Staggering Out Over The Abyss

[Alisoncc]

My understanding has always been that there were no peoples living on the Witwatersrand when Cecil Rhodes first turned up there. All the African tribes were down in the lowlands as there was little game or edible foods at the altitude of the reef and the soils weren't very productive there. So claims by black Africans cannot be substantiated. It was whites who found gold and populated the area, and surely must have prior claim. But whenever have hard facts been of relevance.

[Capetonian]

My 'ban' from PPrune was related to my stating that life in ZA was better for just about everybody under the Nats than it is now, specifically for describing Apartheid as a relatively benign dicatorship compared to now. Below is Wanking Wobbie's note to me :

You are very welcome to use the site but you were using JB to push propaganda. When you started describing apartheid as benign it was time for you to leave that part of the site. You tried it on elsewhere on another part of PPRuNe so it wasn't a slip of the keyboard.

You've got every right in the world to be an angry, discontented southern African but you got a little too comfortable and the reality distortion field started making too many appearances. Same thing happened to those forthright free thinkers helping simplify life on JB for all of us with the only good Moslem is a dead one approach. It makes life much less complex.

I know it's a complication for your simple straightforward approach to the situation but I note that for the second time you've wiped the uncomfortable bit of history where you were dumped unceremoniously out of the forum in your arse as Tableview. And that was in the golden era of peace and understanding created by the JB. Mod squad.

Regards again,
Rob

[A Lutra Continua]

Never bloody stops...

Former Springbok Rally Driver and Olympian murdered

Johannesburg - Former South African cyclist and Springbok rally driver Jan Hettema was murdered on his smallholding in Tweedrag near Boschkop on Wednesday morning.

Police spokesperson Captain Marissa van der Merwe confirmed the incident.

According to Van der Merwe, the attack happened around 08:00 when two armed gunmen overpowered Hettema, 83, his wife Elsa and a worker at their home.

“Jan was shot dead while his wife was tied up and the worker was shoved into a cupboard,” Van der Merwe told News24.

The suspects stole a laptop, cellphones and jewellery.

Hettema's wife survived the incident.

The suspects fled the scene and police are currently searching for them.

Hettema won the South African Rally Championship five times. He also competed in cycling at the 1956 Olympics held in Melbourne in Australia, where he ended in fourth place.

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My understanding has always been that there were no peoples living on the Witwatersrand when Cecil Rhodes first turned up there. All the African tribes were down in the lowlands as there was little game or edible foods at the altitude of the reef and the soils weren't very productive there. So claims by black Africans cannot be substantiated. It was whites who found gold and populated the area, and surely must have prior claim. But whenever have hard facts been of relevance.

The population density was as close to zero as to be of no consequence in much of what is now SA. The marauding tribes from the north slightly increased that low number but the real population explosion occurred when the Voortrekkers pitched and began to teach good farming practices, handed out medicine and got the tribesmen they encountered hooked on dat ol' timey religion. I believe our cousins in Oz and the US went about things slightly differently.

[A Lutra Continua]

Pinched from another site (strangely, also begun as a protest against heavy handed one eyed moderating at TOP).

Cheers, Jaap...!

[A Lutra Continua]

Yup. We've come a long way...

South Africa finishes last in WEF’s 2016 mathematics and science education ranking

South Africa’s mathematics and science education quality was ranked as the worst in the world by the World Economic Forum.
By Staff Writer - July 7, 2016 119 Comments

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has released its Global Information Technology Report 2016, which ranked South Africa last in mathematics and science education quality.

South Africa also finished close to last – 137 out of 139 countries – when looking at the overall quality of its education system.

The WEF’s 2016 report ranks SA’s mathematics and science education quality lower than that of Nigeria, Mozambique, and Malawi.

This is the third year in a row that South Africa has finished last in the World Economic Forum’s mathematics and science education quality rankings.

It should be noted that these rankings are based on the perceptions of business leaders, and make use of the WEF’s annual Executive Opinion Survey to establish how well a country’s education system is performing.

In this survey, the opinions of business leaders are gathered on a variety of topics.

The rankings therefore detail the perceived quality of mathematics and science education systems.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/general/1 ... nking.html

[Capetonian]

It's all the fault of Apartheid, Oom Hendrik, P W, the Nats, the weather, global warming etc.
Nothing to do with the fact that those in government are a bunch of corrupt and thieving savages who want to keep the majority uneducated.
Odd how history repeats itself .

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You forgot Jan van Riebeeck and Bartholomew Diaz.

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Those who wished the corrupt ANC regime and their cronies on SA must be so proud.

Loyalty is among the most admirable of human traits. Blind loyalty one of the worst. And when it comes to one Duduzile Myeni, chairman of SA Airways and of the Jacob Zuma Foundation, South Africa’s President is, at best, guilty of the latter. Myeni, holder of a secondary school teacher’s diploma, is driving what is ostensibly a forceful empowerment agenda. But even if her intentions are honourable, the way she is going about it is misguided, and proving to be extremely costly for both the airline and her country. She was personally responsible for the attempted last minute interjection of Quartile Capital in a long-negotiated deal with Airbus. That was the last straw for the airline’s Financial Director Wolf Meyer, a thoroughly decent man as my direct engagements with him attest. Meyer’s resignation at the end of November last year was followed a fortnight later by Zuma’s firing of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene partly because of his resistance to Myeni’s machinations, sparking what we now know as Nenegate. No sooner had the Quartile Capital dust settled than he SAA chairman is now attempting to gouge R256m from the airline’s meagre coffers to benefit a three roomed outfit called BNP Capital whose licence, incidentally, has been suspended by the Financial Services Board. Also, despite being told by Treasury and the DTI she is acting illegally, Myeni has been driving ahead with her own version of BBBEE – forcing Bidvest and Engen to allocate 30% of the profit from recently awarded contracts into a trust to benefit a list of names she has given them, among them one Sizwe Zuma. The documentary evidence of all this, which is published below in the public interest, was provided by forensic consultant Paul O’Sullivan. He is the whistle-blower whose intervention led to a dramatic event in April when he was removed just before takeoff from an intercontinental flight, Dominique Strauss-Kahn style. O’Sullivan spent the next three days in what he describes as a rat infested cell at Pretoria Central with raw sewerage running through it. I caught up with him in London yesterday. Here is Paul O’Sullivan’s story. – Alec Hogg

Three months ago you were on your way to the UK but never made it, but now you’re here in London. It’s been quite an adventure….

Yes, that’s right, Alec. I was sitting in Seat 5A, which is my preferred seat when I fly to London. I had a glass of champagne in my hand. The doors were just about to close when a supervisor came in and said there were people outside wanting to see me. I must get off the plane. I must bring my children with me. I said, “Who wants to see me?”. They said, ‘It’s the police” so I took my two daughters and I got off the plane where I was promptly arrested and faced three days of abuse and torture at the hands of the South African Police.

Were you taken to prison?

Yes, I was taken to Pretoria Central at high speed (220kph) – blue light convoy. I think there were five or six cars with all their blue lights going. At one stage I saw that we were doing 220kph and I was shocked. It was a massive shock to my system. It emerged on Tuesday last week, under cross-examination by Barry Roux…it was admitted that the instructions for the investigations against me emanated from Lieutenant-General Vinesh Moonoo a person I’ve opened dockets of corruption against over the last two years.

What happened to your daughters? Presumably, they didn’t go with you to Pretoria Central.

My wife came to the airport and took my daughters. There were no seats on the next flight but the day after, they flew to London unaccompanied. Normally, I like to fly with them if I can. Occasionally, they do go unaccompanied so they’re not totally unused to it.

The trauma of having your father arrested is not something you get over easily…

In fact, they’re still suffering from it. I flew up here because one of them had a 10th birthday party so I flew up for that and when she saw me, she broke down crying. It’s quite a traumatic thing to put your children through.

Why this aggressive action from the South African Police towards you?

The reason given at the time was that I’d used my Irish passport to enter and leave South Africa on a number of occasions, which I did during 2015. I did so purely because I wanted to be under the radar as I knew that Radovan Krejcir and people linked to him wanted to murder me. Even as late as six or eight weeks ago there was another attempt at killing me. I thought – rightly or wrongly – that if I used my Irish passport they wouldn’t know I was in the country. I was out of the country when I got the information that crooked cops on Radovan Krejcir’s payroll were on the lookout for me. I decided ‘okay, let me try and stay under the radar’ so it was just one of the defensive mechanisms that I employed to stay alive.

It since emerged in court last week that the main reason I was arrested was because I’d sent an email to the Deputy President and to the Chief of Police and others where I stated categorically that I intended to fly to London on the 1st of April to expose the corruption in South Africa. They admitted in court that that’s the reason they arrested me.

Did you send the email?

Yes. Absolutely.

Did you set up a press conference here to fulfil the threat?

No. I think sometimes you need to shock people into taking action. The intention of the email was to try and shock these people into taking action about the serious cases of corruption that I’ve opened. Those cases of corruption include government ministers, state-owned entity management and senior police officials. We’ve got this situation, which appears to be taking place right now where President Jacob Zuma is appointing what can best be described as criminals, to run the Criminal Justice System. If it goes unchecked, we’re going to see a Police State in South Africa and I think that’s what scares a lot of people in South Africa. You can’t have this situation where cops can ride around, immune to the criminal acts that they’ve committed and then target the people that are exposing their criminal conduct.

You’ve also done a lot of work on South African Airways where corruption has once again raised its ugly head….

Dudu Myeni, SAA chairperson
Dudu Myeni, SAA chairperson
Yes. I wrote an email to Duduzile Myeni, the Chairman of South African Airways, and I told her in no uncertain terms in November 2014 that if she did not resign from the airline I would expose her conduct. In that email, I talked about the fact that private detectives had come to my offices to solicit my assistance in obtaining cellular phone records and bank records of three directors of South African Airways. I mentioned this in the email and I said, “This conduct is unacceptable.” It’s crystal clear from the email chain I have, that the emails triggering this action on the part of this private detective went from Myeni to Advocate Lindiwe Nkosi-Thomas, who was then a director of SAA. The detective made it clear to me his client was Lindiwe Nkosi-Thomas and that he wanted bank records and cellular phone records.

I prepared a sworn affidavit and I sent it to the then CEO of SAA because he was one of the people whose bank records they wanted. They made it clear that they were looking to unlawfully obtain bank records and cellular phone records. Ironically, no action has been taken. Nkosi-Thomas was called to order. A special meeting of the board was convened. She didn’t turn up and she resigned.

The SAA saga goes back to 2012 when former CEO of the JSE Russell Loubser and the chairman Cheryl Carolus, and some other highly respected directors resigned. Dudu Myeni was still on the board at the time. Russell Loubser famously said, “If she has any business acumen, it’s very well-hidden.” How much of an influence does Myeni have on the airline?

I think she’s got too much influence. The King Report makes it clear non-executive directors should not have their shoe leather in executive decisions. What they should be doing is having an overview of the organisation that they are non-executive directors of and making decisions based on their rational understanding of what’s going on in the business. In the case of Myeni, this woman is so arrogant she even has her picture in every issue of Sawubona (SAA’s in-flight magazine) so that all the passengers get to look at her every time they go on a plane. My concern first arose after the incident with private detectives attempting to buy cellphone records and bank records of those three directors of SAA, one of which was the then CEO.

SAA emails



That CEO phoned me and he said, “Paul, I’m shocked at what’s going on.” I asked, “What’s the problem?” He said, “Well, you know I appointed Transactional Advisors to oversee the wide-bodied aircraft tender transaction, as requested by (former Public Enterprises) Minister Malusi Gigaba and I was shocked when Myeni walked into my office and told me ‘we don’t need transactional advisors. We can do all this in-house’”. The CEO told her ‘No, this is what the Minister wanted’. Gigaba was subsequently removed and replaced as Minister by Lynne Brown. That then CEO made it clear Myeni told him that she wanted to go on pension and his decision to appoint Transactional Advisors would delay her ability to do so. I’m left wondering what the hell’s going on here? This is a state-owned entity – one that’s not making a profit. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s running at a loss. We have a chairperson (as I think she calls herself) who decides that this airline is hers to do with as she wishes.

That all raised the story of Quartile Capital. Myeni tried to put Quartile Capital in between a deal that SAA was doing with Airbus. It was stopped. It cost the country a lot through the whole Nenegate saga and Finance Minister Nene was fired, but at least it seemed the corruption attempts over. That’s not the case?

No, it’s not the case, unfortunately. In the docket that I opened in January this year, I made it clear that Quartile Capital were not fit for any purpose. They had judgements against them going into the millions. Not only against the company but against the directors personally. You have the situation where it would have been impossible for them to obtain a Tax Clearance Certificate (a requirement to do business with any public sector enterprise) because there was over R1.5m owing in unpaid VAT. How can you appoint a company like that to be engaged in a purported R6bn deal to finance ten aircraft? I included all that information in the docket. But it’s now clear from the supplementary statements that I’ve put into the docket that the dust hadn’t settled on Quartile Capital when, in early 2016, we had another Request for Information (RFI), seeking Transactional Advisors to advise South African Airways on the restructuring of its R15bn loan book and leases.

Paul O’Sullivan statement OR Tambo 2016/01/13

The article is pretty long. Continued here - http://www.biznews.com/undictated/2016/ ... ary-proof/

[A Lutra Continua]

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Words


Fail


Me.

Oilgate in a nutshell: 7 quick facts on SA oil sale scandal
Aug 29 2016 09:28

The pilfering of state assets in South Africa is starting to make crime on the country’s crime-wracked streets look like child’s play, with #Oilgate a classic case in point. BizNews has exposed how politicians, government officials and commercial business operators have stealthily taken at least R1.5bn from taxpayers. Equally astonishing is that South Africa has now sold off its entire strategic oil reserve. You can read an in-depth interview with a global oil trader with deep knowledge of the transaction and related articles by scrolling to the story links below. But for a quick primer, here are seven things you should know about South Africa’s oil sale scandal. – Jackie Cameron

1. Buying South Africa’s oil – why it was priced at a steal

In December, South Africa’s government sold the country’s entire strategic fuel reserve, 10m barrels of crude oil, at a substantial discount to the price at which the commodity traded. Firstly, the oil market is in a contango, a period where selling oil for future delivery translates into a progressively higher premium over the spot price. As BizNews editor-in-chief Alec Hogg explains: “The further forward you contract the sale and delivery of the oil, the higher the price. Yet South Africa’s reserves were sold with immediate effect. For another, the country dumped its oil reserves at $28 a barrel, at least $10 below the market price ruling at the time.”

2. Why selling off a nation’s strategic oil reserve is a bad idea

There is no international precedent for a country selling off its entire strategic oil reserve. To our knowledge, this is the first time any nation on earth saw fit to expose itself to actually having no oil reserves. The International Energy Agency suggests countries hold 90 days of net imports in their strategic stockpile. This is to safeguard against future supply disruptions and, effectively, avoid a catastrophic economic event. According to Investopedia, the US holds enough oil in reserve to meet its daily needs for more than a month. Many governments are increasing strategic stocks of oil, with China an example of a significant stockpiler.

3. Why oil traders say the government’s story isn’t credible

The authorities have presented the deal as a rotation of supply instead of sale. But, says a global trader, if this was a rotation, then the second leg of the transaction – the plans, contracts and prices related to the replacement oil – would need to have been concluded simultaneously.

Plus, a rotation now wouldn’t make financial sense. Explains the trader: “In the current market circumstances where the market is in contango – future oil prices progressively higher than the current spot oil prices – you wouldn’t sell your oil stocks promptly and you wouldn’t exchange current oil for future oil. This is because replacement oil bought for delivery in the future is already more expensive the moment you dispose of your current oil.”

4. The oil is still in South Africa – but it’s not ours to use

The oil is still in South Africa, but the country doesn’t own it anymore. The new owners will have immediately sold the oil forward for future delivery and fixed/hedged a price which is at a premium to the cost of storage and financing that oil. The odds are that this oil will be exported, says the oil industry expert, because this is the case for so much oil which is being stored in Saldanha Bay.

The government can buy oil from anyone presently storing oil in Saldanha Bay, but most likely at the prevailing market price if or when the country needs it in future. Plus, there is nothing to stop the new owners from removing the oil as and when they choose – which they are likely to do when market conditions change, sources tell BizNews.

5. Who bought the oil?

Two major international traders, Glencore and Vitol, and one other relatively small trading company called the Taleveras Group. Others were (apparently) not invited to tender for the oil, for example Chevron, which operates a refinery in Cape Town. For global oil trade experts, “the one thing you can’t get away from is was due process not followed – and none of these parties are new to doing business in South Africa”.

6. Who made this sale happen?

Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson, members of the Department of Energy and the Strategic Fuel Fund are ultimately responsible. The Minister signed a directive to approve some transaction or other and presumably, this would have been discussed and she would have been briefed. “We don’t expect her to be an expert in crude oil trading or crude oil markets, but the people who work at the Central Energy Fund and SFF and many of those who serve on their boards have been around long enough to know – or be able to hire expert consultants to advise on the transaction. CEF/SFF would have briefed her on the transaction,” said the global trader.

7. How big a deal is #Oilgate really?

The #Oilgate scandal makes Nkandla – President Jacob Zuma’s multimillion rand home refurbishing at taxpayers’ expense – look like a picnic. But, since the first disclosure of the sale, ***** has been baffling brains. This is why BizNews found an insider to quantify how it cost taxpayers and unpack what went down in language we can all understand. Have a read of the interview, on Biznews now.

http://www.biznews.com/undictated/2016/ ... of-r1-5bn/

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From nuclear tech to this... http://livemonitor.co.za/south-african- ... itchcraft/


Those who wished this shower on SA must be so proud.

[Capetonian]

It's increasingly hard to distinguish satire from the tragic reality when you read news about ZA.

[A Lutra Continua]

Is it satire? Witchdoctors already have representation in national medical matters and are able to claim payment from medical insurance schemes for their bone throwing and other chicanery. Some have been caught milking it more than a little, although that was always to be expected.

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So what was it really all about?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09 ... imbabwe-t/

Won't be long before the poor buggers will look back on the UDI years as the good old days.

[Capetonian]

They already are.

[Capetonian]

What the Chinese are doing in central Africa will make the evils of the 'wicked white racist imperialist colonial exploiters' look like a Sunday school tea party at the vicar's maiden aunt's house.

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Ops normal for the thieving filth then...

As South African Airways took delivery of its first new A330-300 aircraft last week, it was an occasion for which all SAA staff had reason to celebrate. However, it was also one that symbolises a silent celebration by all South Africans for the billions of rand saved as a result of the actions of a few good people who sacrificed so much for the new aircraft’s arrival. South Africa owes an immense gratitude to Sylvain Bosc, Nico Bezuidenhout, Wolf Meyer, Thuli Mpshe, Masimba Dahwa and more recently, Cynthia Stimpel.
This is the aircraft whose name should be “The Whistle-blower” in tribute to a few good people who scuppered SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni’s plan to insert a middle-man deal that stood to enrich a few connected cronies with hundreds of millions of rand in unnecessary commissions and finance charges, at the expense of the loss-making airline, and all of us.

The new aircraft forms part of five new A330-300s, which started out as an order for 20 new Airbus A320s about 13 years ago. Due to various postponements of deliveries and contract clauses, when SAA started taking delivery of those aircraft in 2014 the price had escalated tremendously since the initial placement of the order.

By 2014, SAA had exhausted its own cash resources and could not self-finance those aircraft. This meant that each new aircraft it took delivery of generated a cash loss of about R160-million. Multiply that by 20 aircraft on the way and the airline, or the Treasury, was facing a massive burden.

At the start of 2015, as part of the 90-day action plan to place SAA on track towards a long-term turnaround strategy, the acting CEO, Nico Bezuidenhout, tasked CFO Wolf Meyer and Chief Commercial Officer Sylvain Bosc with the renegotiation of this onerous contract.

After months of discussions with Airbus, the pair managed to obtain significant concessions from the manufacturer, which enabled the cancellation of the last 10 of the burdensome A320 deliveries and replaced them with a lease for five A330-300s, the first of which arrived at OR Tambo International airport on Friday.

The deal saved SAA and the South African taxpayer about R1.6-billion and enabled SAA to obtain a refund of R1.3-billion in pre-delivery deposits from Airbus. In addition, the deployment of the modern A330-300 aircraft in lieu of the older models also stood to generate operational savings worth hundreds of millions of rand annually for SAA. It was in many respects a good deal all round for the airline and South Africa.

Despite the deal being approved by SAA’s executive team in 2015 along with the Board and National Treasury, its execution was subsequently blocked by Myeni later in the year when she tried to insert a middle-man into the transaction, against the will of the executive team. Those who opposed the “new” deal were removed one by one, firstly Bosc, then Meyer, then Bezuidenhout and Thuli Mpshe, all of whom were replaced by obedient yes-men who would not stand up to Myeni’s antics.

When Minister Nhlanhla Nene refused to allow Myeni’s deal, which would have left SAA significantly worse off than the deal negotiated by Meyer and Bosc, he too was removed by President Jacob Zuma under the most absurd excuse of releasing him for a position with the BRICS Bank, a position which was never there in the first place.

This move hit the country hard and saw the rand plummet by 15% and the JSE lose 10% within days. Hastily, the advisers to Nene’s replacement, Des Van Rooyen, asked for the SAA Airbus documentation on his first day in office at National Treasury. The plot and activities of state capture were already thick and entrenched at SAA.

Tragically, the new deal that Meyer, Bosc and Bezuidenhout had worked so hard on to save the country billions of rands ultimately cost them and others their jobs, they having refused to let Myeni and her cronies benefit at the expense of SAA and the taxpayer.

As it turned out, these fine new A330-300 aircraft that were supposed to save a lot of taxpayers’ money ultimately became the most expensive aircraft ever, due to the burden they added to the country’s debt as a result of the greed, incompetence and dishonesty of a few connected and corrupt cronies. Yet at the same time they may have helped expose the extent of looting of our State-Owned Entities, along with the irrational appointments so typical of our nation’s president, Jacob Zuma.

Ultimately, this transaction has also displayed the immense importance and role that whistle-blowers play in exposing wrongdoing. The extent of the plundering that has and currently takes place throughout all levels of public service necessitates a desperate need for more good people to blow the whistle on corruption, even though it might be at the expense of their careers and personal lifestyle.

South Africa owes an immense gratitude to Sylvain Bosc, Nico Bezuidenhout, Wolf Meyer, Thuli Mpshe, Masimba Dahwa and more recently, Cynthia Stimpel, whose moral courage and actions enabled OUTA to halt a similar transaction in which, again, Myeni and her team tried hard to inject middle-man BnP Capital, which stood to earn over R245-million from an unnecessary finance fee activity.

The real tragedy is the destruction and loss of such meaningful structures, careful planning and expertise at SAA and National Treasury at the hands of a few corrupt individuals who almost got away with their misdeeds.

The delivery of the new A330-300 last week is aptly symbolic of South Africa’s current situation. One can only imagine how terrible Wolf Meyer, Sylvain Bosc and Nico Bezuidenhout must have felt when reading about it, and not being able to be there to take delivery of this new aircraft, one they worked so hard and sacrificed so much for. DM

[A Lutra Continua]

From FA...


“We are here unashamedly to disturb the white man’s peace. Because we have never known peace. We, the rightful owners, our peace was disturbed by white man’s arrival here. They committed a black genocide. They killed our people during land dispossession. Today, we are told don’t disturb them, even when they disturbed our peace. They found peaceful Africans here. They killed them! They slaughtered them, like animals! We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now…. But 1994 means NOTHING without the land! Victory will only be victory if the land is restored in the hands of rightful owners. And rightful owners unashamedly is black people. This is our continent, it belongs to us.” – EFF leader Julius Malema in a speech outside Newcastle Magistrates court last week.

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

Bibliography

Arguments in this article rest chiefly on the following sources:

“The Mfecane Aftermath,” ed. Carolyn Hamilton, Wits University Press 1995

“Slavery in South Africa,” ed. Elizabeth A Eldredge and Fred Morton, Authors Guild 1993

“New History of South Africa,” ed. H. Giliomee and B. Mbangwa, 2007. Available online.

“Native Tribes of the Transvaal,” British War Office 1905. Available online.

“When Rustling Became An Art – Pilane’s Kgatla and the Transvaal Frontier,” Fred Morton, David Phillip 2010

Website of the Melville Koppies Nature Reserve http://www.mk.org.za

[More Aviation]

Around 250,000 years ago, Emmarentia was inhabited by our hominid ancestors. These creatures appear to have died out.

About 47 years ago a group of urchins, amongst whose number was one More Aviation, used to fight, vloek and fish for the primitive be-whiskered Barbel along the sunny banks of Emmarentia dam before happily wandering off in the general directions of Linden, Randburg and Parkhurst, their hearts full of youthful hope and happiness... the latter part of which has died and gone cold in the knowledge of the real world, life and pernicious history...

MA