Back to Black . . .

Race is just about the most considered concept in the day to day lives of many South Africans. That is just the way things are. Well everytime I raise anything race based or related I am promptly told to get the chip off my shoulder and look to the future and forget the past because it is in the past. Well, the past is my present and as for the future - who knows?

My difficulty is that the country, its very existence and borders were built on race. The choices that people and corporations alike make on a daily basis, are informed to a lesser or greater extent by race. It is just the way it is. But it did not just become what it is today, it was made yesterday, in fact many, many yesterdays ago.

In the beginning there were only two races: the blacks (not allowed anything anywhere) and the whites (allowed everything everwhere). Nobody and nothing is ever going to fix that, ever! Who are the blacks though? It is clear who the whites are, but the blacks? That is a whole new proposition. In the good old days when things were fairly clear, black was all those who were not white, coloured or asian. Behind this was a whole series of legisltation, the police, the courts and around my town, practically all white people. Everyone was expected to know their place on the one or the other side of the divide.

This is a tired story I hear you say and it probably is. All I ask you to consider is the advent of black, when did it happen and how. My premise is simply this: black never was until white came and contrasted. This too is all too familiar. The classification of black as black and therefore different to white, was a clever instrument of division for the purpose of competition for resources. Politics, some white guy wrote, is nothing but competition and co-operation for resources. The more the resources get scarce, the more robust the politics (at best). The closer to white (a whole lot of criterea was used here from being converted to owning land, etc) you are meant the closer to the wealth of the land; of course the further from white the closer to animals and other chattels. Well that is not new either, but just bear with me. So too is the fact that this state of affairs was sustained over a long period of time, dehumanising and reducing to a state worse than animals, millions of people simply by classifying them black.

Today, the legislation, the police and some of the white people from my old neighbourhood are gone, well most of them. The classification has however stayed. Black remains the badge of poverty, degradation and all manner of social ills. There is of course a time when black was appropriated by black people who sought to make it positive and beautiful - sort of like nigger. The positiveness and beauty of black is however only so to black people, well some of them. Even with all these positive actions by positive people and organisations - black has remained just that, black - ok bleak if you insist. I now sort of understand why there are attempts to replace it with yet other classifications and distincitons. HDIs, PDGs, Equity candidates - black as a word seems to get stuck in the throats of white people, especially when black people are around. They don't want to be offensive you know. They know too well what it means, hell they came up with it. Yes, I am visiting the sins of the fathers on the children.

It is now generally accepted that all that classification and what came with it was wrong; in fact a crime against humanity; a crime no one is doing time for. We are all reconciled and have buried the past and have collectively said never, never, never again blah, blah, blah. It is not always easy to unravel theft at the best of time. To unravel theft perpetrated over as long a period as it has in this country comes very close to impossible, especially when fact is a substitute for the truth. The truth, Anton Harber (that brilliant journo) will tell you, is a much tougher proposition. He would know, he spent a long time trying to publish it. In some cases though, it is clear whose land it is and exactly when they were kicked off it to make way for white people. Then of course is the rule of law and just compensation and so on and so forth. In this instance I agree with the sentiment that criminals do indeed have more rights than victims.

The hard working white people have made good hay while the sun shone and of course should not now be robbed of their hay. It is now the turn of black people to make the same hay for themselves and their offspring. Anything else, will plunge this country into chaos just like the other countries in Africa. Just because this is sensible does not make it right, right? Uncle Trevor puts it so poetically when he says that sometimes we should be guided by the moral compas. How I wish that among all those GPS goodies at the cape union mart, they also sold moral compasses. Anyway, morality is just another inconvenient truth.

In the meantime, the new legislation says that black is a generic term that includes coloureds and indians. The corporations and companies are having a field day with the new classifications. They brandish their compliance certificates with pride. Now even companies have colour and it is black - there are actually black companies. I don't care much for companies and the individuals behind them. It is the communities that for me are the most important. Let us go out there and help communities to help themselves. It is the best insurance policy we can buy for our children. The black communities that the late Steve and his then comrade, friend and lover, Mamphele were demonised, harrassed, jailed (and Steve) killed for trying to build.

Then there are other laws that black people have to obey: do not vote for this party, do not eat or drink that, do not dress like that, do not speak english, do not play this music. It is not easy being a darkie I tell you. But I am not complaining and I'm not asking for pity from no one. I am just saying that I have been doing some reading and I'm onto the bullshit.

Affirmative Action: Vuyani's View

The recent nonsense that have spewed forth from Terror Lekota's mouth regarding affirmative action has left me seething with anger. I am not proud to be angry after all, when Terror was premier of the Free State province, he made it clear to a bunch of afrikaners that they should not come into his office proclaiming to be angry. Anger, he said is an animal instinct and does not scare him - or words to that effect. I therefore copied (without permission but with full acknowledgement) a piece brilliantly written by Advocate Vuyani Ngalwana which was published in the Mail & Guardian of 19 August 2005. It was brilliant then, now it is just poignant and sublime. I wish Lekota would have bothered to read and learn before he blew whatever chance of legitimacy his organisation may have had. As my grandma taught me, "if you live in a mud house, don't piss against your neighbour's wall."

I have no illusion about my appointment as Pension Funds Adjudicator. I am quite certain that even with the extensive legal experience I have in income tax law, pension law and constitutional law (among other numerous talents), the chances of my appointment under the previous National Party government (and I am ordinarily a consummate optimist) would have been firmly quashed by the colour of my skin.

I think affirmative action (AA) is being bastardised by persons who -- either owing to a genuine mis- understanding of the concept or a misperception by sheer design -- feel threatened by it.I am concerned, not so much about the opportunities that I have missed to amass heaps of wealth as there is a chance I may still do that; what angers me is that opponents of AA choose to ignore the untold damage that Dr Hendrik Verwoerd and his cronies in the NP (and, of course, the millions of white people who kept propping up the NP with both vote and pelf) caused to black people in denying us the one indispensable tool with which to fend for ourselves -- quality education. For that, I shall never forgive the NP.

To destroy a nation, you need not starve it to death as some nation states have done to ethnic minorities. To destroy a nation, you need not denigrate its religious beliefs. To destroy a nation, you need not suppress its language as the English did Afrikaans. Oh no! If you want to destroy a nation, deny it quality education as the NP did black South Africans. The person I am today is not the better person I know I would have been if it had not been for the NP's social engineering policies.

Millions of black South Africans would not be roaming the streets unemployed and not knowing which way to turn. Countless black South African men would not have died crowded deaths in the coal and gold mines of Johannesburg and each of their families paid a pittance in so-called compensation because they were thought not to know any better. Scores of South African black women (like my beautiful and highly intelligent mother, who had to leave school after obtaining a junior certificate with distinction, beating well over 90% of white students in the process) would not have found themselves turning the Master's bed, cleaning the Madam's lavatory and raising their disrespectful and ungrateful yobs for a living.

Hell, the NP and all who kept it in power wasted people like Oliver Tambo (one of the brightest persons on this Earth who featured in the top 5% in his matric year, writing the same examinations as white people before the NP put a stop to that), who could have led this country to unimaginable prosperity.AA does not derive its definition from the competence (or otherwise) of its beneficiary. That Transnet chief executive Maria Ramos (as a woman) is doing an excellent job does not, in my respectful view, change the fact that she has been given an opportunity to excel, which she would not have been given by the NP government. Such opportunities are what is required to remedy the damage caused to black people and women by past racist policies.

That Vuyani Ngalwana is thought to be performing marginally better than was expected of him does not change the fact that he is a beneficiary of this government's AA policy. Contrastingly, that Ngalwana -- having been appointed on merit -- is demonstrably shoddy at his job does not make him an AA appointment. It makes him an incompetent lout. Period. Appointment on merit, on the one hand, and appointment by affirmative action on the other, are not mutually exclusive. The incompetence of a black person (or woman) is no different from that of a white man. When a white man is incompetent, he should (assuming he had been given all the tools with which to do the job) be fired. When a black person is incompetent, why should he or she simply be labelled an AA appointment and then be left alone as if that were to be expected? Incompetence is incompetence is incompetence. It knows no race. It knows no gender.Those successful black people who "eschew the label" (as Ferial Haffajee suggested last week) are, in my respectful view, short-sighted. A countless number of black lives have been lost so that the opportunities for which affirmative action provides can be realised. It is thus ungratefulness of the highest order for those successful products of AA then to view with disdain the very ladder that has carried them to those dizzy heights, and for which so much black blood has been spilt.

This is a label to wear proudly because without it they would, in all likelihood, not be where they are today.There would have been no Mvela-phanda under the NP government. Notwithstanding the abundance of high quality black legal minds, there would have been no black Supreme Court of Appeal judge or Constitutional Court judge. There would have been no black newspaper editor. There would have been no black SABC group chief executive. There would have been no regular black rugby or cricket players in the national squad. Hell, there would have been no black talent determining our country's monetary and fiscal policy.

That the black people in these positions are there demonstrates not that this government is intent on feeding us mediocrity; it rather demonstrates its commitment to remedying an anomaly where highly competent people played second fiddle to persons of lesser ability by reason solely of the colour of their skin.I, Vuyani Ngalwana, want the whole world to know that I am an AA appointment, not because I am otherwise incompetent and would not cut it when competing for the same job with white persons of similar experience. When I was in practice, I argued cases almost exclusively against white counsel (senior and junior) and had a success rate of over 90%.

I am an AA appointment because without it I (like Steve Biko and scores of other young and bright black people) would never have had the opportunity to realise what remains of my potential. Without it, thousands of South Africans (black and white) would continue to lose their hard-earned retirement savings to life companies in mysterious charges; without it, the retirement industry would not now be changing its business ways for the better. I make no apology to anyone for being an AA appointment because without it I would probably be roaming the streets of Gugulethu wondering what was wrong with this country.

I could not have said it better, even if I tried.

Briefly on Brain Gain . . .

According to the newspapers South Africans stand to gain some brains thanks to the near collapse of the economies abroad. What with the death of financial giants and retailers alike -South Africans who previously would not be caught dead in this terrible country, are now considering coming home to contribute to the growth of the economy, skills transfer and so on and so forth.

For this I am supposed to be grateful because the dark cloud of international meltdown has a silver lining of returnee brains for South Africa. Pardon me for not rushing off to popping the bubbly, I am simply not enthused about this brain gain line I am being fed.

For one thing, this is the very brains involved in the activities that led to the melt down, happily claiming the bonusses for peddling debt, among other things. Granted some of them worked for Woolworths and were not beneficiaries of those other scams. Be that as it may, I would rather the recently unemployed who have suddenly discovered their SA passports and the love for year long summers, came back and politely asked if there is room for them under our sun. Being the forgiving lot we are, they may be pleasantly surprised. They may have to live next to black people and get private security guards, risk having Malema as minister of education and so on and so forth.

Our need for all manner of skills, I have come to understand, is more apparent than real. It is sort of like white folks leave, there goes the brains and white folks face foreclosure over-seas, here come the brains.

Briefly put - kak.

Cope Manifesto Launch

So I let myself be talked into attending the Cope manifesto launch by Laura, yes she of http://laura-land.blogspot.com/ do pay her visit if you will. Anyway, it turned out to be an interesting outing. The following picture was taken last. The kids were waving the Cope poster as they sang: “iCope yethu, ayina mashower, ayina umshini”. That apparently translates into something along the lines of our Cope, does not have showers, does not have the machine [gun]. Kids do say the darnest things; of course they hear it from the adults.
On arrival at the venue, it became apparent from the number of cars, buses and taxis that the crowd inside the stadium will be a sizeable one.

Inside the stadium I was struck by queues of people who did not seem to be making their way onto the field or to the stands. On enquiry, I discovered that the queues were for the Cope T-shirts. In the scorching sun, they stood in those long lines just so that they can get a Cope T-shirt. I am not sure what to make of that.

Inside the stadium one was greeted by an almost carnival atmosphere. There were crowds everywhere and all seem relaxed while the speeches were droning on.

And of course there were more, all ages, shapes and sizes.

All in all it was an interesting affair. With the leadership having a merrier time, much hugging and kissing. And how cool is that car?

There will be more political get togethers in the run up to the elections and I cannot wait to take my camera to each one of the accessible ones. In the meantime, do register to vote and go get a government you deserve.

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers . . .

This is said to come from King Henry VI, a play by Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene II if you are interested. The character in the play to whom these famous words are attributed is no Ghandi and his motives for the statements are not motivated by world peace. These words have however been thrown around in various contexts but it is not always in malice that they are repeated. Ok, I got a little carried away on the English lesson. This post is inspired (if that is the correct word) by Justices Langa, Sacks and O’Reagan, looking morose at a press conference – pleading for a little respect not for themselves but for the institutions they represent. It is also inspired by other matters legal.

I do believe that Judges, like all other arms of government are not above criticism by the ordinary citizens. Criticism, like all other forms of inter-action is subject to limitations of common decency and common sense and if you will the facts. I am sure that the Judges do not wish to close the door on reasonable and constructive criticism. What I have read in the media, attributed to some political leaders does not with respect, amount to neither reasonable nor constructive criticism. A statement to the effect that “JZ will never be given a fair trial” is irresponsible at best and in my view nothing short of inflammatory. It is more so when stated as baldly as that without some basis. Remember this is a forward-looking statement and presumably the obstacles to fair trial of JZ can be addressed, at the very least.

It is equally unfair and ill-considered to insist that Jacob Zuma go to trial when there are matters procedural that he is entitled to have ventilated, prior to facing trial. He is of course free to abandon the procedural points and proceed to trial, until then let the man be. There is of course another matter of the legal fees being paid by the taxpayers. Well, there are rules about such matters and as far as I can tell, those rules allow for Jacob Zuma to have state funded legal defence, I stand to be corrected. This reminds me of the trial of Magnus Malan which I believe was paid for by his former victims – the SA taxpayers, I stand to be corrected.

When the leader of the young communist (as all communist should be – young that is) tears into judges because he does not agree with them and without any basis in law or fact, that is just inflammatory. It does not help our judiciary or JZ. On the other hand Mr Malema suggesting that the judges of Supreme Court of Appeal are against the ANC would be hilarious if it was not downright reckless. What then is the ANC to do when judges are against it, as they were during the apartheid years? And how, as Mr Malema suggest, would the NPA be saving the country by dropping the charges against JZ? What danger will the country be facing if the charges are not dropped?

Similarly the transformation of legal services, judiciary and all matters legal is an equally important matter. The Sunday Times recently ran an article that in summary shows that law, as in law firms, remains white and male. This is not new and in my view is not about to go away soon. Here is the thing, when I chew with my mouth open, arrive late for meetings, have poor spelling and grammar, none of these have nothing to do with me being black or white – it is just me being me. So for as long as the basis of employing a black lawyer is different from the basis of employing a white lawyer, all the commentary by lawyers and lawyers’ organisations as printed in the Sunday Times article is hot air. Consider this, a young white law student, says to his young black fellow law student: “at least you have affirmative action to help you”. The black student responds: “I have the ability to one day practice law in 8 of the 11 official languages of the country, how on earth do you reckon I need affirmative action? Young lawyers want the same things, have the same strengths and short-comings and thrive under similar circumstances. If the boss thinks and acts like someday you will make a good lawyer – so it will be. The unfortunate truth is that there are a lot more white youngsters who appear to have the potential than black ones. It must be in the genes.

The truth is peace and with it prosperity is possible only if disputes can be adjudicated and resolved fairly. The institutions that are charged with the adjudication and resolution of disputes must have the confidence of the majority of the citizens. We cannot afford for our courts and other forums of adjudication of dispute lose legitimacy. Any of the issues above can and will eat away at whatever little legitimacy that these institutions still enjoy. The present doesn’t actually ever go away. It becomes the history on which the future is built. The present exclusion of black professionals from the more advanced areas of practice, with its concomitant resentment, will become the history on which the future of us and them will be built.

In the meantime, a worker who is unlawfully dismissed, a community that is unlawfully displaced from their homes, a woman who is raped, a father who is prevented from seeing his children, a farm worker who is kicked off the land he has worked for 30 years and now lives in a plastic hovel along a national road, a young man blinded by repeated blows to his face by a bouncer at some nightclub, etc, etc – all need lawyers (magistrates, judges, prosecutors, attorneys, advocates), they all need justice, they all need the wrongs against them made right. Equally so, the offenders and perpetrators need their rights to be protected from arbitrary actions by the state; they need fair and just punishment or adjudication and resolution of the matters concerned.

So, why don’t we speed up the future and kill all the lawyers, counter-revolutionary as they are, they serve no purpose for the future.

Of Peasants, Black Englishmen and the ANC . . .

Siphiwe, a guest on the “Tlhware Logonyana” blog (http://wataola.blogspot.com) is of the view that, at the core of the current issues plaguing the ANC is the historical if not age old class divide within the movement. Nothing wrong with that except on his way to or after reaching that conclusion he makes certain statements that unfortunately detract from what is by all accounts a fine mind.

He traces the leadership of the ANC back to 1912 pointing out that each one of the past presidents was either of royalty, a businessman but certainly educated past high school. It is the education or royalty of the individuals he states that seem to entitle them to the leadership of the ANC and consequently make them custodians of the aspirations of the rural peasants and the urban unorganised proletariat. This trend is however happily (to Siphiwe) broken by the election of Jacob Zuma as the first ANC president in history who does not, unlike previous presidents, hold a university degree. Nothing wrong with that either except the thesis seems to make very little of the democratic traditions of the ANC.

Siphiwe seems to suggest that it is not the membership of the ANC (the majority of whom are the masses/peasants/urban proletariat) who have going back to 1912 elected the elite to the leadership of the ANC. In his view, these individuals owe their leadership of the ANC to their status, chief of which is their education. A closer look at the history of the ANC will reveal to Siphiwe that the ANC became a masses/peasant/urban proletariat, later rather than at inception. So the earlier leadership of the ANC would have been of the elite, by the elite, for the elite. Siphiwe will also recall that the likes of Sol Plaatjie actually regarded themselves as subjects of the Queen and distinguished themselves from the amaqaba (those who have not been converted to Christianity). This Siphiwe will find fascinating.

The ANC in fact retained its Christian elitist nature until the Tambo/Mandela youth league took over and the relationship with the SACP grew and with it the 1950’s walk-out of the Africanists. Enough with the history, the point is, each president and other leaders of the ANC for that matter has always been elected by the membership of the ANC, in accordance with its constitution. The fact that these individuals spoke English through their nostrils (like Pallo Jordan) or have a strong accent (like the late Govan Mbeki), was incidental to the electoral process and their ability to lead, for the purposes of the struggle. Jacob Zuma minus a university degree remained in the leadership of the ANC both during exile years and after its un-banning, because he was elected by the members of the movement including the black Englishmen among them. Rank and file members of the ANC determine the leadership and not university degrees or royalty.

The sub-text of Siphiwe’s post is more troubling. The ANC, and I do not hold its brief, is not only the home of the masses (in the sense attributed to that term by Siphiwe) but is a home to the petit bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and all others, including the black Englishmen. It is not, like Siphiwe would like us to believe, a home for the one or the other.

I do not know what COPE had to say about Zuma or whether they have called him a fool, if they did then it was nothing short of foolhardy. I do know that when COPE or anyone else questions Jacob Zuma’s ability or otherwise to lead, such questions are fundamentally different to the racist belief that black people, as consequence of being black, cannot lead. The ANC has through its own processes confirmed that no leader is beyond reproach or recall. As a public figure I am sure Msholozi is no stranger to the robust nature of politicking. Each one of us is quite entitled to choose whom we believe we can entrust our future to. If we differ on that, it is disingenious to then suggest that we differ because I wish to be more English than the English.

There is nothing wrong with the people determining their own future, be they peasants of stockbrokers – in fact that is what it is all about; provided that by “the people” we mean “the people” and not “some of the people”. COPE has rightly or wrongly done precisely that. They have within the rules of our democracy chosen to go their own way. The people of this land will decide whether or not to vote for COPE, trust me the people may be illiterate or may be without tertiary education, but they know what they want. Similarly, the people may be stockbrokers and lawyers; and they too know what they want.

There is nothing wrong in my view with pursuing higher education. Jacob Zuma himself encourages the youth (primarily) to learn. He is even prepared to send the errant youth to some far off centres of learning – by force!

The correlation between academia and leadership may be poor, as Siphiwe suggest, it is however no less poor than the correlation between being of the masses and leadership. Leadership is a quality best judged on its own merit. In as much as it is nonsense to attribute competence to a race, it is equally nonsense to attribute all of evil to the English-through-the-nostrils black bourgeois.

Finally and with respect to Siphiwe, there is no such thing as unconscious class bias. The bias is conscious, that is the whole point of a class – to reproduce itself, consciously! The very views that Siphiwe propagates are meant to secure the interests of the classes on whose behalf he as the vanguard, speaks. It is all meant to be dialectical isn’t it?

I wish that we could all engage in a conversation rather than demonising each other. There is value in what each one of us has to say about the future of our country and on how the gains our collective struggles have made, can be secured. It cannot be that just because one belongs to some (artificial) grouping or another, one should not be allowed to express one’s view. I agree that the peasants should have a voice in how their country is run, but not to the exclusion of the middle class black Englishmen; they too have something to contribute.

Incidentally, it is ironically the ANC’s election poster with Jacob Zuma on it that boldly proclaims: “TOGETHER (judges, peasants, communists, academics, etc) WE CAN DO MORE”!

"Six thousand rockets later"

This is a quote from "The Conservative Sage" a blogger based in the US. This is infact a mantra that he repeats several times in his post "Hamas and the Hornest Nest". Of course this is not new to those who have been following the war being waged by Israel against the people of Gaza.

Those like the blogger I referred to, who are in support of the Israeli assault on Gaza wish the world to believe that Israel is doing what any country would given the same circumstances - defend itself. There has already been a lot written and said about this conflict and frankly, the world does not care what I have to say on the subject. It is my belive however, that the world should know that there some who disagree with the Conservative Sage and with the Israeli prime minister on the Gaza onslaught.

In response to the 6000 rockets said to have been launched from Gaza by Hamas since 2006, Israel proceeded - and is still at it - to reduce Gaza, a sovereign Palestinian state to rubble. This is after the years of on and off blockade of the territory. All this in the name of self defence, an inalienable right for all.

The Conservative Sage asks, with palpable irritation where all the pro-Gaza demonstrators and the UN were, when 6000 thousand missiles were landing in Israel. He also reminds us all that Hamas has publicly stated that it intends to do away with the state of Israel. I suppose then that Israel is facing one of those classical war situations "if not them, then us" and it has decided that it is not going to be Israel that is done away with.

Nowhere in the references to the 6000 rockets is it indicated how many people were killed as a result. I am no expert on matters of the middle east and what I say is always fourth hand but the last I read, it was some 14 deaths and I don't know how many buildings. For the record, murder of one human being is just as bad and should not become a numbers game. There is however a sense of horror when 1000 is killed in less than a month as opposed to 6000 rockets since 2006.

I don't know what it is that Israel could or should have done, other than obliterating a generation or two and reducing Gaza to a rubble. I am no military fundi and do not know strategies of war. I do however know mass scale murder when I see one - even if it is intended to stop 6000 rockets since 2006. I also do not know whether each one of the people of Gaza (infants, toddlers, octagenarians, etc.) are members or supporters of Hamas - neither does Israel. It is argued that the people of Gaza habour terrorists (in which case they bring this horror upon themselves), alternatively the terrorists use the people of Gaza a human shields (in which case shame and blame on Hamas).

I do know that it is on the wrong side of barbaric to kill, maim and destroy at the scale now on the go in Gaza - whatever the justification, if there can be any. In the meantime the world looks on and does nothing. What can be done? Nothing it seems - might seems right.

6000 rockets, Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza later we welcome a new dawn and a new approach to international dispute resolution. A new international order where we should all pray that we are never at odds with our neighbouring countries for if we find ourselves at odds and they have bigger guns than ours, we will truly be screwed. Why should anyone care then, we stood by when they came for Palestinians - safe in our belief that we are not muslims or Palestinians, so they will or should leave us alone.

All this, for 6000 rockets, in 3 years.

So, what now?

I have just read the judgement of the Supreme Court of Appeals in the matter between one JG Zuma and the National Prosecuting authority. To borrow from the judge, the law reports are replete with judgements between the two parties, consequently there is no need to tell a long story here; because there is no story.

So, what does JZ do, faced with a judgement that undoes the Judgement of Nicholson? The latest judgement is to the effect that none of the rights of JZ were breached by the decision of the prosecuting authority to prosecute him without allowing him an opportunity to be heard. For me here is the clincher - it is the right of any accused person to make representations to the prosecuting authority, at any time prior to and during a criminal trial - this much JZ and his legal team knew.

Back to the question: what now? What now does judge Nicholson do? Probably nothing but, if the following is stated in writing about you as a judge, what would you do?

"This commendable approach [the independence of the judiciary, etc] was unfortunately subverted by a failure to confine the judgment to the issues before the court; by deciding matters that were not germane or relevant; by creating new factual issues; by making gratuitous findings against persons who were not called upon to defend themselves; by failing to distingish between allegation, fact and suspicion; and by transgressing the proper boundaries between judicial, executive and legislative functions."

How does the judge concerned continue to sit in judgment, especially in motion proceedings?

As for JZ, does he now approach the Constitutional Court and thereby buy himself a further 9 months or so? What would be the grounds for approaching the Constitutional Court? It should be borne in mind here that the latest judgment also holds JZ responsible for payment of some hefty cost orders. A cost order that includes the cost "consequent upon the employment of 3 counsel" sounds blerry expensive. There is that fundraising thing going on by the friends of JZ, so maybe costs of 3 counsel is not such a big deal. Where does it all end though?

What then happens, if the national prosecuting authority, sans Thabo Mbeki, brings the charges? Will JZ remember to make representations or will he just go straight to trial? How long would such a trial run? What will it costs? Let us not forget that it is to do with money, lots of it, that JZ finds himself in this jam in the first place.

What does the ANC do? The ANC has stated that JZ is their poster boy, come what may. JZ has stated himself that he will attend court and election rallies as may be required (if he has to stand trial ultimately, that is).

On the other hand, the judges are said to be counter-revolutionary. I don't know what this means and maybe, to work out what it means, I should first find out what revolutionary is. What in the context of this series of court cases qualifies as revolutionary? This I presume is the very thing that the judges are being counter to. Will then follow that Nicholson is a portrait of a revolutionary judge?

What would Thabo Mbeki do now that the Pikoli report and now the Harms judgment have made nought of the allegations of his political interference? Can an ex-president be unrecalled?

I wish I could tell the future . . . and then what?

What is it with these english-speaking Blacks?

Consider the following two scenarios:

A client enters the offices of a certain law firm and encounters a black woman behind the reception desk. She asks to see some named person at the firm. She asks politely and in english much to the dismay and disappointment of the receptionist lady. You see, the client is black and should not in the black lady-behind-the-reception-desk's view, be addressing her in english. I mean they are both black and so on and so forth. Not being able to hold herself back or to consider such other mundane issues such as to do her job and call whomever the client is here to see, she says: "thet'isxhosa bo!" (speak isiXhosa) with a contemptuous exclamation appended. This she says with such contempt in her voice and face so that it is clear to the detribalised black client that her behaviour is no less than despecable.

The client responds by saying that she will speak whatever language she damn well pleases and if the receptionist would like, she is quite happy to speak isiShona (the client's language of choice). The client was visibly upset when the person she had come to see walked into the reception area. "What on earth does this receptionist woman think?" She was wondering whether it is on some level un-Black to speak english.

The second scenario plays out at a filling station. A young black man pulls up at the pump but not to fill the car up but to check the tyre pressure. In fact one of the tyres is just about completely flat. He gets assisted by one young black man. They talk about the tyres, the young man forecourt attendant duly pumps up the flat tyre and the young man driver asks whether the tyre is really pumped up, afterall it was really flat. It is at this point that the forecourt attendant asks "why you speak english but you are black?" The english speaking young man tells the attendant that he actually speaks seven other languages one of them being Sesotho so which of these would the attendant like to speak. The attendant says he would like to speak isiXhosa; he also confesses that he cannot speak Sesotho but is going to learn.

Here is the thing, there is a generally held dim view of black people who speak english to other black people. What informs this dislike and contempt? In my enquiries I have been told that it is because the black people who speak english are uppity and think they are better because they can speak english. I have previously covered this ground in another post dealing with school-going children who speak english to each other as they play in the dusty streets of their townships. I will therefore not re-hash the issues. What I would like to know is when will it be that black people can be treated as individuals who are diverse in languages, interests and so on and so forth.

Should black people continue to conform to the demarcation of Apartheid and all other theories of who they are and how they, as a monolithic band of savages, all behave? Maybe this is taking it too far. The point is this though, an ability to communicate with as diverse a number of people as possible, in their respective languages of choice, is and will always be an advantage. Here is the thing though, people are not what they speak; and in any event, people speak the language they live in.

I am one of those blacks who live in english and I am done feeling guilty about it. I also make every effort to address people in their language of choice or their home language as it is generally known in this beautiful SA. I am not better or worse, as a person for it; it is just the way my life works - in english. It also works in at least 5 other languages. There is no obligation to speak any of the languages I speak (read and write); it is just good common sense. I can therefore sympathise with the two individuals at the beginning of this post. As a by the way consideration, what other things I should or should not be doing, because I am black? Not listen to and/or enjoy Marc Cohn, Led Zepplin, Beethoven?

Well maybe the thing is that people speak the language they live in the most. Maybe these blacks are just detribalised, counter-revolutionary, middle-class self-loathers.

. . . and what if they are? What if that is the thing with these english-speaking blacks?

Have a good year ahead inspite of your Government . . .

It is, once again the beginning of another year and another chance to start afresh and to make amends on the previous year. No doubt, this year like many others before it, Afrika will see untold amount of strife, pain and yes, death.

A lot has been said and made of the governments of this continent that I love so. There more I read on governments of Afrika (and that is by no means a lot) the more I have to sadly accept that not unlike Bantu Education of the Apartheid years, people succeed not because but in spite of the government.

With this in mind moAfrika, go to your destiny. Go out there and succeed inspite of your government, you politicians, your liberation movements! Who knows, maybe we all can have a positive example for the governments to follow.

I with this, wish you all your dreams in this and the following years!