The Armpit Of South Africa & Other Stories

I saw a post on Facebook, wherein the poster asked what a political party's position was on legalizing the drug trade in South Africa. The poster was of the opinion that legalizing the trade would make things better and more controllable.

In my opinion, the only thing that legalizing this trade in human dignity, suffering and lost lives will help is that the government would be able to claim its share in tax proceeds from the profit made by these obscene monsters masquerading in human form - something which, in my opinion, could explain why law enforcement agencies struggle so to clamp down on this dangerous and illegal trade in the first place - corruption. 

Traditional Hatred

What an interesting holiday season this has been! 

Three weeks went by so fast that I once again find myself writing the first article for the new year! 

I hope you all had a wonderful time, and whether or not the silly season held any special or even religious significance for you, I hope it was peaceful and filled with love and the company of not just family and friends - but people you really wanted to spend time with, and hopefully, enjoyed their company.

There Is In Prejudice, No Fairness, Nor Equality

We are all losing a little bit of our equality and freedom, a little bit at a time. 

All of us, in every social grouping, whatever the basis for discrimination or differentiation, are affected. We all belong to a race group, a gender, a sexual orientation, a personal expression, and have our own religious beliefs. How long before all of us are equal only in our disenfranchisement, powerlessness and despair?

Is Democracy In South Africa Dead?

"█████ ██ █ ████everything ███ █████ is█████ ████ ████ fine ████ ███ █ █████ love,█████ ██████ ███ your █████ ████ government #BlackTuesday" - This is a message that has been doing the rounds today on the web, and on Facebook. The topic of conversation? The controversial "Protection Of Information Bill, aka the "POI" Bill. It was today passed, after being railroaded through Parliament.

Why I Do Not Celebrate Human Rights Day In South Africa

Did you see Mr Gay South Africa™ win Mr Gay World in the news last week? 

 

No? Neither did I.

Many South Africans will be celebrating Human Rights Day in South Africa on Monday 21 March, but I won't be one of them. Why? Because despite our Constitutional provisions of equality and democracy and human rights, I am still part of a minority group which is discriminated against, and whose concerns are sidelined by the lack of interest of others who like to look down on myself and those like me - and who view our existence and achievements as an embarrassment, or at best, uninteresting.

Yes, He Can

The last few days has given me some things to think about. 

 

The recent cabinet reshuffle in South Africa seems, so far at least, to be something to be glad about. 

 

Lulu Whatshername was reposted somewhere else, away from arts and culture, presumably where she won't be able to criticize and condemn works of art as "pornography" and "anti-family", and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba was also "redeployed" somewhere else. Hopefully those places will be spaces where neither of them might cause any further trouble by pushing their xenophobic religious fundamentalist bullshit into government narrative.

X Spots The Mark

On Saturday I was at a canvassing table in my voting district, asking people to sign a petition against the governments proposed new legislation which will gag the media. Surprisingly, a broad base of people of every language, race and political affiliation, signed the petition and commented freely about how bad this law would be for everyone. This was encouraging, but what still shocked me though, was the number of people who just waved me off - or laughed, as if there was something actually funny in asking people to exercise their democratic right and sign a petition against something which would strip them of their freedom to access information.

"I don't do politics" one smart looking dude told me. "But politics will do you!" I replied, while he and his girlfriend stared at me as though I were from another planet.

What Is Happening To Our Democracy?

I doodled about the matter surrounding the government's current assault on South Africa's democracy on my white board last night, and found what I'd come up with rather thought provoking, so I thought I would build it into a PowerPoint slide and share it with you.

The Word

Freedom is a funny thing. You probably take it for granted, until you wake up one morning and you haven't got it anymore. When Big Brother starts looking over your shoulder to tell you you can't watch certain kinds of characters in your favorite soapies anymore (because that is contrary to "nation-building"), or read about government's latest corruption scandal (because that would influence your vote come next election, duh), or walk down the street holding your partner's hand (because that promotes an "unhealthy lifestyle choice" and "threatens Christian family values") - then you will know the bite of censorship and miss it.

It's quite funny to note over the past week or so, that with all the petitions and civil organizations and personalities now speaking out against the "Protection of Information" Bill which would reintroduce censorship of the media in South Africa - all the right wing and fundamentalist Christian (aka Levitican) groups are deafeningly silent. Why, I wonder?

Plausible Inability

I was being chastised the other day, as sometimes happens - for criticizing the fundamentalist attack on democracy in one of my earlier articles - and one guy thought that by proving to me that Christians "invented" the concept of democracy, he would rubbish my argument.

I'm sorry, what?

"The concept of democracy was founded by christians, embraced by christians and is still widely supported by christians." He said.

Right. So what about all those poor Greeks who thought they invented it around 4000 years ago? Boy don't they feel stupid now? Reminds me of that old BA ad - "We didn't invent flying - we perfected it", only in my mind it goes: "We didn't invent religion - we just hijacked it".

Last but not least, we have all those Levitican leaders who are doing their level best to get global democracy to fall on its sword for the sake of their puritan sense of morality and delusions of dominion and "right to rule" and doing a fair imitation of "Pinky and the Brain".

You, The People

One thing I learned from history is that when you want to isolate and persecute any community, country or group - the first thing you do is to remove the thinkers, leaders and strong-willed from that group. Without them, the rest of the sheep will swallow just about anything the government spoons into the funnel called the media. Stalin did it, Hitler did it, Mugabe has done it - and if the ANC has its way, history will simply have repeated itself.

The proposed new law to control the media and introduce censorship and restrictions by the government has been described as a significant step backwards for South Africa on the downward spiral to becoming like its corrupt and impoverished neighbor, Zimbabwe.

The Minister, The Barrister & The Thought Police

Recently the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Gigaba, announced his intention to push legislation for censorship of the internet and also the mobile phone network, supposedly to block people from accessing pornography. 

 

I believe that aside from just affecting negatively the civil freedoms instilled in the Bill of Rights for all South Africans, this will have dire consequences for freedom of expression, and the right to access information - and the potential threat that this legislation will be made to serve a religious fundamentalist portion of South African society that has long sought to police the morality of the rest of us.

The Trouble With Censorship Is XX XXXX XXXXXXX

The Ministry of Home Affairs has announced plans to ban pornography on the internet. 

 

Also mentioned prominently in the article is their partner in this affair - a shadowy organization calling itself "The Justice Alliance of South Africa", which as it turns out, is a pitifully small right-wing Christian fundamentalist group which pretends to have the legal best interests of the South African public at heart, and which masquerades as a "friend to the court" whenever any legal issue related to matters of interest to the Christian hegemony appears before the bench.

This group has tried very hard to disguise the scent of Christian extremism emanating from within, with a thin veneer of legal respectability, and a spritz of eau de justice, but try as it might, the odors of religious extremism and conservative ulterior motives still linger. 

Ulterior Motives

Why do South Africa's law enforcement agencies not seem to be curbing or preventing violent crime incidents plaguing us of late?

Two likely reasons come to mind:

1) Because they are really unable to curb or prevent violent crime and don't want to admit it, or

2) Because they want the country to be or at least appear to be becoming ungovernable.

Of course, one would have to really wonder why the second reason might apply... except if, for example, they might later need to "justify" a reactionary crackdown on societal or democratic freedoms.

Surely I am exaggerating? I don't know, am I?

Asking myself this question, I am confronted with several interesting facts.

At the top of the list of these interesting facts, is the detail that something like this is beginning to happen right now with the pending reintroduction of media censorship.

Seeing Is Believing

Last weekend we saw the first Mr. Gay South Africa™ pageant - or rather, didn't. 

Those of us who were not fortunate enough to attend the main event, or the semi-final ocean cruise, or the other events which took place around the country, read about it. We saw articles and photos in local pink news services such as Gayspeak and Mambaonline - but that was pretty much the only mention the event received. Did we see any attention given to this event - which the gay community found to be of some import, in any mainstream newspapers or hear radio coverage or see any TV features? I certainly didn't. Apparently the Mr. Gay South Africa™ pageant (I keep writing it out in full because it is a completely different animal to the former "Mr Gay SA" pageant of years ago) did manage to make the News24 front page - online. Twice. It also made The Times once, but that was long ago, and somehow it made Die Volksblad in Bloem - I don't know HOW it got it in. But about the actual final event, only News24 - oh - and although displayed on the front page, the actual article was under "GoTravel" and not anything in the main news section. But otherwise, that was it.

Censorship And The Demise Of Personal Liberty

For some time now, religious fundamentalist extremist groups in South Africa have been campaigning to ban various things in this country. Unsurprisingly, these include the usual list of things people of this ilk seem to disapprove of, and work to deprive those around them of access to them as well.

 

A few months ago, a massive crowd - all of 18 actual people - picketed outside the Sexpo in Cape Town, demanding a return to what they called "traditional" and "family values" - oh, and the banning of pornography of course. This transpired, much to the amusement of the 20 odd thousand people drawn to the Sexpo by their very negative press, which unintentionally turned out to be very positive for the event instead. 

 

Such groups have held numerous protests and mounted email campaigns against "soft-porn" on E-TV, so-called "blasphemy" in student "rag" magazines (which now no longer exist, thanks to these idiots with the over-tight underpants) and of course, marches against abortion. 

 

And who can forget the actual thousands who gathered in South Africa some years ago to oppose marriage equality for gay people - because of course, gay people falling in love and getting married is just way too bad for "the family", and will cause our fragile civilization to collapse?