Voetsek Ramaphosa’s BRICS anti-liberty brigade

IMAGINE a world in which women’s rights alongside LGBT rights have been abolished, as they are in Iran? South Africa’s constitution replaced overnight with a system based upon ‘supremacy of the ruling party’. The opposition rolled into a new “Government of National Solidarity” (GNS). Dissenters imprisoned, or relegated to political re-education camps? Our country is undergoing a massive economic shift under the influence of China and the new BRICS bloc.

A host of ‘special reforms’ ushered in, without so much as a referendum, at the behest of an unelected, trans-national, supra-government. Sound familiar? The result for those who live in a fashionable bubble praising ‘the great economic leap forward‘ — those not relegated to sweatshops or compulsory labour camps — who may already enjoy this shiny, ersatz lifestyle, are illustrated below, as our country resembles a giant shopping mall?

Yet this dystopian picture of a possible future, close to our own, demonstrates a strange dissonance compared to the mall-world of today.

In this scenario, yet to become our fate, there are noticeable differences: Gone are the brands once linked to Western influence. You won’t find Apple wristwatches nor Nike trainers. There are no KFC nor McDonald’s outlets. Everything is a generic brand supplied by an “Original BRICS Equipment Manufacturer”.

All goods in this dismal imaginary place derive from a single corporation, owned partly by the ruling party, as special “BRICS advisors” help with a range of engineering projects. Government subsidiaries are allowed a semblance of competition. To extract compliance, the daily press has been replaced by the official state propaganda mechanism, Tavda (Tshwane Propaganda). Any content not authorised by the state is henceforth forbidden. The Internet is behind a “National Firewall”. Citizens are compelled to watch the state-run channels on their screens as they do in Russia.

National health is in full swing, as private medical practices are constrained. Henceforth, independent trade unions are to be abolished as they already are in China, Russia and Iran. A single currency has replaced the Rand, let’s call it the new BRICS RIAL. The fantasy may be a lot closer than we think. Could LGBT, alongside minority groups and Zionists, be rounded up for processing as ‘social deviants’? In areas where it is convenient, slavery has returned, as it has in parts of Arabia. A military call-up is in place, as we commit troops to the defense of Russia?

Under Western sanctions, travel in this ‘Mecca of Merchandising’ has been restricted to the ‘BRICS Zone’. In any event, only those granted permission by the party, are allowed to travel. Our shift towards a totalitarian regime occurs just a few steps into our near future, under Ramaphosa’s Special Command Council. The “Third Republic” here is well underway. It draws experience from the previous ‘Coronavirus Command Council.

The laissez-faire, ‘neoliberal system’ characterized much of the 20th century. It was prevalent in the early part of the 21st century as well. This system has now given way to a brutal mix of “Socialism with South African characteristics“. In effect, one can attend rugby matches. Yet, there are no longer any regional teams. Exercising a range of individual rights is frowned upon.

If you think such a dystopian timeline is impossible given the broad, electoral support for the current constitution, think again. No less than John Hlophe, the parliamentary leader of MKP, the largest opposition grouping recently pronounced on what may be termed, a ‘plan to scrap the constitution’. This while President Ramaphosa has seen fit to dictate to his fellow South Africans, our country’s position within an emerging power block known as BRICS.

The BRICS summit held this month was thus an all-male affair held in Kazan Russia, without a single female leader, in other words, no representative of the fairer sex. The macho summit proceeded to rubber-stamp a range of essentially patriarchal policies. These included a major shift in the World Economic Order, at the behest of dictators Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. It marked the first such gathering after the group’s expansion without any mandate from those affected. The new members include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. These are alongside the original five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The host, Putin, whose country is involved in a major war with Ukraine has said ‘more than 30 countries including North Korea have expressed a desire to join the BRICS’, which is far from being a political union, though there was little immediate clarity on how an economic expansion would work.

North Korea appears to be stepping up efforts to join the BRICS bloc.

President Ramaphosa’s deplorable 7/10 address

“TODAY marks one year since the start of an onslaught against the Palestinian people” reads President Ramaphosa’s perverse statement released to mark the anniversary of the 7/10 attack on the Nova Music festival and Kibbutz Be’eri alongside other communities in Southern Israel, which claimed the lives of 1200 civilians with some 250 being taken hostage.

The event which occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, was launched to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Both dates are religious holidays equivalent to Eid al-Adha in Islam or Easter in Christianity . The perpetrators could not have picked a worse time to commit their heinous crime, and the result has been bloody mayhem ever since.

The casualties included Joshua Mollel and Clemence Felix Mtengaa, both Tanzanian students, and at least two South Africans who died, amongst many foreigners taken into captivity by Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, an Islamic Jihadist movement (abbreviated as Hamas), and its Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades.

Disabled hostages were quickly slain for ‘being too much trouble’ by Hamas. One a girl with autism, another with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair. It should be noted, South Africa is signatory to the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Though Ramaphosa’s statement goes on to deplore the slaughter of civilians on either side, he deserves condemnation for the capricious manner in which he seeks to invert the historical record, appearing to make out a case that the attack was merely a legitimate strike against an oppressive regime, thus Israel is the one who attacked a music festival in Gaza?

This absurd rhetoric is typical of those who deny Resolution 181, passed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1947 — the resolution called for the partition of British Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with the city of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) to be governed by a special international regime.

UN181, which is the basis for the failed 2007 Olmert Plan — was rejected by the Arab community— and immediately resulted in violence, and the status quo we have today.

For those whose political world view is skewed by the so-called ‘Nakba‘, itself a revisionist dogma — the subsequent Arab-Israel war of 1948, the Six Day War, and Yom Kippur War, are all justifiable acts taken in the defense of Arab sovereignty. Nakba theology painfully ignores the plight of over 800 000 Mizrahi Jews similarly dispossessed of their land in MENA and the earlier Farhud, a “violent dispossession” that was carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on 1–2 June 1941.

No doubt President Ramaphosa would have supported Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Ottoman Empire during World War 1, as he appears to unconditionally support Jihad and the tactics of martyrdom, alongside German and Arab Imperialism?

Statements such as “we have condemned the atrocities committed against civilians in Israel on 7 October 2023, as we have denounced the killing of civilians in any context” ring hollow, since they are all issued in the past tense, with the President refusing to regret his earlier failure to condemn the massacre. It took 10 days for the President’s office to issue a statement, a point made by members of the local Jewish community.

If the deaths of our own compatriots and fellow Africans on Oct 7 pales in comparison with the loss of life in the aftermath, one can only hope our President comes to his senses and condemns both parties to the conflict, one which I perceive as a tragic case of ‘injustice vs injustice?” At very least efforts at reconciling the parties should not be abandoned.

One could go further and ask why our President lacks the courage to abandon war, as a means to resolve conflict? As the wisdom from Isaiah goes: “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Instead, what is demonstrated here are empty calls for ‘justice and peace’ by an executive unable to tell truth from fiction in its eagerness to satisfy the Palestinian lobby.

READ: RAMAPHOSA GAFFE: A River too Far?

READ: DA goes woke, as President Ramaphosa gets into Messiah mode.

READ: Former Israeli and Palestinian ministers: A way out of this endless war

Replacement theology at heart of Middle East conflict

OUR COUNTRY to its credit has enacted legislation to suppress both apartheid and racism. Proposals by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) for introduction of a bill which will ‘domesticate’ the 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, alongside the creation of ‘apartheid-free zones’ and the criminalization of Zionism, confront us with an absurdity: it is as if apartheid never happened within South Africa, since it appears no laws were adopted referencing the UN convention?

If our 1994 dispensation appears in danger of being replaced by a formidable global campaign connected to a maximalist view of Palestinian territory, associated with the former British Colony, then you may be correct: “From the River to the Sea” is the oft heard rallying cry alongside “Death to Israel and America”, as anyone with a different viewpoint is shouted down. Yet the ‘rainbow-coloured’ demonstrators have not translated into ‘rainbow ideas’ in the Middle East?

This is because replacement theology is at the heart of the conflict. A 2020 academic paper by Philip Du Toit on the question: ‘Is Replacement Theology Anti-Semitic?‘ begins by defining anti-Semitism as “normally understood as prejudice or hatred against Jewish people as a race” before concluding that since Christianity doesn’t perceive the Jews as a race, Christian theology cannot, by definition be anti-Semitic.

In ‘Revisiting the Charge of Taḥrīf: The Question of Supersessionism in Early Islam and the Qurʾān’ Sandra Keiting argues that Islam was supersessionist from its inception, advocating the view that the ‘Quranic revelations’ would “replace the corrupted scriptures possessed by other communities”.

Jonathon Feldstein observes the popular ‘Dome of the Rock’ in East Jerusalem has perhaps become “the cornerstone of Islamic replacement theology” alongside a new tradition that undermines both Judaism and Christianity. “Today, it’s commonplace to hear Palestinians and other Muslims deny any Jewish — and therefore Christian — history to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.”

Feldstein’s views are supported by a videographer who prompted Arab Palestinians to explain the plethora of Jewish archeological sites in the region — their answers invariably involve a denial of history, for them, the scientific evidence is a religious ‘falsehood’ to be discarded and ignored, replaced by another narrative, one which seeks to overcome and replace proven historical facts.

Even the Koran references the land of Israel. Al Baqara 2.47 ; Al Maida 5.21; Al Aaraf 7.137; Yunus 10.93; Al Israa 17.2-104;Ta Ha 20.80; Al Mumim 40.53; Al Dukhan 44.32; Al Jathiya 45.16, all refer to Israel as the land of the Jews.

The absurdity of importing apartheid laws to South Africa

The latest PSC dogma and its imported weltanshauung not only seeks to make Jews responsible for apartheid, it criminalises those who profess their religion on the basis of the biblical idea of Zion, in the process relocating South African history to the Middle East.

Furthermore, it provides a canon that replaces the narrative of the Hebrews with that of Arab Palestinians, many of whom were migrants from across the former British and Ottoman Empires. One has merely to examine the history of the Ottoman Railway Company to see why this statement is true. Beginning in 1900, the main line from Damascus to Haifa, allowed mass migration to the new economy surrounding the Zionist endeavor, and the claim is supported by the census data.

Replacement theology as it is constructed in recent times, may be understood as the basis for the apartheid analogy, a process whereby the history of our own country, is similarly replaced and discarded in the furtherance of a strategy which has been termed supersessionism.

It is therefore significant that the UN apartheid convention targets crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” [my bold]

Perversely, the phrase ‘one racial group over any other racial group or groups‘ is routinely omitted by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and PSC, in order to redact the convention to instances of state oppression of minorities, a lamentable situation not uncommon in our world today and certainly not unique to the state of Israel and its neighbors, all of whom should take the blame for the current escalation.

The apartheid convention was enacted in the 1970s primarily to deal with apartheid as it was then constructed within South Africa’s borders — a racist segregationist policy associated with a white Christian minority regime of PW Botha et al — absolutely nothing to do with Jews, who under apartheid were disproportionately jailed compared to their white Christian compatriots, with outspoken Rabbis deported by the regime.

The only genuine question raised by the PSC proposal, (whatever the merits), is whether or not our foreign policy should reflect our constitutional values? At the face of it, foreign policy is best served by an outlook which boldly supports our constitution —  its democratic values — it cannot be that we as a nation are compelled to support those like Hamas or Hezbollah, who are avowedly opposed to secularism, democratic centralism, women’s rights, LGBT rights, independent trade unions, and other rights.

In doing so, we risk rewriting and fabricating our own history.

READ: Debunked: Palestinians and Jews, each form a distinct race & the conflict is thus like apartheid,

SABC Propagandist Sophie Mokoena parrots Iran on ballistic missile attack

TUESDAYS massive barrage of 200 ballistic missiles fired from Iran were aimed at Tel Aviv and other urban centres within Israel, resulting in air-raid sirens and people running for shelter. The barrage was twice the size of a similar event in April, signifies a major escalation of the conflict. Instead of relating eye witness reports, Sophie Mokoena chose to parrot the Iranian position that its missiles were solely ‘aimed at military targets’.

This is reminiscent of the chicanery shown by Hamas’ Head of Political and International Relations Basem Naim when he told Sky News the day after the October 11 event that ‘no civilians have been killed by the militant group’. Editorial note: The deaths of any civilian on either side here, whether man, woman, or child is lamentable, as should be any loss of life caused by an inability of either side to resolve conflict through peaceful dialogue.

Naim claimed immediately following the events of 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of some 1200 Israelis and the taking of over 250 hostages by the Islamists, that only Israeli “soldiers” had been killed because Hamas had chosen to redefine civilians as combatants.

One should not underestimate the chilling effect this statement had for those on the receiving end of the attack, and the manner in which the rhetoric has played itself out in Gaza, a state of affairs which is both shocking and deplorable.

It has become emblematic of those embedded within the Palestine movement to claim no civilians on the Israeli side are actual targets when they are clearly targeted, and if they become casualties of war, Israel is to blame. The resulting fiction merely adds fuel to the fire.

Ahmed Munzoor Shaik-Emam for example, claimed (in an SABC interview on Armistice Day 2023 ) the massacre of persons at an outdoor peace festival ‘never happened’, instead these persons were ‘killed by Israelis’, and in any event they ‘were not civilians’.

In many respects, Mokoena’s propaganda reminds one of the mendacity of Cliff Saunders who during the apartheid border war would deny SADF troops were in Angola, or that people were dying in the townships.

So far as the SABC is concerned, one should not require a lecture on the subject of South Africa’s pacifist constitution and its prohibition against war propaganda, yet when it comes to Mokoena, one is moved to respond — not only has she callously issued support for the belligerent parties in several conflicts, (most recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine), but she appears oblivious to the damage this empty rhetoric is causing South Africa’s much vaunted claim to global ‘non-alignment’.

If we’re allies of every tinpot dictatorship out there, then why not just come out and admit: we’re working with North Korea to destroy Samsung, and helping the Houthis, to reintroduce slavery?

Apartheid Bill mooted

The vocal Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), has announced that they will be marching to Parliament on Saturday, October 5 to call for the South African government to implement an ‘Apartheid Bill’ alongside sanctions against Israel.

The so-called “Apartheid Bill,” drafted by the PSC Cape Town , is purported to be a “step toward operationalising South Africa’s commitment to the Apartheid Convention”. The proposed Bill is thus designed to ‘hold entities accountable for human rights violations and will provide the legal framework for South Africa to implement Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and establish Apartheid-Free Zones across the country,” claims the PSC.

Whether PSC succeed in introducing legislation into the House of Assembly is another matter, but any debate on the UN Convention would immediately be struck by the primary problem presented by the actual wording of the document, which is geared towards ‘racial groups’. The phrase is often redacted by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — if apartheid wasn’t about race, then what have South African’s been going on about these past decades?

As I have illustrated on many occasions, nations are not races, and neither are religions.

Mondli Makhanya you’re counterfeit, and you know it.

I HAVE always had a certain level of antipathy towards Israel, a country associated with the Hebrew bible, referenced in the Koran, and ancient Roman history. Unlike South Africa, it is not my homeland, but rather the homeland of my relatives. Living as a Jew in the diaspora and being a Pan Africanist, never inspired me sufficiently into conducting an “Aliyah” pilgrimage to the holy land, another continent.

Though growing up within a mixed religious environment, both sets of parents, and grandparents were secular — there was never any hint of support for government as a theocracy, quite the opposite. The Anglicans and Protestants in my family wanted freedom from clerical authority, the Orthodox Jews in my family wanted the right to privacy and freedom from the religious views of others.

In short, there was no desire to replace religion and the political views of our neighbors with that of our own. The prevailing wisdom was that it was ‘best to stay out of politics’. The price for my participation in the anti-apartheid struggle, the ‘sent-down’ white youth of 1986 and 87, was a rejection of the liberal views of my family in favour of a leftist concern with changing society — an outlook that pivoted on a militant wish to tell others how to run their lives.

The anti-apartheid struggle was anything but a cakewalk. Yet the outcome, which I refer to as Mandela’s blueprint for a ‘great society’ was most definitely a “We the People” constitution. A foundation document which makes it abundantly clear that when it came to the law, God has no bigger role to play than the author of any other text. The status of religious texts when it comes to our country is one of blessings, fairy tales and motivational books. Gone are the restrictive clerical canons of the Nationalist Party.

Pro-Hezbollah Sermon

It is thus I take issue with Makhanya’s latest pro-Hezbollah sermon published by City Press, a publication which like every other Naspers/Media24 outlet has not only banned my writing, but has gone so far as to destroy my photography and interviews with jazz legends (and their families) associated with the history of our country. Yes our High Court could not find the wherewithal to defend my right to representation in a related matter affecting the TRC Report (the failure of Naspers to participate) (Lewis v Min of Justice & Another, 2015 Equality Court) in which your principal was a respondent. The court delivering its jaundiced, 1994-denialist decision (Lewis v LASA, 2018) to the effect ‘the report may be ignored since it would take a long time to read’, torpedoed any hope of resolution — so much for the Preamble to our Constitution and the very basis of your column.

When I read headlines: Mondli Makhanya | The blackmail of anti-Semitism used to pummel the truth to death and Mondli Makhanya | SA’s Jews must draw a red line on Israel’s ‘war crimes’, I am forced to turn to SA Jewish Report to observe what your critics are saying, because you write behind a paywall. The latest: Jewish voices being stifled, is a sad indictment knowing that your publication will not grant a right to reply nor acknowledge such person’s exist.

Let me report on words Mondli may find within the paragraphs of those whom he clearly does not read, nor care to quote: “Calling out a single population group and demanding that it changes its political or conscientious standpoint is blatantly bigoted,” writes Karen Milner, “It’s akin to saying that only Jews whom the writer deems palatable are acceptable in South Africa, and, in this Heritage Month, deeply endangers the fabric of our multiracial society.”

I note here that not only has Makhanya previously deployed the term ‘black’ as a pejorative (as in blackmail) with which to smear the targets of his bile, but he refers to “SAs Jews” as if we are some kind of monolithic bloc, worse, we are mere simulacra with no human agency other than that we are objects representing other objects in the Middle East, things to be lectured at, not humans with the right to respond, or speak up for ourselves.

I therefore register my objection to this obvious patronage, lack of support for press freedom, and condemn the column as needlessly counterfeit and corrupt.

UPDATE: As I wrote this, reports of the death of Hezbollah chief Nasrullah were beginning to emerge, followed by condemnation by the SA government who seems to think “God’s Army” as it is known, is somehow the moral equivalent of the ANC in exile. The Pretoria government’s handlers in Tehran must be pleased.

READ: Most of all I am offended as a secularist.

The Howard Feldman, News24 Mampara saga

Off the bat, I admit it, I am no fan of Howard Feldman and ChaiFM. If you’re into over-privileged Jozi Jews. Do a google search and you’ll come up with the bizarre statistic that wait for it: “Most of the (live) Jews in Johannesburg can be found in the north-eastern suburbs. Here are some: Glenhazel, Raedene, Kew, Norwood, Highlands North, Sandringham, Savoy, Waverley, Orchards, Oaklands and Fairmount. Glenhazel and its immediate neighbours are jocularly referred to as ‘The Shtetl’.

I really do cringe when one realises that you’ll find Hebrews in equal parts in working class suburbs and industrial hubs of South Africa, places such as Gqeberha’s Motherwall community. Or that what is left of the Jews of District Six and Woodstock essentially charts a map of emigration and loss due to local Anti-Semitism that included political deportation of Jewish dissidents during apartheid.

Feldman’s narrative is anything but working class. His career as a ‘useful idiot’, (his phrase not mine), writing a column for News24 needs to be seen within a context, that for the most part, South Africa’s Jews, (black and white) are invisible, bar one or two lefties.

Allowing Naspers to say, ‘we employ Jews, so we can’t possibly be anti-Semitic’, whilst refusing to apologise for the antics of former directors, persons such as DF Malan who actively supported Nazism, carrying cards emblazoned with Swastikas, needs to be seen within the context of national reconciliation. The group along with its readers apparently moved on, as making money became more important than facts. I get the Machiavellian drive.

So one can forgive a sense of Schaudenfraude, seeing Howard on the receiving end of Adriaan Basson’s Anti-Semitic venom over a series of social media posts that Basson characterised as ‘glorification of violence’. Well hang me high, because I don’t see peace activists promoting peace amongst the throng of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters.

It does seem advocating total annihilation of the Jewish state is alright by Basson, but calling booby-trapped pagers ‘a stroke of genius’ isn’t? Does this make Feldman the “Mampara of the Week” ‘ a narcissistic bigot’ according to one Ferial Haffajee?

Readers may remember Haffajee as the imbecile who banned Medialternatives, physically destroying my review of ‘A Secret Burden: Memories of the Border War by South African Soldiers Who Fought in It‘ for wait for it, exposing embedded journalism within the apartheid military.

Since I am a peace activist not a war activist I don’t support the logic of either of the parties to the conflict. Like the late Dennis Brutus I don’t follow nation-states or people as such, but rather support ideas. And the paramount idea I wish readers would take home here is secularism, not the absence of religion as misguided atheists might put it, but rather the absence of religious rule.

READ: Africa4Palestine Says Sacking Of News24 Columnist Howard Feldman Was ‘Long Overdue

Boereworsgate: News24 comes under fire over Jan Braai incident

News24 editor Adrian Basson has come under fire on social media for running a false story about a man known as ‘Jan Braai’. The outlet was forced to issue a retraction and apology, in what can only be termed a flagrant disregard for fact-checking and basic journalism standards.

A press release issued on heritage day states:“News24 published a story based on a Food Lover’s Market marketing video after people experienced the video as racist. We approached Jan Braai and angled the story around his denial of the racism allegations that stemmed from the video, which were already in the public domain. As soon as the more fulsome CCTV footage came to light, we updated the story. In hindsight, News24 should have insisted on seeing the full CCTV footage of the event before publishing a story about the honestly held views of readers, based on partial video footage released by Food Lover’s Market. We apologise to Jan Braai and the other individuals involved. – Editor”

Of course all of this is merely a sop to those who feel aggrieved at a similar incident involving one Renaldo Gouws, who only a week earlier was seen in videos on X.com handing out Christmas gifts to black kids, one of his many philanthropic endeavors, made years before he became an MP, and around the same period in which his somewhat amateurish video containing theatrics on a point about ‘hate-speech’ was presumably made.

Context matters when it comes to video material, but it seems the press are increasingly driving a narrative in which mere utterances and circumstantial evidence is enough to indict persons of racism.

The people of X.com were having none of it when they rose to defend Jan Braai:

DA goes woke, as President Ramaphosa gets into Messiah mode.

IT must have happened somewhere on the flight to to the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation when John Steenhuisen had his “Damascus Moment”, or maybe it was during the trade summit or shortly thereafter, it matters not, since the religious metaphor isn’t mine, but can be attributed to an IOL hack. If religious metaphors seem strange when it comes to China, a country which has an abysmal record when it comes to protecting the rights of religious minorities, then please bare with me.

No sooner had Steenhuisen returned from China, he was singing the joys of an economic model that has drawn China out of developing status right into the developed world. I’m not going to bore you with a technical analysis of what is right and also completely wrong about this model, suffice to state that it has come at an immense cost, both to the planet as well as many freedoms we take for granted.

Take any metric aside from personal income and you will realise the Chinese state is a state bereft of a free press, and a host of freedoms associated with liberal democracies. If you believe as I do, in independent trade unions, the right to practice one’s religion (secular or otherwise) without intervention from the state, the creative arts as something more than mere industrial decoration, and defining human achievements in ways that are not purely utilitarian and serving a party-political purpose, then this model is not for you.

Cut to the next scene, as President Ramaphosa is seen standing next to Elon Musk, keen to gain approval from an industrial leader of the West, an expatriot whose net worth puts the South African economy to shame. No sooner had Cyril attended a massive US-South Africa trade function in New York, he is on a United Nations podium, singing a song which is one part New World Order to two parts Totalitarian regime.

For all the song and dance about cutting our continent and the Global South into the razzle-dazzle of the West, what Ramaphosa wants more than anything here is to be seen to broker a deal which would see the dismantling of the ‘Zionist entity known as Israel’, a ‘call it apartheid, and everything else will fall into place solution.’ Never mind that neither religions nor nations are actually ‘races’.

Woke means never having to say you’re sorry.

Just how woke this narrative is, can be seen by the manner in which the leader of the DA is prepared to sacrifice the center of his own party and core principles associated with the former ‘progressive movement’ in the interests of building a country which, come next election may yet lack an official opposition, let alone a free press. Of course, that term ‘progressive’ is now associated with a failed attempt at cobbling together an opposition group known as the ‘progressive caucus’, but we’ll leave that for another day.

While ‘Tintin’, as some like to call Steenhuisen was firing Renaldo ‘Ngamla’ Gouws for being ‘too much of a distraction’, and relegating Roman Cabanac to ‘white boy’ status (too much of a red flag to the far-left), and preparing to take his party’s own seats into a long term deal with government that relegates the DA to a mere wing of Ramaphosa new ‘governing alliance’, our President was literally singing the praises of Hamas and Hezbollah on the international stage.

So let’s do a tally here. In return for Chinese money, the DA have sacrificed Taiwan and Tibet in favour of the ‘One China Policy’. Add some Petro-dollars to the mix and you have a deafening silence when it comes to Israel & Palestine. I think anyone worth his or her salt would realise where this is all going. You can read my pieces on the subject here and here.

Open Energy To The Home (ETTH) to free those prepaid meters from ANC Monopoly Capital.

WHILE residents of Lavender Hill and Steenberg were protesting against prepaid meters and Cape Town City officials sought to blame Eskom for tariff increases — some 20 000 Capetonians attended a two day ‘Solar & Storage Convention’ at the CTICC. As an angry mob gathered along military road, the public were treated to demonstrations of solar power and storage solutions, with storage a key element missing from the debate on renewable energy, and a programme that include Internet of Things (IOT) and smart grids.

It is a stark contrast between those able to afford solar financing options (40k to 60k is not cheap) required to embrace a smarter future which seeks to bring renewable energy into the home, with those left out of the equation. Electricity provision has historically been a state monopoly. Yes there is progress when it comes to feed-in tariffs, but the ‘energy divide’ between South Africa’s rich and poor demonstrates how far we have to go before we can start referring to parity of treatment and equality in energy access.

All of this is occurring during a pivotal “Big Bang” moment for the energy sector, years in the making.

This month literally saw the signing into law by the President of an amendment to the Electricity Regulation Act, one which heralds a market reform of the country’s electricity regulations.

After decades of stagnation, Eskom is finally taking up a new role as a ‘national transmission company’, allowing Independent Power Producers (IPP) to compete with the behemoth in generation of electricity. Forgive me if I sound a little droll, a brave step, better late than never, but totally unacceptable when one realises our government is merely re-configuring a problematic state monopoly, with the resulting pyramid scheme involving the bulk sale of electricity by Metros and Munis to consumers and end-users still very much in place.

Demand Energy To The Home (ETTH)

Yes, us luckless consumer , those who actually pay for electricity instead of stealing it outright, are still being treated as an awkward afterthought by our fancy-pants President and his bloated cabinet.

We are thus issued with a100 day notice of an ‘impending change to our prepaid meters’ which will require new software via an Eskom circular, then a simple insert on SABC news. It appears Parliamentarians don’t use prepaid meters or worry about working in the dark. Zero announcement of tangible assistance to impoverished households, and nothing when it comes to upgrading our meters to a new, supposedly more secure system, with even less debate on the timing of the announcement.

Imagine what would have happened if the ANC had introduced a similar policy affecting mobile phones instead of embracing a big bang in 1994?

Remember that Nokia moment when literally everyone in South Africa had a Nokia cellphone?

What our President was really saying, “from next week, many ISPs will be able to provide the nation with Internet, but not one will be able to sell data directly to the consumer, fibre transmission will remain a monopoly.” Or “Folks, every small town and dorpie will be allowed to be in the Internet business” but “no actual business must operate with the intent to do business“, (apparently making money is a crime in South Africa?) as queues form outside the relevant government departments notorious for lack of service delivery?

Do you honestly think we would have smart phones if our government was the sole supplier of mobile telephony? Thirty years of socialist tinkering with the our economy has produced an entire generation without jobs.

This months Electricity Amendment announcement is really the dramatic equivalent to our Slick President announcing our country will be finally getting colour television, except the whole world has already moved on to HD screens, energy smart grids and streaming services.

Open Net Metering

If I still have your attention, (see my critique here and here) then consider open net metering. Currently our prepaid meters have no specification for connectivity, no external ports with which to interface these meters with a local area network (LAN), and no way of channeling data on the cost of these units from Pretoria, to our household consumption and home automation assistants.

Not only are we faced with a proverbial closed prepaid proprietary system whose data is controlled by the mandarins-in-charge (forgive the pun), but there is no clear path towards ‘time of use’ consumption, autobidding of energy, demand management, future options and a market trajectory which lowers the cost per watt, instead of creating energy inflation.

The global trend is towards concatenation or reduction of supply chains, towards placing a ‘factory on the desktop’, or a snappy logistics company at the factory gate, not the Presidents long-winded version of corporate capital, monopolistic bureaucracy crossed with a pyramid scheme and complicated multi-tier government.

Imagine being able to charge up your batteries when energy is cheaper, then using your storage when consumption is at a peak and expensive?

Where are the incentives from government for households to embrace a better future filled with electric vehicles charged by renewable and solar energy?

If you think this is a topic exclusively for the well-to-do? Think again, because collective housing schemes could also pave the way to collective energy generation at local level and potentially solve many of the problems encountered by the residents of Lavender Hill.

READ: Flogging a Dead Horse