Last Saturday I was disturbed from my chores by two ANC election foot soldiers, a lady and a guy, both in their late thirties or early forties. They demanded, in a stern voice, to know if I stayed in the house. When I answered in the positive the lady asked. “According to our papers there are two people who are registered to vote in this house.” I was amazed. How could they know that? Only the IEC should have that information. “How would you know that?” I asked, perplexed. “That does not matter,” chipped in the guy. “Are you Mphuthumi Ntabeni?” I was flabbergasted.

After that we went into little detail about the issues the ANC is putting on the table to convince us to vote for it to power again, chief of which was the cutting of water to people’s home by the City of Cape Town. I agreed with them that cutting people’s water is unconstitutional, and contrary to the promise of bringing basic lives with dignity to people. But my following questions caught them off guard. I asked why were they acting as if they were an opposition party. After all the ANC has been governing this province for sometime now, under whom the City of Cape Town cut people’s water.

If the ANC Provincial government was effective and efficient, I told them when they made to object, it could have found ways and means to stop the City of Cape Town, under the DA as they emphatically pointed out. Surely had the provincial government decided, say, to take the City of Cape Town to court, they would have won the case and saved a lot of people from unnecessary dire straits. I put it to them. “This thing points to the inefficiencies of the ANC government.” I told them. “Though your organisation has good intentions and policies most of the time, it is unable to implement and monitor them, because it puts unqualified deployed people to positions of civil duty. As a voter I no longer trust it.”

In the end they agreed with me and left with a promise that things are now going to be different. I wish I could believe that but I don’t. “I’ve heard your promises before, and frankly am a little cloyed with them.” Nothing is as impossible to surmount as inability. The truth of the matter, with the good it has done, the ANC government has reached its limits of delivery. That’s why it has been going in circles since 2006 when it reached the limits of its abilities. It’s time to pass the baton.

They gave me two pamphlets, one from the ANC and another from the SACP. The ANC one was titled ‘Stop Cutting off people’s water’. It talked about how the DA “Over three years since they have been in power in the City of Cape [sic] the DA has shown they provide services to the rich, not to the poor townships. Zille DA says supporters pay the taxes for government to support the poor. This is not true – everybody pays VAT taxes and it is the sweat of workers that contributes to company profits.”

In a bullet form the pamphlet put three Stop points, which included cutting basic services, evicting people “from Government-owned rental housing if they are unable to pay due to financial problems.” And:

• Stop neglecting to maintain sewerage systems and roads, and leaving rubbish to pile up in the streets in poor areas.

I share their indignation on the last issue. It’s still fresh on my mind how Madame Zille critically called on Jacob Zuma to come and look how people in the Vaal were made to live with sewerage bubbling on their streets. My thinking was, does she need to go to the Vaal for that? I can show her several places in the townships of Cape Town under her administration with similar problems. The hypocrisy of it all gets my goat.

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Most of us have given up the idea of objective journalism as a pipe dream. We are all, to some extent, bias to something; that’s the price we pay for the history of our existence. But we still demand from good journalism a fair portrayal of facts to avoid being manipulated into unsound reasoning. We farther expect journalistic arguments to see beyond emotions and habits. In my humble opinion, Dr. Xolela Mangcu, fails to meet these standards in most of his arguments.

Dr. Mangcu’s piece last week at Business Day, ‘Give Zuma a chance after the intolerance of the Mbeki regime’ is typical of spin-doctoring himself and ‘me, me,’ argumentative style. He takes up his favourite past time, Mbeki bashing and ties it with his cynical attitude towards what he calls “the thing called the Congress of the People”. What baffles me is that he keeps mentioning how oppressed he and his cabal were under Mbeki regime, yet if I remember well they freely used vitriol (democratically entitled) to criticize the former president all the time. The worst that ever happened to them was to get different opinions from what he calls the bloodhounds of Thabo Mbeki. Was that the sign of an oppressive regime?

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This is a long part of my daughter’s story that I hope COPE will learn from its morale:

My daughter is 9 and doing Grade 5 at St Mary’s School, Gardens, Cape Town. Recently she was chosen to participate in the regional inter-school athletics. She duly practised for about two weeks. Last Monday she came down with flu, which as usual triggered in her (acute) bronchial complications. On Tuesday I took her to the doctor, nothing serious, just precaution-she has to have antibiotics so that it does not degenerate into an asthmatic cycle. Tuesday night her flu peaked and the following day she felt on the road to recovery.

On Wednesday she insisted to me that she wanted to take part on the athletic interschool competition. I didn’t consider it possible and had already told her teachers she won’t be participating. On Thursday, the day of the competition I realised that my prohibiting from participating was making her more miserable than being sick, so we struck a deal. I told her if at noon she was feeling much better she can call me and I would come take her to the athletics, which were starting at 14h00. Needless to say, she called.

It was one of those days we had been having in Cape Town, 38 degrees Celsius. Those who know the accompanying humidity of Cape Town would understand how that is not a child’s game.  But I decided to keep my end of the bargain by taking her against my better judgment. On the car I could still hear her breathing was laboured. To give her system better chance of responding at the stadium I decided to skip the midday dose of her medication that I knew made her drowsy. As I sat under the stadium shade at Bellville stadium, looking at Phanye with rest of the children from the schools of the region I had enough time to regret my decision. The sun was shooting hosts. I knew it would reverse her condition.

When her first activity came, 100 m, close to 17h00 hours. Her teachers kept complaining about  how, because Phanye is very tall-she actually wears 12 to 13 year old clothes though she 9-the officials, from other schools were putting her on track to compete with 12 year olds. My concerns were on the other issue.

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By Monica Graaff & Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Until recently the message of environmentalism had an invidious tendency of emphasizing the pessimistic side of things to an extent of bordering on a loathing of humanity. As the result most people tended to avoid it, fearing being bombarded by what has been derogatory referred to as the ‘tree huggers’, the environmental fundamentalist whose narrowness ranges from dismay to despair. But protecting the environment and building sustainable development is not something that can just be wished away. We all have to undertake to preserve, protect and enhance our environment, including our built environment.

We need to disavow the ingrained belief that we can “invent” ourselves out of the current environmental crisis with technology. Technology can never replace the life-supporting system of our environment. To be responsive to the challenges of our era we need first to be responsible. We urgently need a new ways and a deeper critic of our own life styles and civilisation in pursuing and inculcating a vision of creating sustainable societies.

A sustainable society is the one that integrates social, environmental, and economic concerns of health and justice, and can both sustain itself by living up to responsibilities to future generations, as well as sustain and nourish its members in all needs over time. But it is becoming clear that our world, at its present course, can never measure up to the challenges of sustainability. The world is in ever growing environmentalist crisis.

Environmental crisis includes everything from mass extinction of species, resource depletion, global warming to poverty widening, the widening social gap, unfair trade, urban issues, and loss of social capital, in our case due to the apartheid legacy. So environmentalism is much more than just physical environment. It includes issues of direct human impact such as pollution and public health, and goes to issues of community well-being, participatory democracy, justice and equality. Environmentalism also raises deeper questions of what it means to be human, and what real progress should entail, to what sort of society we are striving for. The growing collective conclusion is that we are in a crisis when it comes to environmentalism.

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For a while I was confused why the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille, would stoop so low as to exchange verbal punches with Julius Malema. Now I know. She was not stooping; they’re on the same level. Last Friday in her weekly letter she gave COPE a taste of her dirty tricks by sharing a ridiculous rumour about COPE formation being “mooted by ANC strategists who realised that the election of Jacob Zuma as President of the ANC would alienate a key section of the ANC’s support base. The disaffected would include supporters of Thabo Mbeki and people who could not countenance supporting a presidential candidate with a cloud of corruption hanging over him.”

She goes on about COPE’s supposedly planned coalition with the ANC after elections, effectively  making “a vote for COPE would turn out to be a vote for Zuma.” Madame Zille assures us that she does not believe this rumour; of course she would not be a white-washed grave if she did. Her tactic is to inflict damage on COPE and stand aside in stupefying, specious, disgust; the usual thing for the liberal mentality of her kin. She says; “I do not buy this conspiracy theory. Politicians, despite what some people might think, are not that Machiavellian. And the ANC does not have the capacity to execute such a strategy.  But I do believe there is a possibility that COPE may form a coalition with the ANC, even without it having been the product of an ANC grand plan. Reverend Dandala’s statement about going into coalition lends credence to that belief, as does his general attitude towards the ANC.”

Condescending tone aside, Madam Zille knows exactly what the white liberal vote fears most, the presidency of Jacob Zuma. The coming into picture of COPE complicates matters for DA, which is why Zille decided to highlight innuendoes against COPE, thus effectively planting a seed of doubt in the wavering mind of those white votes that are still neither fish nor fowl. She points out in relish what COPE in harsh white circles is mockingly referred to “Coke Lite” as compared to ANC, which is called “Coke Zero”. That’s the lethal poison of white liberal mind of Zille’s horde. It kills softly while pretending to be on your side.

I’m sure you’ve heard the clearer version of this in hushed tone in some office party where your colleagues are mostly this type of white liberal thinking; ‘Of course I don’t agree with this, but do you know what they are saying …’ Then it goes on to say some stereotyping thing about blacks. I almost pity the likes of Lindiwe Mazibuko (DA media person) that have to deal with this sort of thing almost everyday of their lives. I know how mentally exhausting it is to be in the overwhelming company of hidden prejudices of the white liberal juggernaut. I was one of the few black students who first attended liberal campuses in the eighties. But that is not the point.

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The pooled tank of the Zuma Project that began in crime, continued by foolishness, and will surely end in misery for us all, must be patting themselves at the back, admiring their deviousness as they watch their plan come together. First the Scorpions were done away with. Second the hated president unconstitutionally gotten rid of [Our Constitution insist that only the Parliament or Constitutional court have authority to dismiss a seating president]. Thirdly the laws for them to control the public broadcaster through Parliament are on the way. And now ‘Cosatu in KwaZulu-Natal has given ANC president Jacob Zuma “house rules and conditions” he will have to immediately abide by when he becomes the country’s president.’

Canaan Mdletshe reports: ‘Speaking at a National Health Workers Union rally in Pietermaritzburg yesterday to drum up support for the ANC ahead of elections, Cosatu provincial secretary Zet Luzipho said “Cosatu had supported Zuma through thick and thin – from the day he was relieved of his duties as the deputy president by the then president, Thabo Mbeki”. He said they had “never set any conditions” for Zuma before, but this time around, there would be. Now Zuma had to abide by these rules when he becomes president after the elections.

“Zuma must make sure that when he appoints the new head of the National Prosecuting Authority, he appoints a responsible person who will not prosecute him. He cannot appoint a person and have to stand before him on August 25 (when Zuma faces corruption charges)”. He said the same condition should apply to the new head of police “because (Jackie) Selebi was going”. ” The current head of police in the country is going. So Zuma must also appoint a responsible person in that position as well,”‘ said Luzipho. Talk about a man who wears his brain on his belly.

Those who commit crimes of corruption are now soon going to be their own punishers and our prosecutors. All this for the mad guilt of one person! Msholozi must be smiling alone to himself. And Shaik, the money man, is just in time for the Khangaman’s inauguration. Dear Lord, the school of giddiness and academy of vice is taking full control! How have things come to this? How have we been condemned into barbarism and purchase of corruption.

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Karl Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto gave a prophetic scenario of what is likely to happen as the knot of financial markets tighten from one depression into another. The ability to define these depressions with sophisticated terms, like, ‘the spread of the credit-fuelled financial splurge’ does nothing to our ability of preventing them. The simple factor is in the way Marx put it as far back as in 1867: “Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to the bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to Communism. “

This is what has been passing as economic growth in the financial markets of the West for a while now. The attitude I loath most towards financial crises is the cavalier empty joviality about allowing ‘excess to run its course since the slump is the cure for previous distortions’. This unwillingness, even laziness in tackling structural abnormalities, is what fosters the sweeping of problems under the carpet. It leads to this foolish Keynesian notion that ‘The patient does not need rest. He needs exercise.’ This is usually followed by state expenditure to cure the so called slump.

In reality market economies have long relied on state support, often delivered through the backdoor, but the Great Depression began a substantial shift from a predominantly regulatory state to a revenue state. The accompanying public’s demands for economic security means that government would need then invest large amounts of money in the economy to assure stability and perpetual full-employment growth.

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As the Congress of the People announced its Premier candidate at Paarl yesterday I knew the opinion knives will soon be out for it. Those who feel COPE is just ANC-lite or anti-ANC, think it a platform for political career resurrection with little more than taxonomical adjustment and same old prescriptions and cadences.

Indeed COPE has been taking in a lot of detritus dumped overboard by other political parties, giving some fresh opportunities to reboot. It is therefore understandable when people question its bona fides. After all one of COPE’s rallying points is ethical behaviour. Why, for instance, must it welcome as a hero and Premier candidate for the most contested province in the republic, Western Cape, Allan Boesak, unless it was burnt on shooting itself on the foot?

Granted, Boesak was given a presidential pardon that eradicated his criminal record. But if COPE sells itself as the guardian of moral principles, and rallies on politics that are built on solid principles, why must it want to compromise itself with a convict.  More than other political party, COPE will be judged harshly when it shows holes on its moral fabric, because it chose to take a high moral ground.

On the other hand most people tend to forget that COPE also promotes the combination of reforming spirit with its ideals of constitutionalism, defence of democracy and so forth. COPE is about new agenda that is built on the liberation heritage of our country. It has come, not to destroy the beautiful history of struggling for freedom in this country, but to fulfil it. It says, the policies are good, for that matter, some of us have been highly instrumental in developing them. What is wrong is with the implementation, the pilots not the plane.

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