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I’m so glad that Henré Rossouw said what I’ve been thinking for a long time: that South African wine critics have simply no class.

I’m a long time reader of Wine Magazine, and over the years the arrogance has gotten to me on varying levels. Reading Rob Morris’ article, where he unjustifiably slams a farm that is making good efforts to improve itself and its brand, is classless and baseless. Perhaps he should remember his years a varsity drop out before mommy from publisher’s Ramsey, Son and Parker got him the job at Wine Magazine.

Morris, and Christian Eedes (with whom he’s been known to waste a Friday lunch hour drinking free wine at Greek in Mowbray), exemplify a real weak point in South African wine journalism: namely the idea that great wine journalism is snobbish and slams all who try.

I am certainly no fan of the ‘everyone deserves a certificate’ attitude of many in our post-modern world: but I think people who spend their lives writing copy for a magazine like Wine Magazine in a suburb as plat as Pinelands should watch what they say (I know, I lived there once, as I did in Stellenbosch: At least people who live in the winelands have some class!)

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http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=792739

Can you believe it?

Thabo Mbeki must be the Neville Chamberline to Mugabe’s Hitler (although Mugabe isn’t evil enough yet to earn such a moniker; despite his ’stach!)

I am truly ashamed of our President. He has shown himself, in his handling of the Zim Crisis, to be the sort of person who makes George Bush look like a genius (maybe that’s why they let him stand in their photo ops at the G8 summits).

By recognising Mugabe he is FLUSHING SA’s reputation as a bastion of democracy in Africa down the toilet.

At the same time, as an African, I am proud that the other states of Africa, with their own hard legacies of suffering under dictatorships such as that in Zimbabwe, and the one in which the ANC is keen on baking in on South African society, are turning against these Big Men of Africa.

Don’t they know… hyper inflation and suffering of your entire populace so you can rape the land and its women is so post-colonialism and 20th Century: We having IT!

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Filed under: Commentary, Corruption, Diplomacy, Politics, Rant, Society by Andrew la Grange
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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=nw20080626114212346C109992

Helen Zille wants to debate Jacob Zuma in a public debate, a-la U.S. elections.

I don’t think she is going to get her wish, Zuma, and the ANC sees debate outside the ANC as anathema. To debate outside the party is to acknowledge that ideas of value can exist outside of the party, and that wouldn’t gel with the Big Man and his parties ideas of democracy and struggle for rights.

This is unfortunate, but unavoidable. The ANC by standing like a debate-less monolith becomes an argumentative sink hole : the only way to debate with the ANC is to become part of the ANC - kind of like the Borg, the ANC’s approach to debate is to assimilate and then close ranks against outsiders.

This is deeply undemocratic. The ANC might like to talk of internal democracy, and the many voices in the party. Well done for them - but we live in the Republic of South Africa, not the Republic of the ANC, and when citizens are about to make the choice of leaders, then those leaders have to stand up to public scrutiny, and not the scrutiny of a cabal of undemocratic criminals (convicted and accused) from the NEC.

Zille is not a favourite of mine. Primarily because by occupying the leadership of the opposition, no matter how noble her personal politics may be, she is ultimately stopping a legitimate alternative government from strengthening itself; no realistic political wonk would think that a white middle class woman, no matter her ’struggle’ credentials at the ineffectual black sash and Rand Daily Mail, is going to become the president of the country - and that is who the leader of the opposition should be. I’m not saying that person should be Joe Seremane - but I’m saying that it certainly isn’t Helen Zille.

I commend Zille’s call to debate Zuma in public; but this speaks to the Eurocentric blindness of the DA - this is South Africa; grandstanding on SABC and making Zuma look like the intellectual inferior he patently is, isn’t going to impress black voters. What the DA needs is:

• A black leader from a major ethnic group
• A leader with impeccable business and political connections
• A leader with grass roots support
• A leader with an ANC past who can tap LARGE swathes of the electorate.

That leader sounds a lot like either Tokyo Sexwale or Cyril Rhamaphosa. Perhaps the DA should spend less time trying to goad Zuma into making more statements to rile up their base, and anger the voters who they should be appealing to by making a black leader look like a fool; Zuma isn’t a fool because he’s black, or the leader of the ANC. He’s a fool and a criminal because he is the sort of thug that has come to wrest control of the ANC from its proud founding principles while Mbeki has surrounded himself with sycophants and weak leaders (with a few notable exceptions) and has pandered to the world community (on all issues but Zim).

Public debates aren’t going to help the DA until the DA decides to look closely at the political realities of its composition and stance.

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Filed under: Africa, Business, Commentary, Decision Theory, Politics, Society, Zuma by Andrew la Grange
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from: http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=595

Zuma’s lawyers going for broke

Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Pierre De Vos

E-TV will break a story in their one o clock bulletin today that suggests Mr Jacob Zuma and his lawyers will use any means necessary to keep him out of jail - even threaten the Constitutional Court. Will comment on it later once the story was broadcast

I’ll be very interested to hear what this news is to be… strange that they aren’t just releasing it… maybe it won’t be a really big bombshell!

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Filed under: Corruption, Media, Politics, Society, Zuma by Andrew la Grange
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I’m going to have quick blog about something not political (in fact I’m going to try and avoid politics for a while, because my head is beginning to explode with anger/rage/fear/frustration). I’ll just say that moral governments should invade Zimbabwe to end the humanitarian crisis, Jacob Zuma should be prohibited from becoming president (not necessarily rotting in jail - amnesty will be fine - we’ve given it to worse thugs).

Anyway… as I work with technology all day, and read a myriad of blogs which keep me up to date about the happenings in my and other industries, I come into contact with that most American of obsessions; namely Twitter.

If you don’t know what it is… its like Facebook status updates on steroids over mobile phones. If you don’t know what a status update is… well, it a SHORT message along the lines of “Andrew is wishing people didn’t use twitter”

This message then gets force fed to all your friends. I can think of MANY uses of this technology; i.e. people performing mission critical tasks like doctors, nurses, soldiers, police and security personnel, etc. who might need quick, fast real time updates (tie that to a GPS transponder and you might even have a platform for truly intelligent coordinated multi-individual group co-ordination as you might need in an army, triage, etc).

But in a social context, I have to wonder if twitter is such a good thing. Do I really want to know that Mike is on the toilet, or that Jane just landed at Heathrow.

Blogs are narcissistic, but in a good way, as citizen journalism no matter how questionable the quality (and I include myself deferring in that statement) serves a vital purpose: and is the most true form of free press.

But there is something invasive, something rather voyeuristic about twitter which really bothers me. I suppose as a platform some will use it well, and others not so well - just like Facebook, et al.

It raises the question of whether or not it is voyeurism if you are looking into someone’s life if they publish it, and literally push it to your every digital device?

I think the answer lies in the fact that with so many tech neophytes running around there is a deep misunderstanding of the broad scale of web content; most people for example start with a public site on Facebook or MySpace, etc. But after a couple of embarrassing photos, or reading about how their boss might be reading there profile they start to tie it up in privacy settings pretty quick.

Surely…, an account should be shut up tight at start, to protect the newbie. What shocks me is that this isn’t very different from the 1990’s version of Windows security, where everything was open until it was closed. Only with Win Server 2003 and subsequent, was the platform locked down.

Perhaps these new web platform companies can learn from Microsoft in this regard, and properly secure the systems, and their users privacy, by not needlessly broadcasting information which people would rather not share.

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Language is a powerful tool.

Across our country, so-called leaders are calling there followers to kill if Zuma is not elected president, and his case of corruption quashed.

Is this any different to the barbarism currently taking place in Zimbabwe?

I feel so angry, so filled with rage when I hear words of hate such as those now spoken by the ANC. Are these words of fear? Do they honestly believe that anything can stop the criminal juggernaut that will place Zuma in the Union Buildings?

Maybe so… with their little b**ch Hlope running around the ConCourt telling people that they are the ‘last hope’ maybe the ANC cadres at the top know something the rest of us don’t? - that the ANC isn’t going to poll as well as it has in the past?

I am confident that the IEC will run a world-class free and fair election, despite the seeming rising levels of intimidation the incumbent party wishes to drum up (who are they going to kill? who is going to stand in the way of this organised crime mob? - not I for one, call it cowardice, call it apathy, but I don’t think saving South Africa from itself is worth my life; those who elect leaders such as now fill the halls of the ANC deserve what they get as far as I am concerned; I am politically null and void in this country - my voice doesn’t matter!)

Will we see the ANC dip below a 2/3rds majority? I hope so. Not because the opposition need a boost (they are complicit in validating the criminal behaviour of the ANC, just as they were in validating the criminal NP government, many of whom are now in the DA - surprise surprise), but because the people of South Africa’s aching need for service delivery must be heard.

But with rural campaigns of intimidation on the lips of leaders such as Vavi, I think we all need to accept that the thugs are now in power. Nothing will let them those their grip. Except perhaps similar or even greater levels of thuggery : and I want no part of that.

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I’m depressed about the state of my country. Let me rattle off some names:

• Zuma
• Hlope
• Malema
• Selebi
• Mbeki
• Mugabe
• Pikoli
• Mpofu

I could probably speak for hours on each of these men and the scandals embroiled around them. But it would be a waste of my time and intellect: apathy is rife in my mind, because I know that as as a South African, my opinion means NOTHING.

It’s not because I’m white. Its because I’m not a criminal, a thief, a murderer, a rapist, a thug. Evil prevails when good men do nothing? NO! Evil prevails when good men are in the MINORITY. Yes, I’m going to say it; the whining classes of South Africans: black, white and coloured in which I am, are THE MINORITY.

Because to hate the evil which our so-called leaders perpetuate to aggrandise and enrich themselves; raping our nation of resources and respect as they have done to our wives, sisters and daughters should come as no surprise to us.

South Africa is not a democracy. It is an state run by a organised crime ring. And like in any crime family there are bloody hits (Chris Hani anyone?), calls for murder (Malema), false justice (Hlope), propaganda (Mpofu), political enforcement (Pikoli), fading Godfathers (Mbeki) and rising thugs (Zuma). That organised crime ring is the ANC.

The Apartheid government was wrong for all those long years in which they said the ANC was full of communists and terrorists. The ANC was never very good at being either communist, or for that fact freedom fighters.

No, the ANC is running the oldest scam since the populares ousted the Roman Republic with that other great dictator and violent man, Julius Caesar. Its running a protection racket, like the Mafia. They claimed to look after the little guy, the suffering black under the AmaBulu, and now with the end of Apartheid the time has come to pay the piper; or the thugs who rotted in Apartheid prisons, where many of them should have stayed.

Yes, the struggle for liberation included many great men and women, who fought for freedom and justice, who fought for a free multi-racial South Africa, Tutu, Mandela, Sisulu, Rhamaphosa, But these men are the exception that proves the rule: the VAST majority of the ANC are criminals. They are men and women who wish to do nothing but rape this country of resources, rape its women, and kills its citizens; all in the orgy of destruction which they learnt at the hands of their pan-african funders during the years of Apartheid.

Was the price of ending Apartheid worth the toll now being exacted by the organised criminal gang, the ANC? For so long I have believed it is; I like so many South Africans have believed that despite crime, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the breakdown of our society, it is better in some way to life in a free, feral, anarchic society, than an ordered state of government sponsored order and racial inequality and privledge.

Now many black South Africans are asking themselves if this continues to remain the case. But the rubicon has indeed been crossed; White South Africans HAVE NO INTEREST IN RUNNING SOUTH AFRICA. There is not a single white voice, besides racist  supremacists who shouldn’t be allowed near a gun let alone a government, who would want to rule over black people: Why? Well because the average white South African doesn’t believe in Apartheid anymore, it just leads to suffering and the criminalisation of the majority of the population.

Now we are living in the consequences of that system; and wishing that we return to such a system of slavery and repression is a most dangerous thought for white and black in this country.

That anyone even thinks it, is an example of the mental abuse and socital rape the criminal gang, the ANC, with its drunk violent cadres, in all levels of government has wrought on the human mind of the South African citizen.

God Save South Africa.

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Filed under: Commentary, Corruption, Crime, Politics, Rant, Society by Andrew la Grange
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I haven’t blogged in a while. I needed a break, and I had to avoid freaking out about Hlope, Zimbabwe, the Million (Thousand?) Man March, and the otherwise seemingly endless tide of bad news leaving our society at present: even the economy is going down the drain (although now maybe I can afford a home in the city of my life).

I’ve just read the following story on Awareness Times, by Alhaji Moriekeh Fofnah: http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_20058797.shtml

It’s basically a lot of incoherent rambling poison; the sort of thing one would expect from a blog (maybe like mine?), but not from a newspaper published in Freetown in Sierre Leone.

But maybe one should expect that… because it would seem that is the norm; that citizens of other African nations seem to be under the impression that by helping the ANC they deserve a free pass into South Africa, a sovereign state whose people, not its lazy incompetent exiles, freed themselves from the shackles of Apartheid.

The end of Apartheid was an internal matter. To suggest anything else is ludicrous. Surely the fact the countries like Zimbabwe and North Korea persist despite sanctions and international pressure (along with Burma) is proof positive that change can only be affected in a country internally, or through military force (as is the case in Iraq and the Balkans).

The rest of Africa has a right to be concerned about their citizens safety in South Africa, but to suggest that xenophobia is simply not an African trait is the worst of apologetics, and is being widely punted by a host of afro-academics who wouldn’t be fit to teach high school were they in countries with any sort of viable education system.

All Africans should not only question the Big Men leaders like Mugabe who have oppressed them since colonialism, but also the so-called intellectuals who have provided the philosophical grounding for their kleptocracies; who seem to believe that all solutions and ways of living not bred in Africa, natively, are fundamentally evil and must be a tool of colonialist oppressors.

South Africa is unique in its state of development: now it would seem the voices from the rest of Africa are telling us to cast off our development, our rule of law, our quest for a better life. Instead we should all live in an agrarian hell hole where all a citizen can offer is a bushel of rice. DISGUSTING.

South Africa is probably one of the few countries, along with others in our orbit such as Namibia and Botswana, in which the current xenophobic attacks would put down and neutralised, and care and aid was given to the suffers of violence by the state, at the state’s expense, despite the fact that many of those suffering violence are in fact criminals: i.e. Illegal Immigrants. An illegal immigrant is a criminal. If I go to another country and live there illegally, I break that countries laws and therefore I am a criminal.

However, criminality is not a cause for injustice or inhumane treatment, and our government (slowly it is sure : most likely due to governmental and leadership paralysis) and our people have been clear in supporting foreigners and helping them through this grave time.

In the rest of Africa such violence would no doubt have ended in a mass genocide.

But then I suppose stopping genocide is probably just one of those horrible things from the mindset of the Boers which Fofanah is so keen on ending.

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Filed under: Africa, Commentary, Ideas, Language, Philosophy, Society, War by Andrew la Grange
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One can’t really say if Justice John Hlope, Cape Judge President, is a corrupt official (YET!). The allegations around him seem to suggest so - particularly since these allegations have come from members of the highest court in the land, the constitutional court.

But what can be said with certainty, especially considering Hlope’s association with Oasis, which many saw as a bribe, is that his impartiality is being constantly questioned.

In a free democracy, innocence is assumed until guilt proved, and this is an acceptable standard for a citizen to be held up to. But it is the right of a common citizen, not an official who takes his pay from the public purse, and whom is tasked with high office by the people.

There is a reason why public officials should resign and fight to prove their innocence when their integrity is questioned, as private citizens, because then they can’t be defended with the rights of accused. But by holding onto positions of power, as Zuma, Selebi and now Hlope have done, these men denigrate the offices of the people whom they are placed in power to serve.

The civil list has forgotten that they serve as the wish of THE PEOPLE. The presidency of the Cape High Court is not an ANC fiefdom which Hlope can use as a tool for political gain, to assist his fellow corrupt thug Jacob Zuma.

The age of these big men of Africa, who do not serve the needs of the people, is OVER. It’s so 20th Century. Let’s banish these would-be Mugabe’s to the scrap heap of history where they belong.

I believe that these men and women will not be tolerated by a free and just South Africa. And indeed they aren’t.

Viva to the justices of the Constitutional Court, who seem to be fulfilling their sworn oaths to uphold the laws of our great nation, and protect our constitution and our judiciary, which like all organs and offices of the state receive their power through the eminence of the common South African citizen. 

Pierre De Vos’ excellent blog Constitutionally Speaking is tracking the story closely.

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Filed under: Commentary, Corruption, Crime, Decision Theory, Law, Politics, Society by Andrew la Grange
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During the Great Depression, and afterwards during the New Deal (which could be argued was pretty depressing for many) Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the American people with the so-called ‘Fireside chats’.  I think that sort of direct passive communication between the leader of a nation and its citizens is a good thing.

Thabo Mbeki may have thought he was doing so when he wrote his long winding and overly aggrandizing Monday Letters from the President. But he forgot that those words were laced in a written form, and ultimately for the ANC members and not the country as a whole. And therein lies the truth behind the failure of the ANC in government: its inability to make the distinction between party and state, and the needs of the entire diverse electorate being the responsibility of the government, not simply to pander to the mandate givers in the form of the majority.

I hope that majority is now depleted due to the atrocious actions of the Mbeki and ANC government: the people of South Africa must not be hoodwinked by Zuma and his cronies, by agreeing with the gentle political posturing that is coming out of the ANC: that somehow the GOVERNMENT didn’t do their will. Oh give me a BREAK. The governments policies and the policies of the tripartite alliance were congruent up until Polokwane. To suggest that what is befalling the country today isn’t the responsibility of all policy makers in the ANC, is like suggesting being in a ministerial office during Apartheid doesn’t make you complicit in Apartheid crimes.

Another folksy politician from the US, Harry Truman, famously had the sign “The Buck Stops Here!” on his desk: and indeed that message should pervade the ANC. The buck stops with the ANC. They are the leaders, by hook or by crook (often the latter), of our nation and they should take that responsibility to heart.

Communication from the President, whomever he or she may be, on a weekly basis for 15 minutes once a week, on television and radio would go a long way. Yes, there would be many who would see it as political pandering and propaganda, and simply not listen, due to apathy - and they might be right - but it would also make the leader stand up, stand in front, and take heed that the people are listening and vetting the decisions of his office, as it is there right to do so.

As a white South African man I know that I will never be the president of my country, unlike a black man in America, I dare not even dream that dream, as the political realities of this century on the African continent do not make it so (which is probably why I find Helen Zille’s wasting the leadership of the opposition on herself an act of irredeemable self-importance).

But where I President, there is a shopping list of things I would do:

• Privatise the national health service into a series of contracts to the major medical and hospital groups in the country, with immediate effect, and no longer allow private hospitals. Hospitals should be nationalised and run for profit by NON-government private businesses, with the government as their only client.
• Immediately put out for tender a project to house all South Africans in houses and flats as per their need. In doing so not build the shocking houses of Apartheid and the RDP, but rather a policy of no less than 20m squared per citizen of living space.
• Outlaw the building