I warned that the slogans from the - shall we lump them together as "The liberation forces" - and the right wing of the ruling class such as the HNP, AWB and their ilk were equally dangerous and short-sighted.

I feared that both would form deep furrows in the fabric of our nation, the effects of which would be felt for a long, long time.

Amazingly, that president bravely delivered on one step needed to sort out the country - as history will record long after the current, vitriolic social media campaign to erase him from it by both extremes of the political spectrum has faded.

I feel that the fear I expressed then about those slogans was justified as our country really is feeling the effects of the blinkered thinking exhibited by both extremes of the day.

The two slogans were: "Liberation before education" and the other was "Death before integration".

The resignation of former president J G Zuma last night closes the chapter, hopefully, on the effects of one of them. The tenure of Mr Zuma, and the looting which transpired under his watch, are both products of the fact that there was a large portion of the nation - the sector with the voting power to affect real change - that had not had the benefit of an education which might have made them more alert to the rot. Perhaps deliberately so?

The performance of the incoming president and his cabinet in 2018 (and no, I am not being sexist - anyone with even the most basic grasp of reality will know it is going to be a "he") will, I trust, serve to kill off the vestiges of the other over time.

The folly of the liberation before education drive is evidenced by our current circumstances. While the former president of the republic was already way past schooling age in the late 1980s, as a politician he himself did not really need a bundle of degrees. However, he needed to have a pool of well-educated and experienced citizens from whom he could appoint cabinet ministers with the requisite skills and experience to help run the country as it should have been.

Our current credit rating, the national debt to GDP ratio and the fact that millions of people woke up today without a job - just like yesterday - proves that this was not done and there is little to celebrate.

Had it been done then the economy would be in a better state and our unemployment levels would not be the shameful percentage we see this morning.

Instead of delivering on another slogan by the liberation movements of "a better life for all", we have, in fact, seen the delivery of a better life for - to very large degree - the connected cadres and the districts or provincial regions from which they hail.

As the citizens have become increasingly aware of the way in which connected cadres filch tax revenues, yet more slogans have been coined to try and divert blame to "white monopoly capital" or "enemies of the revolution".

The folly of the other slogan of the day can be seen in the fact that a large (and growing) portion of the advantaged citizenry is regularly carping about the state of the country while being ruled "by them", is shown by the number of incidents where the descendants of those right wing groups still try and enforce segregation of their offspring wherever possible. This is done either by way of clustering together around one language or by using their wealth to place their offspring in schools of such exclusivity that little can bother their chosen view of the order of things.

It is now time for the incoming heir apparent to kill off the vestiges of both slogans and really deliver for the average citizen without attention diverting tactics.

If the new president can draw from the growing group of post 1991 scholars and graduates the brightest and most adept minds to populate cabinet and the public service, he could truly sweep away the shackles of the past that are not only stifling our economic growth, but the future of the young people (generally under 40) of the nation.

The incoming president is, himself, a "lightie" in African presidential terms. At 66 this year he is a youngster. He has, however, had the benefit of an education many can only dream of. He has also had a stellar career in the corporate sector.

He should have, looking at the results he achieved in private enterprise, gained the knowledge and experience to know the merits of appointing the best candidates to vital positions based on merit and not allegiance. He would also know that when the company is facing low cash flows it needs to trim the fat.

It would be the best possible outcome if he could apply this knowledge to setting up an entirely fresh administration on all levels of the public service which is fit for purpose with the just the right amount of people needed to deliver optimum performance. And as he would have seen when eyeing the bottom line of his company, very often, less is more. As but one example where there is excess fat, we do not need a cabinet of 80+ people when the USA gets by with under 20!

If this can be achieved then there will be no further need for silly sloganeering by anyone.

And the country would, in due course, start melding together towards a common purpose. This purpose must be to build a truly better life for all. The vast inequalities that exist in our country cannot continue. Time is running out for the delivery of meaningful change for the vast majority of the citizens. I'd wager that the eleven years of Mr Ramaphosa's presidential tenure are the real make-or-break period for a unified South African state.

However, it cannot be achieved by removing relative wealth from the middle-class and giving it away to the less fortunate. We need to empower all citizens to generate their own wealth. This will grow the economy and lead to job creation. This will solve a lot of the carping and grumbling seen every day in the media.

As I said way back in the late 80s to another incoming president: If you fill their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow the bank truck.

However, with a lot of folk clamouring for cake at the palace gates right now, trimming of the fat and stabilising the ship of state will need to be early priorities.

Its time that the next officer of the watch place a firm grip on the tiller and ensures that the crew are efficient and alert.

Having met the new heir apparent strolling through Fourways Mall one day sans-body guards et-al when he gave of his time for a short chat (and at several media events in tha past 20 years)  I know he is a wonderful human.

However, he is also a politician.

I hope his humanity will be the prime motivator in his administration and not blind political loyalty to a party that, to date, has done little more than use slogan after slogan to divert attention away from its own failings.

Its time for action, not rhetoric.

For those in the South African photo-journalism community who were active in the late 1970s and through the 1980s (and there are a few of us still around who were), the un-flattering attention given to us by the then National Intelligence Agency (NIA) or the state security officials from a myriad of departments in the security apparatus, is a searing memory./span>

Journalists and photographers who were identified as potentially working against the state or who were obvious "kaffir boeties"*(as we were called by yelling security policemen whenever we were taken to various offices for "'n geselsie"*), were harassed in a unique way.

Thinking back on it, the resources wasted by these sectors of the security cluster must have been huge. Nevertheless, we were obviously dangerous enough to warrant this type of attention.

The tactics varied but, in essence, they started by the tarnishing of your work, social and family connections in an attempt to isolate you from your support structures.

This was accomplished through the planting of rumours or outright falsified documents "proving" you were either a common thief, embezzling funds at work, were having an affair, involved in drug pushing, a devil worshipper or engaged in visits to prostitutes - or the worst of all: A secret communist or human rights/ANC sympathiser - among many other varied schemes.

If you failed to "get it" or you were a constant thorn in their sides, you then got bumped up the attention scale to the chaps that specialised in "Hakke-trap"*

Essentially, this involved tasking a detail of two security cluster chaps (easy to spot really, what with their hair styles, little moustaches and their Datsun sedans) to monitor your movements.

There was no attempt at subtlety or to remain hidden. This was open and overt intimidation.

They would drive within inches of your vehicle's bumper wherever you went. They would walk behind you. Often so close you felt their breath on your neck - hence the Afrikaans term I heard for this operation which translates as "walking on their heels".

They never spoke to you unless you spoke to them.

They could stare though.

It was a sort of "We will sort you out you subversive little shit you!" look. (Although this would have been in Afrikaans - they refused point-blank to ever use English given what a subversive language it was...) Often, the stare was delivered with a slight curl of the lip that made their standard-issue moustaches look lop-sided.

I made the mistake of laughing at that one day and attempted to take a photo of the bloke involved.

That was the only time my two heel-walkers initiated a conversation. I still have the smashed camera and a scar on my cheek as a momento.

Anyhow. I am reminded of this less than savoury period of my career by seeing the ham-fisted tactic being revised - although in an electronic form.

It is being openly deployed against those who the current ruling cabal feel are being subversive to their un-stated war on the citizens of the country.

Yesterday saw the publishing of a web site and twitter account styled as a "news leaks" type of operation. (Julian, Julian, what did you start...?)

I have redacted the full name as I do not believe in giving those behind it any more oxygen than they deserve (which is as little as possible) but the thrust of the project is obvious.

The targets of the obvious propaganda (fake news is too grand a term as there is absolutely no "news" content at all) are various journalists who have merely been doing their work.

Also, entities that have resisted or spoken out against the great South African looting project which appears, on all evidence published to date, to be particularly benefitting a certain family and their firm - which happens to have had many of its banking facilities revoked for alleged non-compliance with various money-laundering laws.

It is obviously an attempt at diverting attention from the ongoing revelations of state capture and the campaign to change the national narrative from grand-scale theft to a mythical racist control of the economy.

Presumably the whole "white monopoly capital" invention Victoria at Bell-Pottinger hatched is so that, when the average citizen wakes-up to the fact that the country has no cash, they can say "The white monopoly capitalists took it all."

The greatest irony is that it is too little, too late anyway.

The fact is, through its own doing, the current ruling cabal - whoever it may be - is perpetrating actions which make the PW Botha era cabal look like angels. Each day it is offering up fodder to the media in regard to its neglect of normal citizens and the unashamed theft of as much cash from the country as possible.

Normal citizens have noticed.

The current ruling cabal, however, does not want journalists reporting this.

So it has revived the "hakke-trap" tactics, albeit via a website and attempt at spreading its propaganda on social media.

Unlike the days of yore, however, there are ways of taking the fight back to the agressors which do not involve futile hopes of the state acting against itself.

The internet and social media space does have regulators that fall outside the control of the perpetrators.

Attempts to trace the registrant of the site, however, fail as this information is being protected by an Australian entity that allegedly "protects privacy". In this case it is protecting criminality but I doubt that bothers them. The Australian High Comissioner, however, might be concerned to know what his compatriots are up to.

As to social media, Twitter has a complaints procedure. Some users have, apparently,  reported the accompanying Twitter account for spreading targeted attacks on individuals. From what I can gather this has led to the account needing to be re-created twice in the past 24 hours.

Good stuff.

One hopes this sort of citizen's action keeps going, if nothing else than to make the cadres deployed to run the whole sham waste their time.

As for the site itself, however, it fails to meet South African and local regulations for websites in that it does not contain contact details, names of the "editor" or an address. In a functioning state we would expect the applicable departments to investigate. That, sadly, is a forlorn hope these days.

So, all that remains is for those being targeted to take the fight to the enemy in ways that we never had at our disposal in the past.

The ICAAN registrar, ISPs and others can be asked to either take down the site or to block it.

It will obviously pop-up again under another name. However, if they do not return the stare of intimidation with as much fervour as the propaganda is spread, then the propaganda will win.

The incident shows, to anyone willing to see, that the current cabal has no qualms about using apartheid era tactics against its "enemies".

We saw what happened back then when they got away with the initial things.

So, if we do not stop them now, from here onwards, it will get physical.

It's just a matter of time...

* "Kaffir-boetie"- A derogatory phrase used by Apartheid-era racists to label those who they felt were sympathetic to the black freedom cause in South Africa. Paying your housekeeper more than the norm for her labour could get you called this by your neighbours.

*Geselsie - Afrikaans phrase for "a little chat".

*"Hakke-trap"- Afrikaans phrase literally translated as "Stepping on heels".

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If you live under a rock, away from so-called civilization, you will be unaware of the furor surrounding the South African official opposition's disciplinary process instituted against its former national leader. She just happens to also be the current premier of the only province that is governed according to the rules.

Assuming you are in the loop, I will now chip in my penny's worth on this debacle.

It seems to me to be pretty clear that a misguided aspect of real-politik is behind the ham-fisted charge at the integrity of Helen Zille and the attendant rush to get her removed from office (and the party) by a certain Pastor Mmusi Maimane.

Let us go back into the mists of time about 16 months. Yes, to the period when the white shirts entered parliament and removed the EFF from the opposition benches. If you recall, Mmusi Maimane then led his party out of the chamber.

Fast forward to the local government elections. There, without clear majorities sufficient to form governments, the DA and the EFF made - for many - strange bedfellows in forming coalitions to keep the ANC from office in Johannesburg and a few other municipalities.

At the time, midst all the other comments made, Mr Malema, the young, ambitious and politically savvy leader of the EFF said words to the effect of "Getting the ANC out of power is job number one. After that, we can talk about the other things." (I have paraphrased him quite liberally).

Zoom ahead a bit more and we have the uproar over the firing of Mr Gordhan and a few other competent ministers earlier in 2017. The country (and no doubt its ruling family) were surprised to see a broad coalition of opposition parties coming together to organise protests.

In the glee surrounding these heady days, it would have been easy to miss the fact that Mr Maimane was the one who addressed the crowds in Johannesburg. The EFF was not hogging the limelight on that day.

A few days later, however, the EFF was front and center at the march to the Union Buildings. This gained far more coverage than the Johannesburg marches.

There it was obvious that the crowd was there for one person only. To hear Mr Malema. This was, for me, clear evidence of who the real power-broker (and most influential of the opposition leaders) was.

As soon as his speech was completed, the lawns suddenly began re-appearing. His speech was interesting. Aside from some stock-standard populist rhetoric, there were some gems to use for quotes (He is amazing in that way actually...). Again, running as a thread through all was the concept that getting the ANC from power was the thing to do first.

Now, we are back in the present. With Pastor Maimane in such a rush to suspend the Premier of the Western Cape, who is probably the country's most experienced politician in any real office, that he flaunts his party's due process by announcing her suspension before it has actually taken place - indeed even before any sort of hearing other than the the shrill, social media one instigated by Pastor Maimane himself.

The fact that he can simply delete a tweet he sent which glorified mob violence (and not have a disciplinary case brought against himself) does not bode well for his ability to govern impartially anyway. However, for the purposes of our overview, that is a side issue.

Why the rush to suspend and ostracise? Why the willingness to suborn the party's constitution to be seen to be the man in charge? I think it is simple. The lure of imminent national power promised to him by a coalition with the EFF as opposed to the steady building of a power base through a record of good governance as was the preferred way of his predecessor.

Pastor Maimane has also said uniting to remove the ANC from power is a goal towards which all South Africans should strive. In fact, on the very day this blog was published, the DA account sent this tweet echoing the same line as that espoused by Mr. Malema.

Exactly who the 9.3 million select people mentioned might be from among more than 50 million in the population, can only be guessed at.

However, Pastor Maimane must have done the math. He knows there is a limit to the sort of voter numbers the DA could gain between now and the 2019 election.

He will have looked at the number of voters among the party's original support base and seen that they are a dwindling - and increasingly irrelevant - fraction of the votes he needs to get anywhere. Indeed, by being seen to be booting them all into touch, he has probably convinced himself that he would gain many multiples of that number elsewhere based on such a populist move. It really might seem like a no-brainer to him. Yet, even if he manages this, there is no easy guarantee of the needed majority to take national power.

However, Mr Malema is, oddly, in a similar position - albeit without the so-called "historical baggage" which the DA allegedly carries with it.

No matter what positive thinking may do for your expectations, reality states that Mr Malema's party would need a very long shot political miracle to swing his current voter percentage to the required 50% plus 1 vote to sweep all before him in 2019.

So. In a case of "Your enemy is my enemy and it's a good thing to help you get rid of him..." scenario, it would appear that the "...plan and vision for the 2019 election..." referred to by Pastor Maimane in his press statement about why he is bringing a rushed process against Premier Zille, is easy to spot.

In order for either Pastor Maimane or Mr Malema to get the ANC out of office, they will need to work together toward that common goal. They have done this in Johannesburg. It seems to be a workable solution and it has held steady in the face of typical ANC tactics to destabilise the city administration.

There is no doubt it could work nationally in order to achieve the same objective.

However, there is this experienced, canny and level-headed Premier which, for whatever reason, Mr Malema wants removed. He has stated as much before. Often.

Is it perhaps too much to think that Pastor Maimane, in his thirst for national office - and the need to be seen as the "real leader" of the DA (The ANC spin machine and Bell Pottinger have really done a number on his ego...) has agreed to a back-room deal to ensure we have a good shot at a change of government in 2019?

I do not think so. A cool headed look at all the various speeches and official statements of the two parties in the past year makes an interesting set of dots.

The problem, of course, is that, once the goal is achieved, it will be Pastor Maimane that will be seen to have been the one to knife his own party in the back. Mr Malema will easily be able to use that to paint himself as the only one who did not compromise his party principles to achieve the national goal.

And that, I think, is the real rub behind wanting to get rid of Premier Zille as fast as possible.

Nobody used to selling fables on Sundays to extract cash from an adoring flock would see any ill in teaming up with another opposition leader who has some serious tenderpreneur questions hanging over his head. Mr Malema's credibility is not assisted by the fact that he had previously sworn allegiance to the president he hopes to unseat (His infamous "We will kill for Zuma..." sound bite). No, it seems Pastor Maimane is quite  willing to do his fellow coalition partner's bidding in order to boost his own career.

And he certainly will not like having a far more experienced, and respected, politician warning him and the party of the dangers that such a pact raises. Spoons and satan will have been mentioned.

No. He will not like that at all.

Far better to try some cheap politics and manufacture charges against her so as to try and remove her in disgrace.

Strange. One would at least expect a Pastor to know about the principle of pointing a single finger at someone. You ignore the four pointing back at you.

Mind you. Given the political craft exhibited by Mr Malema to date, he might simply have issued an edict as a condition for co-operation with Pastor Maimane in the existing metros and the future national election. I feel sure he is sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting.

He knows that if it all goes south he will be the ultimate winner if the DA self-destructs over this silly little cameo.

And the Pastor will never, in any event, see the inside of the Presidential office in the Union Buildings. No matter what happens with the silly little sideshow he has engineered to try and force Premier Zille's exit.

However, he may only realsie that once it is far too late.

Pastor Maimane, I suggest you read Zechariah 11:12-13 and Matthew 26:15

Surely you want to be remembered as worth far more than that?

POST SCRIPT 09 JUNE 2017

This article appeared some days after posting this blog.

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I, as many reading this blog may know, have been intimately involved with the processes surrounding aviation safety and accident investigation for a little more than three decades.

I have spent countless hours in archives reading investigator's notes, final reports and the media articles surrounding the accidents detailed therein.

It has been my privilege to speak to thousands of family members, colleagues of crews, the safety officers of the airlines that have experienced airliner tragedies and the official investigators who have re-created the events in each case.

I have likewise spent well in excess of a thousand hours on flight decks witnessing in-flight procedures and processes. I have been allowed, in many cases, to discuss tragedies with crews who knew the pilots of accident flights.

During this period of involvement with the inner workings of the processes of flight safety around the world, there has been, since the 1980s, an ever present hum of distraction mentioned by airlines, authorities and crews about the entire process of getting to the simple truth about various airline tragedies.

This hum originates from the ever present activity of an army of dedicated legal practitioners who lurk on the fringes of any aircraft crash. Almost without exception any aviation accident, fatal or not, will have, as a consequence, a flurry of legal actions following in its wake seeking to exact the maximum possible number of Dollars in punitive damages for even the smallest alleged error or oversight.

It is my experience that relatives do not, in the first instance, want to go this route. They simply want to get simple, direct answers about the loss of their loved ones. Perhaps the lack of these answers as time passes - in this case more than three years - and the evasive language used by those who one would expect to be best placed to provide them, leads to frustration. This frustration can easily morph into anger where, as here, there appears to be a lack of official interest in even finding the answers. I can understand that this anger will need to find an outlet in wanting to make someone, anyone, pay for the hurt and sense of futility that builds up.

While everyone has the right to approach the courts if they feel they have been wronged, it is my view that this punitive pecking at the bones of tragedy has, as I have said before in my accident investigation books, ultimately had a negative effect on the prime goal of accident investigation in general.

In this case, I believe it has, sadly had a singular, unforeseen outcome.

The ultimate goal of investigations is the full and open disclosure of all facts involved, no matter how unpalatable they may be to the operators, regulators or others involved in any manner with the accident flight. These facts are then used to develop procedures which prevent a recurrence of the accident

We who live in the modern world, however, enjoy a misconception - generated in part no doubt by the ability to freely communicate with other people anywhere around the world - that information must and will be free and easily obtainable. In fact, we demand it in outraged Twitter and FaceBook posts on a daily basis.

When anything is not made available, there will, understandably, be accusations of conspiracy and cover-up. When that information pertains to the how and why of a loved-one's passing, it can be particularly hurtful. I can fully understand the rage some may feel.

I personally feel all information affecting any planetary citizen should be available to you if it concerns yourself or a departed family member.

However, experience has taught that this logic is not reciprocated by officialdom.

This is, sadly, why I think this is so.

We, as ordinary citizens, cannot have full knowledge of the various regulations and protocols in place in every jurisdiction on the planet. By the power invested in us by Twitter and FaceBook, however, we act as though we are the ultimate sheriffs of truth and accountability.

Aviation regulators, airline owners, officials and government ministers tend to view the world differently.

It has been my experience - particularly where airliner tragedies are involved - that the ever present prospect of lawsuits has placed a choke-hold on the willingness of official bodies to release data related to accident flights as and when it is available. Nobody wants to be seen to be the one that made a slip-up and opened the hornet's nest of litigation. Worse still, they do not want to have their careers limited by inadvertently leaking information that may provide a key bit of data upon which a court decision may turn.

To this end all statements made, or any data released, will first be referred to the corporate or departmental legal advisers who will look at it word for word to see if there is any possibility of any of it being construed in a negative manner and leveraged in court to extract huge amounts from the ones holding the data.

Any statements that are issued in the interim are always couched in vague terms. We are always urged to await the final report. Basically, officials will say nice things making us think something is being done while, at the same time, they are actually kicking for touch in the hope that the final report will get finished so that they can wash their hands of the matter and we will all go away.

The final reports we see will have been sent back and forth between the airline, the manufacturer of the aircraft, the air traffic bodies through which the flight passed, the investigators and countless other affected and interested bodies. Each will have their legal team go through it to ensure nothing legally compromising to their specific interests is in the final publication.

As each step takes place, the vacuum left in the world's expected, instantaneous flow of information is filled with supposition, half-truth and, more often than not, plain guesswork. Usually, the self affirmation feedback loop of social media will serve to amplify and distort the guesses into fantastic facts in such a manner that, even when released in the final report, the actual truth can never be accepted for what it may be.

When the mundane facts in the final report cannot live up to the preceding hype, one can understand that more confusion will be sown and more anger will bubble up.

In this matter I have no doubt that when it is released later this year, whatever it contains, the final report of the Malaysian authorities will be ripped to shreds again with accusations of conspiracy and cover-up on social media and the various internet fora where it is discussed every day.

This will feed back into the loop and so-on and so-forth.

I do not, therefore, find it at all surprising that all officials involved in this matter are, in spite of previous undertakings to the contrary, releasing the bare minimum of data until it has been legally sanitised - if at all.

All this being a round-about method of getting to the spur for this post: The current outcry about the apparent unwillingness of the ATSB to release certain documents regarding flight MH370 under a Freedom Of Information request.

Given the number of legal suits already underway in this matter, reading the reported statement by Mr Hood of the ATSB reveals one glaring and blinding line that tells me exactly why the request has been denied. It states quite unambiguously a concern that the information might be abused in court.

And this brings us neatly back to the damaging effect of punitive litigation on the whole flight safety process.

In my personal opinion, in this particular matter, the lawsuits already underway might have been launched too early. I fully accept, however, that this is only my opinion and I do not seek to make it prescriptive in any manner nor to find fault with those who are involved in litigation. I am merely sharing my thoughts and reasoning and I accept that I am not privy to the advice nor information which they may have on hand. 

However, it is quite possible that the very act of filing these suits may have, in fact, served to temper any further willingness by the authorities involved, to locate the airliner.

Now this is no fault at all of the relatives involved in bringing these cases. Far from it. I am merely sharing my thoughts that the rightful litigious anger and frustration of those affected - who have every right to expect a humane and caring response from authorities to their cry for closure - may be the very pivot upon which the investigation is being hurried towards finality.

It may be nothing more than a simple and cold calculation of the odds and costs

As long as the wreckage has not been located, there is likely to be no factual method of the lawsuits being adjudicated one way or another. Any court will surely ask the plaintiffs "Where is your physical evidence?"

Given that suits have so far been filed against the airline (past and present), the government of Malaysia and by extension the ATSB, as well as the manufacturer, I cannot see any of those entities being overly keen to assist in finding the physical evidence. It may exonerate them. It may not.

After spending millions more of tax-payer Dollars (which in itself opens them up to claims of fairness and competence by other sectors of their populations) they may obtain evidence that lets them off the damages hook or they may find evidence that nails them to the wall.

As things are at present, the safest and potentially least costly route for them all to follow is to simply leave the status-quo unchanged and hope to blazes that the statistics apparently indicating that there is nothing tragically hidden within the design and systems of the Boeing 777 are correct.

While it may seem outrageous for such to be the case, to me it is the sad, coldly political, yet inevitable, consequence I expected borne from previous experience.

I would love to be proved wrong but I think we have already seen all the official data we are likely to see from authorities on this accident.

It's simply too financially and politically risky for anyone remotely involved with the investigation to do otherwise.

And that, above all, is a fact that can rightly make one angry.

Notwithstanding all this, I am still confident that the independent search for MH370 by Project370 will, once resourced, find this airliner as it is not dependent on the good will of any third parties to release data to the team members.

We've got enough information.

All we need now is enough money.

(If you wish to donate towards Project370 and assist iin finding the airliner click here )

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01 November 2016

Super Heroes at large: Is there a story editor in the house?

America could answer for many things.

A case in point is that no other nation on earth has quite managed to produce, and popularise, as many super hero figures in comics, TV shows or movies as the USA.

Many people around the planet can, I am sure, remember the weekly thrill of reading the latest installment of their favourite Batman, Wonder Woman, Hulk, Superman or other saga.

For those who were not around in the days when information was conveyed on dead trees, Bit-Torrent, YouTube and other modern means of distributing movies will have inducted you to the amazing feats of these larger than life, god-like characters.

A super hero fight to the death is, therefore, guaranteed box-office (or clicks, views, likes, shares or whatever the ruling modern equivalent may be...).

Little wonder then that the 2016 US elections appear to have been packaged in a similar vein.

It has been cynically scripted by its Capitol Hill based publishers to keep prime-time TV audiences in the US glued to their TVs so that what the US does best - selling stuff - can carry on at full-throttle and millions can be gathered for advertising spots during these televised chapters.

Letting you know who is going to win in the end - and having performed the most perfunctory research I can assure you they already do - will not be good for business. There just have to be plot twists all along the way to the very last broadcast to keep people tuning-in and Nielsen ratings up.

So, let's look at the protagonists in the current super hero election storyboard.

In the one corner, wearing red trunks and a clown mask, is The Casino Kid.

He is the archetypal villain.

Everyone knows him - chiefly due to his liberal use of Apprentice Paste, which might explain the oft ridiculed complexion he sports. Millions may (or may not) actually fear him. Many, puzzling as it seems to some, appear to like him.

However, exactly how he rose to his position of prominence and power is filled with mystery and foggy detail. There are conflicting reports all over as to whether he is good or evil.

Many supporting The Casino Kid's opponent claim he is hiding a big secret in regard to being under the influence of a powerful, mystery substance called Kremlinite. This, they claim, is supplied to him by another Super Hero villain, whom they call Vlad The Bad.

Vlad The Bad allegedly commands a remote, secret nerve-center from which his minions probe computers all over the planet. Plots within plots you see?

Like all classic rogues, The Casino Kid has a coven of beauties that are devoted to him and - of course - a large army of misled, yet incredibly devoted soldiers called the Alt-Right to do his bidding. This army is in battle every day, using a battery of weapons called Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, YouTube and others to fire salvo after salvo of Mail-gate bombs, Foundation Flares and Benghazi Beams at the enemy.

The effect of all this activity is to amplify the size and volume of the signals generated by The Casino Kid's deluded rantings well beyond their true merit. Particularly terrifying to the citizens of Senateville - which The Casino Kid has vowed to take over from Masai Man in January - is, however, the fact that, allegedly (according to the media) these very active acolytes appear willing to hit the societal destruct button on The Casino Kid's command.

This sort of unstable element plays well in super hero tales as one never quite knows what will happen next and, in fact, the more outrageous the plot lines become, the more vocal and fanatical the fans The Casino Kid seems to gather. As we shall see later on, other similar super heroes appear to have a similar attraction for the easily led.

In the other corner we have the sworn enemy of The Casino Kid. She is none other than the seemingly demure and fulsome Honest Senate Woman - a title I use merely because she does.

She is dressed in a fetching blue outfit. With stars. It helps that she has now been engineered to resemble the classic all-American girl with striking blue eyes and blonde hair - even if it is of the suicide type being, as it so obviously is, dyed by her own hand.

Honest Senate Woman is the heroine (can I still use that?) of the media and housewives everywhere. There is an army loyal to her as well and, unsurprisingly, it is the Alt-Left. This army is hoping to assimilate another column called the Moderate Middle but how that ends we will leave to election day....cannot spoil all the surprises.

Honest Senate Woman can point to a long record of serving the public. Even at times when many wonder where she was in their darkest hours, Honest Senate Woman can seemingly dig up an endless supply of facts to show that she has always helped the little guys and gals.

Much of that help, however, has been selective and calculated to garner as much airtime as possible on the day although, I am certain, Honest Senate Woman will deny any and all such allegations. She may even, if pressed, use Vlad The Bad's alleged tactics (unofficially) and delete them from servers everywhere.

What makes Honest Senate Woman particularly dangerous to The Casino Kid though is that she has many friends all over. She hugs bunnies. She has given birth. Her husband, Bill The Virile, once held the fate of the world in his hands and - of course - she was by his side when the Alt-Right armies were hurling sordid little Lewinski Lobs at him.

Honest Senate Woman's lines repeatedly claim that those lobs were all just a smoke and mirrors trick and a plot to lure her beloved from the righteous life he always led.

Folk cuddling bunnies believe her. So do a lot of modern Americans who self-identify as members of the Moderate Middle column. And they love little furry creatures. Fuzziness is in - certain clarity not.

Casino Kid may well win, and if he does, cue endless wailing, whining and gnashing of teeth for years to come. Honest Senate Woman will then deploy her secret agents to spend the next four years trying to topple Casino Kid.

Why will the Casino Kid win? Simply because there is a large enough store of Brexit style fed-upness throughout the USA and the majority of ordinary, battling middle-class people are shouting "Enough!" very forcibly to forced integration, a multitude of pre-cast political labels and having to obey the dictates of social justice warriors in regard to how they think and what they may or may not say. Anyway, November 8 will reveal all.

Knowing that, we can all save our outrage reserves, relax and chill.

But can we do so?

It's interesting- and alarming - to apply some of the same plot lines a little closer to home.

When we do, we may find that while we we have been so enthralled by the fight between The Casino Kid and Honest Senate Woman in a country so far away, some of the same characters and similar secret weapons have been mixed in with local plot lines in a land called Mzansi.

We have not noticed this as the story seems comfortingly familiar and necessary - as do all things we import from the USA.

Without spoiling the end - as it seems that it will be quite a spoiler of many things - we have, unwittingly, allowed Vlad The Bad (for simplicity I'll use Honest Senate Woman's description of him) and his acolytes to wave his magic Kremlinite - this batch co-brewed with everyone's most popular villian, Msholozi The Unstoppable, in the USSR in the 1980s - to help Msholozi The Unstoppable install family, friends and operatives behind an impregnable structure called a Guptagate.

This amazing structure appears to be made of many seemingly indestructible elements, two of which appear to be Speaker Shield and the thickest hide known to earthlings. The others cannot be identified due to the swirling mass of Msholozi The Unstoppable's acolytes supporting the gate.

While the citizens of Mzansi had previously placed their hope of protection from assaults on their collective treasure and liberty by this group in a super hero called Thuli The Great, she found, as her days of influence drew to a close and her power waned, that most of her defensive volleys simply bounced off the mighty Guptagate.

This is, apparently, because the Guptagate has also been well coated with special, highly secret Impunity Gel by another character everyone thought was Shaun the Sheep. However, in the event, he had some help from other super heroes from the dark side - one whom the citizens derisively call Weekend Special - and his mates in a group known only by its initials, the all powerful NEC.

What the citizens did not know until recently, however, is that Shaun the Sheep is actually a very clever and well-trained attack dog in disguise. Furthermore, the chaps behind the Guptagate have bags of the citizen's money they have secreted away and are busy depleting these as fast as possible. Well, some in movements called the Blue and Red Brigades tried to warn everyone but they were regularly thwarted by the immovable Mighty Madam Chair blocking most of their attempts. So many have remained ignorant until just a few days ago.

All this while Shaun carries on barking loudly at anyone who wants to peek through the bars of the gate and diverts attention by madly chasing other characters. Most recently he set off after a super hero called Prav The Prudent.

While Prav The Prudent is one of the last remaining heroes in which some citizens have faith, others feel there are questions swirling about him in the form of his contribution - by a highly visible vote in Parliament - to the manufacturing of the very same Impunity Gel that landed in the hands of Shaun and the mighty NEC.

Nevertheless, it has come to pass that the once mighty Thuli The Great has now been written out of the script, much to the relief of fans of Msholozi The Unstoppable.

Outside the Guptagate, the citizens have reached for a new can of what they hope is the magic Accountability residue used by Thuli The Great to shield them. They have handed it to the new hero they were promised, Protector Woman. They fervently hope she will apply it to the Guptagate and what it guards in order to try and dissolve it all.

While they are hoping it may have an effect, there are many thinking Protector Woman has cleverly performed some sleight of hand and is now merely holding a mislabeled can of white-wash - allegedly on the secret orders of Msholozi The Unstoppable.

Whatever the truth of the story lines, in my imagination I see, in a far-off lair, Vlad The Bad and Msholozi The Unstoppable having a glass of something uplifting and giggling gleefully.

It is because, while the rest of us are listening to an amplified feed of diversion - much of it of our own making - to which they and their associates have the volume control, they already know how the story they scripted ends. It would appear to be with a different sort of nuclear option to that envisaged by fans of The Casino Kid.

Reading the entire story to date it appears that only a vigourous bout of determined editing can have any hope of altering, what appears to be, a gloomy final chapter for those outside the gate who will one day suddenly find that they can no longer afford to follow the story.

So, the question is, will a new super hero swoop in and pick up a pen or has Mzansi run out of them?

And, even if there is one, will there be enough resources left on hand with which to finish off the comic?

(Back to top.)

"Julle dink julle is slim bliksems?"*  The securocrats (the collective name given to the ministers of Police, Defence and State Security back then) re-drafted the regulations to make them pretty definitive. You could not do anything to indicate that the story or report had been restricted or censored in any manner. No mention or hint of any mention of banned persons, organisations (on a constantly updated list), no blanks, no black strips, no words that implied the same thing. It was up to any of the ministers to decide if you had been naughty or not. No appeal.

Next, physical movement of reporters and photographers was restricted. 

*Nee wat! - No way!  

*Julle dink julle is slim bliksems? - You think you are clever buggers? 

*Groot Krokodil - Big Crocodile, the name given to South Africa's de-facto Apartheid era dictator, PW Botha who brooked no dissent to his increasingly authoritarian rule. 

(Back to top)

* That CVR and DFDR units be fitted in fire resistant containers and be provided with their own, internal or independent power supplies. The wiring to the units to be fire protected.

 * The 'pinger' systems should be provided of two or more locators, one being operative for the first 30 days after impact, the other only taking over thereafter, to provide a total of 60 days of signals..."

To: Co-Chairperson Skywise (Address redacted)
From: Mark D Young (Address redacted)
Subject: Clarification of refund process and status
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 10:36:00 +0200
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Good Day

Following our corresondence of yesterday, I wish to advise that I have 
contact with numerous consumers who hold tickets paid for but who have 
not been refunded.

One claims the "insurance" company posted at Cape Town Airport has said 
they cannot refund her as the insurance is only for the event of a 
company liquidation.

Could you please fully inform me of the status of the refund process 
and, specifically, the folowing:
1) Does Skywise have the monies for advance ticket sales ring-fenced and 
available for refund or  has been used in general operational expenditure?
2) Are you, in fact, making ANY refund payments at all (Many clients 
claim they have had lengthy run-arounds and now cannot even get through 
to your call center)
3) Is the requisite insurance policy and premiums for liquidation 
refunds up to date and in place still?
4) Given that your Twitter and Facebook accounts seem not to have 
accurate information, what is the management approved, valid process, 
for clients to obtain refunds on tickets booked but where the flight has 
not, or cannot, take place?

I will communicate your reply to the affected consumers.

Your assistance in this regard will be appreciated.

Thank you

Regards

Mark Young

From: (Address redacted)@pakafrica.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (1.0)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:02:35 +0200
Subject: Re: Clarification of refund process and status
To: Mark D Young (address redacted)
X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (12H321)

Mark

Thanks for your email .

The mandate of communicating to consumers comes to you from ?

Unless if you are ready to take the challenge we as Skywaise can 

give you an official mandate to become the spokes person of

Skywise not only for refunds but all matters of Sjywise airline.
Regards .


Sent from my iPhone

To: (address redacted)@pakafrica.com>
From: Mark D Young (address redacted)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:23:04 +0200

Good Day

Thank you for your reply.

I will communicate to those consumers, who approach me often given my 
involvement with consumer journalism - and reporting their inability to 
obtain any feedback from yourselves - the full text of my questions, as 
well as your full reply - not removing anything.

Regards and best wishes

Mark Young

This image is the "original" as supplied to news groups and allegedly a direct download from Face Book

© Mark D Young/SA Photo Magazine 1996

*Baas - Boss.

*Rooinek/ke - A colloquial phrase used to describe an English speaker - based on the red-necks the British soldiers in the South African war exhibited after a day or two in the South African sun.

*Kaffir-boetie - A label used to negatively describe any person who showed any kinship towards black South Africans. In its day as venomous as being labeled a racist or Nazi today.

*Bliksemmed - beaten up.

*Oom - a respectful term for an older male person used by many Afrikaans people. Literally meaning Uncle.

*(A South African saying that is intended to convey concern through the words but is more often than not a toss-away phrase that merely conveys total disinterest in the recipient's plight - a similar phrase to "Bless you" and uttered automatically by most who say the words.)

---

Jani Allan's blog

24 April 2014

During the merry month of April this year Jani Allan - the erudite, incisive (yet -sadly - exiled South African journalist now serving tables in New Jersey)  invoked the ire of South African supporters of a very famous murder accused. She accomplished this through the simple act of posting an open letter to the accused on her personal website blog. 

The reaction to her posting and the incident that prompted the letter - the murder of a woman by her partner - got me thinking. I posted the following item on Jani's blog and it has been referenced many times by readers. Here it is in full for ready reference:

Mark says:

April 24, 2014 at 1:03 pm

SAMS (South African Males) and the domineering approach

Dear Jani and fellow bloggers,

I shall state at the outset that I am not popular at barbecues (Or as we call them out here "braais") due to the very views which follow.

Small matter.

Age brings the wisdom of what is important and fickle opinions grounded on insecurities matter little if you have self-worth inside. After decades of being around some of it is creeping back so - here goes...

I have pondered long and hard on the malaise of domination and abusive tendencies afflicting a large number of my fellow SAMS and I have, I feel, an insight which I shall toss into the ring (My Journalist's hat, being one of only a few fond pieces of Bric-A-Brac I have from years ago, shall remain on the bookshelf...)

Lest I be flamed, let me state that my observation is not meant as a blanket condemnation of all SAMS. There are those of us who were blessed to be raised by thinking women. Both my mothers (My birth one and our housekeeper) attempted to get some basic ideas into my skull from an early age. I am blessed in this fact. I have tried at all times to be worthy of their time and effort and apply their teachings. Where I have fallen short, the fault is mine alone.

Other SAMS have, perhaps, not been so lucky.

Part of my journey to date has involved reading education and the study of the development of thought patterns. During this I learnt that views on relationships and our inter-personal skills are largely shaped in the first 7 years we spend on this planet.

When one considers the aspect, the role model most SAMS have had in regard to women in their early lives have all been submissive and subservient. This could, perhaps, be at the core of the problem?

If we think back to the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and even later (but the named periods are, I feel, the key) most middle class households with a nuclear family also had a housekeeper to help "madam".

Now, where typical childhood misdeeds needed forceful consequences, mothers would often yell at our little SAM "Just you wait until your father gets home!". Lesson: The dominant adult male is to be feared and a wife needs him to take charge and "handle" things because she obviously cannot.

If the housekeeper accidentally burnt something with the iron or did not quite meet whatever standard of mythical excellence she was supposed to attain, she was told the matter would be discussed with "The baas" (Boss). Lesson: The dominant adult male is to be feared and holds sway over ALL females in the household at all times. His word and judgment is law.

Given this effective daily display of subjugation, is it any wonder then that most SAMS grew up with a deeply ingrained concept of entitlement when dealing with women?

After all, if the housekeeper (herself usually a mother and the head of her own home) and mother never said "Boo!" to the 'Boss man', it would be strange and shocking if our little SAM - upon attaining "maturity" encountered his girfriend/fiance/wife suddenly voicing an opinion contrary to his own. Worse still, imagine if she decided to do what SHE wanted?

Circuits trip, blue screens of death appear on the internal brain display - "How dare she question me?" lines of code insert into the application without warning and toilet doors become swiss-cheese or he makes bedroom flambe.

The ticking time-bomb was not, in my view, assisted by the fact that most SAMS in the 70′s and 80′s had to undergo primal male bonding training with weapons - it was actually called national service or joining the "liberation forces" but I am sure you understand my label for it?

From my own experience, conversation after hours or when on patrol during rest stops typically revolved around your "stukkie" (A rather degrading colloquialism for girlfriend meaning little piece) back home and if she was going to hold out on you during your next pass or not.

None of the conversations I recall ever involved the feelings of the ladies at home - their role was quite firmly to be of service and to be ready to go and do whatever one wanted when you got back. When I dared interject and ask what the ladies views may have been I was immediately judged to be of an alternate persuasion. Either you "hannled jaw wimmen" or you were a moffie.* QED. (*Moffie - Colloquial Afrikaans term for a gay person.)

During this period female leaders - be it as heads of schools, politicians or corporate governors were few and far between. I remember our primary school appointing a head-mistress way back and she was the only one among 120 schools in the city so perhaps a nod to her is needed by me too? I therefore raise a glass to Mrs Rita Thompson who used assemblies to effect to emphasise respect of different viewpoints, opinions and the importance of considering the feelings of others. She always led with a calm, caring authority. Now that I think of it, I cannot remember her having raised her voice like many other Headmasters and male teachers I encountered. I digress, however...

Add to this the early childhood SAM training I have discussed the patriarchal traditions of the continent and the fact that one generation normally passes its habits on to the next wherever there is little or no thought for the consequences and you have, I believe, a hint of the problem and its origins.

The only solution I can offer is that each man raising a male child ingrain in the child the dictum given me by my mother "Any woman shall be treated as a lady at all times. If not, watch out because I will be on your case!"

Perhaps it should be up-dated to state that a “Human shall be treated as such at all times. If not, watch out because I will be on your case!”

We need to send the message that inherent or manipulative domination of one gender or person by any other is incorrect. Lest you think this is one sided, there are many women I have encountered who lever the privileges afforded them by society to abuse influence and many that emotionally abuse their husbands with impunity as the family violence act law in South Africa is skewed against SAMS. It is practically impossible for a man to obtain an interdict against a woman in most magistrate's courts (a fact I am aware of as I am currently researching the FV law and how it is being abused by the legal profession in divorce matters to illegally evict men from their homes and businesses). This is, of course, the problem going the other way but - perhaps - the expected swing of the pendulum until stasis is reached?

Nevertheless, abuse of any human by another is the issue – whatever the supposed foundation or justification.

Given that this is a generational issue – if my observation holds any water – we need to ensure that the current crop of under 7′s is fed the right patterns otherwise this problem is not going away soon.

I would have ended by saying this is just my 2c worth but they have withdrawn those coins from circulation.

At least some things change?

---

07 December 2013

Contemplations on the death of Nelson Mandela

Journalism is, I was taught, a pursuit where facts are reported from a neutral standpoint, in a balanced manner, presenting as many facets of the subject at hand as may be evident from the record.

The past two days have, however, seen the words of Ché, a character in the musical Evita, ringing in my mind as I watched the inevitable scramble by the world's media to flood their viewers, readers and listeners with non-stop coverage of the passing of South Africa's former president, Nelson Mandela, who served in office from 1994 to 1998.

Nelson Mandela, we are told, mercifully passed from this earth on Thursday 5 December 2013 after a long period of illness.

The unseemly scramble by many two-bit political leaders or hopefuls in any country you care to mention to try and claim some reflected glory through alleged meetings with him, or through having spent ten damp minutes joining some or other protest aimed at liberating him from jail in the 1970s or 1980s in numerous obscure town squares, has been as nauseating to witness as the rituals highlighted in the song Oh What a Circus..

As many will discover in due course, being swept-up in orchestrated emotion can often shut down one's faculties of reason and objectivity. Following more than 3 decades in journalism and 5 on the planet, I have been able to keep my irony detectors in fine fettle. They have been ringing like mad in the past few days.

I have no doubt my musings will be deemed - in the hysteria of the moment - as being somehow flawed. Hopefully time and perspective will permit them to stand as they are intended.

"Oh what a circus, oh what a show," begins the song in Evita, with Ché standing aloof from the crowd of mourners. With suitable substitutions, the rest of the lyric is most apposite to the current situation.

Now before you choke on your morning beverage and accuse me of all sorts of nasty leanings, take a look at the rest of the song and contrast it to events both past and present.

"Argentina has gone to town, over the death of an actress called Eva Peron." If we substitute World for Argentina and lawyer for actress, ending with South Africa's former president in the place of Evita, the simile is starkly accurate.

"We've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery rite.

It's quite a sunset and good for the country in a round-about way, we've made the front pages of all the world's papers today."

And that, of course, is how the reality of life in the country Mandela led with such promise has been pushed off the agenda. It was a reality he wished, taken on his own utterances, to radically alter.

The excess of the ritual and reverence that has been ordered by his successors will, if his much publicised humanity is to be believed, no doubt be galling for him if there is any cognisance of events on earth in whatever afterlife there might be for him and other humans.

He would, I am certain, far rather the funds be used to the betterment of the country. Sadly, that is not the way of the party he led.

The current incumbent of the Presidential office must be rubbing his hands in glee as the scrutiny of the country's citizens and the world of his profligate ways has also been (conveniently?) erased from the media. He has recently been taking immense heat for (only allegedly-so far) using millions of the citizen's Rands to enrich himself through the construction of an extravagant domestic homestead.

The Public Protector's report into this particular example of excess is due any moment but that has all been forgotten in a carefully orchestrated feeding of emotion around the long expected and inevitable passing of a sickly old man.

It is hard not to view the extended period of pantomime ordered by the authorities without skepticism. They are going to parade his remains through the streets of the capital no less than three times. He will lie in state for 3 days. There will be memorial services in all provinces with free buses to transport people to-and-fro.

Then there will be the actual burial in a week's time. All the while, the government can be assured of wall-to-wall coverage of each day's proceedings in the media and on news channels. How convenient. How wonderful it must be for those men and women, as well as all those who want to "share in the great experience" to be able to do this.

How cynical of the country's leaders to milk this for all it is worth.

The reality is that few of the rank and file of the country will be able to attend, nor will they actually be able to give more than a passing thought to someone they have never met. For the average citizen in Molweni, Winterveld, Crossroads or Orange Farm, life will carry on - Without water, without electricity, without the education they should have been given, without essential medicines at their nearest clinic, most likely without proper food for the family on any of the days ahead and certainly without hope of ever getting the better life for all promised by Mandela and his henchmen.

And henchmen there were and still are. It was they who organised protests, organised sanctions that ensured the poorest of the poor went without and it was they who planted bombs that killed and maimed civilians in the name of freedom.

As leader of the organisation, however, it is clear that Nelson Mandela had full knowledge and approved of the acts of violence perpetrated by his organisation.

It was, after all, this very fact - that he and the National Executive Committee of his party had ordered and begun an armed struggle to achieve power - that led to his trial and imprisonment.

Many of the leaders of government from around the world rightly condemned these tactics at the time. It is ironic that now the leaders of those countries are virtually canonising Mandela and scrambling to be seen at his memorial service.

In contrast, of course, the carefully massaged and widely publicised demeanour of apparent humility and dove-like peacefulness exhibited in public by Mandela after his release from prison, if true, is remarkable.

He also, let there be no mistake, possessed an amazing ability to put people at ease with what is known as the common touch. I know first hand how he charmed crowds and how he would engage with people. He knew as well as the former Princess of Wales how to work the media for a magic moment of airtime to enhance the image.

Let us not, however, be blind to the fact that he was first and foremost a politician that used his legal training to manouvere and cajole to his particular advantage - as do all political figures the world over. That is, after all, a common trait of all political leaders. And we must remember that they are all human and so was he.

"But who is this Saint Evita? Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What kind of goddess, has lived among us? How will we ever get by without her?"

If any human leader is to be lauded as a true humanitarian that has no blood on his hands, the closest I can think of is Mahatma Ghandi. Witnessing the world's current frenzy to celebrate Mandela, are we to conclude that he was somehow better, more saintly and worthy of praise than that remarkable man who led India to independence?

Can we really equate the respect being given at the moment to Nelson Mandela to the level of respect due to a man that starved himself almost to the point of death because he did not want his followers to use violence to achieve political ends? If all the current outpouring of praise, grief and sorrow is to be believed, Ghandi is less of a world icon than the recently deceased man that became famous through being imprisoned for propagating the violent overthrow of the state on the flimsy pretext that the violence was justified.

Now, if this is, indeed the case, then one would expect this great saint, this alleged humanitarian who - taken on the emotion of the moment around the world - is one to eclipse all humanitarians, to have unequivocally distanced himself from these acts of violence at some stage.

He was offered release from prison in 1985 provided that he revoked violence as a means to achieve political ends but he refused to do this - and thus to free himself. He knew, as did his movement, that there was more immediate value to be gained by the party in the threat of ongoing violence and outside political pressure for his freedom than there was in ending the armed insurrection and going about normal political activity in a peaceful manner.

In the period from 1986 to his release from prison by President F W De Klerk (his fellow Nobel laureate), it is alleged that more than 15 000 South Africans died in politically motivated violence in the country. One is left to wonder how many of these deaths would have been avoided had this person who is being lauded as "the greatest statesman in the world" not focused narrowly on the political mileage he and his party could obtain from his continued incarceration.

Perhaps, in the pressure of the times he felt he made the right call? If so, then surely a true humanitarian would have shown remorse for the - we must believe - un-intended consequences of his espousal of a violent campaign and his refusal to end it in good time?

To justify this super-humanitarian tag one would at least expect that he had a change of heart or an epiphany at some later stage that made him realise that violence was not a legitimate means to achieve any end. After all, he was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace prize and, if the many words spoken in the past days are to be believed, an icon of peace and non-violence.

An internet search to check on this most simple of saintly gestures returned the following results on two major search engines.

To paraphrase Ché: "Graft has kept us all alive, since the year 1995. But the star has gone, the glamour's worn thin, that's a pretty bad state for a state to be in."

21 May 2013

Was there ever a more all-encompassing summary of malaise?

An article written by Anna Cox and published today by the Johannesburg daily newspaper The Star stands-out, in my view, as a telling commentary on more than its focal topic.

In a deluge of daily reports about various irritations in our country, some minor and others of more import, the sub-texts and threads that intertwine throughout the piece make for very sobering reading.

If ever there was a succinct, one-part eulogy for the lost dream of a functional and empowering post-Uhuru nation, this article is a damning Obituary.

I shall post the text thereof in full. While reading it, consider the multiple levels of administration and governance that are found to be wanting. In effect all strata needed in a functional democracy have been shown to be incapable of the most basic co-ordination, let alone effective governance.

Consider too the the ineptness revealed via the obviously poor project scoping of the software at the root of the systems discussed. Mourn the fact that payment has already been made (in the many millions of Rands) for the software and systems to the entity that was awarded the contract. 

Ask yourself how, in any shape manner or form, the non-reconciliation and transfer of funds due - in the millions of Rands - cannot have been picked-up by the authorities involved for more than 5 years? The contemplation of the current whereabouts of the funds involved is not suggested. It will more than likely turn you into a gibbering wreck.

What of the fact that many thousands of citizens are wasting otherwise productive time trying to extricate themselves from the web that has been spun by this nightmare dereliction of duty by so many people, from cabinet level down to the Metro Police-person on the beat?

Imagine the effect of this same Kafkaesque model of mal-administration spreading its tentacles throughout the healthcare, defence, housing, education and other sectors of the country.

When the various images are placed together, you no longer need to imagine. You get the world view of South Africa.

And no amount of spin-doctoring, opinion purchasing or apartheid blaming can change this view. Hence the nose-dive of the local currency in the past few days.

May 21 2013 at 07:48am
By ANNA COX

Johannesburg - Joburg motorists won't be prosecuted for any offence since December 22, and every fine issued since then can be torn up and thrown into the waste-paper bin.

The Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) told The Star that it had suspended the posting of all courtesy letters asking for payment.

In terms of legislation, the RTIA has to send these letters, by registered mail, as reminders that the fine has not been paid and informing motorists that they have lost their 50 percent discount, and have another 32 days to pay.

If the fine is still not paid, the RTIA should send out a notice of enforcement order - also by registered mail - informing the motorist that this failure to pay will be registered on the eNatis system against the driver's identity number, and he or she will not be able to do any transactions with any vehicle until the infringement notice is paid.

This should also be the start of the process of issuing a warrant of execution against the motorist’s movable property to recover the money once the National Contravention Register has been fully developed.

But the RTIA has not sent one courtesy letter since January, meaning that no further action can be taken against the motorist.

And now that the agency has admitted it is not sending these courtesy letters, it means that not only are some 4 500 traffic officers wasting their time every day speed-checking and stopping motorists for other offences, but the City of Joburg is wasting R7.5 million a month in sending fines by registered mail which are seldom collected.

The JMPD, for 18 months before December 22, was sending fines by ordinary mail. Then, after complaints from the Road Traffic Management Corporation and motorists saying this was illegal, it was forced to start sending fines by registered mail at a cost of R20 each, as a direct result of the intervention of the transport minister.

Some 450 000 fines are sent by registered mail monthly, at a cost of R7.5m. But since January only 10 percent of motorists have paid fines. So since December 22, when the JMPD resumed registered mail, about 1.48 million fines have been sent fruitlessly, costing about R30m.

The RTIA would have to spend the same amount to send the courtesy letters, and again to send the enforcement order letters.

The RTIA said it had experienced challenges at great expense, as courtesy letters must be sent to infringers by registered post.

Some of the challenges include the recent strikes at the South African Post Office.

"In the event that courtesy letters are sent and not collected due to strike action at the Post Office, an enforcement order is authorised, resulting in all eNatis transactions being blocked - such as the renewal of driving licence cards, motor vehicle licence discs and professional driving permits - causing the infringer unnecessary economic harm - especially fleet owner vehicles - and inconvenience.

"These challenges have resulted in the Road Traffic Infringement Agency taking a decision to suspend the issuing of courtesy letters to an infringer until such time that the SA Post Office has given confirmation of an improved delivery of courtesy letters and service levels," said RTIA spokesman Mthunzi Mbungwana.

A further shock is that eNatis is unable to issue warrants of arrest if motorists fail to appear in court, as the software is not yet functional.

It does not have the software development to upload the outcome of the case onto the National Contravention Register.

Another problem that shows how the Aarto (Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences) system is imploding: in cases where motorists have to appear in court for major offences, such as speed in excess of 40km/h of the speed limit, eNatis can issue only the initials, not the full names, of offenders.

The courts will not accept this as they demand full names, and are thus striking hundreds of cases off the eNatis court roll daily.

This applies to the Tshwane metro police department as well as the Gauteng Provincial Police Department, where the Aarto system is being implemented.

JMPD acting chief of police Gerrie Gerneke said they were negotiating a solution with the RTIA.

FINANCE CHAOS

* There are no service-level agreements between the various municipalities, the RTIA and the SA Post Office, and since 2008 there has been no distribution, reconciliation or transfer of fine income.

* All money paid by motorists in fines to the Post Office, and to other cities' metro police or licensing departments, where there is an eNatis payment terminal, is lying in that local municipality's coffers. It is believed that there is R10m of traffic fine income belonging to the cities of Joburg and Tshwane in these sundry accounts.

* Money paid at the Post Office goes to the RTIA, with Joburg and Tshwane not having seen reconciliation of any of this money in more than five years.

* Similarly, the money collected by Joburg and Tshwane is not paid over to those it is due because there is no accounting or reconciliation system in place between the traffic and issuing authorities.

anna.cox@inl.co.za

The Star

17 April 2013

The Pilgrim's progress

Among the hymns chosen by Baroness Thatcher for her funeral in London today was "To Be A Pilgrim."

The most outstanding aspect of the entire funeral, aside from the silencing of Big Ben, was the relative lack of any large protest or disruption by the alleged millions of people who celebrate her death. 

Rumours of organised disruptions, frenzied postings on Facebook attempting to arrange noisy protests and tons of self-important posturing by various politicians had led news agencies to report on possible trouble during the ceremony.

Instead of idiotic grandstanding and footage of Yobbos spoiling the reverence of the occasion, we saw the crowds lining the streets respectfully applauding as Baroness Thatcher's coffin passed.

The noble yet humbling prose of the funeral service from the Book of Common Prayer, the same service accorded to all buried from an Anglican Church, both elevated the occasion and sounded a reminder to all of us of our own mortality - a point driven home in the address of the Bishop of London.

Perhaps then the day stands as a monument - if one was needed - to the fact that Margaret Thatcher helped to craft a country where the individual was responsible for more than just their own destiny and circumstance. Where people with self-worth realise that collectively, the way forward is not the anarchy of the masses, but the steady growth of the individual's contribution to an improved society.

Perhaps those with short memories, who are easily misled or who have revisionist tendencies - the type of people who dress their babies in T-Shirts celebrating her death and who themselves were not even alive during her years in office - who wished to disrupt her funeral realised that the combined self-worth of all those who wished to pay their respects in a dignified manner might have combined to rebound on any protester or group that sought to sully the proceedings.

In my view anyone who did try their luck at idiotic behaviour would probably have been - to use a good South African phrase -  Bliksemmed* by the majority of people who wanted a dignified day before the protesters could get anywhere near to causing a scene.

At least such a realisation is, in a small evolutionary manner, further progress of a kind.

Now that this is behind us can the planet get on with stuff that really matters - like work?

Without enough solid contributions from the folk empowered between 1979 and 1991, the dole for those who want to return to the era of the unionist power moguls would soon run out.

Then nobody would progress.

At all.

*Bliksem - Afrikaans slang word describing the act of beating someone soundly.

16 April 2013

Hollow echoes of Boston ring through Parliament

Almost as if on cue, the Boston bombing of 15 April 2013 provided an opportunity for the ruling party of South Africa to illustrate how the revising of history - mentioned in my post about the effect it is having on the legacy of Baroness Thatcher - takes place through a calculated process of disinformation and half-truth and, in this instance, selective memory.

A statement made by the party read - partly - as follows: "The ANC condemns...the dastardly act of terrorism that happened in Boston. There can be no justification for such a despicable attack...and it deserves to be condemned by the world community."

The selectivity comes from the deliberate amnesia displayed by the party about its own acts of terror and its documented reaction to world condemnation of same when perpetrated.

A particular instance I remember involved a rush hour bomb in Church Street in Pretoria that killed and maimed more than the Boston attack did. The dead and injured in South Africa's capital due to the ANC's military wing bomb horror included people from all demographics of the country. What justification was there for such a despicable act?

Certainly there was less justification for that dastardly act  than there was for Baroness Thatcher's labeling of the act as cowardly and an act of terror.

Perhaps the revisionists would like us to forget the body parts littering the street I saw through my camera viewfinder that afternoon (and all of them bled red irrespective of who they had been blown off) on the basis that the bomb was placed outside the Air Force Headquarters and thus it was - to use the terrorists favourite euphemism - a legitimate target?

Well then, what legitimacy was there in the Sanlam Center bombing in Amanzimtoti? Yet again people from all demographics were affected by the placing of a device inside a shopping center. Perhaps the re-naming of the road running past the center to commemorate the terrorist that placed the bomb has - together with the elevation of him to the status of a national hero - erased the nature of that attack and, therefore, it no longer counts as "dastardly" and "despicable"?

What of the placing of a bomb in a busy nightspot in Durban? Was the later reverence given to the terrorist involved through the elevation of him to a high position within the Party itself and its lackey populated Ekurhuleni Metro - rather than a condemnation of his acts - justified? 

The flaccid excuse given for the attack to the TRC was that off-duty policemen used Magoo's Bar. Noted. So did shop assistants, char-ladies, doctors, nurses, aid workers and a host of other people one would expect to find in any popular city nightspot.

In fact, the Boston attacks also affected policemen - why then - using the ANC's logic, is it not a justified attack?

Now, before any reader feels this is equally revisionist let us not forget the parcel bomb that killed Ruth First in Maputo. The terrorists that planned and executed that operation are equally despicable. So too the men and women who planned and executed the bomb attacks that maimed or killed many other people including an Anglican priest in exile.

The Nationalist security forces involved tried to justify their actions by stating that the attacks were targeted and did not affect people who were not involved in terror operations. Tell that to the women and children killed on the Masekeni plots or in Maseru and Mbabane.

The short point is that the condemnation of the ANC, and other world voices, of indiscriminate and cowardly terror attacks is correct and fully justified. Nobody - not even the yet to be canonised saint Mandela - can possibly try and justify the use, the planning or the condoning of violence to achieve any aim.

It is such a pity therefore that the entirely correct sentiment expressed today is drowned out by the hollow laughter of hypocrisy that must be ringing around the heads of those who remember the armed struggle and the victims - on all sides - of that stupid and senseless era of "Liberation (almost at any cost or through any means) before education" and "Death before integration".

Furthermore, it would be interesting to know why the ANC chose to comment so loudly on the Boston bombing. Surely there would be fewer landmines (of a verbal sense) in expressing solidarity with the citizens of Iran who lost more than 30 people in a huge earthquake? Mmmm...probably not as much mileage to be leveraged from the world media.

In a way though, with the wheel of terrorist activists becoming terrorist accusers having come full circle, Baroness Thatcher - the evil witch that labeled the yet to be canonised saint Nelson Mandela a terrorist for his instigation and support of bombings and other acts of violence to achieve political change - may well be able to rest in peace given that the very people who bleated the loudest at her epithet, have now themselves, labeled others as such.

Hark! The echoes of double standards are bouncing loudly off the liberated halls of the Union Buildings...

09 April 2013

The lesson from the passing of Baroness Thatcher

"She not only led our country, she saved it!"

With those succinct and apt words, spoken in tribute to the late Baroness Thatcher, the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, probably lost his party a few hundred thousand votes.

I were in his inner circle, I would not lose sleep about those votes. For as we saw in the visuals of people not yet old enough to have been alive during the Premiership of Mrs Thatcher between 1979 and 1991 holding street parties to "celebrate" her death - such easily mis-informed people are not the grist one can use to take a country forwards.

Indeed, the voices of hatred and disrespect that are struggling to make themselves heard among an almost universal chorus of tribute to her determination, leadership and willingness to tackle problems - rather than the usual politician's tendency to wimp-out and appease when direct action was needed - sound a timely warning.

The warning is not due to the possible rise of the lazy-thuggish-Socialist-Unionist masses to power again. Thankfully the world has moved beyond that due to the changes made to it as a result of Margaret Thatcher's period in office.

No, the warning is that where the power of radical, often violent political forces has been dissipated due to the march of moderation and reason, the movements concerned seek to distort history to try and regain column inches or to shape the historical awareness of the next generation.

They find some historical enemy to vilify and blame for their current status no matter if the true facts show us that the figure involved made huge and courageous changes for the greater good.

Our country is seeing such a move, In this case a section of leadership it is lapping up the opportunity of vilifying Thatcher for "propping up" the "evil apartheid regime" due to her opposition to sanctions.

How strange that such a sentiment is expressed in the same week when the minister for planning in the Presidency has been quoted as saying that Apartheid can no longer be used as an excuse for corruption, sloth, inefficiency and lack of meaningful progress and delivery of improvements to the lives of the average citizen of South Africa.

The rabble will, however, not hear that. Nor will they let us forget that Thatcher called out those who planted bombs in cities and wielded AK47 rifles in townships for what she believed they were - often not flinching from using the word "terrorist" where apt - or the fact that she was firmly convinced that succeeding generations should not simply think it good to sit on their bums at home and expect the state to provide for them just because they happened to be alive.

This is the real issue behind the labour movement's dislike and populist vilification of Baroness Thatcher. When she came to power they were at their strongest influence over England and in many other countries around the world. In England they had stymied attempts at modernisation of her industries, they refused to permit individuals to have a voice without fearing a boot to the head as a consequence (remember Scargill's rant against "secret strike ballots" that Mrs. Thatcher instituted as one of her labour reforms?) and now they are still kicking and twitching about how awful she was as a Prime Minister.

Sour grapes and an attempt at regaining long lost ideological ground. Nothing less but yet something more sinister.

Through ongoing disinformation campaigns the radicals manage to pervert history in the eyes of those they snare in their web. In some cases they even manage to re-write history in schools to write out the valid contributions of major role players whom they still view as the "enemy" despite logic and rational historical views to the contrary. 

The remnants of the radical socialist unionist movement of the times in which Mrs. Thatcher led England live on in outposts such as South Africa and their attempt at distorting history is doing almost as well as that of their comrades in the radical Union movements in the UK.

In all the tributes to the "new South Africa" and the patriots that made it possible, little is heard of those who played major roles in the transition - it was certainly not a military victory (thank goodness -  the destruction of a fight to the end would have been devastating) but it was a gradual process brought about in large part by the constructive engagement and pragmatism of Baroness Thatcher.

She sent the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group to South Africa and it was this that broke the proverbial "National Party Ice" to a large degree. That and the resolve of an equally courageous politician who she hosted at Downing Street even before he became President of South Africa. The politician was F W De Klerk.

Interestingly enough Mrs. Thatcher also hosted Michael Gorbachev at Downing Street prior to his elevation as leader of his country. Look at the changes he brought about.

So if we look at the real history, and not the distorted political rantings of those who (in many cases) were not even around at the time, we see a unique confluence of paths in four strategic parts of the planet where leaders of courage, vision and sufficient charisma were in place at a similar time and which largely shaped our current Geo-Political landscape.

These were Mrs. Thatcher in England, President Reagan of the USA, Michael Gorbachev in the USSR and Frederick De Klerk in South Africa.

The lesson we can learn from the passing of Mrs. Thatcher is that she now marks the loss of 50% of the vision, guts and work ethic that so changed the world through the resolution of seemingly intractable problems.

Gorbachev and De Klerk remain around - should we not be tapping their experience and insight in resolving other problems?

What's that? 

Sorry...the indignant yelling of the radical reformist historians is drowning you out... 

Oh well, perhaps its best we leave them to enjoy a peaceful retirement.

Perhaps that will save them from the nutters in the same way that Mrs. Thatcher saved England from becoming the laughing stock of the western world.

It will not, however, save the dancing and toy-toying dupes from themselves.

12 March 2013

SAA misses the obvious then tries to monopolpolize common words

At the outset, I must state that I feel Comair's proposed new livery for its Kulula subsidiary would be an exciting breath of fresh air for lensmen and plane spotters.

Using the now famous national flag on the tail is an obvious - and valid - option for an airline owned and operated by a company in the largest Republic south of the Limpopo river. And seeing as the national carrier missed the obvious with its livery (as it does not actually use the national flag but a stylized graphic of it) all strength to Kulula for planning to do so.

There is also (at the moment) no legislation that precludes such use of national symbols by businesses although I suspect that option will shortly be removed by a frenzy of regulation making in Cape Town. I expect something along the lines of "The Bill to stop successful independent businesses from tarnishing the national image through being more efficient than state enterprises while clearly marking themselves as a country south of the Limpopo's corporate citizen by means of the use of any national colours..."

However, the use of the the three words commonly used to brand the national carrier in combination with "The most..." was, at best, cheeky and at worst, deliberately provocative. It is, though, a clever bit of boundary pushing and great marketing. The viral nature of the internet comments are possibly exactly what was envisaged.

The national carrier's ill-considered reaction, however, was a classic example of overkill and ill-advised puffery.

They have, in effect, placed everyone on notice that, to use the most logical descriptors to describe any citizen or air carrier based in the large Republic south of the Limpopo, will have legal repercussions - hence the restraint and careful wording in this blog post.

Quite frankly, the response of the national carrier is farcical.

As a citizen of the Republic south of the Limpopo, I used to call myself (as my countrymen and women do) what anyone in the English speaking world would term a citizen of the largest Republic south of the Limpopo.

Many Airlines have styled themselves as an airways system - Trek Airways is but one. In addition, routes in the sky used by aircraft are called airways. I would think any company offering travel using these routes could be termed an airways operator.

No. Not anymore according to the corporate spokesman of the entity yapping away since the Kulula billboards went up.

It appears that if you wish to avoid the wrath of the national carrier's corporate legal attack dogs, you may not use the words South African (Possibly according to them, the legal property - allegedly - of SAA) or airways (Possibly,  - allegedly - the legal property of SAA) unless you are the national carrier.

So, perhaps the best thing for Kulula to do then is to term themselves the "The most patriotic and representative airline company in the largest Republic south of the Limpopo utilising the air routes set aside for such operations."

The problem is that even an Airbus A380 whalejet will not have enough space for that.

However, that will assist in what seems to me to be an (as yet) un-legislated national drive towards making everything as complicated as possible while claiming to be working on greater efficiencies.

It would be so good to see the folk at the national carrier spending half as much energy on actually running the carrier on a business basis and cutting the massive losses the taxpayers in the largest Republic South of the Limpopo have had to subsidize for the past 17 years.

The reality, however, is that it seems that the national carrier is too busy chasing its own tail in trying to talk-away the fact that its interim CEO has almost but not really, perhaps possibly, probably but not quite exactly as yet just about failed to formally obtain the qualifications their annual report stated (for two successive years) he had definitely obtained.

While the fact that he does not actually, definitely, completely and finally have these qualifications does not, possibly, affect his ability to run the national carrier, it is yet another indication that things are in a merry mess at the Building that headquarters the national carrier-Park.

Add this to the huge holes in the balance sheet and the loss of technical abilities as previously discussed and the fiddling with words is an exercise that will, I feel, be about as useful as the proverbial re-arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Definitely.

And then there is the small hint in the official Kulula release photo and adverts featuring the new livery that it may be "...going soon."

Perhaps they are just pulling as many "tail" feathers as they can?

Probably.

But it's fun to watch the feathers fly in the largest Republic south of the Limpopo.

Certainly.

06 January 2013

SAA's ground loop comes full circle

South African Airways is an airline with which I became intimately acquainted during the late 80's and early 1990s. 

I visited the head office virtually every day for a period of more than a year while researching my book A Firm Resolve. 

Aside from my daily dealings with the behind-the-scenes flight operations staff, the subject matter of my book brought me into close contact with - and revealed the daily operations of - the technical and safety divisions of the national carrier.

The spotless nature of the workshops, the painstaking attention to detail and the documentation of every nut, bolt and wire as well as the obvious pride visible in each individual staff member's contribution to the smooth and efficient operation of the whole was infectious. 

I came away impressed and proud of our national carrier - not so much due to the interaction with each staff member during my time spent in my research, but by the comments and anecdotes from members of international operators that flew into Johannesburg who made use of the extensive facilities available at SAA Technical.            

To a man the overseas visitors were lavish and forthright in their praise and admiration for the levels of skill, the resourcefulness and the dedication of the SAA staff with whom they dealt.

One telling comment was from a German support technician who said that his airline had as much machinery, tools and test equipment as did the SAA teams but that what his world famous employer needed was to transplant the technicians as their ability to trace problems and their pre-emptive instincts were, in his view, un-matched anywhere else and "...zat includes Seattle itself!"

I was to become aware of one such individual's resourcefulness when I learnt how a "techie" from the instrument shop had achieved the allegedly impossible (and pioneered an investigative procedure still used today in accident investigations) in order to determine the EPR (Engine Pressure Ratio) settings aboard the Pretoria, a Boeing 707 that crashed in Windhoek in the late 1960s.

Mr Warder (the man involved) was not fazed by "Pratt and Whitney says it can't be done..." and "Nobody's done this before." He simply made a plan and had a go. That he was willing to do so is one aspect of the story - that his superiors and employer as a whole created an enabling environment for him to even think of doing the impossible, is as telling of itself.

How sad then, to read today of the emergency bail-out given to the national carrier to avoid the embarrassment of it being grounded by the fuel suppliers, Airports and Navigation Authorities for unpaid bills over the holiday season.

As disturbing as those reports are, it is the tail-piece regarding the fact that the technical department is only - apparently - adept at packing engines and components for repair overseas that is the real shocker.

This speaks to the fact that the pool of technical talent, built at huge cost in money and experience that was renowned around the world, has been allowed to dissipate. While bills can be paid by throwing yet more tax-payer's money at the bottom-line, the recovery of the talent and experience that has been frittered-away and lost in pursuit of whatever agenda is currently the political flavour of the day is nothing short of criminal.

No matter how the politicians wish to spin this, the fact is that a functional, efficient and well-resourced airline has been gutted of the vital skills needed to operate efficiently and safely cannot be denied.

How the airline is supposed to repay the R550 million emergency loan (which is, interestingly enough, more than the combined debt of both Velvet Sky and 1Time!)  in three months in the current whirlpool of management re-shuffling is a mystery, My guess is that in 90 days we will hear a deafening silence as the repayment deadline is quietly ignored and more treasury transfers take place.

It is obvious that the carrier is going to be kept going no matter what and that the huge cost will continue ad-infinitum.

A culture of customer service, efficiency and safety in any company is achieved through a process of osmosis. When the combined experience of well-salted technicians, pilots and customer facing staff has been allowed to dissipate, resign and move overseas or retire early as is the case with SAA, the effect of such losses on the company is hard to quantify and the effects will be felt for decades to come.

Well...perhaps the treasury will be able to give something back to the international aviation community because the cost to the fiscus of losing the soul of an airline can be well documented. 

The last I added it up it is well over R20 billion in the past 18 years or so and it is rising by the day.

Let us hope and pray that the end result of the skills loss is not an SAA airliner coming down to earth with a bump and ending the lives of a few hundred of our countrymen and women.

04 January 2013

Jacques Kallis - Greatness blossoms before our eyes

It was written vividly for those who cared to see.

On a summer's day at Newlands in the mid 1990s a batsmen faced the best bowlers of the day with an amazing composure and single-minded purpose.

Ball released - path tracked - left alone. As the wicket-keeper gathered the ball and it made its way back to the bowler the batsman turned from the wicket and walked a few paces. It was obvious he was "re-setting" his concentration for the next ball.

The run-in, ball released - path tracked - 4 runs back past the bowler. No smugness from the batsman - just the same "re-setting" process.

The batsmen was a very young Jacques Kallis. Watching him many in the crowd around me fell silent and simply enjoyed his workmanlike approach. It was obvious a craftsman was at work. His maturity glowed from him.

From that day to today there was no obvious flamboyance. No hysterics. just a workmanlike dedication and quiet confidence.

I had seen the same focus and aura about a young racing driver at the 1984 South African Grand Prix. While other more famous names were swearing and shouting at their pit crews as their cars failed in the Highveld heat, this young driver got out of his steaming car, helped the team to park it and then he sat down on an engine box at the rear of the pit. Totally calm and focused, he asked the team manager how they were going to approach the next race.

Quiet reassurance and dedication. The stamp of greatness was there.

It came to fruition within 5 years as Ayrton Senna re-wrote the record books of Formula 1.

In his own way Jacques Kallis has re-written virtually every record there is. The difference is that he has not been accorded the full recognition he deserves for his greatness - yet.

While the Antipodeans will forever hail Donald Bradman as the greatest batsman ever due to his high average, his numbers simply pale when compared to Jacques Kallis.

While Jaques has been hailed as possibly the greatest all-rounder of the game - ever - there can be no doubt that an objective look at the statistics shows that he is not "possibly" the greatest all-rounder but simply, in my view, the best cricketer the planet has seen.

As a test batsman, however, there is no doubt that he will be the greatest of all time in the format. He has said he is still hoping for at least 3 more seasons at the top and so the run records in the 5 day game of Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid are only 4 to 6 innings away at J.H's test average. 

He has played fewer games to reach his tally than have they but he has - significantly - a higher average than Ponting and Dravid and a larger total of "Not Out" innings played. Surely this is greatness hidden behind the Antipodean and Sub-Continental bluster and religious fervour for the game?

That leaves the little wizard from India, the great Sachin Tendulkar, as the only one ahead of him as the all-time highest test run scoring batsman. There is no reason to think that J.H. Kallis will not be able to surpass his total.

As if joining the 13 000 runs plus club was not already an achievement of greatness worthy of world recognition, as far as test wickets are concerned, the truly great bowlers are generally hailed as greats of the game if they get 300 wickets or more. J.H. is just a little shy of that mark as well and I think it is only a matter of time before he reaches the 300 wicket club.

The most amazing thing of all, however, is that while Tendulkar, Ponting and Dravid are hailed as national heroes, it is as though South Africa is indifferent to the greatness of the world's finest test batsman that travels on her passport.

Given that Jacques Kallis has achieved all he has in such a quiet and unassuming manner, against the wishes it would seem of the sporting ministry  (remember the crass-stupidity of Nconde Balfour's "Who is this Jacques Kallis? We don't need Jacques Kallis!" comment?) his monumental impact on the game is all the more worthy of recognition by his fellow citizens.

In time J.H. Kallis will be the top-scoring test batsman of all time - it is a certainty similar to the fact that Senna was going to win the world Championship at some stage.

For those of us able to watch him in action, savour the sight of the world's best ever cricketer while you can.

And to the rest of the country, and particularly the ministry of sport - THIS is Jacques Kallis! The greatest ever!

It is fitting that he is already hailed around the world - from Mumbai to Trinidad - as King Kallis.

And they have seen a lot of batsmen...

They know.

Why are we blind?

05 November 2012

And then there were two - 1Time Airlines ceases operations in a "de-regulated and free" market.

On a summer's day in 2004 I recall being seated at an office desk in a building on the eastern side of Johannesburg International Airport.

The gentleman seated opposite me was holding up two pieces of upholstery = black leather and cloth - and inviting my viewpoint. "What would prefer on your aircraft seat if your were flying?" he asked.

Standing behind him was another person who had made this same decision many times.

In the end, black leather was the obvious choice for the seat covering on the new low cost airline which Glenn Orsmond and Rodney James were putting together. Not only had it been proven often that leather was longer lasting than cloth, but the luxury appeal of the aroma and feel was bound to impart a good feeling for the passengers and lend an up-market air of quality to the interior of the aircraft.

This was no "Oi, d'ya fink it would be a good wheeze to set up an airline then?" flash in the pan Boy's Own style of operation.

Rodney had many years of experience in airliner operations and as the CEO of Aero Nexus - a company that owned a few MD80 airliners and which performed leasing and service operations for a number of airlines outside South Africa - he knew what he was getting into.

Glenn had learnt about running a tight ship from what is arguably the most efficient airline the world has seen, Comair South Africa. As the arch number cruncher there for a number of years he had the benefit of absorbing the business acumen and the operational brilliance of the Comair leadership - particularly that of Mr Van Hoven - at first-hand.   

The launch of Kulula a few years earlier by Comair had also, of course, provided a front-row seat from which to observe the intricacies of getting a start-up low cost carrier off the ground.    

    MD82 (ZS-TRD) Shoot for 1Time circa 2006 - Robben Island, Cape Town.                                                                                                

One definite bit of schooling Rodney had picked up as lessor of aircraft to the failed Sunair-2 airline that operated from Lanseria for a few months, was that there was no market in South Africa for a traditional legacy or up-market business class only competitor to the state-funded SAA or the independent BA/Comair and Nationwide airlines.

The launch and growth of 1Time is a part of history. The fact that the airline operated nearly a dozen airliners at one stage in addition to a holiday travel arm and employed more than 500 of the most customer-friendly staff in the local industry speaks volumes of the competence of the people at the sharp end of the operational part of the business.

At launch the use of the MD80 series of aircraft made sense. Leasing costs were far lower than any relatively modern Boeing 737 aircraft and the cost of fuel was sufficiently favourable a half decade ago to tilt the balance towards sustained profitability even when the higher maintenance costs of the older aircraft were factored-in.

As the fuel prices began rising in the period 2007-2010, however, the use of the MD aircraft was an operational aspect that was increasingly hard to justify. Worldwide these very airliners had been phased-out at the turn of the century in favour of newer airliners using CFM or similarly efficient lean-burn bypass engines and more efficient packaging such as the Boeing 737-800 and Airbus A320.

1Time, however, held on to their older machinery and the profitability gap was literally getting burnt up with every air mile traveled by the company. What is more, 1Time added routes that were - to be polite - commercially interesting but certainly not solid contributors to the bottom-line. 

The company also listed on the Alt-X board of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In 2011 control of the company was, effectively, sold to an empowerment consortium and the original management team went to walk on the beach or play golf or whatever it is that one does with a good few million in proceeds of stock sales nestled in the bank.

Blacky Khomani and his team, the new owners, set about trying to take the increasingly uneven fight to Kulula, Mango and SAA as fuel prices escalated and the US Dollar exchange rate weakened - effectively increasing the cost of spares and maintenance. Increased competition on the golden triangle routes (Johannesburg/Cape Town/Durban) from the short-lived Velvet Sky (see blog post of 2 March 2012) placed additional pressure on margins and the company moved to place itself in business rescue (a version of Chapter 11 protection used in the USA) in the first quarter of 2012.

With the less than savoury experience of the demise of Velvet Sky in the minds of the flying public fresh to hand, bookings were less than robust and the company's debts remained high. Information regarding a large loss for the 6 months to the end of June 2012 abounded in the market and the company missed its reporting deadline to the JSX in August. This led to further rumours and the share price tanked. The directors courted possible investors but those are few and far between when it comes to airlines these days.

The end, when it came, was swift and merciless. On Friday afternoon, 2 November 2012, already boarded passengers were asked to depart 1Time aircraft, some en-route flights were turned back to home base and even crew who were at out stations had to find their own way home as all operations were ceased to prevent any further additions to the debt burden of more than R300 million.

Meanwhile, at corporate HQ, SAA directors were most likely clapping their hands in glee and working out how to use the R5 billion bailout (one of many similar handouts of taxpayer's money in the years since the alleged deregulation of the South African passenger airline sector) they were pretty confident of shortly receiving from the national treasury.

It is time the competition commission stopped launching politically correct investigations to reap more millions for the state and actually did some real work - they can start by ruling that SAA needs to set up a separate legal entity to compete in the domestic market and that the local routes may not be cross-subsidised by capital from the taxpayer funding pot  used to keep the international arm going as a state vanity project. 

This will truly let market forces prevail and the fittest will survive - which may ultimately leave a lot of Mango and SAA domestic staff out of work for without the massive subsidy from the SAA parent their numbers look commercially suspect to say the least.

Oh well, while I and others dream of a true democracy and free market in South Africa, 1Time aircraft sat at various airports today as silent as only unwanted airliners can be. 

Inside, the black leather of the seats had proven more durable than the airline itself - but perhaps not as durable as the skewed reality of the commercial aviation sector in South Africa.

14 September 2012

The right to bear lenses - How close should we get?

I have no doubt that a great fuss will ensue about the decision of a French magazine editor to publish photos today.  

While millions of photographs are published each day the printing of photos of the Duchess of Cambridge on holiday in France is going to raise the proverbial methane enriched aroma around the planet.

Many folk will be puzzled at the fuss, others will add their spittle to the tweets and comments that will flood websites from Lower-Whingeing-in-the-Wolds to wherever there is internet access.

So? Why the fuss? 

More importantly, perhaps, is there a message in this for reasonable, thinking photographers?

Well, firstly the fuss in this case will be more for the memories invoked by the actions of a Paparazzi snooping on a road about 1000m away from the villa where the Duchess was sunbathing than the actual photos themselves - after all, the quality of a cropped shot from that distance will be more like a mobile telephone shot than something one would find on glossy pin-up spreads gracing barrack room walls.

No, it is the memories of the death of the mother of the Duke of Cambridge - still partly blamed on the pursuit of her by Paparazzi on motorcycles - that will be the core resonance - and the uniting factor in the storm of reaction that is surely to come. 

The fury of the injustice of Princess Diana's pointless death while fleeing the incessant presence of uninvited photographers that dogged her every move will well-up again. I would wager that the particular lensman that took these photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge will need to up his insurance cover and go to ground somewhere as the brown stuff (and the odd nut-case) will be seeking him out like a Sidewinder missile tracking a jet exhaust plume.

Many had hoped that the impact created by the black Mercedes carrying Prince William's mother in the Paris underpass on the consciousness of thinking and half-human editors and photographers had been permanent. Many had, perhaps naively, hoped that the collective pause for thought and the effective placing of Princes William, Harry and their family on an unofficial do not harass list of the worldwide Paparazzi would have ensured them a relatively normal life. Cosseted, privileged (after all how many can afford to go to the South of France for a Holiday?) and luxurious as their existences may be, there cannot be many reasonable people who would deny them the right to a relatively normal daily existence without the constant clicking of shutters as an ever-present soundtrack.

Well it is pretty obvious that the holiday out of the limelight is over - certainly as regards the European media appears to be concerned. It seems that the UK media are keeping a polite distance from the photos - even the Sun has refused to publish the photos. Well done chaps!

It will, however, be interesting to see how the planet takes the editor of Closer Magazine, France (which is, if I remember, actually a licensee of a UK firm so that little license transgression debate will be interesting to watch...) apart - and it is a sucker bet that she will be dropped from A-List party invitation schedules for a while. Any parties she still does get invited to will almost certainly not be worth attending anyway because who would want to mingle with people who condone her behaviour anyway. 

I think she is going to be surprised to find out how many thinking people remember that somber Saturday morning in the mid 1990's when the wreckage was being cleared from the underpass near the Ritz Hotel.

Now, the message for us as photographers. There is no way to duck this one and we need to ask if the right to bear lenses permits us to get as close as we technically can? Should we just shoot and get the best price for the shots or is there a moral line somewhere which applies to photographing people - any people - which one does not cross?

The answer to this will be different to each photographer but perhaps the limit lies in ones humanity? 

Your cultural background, your respect for other people and the total in your bank balance will influence your position and the lengths to which one will go - regardless of whether you are technically intruding on the subject's privacy or not.

My view, however, is that there should be a limit when it comes to shooting photographs of people. My personal approach - especially when shooting news coverage of famous folk, traffic, aircraft and other accidents has been to consider the question from the point of view of how I would feel if the image in the viewfinder was of one of my family members. How would I feel if the charred corpse trapped in the wreckage was a relative and the image appeared in print?

Extrapolating this to the South of France on Monday this week one would ask how you would feel if the Duchess of Cambridge au-natural was not the Duchess and wife of the potential heir to the British Throne, but your sister. Would you still take the shots of her in a compromising situation and offer them for publication?

Next - where does privacy start and end? Is it only a nebulous concept defined by the reaches of the longest telephoto lens you happen to have at hand or should we as photographers have a set of standards we follow?

Yet again, the answer to this question will vary as before but perhaps it should be the line denoted by the boundary of the property or the outer walls of the building occupied by the subject? 

Perhaps it is time for this to be legally defined because, as things stand at the moment, it seems the line is defined by the limits of the memory of the user of the camera as to the possible consequences of incessant intrusion and the pressure his bank manager is placing on him in regard to his overdraft. 

Oh, and of course there is also - as in this case - the added blurring of the boundary imposed by an available, willing (and ethically suspect) editor that is willing to divest herself of a healthy wodge of Wonga to try and gain some celebrity.

Perhaps, however, the end result of this dodgy decision and the inevitable fallout therefrom may well be a definition of the rules of the game for everyone.

And that will, in my view, be a good thing because the world does not need a variation of the scenes we witnessed against the concrete pillars on that shocking day when Princess Diana died.

A lack of boundaries for privacy will, in some manner or form, certainly lead to a similar situation in the future.

And rather than bringing us closer, it will do the opposite and make the job harder for everyone that depends on photography for a living.

23 August 2012

Kodak-From a name that has no meaning to a company that has no film

There can be few moments to match this. 

The import of the announcement made by the Eastman Kodak Company Management at Rochester, NY, today to the effect that Kodak was selling its consumer film and processing businesses, is massive.

It marks, in a very symbolic way, the final triumph of pixels over silver halide crystals and that of the East over the West in the imaging industry. 

The proverbial passing of the baton between the originators of photography for the common person to the future of memory-making has taken place.

It also marks the final step in a process that started in the late 1980s when Sony's Mavica camera was first used for news photography at an international sporting event.

Many of the large photographic corporates - Agfa Gaveart, Kodak and Konishiroku - felt this was nothing more than an offshoot of the TV camera. Destined to remain a specific tool for TV stations.

The "Big Boys" (Kodak and Agfa) probably sniggered into their drinks and did lunch as they looked at market statistics that indicated a healthy monopoly on the world's photographic business. After all, in those days Konica and Fuji were really only big in the East. Leverkeusen and Rochester had the rest of the planet sorted between them.

Kodak shareholders probably asked each other "What's digital?" over lunch at the Hyannisport Club.

Fuji, however, like their countrymen that first commercialised this "amusing but limited" technology, started immediate R&D departments to harness the obvious potential. 

It was a long-shot upon which to bet. It was a very costly one too with little return in the early years but, if you were wrong the costs of not being there were incalculable. 

Just ask the Kodak shareholders how costly.

And while those shareholders may be grumpy and bemoaning their lot as their stock reflects little of its heady highs of the 1980s, they only have themselves to blame for the fact that their company missed the digital boat and has had to sell its outboard motors in the form of patents and plants.

Why are they to blame? Three words: Shareholder Activism and greed.

In the mid 1990s the board took the enlightened decision to appoint as CEO of Kodak a chap called George Fischer.

Within a few months he called out the light at the end of the tunnel as the approach of the digital juggernaut. At this stage Fuji, Sony and Olympus had already sold more than a few million digital cameras around the world. Kodak had not, despite having developed a lot of the technology used in those cameras, even put a consumer digital camera on the market.

George Fischer bit the bullet and started serious R&D into commercialising digital photography for the masses. The cost to the balance sheet of trimming the corporate flab and re-directing money into the same seemingly endless digital photography pit that Olympus, Fuji and Sony had already been filling for half a decade soon became apparent.

The shareholders did not like the decline in their dividends - especially for the sake of a technology that would hurt their core business - film sales.

So instead of biting the digital bullet they gave George Fischer the bullet.

This was a costly mistake. Not only in the direct hit in terminating his contract early, but because the re-arrangement and dimming of his erstwhile focus on re-aligning Kodak into the digital imaging company it needed to become was, ultimately, to cost them the entire company.

This was not a situation unique to Kodak, however.

Anyone remember Polaroid? Mmm, Gary DiCamillo also tried a George Fischer with them in the late 1990s and got the same amount of thanks from the shareholders for investing in technology that would hurt their core business of instant film sales.

On reflection though, the situation does seem to be uniquely western - Agfa Gavaert bit the dust for the same reasons some years ago.

Konica is still around, albeit not in the photographic industry per-se but they ran with digital technology in another area -office machines- and are doing rather nicely there. Remember they bought Minolta which they then sold to Sony so they could re-badge the cameras as Alphas. 

So now, one major company, Fuji, has the film market - in effect - to itself.

Film?

What's that?

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2 March 2012

Velvet is not Green

In an interesting side-show to the rest of the planet's pre-occupation with the Euro crisis, Syria and the looming election in the USA, the past 5 weeks have seen my previous post's focus on the power of perception proven in a very public manner.

The events that have played-out at South African airports since 20 January surrounding the low-cost airline Velvet Sky and its passengers also provide a salutary lesson to executives of service companies in the power of the new media channels everybody insists you have to have to "be with it". 

Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms can certainly enhance your company's marketability but, on the flip-side, if you foul-up in service somewhere, and you decide to ignore posts on your corporate Facebook wall or other media accounts, soon the Twitter-sphere and the wall posts will gobble-up, finely shred and then spit-out any credibility you think you had established.

The board sitting in Gateway deciding the airline's future will do well to learn this lesson fast. Communication is the name of the game today. The public - especially the vast majority that shop on price (and this was Velvet Sky's big drawcard) are willing to forgive a few foul-ups but they will never forget being ignored - either in-person or on public media. 

In addition, if there is an issue - be honest because once one person knows the truth, it will be out there like a Cape mountain wild-fire within an hour or so anyway. The reputation shredding social-web will do the rest when you have decided to clam-up (or worse-still send out statements that the disgruntled and delayed passengers sitting on the airport floor can contradict with a few presses of buttons on their smart-phones)  and then any hope you may have had of a come-back will be severely reduced. 

That the market needed competition is beyond debate and Velvet certainly brought aviation within reach of may people who had never flown before. More is the pity therefore that the future of the carrier looks so bleak as of today's date. Some of the staff will, for the second time in less than 5 years, be facing a future without pensions as many were ex-Nationwide veterans.

The people in the operations side - Paul Green (Director of Flight ops) and his team - are a class act - they know the business and did their work well. So well, in fact, that the company took a big bite out of the domestic leisure travel market in December 2011. Generally, it seems, the flying public enjoyed the Velvet ride. Certainly the pilots and cabin staff were generally given favourable tweets and wall posts.

Exactly how the bills began piling-up, however, is something beyond the operational crew's control and - aside, perhaps, from an ill-advised trust that bookings would always supply enough revenue for growth and operations - it is difficult to know exactly how the carrier landed in the state where it owed (according to media reports) more than R40 million to all its creditors and then had to cancel all its operations on Monday 27 February 2012. A perusal of BP's founding documents in their liquidation application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court does, however, sketch a picture of frantic times and stressful hours as the executives attempted to resolve the billings issue by increasingly desperate measures. 

However, if their holding company does, indeed, have the sort of money that it tries to portray, then this scenario should never have arisen.

That said, however, the South African airline market is a tough business. The state operates the following airlines: SAA, Mango, SA Express and it has a hand in SA Airlink. So, you effectively have a monolithic corporate edifice and infrastructure set-up for 4 major players. Second in size and passenger numbers is Comair. This listed entity - and also the only airline company (I have it on good authority) to have shown a profit each year since its founding - operates the British Airways and Kulula brands. Kulula is the first and original South African low-cost carrier and is still - as far as various social media platforms suggest - the one most trusted by the traveling public.

Sadly for the Velvet staff, unless a great white, cute and fluffy rabbit of the very wealthy and distracting type can be pulled from the hat before 5 March 2012, it looks to be game over. 

Should the issues be resolved, however, then the rabbit had better distract a lot of people as the fight to stay in business will pale into insignificance next to the uphill battle the staff will then face to remain cheerful as half-empty aircraft fly around burning money all day for little return until their schedule and service regains the trust of the public.

 As this scenario plays out, the corporate calculators will be ticking away to see if profitability ever returns (if it was there in the first place) and someone better have huge pockets if they are to resolve the bills past due and keep things running smoothly until the load factors pick-up again to a level that makes the business sustainable.

Given that all the people that spent hours on Facebook and Twitter shredding the reputation of the airline will all be using those same sources to see what the service experience of the first few brave souls who step aboard (if the company comes out the other side of what looks to be a pretty solid case from BP) will be - it is my guess that passenger yields will not get back to normal until at least half a year has passed. On-time performance, customer courtesy, faultless communication and very visible executive management - both in the media and at the airports - will be vital ingredients in the recovery recipe.

In the interim, the people at the sharp end of the aircraft and their crews who face - as I write - a very bleak future, will all be looking at empty bank accounts and wondering exactly what happened and what colour the Velvet corporate animal is. 

Given the lack of cash issue listed in so many creditor's documents - it definitely does not appear to be green!

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3 February 2012

Who cares about reality? It's the perception that counts.

Perceptions are, in marketing terms, the most expensive things to change. Misinformation, bad facts, false data and creaky opinions are far easier to tackle. 

Perceptions, however, once entrenched as social currency, are virtually impossible to correct - even if they are false.

Someone who knows about the power of perception is Christo Davel. His name may not mean much to you unless you are a member of the upper echelons of the massive, incestuous management structures of our largest banking groups. The mere mention of his name in those circles, however, is usually enough to occasion choking on cocktails at the more exclusive golf courses which play host to the financial management elite of South Africa.

In the dark ages of internet banking in South Africa – around 2001 where the largest entities saw fit to force their clients to pay up to R100 per month to transact online (in addition to a host of undisclosed charges that could easily exceed R600 per month on an average cheque account) – and then still made customers go into a branch to fill in mountains of paper simply to add or delete a beneficiary (all to make things more convenient and secure for you the customer they all said!), Christo and a team of like-minded individuals tried to interest the institutional inertia of South African Banking in a dedicated online banking solution.

The online bank (called 20Twenty) was to allow clients the freedom to apply for the account online, set up beneficiaries and obtain a line of credit without leaving their desks. What is more, he had the temerity to suggest that a single flat fee be billed per month to make it affordable – after all he argued, the actual running cost of multiple branches would not be needed and this saving in overhead could be passed directly to the consumer. 

One of the cheekiest things of all was the fact that clients would actually be able to talk to someone on the phone who would not only greet you by name when you called (a simple but effective trick using the power of caller identity systems), but that single person would be authorised to deal with any query you had or to take steps to immediately resolve any problem - there and then without putting you on hold or having to call back. It was a strange concept to the big four that - it was called customer service. When it eventually took off, much to the dismay of the establishment, this customer-focus was so welcomed that the bank went viral.

The original business plan had expected 50 000 clients in year one. Within four months they had hit 40 000 sign-ups. It was the biggest smack across the corporate face that it was possible to give. The secure cozy world wherein banking clients apparently never complained about service was shattered by the minute as the 20Twenty staff called in time after time to assist new clients to transfer their accounts from existing institutions.

Perhaps the key poke to the corporate eye was that 20Twenty set up a live, online feedback page where clients could interact with the bank in real time and obtain service out in the open. The forum would be a no-holds barred space to chew out the bank if it failed to perform. Many clients used it to chew out their previous institutions as well although such posts were quickly moderated. The word, however, was that 20Twenty was hot and immediate. Service at 20Twenty was what people had been waiting for.

This idea of the forum – from various reports at the time - was one which cast the largest of frowns on the faces of the executives who had originally turned Christo Davel from the door again and again when he first mooted the idea. Their rejection of his ideas, however, did not – as it turned out – come without them having first taken numerous notes on the sly for later use in their own online products which they launched with much fanfare as "unique innovations."

Despite being the strangest of his ideas, however, the online forum was to prove a stroke of genius and its deployment at a critical stage in the latter part of the 20Twenty story would save the jobs – and the money – of thousands of people when the corporate edifices attempted to crush the upstart online bank. When that point came, however, the collateral damage to the wider community had damaged a far wider grouping of innocent people and laid the foundations for the exploitation of others for many years hence.

Perhaps, when the time is right, the full story of exactly what happened when a AAA+ rated bank suddenly had a huge amount of capital withdrawn from it by the larger banks of the country – forcing it into insolvency within less than a day – might be told. As it is, the service and customer response to this set of events is now the stuff of business school case studies.

The fact that the bank which was the victim of the homicide mentioned above was the only one to have entertained Christo and his ideas – to the point of allowing him to operate under its licence – did not, the public was assured by the various larger institutions, have anything to do with this sudden reversal of fortune by Saambou Bank.

And they will also still try and tell us that the Easter Bunny is real.

However, I digress. Mr Davel is back again. This time he is, according to the major banks – to quote our American cousins - Doing the darnedest thing!  

He is – only on your specific request and after getting your explicit permission – pulling all your financial information off the various systems upon which it may be stored, and showing you – by means of the same tools the big banks use all day to watch world markets and identify trends in their own businesses – exactly where your financial strengths and weaknesses are.

Trends in spending or losses are clearly flagged well ahead of time so you can make informed decisions. There is no manner in which the system can issue any instruction to your bank's system. It can only read data – it cannot transact so there is absolutely no risk to your funds at all. The service is called 22Seven. (www.22seven.com). At the moment, it is free until the Beta testing stage is over. A sort of try before you buy approach.

Now, here, I feel, lies the rub. One of the key services it offers is also as follows: If you are wasting money through high charges or excessively high interest (or even if your money is locked into low performing investments) – or if you are on a "low price banking package" for one account with an institution but they are nailing you on charges on another product like your bond or credit card account – 22Seven will show this to you in one easily understood picture so that the true cost per day or month of managing your finances can be seen.

As most sane people would know, this process of aggregation (which is the fancy banker-type word for it), is in daily use by anyone involved in online trading, business management or the plotting of their next corporate take-over.

Guess what though? The big banks have accused him of phishing (i.e. trying to steal access to your accounts – after you give him explicit permission to read the data?) and one of the big 4 has mounted – in effect - a cyber attack on the service requested by its clients by actively blocking any feed of data to the servers requesting the information. 

So, in effect, what this particular bank is saying to its clients is: While we have your money in our systems, we will not let you see exactly what we are doing with it and how we are charging you – we will not let you see data about YOUR money using the same system of aggregation we have been using to track all our client's funds for decades. So there!

Other banks have gone as far as to say that if you make use of the service, they will suspend or withdraw their duty of protection on your account. They are, in effect, using this as a cop-out by saying they will not entertain any claim of fraud on your account if you have made use of the service of 22Seven. The fact that 22Seven is using a tried and tested highly secure method of aggregation that has been in operation for a number of years without security breaches seems to be irrelevant to the scare-mongers.

In short, however, this means someone can go into a branch, con the clerks that they are, in fact, you by using a false ID and other data and withdraw all your cash but – because you were very naughty and asked 22seven to merely look at your account data – they are not going to be responsible for the fraud on your account even though it took place in their portals due to their ineptness!

How lovely to have a convenient dog to kick!

Not only is this disingenuous, it is is nothing short of petulance and – in my view - a violation of a whole bunch of your rights in terms of the constitution and consumer law. It is also a violation of most internet protocols pertaining to online abuse and cyber-crime I have ever seen. I wonder what the ISP hosting that bank's systems would have to say about this attitude?

However, because there is a perception of civility and trustworthiness that has been cultivated by the major institutions most people blindly believe what they are told by the inventors of these myths. Most will rather just remain ignorant of their true financial status rather than risk being labeled as irresponsible when the really irresponsible entities are those seeking to limit you gaining access to information which is, in the final analysis, yours in the first place.

This all begs the question as to what term one could use to describe the actions and vilification campaigns mounted against innovative solutions that really serve a public need which are so often launched by major corporations whenever someone shows them up as being the opposite of the consumer champions they have claimed to be.

It needs to reflect their petulant approach to client empowerment, their unwillingness to truly innovate in ways that save their clients real money (and not just in fancy brochures detailing "cost effective banking" services that are unilaterally raised in price each year.)...

Ahh wait! There are already a few words that will suffice...

Bullies? 

Muggers?

Thugs may be another depending on your experience of their collection policies.

Fiscal Cyber Pirates, (or FCPs) however, seems to be a good triplet to describe the actions of the quadruplets involved in regard to the advent of consumer aggregation services in South Africa.

What is the bet that very soon these self-same FCPs will be trumpeting new and innovative services to their clients that will be suspiciously just like the apparent phishing scheme they are so cheesed-off about at the moment?

And exactly how will they close the gap between what they are saying now and the fact that their knock-offs will be drawing the same information from various places as that being done now by 22Seven?

The sad fact is, that it probably will not matter because when you have power over people's lives, their minds and wallets, their viewpoint is but a click of the mouse on the foreclosure or raise debit interest tabs away...

Eish!

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25 January 2012

As the pendulum swings...

Some years ago when researching people's experiences for a play I was writing that shook the ex-patriot establishment of the small country in which it had its premier – the play in question being "Phew! But it's Hot Today." which will, in due course, be placed in the public domain on this site together with all my other works - a curious anomaly was found in our language.

It became necessary to confirm that I was unable to script a line in which one of the characters used the feminine form of the word misogynist. The simple reason is that the language does not officially, I was surprised to discover, contain such a word.

It was almost as if by some mystical and collective effort, an unknown force had managed to curve the language around the concept that it was only possible for men to hate the opposite gender and that no woman could possibly be as evil as to actually hate men or advocate that they were a lesser life-form.

The last week of January 2012, however, delivered a solution to the conundrum while it also saw the publication of numerous newspaper and magazine articles that illustrated how words and opinions are moulded not by actual fact, but by actions that create a distorted reality – action in numerous small steps that can, and does, mould the mindset of a populace and lead to skewed views of a gender, a people, company or country.

It is, as we shall see, an insidious business this – the moulding of viewpoints to the point where the desired perception becomes fact – irrespective of the underlying truth. It is one that takes place daily – right in front of everyone.

This myth-making happens daily in coffee shops, hairdressers, book clubs and school car parks where the evils of the male of the gender are espoused by a small number of ladies in comments that are generalising, stereotypical and downright sexist.

These on-going one-sided affronts are repeated in countless television shows and in women's magazines where the "typical male wanderlust gene" (and that statement of fact is always backed-up with scientific evidence of its existence of course...) and the supposed failings of the male gender on a biological basis as per the viewpoint of this small yet vociferous group - have scarred (and will continue to scar) a generation of boys who will grow up walking on the same egg-shells all feel they need to tread to avoid causing affront, or sleight, to this activist grouping who hold themselves forth as more evolved beings due to their particular chromosomal make-up.

Anyone daring to stand their ground and state that all men are not as evil as portrayed, or not as inept and unable to multi-task as these ladies (who, of course, always say they are only joking my dear) will say, will surely be labeled anti-feminist or misogynists. This is, of course to be expected as, in most propaganda wars one tackles the messenger and not the message.

Next, Twitter feeds and Facebook posts will be used to create the myth that these self same guys who are merely trying to point out the facts are abusive and making life a misery for the all ladies. The reality matters not. It is the perception created and then espoused that becomes fact. Comments that all men only have one track minds, they are all after the same thing and other similar chestnuts are repeatedly thrown about with impunity. Should men say anything remotely similar about women then you can bet that a number of charges would be laid at police stations (and rightly so).

The flip side is that no male will now ever dare to say this skewing of the relationship between the genders by a small minority of ladies is untrue or point out the obvious error of these statements for fear of falling victim to the vociferous attention of the activist pack.

So vehement is the action and re-action to the campaign that it deserved a word to describe it. The word, it turns out, would also suffice to be the feminine form of the word which I needed for the play mentioned at the start of this discourse.

After much tossing around of ideas via the internet, a consensus was reached between the many journalists and writers I engaged on this subject and gradually an ideal epithet was formed to describe the vilification of the male gender and the espousal of male hatred or character assassination by the less rational of the anti-male activists: Testororrism (Test-toh-row-rism).

It succinctly describes the vehemence and the look with which many Testororrists espouse their version of events and the character of the men they are degrading. 

No matter the descriptors used, as in all cases of human interaction, a simple look at the other side might well assist to get everyone to a state of calm and mutual respect and tolerance again - which is where the majority of ladies and gentlemen  find themselves these days. That the majority enjoy this relationship is due to the many millions of ladies that rightly fought Patriarchy and gender bias throughout the centuries.

Looking at the track records of the testororrist movement however, it would seem that they wish to undermine and damage this harmony - and by extension, the good work done by those who have gone before. Judging by the movement's increasing momentum and the less than intelligent counter-blows made by some men, it is apparent that Darwinian theory obviously does not apply to some aspects of life on this round speck of inter-stellar rock.

Does anyone perhaps have a sub-etha device that is blinking? 

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1 January 2012

Given that the entire population of carbon-based bi-pedal life-forms inhabiting this round rocky planet of ours has, since time immemorial, seen fit to mark the passage of blocks of days and nights at regular intervals - with one of a number of calendar systems - perhaps it is fitting that the first entry on this blog is made on an auspicious day such as this?

The noteworthiness of the day is not due to the fact that there are, no doubt, a good number of other humans fearing the worst for this particular collection of 365 days due to the fact that some Mayans ran out of tablet when carving a calendar. The state of certain European economies and the similar sad economic plight of the defence contractors in the US (now that peace seems to be robbing them of a steady need to re-supply broken weaponry and vehicles to the military establishment of that nation) is similarly not at issue in this context.

The date is remarkable purely on a limited personal level as I have finally managed to put together the majority of the bits needed to heed the call of many associates, would-be wedding photography and journalism customers and readers of my various books and articles for a site where they can see what I am up to or planning. 

The folly inherent in their urging may, however, only become apparent in the fullness of time. 

A resource such as this internet site provides a platform which - in the middle to latter part of the previous century - was available only, as but one example, to a collection of interesting characters who frequented a particular part of Hyde Park in London and who did not mind contact with ripe vegetables and fruit should their opinions not be universally well received. 

Other such places where one could freely voice your view existed in the USA - largely courtesy of Universities - but those who used them and made an impact on their societies, on social justice issues that challenged the status-quo for instance, often met with official censure rather than smelly vegetables when out of the public eye.

In my native country too one had to choose words carefully during that period lest young gentlemen with notably neat, short haircuts and off the peg suits came calling to chat to you. Well at least that was the route I experienced when engaged in documentary photographic work in and around the various suburbs and townships of Pretoria with my good friend Morris Legoabe. 

I was one of the luckier photojournalists at the time - many of my colleagues in the press during the 1970s and 1980s had less courtesy extended to them by the owners of military or police outfits filling their doorways instead.

As we enter 2012 reflection provides pause for thought. In the electronic speaker's corner of the internet the tomatoes and eggs have been replaced by e-mail messages and Tweets. The suits and military uniforms, however, may just as easily be sent out as various nations begin to make increasing use of the electronic capabilities provided by modern technology to filter opinions and views. 

In my home country the tailor's wares of the 1970s and 1980s have been replaced by RICA and a raft of legislation proposals that - while ostensibly sensible and well meaning - sound a horrible echo of the past for those of us who experienced the endless hours of hospitality from chain-smoking, safari-suited guys with moustaches. They were usually called Jan or Gert and they never had a surname or other identifying data they were willing to divulge. 

Most of the ones I met claimed a faceless superior who had a temper and bad attitude and wanted them to obtain co-operation as soon as possible. Remarkably, if they were to be believed, most of the Stuyvesant puffing guys professed to actually hate their jobs and really wanted to help me out if only I would tell them the real political motive I had for taking photos in all those townships and suburbs of my fellow citizens and their daily living and working conditions. 

While I now teach my students that the ability to carry a camera into any situation is a privilege and not a right, this is based on the humanity of the situation and not the Roman-Dutch legalistic or political issues involved. For anyone to be photographed by another person involves a certain amount of co-operation and trust on both sides. In many cases - especially in documentary or news work - the photographer is not always present by invitation and the timing often coincides with a momentous event in the life of the subject. To be allowed to memorialise the subject at times such as those (no matter what brand of camera you happen to be using!) is a privilege.

No such interpretation can be accorded to freedom of speech however. This is undeniably a right and not the privilege many governments seem to be seeking to revoke. While all rights bring responsibilities (in the case of freedom of speech these include sensitivity to the likely audience and their practices, beliefs and norms), the right to document and publish the actions of the elected servants of nations and to discuss their use of power is one which may well provide more of a fight in its defence and use up more column inches in newspapers around the world in 2012 than in any other year of this fledgling century.

Those of us lucky enough to be able to use cameras and computers to capture and publish our views should, therefore, keep our hailing frequencies open and note any hint of the whiff of official trimming of the speaker's corner spaces we and the media at large, inhabit.

In addition - and perhaps more immediately - we need to call out the large corporate entities who are also abusing technology, but in order to financially oppress people. They are doing so by the use of ethically suspect practices in matters as diverse as product selection and ordering to the collection of accounts. Most of their victims are unsophisticated and live in homes little changed from those I photographed in the 80s.

There is little, perhaps, to differentiate a politician who smothers rights in the name of a revolution from a corporate executive who smothers lives in a financial sense in the name of shareholder value.

All the above should give you an idea of the directions in which my particular soapbox will be pointed on this site from time to time.

I hope you will find value in some or most of it.

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