Staggering Out Over The Abyss

[A Lutra Continua]

Biggest hospital in Africa at Baragwanath was built under the old regime specifically for black folks. The new lot have left a trail of closed down hospitals and clinics, not to mention schools burned down in the old days and schools left standing empty. It may have been one sided back in the day but it was run a lot better back then than it is now and the levels of outright theft and corruption were far lower while things actually worked and people were held accountable for the budget given them.

It was always going to turn to shit under the new regime but the cheerleaders just stuck their fingers in their ears and refused to look reality in the eye. Now that it's all become runny guano they've done a Pilate and washed their hands of what they created. Neither hide nor hair can be found of the screaming mobs who picketed SA and Rhodie institutions and businesses overseas back in the day.

[Capetonian]

Your last sentence reminds me of when I was in the UK in the 80s on a visit from SA and I walked past a branch of Barclays Bank in Hendon, which was being 'picketed' by a bunch of screaming rabble ...... boycott racist South Africa, boycott Apartheid, boycott Barclays Bank as they support Apartheid ...... etc. I asked one of them what it was all about and they gave me the lefty view of Apartheid, not that they knew anything about it other than what they'd read in their student magazines and the Guardian.

Having listened, I said : "That sounds like a bloody good idea to me, without the white man those jungle bunnies would still be swinging on trees and eating each other. I'm going in to open an account."
And I did! I also made a point of going into bottle stores and grocers and asking for South African goods. In those days a lot of people didn't know that Outspan orange were from ZA, they thought they were from Spain.

I also confronted the rabble outside South Africa House who tried to get me to sign a petition for : "Free Nelson Mandela." I started off by asking them why I would 'a free Nelson Mandela'. They explained to me :
"well, 'e's like this black man wot's in prison in Sarf Africa 'cos he's black, like, innit."
I wound them up to the extent that one of the cops who was there to keep an eye on them told me to back off before they got violent.

I was at the World Travel Market in London once and was helping on the joint SAA/Satour stand when a bunch of 'protesters' turned up, I climbed into them too. The same afternoon, they'd migrated to the Korean stand protesting about Koreans eating dogs.

One wonders what those posing posturing self-righteous pricks are doing now about the poor downtrodden blacks who are the victims of their own people.

[Woody]

http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2011/0 ... ans-iLIVE1

Well that's interesting

[Alisoncc]

My understanding from the years I spent on the Witwatersrand is that the reef as such was totally devoid of people before gold was found by white prospectors. There were no game animals up there which the "locals" could hunt, and the soils supported little in the way of vegetation. Life was far easier down on the lowlands, so that's where the Bantu lived.

[Capetonian]

The munts would never have discovered, let alone been able to mine, the gold without the technology and expertise of whites. If they had, they would not have been able to market and sell it globally.

The lefties and libtards love to bleat about how the white man exploited the blacks, but the reality is that whilst white owned companies did benefit from the cheap labour of the blacks, many of whom were not indigenous to those areas, those blacks would still be living in the stone age, or would have killed each other, if it hadn't been for white intervention.

There is a pretty sound argument for saying that we shouldn't have interfered and changed their way of life and the course of nature, but the exploitation argument is utter BS.

[Cacophonix]

My understanding from the years I spent on the Witwatersrand is that the reef as such was totally devoid of people before gold was found by white prospectors. There were no game animals up there which the "locals" could hunt, and the soils supported little in the way of vegetation. Life was far easier down on the lowlands, so that's where the Bantu lived.

While it is true that the Bantu people were not native to Southern Africa and migrated in waves, by the time the first missionaries followed by a gaggle of trekkers arrived (well before the gold dirt trackers) in the area of the place known as the Witwatersrand, so named for the abundance of clean water, the Highveld, which is not an arid area in the sense that it is not a desert, supported large numbers of game, sweet grasses, good grazing and was home to the Tswana, the Pedi and elements of the Basotho people. The other elements of the Nguni had settled closer to the coast and the lowlands. In fact the reef had been home to people for thousands of years before the Bantu arrived in the area and was home to the San (known to some as the Bushmen).

Next time you are in Gauteng drop in to look at some of the rock art near the Melville Koppies that dates back thousands of years.

Eventually they spread out across the country and also towards the Witwatersrand region. The first signs of their presence in the form of remnants of an ancient iron-melting furnace dating back to about 1060 AD were found on Melville Koppies, a small nature reserve in the heart of Johannesburg.

Towards the 18th century, a thriving population of Sotho and Tswana speaking people had settled themselves in the Gauteng province (including Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand), and most of the Limpopo and Free State provinces, having driven away the indigenous San people in the process.

http://www.south-africa-tours-and-trave ... story.html

The myth that the area was devoid of population started as a canard that arose from disputes about land between the white settlers and the resident blacks that soon morphed into conflict over gold rights between whites, ultimately between the Boers and the English when the British cast their avaricious eyes upon the area which resulted in the first Anglo Boer war.

Caco

[Alisoncc]

Next time you are in Gauteng drop in to look at some of the rock art near the Melville Koppies that dates back thousands of years.

No thanks, prefer to remember it when it was still partially civilised, during the apartheid era.

[Cacophonix]

Your loss Alisoncc.

My view is that Johannesburg was never civilised from the get go and, yes, there have been ups and downs, but the area is far from being down and out and in my view is on the way up again. As you won't be surprised to know I was never a fan of apartheid so I don't look back at the period with a misty eyed sentimentality despite having enjoyed the 'benefits' that I enjoyed in my time living as a white in Johannesburg (I was born in Pretoria).

I note that some of the chief moaners on this delightful little thread persist in Joey's so, hey, it can't be that bad after all!

Caco

[Capetonian]

Johannesburg is a great city, and very underrated and maligned. It has a superb climate, a good infrastructure, and people are generally helpful, friendly, and get things done, unlike Slaapstad! Parts of JNB are still perfectly safe, despite the high crime levels in other areas. There is a lot to see and do in terms of history and culture, but no wine, beaches, or mountains.

I always used to enjoy my visits to the Highveld, at one point I was working there three days a week and commuting to CPT. All in the Apartheid times. Happy days!

[A Lutra Continua]

Right over Julius' flat head, no doubt.

Dear Mr Malema:

I am writing in response to your recent remarks calling for whites to return the land to its rightful owners, failing which you may have to slaughter us. I think it’s good that you have put this issue under the spotlight, and I would like to help resolve it.

I personally had nothing to do with what the EFF sees as the “mass butcher/slaughter of black people” by white land thieves in the colonial era. On the other hand, I am an Afrikaner with capitalist inclinations, so I am clearly guilty by association in your eyes. Hey, that’s all right by me. I’m not here to argue. I am here to find a solution, and to do that, it’s necessary for me to put my own land on the table and discuss what’s to be done with it.

This land (about 1200 square metres) is located in Emmarentia, Johannesburg, a good place to ponder our history because it is located at the foot of the Melville Koppies, where archeologists have unearthed a great deal of evidence about previous owners. Their findings can be summarized as follows:
1.Around 250,000 years ago, Emmarentia was inhabited by our hominid ancestors. These creatures appear to have died out.
2.Around 100,000 years ago, the first humans made their appearance. Unfortunately, I don’t know their names and their descendants have proved untraceable.
3.Some twenty thousand years ago, the so-called San or Bushmen took up residence in a cave in the kloof near where Beyers Naude Drive cuts through the Koppies. Among the artefacts they left behind is a Stone Age device for making arrowheads. The whereabouts of their descendants is unknown.
4.Around five hundred years ago, the first Tswana showed up. These were sophisticated people who used Iron Age furnaces to work minerals mined nearby. They also owned sheep and cattle and grew millet and sorghum along the banks of the stream which flows past my house.

On its face these Tswana would appear to be the only previous owners whose descendants are still living in the area, so in theory I should give my land to them. But when you look closely at the Tswana, a complicated picture emerges.

In the beginning, around 1700, almost all Tswana fell under the authority of the Hurutshe, a powerful tribe that exacted tribute from lesser Tswana chiefs and kept them in line.

Around 1750, things began to change. Nobody knows exactly why, but one suspected cause is the mealie, which arrived here around that time. Mealies boosted crop yields. More food led to population growth, which led to intensified competition for scarce resources. The Hurutshe hegemony was challenged and overthrown. Without proper supervision, minor chieftains started tooling up and making war on one another. The Fokeng attacked the Kgatla. Kgatla attacked the Po. Pedi fought the Kwena, and so on. According to the anthropologist Isaac Schapera, there were 26 civil wars in the decades prior to 1820.

In response, Tswana kingdoms became increasingly militarised and autocratic, which is to say, they moved from level 3 societies, which were chilled, to levels 4 and 5, where kings and chiefs practiced an early form of capitalism, extracting labour and tribute from weaker vassals. Since the vassals did not necessarily like this, the more powerful Tswana chiefs began to concentrate their people in large towns, usually sited on easily defensible hilltops and surrounded by stone walls.

This did not help much. Analysis of Tswana praise poems and oral histories indicates that being a chief in Emmarentia and surrounds was a very dangerous occupation between 1700 and 1820. Of 71 chiefs mentioned in oral traditions, only 48 percent died in their beds. The rest were assassinated or killed in battle.

As a result of these factors it has proved difficult to establish exactly which Tswana grouping owned my land during this period of violence and confusion. Most likely, ownership changed several times, and at some point it was taken over by the Po, a Nguni people who controlled the Witwatersrand from a headquarters located near the Gillooly’s freeway interchange. Have you ever heard of these people? Ja, me neither, but don’t worry, because they were soon swept away by the Mfecane.

Contrary to popular belief, it seems the Mfecane was not really caused by Shaka Zulu. According to my readings, that man’s role has been exaggerated by Inkatha supporters who love to depict Shaka as a black Napoleon who single-handedly invented the short stabbing spear and the horns-and-chest battle formation, thereby changing history.

More recent research holds that Shaka was just one of many southern African kings who more or less simultaneously embarked on a program of militarisation and nation building, thus leaping from level three to level five and in the process destabilizing their neighbours.

Shaka’s neighbours included the Hlubi, the Ngwane and the Swazi. After Shaka came to power around 1818, these people decided it would be wise to move onto the highveld to get away from him. But the nearest parts of the highveld were already occupied by the Phuting and Hlakwana, who lost their crops and cattle to the invaders and had to flee westward, into territories controlled by various Tswana entities. This resulted in a chain reaction that rolled on for years, turning the highveld into a zone of “persistent raiding and displacement” that shattered African social structures and turned many people into refugees.

Around 1824, Mzilikazi and the Ndebele arrived on the scene, also fleeing the Zulus. Mzilikazi was by far the most efficient of the level-five autocrats. He ate up all the tribes in his path, usually killing males and incorporating women and children into his own ranks. One exception to this was the Po, who reportedly saved themselves by submitting to Mzilikazi and joining his cause as “allies or slaves.”

One therefore assumes that the Po moved with Mzilikazi to Rustenburg district, where the Ndebele made their capital. The king lived in the very centre of the new empire, surrounded by loyal Ndebele commoners and swathes of pasture for the royal cattle. Beyond the pasture was a ring of tribute-paying vassal chiefs, and beyond them lay the march – a vast area that had been cleared of all human inhabitants. Mzilikazi trusted no-one, and wanted to make sure he could see his enemies coming.

I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I suspect Emmarentia was part of this so-called march. Here’s why. In 1836, an aristocratic British sportsman named Robert Cornwallis-Harris came this way to hunt big game. When he reached a range of hills which could have been the Witwatersrand he began to see the ruins of “extensive villages,” deserted save for a handful of “half-starved persons” hiding in the bushes. According to Cornwallis-Harris, the abandoned villages were strewn with broken earthen vessels, fragments of ostrich shell and game skins. And that’s almost exactly what archeologists find when they dig trenches on the koppie above my house.

Against this backdrop, your remarks about “peaceful Africans” strike me as somewhat odd. The last person to make such an argument was Joe Slovo, whose seminal “Colonialism of a Special Type” essay was riddled with black holes and omissions intended to present whites in the worst possible light. That’s because Slovo was desperate to ingratiate himself with black people and become your leader, an ambition which led directly to what you see as the great sellout of 1994. You surely know better than to trust a white man, sir.

But anyway, our story has just begun. The first white settlers showed up in Emmarentia a few months after the hunter Cornwallis-Harris. You seem to imagine these Voortrekkers as an army of genocidaires using guns and horses to drive peaceful Africans towards extinction. Not so. Mzilikazi opened the hostilities, massacring a party of Trekkers near the Vaal River and then stripping the Boers of all their livestock at Vegkop. At this point, the Tswana who’d previously dominated the area came out of hiding and offered their support to the Boers, which led to Mzilikazi’s defeat at the hands of multi-racial DA-style army at the battle of Mosega.

In the aftermath, Mzilikazi fled northwards across the Limpopo, and the Boers claimed “his” land as their own. The suburb where I live became the farm Braamfontein, property of the Bezuidenhout family. These were my people, but let me be the first to admit that they did not behave like civilized white liberals.

Instead, they emulated the African kings who came before them, exacting tribute (especially in labour) from subject chiefs and periodically raiding more distant neighbours for cattle and captives. Some of those captives, especially the children, became inboekelinge, or indentured servants, working on Boer farms for nothing until they were 25.

Let’s face it — this was a form of slavery, and we must answer for it. But the Fokeng and the Kgatla must answer too, because they were our partners in crime, constantly joining the Boers in “mutually beneficial” raids on surrounding tribes. As a result, the Kgatla (who lived around Sun City) and Fokeng (near Hartebeestpoort) became rich and powerful. According to historian Fred Morton, Kgatla chief Khamanyane (who ruled from 1853 to 1875) acquired an astonishing fortune in wives (43) and cattle, while many of his subjects “attained higher living standards than most Boers.”

Which is not to say that the Boers and their Tswana allies had it all their own way. On the contrary: the Boers were weak, and existed in a state of uneasy equilibrium with surrounding African principalities. Gert Oosthuizen, baas of the farm where I now live, would have been called out on kommando at least 14 times in his first thirty-odd years on the Highveld, but seldom returned home a victor.

Most Boer military campaigns ended in stalemate, and they were defeated on at least three occasions — by the Pedi in 1852, the Sotho in 1858, and the Venda in 1861. By 1867, they were under such pressure that they had to abandon the Soutpansberg, leaving behind a few stragglers who survived by paying tribute to their conquerors in the African way.

After the discovery of diamonds, Africans began to acquire guns and push back even harder. In 1870, the Boers abandoned Potgietersrus. In 1871, they lost another war against the Pedi. By 1877, they seemed to be in an extremely precarious position, which is why the British stepped in to annex the Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek.

Beyond this point, your understanding of history becomes more tenable. Professional soldiers sent by Queen Victoria crushed the Zulu and Pedi with considerable slaughter, as they’d previously crushed the Xhosa and were soon to crush the Boers. Black Africans wound up losing about two thirds of the land they’d held before 1652, and for this whites must answer. Then again, the British army had African auxiliaries in all its campaigns, so they must answer too.

But for what exactly? You keep saying “genocide.” I’m not sure that’s the right term. In the 1980s, historians Leonard Thompson and Howard Lamar published a comparative study of the North American and South African frontiers. Someone stole my copy of that book and the precise details are fading, but it claims there were something like ten million “Red Indians” when the American frontier opened circa 1780, and only 250,000 left a century later. That’s genocide.

In SA, the numbers tell a different story. According to Thompson et al, there were around two million Africans when our frontier opened, also in 1780, and roughly double that number when it closed in 1880. Since then, the African population has grown at a healthy rate, apartheid notwithstanding. That’s why whites are now so heavily outnumbered, and why if you say, surrender your land, I have not much choice.

But surrender it to whom? If we take the arrival of the first white settlers in 1836 as our point of departure, I should give my house to the descendants of Mzilikazi. But that won’t go down with the Tswana, who remember Mzilikazi as a bloody tyrant who robbed them of their birthright.

The Po might rematerialize and make a claim, and then there’s the Bushman to think about. They were here long before anyone else, but vanished in the 1820s. Perhaps they also ran for their lives when they saw Mzilikazi coming, and took refuge in the Kalahari.

If so, this was a frying-pan-into-fire move, because the Tswana out there were short of labour, and they turned Bushmen and other vassal races (the Kgalagadi and Yei) into slaves who were exchanged for goods, passed on as heritable property and “controlled with startling brutality” by their masters. According to historian Barry Morton, slave herdsmen were “observed to live in an indescribable state of general squalor.” Death from malnutrition was “not uncommon,” and slaves were “punished and occasionally killed…for losing a single animal.”

According to Morton, evidence to back such claims lay hidden in plain sight in the archives, ignored for decades by researchers swarming into the Kalahari to study one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer populations. I can only surmise the researchers were white liberals who didn’t want to spoil the plot, which holds that it was the Boers who caused all the trouble in our history until they were overthrown by the saintly Mandela, thus giving birth to the Rainbow Nation.

Judging by your speeches, you detest white liberals even more than I do, which is why I have drawn all these complications to your attention. The fact of the matter, sir, is that all our ancestors have blood on our hands. More blood on mine than yours, at least at this point, but still: the only innocents in this story are the Bushman.

They were harmless level one people, with no chiefs and no material ambitions. Whites hunted them like wild animals, but your people were little better. The first British official to arrive at the royal court of the Xhosa (Sir John Barrow, c 1798) was told by King Hintsa, “My people exist in a state of perpetual warfare with the Bushmen.” Perhaps this helps us understand why the north-eastern portion of this country is littered with the relics of Bushmen who vanished long before white settlers came.

And so we come finally to the point of this letter. The victims and villains of history are beyond my reach, but I am not without conscience. I am sorry about all the Zulu who perished at the hands of Lord Chelmsford in 1879, and the Shona and Ndebele slaughtered by Rhodes’ Gatling guns. But I am particularly sorry about the Bushmen who used to live in the kloof above my house. They suffered greatly at the hands of people like us, and their claim to being the original and thus “rightful” owners of Emmarentia looks unassailable.

I therefore think it might be best if I share my land with my friend Errol, an Afrikaans-speaking coloured person with at least a bit of Bushman blood in his veins. He’s not black, strictly speaking, but at least he has an Afro. And his apartheid victim credentials are impeccable.

But before I go ahead, I would like to make sure this accords with the fast-track land reform scheme you envisage. If I do the right thing by Errol, will my life be spared?

Your swift reply awaited.

Rian Malan

[Cacophonix]

Ag man old Malan is a good writer and he's is right,the Bantu drove the San out of and then Mzilikazi and his people who were based up in what became the Transvaal were driven out by the Trekkers and their black allies. South Africa's history is drenched in blood as anybody who has frequented the old Thunder Gun pub in Randburg (as it was) on a boisterous Friday night well knows.

Caco

[Alisoncc]

Just remember Homo Sapiens are reputed to have come out of Africa. There has never been any mention of them going back. Which is quite understandable.

[A Lutra Continua]

You couldn't make up this shit...

The Limpopo High Court has issued an order banning the use of Doom insect repellent for religious healing.

Judge George Phatudi ruled on Monday that controversial pastor Lethebo Rabalago was to stop spraying Doom on members of his congregation.

The Limpopo Department of Health launched a court bid against the use of Doom for religious purposes after Rabalago, who has been nicknamed the "Prophet of Doom", used the insect repellent to allegedly heal church members.

The department and Rabalago, who is the leader of the Mount Zion Church, have been at loggerheads about his unconventional "healing" methods.

Legal counsel for the department, Advocate Humphrey Masilo, told the court that the government had obligations to protect unsuspecting citizens from harmful practices.

Neither scientist, nor chemical expert

But Rabalago's lawyer Advocate Edmond Lubisi argued that none of the members of the congregation had died from inhaling Doom.

Masilo said: "There is a risk factor that these people who have been exposed may not have volunteered themselves... If he uses this Doom in his house on himself, it is not a problem."

Masilo and the department failed to submit an expert's statement on the complications that might be caused by inhaling Doom, while Lubisi argued that the insect repellent was administered to people who volunteered.

"If the State wants to interfere and dictate on how churches should operate, it should be done according to the law," said Lubisi.

Phatudi lambasted the pastor, saying he was neither a scientist, nor a chemical expert.

[Woody]

Zuma's in charge

http://www.fin24.com/Economy/zuma-to-pa ... t-20170327

[A Lutra Continua]

No surprises. It was all foretold back in the day. The entire civil service, parastatals, military and other organs of state have already been stuffed with compliant supporters and completely politicised. Clearing out the last few dissenting voices is a mere formality.

Seriously, what did the liberal west think would happen with these clowns in charge?

[Capetonian]

If Gordhan stays, the Rand might recover, but it's not looking good right now, this is ZAR=GBP, it's gone from 15.5 to 16.4 in less than 24 hours.

My money, literally, is on it dropping further. I need about R30k and I'm waiting before I buy it.

chart.png (8.53 KiB) Viewed 434 times

[A Lutra Continua]

Yup, there was a time two USD would buy you one ZAR.

[A Lutra Continua]

Oh dear. Our Max is not a happy bunny. It seems the reality of what you helped create sneaking up and biting you in the arse is a real bitch.

Guptas vs Treasury: it's open war
2017-03-28 08:56

If you really wanted to understand why President Jacob Zuma ordered Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to cancel his appointments with investors and come straight home, you should have watched the Gupta channel ANN7 and followed what is commonly referred to as “Paid Twitter”, the Gupta-financed social media trolls, since last week.

The long, drawn-out battle between the national treasury under Gordhan and the Gupta/Zuma axis has now exploded into an open war.
I’m told one of the reasons that will be forwarded for the dramatic presidential order yesterday is that Gordhan, his deputy and their officials were undermining the president of South Africa in their presentations to foreign audiences.

The Gupta family showed their real clout in South Africa yesterday, more than when they abused a national key point for a private wedding, more than when they had a Cabinet minister help them to buy a mine, even more than when they tried to appoint Cabinet ministers.

It’s not outrageous to say today that the Guptas have taken control of the president of South Africa. They’re not his puppets, he is theirs.

It seems likely this morning that Gordhan will be fired from the Cabinet today or soon afterwards – not because he is a bad minister or has ideological differences with the Zuma faction, but because he has boldly stood up to stop or slow down the massive state capture project by the Guptas.

The Guptas want Gordhan to go, so Gordhan will go, no matter what the consequences for the South African economy.

His deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, will most definitely lose his job – his cardinal sin being that he exposed the fact that the Guptas tried to bribe him and offered him a Cabinet job.

A Cabinet reshuffle was on the cards anyway because Zuma’s preferred candidate to succeed him as ANC leader, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has to get a Cabinet position to raise her public profile from where she could launch her leadership bid.

Zuma will probably use the occasion to get rid of other critics, like Derek Hanekom and communists like Thulas Nxesi, Senzeni Zokwane, even Blade Nzimande, Rob Davies and Ebrahim Patel.

He also needs to make space for new Gupta blood in the Cabinet in the form of Brian Molefe and Sifiso Buthelezi.

Gordhan should have read the writing on the wall when the Gupta propaganda machinery drastically increased its vile anti-Gordhan output last week.

It was non-stop on ANN7 and on the Gupta-deployees’ Twitter and Facebook timelines: Gordhan regularly received an R11 million pension payout, he is colluding with the banks in their battle against the Guptas, he owns shares worth millions in the banks and other branches of white monopoly capital, and so on. All false, of course.

The recall of Gordhan yesterday had everything to do with today’s court case between him and the Guptas. Zuma has now joined the case on the Gupta side to stop an application that seeks to stop the executive from interfering in the business of banks.

The Guptas wanted Gordhan to appear in court in person, which would be highly unusual, and they want him to personally pay for the legal costs should he lose his case.

Last night senior sources even speculated that Zuma was going to fire Gordhan early this morning, meaning the court case would disappear.

This would suit the Guptas, goes the argument, because they fear the revelations Gordhan could potentially have made about their shady business dealings.

It is deeply ironic that the investor road show Gordhan was on over the weekend was born out of the shock to the economy when Zuma fired Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister on 9 December 2015. Government and business then put together teams to tour the world to reassure investors.

Zuma could never hide his anger at having been forced to back down and appoint Gordhan instead. At last he has his revenge, about 450 days later.

The events of yesterday and the possible firing of Gordhan won’t only have a devastating impact on the economy, it will seriously escalate the conflict between the two main factions in the ANC.

This is Cyril Ramaphosa’s big challenge.

If he remains silent and can’t show that he could stop Zuma from wrecking the economy for personal gain, he can’t seriously hope to be a viable candidate for the presidency of the ANC in December.

The blood will be on the walls in Luthuli House in the days ahead, and we, the citizens and taxpayers, will soon be poorer as the currency slips and investors turn their backs on South Africa.

And our president doesn’t give a damn.

[Woody]

Zuma about as popular as The Donald

Zuma has recalled Gordhan‚ at short notice‚ from an overseas roadshow‚ fuelling speculation of a possible Cabinet reshuffle that could again cause political and economic turbulence.

Kathrada’s letter‚ written almost a year ago‚ still speaks to the current state of affairs in South Africa.

In case you missed it, here it is:

Dear Comrade President Zuma,

I have agonised for a while before writing this letter to you.

I am just a rank-and-file member of my ANC branch. However‚ even before the ANC opened its membership to non-Africans in 1969‚ I was involved in the activities of the ANC‚ the South African Indian Congress‚ the SACP and Umkhonto weSizwe.

In the Defiance Campaign Trial of 1952, I was among the 20 accused who were sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment‚ suspended for two years;

In the Treason Trial (1956-1961)‚ of the original 156 accused‚ I was among the last 30 who were finally acquitted in 1961; and

In the 1963-1964 Rivonia Trial I was among the eight accused sentenced to life imprisonment. Together with comrade Walter Sisulu and others‚ I was released in 1989. Comrade Madiba was released about four months later.

I am immensely grateful to the ANC for the privilege of serving on the first national executive committee after its unbanning. In 1997‚ I stepped down. I also benefited from the experience of serving for one term as parliamentary counsellor to President Mandela.

I am of course aware that this does not automatically bestow on me the right to address this letter.

However‚ in all these years it never occurred to me that the time would come when I would feel obliged to express my concerns to the Honourable President. It is painful for me to write this letter to you. I have been a loyal and disciplined member of the ANC and broader Congress movement since the 1940s.

I have always maintained a position of not speaking out publicly about any differences I may harbour against my leaders and my organisation‚ the ANC. Today I have decided to break with that tradition.

The position of president is one that must at all times unite this country behind a vision and programme that seeks to make tomorrow a better day than today for all South Africans.

I did not speak out against Nkandla although I thought it wrong to have spent public money for any president’s private comfort. I did not speak out‚ though I felt it grossly insulting when my president is called a “thief” or a “rapist”; or when he is accused of being “under the influence of the Guptas”. I believed that the NEC would have dealt with this as the collective leadership of the ANC.

When I learnt of the dismissal of Minister Nene and the speculated reasons for this‚ I became very worried. I’m fully aware the appointment and dismissal of ministers is the prerogative of the president. This might be technically correct‚ but in my view it is against the best traditions of our movement.

My concern was amplified when it emerged that the deputy finance minister reported that he was offered the finance minister post by members of the Gupta family. The resultant crisis the country was plunged into indicated that the removal of the minister was not about the interests of the people.

The unanimous ruling of the Constitutional Court on Nkandla has placed me in an introspective mode and I had to ask myself some very serious and difficult questions.

Now that the court has found that the president failed to uphold‚ defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law‚ how should I relate to my president? If we are to continue to be guided by growing public opinion and the need to do the right thing‚ would he not seriously consider stepping down?

I am not a political analyst‚ but I am now driven to ask: “Dear Comrade President‚ don’t you think your continued stay as president will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in the government of the country?”

And bluntly‚ if not arrogantly‚ in the face of such persistently widespread criticism‚ condemnation and demand‚ is it asking too much to express the hope that you will choose the correct way that is gaining momentum‚ to consider stepping down? If not‚ Comrade President‚ are you aware that your outstanding contribution to the liberation struggle stands to be severely tarnished if the remainder of your term as president continues to be dogged by crises and a growing public loss of confidence in the ANC and government as a whole?

I know that if I were in the president’s shoes‚ I would step down with immediate effect.

I believe that is what would help the country to find its way out of a path that it never imagined it would be on‚ but one that it must move out of soon.

To paraphrase the famous MK slogan of the time‚ there comes a time in the life of every nation when it must choose to submit or fight.

Today I appeal to our president to submit to the will of the people and resign.

- TMG Digital

[A Lutra Continua]

I see the ivory tower dwellers are still tiptoeing around looking for the clean end by which to pick up this particular turd.