It’s that time of year again, and I’m in a flat spin preparing for another trip to South by South West, in Austin Texas. I will be there from 11-18 March, after which I’ll probably need to take the rest of the year off.

South by South West is one of the world’s premier film, music and interactive festivals, attracting near 20,000 people to the delightful university town of Austin. The programme is packed with serious brain food and equally serious food and entertainment.

To pay for it all (courtesy of our sponsor, Old Mutual) we’ll be blogging and tweeting up a storm. The official Twitter account is @sxswsa, and I’ll be editing a blog at sxswsa.co.za. Follow along, and use the hashtag #sxswsa to facilitate searching. There’s also a Twitter list, at @sxswsa/sxswsa, with all the South Africans who are going along. This year, the effort will be lent much professionalism and polish by the addition to the team of two social media and marketing mavens, Catherine Lückhoff (@cluckhoff) and Gaby Rosario . They’ll both be writing and photographing their way around Austin. In addition, we’ll aggregate as much other South African content on the sxswsa blog as we can, to make it a one-stop shop for the South African invasion of Texas.

As an introduction, here’s a piece written for BizCommunity, one of the sites (along with Memeburn) which has kindly agreed to cover our trip: The South African invasion of Texas. I will likely write articles for other publications too, so keep an eye out for them.

A happy new year to all. Here’s my first Daily Maverick column of 2011, by special request from two followers on Twitter: How to hire a hitman in SA.

While the government talks tough about joining the currency war that has broken out as a result of the collapsing dollar (see my column at The Daily Maverick: Currency: the race to the bottom), I was thinking about the many other grand but ultimately futile ideas government comes up with to plaster over the cracks of past failures. Then I thought how nice it would be for everyone, including the ANC’s own constituency, if the government tried to do far less, but do it well.

In other news, some guy on the interwebs said I called for genocide, and proceeded to point out how barbaric that would be. I quite agree. Well, I would, if there was even a shred of truth in the words he put in my mouth: The algebra has a devil for a sidekick. Cute headline, though.

While everyone is saying all the right things, and making all the right arguments, they’re losing the battle on media freedom. As long as the ANC’s base remains unconvinced, it will side with the ANC, and the ANC will claim a legitimate mandate to push through draconian laws that will, in effect if not in intent, stifle a free media.

Read my Daily Maverick column on the subject here: Why the media will lose this battle.

Here’s a fairly comprehensive summary of why we should support our country and our team, but have nothing to do with the exploitation of FIFA: The Fifa conquistadors are coming!

My other columns on FIFA have been collected in a previous post: Boycott FIFA

I will have more to write concerning FIFA and Match, some of it in their own damning words.

PS. Here’s a #boycottFIFA ribbon for your Twitter avatar or Facebook profile picture.

Here’s a round-up my latest columns and articles:

The bonsai economy, on The Daily Maverick, prompted by president Zuma’s promises of tighter labour law in his May Day speeches.

The death of an industry, on ITWeb, which celebrates the coming demise of a telecoms sector (least-cost routing) that existed merely because of a temporary market inefficiency.

South Africans rock Texas, which appeared in print in Brainstorm magazine, and contains a detailed report-back from our trip to South by South West, including some pretty cool notes on technology in Africa.

I trust you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

The world didn’t end while I was on holiday, and neither did my columns. First, I grabbed a review unit — the sweet little Nokia Booklet 3G I had lying around — to take along. Security reasons, you understand. I had cleaned it up thoroughly in preparation for its return to Nokia, so imagine my surprise when I fired it up and it alerted me of a new email. That prompted this column on ITWeb. I always said Google could very easily be evil.

While I was away, I first wrote a column in response to the UK parliamentary whitewash of the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit email leak. However, the noise around Eugene Terre’blanche and Julius Malema prompted its delay, in favour of this: While FIFA takes over, we fight. A week later, upon my return, Anatomy of a whitewash found its way online.

I have some more very juicy bits lined up about FIFA. It doesn’t get any prettier as we count down to the World Cup. I’ll keep you posted.

Ever since the first “2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Special Measures Act”, no. 11 of 2006 was passed, and FIFA began calling for volunteers for the Confederations Cup rather than employing people like civilised companies do, the whole World Cup thing has left a sour taste in my mouth. It’s annoying to watch your government hijacked, and your country and its people exploited, by people who think they’re too good for the rules by which the rest of us play.

So here’s an idea: Boycott FIFA.

Now why would anyone want to think South Africa is in deep crisis? If yesterday’s open letter to Jacob Zuma by Alec Hogg wasn’t enough to convince you, how about a deadly shootout between opposing police forces?

It appears there is now open warfare between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). The former is the national police, run by fat-cat gangsters. The latter are a bunch of glorified traffic cops, most related to each other, who spend their days getting fat, extorting bribes, and beating up girls in bars.

Writes the Sowetan’s Mfundekelwa Mkhulisi:

Members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) fired rubber bullets during a stand-off with their Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) counterparts on the M2 Highway in Johannesburg last night.

“Metro police blocked the flow of traffic on the M2 and when police intervened they fired live ammunition and police returned with rubber bullets,” police spokesman Julia Claassen said.

The entire city centre came to a grinding halt, as bystanders fled for their lives and hid under their cars. The Times reports that a police spokeman couldn’t get to the scene, and couldn’t get a report on the gun-battle because police officers had switched off their cellphones. Its coverage, by Werner Swart and Thabo Mkhize, also says one cop may have died in the stand-off:

Protesting Metro police caused chaos yesterday when they sealed-off the Johannesburg CBD, preventing thousands of motorists from leaving the city centre and sparking a deadly clash with the South African Police Service.

The violence may have resulted in the death of one metro officer, but the SAPS were unable to confirm this last night. Seven metro officers were injured.

The clash came after hundreds of metro policemen, in full uniform, blocked access to highway on-ramps and off-ramps ringing the city last night, in protest over a salary dispute with their employer.

SAPS officers fired rubber bullets to disperse their unruly metro colleagues, said spokesman Supertintendent Eugene Opperman.

He said the metro officers returned fire with live ammunition. The police are now investigating cases of attempted murder against the metro police officers.

Terrified motorists told The Times how officers had threatened motorists and brought traffic to a standstill. At some intersections, officers used concrete bins to block the path of motorists trying to make their way home.

Here’s the Mail & Guardian Online’s take on the story:

Protesting metro police officers fired live ammunition at South African Police Service (SAPS) members in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

SAPS Gauteng police spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the police had been forced to fire rubber bullets at metro police members who had blockaded the city, causing traffic gridlock.

Seven metro police officers — three women and four men — were injured during the police action, Opperman said.

The exchange occurred in the Eloff Street/M2 highway area.

The protests were triggered by complaints over salaries and nepotism. Strikers said they would not return to work until their grievances had been addressed.

Major roads and highways were blocked, causing traffic havoc.

Said Opperman: “The SAPS deplores the conflict-seeking type of protest by the Johannesburg metro police.

Come foreigners! Come football fans! Welcome to our fair land, and bring your euros with you! (Dollars can be exchanged for real currency or a flack jacket upon arrival at OR Tambo International Airport. Even Metro cops won’t accept dollars for bribes.)

If I were an honest cop in that department, I would resign in disgust, today, and publicly announce this fact. Anyone who doesn’t, deserves the stigma of being a Johannesburg Metropolitan Pig Thug.

More than that, this appalling behaviour calls for the immediate disbandment of the Metropolitan Police. Arrest anyone who took part in the protest, and lock them up. Make sure they never work in a position of responsibility again, lest innocent companies (such as private security firms) accidentally hire disgruntled homicidal maniacs.

The concept of a Metro police force is a good one. A national force isn’t very good at local policing, traffic management and by-law enforcement. After all, they have police commissioners to catch. But when local police start shooting at national police, something appears to be somewhat wrong. I don’t mean to whinge, you understand, or sound pessimistic, but perhaps someone over at SA Rocks can explain how else one should feel about this sort of thing, or exactly what we should do about it. Other than grin, bear it, and send Nelson Mandela birthday wishes.

I’ve sent him a wish. It read, “Sorry, Madiba, that you had to live to see this.”

Considering specific corruption cases in isolation may provoke outrage, but it’s a cop-out. It’s a defence mechanism against despair. Because a full litany of the depth of the crisis in South Africa makes depressing reading. Alec Hogg, the editor in chief of Moneyweb, writes such a litany in his open letter to ANC president Jacob Zuma, prompted by the finding in a recent survey that nine of every ten South Africans consider corruption to be a way of life.

The letter is worth reading in its entirety, if only to be reminded of the weight of evidence against individuals involved in public and private corruption in recent years — some of whom remain unmolested by public reproof or legal censure.

I’m doubtful whether it will have much impact. The fact that Hogg feels the need to resort to transparent flattery, and to gloss over Zuma’s own proximity to, tolerance for, or involvement in corruption, suggests that he knows the letter will not find a sympathetic ear. Nonetheless, it is a letter that had to be written, and should be read. Widely. Well done, Alec.

Here’s a great little piece by Jeffrey A. Tucker, the editor of Mises.org, on the delusional and self-serving habit of politicians, journalists and dinner party guests to declare that this or that price movement is a problem, or worse, that it is “unfair”.

I’ll extract the most salient sections from the article:

What kind of theory of the world insists that houses and stocks always go up in price, whereas gas and grain prices always go down? That doesn’t really make sense. A price is not set by natural law, nor are price movements intended to follow a preset pattern like the movements of stars. Prices are nothing but exchange ratios — points of agreement between buyer and seller. They reflect many factors, none of them fixed parts of the universe.

So why do we expect some to rise and some to fall? It all depends on whether you are in the position of a producer or a consumer. As homeowners, we are in fact “producers” of our homes; that is to say, we are holding them with the expectation of someday offering them for sale. The same is true of our stocks. We already own them, so of course we want the price to go up. Then we can sell them at a profit.

On the other hand, on things we intend to buy, things like gas and grain, we want the price to be as low as possible. We want their prices to fall. That way we save resources.

So what’s at work here is self-interest. Think of the same situation from the point of view of someone who is a first-time homebuyer. Does this person want high prices or low prices? Of course the answer is obvious. This person wants the lowest price possible, so for this person this “housing bust” is not a bust at all. It is a boon. But once this person becomes a homeowner, matters change. Now he wants prices to rise.

Now think of the gas station owner. If it didn’t affect how much he sold, would this person want prices to rise or fall? Of course, he wants the highest prices possible.

[…]

It’s the same in all markets. We can see that it is perfectly absurd to attempt to fashion national policy around the interests of only one party to an exchange. To try to keep house prices high and rising cheats the first-time buyer. To keep them low cheats the current owner. To keep grain prices high helps grain producers but hurts grain consumers. Some gas companies might like high gas prices, but consumers hate them. On the other hand, gas prices forced lower by dictate might thrill consumers but producers might end up hurting so much that they shut down. That helps no one.

[…]

There is no way to observe an existing price and declare it just or unjust. As St. Bernardino — a shrewd observer of economic affairs — said,

Water is usually cheap where it is abundant. But it can happen that on a mountain or in another place, water is scarce, not abundant. It may well happen that water is more highly esteemed than gold, because gold is more abundant in this place than water.

The Late Scholastics, followers of St. Thomas Aquinas, all agreed that the just price has no fixed position. It all depends on the common estimation of traders. Luis de Molina summed up the point:

A price is considered just or unjust not because of the nature of the things themselves — this would lead us to value them according to their nobility or perfection — but due to their ability to serve human utility. But this is the way in which they are appreciated by men, they therefore command a price in the market and in exchanges.

[…]

Now, there are ways for a price to become a matter of injustice. It can mask fraud. The prices can result from or be influenced by some act of force, such as price controls or taxation or restrictions on supply and demand. Behind each of these, we find coercion, a body of people who are mandating or restricting in a way that is incompatible with free choice. Arguably, this is not just.

We can conclude, then, that to the extent we complain about unjust gasoline prices, we need to look at the restrictions on refineries or exploration or drilling, or examine the role that high gas taxes have in pushing up prices beyond what they would be under conditions of free exchange.

And as for those who believe that all prices should move in ways that benefit their own particular economic interests at the expense of everyone else, don’t confuse your agenda with a matter of justice. […]

This article makes a nice introduction for the coming week’s project: poking holes in last week’s Financial Mail cover story, Spillover: SA’s response to soaring global oil prices.

As of this week, I will be writing a weekly column on technology and telecommunications for old friends at ITWeb — a top technology news site in South Africa with readership that slightly exceeds that of this blog, albeit by only a few orders of magnitude. The idea is to comment on issues that come up in ITWeb news stories, through my usual political or economic policy lens. It will initially be published on Thursdays. I’ll still write a separate monthly column, “Backbite & Sneerwell”, in Brainstorm magazine (link for subscribers). After all, it dates back to 2001, and is my longest-running effort at commentary. I will also continue to write columns on topics other than technology in Maverick magazine.

Last week I wrote a trial run for the new column, on the monstrously bad idea of having the state establish a local set-top box industry for digital television because “we’re loathe to rely on foreign suppliers”. This week, The Spike proper begins, with a final stab at one of cabinet’s most deserving members, Poison Ivy.