"That free love with bondage bound."
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake | Songs of Experience: The Sick Rose
On politics...
Ever heard yourself say: "Could Zimbabweans not have read the writing on the wall?"
What are South Africans waiting for, a plane to write it on the sky? Simply put, the choice at Polokwane is: Would it be better to remove my left arm or my right arm? Pundits have proclaimed Jacob Zuma is better; no, Thabo Mbeki is better. Actually, the real question is how after only 13 years of attempting democracy is ons so diep in die kak?
...crime...
This week a guard starts patrolling the beautiful, tree-lined street in which I live. Since January there have been 13 criminal incidents, including five armed robberies and five house-breakings, in our block of 20 houses. A woman was badly beaten in one incident and needed 13 stitches in her head.
There has not been a single arrest in any incident this year or last. The only arrest any of us knows of in our community was the arrest of the person who raped and stabbed me eight years ago and that was because a private-investigator friend drove the investigation. The area we live in falls under the policing precinct of Parkview, reputedly the best in Johannesburg.
...inequity
Let’s look at Mbeki’s South Africa: the Sunday Times reported early this year that South Africa is the world’s fourth-largest creator of new dollar millionaires with close to 50 000 in the country.
Since 1994, according to the BusinessMap Foundation, there have been R225-billion-worth of BEE transactions, with 173 empowerment deals, worth R75-billion, in 2006 alone. The recent University of Cape Town/Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and TNS Research Survey estimates the buying power of the country’s 2,6-million black diamonds at about R180-billion.
Not bad — but this in a country that added a million more unemployed in the past 10 years. We have 40% of our nation unemployed, according to Stats SA. The Human Sciences Research Council tells us that 54% of our people live in poverty.
Charlene Smith
Okay, so she's a rich white bitch. So what? She's also one of the best journalists operating out this Godforsaken patch of Heaven on Earth. Much like Tom Feeley's InformationClearingHouse, you'll find every kind of irrational, illogical, or mentally deranged attack on the author cluttering the comments feature of Smith's blog.
Why the hell South African media-blogs persist in highlighting comments features is beyond me — they detract from the article. If people feel strongly enough about an entry, let them write their own. Thus is the hyperlink spread and the geography of the Web expanded.
ThoughtLeader's also a miserable fucking idea — perpetuating a closeted elitism blogging was first used to subvert. An invitation-only gaggle of eclectic and indifferent blogs, it sets itself up to embarass itself — and all-too-frequently does.
Based on her above entries, and those putting the increasingly facile Ronald Suresh Roberts, Mark Gevisser, and other Mbeki sycophants firmly in place, Charlene Smith is an exception to the norm. Her writing springs from the catholicism of charterism and a natural allegiance to The Freedom Charter as the most profound but difficult of all South African manifestoes.
Hers is one of the more 'objective' voices you'll find.
I need to point to her blog here. She holds to a belief that we'll see our way through increasingly dark times (Eskom's propensity to turn off the lights and everything else at any time of day adding to the gloaming). Coming from an economically differenct perspective than does Smith and viewing South Africa as a bit player on a far larger stage, I most certainly don't entertain such beliefs.
But I do hope she's correct.
