Staggering Out Over The Abyss

[Woody]

Missed this one, has Ex-a bought it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43325272

[Cacophonix]

It seems that cash In transit heists are the flavour of the month again in South Africa with two hits having taken place in Boksburg and Soweto in the last fortnight...

Another day in Boksburg South Africa...



The statistics are alarming with 111 (actually 112 now) heists this year alone. The police are often implicated in this kind of crime as well for having providing guns, planning, protection and often master minding the crimes themselves..



Caco

[Capetonian]

Look what the ANC has done for South Africa:

Poverty in South Africa has risen dramatically between 2006 and 2015, and an estimated 30,4 million South Africans live in poverty

Peter effing Hain and his accolytes must be so proud.

[Woody]

Notice the comments about how reform slowed under Zuma!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44278164

[admin]

Whatever happened to ALC, aka once known as Rusty Twotter - I think? This used to be his patch.

Alison

[Slasher]

I asked that on the Members Forum some time ago and you said he pokes his nose in now and then.

Still miss the houndom-loving old bugger.

[Cacophonix]

I asked that on the Members Forum some time ago and you said he pokes his nose in now and then.

Still miss the houndom-loving old bugger.

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

Hebrews 13:2

Which given ALC's partiality to Gilroy's brews seems perfectly appropriate!



Caco

[Capetonian]

The ***** has hit the fan in Riebeek Kasteel, for many years a haven of peace and always considered very safe. Savages from the township looting shops and apparently trying to burn down the iconic Royal Hotel.

[Slasher]

And what's their bellyache this time Cape?

[Capetonian]

They are claiming back what the whites stole from them. You know, shops full of goods, cultivated and productive land, cars, and so on.

In fairness, I understand why they are pissed off. The ANC made them promises about how their lives would improve, and most of them are worse off in terms of a functioning infrastructure, job opportunities, affluence, than they were under Apartheid. They have been utterly betrayed by the government that they voted into power.

However, most of them still have the feeling that everything is the fault of the whites and Apartheid, and they blame that for everything.

[Capetonian]

CAPE TOWN - In the Western Cape, the rural town of Riebeek Kasteel is calm following violent protests and looting earlier on Monday.

Disgruntled residents living in an area called Esterhof took to the streets over a lack of housing and service delivery.

A number of shops were looted and there was a heavy police presence in the community.

Riebeek Kasteel Community Policing Forum spokesperson Roger Roman said: “There are rumours that people have been bused in, we see no evidence to support that. So the protests are by the local coloured and black communities who live in pretty appalling conditions and who haven’t been heard and listened to for 25 years.”

[Woody]

SAA may look to renting pilots out

SAA may look to renting pilots out
Published by Lucinda Dordley on June 27, 2018
11 0
South African Airways (SAA) CEO, Vuyani Jarana, has said that he may be considering leasing out the company’s cabin crew and airplane docking spots to foreign airlines. This will be done in an effort to cut costs for the struggling airline. This measure may also help fight the global shortage of flight staff.

Speaking to Associated Free Press News, SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali, said that Jarana’s key objective is to protect SAA’s employees as well as return the airline to positive financial status.

[Capetonian]

This week, 9 friends of mine are leaving or have left South Africa.

1,2 and 3 are a family, mother and son born and raised in ZA, father is a Brit who has lived there for 40 years. They are hard working and productive people who have set up several successful businesses employing, directly and indirectly, people from the local community. They no longer feel safe and see no prospects for their 12 year old son. Moving to UK

4 and 5 are a couple, both born in Rhodesia, who have lived in the Cape for 40 years, both retired, and unable to live in what they consider a safe and secure way. Moving to UK

6 is a female in her 60s who has worked hard all her life, employing local people in two shops and a restaurant that she owns. After two attacks within a month, moving to Switzerland

7 is a male in his early 70s, also born in ZA and grew up in Rhodesia. Again, his pension income won't let him live securely and he feels unsafe whenever he goes out. Moving to UK.

8 and 9 are a couple who after spending a few years spending a few months in UK and the rest of the year in their beautiful luxury home in ZA, have decided that things are looking so bleak that they are going to disinvest there and consolidate their assets in the UK and spend their time there, with the odd short trip back to ZA. They were both great believers in black empowerment and uplift, but have lost faith and trust.

I am not commenting on whether their decisions are right or wrong, the fact is that they feel they are making the right decision for them. Multiply across the white community how many other people are feeling the same and acting accordingly, and there's a huge loss to ZA. People who are (relatively) wealthy, work, or have worked hard, put money into the exchequer and community, and provided employment for locals and their families are leaving.

ZA already has one of the narrowest tax bases in the world and it's going to get narrower.

Jacob Zuma and the ANC probably did more harm to the country in his 10 or so years of Presidency than the Nats did in their 45 years of tenure of power.

[Capetonian]

For the first time, the Department of Basic Education has published a full breakdown on subject pass levels in its 2017 School Subject Report.
While there are some specific pass conditions for subjects such as Home Language, First Additional Language and Mathematics, at South Africa’s current ‘elementary pass’ barrier of 30%, the 2017 matric class passed with a rate of 75.1%. If the pass barrier was 40%, the pass rate would drop to around 54%, and If the pass barrier was 50%, the pass rate would drop to around 33%. If South Africa had to meet the 60% pass barrier seen in some other countries, only 16% of matrics would have made the cut.

[Cacophonix]

Reading Alex Henshaw's Wings over the Great Divide and, although, of his own time, his views of Johannesburg and South Africa in the late 1940's, generally, are remarkably familiar. His wife Barbara hated Johannesburg and who can blame her! The book and his opinions stilll ring true today and I must admit have left me feeling intolerably homesick but for what I do not know.

Well worth reading (if you can get hold of it). For old Africa hands it is a must, encompassing the passing of an age and a way of flying that is all but impossible in Britain and most of parts of the world today. South Africa has always been an ungovernable crazy, very violent place, fraught with misguided stupidity, prejudice, passion and angst!

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Caco

[Capetonian]

I despise that loathsome slimebag Peter Hain, but I thought this might be of interest to some. I won't be queuing at midnight to buy a copy.

Global South Africans
Yesterday at 3:38 AM ·

If you're looking for a short, popular, accessible book that tells Mandela's entire and remarkable story in a nutshell - this is it. Mandela: His Essential Life by Peter Hain is out on 18 July. (Published by Rowman and Littlefield, £9.99 paperback, £16.99 hardback.)

Lord Peter Hain is a former British anti-apartheid leader born of South African parents forced into exile in 1966 and Chairs the Mandela Centenary Committee organising the Exhibition, free at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London’s South Bank Centre from 18th July – 19th August. Happy reading!

From barefoot herd boy to world leader, from freedom fighter to revered statesman, from prisoner to president.
Nelson Mandela’s story is an extraordinary one and an inspiration for humanity.

Of course there are several excellent, though learned and very lengthy, biographies about him.But what’s been missing is a short, popular and accessible book that tells Mandela’s entire and remarkable story in a nutshell—which is what this aims to do.

I was not an impartial observer in his life but rather an active participant: initially as an anti-apartheid activist and then as a British politician and friend.

Just as much as I was in writing it I hope you enjoy and are inspired by Mandela: His Essential Life.

Surviving in his cold, bleak cell on Robben Island off Cape Town, as an African he was permitted no more than five ounces of meat daily where Coloureds (mixed race) were allowed six ounces. He was permitted half an ounce of fat daily; Coloureds, a full ounce. The pernicious precision of apartheid penetrated every nook and cranny of life, banning interracial sex, park benches, sport, jobs, schools, hospitals and so on.

Despite being imprisoned for 27 years in the prime of his life, his people oppressed, beaten tortured, assassinated, exiled, detained or banned, he emerged without bitterness or vengeance to negotiate an almost miraculous transition from the evil of apartheid – the worst, most institutionalised system of racism the world has ever known.

His capacity for forgiveness is what made him the absolutely critical figure in the eventual liberation of his country,
The ‘rainbow democracy’ which he led as President from 1994 stood as a beacon to the world for the triumph of hope over horror.

Mandela was a democratic constitutionalist with an almost touching faith in parliamentary democracy – even though Britain’s Parliament and the US Congress opposed him for almost the entirety of the freedom struggle. And even though, by force of circumstance—the suppression of his African National Congress’s nonviolent campaign against racial oppression for over sixty years—he had to become a freedom fighter, to lead an underground campaign of guerrilla activity similar to the French resistance against the Nazis.

Today everyone says they were against apartheid. And doubtless many were. But some did things about it; others didn’t. The international anti-apartheid struggle was for most of its life engaged in a big, hard fight against a brutal police state
Millions worldwide took part in the long and bitter, but ultimately victorious, anti-apartheid struggle. Most were foot soldiers in the rise and fall of apartheid, including my family and me. Some played an absolutely decisive role; many, a significant one. Nelson Mandela was the leader: in the resistance, in prison, after his release in February 1990 and finally, when in power.

To win the freedom of his people, Mandela had to sacrifice his own for a quarter of a century. Not just that – but his family life too. Anguished and unable to be a husband or father, he knew his wife Winnie – twenty years younger – was struggling against intolerable police harassment, imprisonment and beating to bring up their toddlers Mandela left behind.

In public he was a brilliant leader with a human touch, in private consumed by loneliness.

There will never be another quite like Nelson Mandela, with his courage, humanity and sacrifice, and his commitment to the enduring values of liberty, democracy, integrity, equality and justice.

One of his many memorable proverbs stands as a beacon for all humankind:

‘What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.’

[Woody]

The Democratic Alliance (DA) marched against crime, and the lack of police officers to enforce the law and protect the citizens of the Western Cape today. The march started at Manenburg Police Station and made its way to Nyanga Police Station.

The DA is demanding that the ANC call in the army to support the police services in their efforts against crime, following weeks of gang-violence in notorious areas.


DA leader Mmusi Maimane, lead the march and addressed a crowd of DA supporters. In a press statement Maimane said, “Our country is under siege by criminals. Across South Africa we are losing the fight against crime, and we are losing it because the ANC has no incentive to deal with crime.

“Some even receive money from the proceeds of crime – whether from cash-in-transit heists or from the illegal cigarette trade – and they escape prosecution by buying favours. One of the cash heist kingpins who was recently arrested was not only an ANC employee at Luthuli House, but also an elected ANC branch secretary.

“Our crime-stricken communities have been failed by the ANC nation-wide, but we are gathered here in Cape Town today because the people of Phillippi, Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Mannenberg, Nyanga and many other neighbourhoods are suffering particularly badly. Your government has a duty to protect you from crime and criminals. It says so in our Constitution. Your right to freedom and security is one of the very first things mentioned in the Bill of Rights.”

[Woody]

Not it’s bad news getting rid of 11 taxi drivers.

Gunmen in South Africa have killed 11 taxi drivers in an ambush, police say.
The men from Gauteng province were travelling to Johannesburg on Saturday night when their minibus was fired on.
The victims, and four others critically injured, were returning from a colleague's funeral in the coastal region of Kwa-Zulu Natal, police said.
The motive is unclear although rivalry between groups running minibus taxi routes in South Africa has led to violence in the past.
Minibus taxis are the most popular form of transportation among South Africa's population of 55 million.

Media captionHow violent is South Africa?
Police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker said the vehicle was attacked between the towns of Colenso and Weenen, in the coastal province.
"The vehicle was ambushed. There were 11 fatalities and four were seriously injured and are in hospital," he told reporters.
"There has been a lot of taxi violence in the area but we are still investigating who the perpetrators were."
The targeted attack comes days after deadly shootings in Johannesburg, South African media reported.
In one week, a taxi owner reportedly with "no enemies" was shot dead in his vehicle, and two others were killed while travelling under a police escort.
Ten people were also killed in violence related to rivalries among minibus drivers in Cape Town over one weekend in May.

[ian16th]

There will be a queue round the block in the morning, of guys wanting the 11 jobs.

[Capetonian]

Blacks? Wanting jobs? Really?