The sOccketball is an invention by a bunch of American college kids, aimed squarely at the sub-Saharan African market. It just got a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award. The problem? It’s useless, and the idea that Africans can’t look after themselves is supremely condescending. I explain why in today’s Daily Maverick column: Let’s return the beads

That was the challenge set for me for this week’s column, though not by The Daily Maverick’s editor. In the wake of the Muhammed cartoon furore, and the general high levels of intolerance everywhere, here’s what I came up with: What’s wrong with everyone?

I know my mother reads this, and I know she told me not to be mean about cyclists. Sorry, mom.

So, we went marching in protest against attacks on foreigners this weekend, to point out that no, we’re not all like that. Surrounded by communists and socialists and unionists and other great folks, I tried valiantly to get my “free markets, free immigration” message in front of the big red banners. Call it a protest within a protest. Not having marched in any cause since before 1994, I made two double-sided posters and one tall one, and met up with Duncan McLeod from the Financial Mail, and our convict-cursing comrade, Brian Bakker. Somehow we swindled him into carrying the poster with Duncan’s line on it. He will not be living this down any time soon.

The other side of my placard says “free markets, free immigration, free south africa”, and the other side of Brian’s placard reads “foreigners are scapegoats for government failure”.

A few more pictures can be found below the fold, and here’s a cool photo-essay by someone I don’t know, to a very appropriate sound-track:

For more pictures… Read the rest of this entry »

“The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That’s one lesson to take from the Big Bad Bullard Barney.

The quotation is attributed to Aristotle. He noted another mark of an educated mind: “to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”

Last week, I posted (here and on ThoughtLeader) the argument I thought David Bullard was attempting to stir, namely that colonialism, for all its evils, had benefits too. In particular, that in many places it established institutions and infrastructure that formed the basis for later prosperity growth. This may or may not be a valid argument, but despite Bullard’s careless and condescending approach to the subject, it seemed worthy of discussion among civilised, intelligent people. (As it happens, I was wrong: Bullard didn’t intend to go that far. He told Lerato Mbele on CNBC Africa on Thursday morning that he intended only to say we shouldn’t keep blaming present ills on past injustices. But first, he went to see his lawyer.)

As often happens with controversial subjects, the argument quickly turned absolutist, divisive, and personal.

Sadly so. It would be not only more polite and entertaining, but also more instructive, to suppose that someone who raises an interesting argument might wish to discuss its merits and implications, rather than stating it as cold fact or firm belief so partisans can shout each other down. Why would they raise the debate if the issue was simple and settled in their own mind? It seems reasonable to assume they’re able to see more nuances than just a simplistic, binary distinction between good and evil.

It seems fair to assume it isn’t very likely they run down neighbourhood cats in their spare time. I’m sure Bullard doesn’t, for example. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least.

Anyway, the argument on colonialism, which I hadn’t thought much about until I read it in an editorial by an Indian economist a few years ago, was put forward for consideration.

If parts of the argument appeal to me, that is irrelevant. I may well be wrong, but that is also irrelevant. The merits of, perspectives on and conclusions from the argument is what matters in public debate. In a public forum such as a blog, anyone is welcome to try to convince readers the argument is invalid. I dare say they won’t do so by calling their opponents Holocaust deniers or unreconstructed racists.

I did not, for example, state a conclusion on whether colonialism was, on balance, good or bad. On the contrary, I noted several caveats, several grave iniquities of colonialism. Yet half the responses, both in support and in opposition, seemed to assume that even just raising the argument was tantamount to unequivocal support of colonialism. On the contrary, there isn’t even an intellectual need to reach a definitive good-or-evil conclusion. The subject is far too complex for such a simplistic judgement, it would involve exactness that simply is not in the nature of the subject, and the point is moot in a world that has moved on and looks toward future progress.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, in 2005 said the following:

Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day.

These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well.

Just look at him, in those colonial clothes! He must be a racist lapdog of British imperialism who thinks Indians are an inferior race!

Or is it possible to consider that his statement does not amount to nostalgia for colonialism? That it does not claim Indians could never have built these institutions and infrastructure without the British Raj?

Lest this post reopens the colonialism argument, let’s consider a few different examples.

Roe vs Wade is a 1973 ruling by the courts in the US. Based on the constitutional right to privacy, it ruled that a woman had a broad and unequivocal right to choose to have an abortion, no matter what the circumstances before the foetal viability, and for the sake of her health afterwards. Since “health” was defined very broadly, the legal hurdle for third-trimester abortions was set low.

Some people argue that this ruling is wrong. They base their argument on the fact that the US constitution says nothing about abortion, and that there is a clear conflict between the constitutional right to life and other legal rights. By ruling as it did, the court created a sweeping legal right where none existed before. Such a decision, opponents argue, should have been made by the people’s elected representatives in the legislature, and not by appointed judges from the bench.

Obviously, moral conservatives and religious opponents of abortion use this argument. It suits their political agenda to overturn the ruling that made it legal. I happen to agree with the argument, purely on principles of law and political philosophy. There are good reasons for separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and this ruling crosses that line. It does not interpret law, but writes it.

Given the knowledge that I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling, would you think I’m pro-life (anti-abortion), or pro-choice (in favour of abortion)?

It surprises many people to discover that, bar a few important caveats for the purposes of this argument, I am pro-choice. I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling because of legal principle, not because of its substance. I would want that question to come before an elected legislature, to be openly debated, and decided according to the will of the people. I would want that decision to be pro-choice. If that is indeed the outcome, opponents would have suffered a fair, democratic defeat. If not, I would accept an anti-abortion decision in the knowledge that democratic principles were preserved. Moreover, I’d take comfort in the fact that should society change its mind in future, and wish to change the law, it would not be blocked by legal precedent declaring such legislative decisions to be unconstitutional.

How about the death penalty? As a white guy, affected by and deeply concerned about crime, you might think I’d support the death penalty. Let’s establish a few facts in support of that view. First, I’m no bleeding heart. I have little sympathy for the scum that murder and rape and victimise our townships and suburbs. More importantly, I accept the pro-death-penalty argument that honest, innocent and hardworking taxpayers should not have to support the life imprisonment of such murderous scum. But even though I agree with that argument, I oppose the death penalty. Not, I might add, because I have reached definitive conclusions on whether the state should have the right to kill citizens, whether the risk of executing innocent people outweighs the benefit of executing the guilty, or whether the death penalty would be an effective deterrent. Such questions are, to my mind, preceded by the more mundane consideration that if you can’t catch criminals, can’t prosecute them and can’t keep them in jail, it is premature even to begin debating the likely success of reintroducing the death penalty, and the complex philosophical conundrums posed by something like the death penalty. Supporting the death penalty, in my opinion, is putting the cart before the horse.

Or let’s take another common source of generalisations: party affiliation. In South Africa, ANC supporters include communists, unionists, welfare statists, left-liberals, black racists, non-racists, crony capitalists, market-oriented capitalists, and a few classical liberals. I’d have much in common with some of them, and strongly oppose the views of others. Likewise, DA supporters include left-liberals, welfare statists, white racists, free-market capitalists, classical liberals and chihuahuas. When they gain power, they’ll include crony capitalists too.

In the US, the Republican Party is aptly named the “Grand Old Party”, and is commonly described as a “big tent”. That’s because the GOP includes libertarians of both the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul, and the Chicago School, such as Alan Greenspan. It includes religious conservatives like Mike Huckabee, religious nuts like Pat Buchanan, and non-religious social conservatives. It includes foreign policy hawks who envision a global Pax Americana, but it also includes small-government isolationists and libertarian pacifists. It includes big-government conservatives and crony capitalists. It includes socially conservative minority groups who believe in the American Dream and don’t believe the welfare state is it. It includes rural rednecks and sophisticated urban capitalists. It includes sophisticated rural capitalists, and urban rednecks too. It includes xenophobic nativists and free traders. There’s a big ol’ rumble going on in that there big tent. Likewise, the Democrats include a disparate collection of unionists, socialists, free-market liberals, marxists, free traders, anti-free-traders, big-government welfare statists, and spending hawks. If someone tells you they support the Republicans, or the Democrats, which of these many conflicting positions would you assume to be their policy positions and philosophical beliefs?

The point of this long list of examples is this: It does not improve the quality of discussion, on a blog or anywhere else, to assume that someone who presents an argument for debate necessarily accepts it. Or if they do, that this implies a more general stereotypical, partisan or extremist position. It neither addresses the merits, nor raises the tone, to get personal, denounce someone’s character, or reduce their argument to simplistic caricature.

Those who do this end up demonstrating only one thing. That while their opponent is able to entertain a thought without accepting it, and can rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits, they sadly lack these marks of an educated mind.

When I first wrote about David Bullard’s dismissal over his Sunday Times column on colonialism, I described it as offensive and condescending. Given the supercilious faux-Victorian persona he’s cultivated, however, I found it not all that surprising, and not worth suppressing by his dismissal or otherwise.

I must admit, I did not expect an apology from Bullard, but that’s exactly what he’s written in Business Day today.

I can’t claim to believe everything I have written because some columns were written purely for sensation. Readership of the column grew and I became heady with its success and pushed the boundaries. Last week I pushed that boundary too far.

…I offer sincere and heartfelt apologies to those who were offended, including Mondli Makhanya, my friend and former editor, whom I respect enormously.

Given his previous comments on Makhanya, notably that, “I was found guilty in the kangaroo court of Mondli Makhanya,” and that controversial Empire column on his motoring gig in the Sunday Times, I’m not sure what to make of this turnaround.

It seems clear that the vast majority of readers missed the satire. That few saw it as a provocative fiction, designed to make a point about a particular narrative about the past that is partly true but wholly one-sided, and to make a point about the convenient politics of always blaming present ills on these past evils.

Condescending and offensive though I found the column — writing is rarely as ugly as when satire fails — I never thought he intended to offend, or meant to present those crude caricatures as reality. Either way, it appears out of character for the public Bullard persona to apologise when readers misunderstand his intention and take offence. So why the groveling now?

Update: Ray Hartley, editor of The Times comments on his blog:

Where does that leave all those readers who came out in defence of Bullard’s column, saying that it was a legitimate piece of commentary? Gazzam, you was all outed!

I’m not so convinced. Most people I have read on the subject agreed that his comments were offensive, that the column was badly written, and that even if there was a valid debate about colonialism to be had — as I maintained — that he made several points with which one might disagree.

He apologised for causing offence, which is fair enough as far as it goes, but that just says he agrees the comments were offensive and the column was badly written. It says nothing about the validity or otherwise of the commentary, or about those who defended him. Besides, until a few days ago, one person who came out consistently in defence of David Bullard was, ahem, David Bullard. Where does that leave him?

There are some good observations on the Bullard affair by the guys hosting ZA Tech Show — a fairly new, very informative, and at times highly entertaining South African podcast.

The subject starts about 51:40 into the show, and it’s worth a visit, in particular for the apt discussion on the Streisand Effect.

The only point I’d take issue with is the comparison of David Bullard with Darrel Bristow-Bovey (the late and much lamented Robert Kirby had one take on that particular saga, in a column here.)

Yes, both were fired, but one over either perceived racism, or criticism of his employer, or both, or neither, and the other over multiple instances of plagiarism. I hardly think condescension, however offensive, is comparable in any way to plagiarism. The latter deserves disenfranchisement as a journalist, the former merely a snide rebuttal.

Update: Reader Cam Silver points to an amusing consequence of Bullard being a bastard, on Hayibo.

I haven’t weighed in on the noise about the Forum for Black Journalists, whose racist admission policy was recently declared unconstitutional by the Human Rights Commission. Since the story broke days after my rant about white racists exploded into a raging inferno, I had been toying with the idea of using the FBJ issue to make a similar argument against black racists. But I admit, I was weak. I felt swamped by — and tired of — the subject of racism. Another reason I desisted is expressed well in this excellent editorial on the reaction to the ruling, by political analyst Prince Mashele.

What both whites and blacks in our country seem incapable of, however, is to subject racial questions to rational thought. And unfortunately, this failure leads to an automatic expectation of racially solidaristic approaches to issues of race. As a result, simplistic formulas take the place of dispassionate analysis — so commentary on racial questions becomes predictable and a platform to parade racial correctness.

Whenever race issues arise, one can easily tell whether it is a white or black person commenting, not on the basis of accent or style of writing, but based on their unconcealed preference for racial solidarity over sound argument.

It’s this kind of approach that has made blacks who dared to raise critical questions about the FBJ’s racial policy to be quickly labelled “coconuts”. In the same vein, a white person expressing sympathy with black people is generally interpreted as a buyer of favour. Is there nothing like a race-neutral mind?

This question makes me sorry I didn’t post my position on the FBJ. In my view, as a white journalist, it has every right to exist, and every right to exclude whites. Why should I care? I feel the same about white racist groups. If they want to congregate and burn crosses and do what white supremacists do, that’s their problem. In their case, I’d only object when they start committing crimes. When it becomes harrassment, assault or murder, we have a problem, but that problem does not affect the right to freedom of association or freedom of expression.

Similarly with the FBJ. If they feel the need to have a racially-exclusive club because they prefer to think in terms of race and solve problems based on racial analysis, that’s their loss, not mine. I think it’s rich of people who support such organisations to claim racism in others, but that’s also their loss, not mine.

Here’s my objection to the FBJ, though. I have a serious problem that a senior political figure agreed to meet with them in a closed, off-the-record session. If you’re going to have discussions with exclusive groups, by all means do so. The FBJ wouldn’t be the first group of limited membership and special interests to meet with the government or the ANC. But then disclose what was discussed.

You see, there’s an important feature of the constitution that is often overlooked. The function of a constitution is to bind government, and protect citizens. The constitution explicitly says so, making only specific provisions, “where applicable”, binding on other persons. For binding citizens, we have the statute books — regular law — which serves essentially the opposite function.

So while the FBJ has a clear right, in my view, to associate however it wishes, that Jacob Zuma meets behind closed doors with an explicitly racist body strikes me as unconsitutional discrimination on the part of Zuma. Especially since, at the time, he was refusing to grant interviews to most other journalists. His argument might be that he was acting in his capacity as ANC president, not as an agent of goverment, but that seems like a weak defence.

Zuma’s meeting with them, not their existence or constitution, is my main problem with the Forum for Black Journalists. And I disagree with the Human Rights Commission’s ruling.

Is that point racially neutral enough?

David Bullard has been fired by the Sunday Times. Ostensibly, it was over last Sunday’s column, in which he envisioned what South Africa would look like had it not been colonised by the Dutch and the English. His vision isn’t exactly complimentary.

The column is condescending at best, and probably racist. But so what? It stokes debate, and that debate should not be about freedom of speech.

Before I talk about that debate, the obvious question is why fire Bullard for being offensive now? Hadn’t the Sunday Times’s editor, Mondli Makhanya, read him before? Doesn’t an editor who once bravely put “Manto: a drunk and a thief” on the front page agree with Salman Rushdie that without the freedom to offend, freedom of speech ceases to exist? Maybe he does. But Bullard made the fatal mistake of offending his paymasters. For that, of course, they have every right to tell him to sod off and exercise his freedom of speech elsewhere.

Except that his paymasters deny that’s why they’re firing him. Makhanya says his 19th century views are unacceptable in the newspaper. Yet Bullard has been cultivating that persona in the very same newspaper for years. He unapologetically trades on his arrogance, his Victorian superciliousness, and his ability to provoke outrage. If he steps over lines, it’s because with his dandy sartorial style, his whisky-drinking tastes and his cigar-smoking condescension, he consciously — and self-consciously — stations himself above arbitrary lines drawn by the hoi polloi.

It is certainly not the first time Bullard has been racist or offensive. Why didn’t he get fired before? The only other possibility that springs to mind is that the political class strongarmed the newspaper by threatening to pull advertising. That is, of course, their right, but it would genuinely surprise me if Makhanya, who stood firm in the face of far heavier political pressure caved over something as inconsequential as a column by a known stirrer. My bet is Makhanya was just waiting for an excuse to fire Bullard after the latter’s scathing attack on his bosses in the recently-launched media magazine Empire — an attack he has exploited on several public occasions to arouse shock and mirth. Sarah Britten speculates along the same lines, and reckons his axing can only be good for Empire. Bullard himself agrees. (I share Britten’s wish that Empire would get around to discovering these newfangled intarweb tube things. On the other hand, we all know what Bullard thinks of the internet. And in the interest of full disclosure: I too write for Empire.)

For my part, I agree with Rushdie. If Bullard’s column is racist, or offensive, or contains 19th century views, so what? You’re free to disagree. In fact, it’s far better for racism to be declared openly and discussed freely than to be suppressed. Just because it’s taboo in public discourse doesn’t mean it’s not flourishing in pub discourse. Or should that read “festering”?

What will get lost in the noise is the debate Bullard appeared to be trying to stir. Not very well, in my view. He expressed the argument in an offensive, condescending way, but there is a valid debate to be had about the modern tendency to dismiss colonialism as mere racist oppression and exploitation. It definitely was, in many cases, mercenary and ruthless. The degree of depravity differed from one colonialist to the next, and the English were far from the worst.

Many writers take the line that colonialism in India, for example, had substantial benefits, in addition to the well-known drawbacks and injustices. Those writers are not only Western apologists for racist oppression, but also Indian economists, historians, and prominent politicians, writing about their own country. For all the harm colonialism did, they argue, it also brought with it civil institutions and infrastructure. India can thank Britain, they say, for its liberal education, modern jurisprudence, and functioning civil service bureaucracy. Once liberated, it was on these institutions that economic progress could be built.

Reasonable arguments can be made on both sides of this issue. As Bullard shows, the same goes for unreasonable arguments. But that his column was grating and offensive does not mean it’s not a debate worth stirring. Yes, it means suspending conventions about what is politically correct. It means challenging well-established orthodox thinking on issues of history. It means treading sensitively around, and not being over-sensitive to, issues of race and oppression. It means rejecting the victim complex to which Bullard refers in his final paragraph, as well as the instinctive slam-dunk defense offered by perceptions of racism. But is it a debate worth suppressing?

I don’t think so. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, once expressed the 19th-century view that “[t]hose who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”

It appears that view is also too 19th-century for Mondli Makhanya’s Sunday Times.

Update at 21:00 on 11 April 2008: If you’re interested in David Bullard’s columns, I hope you have bookmarks. Because you aren’t going to find them — not even previously published ones — at The Times website. They appear to have been orphaned. They still exist. For now. The link to his column in the copy above still works, and so do the links from that page, but without an article ID number, David Bullard is just a bad memory for the Sunday Times.

Update at 22:00 on 11 April 2008: Bullard responds, inserted in the copy above.

Update at 13:00 on 12 April 2008: The Saturday Star was quick to exploit this competitive opportunity, and published a page three article on Bullard in today’s first edition. It isn’t yet available online, but an image of the page is here. In it, he is quoted as saying that the column was merely an excuse for Makhanya to get rid of him, after he refused to apologise for claiming, in his Empire column that standards at the Sunday Times and other Avusa publications were in decline. After all, he says, his brief was to be “controversial” and “outrageous” and “to upset people” on a Sunday. “I was found guilty in the kangaroo court of Mondli Makhanya,” the piece quotes. Marvellously in character, he is pictured in a flashy pin-stripe suit and tie at the opulent Rand Club. “Wait until you see the next article in Empire,” he promises, “because now I don’t have to hold back at all.”

Update at 12:00 on 13 April 2008: Prompted by my response to Dawn in the comments section, I posted a short follow-up piece on the debate I believe Bullard was trying to stir: In defence of colonialism.

Update at 15:00 on 13 April 2008: Bullard’s Empire column, along with a full complimentary issue, has been published online. I noted it here. The direct link to his column is here.

As counterpoint to a rant against white supremacists I wrote for the Mail & Guardian’s online opinion site recently, I thought this video was pretty apt. The events portrayed here remind me of the caricature image of the stupidity of “houtkoppe” (blockheads), as the whites I went to school with during apartheid days commonly called blacks. Except, these particular houtkoppe are perfectly white.

But enough with the theory and the rationalisation. It’s just damn funny:

Over at Commentary South Africa, Laurence notes an interview with fiction writer John Grisham, in which he says:

I think what the Republicans have done in past elections is brilliant. Because, they’ve convinced a lot of people to vote for them against their own economic self-interest, and they’ve done that by skillfully manipulating a handful of social issues, primarily abortion and gay rights and sometimes gun control. And the Republicans have used those to scare a lot of people into voting for Republican candidates. It’s skillful manipulation.

Laurence’s comment is that it’s morally questionable to expect that “people should use their vote as a tool for self-enrichment, by voting for whichever party promises to give them the greatest largesse from the state treasury”. And he’s quite right.

He also points out that the Republicans haven’t exactly been true to their small-government roots, but I’d argue (and the political promises seem to bear me out) the Democrats in the US would be considerably worse.

What few on the left recognise, or what they deliberately fudge, is that the Republicans in the US consist of an uncomfortable alliance between three constituencies: economic conservatives (i.e. small-government libertarians), foreign policy conservatives (hawks who believe the best defence is superior strength), and social conservatives (consisting mostly of the religious right). Even those constituencies are split, for example the foreign policy conservatives are divided between those who believe in strength as a useful tool in the service of liberty and democracy, and isolationists who believe government shouldn’t be entrusted with anything, including foreign wars. Calling all Republicans social conservatives is a false characterisation, and betrays either the rhetoric of a shallow partisanship, or a profound lack of understanding of American voters.

It’s a step too far, moreover, to say that people vote against their own economic self-interest. In fact, if they happened to be rich, undoubtedly their votes would be considered selfish. True, “the rich”, as leftists describe anyone who has achieved middle-class success or more, often know how a society creates prosperity. (The exception seems to be the populists in the ego-driven entertainment industry.)

But classical liberals, or economic conservatives — call them what you will — might vote against government handouts even if they’re not rich themselves. Not because they selflessly forgo them (or stupidly pass them up, as Grisham appears to believe, rather patronisingly). They vote against handouts because they believe those handouts are not in their self-interest. They believe that their individual right to determine how their income is spent and their capital is allocated is in their best interest, while tax-and-spend government programmes are not. They believe that individual productivity creates wealth, and government redistribution destroys it.

It’s true, as Laurence notes, that whether Republicans have been true to this economic view of small government and low taxes is debatable. Many on the economic right (as opposed to the social or foreign policy right) would argue that it has not. That it betrayed the Reagan legacy, and the Gingrich revolution, and that this cost them a heavy price in the 2006 mid-term elections, and might cost them even more later this year.

More interesting, however, is the general mischaracterisation of the economic right, because the same generalisations are made elsewhere in the world, including in South Africa. Those who argue the economic virtues of free markets, believing that they not only encourage wealth creation, but that this dynamic creates jobs and improves the quality of life of all of society, are all too often tarred with the same brush as the religious right and social conservatives. And they, in turn, are caricatured as bigoted.

When John Grisham says economic conservatives who vote Republican do so because of “abortion” or “gay rights” or “gun control”, he’s using exactly the same rhetorical technique as someone who caricatures the South African economic right — fiscal conservatives, free marketeers, classical liberals, free traders and libertarians — as “racist” or “counter-revolutionary” or “Uncle Toms” or “elitist” or “coconuts” or “Eurocentric”. Witness the more rabid partisans: the rhetoric of the ANC Youth League, for example, is littered with examples. The thing is, not only are such caricatures often false, but they miss the economic point entirely. And the thing is, they’re designed to miss the point.

It’s not funny. It’s actually pretty scary. But all the white racists who voted “no” in the 1992 referendum, which asked white voters whether they’d be okay with “power sharing” with the ANC, are vindicated. Turns out there’s not enough power to share.

All the doomsayers who predicted infrastructure decay and economic collapse, all those who fled South Africa to make a home in Australia or elsewhere, now appear to have been right. They may have been right for the wrong reasons, and may have expressed it in distasteful terms, but right they were.

“There is no power crisis,” said president Thabo Mbeki in May 2006. Yeah right, dear leader. Amandla aWethu¹, right? Sorry, Mr President, but a belated apology 18 months later doesn’t keep the lights on. (It’s worth noting that judging by the Google results this is just about the only significant apology Mbeki has ever offered for anything.)

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1. ”Power to the people!” [↩]

Zimbabwean activist Natasha Msonza touches on a sensitive topic, all the more dangerous when spoken in a country where the ruling kleptocracy routinely blames the country’s economic problems on white racists, neo-colonialist farmers and imperialist foreigners. Referring to a column published in the Zimbabwe Independent, she notes several telling instances of racist behaviour, and writes:

I couldn’t help agreeing with Muckraker when he/she wrote: “…primitive racism is now the official creed of Zanu PF.” Now before anyone starts labeling me an unpatriotic born-free who doesn’t understand the sovereignty our ancestors died for; will the real racists please stand up?

(Via Sokwanele.)