Corruption is the elite’s way to steal from the poor, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said in Johannesburg on Thursday. “It has become a matter of life and death. Corruption is the biggest threat to the realisation of our dreams,” he told an anti-corruption summit. “Self-enrichment will unravel the fabric of society.” Vavi said up to 20 percent of government procurement was lost to corruption as officials exploited gaps in the system to procure government tenders. “We are facing a nightmare future in South Africa… people are systematically using their power to secure… parts of society.” He said if the current economic system of capitalism continued with the “me first” mentality, it would be difficult to root out corruption. “The culture of me first accumulates and accumulates that one person in this country earns R627 million per year… while workers earn less than R1500 per month,” said Vavi. – Sapa
Quote of the week
The party has a responsibility to ensure that, in the process of seeking to transform both the state and society, the legitimacy of the state is not compromised. Whereas the party, through its government, exercises political authority over the State, the separation between the Party and the State is imperative. Given the character and nature of the ANC, contestation to influence and control the State is an ongoing struggle, whose outcome will partly be determined by the balance of forces, as well as the imperatives of what type of society and State, the ANC seeks to build. The ANC’s approach and orientation on the question of State Power and its use is well documented. The Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC, as adopted at the ANC’s 52nd National Conference held in Polokwane, is clear on what must be done. The challenge lies in our day to day experiences, wherein the ANC, its Alliance partners and its functionaries in and out of government, adopt different and at times conflicting postures towards the State and its Organs. The ANC fully embraces the doctrine of Separation of Powers as articulated in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. – ANC Gauteng discussion document
But let me acknowledge once more, loud and clear: I am an apartheid beneficiary. I am not proud of it. I am ashamed of the fact that gross human-rights violations were perpetrated in the name of my volk, that some of my fellow Afrikaners have shown absolutely no remorse, no humility with respect to the privileges they have enjoyed and still enjoy in post-apartheid South Africa. In Germany it is a crime to deny the Holocaust. Why should it be any different in South Africa for apartheid beneficiaries when they deny that they aided and abetted in the perpetration of and benefitted from a crime against humanity that remains as this untranslatable word, apartheid? – Jaco Barnard-Naude in a Blog post on Thought Leader
Nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rule of prudence. Prudence is not only first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all. – Edmund Burke.
A society that takes itself too seriously risks bottling up its tensions and treating every example of irreverence as a threat to its existence. Humour is one of the great solvents of democracy. It permits the ambiguities and contradictions of public life to be articulated in non-violent forms. It promotes diversity. It enables a multitude of discontents to be expressed in a myriad of spontaneous ways. It is an elixir of constitutional health. – Justice Albie Sachs in Laugh It Off Promotions CC v South African Breweries
Human rights lawyer Geoff Budlender SC says courts should be seen as institutions that strengthen rather than undermine democracy, notes a Business Day report. Budlender said that in a participatory democracy, the courts played a crucial role as a ‘critical mechanism of accountability’ to the people. The Constitution gave the executive the function of developing and implementing policy, but this did not mean that every policy could claim a genuine democratic mandate, he said. According to the report, Budlender said his four years’ experience as a civil servant had shown him ‘it was unelected officials like me who made many of the most significant decisions’ on policy. The theory that the executive had ‘a monopoly of wisdom on policy questions, based on a democratic mandate, strikes me as somewhat remote from reality’, he said. Budlender added if courts were to live up to their role in democratising society, they needed to make judgments that did not undermine the other constitutional imperative – that the government should be able to govern. – Business Day
Most curious, though, was the reaction of the middle-classes, Malema’s traditional enemies, as his commitment became clear, and the scope of the ANCYL’s protest ambitions became apparent. They didn’t suddenly agree that nationalising mines or expropriating farmland would be a good idea. They did, however, express admiration, even respect – something that would have seemed unlikely in the extreme the day before. .. A little bit of sympathy can be a powerful thing. Where the chattering classes were dismissive, at best, of Malema before, a kernel of doubt has been planted. Could he be worth listening to? Is there perhaps sense to be divined in the mess that is his ideology? It won’t last, probably, but getting people who normally wouldn’t is the point of any protest. Even if Malema is utterly ignored by the government, and the JSE, and the Chamber of Mines, he’s already succeeded in a small way. Mostly, though, Malema has suddenly become an inspirational political figure, somebody who achieved a tangible and difficult goal through sheer determination. There aren’t many others we can say that about, and none who can reach disenchanted young people as Malema does. That, too, is a lever of power. – Phillip de Wet at Daily Maverick
Unlike with kaffir, when the word “coolie” came to South Africa through the slave trade, it slipped into the local languages. Growing up, I cannot recall any other Setswana word to describe people of Indian origin other than as makula. I perceived no malice (and I believe that none was perceived) in its use except when conferred by tone or context in much the same way that the words “whites” or “blacks” are innocuous except when an inflection or the context gives clues to an underlying prejudice. Batswana and Basotho don’t usually use makula in a derogatory sense… while its etymology is derogatory the current use is not. - Osiame Molefe over at Daily Maverick on Julius Malema’s use of the word perceived by some to be racist.
