Owen Leed

Saving South Africa...

2011-05-24T18:30:00.003+08:00

South Africa is in an intense battle to save the Country from African socialism.

The letter repeated here was written by a South African "pop star" (Steve Hofmeyer) to Julius Malema (ANC youth league president) and pretty pretty much sums it up.

Malema is in court defending the right to sing the "struggle" song "Kill the Boer kill the farmer".

He is singing it in court with his comrades (armed to the teeth) ignoring all court rulings.

Steve Hofmeyer to Julius Malema

To: Julius Malema

Afrikaners/Whites are suffering from confession fatigue. Even their children are now paying for the "sins of their forefathers". They have had to admit to past injustices and are now made to apologise for any prevailing failures. They are secondhand citizens made to pay firsthand taxes. Blaming them is a relief valve for black leadership who has demonstrated zero accountability, confusing self-enrichment with achievement. Hate speech songs ("Kill the Boer") as sung by ANC leadership are met with quiet insolence and even pride. Our government is now defending(with taxpayers money!) the right of that chant in court. Peter ("One Boer One Bullet") Mokaba has a FIFA World Cup Soccer stadium named after him. All this while we sport the the most brutal murder-rate in the world, second only to Columbia. Once again, blameless Afrocentric arrogance abounds while we are asked to tolerate pathetic matric exam results and understand perpetrators' rights. Although South Africans have incompatible memories, collectively we are all heirs of extremely aggravating circumstances. The defeatist victim mentality perpetuates condescendence and alas, inequality. We could have taught the world something. We have not.

It's time...

1. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that Struggle math doesn't tally.
Mitigating and aggravating factors can't be quantified. Denialism and/or Black Empowerment here is hypocrisy and vulgar opportunism.

2. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the gravest acts of genocide did not occur during Colonialism/Apartheid, but before and after (read today). Right now South Africa has a lower life expectancy than Uganda.

3. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that, unlike Native Americans and Australian Aboriginal genocide, first-nation populations in South Africa escalated under British/Afrikaner rule from 10-30 million in a few decades.
Verwoerd was building African schools with Afrikaner money at the time Aussies could obtain fauna licenses to hunt fellow Australians.

4. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the only real genocide in South Africa was the Koi annihilation by his ancestors and what Shaka and Dingaan did to their own people. Today, once more, South Africans are wiping fellow citizens off the face of the earth.

5. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that South Africans have lost more lives in the first four years of ANC rule than during the entire four decades of Nationalist rule. This statistic should be staggering by now, almost 18 years later.

6. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that more Boer children died in the Anglo Boer War than South Africans in the entire century of the Struggle.
Fact: twenty times more. Let's talk entitlement.

7. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that discontented South Africans of European descent do not burn down schools, drop their pants, capsize dustbins, plunder and intimidate hospital workers during marches and strikes. We certainly do our share of bad things, but we do not sing while babies die in maternity wards.

8. It is time for Julius Malema to see the folly of transformation from Western democracies to Africa-socialism, placing need over achievement.

Everybody is poorer and unemployment rife. There is nothing "just" about economic equality when it implies market tampering.

9. It is time for Julius Malema (and Robert Mugabe) to admit to the futility of still blaming this on previous regimes. That redemption tool is now exhausted and merely perpetuates condescension and promotes professional suffering.

10. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the demonized Afrikaner was also the rightful owner of land they had acquired after a brutal war they had lost, at enormous human cost. Trivialising a blood sacrifice is insensitive and dangerous. Don't question Afrikaner reluctance to assimilate before you get this.

11. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that Verwoerd entrusted Malema's tax-exempt great-grandfathers with gratis homeland larger than achiever-countries like Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, and still came up with nothing to show for it. Many Afrikaners found Verwoerd way too liberal with their tax money.

12. It is time for Julius Malema to admit to his actual Western appetite combined with Africans' neurotic leap from mother tongue education to English, a treason which may still erase the little literature and heritage they had bothered to record.

13. It is time for Julius Malema to admit he can only favour place name changes in envy, as not one single Western city, town or street was stolen from anybody on this continent. A child can solve land claims.

14. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that almost all former fruitful farmland dispossessed in land claims, have suffered the same fate - brutal sterilization.

15. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that more Afrikaner farmers are slaughtered annually than South Africans who died during the Sharpeville violence, a figure that dwarfs Ireland's national mortality rate (FYI, Bono).

16. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the new South Africa has contributed nothing to the world stage but shame and catch-up. This explains the following patronizing and affirmative therapy organizations:

Black African Cricket Forum, Black Broker Service Network (BBSN), Black Brokers Forum (BBF), Black Business Council, Black Business Forum, Black Business Woman Association (BBWA) , Black Editors' Forum, Black Filmmakers Network (BFN), is a network of over 200 individuals and 25 companies nationally, Black IT Forum (BITF), Black Law Students' Forum, Black Lawyers Association, Black Leadership Forum, Black Management Forum, Black South African Students' Organization (SASO), FEW - black lesbian organization in South Africa, Forum of Black Journalists, National Black Contractors and Allied Trades Forum (Nabcat), National Forum for Black Public Administrators (NFBPA), National Society of Black Engineers, etc.

17. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the voters of the previous regime really voted the ANC into power and that they rule by the grace of a benevolent yes- vote in a referendum in 1992. He was pre-teen then. Everyday he parades his hypocrisy that yes-vote lives in regret.

18. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the killers and rapists in his songs are NOT an Afrikaner statistic. Examples abound 1,2,3. The greatest butchers of South Africans, by far, were his own ancestors (Dingaan en Shaka). Today 3500 plus Afrikaner farmers are no longer with us.

This vile statistic of ethnic cleansing accumulates daily and is generally ignored.

19. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that poverty will prevail for as long as they keep in power a government defined by nepotism, judiciary containment, golden handshakes, silent diplomacy, BEE charters, unprecedented unemployment, unethical grants, land grabs, tenderpreneurs and futile dreams of nationalization.

20. It's time for Julius Malema to admit that the book on tender procedures has been rewritten by ANC cronies, comrades and families. By October 2010 the amount of R26 billion of that had been investigated as fraudulent (The Star , 28 October 2010). By April 2011 the national press editorialized corruption as epidemic.

21. It is time for Julius Malema and other instant millionaires to admit that one may only keep what one earns. This is capitalism. Fallible but unchallenged. Possessing what you did not earn is common theft in any language. "Deserving" politicians, nationalization, landgrab etc. translate to Afrikaans as theft, theft and theft.

22. It is time for Julius Malema to admit culpability in keeping leaders in power who are dragging this fine nation to the bottom of international management, development and mortality indexes. The latter is the measure of civilization while we sport a lower life expectancy than Uganda.

The 2010 Global Competiveness Report by the World Economic Forum rated the new, fair and Democratic South Africa such:

* Quality of the education system - 130th out of 139

* Quality of primary education - 125th out of 139

* Quality of math and science education - 137th out of 139

* HIV prevalence - 136th out of 139

* Life expectancy - 127th out of 139

* Infant mortality - 109th out of 139

* Tuberculosis incidence - 138th out of 139

* Business impact of HIV/AIDS - 138th out of 139

23. It is time for Julius to explain to other Africans that circumcision and muti rituals are pre-civilization quackery, that AIDS is not cured by raping virgins and that sangomas will always be inferior to the Western tradition of health awareness as a science and a discipline.

24. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that African folk are still dependent on what South African governments force other South Africans to do for them. Blunt patronization.

25. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that he has run out of reasons and time to blame the previous regime and to sever the defeating umbilical chord of Afrodebt. Ironically, the only two former colonized states which became global achievers (India and China), did exactly that.

26. It's time for Malema to understand that the settler lineage will never fall for the Struggle propaganda that their contribution and sacrifices were insignificant. You cannot suppress their heritage by stealing the names of world class towns, cities and well established infrastructure; you can defile it by not sustaining that incredible progress.

27. It's time for Julius Malema to show gratitude for a tribe who sacrificed almost 40 000 of its own population to rightfully own a country Africans acquired by virtue of outnumbering them and then agitating for a democracy.

28. It is time for Malema to admit that one man's liberty was always another man's devastation and that the e entitlement tug-a-war can only be solved by immediately declaring a breakeven point. Stop BEE, AA, quotas, EE and affirmative therapy right now.

29. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that it is inconsequential to bemoan Western influence when everything you do is for Western style affluence and thanks to Western influence.

30. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that nobody wants to rescue Apartheid, but that redress is only possible if something legally owned was taken away. Forced removals were regrettable but almost never done without offers of compensation. Why is this fact omitted when rallying up emotions to grab land?

31. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the oppressed during the Struggle has long since assumed and surpassed the role of the former oppressor. Collective amnesia at this point in our dour histories is dishonest and suicidal.

32. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that his ancestors of the time were not invited to the Peace Treaty of Vereeniging, because they were, despite their numbers, economically, technologically, militarily and politically insignificant. This explains decades and decades of gross minority rule.

33. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that Afrikaners would not have stood for subjugation by any minority, ever.

34. It is time for Julius Malema to read the previous point again and ask the relevant questions.

35. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that the colonised is a colonisable individual, and a very envious one at that (Fanon). The pathology of eternal debt is misguided.

36. It is time for Malema to admit that no South Africans want to return to a pre-Eurocentric African state of mind and affairs. African anti-Western defiance is populist diatribe and hypocritical banter tagged with a huge dollar sign.

37. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that Africa is the orphan continent thanks to many that went before him, fat-cat despots who sounded exactly like him.

38. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that not one single leader, minister or mayor has been voted in legally or democratically. More than half of South Africans still don't vote. The politically inept and unqualified surface and after being discredited, resurface elsewhere under the banner of ANC propriety.

39. It is time for Julius Malema to admit that South Africa produces almost 25% of this continent's GDP . SA qualifies to host world cup events on this continent. Not bad for the land that surrendered colonial rule stone last.

40. It is time for Julius Malema to see that it is pathetic to use old buildings, highways, systems and infrastructure but pretend to be demoralized by the sight old flags.

41. It is time for Julius Malema to admit to the sometimes mutual incompatibility between hatespeech and traditional songs, the way Afrikaners had to sacrifice traditional terms like "kaffer". He can not have his cake and eat it. If some can chant "kill the Boer", others will gladly reciprocate by revoking the vocable.

42. It is time for Julius Malema to see that most South Africans do not want the old South Africa back. We all opt for an accountable government of any colour or tribe. What we do not want is an Interpol boss serving time for corruption and the spouse of our Minister of Security as a convicted drug smuggler. We demand safety and a future for our children.

Now, Julius, go tally your populist and unfounded anti-western sentiments.

You are keeping my South African compatriots victims in this sad old race to upstage Europeans. Ironically your efforts are still subsidized by white money. This you use gladly and squander greatly. We are not immigrating. We shall secure a future for our children in our motherland. This ship will be turned around by sober thinking South Africans, and I want to be there.

Steve Hofmeyr

2011 already and where will it all go?

2011-05-02T16:04:00.000+08:00

It has been some time since I posted an entry to my Blog. I have neglected it as I have not really known what to say in it for some time now.
2010 was an incredibly challenging year with much change on the career front for me. Towards the end of the year things started to straighten out and 2011 looked like being a much better year than the last couple. However, there is only so much time in a day, week and month to get round to all the commitments that I have made and that takes some managing.
I wonder whether the beneficiaries of the hard work have a single clue as to how hard I do actually work to put food on the table? Work, agonize and fight for everything that I can get for their benefit. I often wonder this and suppose that I will never know as it would be churlish to expect any kind of gratitude or even a thank you. As I said, no doubt churlish to expect anything in return.
The last 2 years have been spent against a backdrop of watching a mother fight for the ability to see her sons. A mother who loves her children as deeply and passionately as any other normal mother would. A mother who left a husband after years of unhappiness and who has been punished ever since.
I wonder when the healing can start properly for the sons and the mother? No one in their right mind would ever believe that this mother would ever be able to harm anyone, whether deliberately, directly or indirectly.
The sooner that the process that this mother is currently in, evolves and matures, the better. Boys need their mothers and mothers need their boys. Time will show that and I sincerely hope that this mother and her boys will heal fully in time.
And yes, for those of you that may read this and start to get on your high horses, get over it – it is 2011 – divorces happen for all sorts of reasons, but usually because the love is dead and in some way or another there has been a betrayal. Simple, resonating stuff.
Our measure of being successful parents has NOTHING to do with being able to stay in the parental relationship or not.
Enough of that. I am a successful father and that is how I measure myself EVERY single day. Have I today done what I need to do to ensure the best possible future for my children? Well YES, I have.
Do I wish I could see my children more? YES I do.
Just as I wish it for the mother of two sons who should be able to see each other more.
Will this be rectified? Yes it will be on all counts. Mother and sons will for 100% sure see more of each other, they will re-establish and then grow together and I will be an ecstatic witness to that; a witness to love triumphing over everything else in its path as it always will.

South Africa's foreign policy: Human Rights? What's that?

2010-10-20T12:53:00.002+08:00

Nelson Mandela’s successors have other fish to fry abroad
Oct 14th 2010 | Johannesburg

Jacob Zuma eyes China.THE first time it served as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, in 2007-08, South Africa did much to squander its reputation as a beacon of human rights. It repeatedly sided with Russia and China, both former backers of the now ruling African National Congress (ANC) in its struggle against apartheid, to block Western-backed resolutions condemning miscreants such as Myanmar, Iran and Zimbabwe. After its election this week to a second two-year term on the Security Council, South Africa has a chance, under a new president, to do better. But will it?

When Jacob Zuma came to power 17 months ago, he was widely expected to concentrate more on domestic matters than his philosophising, globe-trotting predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. Foreign policy barely featured in Mr Zuma’s election campaign. Yet if anything Mr Zuma has been even more active than Mr Mbeki on the foreign front, chalking up two dozen trips abroad in the past 12 months, including visits to all the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the giants of the emerging world, as well as to Britain, France, the United States and a slew of African countries.

Mr Zuma says his foreign-policy priorities are the same as those of previous ANC governments: to boost African solidarity and unity; to strengthen ties between countries in the southern hemisphere; to keep good relations with strategic trading partners in the West; to reform the UN and Bretton Woods institutions to give the poor world a stronger voice; and to promote democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Mr Zuma sounds a bit less ideological and a bit keener to boost South Africa’s trade and commerce. He invariably has an entourage of businessmen; 370 went on his trip in August to China, South Africa’s biggest trading partner.

But has Mr Zuma honoured Nelson Mandela’s pledge that “human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs”, any more than Mr Mbeki did? Civil-liberties groups such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch were encouraged at first by Mr Zuma’s apparently tougher stance on Zimbabwe. He protested against Myanmar’s detention last year of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. He condemned the Sri Lankan government’s treatment of the Tamil Tiger rebels. He criticised Israel’s attack on a Turkish ship bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. And he warned Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC), that South Africa, as a member of the court, would arrest him if he set foot on South African soil.

Even so, a deeper change of heart has yet to be seen. On Zimbabwe, Mr Zuma has been barely more robust than Mr Mbeki. Almost a year ago the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a 15-member regional club, appointed Mr Zuma to replace Mr Mbeki as official “facilitator” in power-sharing between Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and its prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, who leads the former opposition; and he was supposed to have persuaded the pair to settle their differences by December 2009. Since then, deadlines have come and gone amid little progress. Mr Tsvangirai’s people continue to be beaten up and jailed, white-owned farms seized, journalists arrested and senior officials unilaterally appointed by Mr Mugabe in violation of the constitution, with neither Mr Zuma nor the SADC uttering a word. Western diplomats say that he is beavering away behind the scenes, but the results have been thin.

On Sudan, Mr Zuma’s refusal to receive Mr Bashir may at first blush seem a laudable move to bolster international justice. But Mr Zuma has made clear that he roundly disapproves of the ICC’s prosecution of Sudan’s president—or any other African leader suspected of atrocities. The imperative of peace should precede notions of justice, he argues. On the Security Council, South Africa is likely to pursue the African Union’s avowed aim to get the UN to suspend Mr Bashir’s indictment.

Indeed, Mr Zuma seems as happy to hobnob with dictators as Mr Mbeki was. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Swaziland’s King Mswati III and Mr Mugabe all merrily attended his inauguration. On his trips abroad Mr Zuma has never brought up human rights, at least not in public. He has been characteristically silent over the Nobel peace prize just awarded to a Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo.

At home and abroad Mr Zuma is a supreme pragmatist, anxious to please everyone and offend no one. Though less viscerally anti-Western than Mr Mbeki, he sees power flowing to the east and south and hopes to catch the wave. Hence his wooing of the BRICs. Mr Zuma wants that elite club to include his own country, as Africa’s indisputable heavyweight, despite its smaller population and land mass and its slower-growing economy. Back from China, both sides aglow with friendship, he said he expected the group to reach a “favourable decision” soon. As a new member of the Security Council, where all four BRICs will now have a seat, South Africa will bend over backwards to please its potential new partners.

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Reproduced from www.economist.com

Darkening Rainbow

2010-08-22T09:48:00.002+08:00

The Times: 20 August 2010

There are bleak historical resonances in South Africa’s assault on Press freedoms

In staging the World Cup, South Africa sought the world’s attention and admiration. It achieved both of these ambitions: the smoothly administrated tournament was a triumph for South Africa’ standing in the world and for its self-confidence at home.

But having asked for the world’s scrutiny, South Africa should not be allowed to hide from it now. The ANC government is planning to restrict the freedom of the Press and enhance its ability to intimidate the media. South Africa hoped that the World Cup would represent a coming of age. Just six weeks later, the optimistic mood has been overshadowed by fears that the country is regressing to the abuses of a darker era.

Raymond Louw, who once edited the country’s leading anti-apartheid newspaper, has argued that the assault on Press freedom is ‘worse than anything under apartheid. There are two main strands. The ‘Information Bill’ proposal would permit any head of a state body to declare anything of their choosing to be a government secret. Even possession of such information, let alone reporting it, could carry a punishment of up to 25 years. In addition, the Government plans a new media tribunal with powers to imprison journalists and impose crippling fines.

The motivation of this illiberal tranche of policies reveals a great deal about the ANC. It was the rivalry between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma that encouraged the Press to abandon its reverential reporting of the ANC. But having delighted in the Press’s criticism of Mr Mbeki, Mr Zuma --- whose polygamous and adulterous lifestyle is an easy target --- has quickly tired of it in office. The South African Broadcasting Corporation has been told to carry no more interviews with Mr Mbeki as they undermine the Zuma Government.

It is true that the South African Press has not been blameless. They have made some serious factual mistakes. But the ANC is attacking is attacking the media for what it is doing right, not what it is doing wrong. Reports consistently demonstrate that corruption, even at ministerial level, is now almost an open arrangement, with state contracts often allocated to favoured bidders who then pay back-handers. This month a journalist at South Africa’s Sunday Times was arrested after he wrote an article critical of the national police chief.

The ANC is beginning to fear that the Press now threatens its prospects in municipal elections. The Government’s corruption and the five-star lifestyle of its ministers is so endemic that it is curbing the Government’s ability to provide the basic infrastructure and social services that it promises at every election. Attacking the media also provides a rare unifying thread for the ANC. Its disparate groups of communists, nationalists and unionists can agree on little else apart from that the media is the common enemy.

The ANC’s war with the media has already prompted international opprobrium. This week the US Ambassador expressed his dismay at the proposed laws. But the most damning indictment resides at home, where even formerly optimistic voices admit that they are even more depressed than ever before.

If South Africa abandons its protection of essential constitutional liberties, it is gambling with its democratic future and undermining the principles that sustained its historic fight against apartheid.

After the final whistle

2010-07-14T11:27:00.004+08:00

By Steuart Pennington of www.sagoodnews.co.za

We have been asked by a range of organisations, think-tanks and academic institutions to comment on what we should do as a country to sustain the momentum of our FIFA 2010 remarkable success "after the final whistle has blown". In this newsletter, CEO of SA - The Good News, Steuart Pennington, shares his thoughts.

Words of Caution

We must retain the perspective that FIFA 2010 is an "event" in which we, as a country, have excelled. But since 1994 we have staged more than 147 international sporting events with similar success, just not on the same scale. We have done this before.

We must recognise that this particular success has resulted in a sense of national unity and pride that is unprecedented. In addition the global community, probably for the first time, has both an experiential and an informed view of our country.
The global media have had to eat their words. If anything they will respond by seeking out opportunities to vindicate their prophecies of doom and gloom. They are unlikely to lavish us with ongoing praise.

That we have learnt a number of invaluable lessons is indisputable, but it would be unwise to think that as a result of our FIFA 2010 success we have discovered new truths about our country which will enable us to deal with many of our underlying structural challenges such as education and health in a new way. If anything, our considerable success has reinforced existing positive truths that the doubters have been nay-saying for the past 14 years. But these doubting Thomases, here and abroad, remain ignorant and cynical of the wider truths of our country. We would go as far as to say that they still don’t understand or comprehend them.

It is upon this challenge which we must build. Ensuring that the truth of our country is understood here and abroad.

Therefore, we must NOT:

 Use this success to have a go at politicians; the "Danny Jordaan for President" syndrome;
 Use this "event" success to think that we can adopt a similar approach to some of our structural challenges, health, education etc. expecting similar results;
 Try to maintain the existing social momentum. "Events" result in euphoria and disappointment – one-off highs and lows. Trends, if positive, produce long term confidence and if, negative deep seated anxieties;
 Think that we must move onto the next "big thing". Life will, and needs to, get back to normal;
 Shoot from the hip by becoming baffled by our own euphoria and thinking that we are now in a position to change South Africa and the world;

What we must do:
• Compile accurate statistics on all the issues that have surrounded this event, such as attendance at games, number of tourism visits, the tourism spend, the tourism accommodation profile, the success of the special courts, the security incidents, the transport issues and the like. There will be much that we can learn for the future;
• Measure the impact of this event on our global brand equity. Answering the question "Has South Africa and Africa’s branding improved, and what are the lessons learned?";
• Measure the impact of this event on Africa, particularly in respect of relations between South Africa and the rest of Africa;
• Understand the legacy expectations and our ability to deliver on them in respect of Africa;
• Examine the lessons learned, and build on them
• Hold FIFA and the teams that visited to their legacy project undertakings;

We should recognise that:
 The conventional wisdoms, the generalisations and the cynicism in this country in respect of our future will not disappear with this success (just listen to the current talk shows – the cynicism is back!). Only 6 months ago a survey revealed that 80% of our youth were planning to leave South Africa because of a lack of confidence in its future; lack of job opportunities, education, BEE, security, xenophobia and Affirmative Action were given as the reasons. These perceptions will not suddenly disappear;
 That many of our developmental challenges continue to require long term structural changes which are now not "suddenly" possible because of our success in organising the FIFA World Cup;
 That we have been distracted from many of our underlying challenges; unemployment, poverty, health, education, racial issues and crime by this event;
 That much of the truth of SA still evades the media, our newly found global fans and the reading public.
Therefore, our recommendations in terms of what we should be doing to maintain the momentum are as follows:
 Focus on a campaign of teaching our citizenry and the global community the truth about South Africa with a specific intention of instilling confidence in its future;
 Develop a specific campaign around mobilising civil society towards building a safer South Africa;
 Focus on youth development and opportunity;
 Implement a schools campaign to build an understanding of our truths for both teachers and learners so that they develop an informed perspective of our future
 Focus on good citizenship, www.forgood.co.za is an example of this;

Our challenge is to translate the success of this event into long term sustainable initiatives that build the same kind of confidence that we have right now.

Our challenge remains real confidence in the future of South Africa.

New email addresses

2010-07-11T10:42:00.000+08:00

Please up date your records with my new email address details:
Primary: owen@owenleed.com
Secondary: owen@leed-family.com
All A1 related email addresses for me are now redundant.

There are no miracles in Africa - A self destructing continent

2010-04-30T14:56:00.005+08:00

James Jackson was educated at Cheam School, Wellington College, Bristol University, King’s College London, the London College of Law, and the Inns of Court School of Law. He was "Called to the Bar" and is still a Member of the Inner Temple.

He is the bestselling author of historical thrillers including Blood Rock and Pilgrim. As a postgraduate he specialised in analysing future trends in international terrorism, was Called to the Bar, and worked for many years as a political-risk consultant. His non-fiction publications include The Counter-terrorist Handbook. He is based in London.

There are no miracles in Africa - A self destructing continent

White Zimbabweans [previously Rhodesians] used to tell a joke — what is the difference between a tourist and a racist? The answer — about a week.

Few seem to joke any more. Indeed, the last time anyone laughed out there was over the memorable head-line “BANANA CHARGED WITH SODOMY”(relating to the Reverend Canaan Banana and his alleged proclivities).

Zimbabwe was just the latest African state to squander its potential, to swap civil society for civil strife and pile high its corpses. Then the wrecking virus moves on and a fresh spasm of violence erupts elsewhere.

The Congo, Ivory Coast , Sudan , Rwanda , Sierra Leone , even Kenya .. Take your pick, for it is the essence of Africa , the recurring A-Z of horror. Therefore, as surely as Nelson Mandela took those steps from captivity to freedom, his own country will doubtless shuffle into chaos and ruin.

Mark my words. One day it will be the turn of South Africa to revert to type, its farms will lie wasted and its towns will be battle zones, its dreams and expectations will be rotting on the veldt. That is the way of things. Africa rarely surprises, it simply continues to appall.

When interviewed on BBC Radio, the legendary South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela spoke of the 350-year struggle for freedom by blacks in South Africa. The man might play his trumpet like a dream, but he talks arrant nonsense. What he has bought into is a false narrative that rewrites history and plays upon post-colonial liberal angst. The construct is as follows: white, inglorious and bad; black, noble and good; empire, bad; independence, good; the west, bad; the African, good. Forgotten in all this is that while Europeans were settling and spreading from the Cape, the psychopathic Shaka Zulu was employing his Impi to crush everyone —including the Xhosa - in his path, and the Xhosa were themselves busy slaughtering Bushmen and Hottentots. Yet it is the whites who take the rap, for it was they who won the skirmishes along the Fish and Blood Rivers and who eventually gained the prize.

What suffers is the truth, and — of course — Africa. We are so cowed by the moist-eyed mantras of the left and the oath-laden platitudes of Bono and Geldof, we are forced to accept collective responsibility for the bloody mess that is now Africa. It paralyses us while excusing the black continent and its rulers.

Whenever I hear people agitate for the freezing of Third World debt, I want to shout aloud for the freezing of those myriad overseas bank accounts held by black African leaders (President Mobutu of Zaire alone is believed to have squirreled away well over $10 billion).

Whenever apartheid is held up as a blueprint for evil, I want to mention Bokassa snacking on human remains, Amin clogging a hydro-electric dam with floating corpses, the President of Equatorial Guinea crucifying victims along the roadway from his airport.

Whenever slavery is dredged up, I want to remind everyone the Arabs were there before us, the native Ashanti and others were no slouches at the game, and it remains in places like the Ivory Coast.

Whenever I hear the Aids pandemic somehow blamed on western indifference, I want to point to the African native practice of dry sex, the hobby-like prevalence of rape and the clumps of despotic black leaders who deny a link between the disease and HIV and who block the provision of anti-retrovirals. And whenever Africans bleat of imperialism and colonialism, I want to campaign for the demolition of every road, college, and hospital we ever built to let them start again. It is time they governed themselves. Yet few play the victim card quite so expertly as black Africans; few are quite so gullible as the white liberal-left.

On the eve of this millennium, Nelson Mandela and friends lit candles mapping the shape of their continent and declared the Twenty-first Century would belong to Africa. It’s a pity that for every Mandela, there are over a hundred Robert Mugabes.

So Britain had an empire and Britain did slavery. Boo hoo. Deal with it. Move on. Slavery ended here over two hundred years ago. More recently, there were tens of millions of innocents enslaved or killed in Europe by the twin industrialised evils of Nazism and Stalinism. My own first cousins—twin brothers aged sixteen—died down a Soviet salt mine. I need no lecture on shackles and neck-irons. Most of us are descendents of both oppressors and oppressed; most of us get over it.

Mind you, I am tempted by thoughts of compensation from Scandinavia for the wickedness of its Viking raids and its slaving-hub on the Liffe. And as for the 1066 invasion of England by William the Bastard…

The white man’s burden is guilt over Africa (the black man’s is sentimentality), and we are blind for it. We have tipped hundreds of billions of aid-dollars into Africa without first ensuring proper governance. We encourage NGOs and food-parcels and have built a culture of dependency. We shy away from making criticism, tiptoe around the crassness of the African Union and flinch at every anti-western jibe.

The result is a free-for-all for every syphilitic black despot and his coterie of family functionaries.

Africa casts a long and toxic shadow across our consciousness. It is patronised and allowed to underperform, so too its distant black diaspora. A black London pupil is excluded from his school, not because he is lazy, stupid or disruptive, but because that school is apparently racist; a black youth is pulled over by the police, not because black males commit over eighty percent of street crime, but because the authorities are somehow corrupted by prejudice. Thus the tale continues.

Excuse is everywhere and a sense of responsibility nowhere. You will rarely find either a black national leader in Africa or a black community leader in the west prepared to put up his hands and say it is our problem, our fault. Those who look to Africa for their roots, role-models and inspiration are worshipping false gods. And like all false gods, the feet are of clay, the snouts long and designed for the trough, and the torture-cells generally well-equipped.

I once met the son of a Liberian government minister and asked if he had seen video-footage of his former president Samuel Doe being tortured to death. ‘Of course’, he replied with a smile. ‘Everyone has’. They cut off the ears of Doe and force-fed them to him. His successor, the warlord Charles Taylor, was elected in a landslide result using the campaign slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him”. Nice people. Liberia was founded and colonised by black Americans to demonstrate what slave stock could achieve. They certainly showed us. Forgive my heretical belief that had a black instead of a white tribe earlier come to dominate South Africa, its opponents would not have been banished to Robben island. They would have been butchered and buried there.

When asked about the problem of Africa, Harold Macmillan suggested building a high wall around the continent and every century or so removing a brick to check on progress. I suspect that over entire millennia, the view would prove bleak and unvarying.

Visiting a state in West Africa a few years ago, I wandered onto a beach and marveled at the golden sands and at the sunlight catching on the Atlantic surf. It allowed me to forget for a moment the local news that day of soldiers seizing a schoolboy and pitching him head-first into an operating cement-machine. Almost forget. Then I spotted a group of villagers beating a stray dog to death for their sport. A metaphor of sorts for all that is wrong, another link in a word-association chain that goes something like Famine… Drought… Overpopulation… Deforestation… Conflict… Barbarism… Cruelty… Machetes… Child Soldiers… Massacres… Diamonds… Warlords…Tyranny… Corruption… Despair… Disease… Aids… Africa.

South Africa needs Malema

2010-04-13T18:37:00.000+08:00

Written by Wayne G

2010-03-24

Since the first time I heard Julius Malema preach hate I have harboured a deep seeded resentment toward him and his alienation tactics, hate speech, mindless babble and other forms of bigotry only fit for the 12th century. For the first time in 14 years I became a vocal critic of the ANC and what it has become.

I always gave them the benefit of the doubt until this little egotistical megalomaniac came along. Like many peace loving South Africans I was gobsmacked by the cheek of this man parading as the self proclaimed future leader of the ANC and the country with all the answers.

The sudden realisation that we actually need Malema ironically dawned on me on Human Rights Day. Malema is exactly what this country needs. He is the catalyst to the systematic implosion of the ANC. He will systematically weather down the little goodness the ANC has left. He is like a time bomb planted in the middle of Luthuli House.

Malema through all his juvenile ranting and sociopathic public tantrums, personal attacks and publicly played out vendettas is destroying the reputation of the ANC quicker than any opposition party could ever dream of doing. He is systematically diluting the credibility of the ANC with every silly word carved out of his "struggling" mind. He is making a mockery of all the ANC's hard fought freedoms, their laws, constitution, leaders, elders, alliance partners and all Mandela wanted for South Africa . Zuma eventually publically denounced rogue members attacking other politicians in the media and the very next day Malema verbally attacked the PAC and the Boer. This shows how much he cares about what our president says.

Malema is a rogue pathogen and the unfortunate host in this case is the ANC. By definition pathogens harm their hosts by producing toxins that promote infection and illness. Malema and his self serving prophecy are toxic to the ANC and making it sicker and weaker by the day.

The government seems unwilling or unable to stop him and with each passing day he sucks more blood out of the ANC and spits it at the feet of the true heroes of the struggle and its alliance partners. A struggle he speaks of like he was there. He was 13 in 1994. What could he possibly know about the struggle?

Isn't it ironic that at the peak of Malema 's hate speech and pointless rhetoric the opposition parties are talking aim and forming an alliance? It's as if they sense the rumblings of weakness and vulnerability in the ruling party. Never before has the ANC been dogged with so many controversies, from a presidential love child to vast corruption and illegal tenders.

As a tax payer I am disgusted at the opulent behaviour of the ANC and its members at the expense of the people of this country. The hypocrisy is preposterous and unbecoming of any government, let alone that of a poor third world country with huge socio-economic inequalities, spiralling crime levels, highest HIV infection rates on earth and mass corruption.

The hypocrisy of Malema also shows the depth of his understanding of the term Boer. The very same "Boers" that he wants to shoot are the farmers that farm the chickens that make the Nandos that he feeds on daily.

I hope others incensed by Malema can share in this sentiment. It took a lot of soul searching for me to unearth this understanding and with it peace of mind. So don't pack for Australia just yet, stick around a little longer and watch this beast go down in a blaze of glory. Malema has a job to do and we need to let him do it. In a couple of years he will be history. His thoughtless words and provocations will bring the ANC down, just like the struggle songs spurred the demise of white oppressive rule.

History is what it is. The future is now. Yes, we do need to remember the fundamental principles that liberated South Africa , but not so we hate and resent our oppressors but so we can learn and design our future through compassion, tolerance and positive community input and political leadership.

Malema is a racist, his words and actions make it so. We all know where racism got us in the first place. Songs about death, or killing members of our diverse society where everyone is offered the same protection by the constitution is wrong and unconstitutional.

So instead of trying to shut him up and fearing him, rather encourage him. Your emotions just like mine are wasted on "Mal Malema". The quicker he can destroy the ANC and its alliances the quicker a new government can fix this mess that is South Africa 2010. The word is out that South Africa 's first real all inclusive opposition party is in the wings. Good things await us, we all deserve it.

AGONY...

2010-03-17T07:37:00.001+08:00

I wonder how people define the word "agony"?

Children

2010-03-14T16:43:00.003+08:00

It seems some time since I last made a posting which suggests that I have not had much on my mind.

Quite the contrary. There has been a lot going on, some good, some bad, some deeply disturbing, all of which I will talk of here in the fullness of time. There will be some who do not like what have to say or what I have felt. More of this later.

Today's thought struck me as I watched a toddler being handed from Mum to Dad and back again..... Will I ever be able to watch a family and not think about my children and all that I have missed in the last years of them growing up on a different continent to me?

Traci has often said that they need me and I know that they do. I can assure you that I need them too. I miss my children every day and ache for the times that I am able to spend with them. I will be with them again in less than a month and that always fuels me to be a better person. I cannot wait to see them.

Megan - I love you
Jesse - I love you
Jake - I love you
Wendy - I love you

My thoughts are with you always despite the distance, the time apart and the difficulties of managing around global time differences and so on.

I hope that in the years to come we will be able to spend more and more time together and that you will be able to get to know me better and vice versa.

I love you.

I am nothing without you.

Daddy
xxxx

Marked

2009-12-29T13:21:00.004+08:00

The tattoo on this soldier's back spells kafir, the Arabic word for infidel. He is a member of the 10th Mountain Division, serving in Wardak province, Afghanistan.

An interesting reflection of our times as we head to 2010

See more here:

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595_2010996,00.html

25 December 2009

2009-12-25T23:03:00.003+08:00

The truth of today will unravel itself and show it for what it is.
No more Mr Nice Guy.

Tiger Woods admits "transgressions", apologises...

2009-12-03T17:04:00.002+08:00

The truth, like a cork in water, ALWAYS rises to the top. Take note.

A white Afrikaans bird........ who left the country for a better place!!

2009-12-02T11:28:00.003+08:00

Unbelievable choice...

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/sports/45180-charlize-theron-to-be-leading-lady-in-world-cup-draw

CAPE TOWN, Dec 1 — South African actress Charlize Theron has landed the leading lady’s role in Friday’s draw for next year’s World Cup finals in her home country, Fifa announced today.

Theron will be joint host of the 90-minute show to be televised live to an estimated global audience of more than two hundred million people in 200 countries at 1900 local time (1700 GMT).

She will join Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke to host the procedure of placing the 32 finalists into eight groups of four teams for the tournament which runs from June 11 to July 11.

The show will include an African musical spectacular, including gospel and jazz.

A host of sporting celebrities will also take part in the draw including Ethiopia’s Olympic champion runner Haile Gebrselassie, England midfielder David Beckham, South Africa footballer Matthew Booth and cricketer Makhaya Ntini and the host country’s rugby World Cup captain John Smit.

South African president Jacob Zuma will be in the audience along with Nobel Peace prize winners Frederik de Klerk and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Fifa will announce which teams will be seeded for the draw at a news conference tomorrow. — Reuters

The Very Reverend Jason Selvaraj

2009-11-15T16:51:00.001+08:00

I heard the story today of how when the Reverend Jason (the Dean at St Mary's Cathedral KL) is called upon to visit a member of his congregation who may be ill in hopital, he will do so.

In doing so he reads to them from the bible and says a small prayer for them.

On opening his eyes he sees patients in the beds in the ward looking at him with 'longing in their eyes'.

Being the man he is and not wishing to impose, he always simply asks whether anyone else would like a prayer said for them.

Many hands always go up.

And many are the hands of non-Christians.

I found this quite an interesting read today - the subject of racial stereotyping...

2009-11-04T15:54:00.003+08:00

Marathon winner caught in American ‘race’ debate
NEW YORK, Nov 3 — As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?
He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.
But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.
The debate reveals what some academics say are common assumptions and stereotypes about race and sports and athletic achievement in the United States. Its dimensions, they add, go beyond the particulars of Keflezighi and bear on undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced.
“Race is still extremely important when you think about athletics,” said David Wiggins, a professor at George Mason University who studies African-Americans and sports.
“There is this notion about innate physiological gifts that certain races presumably possess. Quite frankly, I think it feeds into deep-seated stereotypes. The more blatant forms of racial discrimination and illegal forms have been eliminated, but more subtle forms of discrimination still exist.”
There are few cases parallel to Keflezighi’s in American sports. Some are noteworthy because of how little discussion, by comparison, they generated over the athlete’s nationality.
For example, the Hall of Fame basketball player Patrick Ewing (Jamaica) and the gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin (Russia) were born abroad, but when they represented the United States in competition, they seemingly did not encounter the same skepticism that Keflezighi has.
Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said the argument about Keflezighi “tells us there are people that still have racial red flags go up when certain things happen.”
He added: “Many people think that with an African-American president, we are in a post-racial society. Clearly, we are not.”
The online postings about Keflezighi were anonymous. One of the milder ones on Letsrun.com said: “Give us all a break. It’s just another African marathon winner.”
A comment on The New York Times’s site said: “Keflezighi is really another elite African runner by birth, upbringing, and training. Americans are kidding themselves if they say he represents a resurgence of American distance prowess! On the other hand, he is an excellent representative of how we import everything we need!”
In a commentary on CNBC.com, Darren Rovell wrote, “Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.”
Keflezighi said yesterday that remarks about his heritage were not new. “I’ve had to deal with it,” he said. “But, hey, I’ve been here 22 years. And the US is a land of immigrants. A lot of people have come from different places.”
The last American to win the New York race, Alberto Salazar, was also born in another country. He came to the United States from Cuba when he was 2. When he won, though, he did not hear grumbling about whether he should be considered an American. He pointed out two differences between his case and Keflezighi’s: Salazar is Hispanic, not black; and when he won in 1982, the Internet, in its current form, did not exist.
The argument that Keflezighi is not really an American makes little sense, Salazar said in a telephone interview.
“What if Meb’s parents had moved to this country a year before he was born?” he said. At what point is someone truly American? “Only if your family traces itself back to 1800, will it count?”
The issue previously arose when Keflezighi won a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, said Weldon Johnson, a founder of Letsrun.com. So when the negative postings appeared Sunday, he said, “I did not like seeing them, but I was not surprised.”
Perhaps the passion over Keflezighi’s victory stems from the despair over the state of American distance running. Americans used to be the best, in the 1970s and 1980s. But their time of glory waned as East Africans began dominating.
The success of distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia fostered a lore of East Africans as genetically gifted, unbeatable, dominant because of their biology. Scientists have looked for — but not found — genes specific to East Africans that could account for their distance ability, said John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies race and sports.
But, he said, “there is a difference between saying we don’t have a scientifically respectable conclusion and the very broad and perhaps mistaken claim that there is no physiological phenomenon here whatsoever.”
Regarding the question of whether East Africans have a genetic advantage, Hoberman said, “We don’t know.”
“The more relevant question is, who gets to represent the country?” he said, adding, “Only racists will insist that ‘our’ athletes meet specific racial criteria.”
Consternation over the race of elite American athletes is not new. A century ago, the notion of a “great white hope” emerged — a white boxer who whites hoped could beat the black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson.
In running, as African-American athletes excelled in sprints, they were said to lack the endurance or the fortitude to prevail in longer distances, Wiggins said. Then, when East Africans started to thrive, the argument changed to one claiming there are special East African genes.
“From my perspective, it is racist thinking at its utmost,” Wiggins said.
In Salazar’s view, Keflezighi’s victory is another indication that American distance running is coming back. Keflezighi never ran competitively before he came to the United States, and he did all his training here.
“Can American-born guys and gals compete?” Salazar said. “I think we are starting to see that.
“Does Meb resolve that argument? No. He wasn’t born here.
“And neither was I.” — NYT

Anachronistic Cowboy

2009-10-03T13:21:00.008+08:00

Really?

This amused me.....

2009-09-09T12:19:00.003+08:00

Canada, asylum and the sprinkler salesman

Canada is a very large place, seriously in the market for more people. It was not, however, aching for the company of Brandon Carl Huntley, 31, late of Mowbray, a Cape Town suburb.

He was in the country illegally. His resume, according to newspaper accounts, included stints as a carnival worker and as a garden sprinkler salesman, positions Canada is manifestly able to fill from its current reserves of human capital and which would not classify his departure from South Africa as contributing greatly to any brain drain.

So Huntley had to find some other means of persuading the Big Empty to have him. He chose to seek asylum, claiming he had been persecuted by muggers back home because he was white and the local police had done nothing to protect him.

Among the logical holes in his story was his admission that he had never reported being mugged to the police. He said did not trust them to act. Evidence of their inaction was therefore lacking.

Assuming, in the absence of police reports, he truly was attacked six or seven” times – he had scars purporting to show it – he was also hard put to prove that the alleged attacks were racially motivated. We have only his word for it that the attackers used racial epithets if and when they set upon him. And even if they did use such language, that is hardly probative of his colour having been the decisive factor in their choice of target.

Canadian headline writers often play on the title of their national anthem, O Canada, when their countrymen do something particularly embarrassing. The ruling by William Davis, sole member of the immigration tribunal that heard Huntley’s case, surely qualifies for the Oh, Canada!” treatment. In granting Huntley refugee status, Davis agreed that the applicant would stand out like a sore thumb in any part of South Africa”. The evidence” showed a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness by the government and security forces to protect white South Africans from persecution by African South Africans”.

This is ignorant on so many levels. Merely to have visited South Africa is to know that black people do not persecute white people there. It runs counter to everything that makes South Africa special to all of us who love it. Yes, crime is a serious problem. Dealing with it is in the top tier of the government’s agenda. By a huge margin, the majority of victims is black.A final verdict on Davis’s ruling must await the release of the full text. At this writing, we only have the bits Huntley’s lawyer, Russell Kaplan, a South African expat who has been living in Canada for 20 years, shared with the media. Still, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was a most peculiar proceeding. Davis relied in good measure on horror stories told by Kaplan’s sister Laura, herself a recent immigrant. Well, there can’t have been an ounce of bias there, can there?

The case might well have passed unnoticed had not Kaplan, or his client, decided to let the world know about it. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, home of the tribunal that heard the matter, renders more than 40 000 decisions are year. The proceeding was closed to the public. There is as yet no mention of it on the board’s website, no press release was issued and IRB officials have studiously declined comment citing privacy concerns.

Some if not all tribunal decisions are eventually published on the internet. Three of Davis’ rulings from 2007 can be found there. In one, he granted asylum to a former member of the Peruvian armed forces who feared reprisals for atrocities that occurred while he was on active service against the Shining Path in the 1980s.

Two other applications Davis rejected. One was from an Albanian who claimed his wife’s brothers were out to kill him after he was photographed having gay sex. Davis was not convinced he faced persecution. The man merely came to Canada to find a better life”. The second was from an Afghan who said the Taliban were after him. Davis found the timing of this application suspect. The claimant made his refugee claim on the very same day his status in Canada expired.” And yet Huntley’s claim, made long after his visa expired, was somehow not so suspect.You have to know what you are looking for to find these cases. Kaplan and his client might have done themselves a favour by simply shutting up, but no, they wanted their 15 minutes of fame.

Huntley would not have been missed in South Africa which, like Canada, faces no shortage of carnival workers or sprinkler salesmen. South Africa would not have had to publicly respond to the shameful distortions contained in Davis’s decision.

As it is, the Canadian government may well decide to reverse the decision and Huntley will be back to square one.

This is not, incidentally, the first case of its kind. In 1997, a Durban couple, Michelle and David Thomas, came to California with their two children on visitors visas. A year later they petitioned for asylum. They said they had endured and would continue to face reprisals because David’s father, Boss Ronnie”, was a racist thug who threatened and abused his black workers back in South Africa. Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court which finally upheld its initial rejection by an immigration judge.

At least they had the good grace not to claim they were the victims of anybody’s racism other than Dad’s.

By Simon Barber

Simon Barber is the US country manager of the International Marketing Council

Source: www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com

Day 32...

2009-07-28T07:23:00.003+08:00

Just in case anyone thought anything different..... day 32 is here.

I stopped counting at Day 10 which was the breakthrough milestone for me.

Weight: Holding at 96kg. STRONG!! But realising that my appetite is twice what it was - amazing. I do have to be careful until that settles down.

Lungs: Did 80m underwater at the weekend. For those that think that is not far - try it!!

Sleep: The biggest surprise of all is that I sleep better than I have for 30 years. If I wake, it is NOT to the urge of wanting to smoke, which I must admit, I used to. 24/7 it was for me. And best of all, that last cigarette of the day that used to be SO important...... Well, it no longer pushes my pulse rate up to clearly NOT a resting rate, because I no longer need the drug!!

All good!! And smiling.

The Meaning of Life

2009-07-17T13:41:00.002+08:00

NEW YORK — What’s life for? That question stirred as I contemplated two rhesus monkeys, Canto, aged 27, and Owen, aged 29, whose photographs appeared last week in The New York Times.
The monkeys are part of a protracted experiment in aging being conducted by a University of Wisconsin team. Canto gets a restricted diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual while Owen gets to eat whatever the heck he pleases.
Preliminary conclusions, published in Science two decades after the experiment began, “demonstrate that caloric restriction slows aging in a primate species,” the scientists leading the experiment wrote. While just 13 percent of the dieting group has died in ways judged due to old age, 37 percent of the feasting monkeys are already dead.
These conclusions have been contested by other scientists for various reasons I won’t bore you with — boredom definitely shortens life spans.
Meanwhile, before everyone holds the French fries, the issue arises of how these primates — whose average life span in the wild is 27 (with a maximum of 40) — are feeling and whether these feelings impact their desire to live.
Monkeys’ emotions were part of my childhood. My father, a doctor, worked with them all his life. His thesis at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, was on the menstrual cycle of baboons. When he settled in Britain in the 1950s, he had some of his baboons (average life span 30) shipped over, ultimately donating a couple to the London Zoo.
Upon visiting the zoo much later, he got a full-throated greeting from the baboons, who rushed to the front of their cage to tell him they’d missed him. Moral of story: Don’t underestimate monkeys’ feelings.
Which brings me to low-cal Canto and high-cal Owen: Canto looks drawn, weary, ashen and miserable in his thinness, mouth slightly agape, features pinched, eyes blank, his expression screaming, “Please, no, not another plateful of seeds!”
Well-fed Owen, by contrast, is a happy camper with a wry smile, every inch the laid-back simian, plump, eyes twinkling, full mouth relaxed, skin glowing, exuding wisdom as if he’s just read Kierkegaard and concluded that “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”
It’s the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, “Ripeness is all.” You don’t get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.
Speaking of St. Emilion, scientists, aware that most human beings don’t have the discipline to slash their calorie intake by almost a third, have been looking for substances that might mimic the effects of caloric restriction. They have found one candidate, resveratrol, in red wine.
The thing is there’s not enough resveratrol in wine to do the trick, so scientists are trying to concentrate it, or produce a chemical like it in order to offer people the gain (in life expectancy) without the pain (of dieting).
I don’t buy this gain-without-pain notion. Duality resides, indissoluble, at life’s core — Faust’s two souls within his breast, Anna Karenina’s shifting essence. Life without death would be miserable. Its beauty is bound to its fragility. Dawn is unimaginable without the dusk.
When life extension supplants life quality as a goal, you get the desolation of Canto the monkey. Living to 120 holds zero appeal for me. Canto looks like he’s itching to be put out of his misery.
There’s an alternative to resveratrol. Something is secreted in the love-sick that causes rapid loss of appetite — caloric restriction — yet scientists have been unable to reproduce this miracle substance, for if they did they would be decoding love. Because love is too close to the divine, life’s essence, it seems to defy such breakdown.
My mother died of cancer at 69. Her father lived to 98, her mother to 104. I said my mother died of cancer. But that’s not true. She was bipolar and depression devastated her. What took her life was misery.
We don’t understand what the mind secretes. The process of aging remains full of enigma. But I’d bet on jovial Owen outliving wretched Canto. I suspect those dissenting scientists I didn’t bore you with are right.
My 98-year-old grandfather had a party trick, making crisscross incisions into a watermelon, before allowing it to fall open in a giant red blossom. It was as beautiful as a lily opening — and, still vivid, close to what life is for.
When my father went to pick up his baboons at Heathrow airport, he stopped at a grocery store to buy them a treat. “Two pounds of bananas, please,” he said. But there were none. “O.K.,” he said, “Then I’ll take two pounds of carrots.” The shopkeeper gave him a very strange look before hurriedly handing over the carrots.
I can hear my 88-year-old father’s laughter as he tells this story. Laughter extends life. There’s little of it in the low-cal world and little doubt pudgy Owen will have the last laugh.

By Roger Cohen, published in the New York Times 15 July 2009

Ha ha ha

2009-07-17T11:45:00.001+08:00

hahahhahahahahhahahaha

Day 9

2009-07-05T10:44:00.001+08:00

Awesome. Not a single thought of wanting a smoke this morning.

Day 6

2009-07-02T08:10:00.001+08:00

I know, it's only rock and roll, but I like it like it yeah yeah yeah!!!!

Day 5

2009-07-01T16:05:00.003+08:00

Tick tock.

The cravings gnaw at me.

Powerful and overwhelming urges to smoke.

To light one up.

To draw in that lungful of poison and because I think it will make me feel great.

But I will not.... I will NOT.

Day 3

2009-06-29T12:05:00.003+08:00

Who would have thought that I would make it to day 3?

I bet no one!

I have and have avoided one or two crises this morning during which I could have set myself on fire to have a smoke..... got through them though and so far have been smoke free for 69 hours.

No more Carbon Monoxide in my body.

No more Nicotine in my body.

Day 2

2009-06-28T09:42:00.005+08:00

09h40 Sunday morning. I have been through the Friday night and Saturday night of a weekend.

On both nights I was out with friends, some of whom are smokers, and I must say that it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

I do have to be careful not to gulp gallons of alcohol down my throat every time I feel the urge to grab someone by the neck and steal their cigarettes from them!

By no means out of the woods yet, but a damn fine start.

Tick tock tock tock

Thanks you those of you who have been encouraging and supportive. Much appreciated.

Day 0

2009-06-26T10:09:00.003+08:00

It has started. I extinguished my last cigarette at 14h52 today local time in Kuala Lumpur.

31 years a smoker fool.

3 hours and 50 minutes a non smoker....

Nic Benson - you are a scholar and a gentleman for your words of support.

Non Smoker

2009-06-25T16:16:00.002+08:00

Tomorrow, 26 June 2009, I will attempt to become a non-smoker. It is time.

What is wrong with people???

2009-06-08T11:18:00.001+08:00

Honour (from the Latin word honos, honoris) is the evaluation of a person's trustworthiness and social status based on that individual's actions. Honour is deemed exactly what determines a person's character: whether or not the person reflects honesty, respect, integrity, or fairness.

Accordingly, individuals are assigned worth and stature based on the harmony of their actions, code of honour, and that of the society at large. Honour can be analysed as a relativistic concept, i.e., conflicts between individuals and even cultures arising as a consequence of material circumstance and ambition, rather than fundamental differences in principle.

Alternatively, it can be viewed as nativist — that honour is as real to the human condition as love, and likewise derives from the formative personal bonds that establish one's personal dignity and character.

Dr Samuel Johnson, in his "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), defined honour as having several senses, the first of which was "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness." This sort of honour derives from the perceived virtuous conduct and personal integrity of the person endowed with it.

On the other hand, Johnson also defined honour in relationship to "reputation" and "fame"; to "privileges of rank or birth", and as "respect" of the kind which "places an individual socially and determines his right to precedence."

This sort of honour is not so much a function of moral or ethical excellence, as it is a consequence of power.

An interesting piece by John Malherbe

2009-03-11T08:58:00.001+08:00

Just some more ramblings which you might find interesting or not. The essay is far from finished. I’m tending to narrate the ideas from the inside-out so it gets a little gappy and convoluted at times but the extrusions are inverting which is good.

I believe that our reactive society prevents us from seeing the magic and any communication needs to somehow convey the message so that we can stop apologising and making excuses. Retrieving a Soul Quote: R. W. Emerson “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the Soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with all its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and ever more goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, “I am divine. Through me God acts; through me speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou thinkest as I now think.”

What is the difference between a culture and a civilization and what might unite them or fuse them? A Soul? For the purpose of this discussion or task let us assume that the collective consciousness of South Africa is united. What do we mean by collective consciousness? There have been many descriptions of this phenomenon mostly characterized by a group identity, sense of humour, negative sentiment (doomsayers resistant to change or progress), a state being where it is characterized by fear or paranoia (violence stats.) or sense of inadequacy especially when applied to the developing countries in relation to the developed world. We might have the luxury of describing this state as a consciousness in formation or in an early stage of evolution but making progress, hold that thought.

If we perceive this united consciousness as a single person and forget the complexity that makes up this person or psyche, then we may see that this person is evolving. The hardship or friction they may be experiencing at any one time can be seen philosophically (in retrospect perhaps) to be the only thing that could have happened at that time to make them grow or progress to their next stage of evolution. The only thing that prevents them from seeing this fact is that they can’t see. They are in fact a bunch of thoughts, opinions, fears, regrets, reconciliation’s. In fact with all these thoughts they can’t see what they are, let alone what they should do.

It could be said that this person through all their trials, doubts and fears was evolving into a new state of Being but perhaps only if they realise what is happening to them and behave in a way which allows this to happen. If they do this they might be able to become what they are supposed to become and actually evolve.This new state of Being displays some remarkable but familiar behaviour. Listed these may include humility, empathy, tolerance, which collectively might be summed up as a “State of Grace”. In fact these familiar emotions are not emotions at all, they are a state Being that we are evolving into.

A significant proportion of South Africans were surprised but relieved that when Nelson Mandela and others were released from prison there was not a rampage of revenge and bloodshed. Perhaps this new state of Being doesn’t need revenge. In fact not only did this new state of Being not take vengeance, they accommodated the “enemy” and bent over backwards to make them feel that they belonged. This is a peculiarly South African characteristic, we are, I believe, the most hospitable, accommodating nation on earth. This thread unites us, black, white and everything in between. There is a strange something that, only here, makes it possible to be truly cosmopolitan. Everybody who comes here is made to feel at home, like they belong. As hard as we try to behave in this way as individuals from all our different perspectives and fears perhaps there is something else that unites us. Maybe Africa is home, a place where we can put up our feet, be silent, rest and recuperate, regenerate. Maybe Southern and South Africa is that place where we can all come to regenerate, to realise that we are evolving. A place where we can in a sense shed our skin and accept graciously this new state of Being. It can only happen where we belong, in the wilderness, in silence. If we tell people this in the simplest way they may also realise that this place, home, is where they need to come to find relaxation and respite, the only real opportunity to regenerate, something not available elsewhere. Maybe the only way to explain it is to tell the world to come home. That this is the only place where you can come and experience this new state of Being, what it feels like to be human.

Throughout history the great civilisations have one thing in common. They gave everyone a chance to feel what it was like to be human. Maybe South Africa will be considered to be the next great civilisation….It won’t if we don’t see what we are and what we are becoming. Whatever we do and whoever we are we all need to go home sometime to understand what it feels like to be human because we are human for a reason. Not only are we human for a reason, but male and female, rich and poor, black and white for the same reason. As each individual must learn to know themselves through their own eyes, their own perceptions, naked and raw, they must learn to see, so must a nation or a country or a civilisation. At best the current perception of itself (SA) must seem psychotic if not schizophrenic. This quest for seeing or perception is how we must begin to find our relationship with the world around us, it is our navigational tool. As the individual must take stock of what and who they are to begin regeneration so must the civilisation. As the individual or civilisation begins to see they will also know how far they can see, who they can reach, and in context, their role in the order of things will extract itself. They see what they are.This perceiving quest is how we must begin to find our relationship with the world around us. As the individual must take stock of what and who they are (take back their power) to complete their own creation, they will see how far they can see, who they can reach and in context their role in the order of things will extract itself.

The responsibility to take that essence (SA = Healing and Regeneration?) and in turn complete its creation becomes a part of the perceiving quest and a new mythology is born, one in which we unfold our own myth. The responsibility in the context of SA is perhaps more about perceiving or seeing itself before others can see it.

The real cost of Aids is emotional and spiritual, that death is priceless. This is what we have to tell the world. Not that we’ve beaten it through science and technology or suppression or interpretation of the facts, but through understanding. The only price to pay for Aids is that of not understanding, then we fight the war of inflation and poverty on other peoples turf and terms.

South Africa is one of the only places in the world where you can cultivate understanding but we know as South Africans we can cultivate that in most climates. In the late 60’s while everyone was focussing on the USA going to the moon a miracle happened in SA. A South African showed how it was possible to fix things inside. A heart was transplanted. Some dismissed this as tricking God or cheating death but Chris Barnard knows that all he did was buy us a little time.

Lets not forget the other Chris, Chris Hani and Nelson and Steve. They all knew this too and paid a huge price to buy some time.

Time for a Soul transplant. In Jerusalem one man died so that we might live? In SA many men died and maybe the really big miracle is still happening. What is a miracle but a massive contradiction. In SA we are living a miracle daily, in fact SA is a living miracle. One day people might find a computer disc or clay pot which when interpreted will carry the legend of a great civilisation with great leaders who built things. This won’t happen unless we see what we are and then go tell someone. The lungs of the earth are the rainforests, the heart perhaps the U.K., USA or Europe, the remaining organs can be assigned but what is missing is the Soul which is in SA. We know what happens if the Soul dies.So if we are ever going to be proud to be South African, black or white, maybe all we have to do is see that we are in the right place at the right time, see what we are or what we have the potential to be and what we can do. You won’t believe how far that can reach.

We can guess at what the sixth sense is and it will have a different slant for each one of us. I believe that as humans we have a seventh and more senses but the seventh is that which unites us. It is a sense of Being Human and a sense of Belonging. Mother nature or the nature of the Mother can only really be universally experienced in South Africa. In the country where black women raised white children with no bitterness or malice, with no reward or recompense to speak of, at least not in this life, in fact with extraordinary devotion and love. Everywhere else in the world we are humbled by nature or we “humble” it. We are isolated or alienated from nature and only return to de-stress or unwind. There are many beautiful places in the world that we escape to according to our means, creating memories and leaving mementoes (mostly litter). Sadly there is a sense that nature is subordinate, such is the way of our various western egocentric consciousnesses (consciencelessnesses), we visit condescendingly and return home “renewed”. I think we are missing the point.

Regeneration is the goal and we can settle for nothing less. In South Africa lies the possibility of Regeneration. In South Africa there is a sense of Being Home, a sense, not of humbling you or of quieting your soul but of making you understand that you belong. In many ways this is not a holiday destination, nor should that be the intent of the traveller to these parts.We have the possibility of creating a civilisation, that is what the African Renaissance is about. We need to take the time and the care and have patience, some people have already paid a huge price. Our attitude must not be “how do we beat that” or “how can we compete with that”. We don’t have to if we create something new and unique, we have all the materials. Time is both our worst enemy and our best friend. Most of us will not be around (in the final sense) to see the real fruits of the work that must begin now. How do we start something knowing we may never see its conclusion? What is a miracle but a massive contradiction (would suffice).

In South Africa where we sit on the side of the road the secret is that we are regenerating. Come home where you belong, put up your feet, relax see what you are and let Grace serve you………..

The legacy, apartheid and oppression, the debt absorbed, the Soul retrieved. It is up to us to live the completion of creation.

The Hairy Book

2009-02-04T16:42:00.004+08:00

In December 2008 the first words of a book were penned. Many have said that I should write a book and finally it is so that I am. Finally I am motivated enough to do so.

It will take some time to complete as the story will be a long one and will eventually encompass and represent all that I am as a person.

Its chapters will be varied and will tell a story that I hope will inspire anyone who reads it when it is ready to be read!

It will be a tale of dreams fulfilled.

It will be the truth of how quiet, buried ambitions can be realised with patience and persistence.

2009 - have a good one everyone

2009-01-01T23:42:00.003+08:00

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

Something to think about as we start the year.

Or more simply put:

CARPE DIEM

20 years

2008-09-27T21:31:00.003+08:00

A lot happens in 20 years.
A lot changes in 20 years and yet so much is actually the same.
I have just realised in the last few days that it was 20 years ago that I graduated with a degree. The fact that I have one always mildly surprises me, but the reality is that I am “degreed” as is said nowadays. I had a very amusing email exchange about that word with a gentleman that I work for who probably figured that it was grammatically incorrect. Well, considering I was educated in three languages, I won’t be far wrong to say that in all likelihood I have better grammar skills than most on the planet.
20 years…. A lot has happened in 20 years and the reality is that I am nowhere in my life that I really expected to be and at the same time have done so much that I did not expect to do at all.
Most significant of all that I have achieved is being a father. I have always wanted to be a good father, but often fail at it and it now consumes me at all times to be a better father every day. A better man for the benefit of my children
The challenge is to be able to manage my own ambitions and dreams and be the father that my children deserve at all times.
I recently spent a month with them and for the first time since becoming a father some 15 years ago, I realised how much they do actually need me. My input, my love, my unconditional support.
To know that is, in itself, is the greatest achievement of the last 20 years. Nothing else compares to that knowledge.
The rest is irrelevant.

Prams & Pushchairs

2008-09-14T04:49:00.004+08:00

England.... the land of prams and pushchairs..... pushchairs and prams. The land of barely adult people trying to raise yet another generation of more people in a land where no one is to blame and no one is prepared to accept responsibility for anything. A land where there is no authority, no discipline; where parents have become neutered by an overwhelmingly pathetic popular sense that discipline is bad. Young people who have been brought up with no moral or social compass, no guidance, no rules, no manners, all now trying to bring up yet another of generation of people who will be less......... well, just less of everything.
Pushchairs and prams, prams and pushchairs.
Horrendous bloody place it is. Rule Britannia my arse.

The truth

2008-08-20T19:31:00.005+08:00

"The truth, like a cork in water, will always rise to the top"
My dear friend and former Chairman, Gio Cantarella, used to drum this in to everyone that cared to listen and indeed he is right. In the fullness of time the truth will prevail.
This applies to us all, in our private lives, our family lives and our commercial and professional lives.
No one escapes it.
Of course, the truth is not always what we would want others to believe it to be, but the truth is the truth and is inescapable.
About two yeas ago I was entertained on a number of occasions by a dear old retired General, the former Vice President of the country I was in at the time. He seemed like any one's wonderful grandfather or elderly uncle. His wife is grandmotherly and always insisted on serving cakes and snacks and some wonderful varieties of tea, the most notable of which was a Ginger tea that made one's hair stand on end.
People came and went and as befitting his status he was bowed to and all sorts of more junior people including ministers of the country in which we were would literally bow at his feet and touch his hand to their foreheads as a sign of respect as part of the local culture.
Now the truth is that this man was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. Literally hundreds. Not soldiers in combat as one may think, but hundreds (at least) of innocent people fighting and struggling for their freedom.
A truth.
A gentle old grandfather.
Really? A gentle grandfather with blood dripping silently and invisibly from his hands...
Were his actions justifiable? To him and other yes. To the remaining family members of those who died, no.
How will Nelson Mandela be remembered? What will his "truth" be?
Of course we know the obvious answer to that. However, no one should forget the entire history of the man...
And ultimately, the truth like a cork in water will rise to the top.

Boring Blogs

2008-08-12T22:18:00.002+08:00

My own blog has begun to bore me!!! Not all of it, but it has become repetitive recently for which I apologise to the few of you who read it occasionally. Time for my own original thoughts here... watch this space.

The amazingly well educated traveling public...

2008-07-14T11:17:00.002+08:00

THE following questions have been posed to tourism offices across South Africa.

Q: Does it ever get windy in South Africa? I have never seen it raining on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see elephants in the street? (USA) A: Depends how much you've been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Durban to Cape Town - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden) A: Sure, it's only two thousand kilometres, take lots of water...

Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in South Africa? (Sweden) A: So it's true what they say about Swedes...?

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in South Africa? Can you send me a list of them in JHB, Cape Town, Knysna and Jeffrey's Bay? (UK) A: ....and what did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about koala bear racing in South Africa? (USA) A: Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific. A-fri-ca is the big triangle-shaped continent south of Europe which does not... oh forget it. Sure, the koala bear racing is every Tuesday night in Hillbrow. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is north in South Africa? (USA)A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can I bring cutlery into South Africa? (UK) A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA) A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is... oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys’ Choir plays every Tuesday night in Hillbrow, straight after the koala bear races. Come naked.

Q: Do you have perfume in South Africa? (France) A: No, WE don't stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in South Africa? (USA) A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in South Africa where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy) A: Yes. Gay nightclubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in South Africa? (France) A: Only at Christmas

Q: Are there killer bees in South Africa? (Germany) A: Not yet, but for you, we'll import them.

Q: Are there supermarkets in Cape Town and is milk available all year round? (Germany) A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter-gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in South Africa who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)A: Rattlesnakes live in A-me-ri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All South African snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I was in South Africa in 1969, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Hillbrow. Can you help? (USA)A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA) A: Yes, but you'll have to learn it first.

Source: http://www.travelhub.co.za/

July 13 2008

2008-07-13T21:20:00.002+08:00

A rare day with a family of cousins in one place together.
Ben and Dani.
Megan, Jesse, Jake and Wendy.
Ruby and Sylvie.
Teddy and Abi.
Surrounded by their parents (except myself and George Williams) and by the Leed grandparents on the occassion of Ben's 7th birthday.
I am sad that I was not there and I am sure that my brother-in-law George feels the same.
It may be many years until the children are all in the same place at the same time and I hope that they leave each other today with happy memories and that the "leaving" is not too rushed.
Love you all!!

An oldie but a goodie....

2008-07-12T11:50:00.001+08:00

This plane was about to crash; there were 5 passengers on board but only 4 parachutes
The first passenger said, "I'm Zinedine Zidane, the world's number 1 footballer. FIFA needs me, I can't afford to die." So he took the first pack and left the plane.
The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, said, "I am the wife of the former President of the United States , I am the most ambitious woman in the world. I am also a New York Senator and a potential future President." She just took the 2nd parachute and jumped out of the plane.
The third passenger, Robert Mugabe, said, "I'm President of Zimbabwe and I have 13 million helpless people who always look to me for guidance. Above all I'm the cleverest President in African history, and Africa's people won't let me die". So he put on a pack next to him and jumped out of the plane.
The fourth passenger, Nelson Mandela, says to the fifth passenger, a 10yr old Chinese school boy, "I'm old and have lived a fruitful life, God will decide my fate, so I'll let you have the last parachute".
The boy said, "It's OK, there's a parachute left for you. Africa 's cleverest President (Robert Mugabe) has taken my schoolbag."

Pictures of the week

2008-07-07T23:54:00.008+08:00

Megan Williams and Megan Kaitlin Leed

Megan Williams and Jesse Louise Leed

Jake Niall Sinclair Leed

Wendy Ladybird Leed

Hany Besada: Time of reckoning looms for African leaders

2008-06-25T13:03:00.004+08:00

South African President Thabo Mbeki at the recent World Economic Forum

on Africa in Cape Town. Mbeki made a rare national address

to condemn anti-immigrant violence but faced criticism

for doing too little, too late after two weeks of unrest.

This article caught my eye this morning in Malaysia's New Straits Times:

AS South Africa bade farewell to the eight African heads of state who had attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town earlier this month, President Thabo Mbeki found himself having to answer yet more questions about last month's attacks on thousands of African migrant workers living in his country. Poor black South Africans accuse them of getting scarce jobs as well as government-subsidised housing.

This recent spate of xenophobic violence left more than 62 people dead, injured some 670 and displaced more than 100,000 migrants in the process. Although calm was restored on South African streets in the days ahead of the WEF, visiting African dignitaries looked towards Pretoria for guarantees of safety for their nationals.

As President Mbeki scrambled to find answers as to what had caused last month's mayhem, which sent shock waves across the rest of the continent, many migrants could be seen fleeing the country, while those who couldn't slowly tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

However, unlike their fellow Mozambicans or Malawians, for many Zimbabweans the option of going home simply does not exist. With widespread reports of violence ahead of their country's second presidential poll on Friday, the evolving social and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has contributed to an unprecedented exodus of Zimbabweans.

Although most Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa left their home country in hopes of finding better lives and opportunities in their more prosperous southern neighbour, thousands more have fled the political repression by the state and are determined not to return to Zimbabwe until political and economic conditions improve, perhaps with the departure of President Robert Mugabe.

The country is undergoing an unprecedented flight of skills from both the public and private sector to neighbouring South Africa. Up to three million Zimbabweans are estimated to be currently living in South Africa. The problem is exacerbated by South African visa requirements for would-be Zimbabwean travellers, issued by a corrupt South African Home Affairs Department, which makes it increasingly easier to obtain illegal identity documents and work permits.

To make matters worse, economic conditions in South Africa have also worsened considerably in recent months. Economic growth slowed sharply in the first three months of the year, dropping to a six-year low. The mining industry, a lifeline for the country's economy, saw its output plummet by more than 22 per cent this year - plumbing the lowest level in four decades. Meanwhile, the worst nationwide blackout in the country's history is destroying investor confidence in South Africa and forcing many industries to shed jobs as a cost-effective measure to minimise the negative effect of higher production costs and declining revenues.

The government stands accused of having done little to avert the crisis. Blamed for lacking a long-term vision and being slow to respond to calls from the private and public sectors to inject much-needed human and financial resources into this sector to upgrade the country's crumbling power infrastructure, the African National Congress government has been criticised for having millions of South Africans suffer daily blackouts earlier this year.

With unemployment unofficially estimated at 40 per cent, surging food prices, a crumbling health care sector, the heavy impact of the HIV pandemic that affects more than five million South Africans, and an ever-increasing crime rate, South Africans have come to look at African migrants as scapegoats for their socioeconomic woes.

The recent criminal violence has tarnished South Africa's image as a land of hope and equal opportunity throughout the continent. Critics contend that the government should shoulder some of the blame for the current crisis. Its market-oriented macro-economic policy, combined with affirmative action programmes designed to deal with the legacies of apartheid, has inevitably widened the gap between an affluent white minority population and a small but steadily growing black upper class with strong ties to government, and the rest of the population, many of whom live in abject poverty.

The government's policies have been undermined by a failure of service delivery at local level and, more importantly, by the severe skills shortage the country faces as a result of emigration. The question now remains how long poor South Africans' frustrations over the increasingly dire socio-economic situation will be targeted at their African brethren, before being levelled against their own government.

There may come a time when South Africans will start pointing fingers at their national leaders, asking whether their struggle to end apartheid 14 years ago was not in vain. In the meantime, Zimbabweans living in South Africa are preparing for more difficult times ahead.

Hany Besada is senior researcher and programme leader of Health and Social Governance at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada.

Picture of the Month

2008-05-09T04:17:00.004+08:00

A Silvered Leaf monkey safe in the protective arms of his mother.The babies are born bright orange. Happy Mother's Day. Picture courtesy of TV Smith, my good friend in Malaysia - www.mycen.com.my

Easter 2008

2008-03-22T13:22:00.001+08:00

This will be the last Easter that I do not spend with my children.

We apologise to the previosuly disadvantaged

2008-03-20T14:59:00.004+08:00

We are sorry that our ancestors were intelligent, advanced and daring enough to explore the wild oceans to discover new countries and develop them. We are sorry that those who came before us took you out of the bush and taught you that there was more to life than beating drums, killing each other and chasing animals with sticks and stones. We are sorry that they planned, funded and developed roads, towns, mines, factories, airports and harbours, all of which you now claim to be your long deprived inheritance giving you every right to change and rename these at your discretion. We are sorry that our parents taught us the value of small but strong families, to not breed like rabbits and end up as underfed, diseased, illiterate shack dwellers living in poverty. We are sorry that when the evil apartheid government provided you with schools, you decided they'd look better without windows or in piles of ashes. We happily gave up those bad days of getting spanked in our all white schools for doing something wrong and much prefer these days of freedom where problems can be resolved with knives and guns. We are sorry that it is hard to shake off the bitterness of the past when you keep on raping, torturing and killing our friends and family members, and then hide behind the fence of "human rights" with smiles on your faces. We are sorry that we do not trust the government. We have no reason to be so suspicious because none of these poor hard working intellectuals have ever been involved in any form of corruption or "irregularities". We are sorry that we do not trust the police force and, even though they have openly admitted that they have lost the war against crime and criminals, we should not be negative and just ignore them and carry on hoping for the best. We are sorry that it is more important to you to have players of colour in our national teams than winning games and promoting patriotism. We know that sponsorship doesn't depend on a team's success. We are sorry that our border posts have been flung open and now left you competing for jobs against illegal immigrants from our beautiful neighbouring countries. All of them countries that have grown into economic powerhouses after kicking out the "settlers". We are sorry that we don't believe in witchcraft, beetroot and garlic cures, urinating on street corners, virginity testing, slaughtering of cattle in our back yards, trading women for cattle and other barbaric practices. Maybe we just grew up differently. We are sorry that your medical care, water supplies, roads, railways and electricity supplies are going down the toilet because skilled people who could have planned for and resolved these issues had to be shown the door because they were of the wrong ethnic background and now have to work in foreign countries where their skills are more needed. We are so sorry that we'd like this country to fulfil its potential so we can once again be proud South Africans.

Wounded Nation

2008-03-05T15:21:00.001+08:00

AFTER bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of the Mandela years, South Africans today are deeply demoralised people. The lights are going out in homes, mines, factories and shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom - suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure to maintain power stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries - implements rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos.
Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts from China.
The currency, the rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it gratuitously violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged deals with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs.
Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state president-in-waiting, narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an HIV-positive woman last year, and faces trial later this year for soliciting and accepting bribes in connection with South Africa's shady multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German and French weapons manufacturers.
One local newspaper columnist suggests that Zuma has done for South Africa's international image what Borat has done for Kazakhstan. ANC leaders in 2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they learned in exile in pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously embracing capitalist icons - Mercedes 4x4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes and Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under countless tables - as they wing their way to their houses in the south of France.
It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions - a perfect storm as the Rainbow Nation slides off the end of the rainbow and descends in the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has warned foreign investors with millions to sink into big industrial and mining projects: we don't want you here until at least 2013, when new power stations will be built.
In the first month of this year, the rand fell 12% against the world's major currencies and foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years.
"There will be further outflows this month, because there won't be any news that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for the better," said Rudi van der Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa's Standard Bank.
Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, who warned the government eight years ago of the impending crisis, said: "The damage is huge, and now South Africa looks just like the rest of Africa. Maybe it will take 20 years to recover."
The power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others.
"The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented event," said Anton Eberhard, a leading energy expert and professor of business studies at the University of Cape Town.
"That's a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa's reputation for new investment. Our country was built on the mines."
To examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa's last best chance, arrived at this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the Scorpions (the popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a useful starting point.
The elite unit, modelled on America's FBI and operating in close co-operation with Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big successes of post-apartheid South Africa. An independent institution, separate from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy massive public support.
The unit's edict is to focus on people "who commit and profit from organised crime", and it has been hugely successful in carrying out its mandate. It has pursued and pinned down thousands of high-profile and complex networks of national and international corporate and public fraudsters.
Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the Scorpions' sting. A major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa's biggest foreign exchange earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as the result of a huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the Scorpions, whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too successful for their own good.
The ANC government never anticipated the crack crimebusters would take their constitutional independence seriously and investigate the top ranks of the former liberation movement itself.
The Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who falsified their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the ANC's chief whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that sold frigates and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent to jail for 15 years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state vice-president Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found by the judge to have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now the Scorpions have charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in August.
The Scorpions last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a close friend of state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating the ends of justice. Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a white police sergeant a "f***ing chimpanzee" when she failed to recognise him during an unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down pending his trial.
But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC - ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma - want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will send to the outside world is that South Africa's rulers want only certain categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and other politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets.
No good reason for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. "That's because there isn't one," said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential Business Day, South Africa's equivalent of, and part-owned by, The Financial Times, in his weekly column.
"The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that," he added.
The demise of the Scorpions can only exacerbate South Africa's out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its scale and violence only behind Colombia. Everyone has friends and acquaintances who have had guns held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM machines and hijack security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash.
In the past few days my next-door neighbour, John Matshikiza, a distinguished actor who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the son of the composer of the South African musical King Kong, had been violently attacked, and friends visiting from Zimbabwe had their car stolen outside my front window in broad daylight.
My friends flew home to Zimbabwe without their car and the tinned food supplies they had bought to help withstand their country's dire political and food crisis and 27,000% inflation. Matshikiza, a former member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre company, was held up by three gunmen as he drove his car into his garage late at night. He gave them his car keys, wallet, cellphone and luxury watch and begged them not to harm his partner, who was inside the house.
As one gunman drove the car away, the other two beat Matshikiza unconscious with broken bottles, and now his head is so comprehensively stitched that it looks like a map of the London Underground.
These assaults were personal, but mild compared with much commonplace crime.
Last week, for example, 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her A-levels with marks of more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor, returned home with her father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the geophysics department at the University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for the family. Inside the house, armed gunmen confronted them. They shot Professor Botha in the leg and pumped bullets into Razelle.
One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life and will never walk again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a laptop computer and a camera.
Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of ANC power in the country at the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in parliament, led by President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation address and apologised to the country for the power crisis.
Mbeki made only the briefest of mentions of the national Aids crisis, with more than six million people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions crisis. The collapsing public hospital system, under his eccentric health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, received no attention. And the name Jacob Zuma did not pass his lips.
Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who cannot stand again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing.
Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rape case, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that the notion of Zuma assuming next year the mantle worn by Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black state president would be so appalling to delegates, a deeply sad and precipitous decline, that his own re-election as ANC leader was a shoo-in.
But Mbeki completely miscalculated his own unpopularity - his perceived arrogance, failure to solve health and crime problems, his failure to deliver to the poor - and he lost. Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and ANC MPs in parliament must take its orders from him, while Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, ordering MPs to toe his line.
Greatly understated, it is a mess. Its scale will be dramatically illustrated if South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup is withdrawn by Fifa, the world football body.
Already South African premier league football evening games are being played after midnight because power for floodlights cannot be guaranteed before that time. Justice Malala, one of the country's top newspaper columnists, has called on Fifa to end the agony quickly.
"I don't want South Africa to host the football World Cup because there is no culture of responsibility in this country," he wrote in Johannesburg's bestselling Sunday Times.
"The most outrageous behaviour and incompetence is glossed over. No-one is fired. I have had enough of this nonsense, of keeping quiet and ignoring the fact that the train is about to run us over.
"It is increasingly clear that our leaders are incapable of making a success of it. Scrap the thing and give it to Australia, Germany or whoever will spare us the ignominy of watching things fall apart here - football tourists being held up and shot, the lights going out, while our politicians tell us everything is all right."
11:50pm Saturday 9th February 2008 - written for Scotland's Daily Herald

Pic of 2007

2008-02-06T10:55:00.000+08:00

Belated Happy New Year

2008-01-14T12:38:00.000+08:00

Happy 2008 everyone - may it be the best year ever for us all.

Of course it will have its challenges, some of which have presented themselves far too quickly for my liking already in the short two weeks that we have already had of 2008, but nevertheless we must soldier on!!

Have a good one!!!

South Africa - some facts about a remarkable nation

2007-12-13T10:41:00.002+08:00

Economy
1. The rand was the best performing currency against the US Dollar between 2002 and 2005
2. South Africa has 37,000 high net-wealth individuals (holding at least US$1million in financial assets)
3. South Africa has the 26th biggest economy in the world, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$126 billion
4. South Africa accounts for almost 45% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy three times the size of the second biggest (Egypt)
5. Gauteng is South Africa’s smallest province but produces 37% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product
6. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is one of the fifteen largest in the world in terms of market capitalization
7. South Africa’s banking system is ranked 8th in the world.

Infrastructure
1. South Africa generates two-thirds of Africa’s electricity
2. Forty percent of Africa’s telephones are in South Africa
3. South African power supplier provides the fourth cheapest electricity in the world
4. Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto is the biggest hospital in the world
5. South Africa is one of only 12 countries with potable tap water
6. Durban is the largest port in Africa and the ninth largest in the world.
7. There are 22 million cell phone users in South Africa

Social
1. Ten million South Africans (a quarter of the population) have access to social grants
2. Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor and 1,000 houses per day have received electricity
3. Seventy percent of South Africa’s population is urbanized
4. Our population is set to stabilize at around 45 million people for the next 20 years
5. In the past 2 years, 300,000 people have moved into the middle classes and 500,000 have moved out of poverty, but we still have 20% of the population living in poverty

Tourism
1. The number of tourists visiting South Africa has grown by 116% since 1994
2. The Singita game reserve was voted the best hotel in the world by the readers of a leading travel magazine
3. For every seven tourists who journey to South Africa, one permanent job is created
4. The world's best land-based whale-watching spot is located in Hermanus in the Western Cape.
5. In 2002, South Africa was the world’s fastest growing tourist destination - for those of you that have read this far... under MY watch!!

Sport
1. The Cape Argus Cycle Tour is the largest timed cycle race in the world.
2. South Africa will become the first African country to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010
3. South Africa has the largest soccer league in the world
4. South Africa has two golfers in the World’s Top 10
5. In 1994, we won 11 medals in the Commonwealth Games. In 2002, we won 46.

SA Teaching the World
1. South Africa houses one of the three largest telescopes in the world at Sutherland in the Karoo
2. South Africa is the first, and to date the only, country to build nuclear weapons and then voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear weapons programme
3. South Africa has the 8th best ratio of women to men in Parliament
4. South Africa’s Constitution is widely regarded as being one of the most progressive in the world, drawing from the experiences of the world’s most advanced democracies
5. South African Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967 in Cape Town.
6. The South African oil company Sasol has established the only commercially proven oil-from-coal operations in the world.
7. Two of the world's most profoundly compassionate philosophies originated in South Africa – Ubuntu (the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity) and Gandhi's notion of "passive resistance" (Satyagraha), which he developed while living in South Africa.

Education
1. Almost a quarter of South Africa’s non-interest budget is spent on education
2. The University of South Africa UNISA is a pioneer of tertiary distance education and is the largest correspondence university in the world with 250,000 students.
3. Our learner to teacher ratio has improved from 1:50 in 1994 to 1:34 in 2004
4. South Africa’s matric pass rate has improved from 49% in 1994 to 70% in 2004, but student’s receiving university exemptions has remained at 18%
5. The adult literacy rate in South Africa now exceeds 80%

Environmental
1. The Kruger National Park supports the greatest variety of wildlife species on the African continent
2. The Cango Caves near Oudsthoorn is the world’s longest underground cave sequence
3. South Africa is home to both the largest land mammal (elephant) and the smallest mammal (shrew)
4. South Africa is the only country to house an entire floral kingdom (fynbos), one of only 6 on the planet
5. In 1991, South Africa became the first country in the world to protect the Great White shark.
6. South Africa has the oldest meteor scar in the world, at the Vredefort Dome near Parys. The scar is 2 billion years old.
7. South Africa has the third highest level of biodiversity worldwide
8. The Cape Hyrax’s (dassie) closest relative is the African elephant
9. South Africa has embraced the concept of trans-frontier ‘peace parks’, linking ecological reserves across national borders

General
1. South Africa is the cradle of mankind
2. Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
3. The Western Deep Levels is the world’s deepest mine at 3777 metres
4. South Africa has the world’s largest deposits of gold, chromium, platinum and manganese
5. The only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace Prize winners is in Soweto. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West.
6. South Africa has the world's second oldest air force, established 1920.
7. South African Breweries ranks as the second largest brewing company in the world. It supplies up to 50% of China's beer.
8. South Africa has the second oldest film industry in the world
9. South African media ranks 26th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index, ahead of the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan
10. In 2005, Time Magazine hailed President Thabo Mbeki as the Most Powerful Man in Africa
11. South Africa’s population is approximately 46.8 million (2005)
12. South Africa is a middle income, developing country with well-developed financial, communications and legal services and excellent energy and transport infrastructures

Source: South Africa - The Good News www.sagoodnews.co.za

Pictures of the week

2007-12-09T21:30:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the world Sylvie!!! Born to Bron and John and sister Ruby...

Smoki O's - Tapas for Smokers

2007-11-11T14:33:00.000+08:00

I am fed up with the anti smoking nazi's that exist all over the world..... whilst lighting up in the doorway of a bar and being frowned at by some twit, I came up with the following idea...

SMOKI O's - Tapas for Smokers
An environment for smokers to be left in peace.

Simple concept: Good food and excellent booze for smokers.

Smokers are charged a cover charge of say GBP10.00.

For that they can choose from a range of cigarettes available at the bar and from a range of tapas regularly brought out from the kitchen. The fags and tapas are included in the cover charge.

All drinks are charged to the customer at the normal going rate.

Good ventilation, good reading material, great TV/DVD programming - NO SPORT!!

Non smokers..... YOU are simply not welcome. Go elsewhere with your attitudes and views. We are tired of you... Oh yes, before I forget.... pretentious smelly cigar smokers - you are not welcome either.

Heaven...... I think I will do it!

Health warning - I am very aware of the potential dangers of smoking, just as I am aware of the dangers of driving, flying, crossing the road, climbing stairs, eating and even drinking tap water. So SHUT up!!

Picture of the week

2007-10-11T12:25:00.000+08:00

Taken by my good friend TV Smith in Malaysia at the last full moon

Uncle Gordon

2007-10-06T23:01:00.000+08:00

In 1982 or 1983 (I will correct the year when I know it) my Dad, David Leed / Daddy O, returned from a business trip to Australia. We were living in Holland at the time and I was in my last year of school.
I remember the excitement in the house.... we were always excited when Dad was coming back from a trip. We missed him.
This was different though. He had been to Australia, and he had been able to visit his brother Gordon. Our Uncle Gordon.
At that time my Dad and Uncle Gordon had not seen each other for 32 years. A monstrously incomprehensible amount of time for me aged 17/18.
I recall sitting at our dining room table as Dad told us of their reunion, how he felt about it and how, when they met again, they just chatted and chatted and chatted and whittled 32 years in to a few passionate hours of bonding together, re-forging a lifetime apart. I can still see the look in Dad's eyes as we quizzed him, as he told us what he could, and the sense of wellbeing in him having closed that 32 year gap.
Uncle Gordon passed away on Friday evening, gently, in his sleep. I wish him him well on his journey.
And Dad... I love you.

Beautiful Ben

2007-09-30T15:52:00.000+08:00

My nephew Ben on a school trip to Bodium Castle.

Time flies

2007-09-29T14:08:00.000+08:00

Another month over. Another month of life's experiences, some good, some bad, some great. A month of missing my kids and thinking about them as they experience a change of schools and a new routine. A new start, a new future. A good and bright future.

August 31 2007 - Southbourne, UK

2007-09-06T06:51:00.001+08:00

Ibiza 2007

2007-09-06T06:43:00.001+08:00

What can I say? We had a fabulous time.......

Antoinette

2007-07-08T12:16:00.000+08:00

I went to school with a young lady called Antoinette (surname escapes me now and in fact she is not so young anymore) at The British School in the Netherlands in 1982/83.
I think I last saw her in London very briefly in about 1989 or 1990, and must confess that I had not given her much thought until today sitting on a plane between Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
I sat across the aisle from a young Dutch girl (perhaps 16 or 17) on her way to Indonesia with her family, no doubt for their annual summer vacation, who in so many ways reminded me of Antoinette.
Buried memories come rushing front of mind again with such small prompts.

A dream

2007-07-01T14:27:00.000+08:00

I had a vivid dream a few nights ago. So vivid it has not left me as dreams normally do after a few hours or days.
The dream was about love.
In the dream love was represented by beautiful jewels. Diamonds, rubies, tanzanite, emeralds - all the colours of the rainbow - all glittering in a jewels multifaceted many dimensioned way.
All of these jewels were lying in sand.
Some were vsisible at times while others were not.
As the wind blew, some were covered and others were uncovered and this went on for infinity.
Each jewel that was visible represented love.
Each different jewel that was visible represented someone, a person - a life time of people - ALL people.
As each jewel was covered up and another one, or many at a time, uncovered by the sand, the importance of always remembering love and how to love and who to love and never ever to forget who and how and when, even if that person is not around, was the powerful thought that woke me up, with that crystal clarity that we sometimes wake from our dreams with.
Without LOVE we are nothing. Without the ability to LOVE we are nothing. Without the recognistion of LOVE we are nothing.
Love is indeed all around us, all the time. We just spend too much time preoccupied with other things. Without LOVE there is NOTHING. Love for one another; Love for all our children; Love for all things - whether human or not.
To be able to love is to be able to LIVE.

Jesse's Broken Dragon..... part 2

2007-06-10T15:39:00.000+08:00

Let's fix the broken dragons.... Together

Jesse's Broken Dragon

2007-05-04T04:58:00.000+08:00

.......Sitting forlornly in a crumpled bag on a window sill in West Sussex......
Dragons are portrayed as serpentine or reptilian, hatching from eggs and possessing extremely large, typically scaly, bodies; they are sometimes portrayed as having large eyes, a feature that is the origin for the word for dragon in many cultures, and are often (but not always) portrayed with wings and a fiery breath.
Some dragons do not have wings at all, but look more like long snakes. Dragons can have a variable number of legs: none, two, four, or more when it comes to early European literature. Modern depictions of dragons are very large in size, but some early European depictions of dragons were only the size of bears, or, in some cases, even smaller, around the size of a butterfly.
Although dragons (or dragon-like creatures) occur commonly in legends around the world, different cultures have perceived them differently. Chinese dragons, and Eastern dragons generally, are usually seen as benevolent, whereas European dragons are usually malevolent (there are of course exceptions to these rules). Malevolent dragons also occur in Persian mythology and other cultures.
Dragons are particularly popular in China. Along with the phoenoix, the dragon was a symbol of the Chinese emperors. Dragon costumes manipulated by several people are a common sight at Chinese festivals.
Dragons are often held to have major spiritual significance in various religions and cultures around the world. In many Eastern and Native American cultures dragons were, and in some cultures still are, revered as representative of the primal forces of nature and the universe. They are associated with wisdom - often said to be wiser than humans - and longevity. They are commonly said to possess some form of magic or other supernormal power, and are often associated with wells, rain, and rivers. In some cultures, they are said to be capable of human speech. They are also said to be able to talk to all animals.
Dragons are very popular characters in fantasy lirterature, role-playing games and video games today.
The term dragoon, for infantry that move around by horse yet still fight as foot soldiers, is derived from their early firearm, the "dragon", a wide-bore musket that spat flame when it fired, and was thus named for the mythical creature.

Happy Happy Easter

2007-04-08T09:44:00.000+08:00

Easter Sunday. When we were kids, Mamma Lou and Daddy O used to lay out a very special Easter breakfast table. We would all have a great breakfast together and Daddy O would give us each a special Easter present.

I wonder what you are all doing today? I will just have to call later and find out!!

Seeing you soon....

2007-04-01T13:04:00.000+08:00

Not long now before I see you all in England... I can't wait. It will have been 4 months since I last saw you and it seems like much much longer. It is a long time!!
We must think of some fun things to do!!

Johannesburg

2007-02-18T13:16:00.000+08:00

Reflective mood at 04h10 on 18 February 2007 with Maputo dead ahead (and down) 37000 feet and 40 minutes to go to Johannesburg.
I go there now with mixed and conflicting emotions. It is the place of my birth, where my soul resides, a place I returned to after a lifetime away and have now left, abandoned, to pursue another dream, to flee the pain of the place, yet to return sporadically to breathe the reality of the place. The gritty, harsh dangerous beauty of Egoli, the City of Gold.
It was this exact week in 1997 that I first returned to Johannesburg having left aged 7. Today, 10 years almost to the exact day I return to breathe it again.
That visit in February 1997 resulted in the uprooting of a young, unstable family in June 1997, led by Mummy bearing little Megan and baby Jesse, barely 15 months old, all following a man set on returning to his “home” and leaving behind a certain level of chaos and uncertainty.
This little band of 4 people started to put roots down in Johannesburg and the rollercoaster of the next few years began.
Johannesburg will kill you unless you embrace it, examine it and attack it. I attacked it, with a vengeance. At every level. Business, social, (multilayered social, adulterous social, extreme social). I embraced the hedonism of the place at levels that will never be spoken about.
Our family grew – how could anyone of us ever forget the birth of Mr Jake?? – his entrance to the world still disturbs yet so appeals to the darker more dangerous side of my nature.
The adventures that Mummy and I had with various social groups as we got deeper and deeper in to it all.
The joy of a new lease of life working with the South African government for it all to be destroyed so callously by a group people who simply had to say “Let’s talk”.
The arrival of beautiful Wendy... the slow yet inexorable decay of my relationship with Mummy and hers with mine. The almost totally disasterous self destructive nature of that relationship. The giving up. The end of our relationship and the slow transition to the family unit held together by love and passion for being loved.
Yet the sheer determination to not stay down when told to stay down and the triumph of that sheer will. The purpose of self determination.
The hijackings, the muggings, the smash and grabs, the house breakings the petty theft, the daily tragedy of people dying around us.
I love Johannesburg – it made me the man that I am today, the father that I am and the friend that I am to Mummy, despite the loss of our relationship.
However, I will leave Johannesburg 12 days form now having had my hedonist senses "fixed" with it all and will be more than happy not to return again until circumstance puts me back in to the deep madness of this, one of the most dangerous citites in the world.
The Malaysian ailrines 747-400 has just started its descent in to the newly named OR Tambo International airport – I can feel my senses coming alive, my “Johannesburg radar” prickles and shakes off its dust, my gut tightens in anticipation, my body squares up to the potential dangers of one of the most dangerous, yet alive and vibrant cites in the word…..
Here I come, city of my birth, here I come!!!!

Pic of the day

2007-01-15T10:51:00.000+08:00

Happy Birthday Dad!!

2007-01-09T06:24:00.000+08:00

My Dad turned 70 on 8 January 2007. Happy Happy Birthday Dad!! At the time of dad turing 70, I am 41.
When Dad turned 41, I was 12 and a half years old. It was January 1978 and we had been living in the UK for about 18 months, since the summer of 1976 - the infamous "drought" summer.
I had just had my first term at Reigate Grammar School, where I met Sandy and Gregs who remain close and firm friends to this day. Quite scary to know that we have known eachother for +/- 30 years.

Picture of the week

2006-12-25T00:43:00.000+08:00

One of the most enduring couples I know, who have faced hardships together through thick and thin. Lesley and Erol. Bless you both!!

A couple recent pictures

2006-12-19T09:39:00.000+08:00

2006 going in to 2007

2006-12-19T09:30:00.000+08:00

It was a year ago today that we all set off to Glentana for our Christmas holiday. It seems such a long time ago though in a funny way only yesterday.
Well, here we are a year later - you have all moved to the UK and seem to be settling in and I will be on my way to you in just 2 or three days from now. I cannot wait - cannot wait at all.
Last year we were heading south for a beach, this year you are living on a beach and I am heading north to it!! Somehow strange.
Anyway, cheers to Christmas 2006 and lets hope that 2007 will be a good year for all of us.
xxxxxxx

Indonesia

2006-12-02T11:17:00.000+08:00

Well, here we are again in Indonesia. The second race in 9 months at Sentul Circuit. It will have its challenges, but I am sure will not be as challenging as February 12 2006.
This is the only circuit to have had 2 races within one calendar year, for various reasons.

Pic of the week

2006-11-11T15:47:00.000+08:00

Christmas 2006

2006-11-02T23:40:00.000+08:00

What's the plan?

Tea Time in the Highlands

2006-11-01T13:59:00.000+08:00

Ever wondered where tea comes from? Wel, one of the places is Kenya in Africa and another is Malaysia - the Cameron Highlands tea plantations.

Morning all

2006-11-01T13:53:00.000+08:00

Miss you lots.
So - what is all the fuss about Madonna adopting a little boy from Africa - do you think the fuss is just becasue she is Madonna or what?
I cannot fathom it really.

Nearly November

2006-10-28T14:50:00.000+08:00

Strange to think that it is nearly November already. Almost a year since our holiday and 4 months since you arrived in the UK. Amazing how much can change so quickly. It has been a long hard year in many ways and I am getting quite fed up with long hard years. Seems to be so little purpose to it all really at times, especially when I am so far away from you all. I miss you all very very much and cannot wait to see you again. Big hugs and love to you all. xxxxxxx

It has been a while.....

2006-09-04T06:23:00.000+08:00

Wow - I have just seen that I have not updated this for nearly a month....
Well, I have been awake most of the night after my flight... I gave up trying to sleep in the end and have been working for the last two hours - next I will shower and then go have breakfast - I will probably need to go to bed then but will have a days work to do.....
It was absolutley fantastic to see you all this past week. You are all looking great.
I know that the last two months have been a bit unsettling as you have not had your own stuff around you and so on, but that is nearly at an end.
I am delighted that you have all got in to school and astonished as to how much you are all looking forward to actually going to school.... Amazing - I wish that when I was your age I looked forward to school the way you do. I suspect that yesterday you went out and got your uniforms from a comment Mummy made to me on the phone last night. That bit I did used to enjoy every year - new shirts, trousers, shoes - yummy.
I hope that your first days will be OK and that you settle in quickly and make good new friends. Remember what I said on Saturday - most people are shy when they meet new people so don't worry if the boys and girls in your class are not immediatley friendly.
They will warm to you soon enough.
I experienced this a few times when I was younger.
Remember that you do not have to pretend to be anything other than yourselves to make friends. Just be yourselves - you all have remarkable stories to tell that most of the kids that you will meet will never experience.
We are very lucky people to travel the way we do and to see and experience some of the things that we have experienced.
Use that to your advantage, but nicely - never brag or show off.
To the kids in your new classes, it is YOU that is the exotic and exciting person. So just know that in the back of your head when you feel a bit shy and worried about how strange all the new experiences are.
You will all be GREAT!! And you will all make great friends too.
Let me know how it goes my loves!!
I love you beyond anything imaginable. With all my heart and soul.
xxxx

Hello my gorgeous children

2006-08-07T12:58:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I updated my blog with lots having happened since the last entry.
I hope you are all OK - when I spoke to you yesterday I was not too sure whether you are OK, or not, to be honest.
I hope to be in the UK from 25 August or so, assuming all goes according to plan in the next few days here in KL.
I cannot wait to see you, hold you, spend time with you and generally hang out, you know.
I think Mummy needs to encourage you all to use email a bit more regularly so that we can stay in touch more regularly than just the telephone conversations which always seem so rushed to me.
Love you all - miss you as always.

Surreal Moments

2006-07-12T10:48:00.000+08:00

A mundane taxi ride turned magically surreal.....
Sitting in the back of a taxi this morning, listeninng to the national broadcaster news service followed by the opening bars of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Sweet Home Alabama'....
The 60+ Indian Sikh driver, turban, jewellery and all, cranks up the volume saying "One of the best songs ever written".
As Skynyrd get well and truly in to the best of it, the driver starts talking about the importance of educating children properly in this world, teaching them to understand differences and to tolerate them all, whilst muttering that every couny in the world is "the bloody same" when it comes to discrimination issues and the unjustness of it all in realtion to simple people just trying to survive.
The irony of this, as we drive past Kuala Lumpur's mosques and western embassies next door to each other, all set to the foot stomping guitars and lyrics of a song about place called Alabama, once the world's focus on basic human rights issues, was not lost on me....
Bloody marvellous moment in life.... Sweet Home Alabama......

Boo!!!

2006-07-03T12:08:00.000+08:00

How are you all doing? It has been three days now since you arrived in England.....
I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that it was not too hot for you.
How are Tom, Anna, Sandy and Lou?
How was your lunch with Niall yesterday?
Missing you all terribly and am hoping to be able to get over to see you quite soon.
xxxxx

Welcome to England.

2006-06-30T10:13:00.000+08:00

At least the weather will be good when you arrive - Sandy tells me that Sunday is forecast for 30 degrees. That is a lot hotter than SA is at the moment.
I hope you all had a good flight and that you are not too tired when your journey finally ends.
Have a wonderful weekend and remember that I love you all very very much.

Today is the day!!

2006-06-29T07:01:00.000+08:00

Wow..... hard to believe that today has actually come. You must all be very excited about getting on the plane tonight and waking up in England in the morning....
I am quite sure that Tom and Anna are very excited to see you too, so that will be fun when you get there tomorrow. Not te mention your cousins of course and everyone else that is looking forward to seeing you including Mama Lou and Daddy O.
I love you all more than I can ever ever express.
xxxx

Father's Day

2006-06-24T12:00:00.000+08:00

My darling darling children....
I have just received your 4 beautiful cards and the wonderful envelope that Mummy decorated so typically "mummy" style!!
Thank you for the love and the messages written by each of you in each card. To say "I miss you" would be a complete and utter understatement.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you.....

The Boer - Arthur Conan Doyle

2006-06-24T11:34:00.000+08:00

"Take a community of Dutchmen, the type who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one ofthe most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer - the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain...."

2 weeks to go...

2006-06-15T11:34:00.000+08:00

Wow - the final countdown has begun....
2 weeks from today is your last day in South Africa and the next day you will wake up just before you land in England..... Are you excited?
I am sure that the few days between now and then will be fraught with all sorts of issues and worries, but all will be OK. Please help and support Mummy as much as you can in this time as the job that she has between now and then to sort everything out is nothing short of MAMMOTH.
I love you - and am thinking of you every minute of every day.

Dolly Parton once said....

2006-06-10T21:51:00.000+08:00

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain......

African bush fires

2006-06-05T12:55:00.000+08:00

Every winter in South Africa the landscape is cleansed by these naturally occuring bush fires. Not a great picture but then again I was not hanging around as it was 20 feet from the car with flames 8 feet high....

Jesse....

2006-06-03T07:37:00.000+08:00

You said that I look "tired and funny" in your comment about the picture of me and Daniella - your cousin. Well, it was almost a year ago. I was tired, but I look "funny" because i had shaved my beard off..... and I so know how much you hate that........ I won't do it again. OK?

Goodbye South Africa

2006-06-03T07:30:00.000+08:00

Nine years to the day since Mummy, Megan and Jesse arrived in South Africa, I left SA as my home.
And you will all leave soon to be in the UK.
Change is a good thing. It comes with great sadness at times, but one should never look back. Only forward. Nothing of the past can be changed, but everything of the future is there to be made the way we want it to be.
I will see you all "on the other side".
Love you without end.
Daddy

Pic of the day

2006-05-21T21:02:00.000+08:00

Another Sunday

2006-05-21T20:34:00.000+08:00

Well, another week passes by. This has been a particularly frustrating week work wise with very little forward movement in what we are trying to do here in Malaysia. Frankly it is annoying.
The only consolation is that I will be back in South Africa this time next week for my birthday and I cannot wait to see you all when I get there.
Mummy and I have all our fingers and toes crossed and double crossed that everything will now go smoothly for the move to England.
I am sorry that I have not updated for 2 whole weeks. Have not really had too much to say.

Sunday Sunday.......

2006-05-07T18:39:00.000+08:00

I wonder how you all are?
The last two times that we have spoken, you have all been very distracted. So distracted in fact that I have not really felt that we had a conversation. It has been hard to catch up with you properly.
Mummy seems to think that I am being a "drama queen" about it, which is a bit unfair. By now I would have thought that we all understand how difficult it is that I am so far away, and that we should be compensating for it somehow.
I hear that you are all very excited (perhaps over excited) to get to the UK and also now very disappointed that the sale of the house seems to be dragging on forever.
Unfortunately that is the nature of house buying and selling. It takes time and effort and above all patience.
Sooner or later you will all be in the UK.
Try not to rush through your last days in South Africa. Regardless of how good or bad you think South Africa is, please try to enjoy your last days there.
Megan, you have lived there since you were 4, and Jesse, you have lived there since you were not even 2 years old.....
Jake and Wendy - you were both BORN there.
I was born there, and I am South African before I am anything else. Even before I am a drama queen!
When you are all older, the fact that you lived there and 2 of you were born there will mean more to you than it does right now. It really will.
So please try to be patient and above all help Mummy and nana Yia Yia as this is a very hard time for them, as all they want is for you all to be settled safe and sound in England as soon as possible. You will be.
It will happen when it is meant to happen.
Love you all.

The sky above the South China Sea

2006-04-30T18:50:00.000+08:00

In the wilds.... of Borneo...

2006-04-30T18:28:00.000+08:00

.... I came across this young man.
"Orang Utang" means "man of the forest" - he is about 4 years old and an orphan, as a result of deforestation in Malaysia and on the island of Borneo specifically....
He is looked after by some absolutely amazing people who, in time, will rehabilitate him to the wild.
Normally a baby Orang Utang would stay with its parents until around 7 or 8 years old, which I suppose is about the same as people being 16, 17 or 18 by the time parents may think their children might just survive on their own...

The most amazing thing about today was this: just as the group was about to set off up the mountain, an old man joined us. he must have been about 70, and very frail - he was walking with a zimmer frame that had little wheels on it. Shuffling really - not walking. I thought to myself that he would potter around the nature reservation garden as there would be no way that he would make it up the hill, on what turned out to be a very steep jungle trail going up about 50 metres from the start point to where the viewing platform was for the young orphaned Orang Utangs.

About 10 minutes after I got to the viewing platform, the old man was there. He had been carried up on the back of one of the game rangers!! CARRIED. And then he was carried down. 35 degree heat - 80% humidity. CARRIED.

I said to the ranger that he had done an amazing thing and he said simply, "It is my job sir."

There are some amazing people in this world. It is good to find them and remind oneself that there are these amazing people going about their daily business.

Wonderful.

Gezellig

2006-04-27T17:43:00.000+08:00

“Gezellig” is a fantastic word.
It is a Dutch word that cannot really be translated….
It means togetherness, coziness, fun, satisfaction, love and warmth - all rolled in to one.
It is a feeling more than a meaning, or a meaning with feeling.
“Gezellig” is about people.
“Gezellig” can happen over a cup of coffee, it can be over dinner, it can be around a camp fire, a Christmas tree, in a car or at a bar.
It can be a group of people laughing and chatting on a train, it can be a couple walking in the rain.
It is a feeling to be looked forward to, a feeling that you will know when you experience it. And you will miss when not experiencing it.
It is a good feeling, a comfortable feeling, a warm cozy and loving feeling. A trusting feeling, a place in your heart reserved for family and special friends of whom you are a part.

Pic of the week

2006-04-20T16:48:00.000+08:00

Gone again

2006-04-20T12:34:00.000+08:00

My gorgeous children..... Well those nine days together seemed to fly like none other before them. I hate it when I have to leave and I know that you do not want me to leave when I do. Nevermind, I will see you all soon enough. I will not be away as long as the last time which was over two months. I hope that school is OK now that you are back. Please try to stay focussed on your studies even if it seems hard to do knowing that you are going to England soon.
I love you all very very much.

Home again

2006-04-11T18:04:00.000+08:00

You guys have NO idea how good it is to see you and how happy you make me. Sadly the time will fly that we are able to see eachother, but every second will be worth it and every second I will cherish until I next see you.

Picture of the week

2006-04-04T10:45:00.000+08:00

Shanghai, China - 2 April 2006

2006-04-04T01:18:00.000+08:00

18 months of work come together in a spectacular 1st and 2nd place at the final race of the season in Shanghai. I cannot tell you how happy I am for the team.......

Shanghai, China

2006-03-31T07:16:00.000+08:00

Gosh - it has been nearly a week since I updated you..... I am now in China. In a city called Shanghai, right over on the eastern seaboard of the Chinese mainland. It is a massive city - 20 million people - that is nearly half the population of the whole of South Africa. Very interesting place to be. It is the first place in the world I have been to where I cannot read simple street signs because they are in Chinese and the Chinese alphabet is so different to the Roman alphabet which is what we use.
It is the last race weekend which is sad on the one hand but also quite a relief for most of the guys as the travelling schedule has been punishing.
It also means that I will be home in the not too distant future - as you well know. Not many sleeps to go now.
I will try to update you again during the course of the weekend.
I love you , miss you and am now very very desperate to see you.
I think yesterday was your last day of term. I hope you have a good holiday and don't forget to plan some stuff that we can do together.
xxxx

Check it out Jake....

2006-03-25T18:49:00.000+08:00

Jake - this is the new Playstation 3 - Looks cool doesn't it....