South Africa Archives - Medialternatives

by davidrobertlewis - October 27, 2024October 30, 2024

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 To extract compliance, the daily press has been replaced by the official state propaganda mechanism, Tavda (Tshwane Propaganda).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.

by davidrobertlewis - October 7, 2024October 8, 2024

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,

by davidrobertlewis - September 28, 2024October 15, 2024

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.

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 - 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 - July 20, 2024July 27, 2024

Comediangate: IOL a laughing stock after ‘exposing’ comic

THIS week IOL waded into yet another ‘multibaby’ scandal, this time involving the identity of an account on social media platform X.com. The manner in which the news group deals with facts raises a number of questions regarding ‘press privilege’ and its latest antics must be condemned as an abuse of press freedom.

For starters, the news group was forced to issue a hasty public apology for fingering a KZN comedian, who they claimed was part of a ‘conspiracy involving apartheid-era stratcom agents.’ This resulted in R1.2 million defamation lawsuit filed against it. IOL were given two weeks to respond.

Online personality The Kiffness tweeted:

“Inexcusable defamation from @IOL.

@IqbalSurve, you can’t keep making unsubstantiated claims about people & get away with”

Here is how the IOL apology read:

“We previously reported and posted that the person behind the Goolammv X account was Mohammed Yacoob Vawda, a UKZN lecturer, SABC radio personality, and stand-up comedian. We were mistaken, and confirm that he is not the person behind that account. We unreservedly retract the accusation and apologise to Mohammed Yacoob Vawda and his family. Please desist from directing threats and abuse at him.”

Yes IOL are clowns, the dangerous kind.

Not only were IOL dead-wrong about the identity of @Goolammv, but their shoddy attempt to correct their mistake by spinning the story as just a minor hiccup, a silly detail involving mistaken identity, by literally going through the telephone book, to presumably finger another man, merely confirms the group has waltzed straight from a ‘multibaby’ into a ‘multi-comedian’ scandal. The group proceeded to run stories alleging connections to a “sock puppet operated by an individual with connections to high-profile politicians and senior government officials.”

So far as editorial were concerned it was enough to name anybody with a government connection or problematic past to throw shade. Take one public comment on the story and the resulting headline: ‘Ismail Abramjee Concedes Goolammv Identity Following Investigation’, a piece of yellow journalese that revolves around Abramjee’s comments on ‘Goolam Mohammed Sulieman Vawda’, which took the trouble to note the social media activist actually ‘used his real name and initials’.

Not exactly, anonymity nor a ‘cloak and dagger’ operation as Survé would have it?

Another post on July 18 deploys the Renaldo Gouws controversy while claiming the tweeters ambition is to “KILL” the entire black-owned Group’. Allegations include a ‘plot by commentators to subvert our democracy’. The element of treason seems a bit far-fetched and contrived considering IOL is a privately owned company while Gouws is a member of Parliament.

What has lead to this astonishing loss of editorial oversight?

The comedy of errors really begins after CEO Iqbal Survé was once again challenged on his failure to ‘pay back the SACTWU money’. That’s right, money borrowed (and never paid back) from a union pension fund which was used to orchestrate a buyout of the Independent Group from previous owner’s Tony O’Reilly. The R300 million loan was frozen indefinitely following a decision gained by the company in it’s favour. Bear in mind the loan still exists and the decision does not bar citizens from asking such questions.

Survé at first attempted to deflect attention from public questions on X.com by claiming without any supporting evidence, that @Goolammv was an ‘apartheid agent’ (or as it appears, somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody else who may have been fingered as an agent?)

This writer was party to the thread and witnessed the sequence of events which lead up to the IOL story by a paid hack.

Following the incident Survé now claims “@goolammv Goolam Muhammed Suliman Vawda is a charlatan, tender entrepreneur, money launderer connected to powerful politicians”. Zero details about the person concerned other than Survé is upset.

The claims seem absurd and licentiousness given freedom of speech within the public sphere. It is clear Survé perceives a need to abuse his position, to target his critics, to avoid such questions. Whither the right of reply? Worse the calumny follows a now well-established pattern of abuse within the group in which journalists are fed information by management. Instead of content flowing up a chain of editorial command it flows down into the ranks, via its owner. [Note: following my comments here, IOL suddenly announced it was rolling out its ‘Thought Leader’ section, which is just shy of hiring Anton Harber].

Survé’s social media feed increasingly relies on dubious sources, scurrilous rumours and unsubstantiated information, for example one Mehmet Dag, an Egyptian expat and one-man political party, is a regular contributor, who calls Survé “his brother”. Dag also claims to have a dossier on various conspiracies involving local politicians.

Readers may remember Dag as the man behind a campaign to remove LGBTIQ rights from our constitution alongside the rainbow crossing in Green Point.

Survé’s latest attention-seeking suggests that IOL sources are in reality Boswell Wilkie clowns.

UPDATE: IOL now claims that ‘charges have been laid’ against the ‘creator of notorious X account ‘goolammv’’ supposedly by a ‘senior media editor not affiliated with the Independent Media Group.’ The article does not name the individual nor does it carry any details of what these charges are, other than he is accused of ‘terrorising’ politicians and business leaders via his X.com account. Last time I checked, asking uncomfortable questions via X.com, a platform which prides itself on freedom of speech, was not considered a crime in the Republic.

UPDATE: News24 hits back with ‘Suspect’ Survé, top editors face criminal probe for Goolam gaffe “Media baron Iqbal Survé and some editors in his upper echelon face a criminal investigation for doxing the wrong man in their much-vaunted “unmasking project”.

UPDATE: Survé socks it to News24 statements seem to fudge the defamation case reported elsewhere while making wild allegations. Should Survé hand himself into a mental asylum?

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 davidrobertlewis - April 13, 2024September 4, 2024

Courts are promoting unlawful occupation of rental property

THE so-called 'Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998' has turned into the "Promotion of Unlawful Occupation of Land Act" under the machinations of my country's woke judiciary.  Here I relate my experience with a civil court proceeding held April 11, 2024 in which the respondent to an eviction proceeding didn't appear, hasn't entered 'notice of intention to defend" against the application, yet received extraordinary protection from the court, a court seized with feminist ideology and critical race theory to the detriment of my own black household and black children. What an absolute joke, I have less rights as a law-abiding citizen than a foreigner scoffing at the law and gaming the system. I am now facing having to place my own belongings in storage, splitting up the kids and not having a home, because my only property has been hijacked with the assistance of our courts, affecting my own ability to pay rent.

UPDATE: Eviction order was handed down on 2 May, respondent once again absent from proceedings. Wholly unnecessary hearing where the matter could have been simply placed on the unopposed roll. Am still gobsmacked that the court even deliberated on the matter without the other party being present and/or filing notice of intention to defend. Something needs to be done to avoid wasteful, unnecessary duplication of legal services which seem to have become the bread and butter of a corrupt profession

by davidrobertlewis - February 21, 2024April 7, 2024

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, found inter alia, I was not Jewish enough to possess rights commonly afforded other Jews, and therefore could not claim anti-Semitism 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.