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ZIWAPHI • VOL 4 NO 7 • 9 - 22 APRIL 2010

NELSPRUIT,

Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela says the violent community protests that have rocked Mpumalanga are an indication that government is often not as responsive as it ought to be.

Madonsela was addressing a Stakeholders Forum comprising provincial government officials, political parties, non governmental organisations and traditional leaders in Nelspruit on Tuesday as part of a two-day visit to the province.

“It helps to respond within two days when a community has a complaint. It’s better to tell them where the problem is, and what you are doing to resolve it because if we make promises we can’t keep, we lose integrity,” she said.

She said that following the service delivery protests in Siyathemba township in Balfour early last month, she and Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, visited residents and heard that they had been complaining to the Dipaleseng local municipality about the irregular use of state funds for some time.

She said a team of investigators from her office was busy investigating the allegations.

“We hope that all these measures will bring about relief to distressed communities,” she said.

Since March last year, violent protests have rocked nine municipalities of the province, including Dipaleseng.

Madonsela noted that government only fixes the symptoms temporarily instead of finding out the cause.

“There is also a Ministerial Committee which meets regularly to try and address the bottlenecks that hinder the effective and efficient delivery of services in a specific area,” she said.

Mpumalanga MEC for Public Works, Roads and Transport, Clifford Mkasi said the Public Protector must assist in restoring confidences to government.

“We hope this will contribute towards enriching the functions of the office in investigating queries and conducts of government officials, parastatals and public office bearers to eradicate corruption and run a clean government, without fear, favour or prejudice,” he said.

Madonsela’s visit to Mpumalanga forms part of a project to promote Public Protector Vision 2020, a programme that seeks to encourage the public to regard the Public Protector as a trusted, effective and accessible institution that rights administrative wrongs and consistently acts with integrity to ensure fair, accountable and responsive decision making, service and good governance in all state affairs and public administration in every sphere of government.

On Wednesday, she will interact with the general public in Carolina to promote the Public Protector’s services.

The Constitution has established the Public Protector as one of six institutions mandated to support and strengthen constitutional democracy.

The Public Protector has the authority to investigate any suspected improprieties within the state or public administration to right administrative wrongs and ensure fair, accountable and responsive decision making, service and good governance.

The Public Protector may not, however, question judicial decisions.These journalists are increasingly becoming brothers-in-arms, they decide what the nation should know and they use the power of the media to advance their own agendas. A case in hand is the recent stone walling of information about a journalist who the ANC Youth League alleged was taking bribes for publishing propaganda from his dark alley paymasters. The media bosses acted like some Cosa Nostra bosses. They colluded openly to keep the story from the public eye. They practiced their own code of silence epitomizing the sign of ometa. Instead, they mounted an attack on the provider of the information about a crooked journalist. Whether there was substance or not in the allegations about the dirty journalist, it was not the preserve of the media to decide.

They should have published the story alongside their own views about the veracity or lack thereof of the allegations. Unfortunately, they decided to collude and crush the story. They have the power to decide what the public must and must not know. It is called press freedom! There are those who unashamedly try to link every bad thing that happens under the skies of South Africa to Julius Malema. Like his namesake, Julius Caesar, who was accused of being over-ambitious, Malema is made out to be the tyrant who has become a national threat. Some among the press even had the temerity to blame Tereblanche’s death on Malema. What Cheek!

Terreblanche, was no saint, to the knowledge of everyone in this country, many people have lost their lives at the hands of Eugene and his ilk. When Rocky Malebane Metsing toppled Lucas Mangope from this Bophutatswana throne, the hotheads in AWB stormed the Tswana homeland, armed to the teeth and killed at least 50 innocent black people until one brave soldier decided to put a bullet on a prostrate AWB ‘soldier’ in full glare of television cameras.

The racial divide in South Africa took many decades of formulation and implementing. It is so deeply entrenched not only in culture but also in veins of our bodies. Illusions about a rainbow nation are necessary to help us tolerate one another but they are just that and no more!

David versus Goliath

Terreblanche symbolized a Goliath - a bully, who terrorized black people for a long time. He represented everything evil associated with apartheid. Like Goliath, he was slain by a 15 year old who, arguably, could be likened to David. Should we celebrate like the David’s clan the death of a bully who struck fear in the bosoms of even the bravest of our black people? His teachings found resonance with the likes of Barend Strydom who took a gun and randomly shot to death seven people in broad light in Pretoria. In court Barend had the following to say:

“I grant the right to live, but not in our country. They should not be seen in Pretoria, but in their homelands” Strydom said. “Scientists have proved there is less oxygen in this country as a result of all the black people.” “Wit Wolf” Barend Strydom testifying in mitigation of sentence after being convicted of shooting seven black people in a rampage in central Pretoria, Argus, May 18 1989. He said he smiled during the shootings because as a “friendly person” it was hard for him not to smile at his victims. He also said that when the British ruled South Africa there had been permits to shoot ‘Hottentots’, “I see no reason why we cannot obtain permits to shoot blacks as well”

Barend received amnesty from our very generous presidency. He has not stopped his war talk and his hatred for blacks. There are millions of Afrikaaners who idolize him and wish they had his courage and resolve. He is a hero.

The real De-Klerks

There are those who in the media who love to portray F.W. de Klerk as a doyen of democracy, a man of vision who gave black South Africans their freedom. Little do the lazy journalists know exactly what a racist de Klerk was or still is. The following quotations from him and his late former wife Marike should at least shed some light on the views he held about race relations at one point:

“The government has no intention of putting each race into a separate compartment. However, we would never accept integration” Mr. F.W. de Klerk (National Party Vereeniging), July 1975, Weekly Mail, August 1989

How many Afrikaaner people are holding on to words of their leader, today?

“You know they are a negative group. The definition of a coloured in the population register is someone that is not black, and is not white and is not Indian, in other words a no-person. They are left overs. They are the people that were left after the nations were sorted out. They are the rest” Mrs Marike de Klerk 1983, (source: Sunday Tribune February 5, 1989).

This view is still shared by millions of white people across the country, at least the people of Orania and the Afrikaaners in Venterdorp do not even try to hide their feelings

What about Indians?

Indians were first brought to Natal in 1860. As the years passed, they began to create certain problems. By the time of the Union they had become a national problem – History for standard 9, C Joubert and JJ Britz 1987

Racism was taught at school, at a tender age, hatred and intolerance for races other than white was fed to young boys and girls

... and the Couloureds?

Coloured girls can now work as usherettes in White cinemas – provided they do not look at the screen, Mr. John Rodman, general manager of Kinekor’s theatre division, told me this week. “when we show a film which non-white girls are not allowed to see, they usher patrons with a torch and watch the floor,” he said. “We discussed the matter with the Department of Labour and I raised this point with them. As a precautionary measure – since non-whites are not allowed to see some films restricted to only whites – we decided that they should not look at the screen.” (source: Sunday Express, October 24, 1971).

Laugh if you want to at the stupidity of the business community and the government of racists.

Baaskap and religion

A predikant recently instructed a congregation of illiterate labourers that they should not say “Onse Vader”, wat in die hemele is, since Jesus was a white man, only white men can say “Our Father”. Letter from Rev. Leanard Heap to the Cape Times, August 18, 1959, it elicited angry replies from some Afrikaans churchmen. Similar controversy arose in 1970 after allegations that white churchmen were telling Coloured farm children in the Southern Cape about “Baas Peter, Baas Mathew and Baas Paul when they spoke of Apostles

Racism was preached in church and many white people claim to be god-fearing today while they think of themselves as BAAS (boss).

The De-Klerk’s views on separate development

The Nationalist Government’s policy is separate development. Now if a white man marries a black Transkeian woman, the man will be voting for the white parliament, the black for the Transkei Parliament and the children for the Coloured person’s Representative Council. I do not think this makes for a happy family life. Mr. F.W. de Klerk explaining why the Prohibition of mixed Marriages Act was necessary, July 1975. Quoted in the Weekly Mail, August 8, 1989.

This is classic from a man who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Nelson Mandela. Today our media has managed to make black shameful of talking about apartheid and racism. Any black person who blames apartheid for whatever reason is made to look like a lazy bum who is looking for a scapegoat. We are told over and over again than apartheid is a thing of past and that we must move on.

It’s a sin to be black and rich!

Some black people have tried to move on in the business world. Almost all of them are questioned for being rich. Robert Matana Gumede, a billionaire from around Nelspruit, recently got married in a fanfare wedding which surpassed in style, class and splendour even the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. The media, surprisingly, gave a positive coverage of the wedding except for one white woman journalist from a weekly newspaper whose coverage of the event was more about how Robert made his money. She spinned the whole article to leave a reader with lingering questions or suspicions that Robert’s wealth might have been amassed through crooked links.

Rich whites tenderpreneurs are left untouched

Now lifestyle audits are called for any black person who seem to be doing well. If Crous, the old playboy who is going out with Khanyi Mbau were black, the media would be questioning his wealth because the little that we know about him points to him being a “Tenderprenuer” who rakes in money by building the poor quality matchbox RDP houses. It is a sin to be black and rich. The media and those behind them are so powerful that they utilize state apparatus such as the SARS, HSRC, Public Protector and CIPRO to advance subliminal messages to the effect that if you are black ‘get rich at your own peril, because if you do we are coming after you’

Make-up smile

In the democracy that we live in, we are bit civil to one another across the racial divide but the truth is that we still hate each other’s guts with well passion. The practiced smile we wear on our faces is like cheap make up that does not change who we really are. Terre’Blanche died for his sins and he will answer to his God. The living have a choice whether to make a martyr of him and perpetrate all the rot that he stood for.

As for the lazy journalists who respond rather than research, the less said the better.