Do join me here if you can – ENERGY VITAL ART OPEN HOUSE: Rebirth, Spring 2010, http://gloenervital.com/events/

Responding on Thought Leader.

My maternal great grandparents, as well as my maternal grandparents; uncles and aunts, including numerous cousins were born and raised on various Boere farms in the North West/ Northern Cape and Free State provinces. Many have also died here. These people have told me some of the most horrendous stories of living and dying on these farms over the years and generations. As a child growing up in the Free State, I, together with my parents visiting our relatives on these living-hell-farms, have personally experienced some of the dehumanizing ordeals these poor people had to live with on a daily basis for years and years.

 In my opinion many Boere farms epitomized the cruelty and brutality of Apartheid, as well as the extreme abuse and dehumanization of Black people under the obnoxious supremacist racist system. I’ll bet my telling so far is familiar to many, many other Black South African people of all shades and tones of  Blackness. Therefore, “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer!” was, in my view, a chant of extreme anger and frustration at probably one of the most important cornerstones of Apartheid’s sustenance and perpetuation. Apartheid-human-dignity-degradation, like slavery, was up to a point of course, extremely effective at getting the highest productive returns from the exploited and abused while killing them slowly and excruciatingly physically, mentally, and emotionally painfully.

 I’ll argue that at its purest level, the chant was directed at a system, an inhuman and unjust mode of production; it wasn’t necessarily personal or person-specific. Unfortunately systems and modes of production are made up of specific people in specific relations. Therefore, when taken literally, real specific people die. This must not be misconstrued to mean that I justify or condone murder and/ or crime though; and I conclude that the “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer!” chant is outdated and has outlived its meaning in the post-1994 new Rainbow Nation South Africa. The real enemy of South Africa today is multi-dimensional and includes, amongst other things, poor service delivery. We should now perhaps say, “Kill a poor service delivery, fire a councillor!”

Responding to: In defence of Julius’s right to free speech

I have little input to make with regard to the technicalities and interpretations of the law as I’m not a lawyer. However, the latter fact cannot be used, I hope, to invalidate my thoughts on this case, with particular reference to the offended vis-à-vis JM’s reasoning.

The most resourceful people will always get themselves topnotch lawyers to get them off the hook. Topnotch lawyers are cold, ”objective” masters of rhetoric, expert at finding and creating (?) loopholes in the law & interpretations of it in given situations. Therefore JZ goes free and a poor woman is left beat & humiliated, subjected to further emotional & psychological abuse by the likes of JM oozing arrogance of power.

I’ll argue that those who’ve never lived with and in what I call the township-jungle-law phenomenon will ofttimes have little or no appreciation of the socio dynamics of human relations and interactions emanating from there. At its most base level township-jungle-law metality can be extremely macho and chauvinistic, where boys and men take it for granted that screwing any girl or woman they want is their God-given ”cultural” prerogative. I (proudly) grew up in a shebeen, so I know. In this environment it’s often the easiest thing to overpower a woman through sheer material endowment or brute physical force. Many a time a woman  “…will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money…” because running away in the middle of the night would be like jumping off the pot into the fire. A woman treated with respect and dignity doesn’t have to “…request breakfast and ask for taxi money…In the morning…”. But then again the law is not moved by feelings and emotions…

@ Sipho : Any student of politics and power knows that any thing is possible in politics. Therefore it wouldn’t surprise me if the current SA pres. gets a second term. What would surprise me would be the SA voters themselves. By the way, I have no (political) power ambitions (at the moment!); and although I am not a card-carrying member, I actually am pro-ANC to the bone. For the party to regain the respect and goodwill of SA people it is in dire need of renewal of the humane values and style of its front figures. The power relations paradigm changed in 1994; leaders cannot continue with the same style of doing things as they did in exile. Now they cannot escape responsibility and answerability to the people.

The SA president debate continues…

@ Sipho

In all life supporting and growth human relations, respect and GOODWILL are earned. The effort? Simple, among others: wisdom, character, sensitivity, flexibility, adaptability, reciprocity, diplomacy, open-mindedness, dependability, justice & fairness, honesty, transparency, decency, humility, honour & integrity. Sorry, but the general local and global consensus is that the current SA president is lacking in much, if not all, of the attributes above.

Following blog here.

@shaz, JB, et al.: It’s said that leadership is reflection of the collective consciousness. It’s clear that SA now understands that we blew it here. Hope is that the SA collective consciousness has learnt from this stupendous blunder, such that the next leadership to be voted into power will be of a more honourable and graceful kind, reflecting positive and uplifting contemporary values towards future-oriented nation-buliding.

Thread on blog article here.

It’s a globally observable phenomenon that in business and economics this is White Man’s world, from education (MBA’s, etc) to leadership, power and control, through discoveries/ inventions to innovation. The most successful non-White economies in the world are so because they produce and manage largely according to standards established in the Western world; and even if their own markets are huge (the Far East), they produce things whose development and demand originally came from White Man’s world.

My point is, politics aside, you want to rise in White Man’s corporate world, know and understand how these people think. In my opinion, White Man will remain the most powerful business being on earth because He/ She is a master of changing, winning, and adapting, brutal as he/ she can be. Top corporate leadership requires skills that are not learnt in a classroom or shebeens. Dare to enter White People’s informal world in your climb in the corporate ladder! That’s where things happen. I am CEO of my own successful enterprise in the Whitest country in the world, by the way.

Responding to blog article here.

In the free world, moral rectitude and ethical awareness are pillars of leadership. History is full of examples of empires and modern corporations collapsing as a result of corrupt morals and lack of ethical standards on the part of their leaders and, subsequently their subjects/ subordinates. You want to dominate a people totally you corrode their moral and ethical fibre, much as colonialism and later apartheid did to SA people. This was, and still is evident in the squalar of township life, where the most sordid of jungle laws often prevail. e.g. like in primitive wars, in the t/ships it’s not over, or you won’t have demonstrated your superiority and power, until you’ve fucked your neighbours or the next man’s wife and daughter/-s.

As a modern state propounding democratic principles embedded in uBuntu (whatever that means to our leaders), SA cannot be run like it’s one large orgy-township-land, or like it’s still one liberation movement in exile where sex was pervasively used extreme-junglelaw-township-style as a tool of manipulation, power, domination, control, and even total destruction of victims’ lives. “Everyone is doing it”!? Jesus! In the townships every dog (dog animal and Top Dog) does it, even right in front children. Those who want to run SA like it’s country of mammals in the Discovery Channel must never again be given the mandate to rule. Sorry, no morals, no rule!

THE SPEAR LIVES, Part 2

Twenty years on
And The Spear lives…

Second time around
I hail from far beyond the seas
From beyond the highest mountains
I’ve zoomed over the widest deserts too
If you could fly
You’d choose to soar over to me
We sing along
In praise of freedom
I hope

Out here
Where my freedom
Chose to land me
I strive every waking minute
To keep my spear sharp-pointed
At its tip there’s a piece of diamond
Toiling to find it’s place
I can only balance
The golden shaft
Not an easy task
In my shaky way
I conjure The Spear
When Madiba Face appears
Everything is alright

Madiba face
Madiba charm
Madiba aura
Madiba Glow
Madiba dance
(Make) Freedom
Ahhh… smell so good…
Ahhh… taste so sweet…
Ahhh… feel so fine…

I’M FREE
For Madiba lives
Twenty years on …

END

© Simon Chilembo  February 13, 2010

Responding to string here: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-02-15-director-thrown-off-plane-for-being-too-big-seat

SIMON CHILEMBO

Obesity is, unfortunately for many who think otherwise, as much a serious personal affliction, handicap, tragedy, and abomination as any other “normal” illness. Therefore, people who suffer from the former deserve the compassion and respect given any other ill or handicapped person. Nobody in his/ her right frame of mind wants to be and remain fat. Nobody but an obese person self knows how extremely negative this condition impacts life quality and potential full life enjoyment. Body weight management defies even the very best amongst us ordinary mortals: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/top10s/article962304.ece . And it becomes even more of a challenge and personal disaster the older we get if (professional) help does not come forth. What with culture and tradition cards some people so dearly cling onto, even if the prevailing paradigms outdate them! It should be an imperative therefore that obese people are also afforded the same societal human dignity afforded all in any democratic society.

Some of the elegance of democracy lies in the attendant of the right to exist for all, for better or for worse. Society then has to, through democratic processes, pay the price for the existence of “bad”, “imperfect” or “non-desirable” elements through the creation or establishment of various social control institutions as provided by the law of the land/ constitution. In my view, one of the most poignant tenets of democracy and the rule of law is the Right to Choose. General public services and utilities are there for the good and benefit of all. It IS the prerogative of ALL who are not too pleased about the “social trash” inevitably encountered in the private sphere to find alternative ways of happily going about their own perfect lives. I therefore implore those who can’t stand fat people and the like on aeroplanes, etc., to get rich and buy their own private jets. In the meantime they could themselves pay for double-seats for their own comfort. Business and First classes are of course excellent alternatives. The reality of life is, sadly, we get what we pay for. Come on, does anybody really think that fat people themselves enjoy the claustrophobic rides on planes?