Activism Archives - Page 3 of 28

by davidrobertlewis - August 30, 2024September 18, 2024

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

by davidrobertlewis - August 10, 2024September 4, 2024

Gender Wars: Brave New Olympics, it’s not so simple.

AS THE world deliberated on the controversy surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khalif, who had previously failed a gender test by the International Boxing Association (IBA), matters were coming to head in a long-standing legal dispute involving South Africa’s Caster Semenya, 32, who was born with ‘differences of sexual development’ (DSD).

Caster cannot cannot compete in female track events without taking ‘testosterone-reducing drugs’. World Athletics updated its rules in 2023 to state ‘DSD athletes would be required to reduce their testosterone level to below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for two years in order to compete internationally in the female category in any track and field event.’

The South African disagrees, stating:”World Athletics is showing discrimination against athletes with her condition” and her allegation is supported by Athletics SA and the SA government with the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights scheduled to deliver a final ruling.

Whither Weight Divisions?

Enter the Paris Olympics which has focused attention on the paradox presented by affected persons who include the ‘intersexed” — two boxers have been roasted on social media for competing in women’s events, even though under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules, those who transition from one sex to another, or who lack the chromosomes we traditionally associate with the two sexes, may yet be allowed to compete, under their respective, reassigned or altered genders.

Yes you read that right, the controversial opening ceremony with its drag queens and pagan references, was all about ‘reflecting equality and inclusivity’ for which the IOC now prides itself, no harm there, except if you happen to be a man pretending to be a woman, just to get a gold medal?

Though transgendered persons may possess a right in law to claim ‘womenhood’ for instance, they do not possess an automatic right to compete within many sports codes outside of the Olympics, for obvious reasons. If the trend continues so far as the Olympics is concerned, women’s events will invariably be dominated by cisgendered men at the expense of cisgendered women, — weight divisions are being further eroded by those who claim such distinctions are fat-phobic?

Hang-on a Minute, what about Blade Runner?

Just about nobody suggests that South Africa’s ‘blade runner’ Oscar Pistorius is being discriminated against for not being allowed to compete alongside able-boded athletes in the men’s 100m, since the use of a prosthesis and certain types of track shoes are also banned alongside performance boosting drugs, blood doping and other controversial medical interventions.

Allowing the intervention of technology (in this case gene or hormonal therapy) should always be considered an unfair advantage, much the same ways as a range of airfoils and engine designs are also banned in F1 racing.

Woke or Broke?

During a heated online debate on the subject I found myself being inboxed an article Shades of Gray: Sex, Gender, and Fairness in Sport, which at the face appears to make out a reasoned case that ‘hormones are all that separates men from women‘, even though on its own account, this isn’t actually true — the tragic reality of the human condition is our biology determines performance, with factors such as stamina, muscle torque, and relative weight and height – the same paper woefully proceeds to issue forth in utter ignorance of its own data.

Being a ‘cisgendered male’ competing in a women’s event (or somewhere inbetween) whilst undergoing hormone therapy or other therapies, clearly provides unfair advantages of reach and gait, whilst making a mockery of the division of the sexes. Does the Olympic event require a separate league for the differently-abled — those who may fall outside of standard definitions of what it is to be a man or a woman?

Do we know what the term ‘Woman’ refers to these days?

Spare a thought for biologist Richard Dawkins who was banned by Meta this week. His crime, being the author of an essay which had this point to make: “Sex is not defined by chromosomes, nor by anatomy, nor by psychology or sociology, nor by personal inclination, nor by “assignment at birth”, but by gamete size. It happens to be embryologically DETERMINED by chromosomes in mammals. … But it is universally DEFINED by the binary distinction between sperms and eggs.”

by davidrobertlewis - July 27, 2024September 25, 2024

Gillian Schutte defends race labeling, toads

In the critically acclaimed film “BlacKkKlansman,” directed by Spike Lee, the term “toad” is ingeniously used to refer to a specific type of ‘white person’. The historical context of this term presents all sorts of problems but has been decoded by critics as a dramatic technique that ‘provides insight into the racial climate of the time and the profound impact of the civil rights movement’.

Traditionally associated with amphibians, toad is used as a code word by Lee’s ‘African American’ detective Ron Stallworth” to ‘identify racist and bigoted individuals’ within the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The tactic, essentially one of reverse psychology, sheds light on the “hateful language used by white supremacists to demean and dehumanize black individuals”

Unfortunately South Africa’s Gillian Schutte is not Hollywood’s Spike Lee — her adoption of counter-factual histories, bold language and narrative that appropriates the rhetoric of the radical black left, (without giving any credit), is merely repackaged by a ‘white person’ given some leeway to comment on the sensitive topic — with the result she is a firm favourite of today’s editors — those who may wish to see their own jaundiced views reflected back in print media.

There is thus a plethora of Schutte’s published writing in my country.

Her opinion pieces circulate online in their dozens in the aftermath of the GNU — all leading one into the arena of ersatz political analysis, of the kind delivered by feminists who may object to transexuality by misunderstanding gender. Sorry Gillian, it’s not all reducible to biology but rather a subject informed by legal definitions open to legislative scrutiny. Allowing a man to transition to a women and vice versa, is neither a denial of the suffragette movement nor would treating all humans as equals — judging a person on the basis of ones character not ones colour — be a negation of civil rights — quite the opposite.

Schutte appears oblivious to the problem presented by ‘race and gender’ from the perspective of the administration of law, and I speak here as a recipient of the idiocy of laws of my own country. Yes, she may object to non-racialism but invariably it is without bothering to examine the provenance of the term, within the Unity Movement and the racialisation of society which this movement opposes. (Read my piece here)

The same may be said of Schutte’s Hogwarts feminism.

Race slurs are the tactic of racists.

Need one remind readers that racial slurs by individuals, like the tactics of racialisation, have long been a tool of those who lack coherent arguments, or who seek to reduce the nuance and complexity of life into convenient soundbytes. Maintaining power by replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, rule by men, with rule by women, ranks as bad an idea as replacing ‘racialisation with more racialisation’, one form of hegemony with another. Hurt cannot be healed by more pain. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

I thus find myself constantly amazed, gobsmacked that Schutte is allowed inches of column space to spew her drivel, pontificating on a subject for which she provides very little context and history, save an appeal to her own authority.

While those who were on the frontlines of the anti-apartheid movement and its campaign against the racialisation policies of apartheid may be a dying breed, one should never forget the premise of the Unity Movement — there is only one stream of common humanity, not separate streams resulting in different species of human, as the apartheid doctor Piet Koornhof would have it.

Race Theories rejected by science

The assertions made by Unity won out when the multi-regionalist theory of human evolution (the idea that the races spontaneously evolved in different parts of the globe resulting in mutual claims of superiority/inferiority) was finally shot down, alongside apartheid race eugenics, by the paleoscience of the nineties.

Sadly race science has seen an upsurge, there have been many attempts in recent years to resurrect the idea of ‘separateness in lineage’, those who seek to rebrand the theory to explain the presence of ‘Neanderthal alleles‘ and thus links to sub-populations seemingly external to our common human genome. But this tinkering with interpretation of data reminds one of the rephrasing of the specific ambitions of the anti-apartheid movement by millennial radicals into a more generalist claim involving ethnicity and religion, and a tragic process whereby the NGK is allowed to escape its role merely so Christianity may triumph?

The hackneyed arguments brought by Schutte that ‘dropping race labels are somehow akin to dropping gender labels‘, or egad, promoting non-racialism is somehow a ‘ betrayal of the struggle for democracy and human rights’, since it allegedly results in ‘an embrace of colonialism” by our GNU‘, must be rejected given the particular circumstances of our democracy. A state of affairs which is anything but PW Botha’s Tricameral Parliament — a dismal political experiment which comprised separate houses for each designated ‘race group’ alongside a reform of racialisation laws to reflect a new type of racist othering.

Strip away Schutte’s radical invective and all what one gets is a ‘lesson about toads delivered by a toad’, and if that makes one an enemy of amphibians then so be it.

READ: If everyone is a racist, nobody is a racist

READ It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

READ: Yoga ‘wokeism’ misses the whole point of post-modernity.

by davidrobertlewis - June 28, 2024September 4, 2024

GNU revolution or failed marriage?

BARELY a week after it was announced the ‘Government of National Unity’ (GNU) appears to have faltered. At contention is the difference between 8 cabinet posts or six for the Democratic Alliance and the tricky subject of who is to be named as deputy president alongside many regional agreements within provincial government.

Of course there were bound to be hiccups, the two major players at the center of the emerging coalition hold diametrically opposed views on many issues, including land distribution, taxation, and foriegn policy but with some convergence around democratic centralism, and especially the urgent need to maintain a stable economic outlook — one that allows for a thriving market economy capable of supporting a social wage — avoiding the pitfall of inflation and Rand volatility.

No sooner had the ink dried on the GNU pact (which includes up to 10 parties with over 60% of the popular vote), newly re-elected President Ramaphosa was calling for a joint sitting of Parliament amidst the political deadlock. This signals an extraordinary start to our new Parliament and the seventh administration, which if it fails to reach consensus on the vital subject of the cabinet, could make way for the eighth and nineth before the year is out, with the resulting inability to pass legislation.

Any thought that the ‘grand old party’ which has ruled South Africa for thirty years can simply absorb its detractors, or rule by commandeering votes or gerrymandering Parliamentary seats needs to be dispelled forthwith.

Following the ANC historical loss of a ruling majority during the May election, ‘business as usual’ for the party, which has a history of absorbing opposition and coalescing around the so-called ‘tripartite alliance’ is now a practical impossiblity.

The COSATU labour federation which formed a key component of the previous election-winning strategy, may be extremely unhappy at the outcome of the election, since the electorate apparently favours ‘economy over ideology’.

The South African Communist Party (SACP), the other partner besides the trade union holds no actual seats in parliament, which begs the question, has this tired formula run it’s course? Is the labour left of old, a mirage congregating around a once formidible oasis of BEE patronage?

This as the rise of right-wing factions under ultra-Nationalist Jacob Zuma, signals opposition politics, especially when it comes to the left-right cleavage, is inexorably altered?

At the time of writing, the leader of the official opposition has yet to be announced, but I dare say those amongst the rank and file will be eyeing any instability at the centre of politics with much glee, perhaps anticipation — upsetting the ANC apple-cart would bring exoneration for Zuma, unable to take up a Parliamentary seat due to a criminal conviction — several of his so-named MK party MPs, including impeached judge John Hlophe, would certainly face charges if they were not elected.

One can only hope and pray that our nation’s politicians are able to set aside their differences in the interests of the country.

by admin - May 21, 2024May 28, 2024

Sinwar, Deif, Haniyeh indicted for Genocide

THREE LEADERS of Palestinian Islamist group Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya have been indicted by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan:

“On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya SINWAR (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023:

•Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;

•Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);

•Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);

•Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;

•Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;

•Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;

•Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and

•Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.”

by davidrobertlewis - May 20, 2024May 20, 2024

President Raisi is dead, long live the people of Iran

Iranian parliamentary leader, President Raisi, has died in a helicopter crash over the weekend. The head of the ‘Combatant Clergy Association’ was active in a theocracy run by Ayatollahs following the 1979 revolution.

Raisi ran for president in 2017 as the candidate of the conservative ‘Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces’, losing to moderate incumbent president Hassan Rouhani, 57% to 38.3%. He successfully ran for president a second time in 2021 with 62.9% of the votes, succeeding Hassan Rouhani.

Raisi’s presidency oversaw a massive clampdown on women’s rights following the Hijab Revolts spurred by the death of 22-year-old Mahsi Amini in custody.

Between November 2022 and March 2023, up to 7,000 schoolgirls were poisoned at dozens of schools in at least 28 of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to human rights groups and government officials. ‘Hundreds were hospitalized with symptoms that included respiratory distress, numbness in limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea, and vomiting. The outbreak at schools for girls, first reported in the holy city of Qom, generated new protests against the government.’

As a religious scholar in Iran’s theocratic government and a protégé of Ayatollah Khamenei, Raisi climbed the ranks of the judiciary, serving as a prosecutor in several cities.

After being named Iran’s top judge, he is believed to have been part of a small committee that ordered the executions of thousands of political dissidents in 1988.

Raisi oversaw a general clampdown on independent trade union activity with the banning of independent unions. At the same time he promoted the inclusion of Iran in a group of nation’s known as BRICS, whose members are drawn from autocracies as well as democracies.

Execution of LGBTIQ individuals also ramped up under Raisi, who actively promoted the death penalty for homosexuality and other ‘moral offenses’.

It is not surprising that South Africa’s Naledi Pandor, whose government is in a coalition with far-right Al Jama-ah party in Johanessburg is a big fan.

by davidrobertlewis - March 6, 2024March 11, 2024

Media24 gets into a hissy fit over loss of revenue

Media24 the company which destroyed several articles on South African jazz history whilst unlawfully misappropriating my own byline and corruptly rigging proceedings before the Labour Court of SA in 2010, is having a cadenza about the dominance of Google and Meta in the online advertising and search industry.

Last time I checked, Media24 did not have a search engine nor any social media of its own. Their online portal is behind a paywall (read Boere-Mafia Laager), and the loss of advertising revenue has absolutely nothing to do with Alphabet (the parent company behind Google) nor Meta and everything to do with the changing habits of its readers, many of whom have dumped the site’s partisan editorial and its “Kerk bazaar” for greener pastures.

With pay television falling prey to Internet streaming companies like Netflix, and Media24’s Multichoice spun off more than two years ago, (now the subject of a takeover by Canal+), executives at the company must be feeling the pinch, with very little left after tax — a sum of the parts analysis of the company might just provide an astonishing headline: Boetie, where are the parts?

The easy answer is Media24 is Takealot, South Africa’s number one online retailer, but with Amazon, Shein and Temu competing with the platform, executives must have had a groot skrik looking at projected revenues, seeing what is coming at them?

I suspect none of this verdriet impacts upon holding company Naspers and its ‘Jekyl & Hyde’ shenanigans at Prosus, both behemoths who collectively control billions of revenue from Tencent (and the Chinese certainly aren’t complaining about SA ownership of Wechat?) — that ancient bastion of Afrikaner kragdadigheid at the Heerengracht must be sensing they either need to throw in the towel, or buy into the new Web3 economy ?

That would be too easy, instead they have become the eternal whining aunties feasting on scalped whales harpooned by their parent company, so accurately portrayed by Daniel Defoe in his epic tail of capitalism, Moby Dick?

Anyone care to spear a whale?

The media company that refused to participate in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, disputing the outcome and status of the special report on the role of the media during apartheid, apparently told the Competition Commission that ‘Google is abusing its “dominance” and threatening the viability of the Fourth Estate in South Africa,’ what a joke.

Since when did they ever care about the “Fourth Estate”?

Ishmet Davidson the self-same liar who claimed the company had been given ‘a clean bill of health at the TRC’, is reported to have told the Competition Commission on Tuesday that “Google is sucking advertising revenue out of South Africa, making it increasingly difficult for local publications to survive. He said even News24, despite its size, is loss-making – and he pointed the finger at Google and rival Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, for the dire situation facing local publishers.”

Davidson said News24 was “forced” in 2020 to implement a paywall around much of its content, but even though more than 100 000 paying subscribers have signed up, the revenue from subscriptions “has not nearly been sufficient to offset the decline in advertising revenue”.

If this sounds like the man is angling for another bail-out from government, in much the same manner as the sole pay-channel license awarded by former director PW Botha during the 1980s, they suck and you probably on track.

You can read the full story on Tech Central

by admin - February 21, 2024February 27, 2024

Historic impeachment of two judges

TWO judges were impeached in the House of Assembly today. The impeachment of Judge Nkola Motata for drunk driving came a few hours after Judge John Hlophe was impeached by the House. This is the first time in 30 years of democracy that any judges have faced impeachment proceedings, and brings to an end proceedings, after Motata was found guilty of drunk driving in 2009 when he crashed his luxury vehicle on a boundary wall of a house in Johannesburg in 2007.

The Hlophe impeachment was far more serious charges related to gross misconduct, the attempted influence over other judges.

Hlophe’s case started in 2008 when nine justices of the Constitutional Court (CC) laid a complaint against him, accusing him of attempting to influence Justices Chris Jafta and Bess Nkabinde in a case concerning former President Jacob Zuma. In the 15 years since, there has been numerous litigations on the part of both JP Hlophe as well as the JSC. In April 2021, a tribunal inquiry found Hlophe guilty of gross misconduct, a decision upheld by the JSC in August 2021.

The impeachment motion before Parliament may be considered a mere formality, but offered the respective judges an opportunity to enter politics, to canvass public opinion on their status.

Hlophe thus gave a number of fiery public speeches aimed at bolstering his position in the runup but in the end it was to no avail as both he and Motata went down in flames.

The motion against Hlophe succeeded with 305 votes.

by davidrobertlewis - February 21, 2024April 10, 2025

Anti-Semitism & its political adherents in Parliament

THERE is officially ‘no antisemitism’ in South Africa. No sooner had Justice Minister Ronald Lamola kicked up a storm after making bizarre statements on a BBC hardtalk interview, the country was being entertained by two incidents from inside the country’s various legislatures.

A tie-episode involving the wearing of a ‘Star of David’ by a member of the Johannesburg City Council was soon followed by threats inside the National House of Assembly: “We won’t allow you make this a Jewish state. The City of Cape Town would be a bloodbath,” ranted Member of Parliament Munzoor Shaik Emam, who proceeded to threaten Jews living in South Africa.

It was Sartre who once remarked: “If the Jew did not exist, the Anti-Semite would invent him”. ” In his seminal Anti-Semite & Jew, written after the author had noticed the absence of the Jews living in Paris before the war, deported to the Nazi death camps, he wrote: “The anti-Semite convinces himself of beliefs that he knows to be spurious at best.”

The latest debacle is redolent of ANC MP Marius Fransman’s invention of ‘Jewish property tycoons in Woodstock”, and other statements for which he was ordered to apologise. A suburb that had once seen an influx of Jews from the Shtetls of Czarist Russia, but which like District Six has lost its Jewish population, a factor of immigration and structural discrimination.

Lamola’s claim: “There is no antisemitism in South Africa against the Jewish People“ is not only a blatant lie, similarly debunked, with a demonstrable increase of 631% over the past three months, but it reminds one of equally perverse statements made by the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who once proclaimed: “In Iran, we do not have homosexuals. Or apartheid’s own PW Botha who explained to the world’s press:”Most Blacks are happy” and “we treat our Blacks well.”

Sartre explained the tendency towards the objectification of Jews, who before the creation of the state of Israel, had become the ‘objects of history’ instead of the ‘subjects of humans rights’.

“A Jew is a person that others look at and say, “look, he/she is a Jew”. Just as a chair is a chair by virtue of our considering it a chair, so is a Jew a person whom others consider to be a Jew. Therefore, a Jew’s Jewishness exists only to the extent they are considered Jewish by those around them.

A 2010 hearing presided over by ANC apparatchik Halton Cheadle involving his own client (and business partner), found inter alia, that since I am apparently “a Jew in breach of my religion” or simply not Jewish enough, (the wrong kind of Jew), I can’t claim antisemitism on the basis of an outrageous inquiry into my identity by an apartheid media firm — an entity that pathetically denied their role in the regime, and proceeded to pillory the findings of the TRC during the kangaroo ‘trial’.

So yes Minister Lamola, there is ‘Anti-Semitism’ or Jew-hatred in my country — a disgraceful, ugly history harking all the way back to the dark days of the National Party, whose swastikas adorned membership cards, whose laws actively discriminated on the basis of religion and cultural identity.