months away. They have no qualms about healthcare facilities for the most vulnerable being closed. And they might pass lip service about “peaceful protest” in open letters, but the fact is that they are more than happy to sit on their thrones while their underlings fight each other and everyone else.

If it’s a battle for hearts and minds – which so many of these disputes seems to come down to in the end – you’d think that maybe they’ve lost this one. But with the alternatives too sparse and too risky to use, it’s not like it won’t just be business as usual anyway when the strike ends (allegedly) on Thursday.

What’s the plan here?

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South Africa is once again demonstrating its neutrality over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This comes just a few days after it was revealed that SA had been following a non-partisan approach by supplying arms and ammunition to Russia.

Now we’ve sent the head of the SANDF (the SA armed forces) to Russia to “visit educational institutions of the ground forces and enterprises of the military-industrial complex” there and “further increase cooperation between ground forces in various fields”.

Thank goodness we’re not taking sides here.

It’s not like we can afford to be doing this. The Rand is tanking already because of loadshedding and the arms shipments row. To add fuel to the fire right now seems both deliberately provocative and deliberately stupid.

South African bilateral trade with Russia amounts to around $1.3 billion. In comparison, bilateral trade with the UK is $10.1 billion, the US is around $17 billion and the EU over $30 billion. To risk all of that for Vlad’s pocket change means that there’s clearly something else happening behind the scenes. Is that something SA owes Russia? Or is it something the Ramaphosa owes Putin?
Because we can talk all day long about how much we abhor the colonial West and and all that they stand for, but that talk is cheap when we are still doing 50x more trade with them each year than we are with Mother Russia. And that’s a lot of money we simply can’t afford to lose.

Maybe the idea is to just run what’s left of the country into the ground before they get voted out at the next election. Or maybe this is actually an election strategy: a vote winner. The anti-imperialists will go for it, of course, but it remains to be seen how the incoming hyper-inflation will attract any normal person to vote for the ANC.

So… what is the plan here? Because I’m equally mystified and concerned.