Category: elections

Tired of…

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Tired of a few things at the moment.

The impending World War is a bit tiresome. I do hope that it’s not going to affect our football team weekend away towards the end of the month. That would really be adding insult to injury. Imagine society crashing down around us and you didn’t even get the chance to share a few beers with your mates at what looks like a really decent place in the Klein Karoo before it all kicked off.

Tired of the politics in this country. The iffy polices and the usual pre-election promises and lies. Yes, yes, I know that they’re the same thing. Tired of the polarised viewpoints and the unjustified ad hominem attacks on social media. Weary at the people who think that what’s happening on twitter bears any relation to the situation in the real world.

And, related: HOW HAVE WE SUDDENLY GOT SO MUCH ELECTRICITY? Sure, no loadshedding is great and all, but at what cost is this pre-election “normality” coming? Something unsustainable is happening.
More on that in a future post.
Maybe.

Tired of – and a bit bewildered at – this sort of stunt from local news site (the) Daily Maverick:

I recognise the need for journalism, and I recognise the need for a strong and independent media, but 1) Is that really what they are?, and 2) Is this action a bit OTT and a bit drama llama-y?

Mmm.

Tired of being just being tired. I went to bed ridiculously early yesterday evening, and I slept really well. I just could have done with another few hours. I’m sure you recognise the feeling.

Still did much better than this guy though:

Oh why have all the moonbats come back out of the woodwork recently? Was it the eclipse?
So damn exhausting. They’re suddenly everywhere again, including literally shedloads of Americans who think that Cape Town has been washed away by some massive weird tsunami thing that none of us actually in Cape Town, noticed.

And like that guy above whose name was blanked out on this screenshot, but who has clearly risen like Lazarus, if he’s repeatedly had no pulse for 5 minutes at a time.
If resurrection is a side effect of the covid vaccine, then I think we need to know.

There would be many, many implications.

I think I need to sleep on it…

How did we get here?

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With all the analysts, experts and common sense telling us that SA is about to go to even more pot after the upcoming elections; with the UK in danger – allegedly – of becoming a failed state; with wars in the Middle East and the ex-Soviet Union (and everywhere else that we don’t get to hear about); with Trump looking like even a possibility for re-election in the US, you might be forgiven for wondering how on earth we ended up in this situation.

Alasdair Beckett-King (you may remember him from such posts as Day 417 – King Lear redux) is also rightfully incredulous:

The thing is, even though it’s quite clear what has actually brought us to this (Alasdair inadvertently touches upon it above, in case you were still wondering), realistically, it’s not like our collective idiocy is going to change anytime soon.

“Surely it can’t get any worse, though, right?” he asked for the 8,114th time in the last 5 years.

Correct me if I a wrong

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With the election date announced (May 29th, thanks for asking), everything here has become even more politically charged than usual. Voting will be for provincial and national government, but the players are all the same, and so even anything to do with the municipalities becomes antagonistic and polarised very quickly.

Here’s a reply to a Facebook post regarding funding for homeless shelters in Cape Town.

It looks like a keyboard has fallen down a steep slope, bouncing on several rocks and deflecting through the branches of a particularly thorny tree before coming to rest in the midst of a honey badger family, where the junior members have flung it from one to another for an hour or more.

And then one of them hit the POST COMMENT button.

This comment is absolutely unintelligible, but it’s still easier to read and is more sensible and pleasant than most of the stuff you’ll read on social media for the next few months.

Although “spiritual warfare attackers” will almost certainly feature less in that other stuff.
Which is no bad thing.

Correct me if I a wrong.

Great timing

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Thursday was the day that Climate Scientists announced that the world had made it a whole year with an average global temperature >1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. And if you click through on that link, you’ll be able to read about many of the other records that have recently been broken as mankind does its best to trash what’s left of the planet.

It probably wasn’t the best day that the UK Labour party could have chosen to announce that they were dropping their £28bn a year “Green Prosperity” plan, halving the funding due to “the economic climate”. The actual climate isn’t the only climate that is struggling, then.

When you are an opposition party, it’s easy to make grand statements about how much you are going to spend, and all the plans you are going to carry out once you’re in government. No-one can hold you to them, because you can’t do them anyway, because you’re not in power. But suddenly, with Labour surely almost certain to win the upcoming election in the UK, they’re having to backtrack on their promises.

But with the world experts crying out for more funding for environmental and ecological issues, more buy-in and more commitment from governments, the perfect timing of this climbdown was a disaster.

Talking of disasters…

During his 2024 State Of The Nation address on Thursday evening, President Ramaphosa talked up the progress that the government had made in tackling loadshedding, which was running at Stage 2 throughout his speech:

“Since SA’s renewable energy programme was revived five years ago, more than 2,500MW of solar and wind power had been added to the grid, with much more in the pipeline. More than 120 new private energy projects were in development after regulatory reforms enabled private investment.
These are phenomenal developments that are driving the restructuring of our electricity sector in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices. 

Through all of these actions, we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach.”

About an hour after he made that statement, loadshedding was raised to Stage 3.
And three hours after that, it was raised to Stage 4.

And now we’re on Stage 6. No electricity for 12 hours each day.

Again, absolutely wonderful timing.

“…we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach”

Utter nonsense. Any light at the end of the tunnel has clearly got nothing to power it.

Plant xenophobia

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As the fire along the coast continues to rage unabated, and with the wind threatening to turn over the weekend and potentially push it back towards the Southern Tip, Margaret et al. have now turned their attention towards the vegetation which is providing fuel for the fire.

It’s well known that some invasive species can burn at hotter temperatures than our local fynbos – which incidentally needs to burn every 15 years or so to survive – and may therefore be partly responsible for the speed and the spread of some fires. And that’s clearly not good.

But there does seem to be some issue with the glossary of terms being used here.

“Dense, inaccessible vegetation”, in which the fire is currently burning does not mean “invasive vegetation”. It just means there’s a lot of vegetation and the firefighters can’t get to it.

The Margarets on the group don’t seem to get that. Apparently, if it’s burning, it must be invasive and someone needs to be prosecuted.

Nor do the terms “alien” and “invasive” the same thing. Alien species are ones that have been introduced to this country from somewhere else. You might also see them described as “exotic”, “non-native” or “non-indigenous”.
We’re supposed to frown upon this sort of thing these days, and so we do.
But what we don’t have to do with alien plants is pull them up remove them simply because they came from somewhere else. I mean, if it’s on your property, you can do that, but you don’t have to.

I recognise that applying this logic to actual humans is a vote-winning policy with some South African political parties, but they are fairly repulsive, and there’s no need to take it out on plants as well.

Unless they are invasive.

Invasive species are ones which expand into and modify ecosystems into which they are been introduced.
This is a really bad thing, and there is legislation to cover this, which quite often does require them to be pulled up and removed.

I fully support this by buying invasive wood to burn on my braai. It’s just one (additional) way I like to help. But while I do my bit, my neighbours just up the road are actively growing a Rooikrans hedge. Maybe they just like to live dangerously.

Apparently, the municipality are coming to town today “to do an inspection” on who’s got what plants on their properties. This is laughable for several reasons. First of all, it’s far too late to do anything about getting rid of invasives ahead of the wind changing direction on Sunday and blowing the fire our way again. Where were the council 3, 6, 12 or 24 months ago?

Secondly, it’s sheer pandering towards concerned residents who will be looking for any scapegoat should there be any fire issues in the village. And lookie here: just before an election, as well.

Who ever would have thought?

And then thirdly, there’s the fact that the areas managed or controlled by two biggest landowners in the vicinity: the municipality and the Agulhas National Park, are both absolutely chock full of invasive – and high fire risk – vegetation. But woe betide you if you have a Rooikrans hedge in your garden.

Actually, no: I’d fully support them on taking that one out.

The worry is that the village is a bit lentil curtainy when it comes to this sort of thing. There are enough militant old hippies living there to go out and just chop for the sake of chopping. I’ve cleared our place of all the invasives, but I do have a shrub on my property which is alien (don’t shoot me, Rupert), but which isn’t invasive and which doesn’t pose a fire risk. But with all the convenient mix up over nomenclature, I half expect it to be gone via a vigilante chainsaw when we next go back.

I will not be happy, but I will know pretty much exactly whose door to knock on.

Let’s hope we don’t have to cross the bridge of the knocking on the door scenario, and let’s hope even more that the current fire is extinguished quickly and safely, with no more damage to the environment or anyone’s property. Or my plant.