• This column was first published in Maverick magazine last month. If you haven’t come across it, it’s fun to write for and fun to read, and most importantly, those who read it pay for my writing, so go ahead and get yourself a subscription.

Time to scrap BEE

As contrary as it runs to a fair and free economy, black empowerment was fully justified in the New South Africa. But the justification is withering, and the arguments against it are mounting.

The Sunday Times revelation a few weeks ago about the millions siphoned to the ANC as part of the BEE deal involving Saki Macozoma, Stanlib, Standard Bank and Liberty Life, is most instructive. It seems to be a case of accidental corruption. When political bribery can happen unintentionally, and there appears to be nothing illegal about it, something is deeply wrong with our country.

What happened was that the large empowerment consortium fell victim to a minor participant who dropped out and was replaced by an outfit headed by Nicholas Wolpe. You may recognise the name if you hung out at the “palace of patronage”, as Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee aptly described the “network lounge” at last year’s ANC conference in Polokwane.

Wolpe’s participation was small enough — R9 million — to attract no attention from Macozoma and his board-level colleagues, who had vetted other participants in the deal. Macozoma said the deal was not material. I’m quite willing to take his word for it that he didn’t know, at the time, about Wolpe’s connection with Chancellor House, which the ANC has admitted is a funding vehicle for the party.

Corruption House, as I prefer to call it, has been involved in two humungous Eskom contracts, from which it stands to gain several billion rand, at least some of which will end up in the ANC’s strongbox. Not bad, for political fundraising.

Macozoma rightly says that R9 million is immaterial in the context of a R1.5 billion deal, but it isn’t much less than the R11 million that was involved in the “Oilgate” scandal, during which PetroSA paid upfront money to Imvume Management, which the latter promptly sent to the ANC to fund its 2004 election campaign. PetroSA ended up having to pay again for what it was supposedly buying from Imvume, and the ANC was silent (but grateful) about its windfall.

Though these cases are all slightly different, each of them is troubling. The first looks like a case of buying political patronage. If the ANC benefits from an empowerment deal (or indeed, any other deal), it is likely to favour future tender offers from that company. The second is a case in which the ANC abused a necessary public-sector contract to create an automatic kickback to the party by awarding part of contract fee to itself, via Corruption House. The third is a more blatant case of fraud aimed at topping up empty party coffers.

In considering these cases, a couple of points need making.

First, black economic empowerment was fully justified, even if it runs counter to the principles of a free market involving a free people. It was necessary to rapidly correct at least some of the disparity in economic participation between black and white. The alternatives would be far more unpalatable, both morally and in practice.

However, several factors make this justification less convincing as the years go by. It can for obvious reasons not be fair in perpetuity. Few past injustices can be elegantly and fully undone by applying such corrective policy. A restitution policy should lay the foundation for long-term justice.

As time passes, more and more young people and young companies are caught up in paying for the supposed crimes of their fathers. Few would dispute that it is just to force Sanlam or SA Breweries into an empowerment deal, but is it equally just to demand the same from a white kid who matriculated in 1996, graduated in 1999, and founded a company in 2004 in competition with his black classmate?

Another reason empowerment’s justification is decreasing is that substantial progress has been made. Many major companies sport BEE credentials, these days. A significant black middle class is emerging. A black South African finds himself on the Forbes dollar billionaire’s list. The list of black movers and shakers is ever-growing. Nowadays, BEE seems to make the rich richer far more often than it actually empowers anyone. Macozoma himself is one of about half a dozen empowerment magnates, and about two dozen empowerment vehicles seem to be involved all major deals.

Since blacks are no longer excluded, perhaps it’s time to leave the economy to its own devices, without imposing growth-sapping contraints upon it to eke out those last few drops of restitution.

The second point is that political donations should be protected as a form of free speech. It is everyone’s individual right to fund political causes, and this right extends to company shareholders too. More importantly, a political party cannot campaign without money, so restricting its ability to accept donations curbs its ability to promote its message, which is a de facto limit on free speech.

That said, the combination of BEE and political donations makes for a dangerous environment. That there appears to be nothing illegal about Saki Macozoma’s deal must shock many observers. In many countries, such an arrangement would sink a political candidate, or lay a company open to public vilification, legal proceedings and possibly criminal prosecution.

An audit of Corruption House is said to be underway, and criminal action may be taken should it find evidence of crime. But it probably won’t, and that’s a problem.

The ANC has said in the past — over the Oilgate scandal, for example — that it is not obliged to reveal its donors. That is a problem too.

The huge size of our government gives it inordinate power in how it awards contracts. Because it uses this power to enforce BEE, this creates grave potential for conflicts of interest. If Macozoma can be caught in such a conflict without even knowing it, that’s clearly a problem.

The problems are clear. So what’s the solution? First, pass a law that requires political parties to disclose the sources of their funding. If patronage is going to be bought and sold, citizens deserve to know who is buying favours from whom.

Second, no political party, whether in government or otherwise, should be able to influence private business transactions, nor benefit from them.

Third, the same goes for public sector contracts. I’m no expert on the mechanics of the State Tender Board and related legislation, but if a party-political funding vehicle such as Corruption House can participate, repeatedly, in multi-billion rand public sector contracts, something is broken.

To be free and prosperous, this country needs a great deal more independence, a great deal more transparency, and a great deal more culpability for conflicts of interest in approving business deals or issuing government contracts.

A good start would be to abolish black economic empowerment as a mandated procedure. Remove it from the criteria that must be met for public sector contracts. This may need to be done gradually, and safeguards against losing BEE’s substantial gains might be necessary, but 14 years into our new democracy, the benefits of a contract process that doesn’t encourage political patronage and outright bribery trumps the benefits of continued black empowerment.

Most of all, we need a country in which private business transactions don’t lead to accidental R9 million donations to a political party, ruling or otherwise.

It’s what you might call “milking it”:

Canned writer David Bullard has apologised to readers of a column that got him axed for racism. But now he plans to sue the Sunday Times for breaching labour law.

“I couldn’t comprehend that it would be offensive to so many people and that’s what the apology was about,” Bullard, 55, said on Friday.

“It’s driven home that the days of apartheid, which I never suffered under, are still real to people. And one has to be sensitive to that.”

[…] Bullard now plans to sue Sunday Times publisher Avusa in the labour court for two years of lost income.

If you think “milking it” is too harsh, here’s the final line from Justine Gerardy’s excellent interview with him:

“From a commercial point of view, it’s been phenomenal — you couldn’t have bought the publicity.”

(Hat tip goes to jc for picking up and forwarding the story.)

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.

Posting numbered updates to this story is getting tiresome, so here’s a new post, freshly baked.

BizCommunity, which has been following the David Bullard affair comprehensively since it broke, has published well-known marketing writer Chris Moerdyk’s take on the issue. It is the clearest, most definitive analysis I have yet read.

With one reservation, I agree with his comparison:

Bullard clearly did not learn any lessons from the fate of Sowetan sub-editor Llewellyn Kriel who was fired by Sunday Times owners, Avusa, in November last year for criticising his employers in a blog published on a competitor’s website.

Kriel’s blog can be found on ThoughtLeader, where Moerdyk blogs too (as, in the interest of disclosure, do I). Wisely, Kriel has left the blog defunct since taking up his new position.

Kriel played the incident up as his martyrdom for free speech, but that was a suspect defence. An employer has every right to expect staff to protect the company’s interests in public, and has every right to axe staff who are not prepared to do so. His post was, I thought, rather ill-considered. In the case of a media organisation, a dismissal is not a denial of freedom of speech either, since the disaffected journalist could simply go to a competitor to tell the full story. He’ll surely find someone to give him a platform to disclose the facts, if the facts merit disclosing.

Bullard, ironically, has more claim to a free speech defence than Kriel did, because he was ostensibly fired over perceived racism in his Sunday Times column, and not over his criticism in Empire. It would have been far less complicated and controversial had Mondli Makhanya, the Sunday Times editor, simply acted then, on grounds of betraying the trust of an employer. Or even if instead of denying it, when asked if this was the real reason, he’d answered simply: “Well yes, we were none too happy with that either, and that alone would be sufficient cause for dismissal.”

The editors at Empire have bowed to the clamour of the unwashed hordes on the internet, and have posted the now-infamous column in Empire, in which David Bullard throws a haymaker at Sunday Times publisher Avusa, online. Nifty layout when you click through to the story. Very classy-magaziney. (Click on the image to the right to skip the front page and go directly to the column.)

I and several other people, including Bullard himself, have speculated that this column, rather than the one published in the Sunday Times last weekend, is the real reason for his summary dismissal.

(For the record, I write a regular series on media hoaxes for Empire. I claim no credit for its design, nor do I claim responsibility for its columnists.)

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.

“Spot the difference”, I wrote above portraits of B.J. Vorster and Thabo Mbeki, in a post describing the bid for Sunday Times owner Johncom as reminiscent of the Info Scandal of 1978. Anton Harber, former political editor at the Rand Daily Mail, former Mail & Guardian editor and current professor of journalism at Wits University, says there is a difference:

In the Info Scandal, government money was secretly channeled to a sympathetic businessman, Louis Luyt, to try and buy the Rand Daily Mail, then a leading government critic, and when this failed, to launch The Citizen newspaper. The scandal lay in the secrecy, and the abuse of state resources to try and take out a vocal opponent of government.

This time around, it appears to be an open bid by a group of individuals who are entitled to do it in their personal capacities. What is unusual, however, is that a number of them are government officials, in key places such as the presidency and foreign affairs, and senior ruling party members. It seems they seek funding from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), but this is what the PIC does it and as long as it gives them no special treatment, and makes a decision on solid business grounds, I cannot see grounds for complaint at this technical level.

Fair comment. Harber remains concerned, however, calling it a “very worrying development”. He notes some of the dangers, concluding:

Interestingly, ANC media policy currently highlights the need for greater diversity in our media, and no doubt some of them will argue that government needs a louder voice in the media and this is adding to the diversity. But they are wrong - media diversity should serve to give voice to the voiceless, those most distant from wealth and power, and not those who hold and wield the enormous authority of the state.

A few days ago, I expressed concern about the impliations of Tokyo Sexwale, a presidential candidate, owning the Sunday Times. This pales into insignificance against the prospect of members of the Sunday Times board actually sitting in government offices, like the Afrikaans media of the apartheid era.

Some will argue that this is just a transaction by some individual exercising their rights in a free market. Well, it is more than that and it has consequences and implications we cannot ignore. If these individuals want to show that they are not doing it as party officials, they should resign from government and party so that they are not conflicted between their political obligations and their business/editorial ones.

Spot the difference:

It’s a peaceful and sunny Sunday morning, and the Sunday Times is once again the bringer of what a friend calls “an explosive cover story”. Written by Buddy Naidu and Simpiwe Piliso, here’s the headline: Mbeki men in R7bn bid to own Sunday Times.

I was but a child when the Rand Daily Mail broke the news in November 1978 that The Citizen, founded two years earlier by publisher Louis Luyt, cabinet minister Connie Mulder and secretary of information Eschel Rhoodie, had been established and secretly funded by the National Party government under state president B.J. Vorster. Previously, Luyt had tried to acquire shares in South African Amalgamated Newspapers. [Update: I should point out that SAAN was the publisher of the famous Rand Daily Mail, which was at the time highly critical of the apartheid regime.]

Now, it appears Ronnie Mamoepa, the spokesperson in the department of foreign affairs — a similar role to that played by Rhoodie in the 1970s — with Titus Mafolo, a political adviser to Thabo Mbeki, and Billy Modise, former chief of state protocol, who together with delightfully-named businessman Groovin Nchabeleng own a company named Koni Media Holdings, are attempting to take over Johnnic Communications. Johncom is the publisher of several major media titles that have been vocal critics of the government and have in turn been singled out for tongue-lashings by Mbeki, assorted state officials and the public broadcaster. They include the Sunday Times, the Sowetan, and half of the Financial Mail and Business Day. Mamoepa and company have applied for funding from among others the state-owned Public Investment Corporation.

Thabo Mbeki on Friday laid into the media, saying that the government was not attempting to stifle press freedom.

“A few of these have even attempted to make comparisons with the repugnant apartheid government, which in 1977 banned a number of publications, including the World and the Weekend World,” Mbeki reportedly said.

How hollow his denial rings today. What the repugnant apartheid government also did in 1977 was publish The Citizen, denying all the while that it was funded by government money, that it exercised editorial control, or that it was engaged in a National Party propaganda and misinformation campaign. The affair led to the resignation of the state president, B.J. Vorster.

One ANC member of parliament has already spoken out against the deal. Kader Asmal is quoted as saying it is “astonishing that civil servants are able to develop time and energy for what is really a takeover bid”. He argues that at issue is the danger of control of newspapers by politically active people. Perhaps he should consider tabling a bill in parliament preventing civil servants or “politically active people” from owning interests in media companies. That goes for the stake Tokyo “Berlusconi” Sexwale’s company, Mvelaphanda, is acquiring in Johncom too.

I’ve written before about the worrying similarities between the socio-economic policies of this government and the apartheid regime — both practicing a form of national socialism or state corporatism. In this essentially political affair, the parallels with the first Info Scandal are even more uncanny. They are frightening. Who, for example, will be playing the role of P.W. Botha, who stepped into the power vacuum left after Vorster’s resignation?

Update: Anton Harber points out one difference.

The threat from Essop Pahad, the “minister in the presidency” of South Africa, to withdraw advertising from the Sunday Times over the paper’s coverage of the theft conviction, alleged drunken misbehaviour, and abuse of power by Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, is “dangerous, dangerous, dangerous”.

So says Anton Harber, the go-to man at Wits University for all matters journalism, in a column that sets out clearly why such a threat — which appears not to be empty rhetoric — would constitute “bad governance, an abuse of public trust and perhaps even corruption”.

They should be slapped down as fast as anyone else actively promoting the abuse of the state coffers in pursuit of their political agendas.

Other publishers and media owners might be tempted to rub their hands with glee at the prospect of this approximately R150-million being dispersed among the Time’s rival publications. If they do, they will be displaying an extraordinary shortsightedness.

To allow the government to use their expenditure to punish those they disapproved of and reward those they like would be to had them a powerful weapon to use against their critics. This month it may be the Sunday Times, but if it proves effective then you can be sure that it will be used against others. It means that publishers and broadcasters will have to think twice every time you do something which might find disfavour with the presidency, such as questioning the use of beetroot rather than antiretrovirals, or pointing to the poor conditions in your local hospital’s maternity wards.

It would be a matter of time before such a weapon was used against those who did no more than give favourable coverage to the wrong faction of the ruling party.

Well said. The threats to media freedom are mounting. President Thabo Mbeki regularly uses his bully pulpit to castigate what he believes to be irresponsible, inaccurate or unpatriotic reporting, usually in response to criticism of the policies of the ruling party, or the actions of the executive. Like anyone else, he’s entitled to his opinions, but a president should use his status and power judiciously. When a head of government publicly denunciates the very institutions that exist to protect the people from their government, this has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

When that same government threatens to use the prodigious power of public money against the media, this too has a chilling effect on press freedom. Not to mention that it’s your and my money, taken from us by legal force with the promise to use it for the benefit, not to the detriment, of the people.

Thomas Jefferson put it this way: “I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.”

That’s exactly what the ANC government is doing.

But they’re lying, the politicians might (and do) say. Again, Jefferson, who himself suffered greatly, both personally and as president, from the very press whose freedom he defended, responds: “The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.”

A free press can be good or bad, but without freedom it can only be bad.

Today, news broke that Mondli Makhanya, the editor of the country’s biggest Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, and its deputy managing editor, Jocelyn Maker, are to be arrested to face charges over the provenance of source material used in a recent article alleging that health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is a thief and a drunk.

In response, Justice Malala, one of the country’s most respected journalists, a columnist, political analyst and former newspaper editor, wrote a column that inspires tears for the beloved country.

I am angry and I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for my country.

The sound of silence has fallen over our country while the government of President Thabo Mbeki, in its anger and its shame over its numerous failures and acts of deceit, uses state security apparatus to go after every man and woman who dares to speak truth to power.

… The question has to be asked: is this the South Africa of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli? Did the heroes of June 1976 and the veterans of the fires of the ’80s lose out on schooling and normal lives to be in a country where journalists are prosecuted as happened under apartheid?

The Mbeki regime has been an unmitigated disaster from the onset.

But ineptitude — ranging from the failure to deal with HIV/Aids and rampant crime to consorting with criminals such as Robert Mugabe — is different from pure, unadulterated corruption such as we see unfolding today in the Pikoli saga and now the persecution of Makhanya and Maker.

These are steps into the worlds of Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe. Only 13 years into our democracy, Mbeki’s Stalinist learnings are fully on show: journalists and editors arrested and jailed; opponents jailed on trumped-up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged.

… I am angry and I am afraid. But mostly I am ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed to call myself South African. Ashamed that in this country we all keep quiet while evil is so routinely perpetuated by a bunch we ourselves put into power.

More power to Malala’s pen. This is indeed a dark day for journalism, media freedom and political liberty in South Africa.

A few weeks ago, this letter to the editor featured in a local conservative tabloid, The Citizen, referring to last month’s exposé about the South African health minister in the Sunday Times:

Whisky and Waters

THE DA should relax. Because of them, Cabinet Minister Babalaas-Msimang has had to issue a few statements recently.

“Although I was Absynthe from office for several months, I wish to remind you I Amstel the Minister of Health, am not a dictator but I Amarula and I will continue to Rum the department of health,” she stated, announcing her return to office.

When quizzed on her health, she mentioned she had recovered well. “Of course I am well,” she retorted “I am more than well – I am OKWV! Ask a stupid question, get a stupid Hansa.”

Despite being asked about her new liver, she made no reference to the Morgan transplant.

President Mbeki has rallied around his friend: “She has my Absolut support. That is why I wiped that silly Smirnoff her former deputy’s face!

“The opposition will not be able Tequila career.”

Let’s face it – no matter how many times the DA has stirred she appears unshaken, and despite her career seemingly being on the rocks, the Minister is still a Mainstay of the ANC government.

GREG DE VILLIERS
Edenvale

The author is pretty chuffed that his writing has found such wide appeal. He shouldn’t be surprised. It’s both funny and right on target.