In South Africa, racism is STILL more important than human life

This article in the Sunday Times highlights the shocking levels to which we've sunk as a country when it is deemed more important to enforce affirmative action employment policies in hospitals in the Western Cape than it is to save the lives of the patients who are in them.

Up to 10 operations a day are having to be cancelled, because specialist surgeons cannot be found to fill the posts - "black" surgeons that is. There are "white" and "Indian" specialists available, who have applied for the posts, but the hospitals are not allowed to hire them.

So now, just like with apartheid, South Africans are dying because of racist politics.

This place is truly sick.

Goodbye World Cup

As Dan Retief, one of the shrewder SA rugby analysts, has pointed out, we finally get our Super rugby going, with two SA teams in the final, and the country starts getting into a winning mindset - and literally within the hour, the politicians and administrators rumble in with the kind of heavy-handed authoritarian behaviour that we last saw from the Broederbond, completely overriding the coach and the selectors, and putting an immediate dampener on everything.

And once again, the overseas pundits shake their heads in complete disbelief at what a bunch of clowns we are.

This doesn't bode at all well for what lies in store as we prepare for the World Cup, so I'm going to go on record right now, and pray that I am proved wrong.

I reckon two things are certain in our immediate rugby future:

1. We are not going to be allowed to select our best team for the World Cup.
2. We are therefore not going to win it.

And one other thing I've decided - just as many of us supported the All Blacks in the days when Springbok teams were picked along racial lines during apartheid - if this year's Springbok team is picked on race, I'm going to support the All Blacks again, as my own personal protest against Apartheid 2007, ANC style.

This is getting sickening

Listen, I sympathise just as much as everyone else with the parents of Madeleine McCann, the little girl who was abducted on Praia da Luz, and I applaud the worldwide awareness and the various campaigns and social networking initiatives that individual South Africans have started to try and help.

But it's getting a little sickening to see so many people in South Africa all of a sudden getting all socially conscious about it on web sites like Facebook and SA Reunited while completely ignoring the kids who regularly go missing on their own doorstep in South Africa.

Dare I suggest it's because she's cute and blonde and WHITE?!?!?!?

I'm speechless!

Yeh, I know, it's not often. But this reply from Arno Carstens to an email I sent to Honda about the hilarity (and disparity) of using Blue Eyes in their Civic TV ad, has left me thus.

Hell, I'm under no illusions about what musicians need to do to make money - I just didn't expect Arno to actually use the "I have no artistic integrity" defense, ha ha ha!

This is what he wrote, as forwarded by Honda SA to me:

"With regard to Arno Carstens’ original meaning behind the song, Arno writes:

The song’s lyrics do not speak of any specific incidence or endorse violence in any way. ‘Blue Eyes’ was written as a lament to the tragedy of family murder, a relevant issue in South Africa when we first released the song in 1997. The intention in the song is to describe the tragic emotion that ensues in a family through the intensity of facing its own destruction. ‘Blue Eyes’, as with all other Springbok Nude Girl songs, does not attach any fixed meaning to any specific phrases or wording in the song, we express all of our songs with an element of ambiguity subject to personal interpretation; which is why we have never printed lyrics in any of our releases.
Now in 2007, ‘Blue Eyes’ has evolved substantially from what it was when we originally wrote it. It has become an anthem and one of our most successful songs; we perform it at the end of any SNG show as the climax of the show.

‘Blue Eyes’, over its 10 years, has clearly taken on a life of its own and seems to constitute more importance to the identity of South Africans, or what it is to be a South African, than anything else . We haven’t discussed the songs original meaning since we released it (although we did at the time), because, as we perform it every time we do a show, we don’t believe that its original meaning is relevant to it anymore."

Kudos to The Sowetan

As reported by Bizcommunity the Freedom Day ad campaign by the Sowetan newspaper in South Africa seems to have provoked something of a controversy. It is based on Martin Luther King's much-quoted "I Have A Dream" speech, to neatly point out how South Africa is crudely squandering the potential freedom its people won with their own blood.

In a typical demostration of how the state-controlled media in South Africa will not tolerate press freedom (much less the expression of vital truths) the ANC's national mouthpiece, the SABC, has banned the radio ads.

SA president Thabo Mbeki has said that those inside South Africa who raise their voices about crime are "despicable racists", so I presume that the Sowetan's publisher, Bongani Kheswa is now one of those. He is also now one of the people that the SA Safety and Security minister, Charles Nqakula, has publicly stated should "leave the country" if they want to whinge about crime.

Kheswa says that “As Sowetan we feel that South Africa is ready to face the shocking truth of the adversities we went through to achieve our political freedom. Through this advert we would like to encourage people to celebrate this victory, but still keep in mind that the face of the struggle has now changed.

I hope that every person who will be listening to this advert will do so with an open-mind and realise that there is a need for South Africa to regroup as a nation to fight these new challenges we are facing in an effort to make this country a better place for the next coming generations.”

Now there's someone I'll vote for!

Click on the image below to read the ad:

The Final Sellout

Look, Arno Carstens might be on the slippery slope to the kind of middle of the road mediocrity last visited by Matchbox 20 and Hootie & the Blowfish, but this boggles the mind...

We now have "Blue Eyes", the archetypal song about family murder, being used to sell Honda Civics in the new ad. Probably cos the agency doesn't realise what the song is about in the first place. Noses out of the coke bowl boys!

Let's not even start on artistic integrity ito Nude Girls, altho it's completely to be expected from Sony.

M

I'm the Fool

Shades of Red found a delightfully whimsical site that allows you to determine what tarot card you are...

You are The Fool

The Fool is the card of infinite possibilities. The bag on the staff indicates that he has all he need to do or be anything he wants, he has only to stop and unpack. He is on his way to a brand new beginning. But the card carries a little bark of warning as well. Stop daydreaming and fantasising and watch your step, lest you fall and end up looking the fool.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Those 3 little words

One of the most common responses I hear from people around me almost every day, when the talk turns to the state of this country, is "it's NOT SO BAD".

Of these people I want to ask one simple question:

Exactly what part of 1 rape every 8 minutes, 36 000 murders a year, and 160 000 other violent crimes a year do you find NOT SO BAD?

To my mind anyone who finds this state of affairs NOT SO BAD is either:
- from another planet
- certifiably insane
- just plain morally repulsive