I was woken up this morning at 5:30 by the blaring of Vuvuzela’s. I got up and was going to write something for this Blog about the judgment of the High Court which found that the Mail & Guardian had the right to access all the information regarding tenders given out by the Local Organising Committee of the Soccer World Cup. A great day for the principle of freedom of information and openness and transparency and all that important stuff.
But I put on my Bafana Bafana shirt and practiced my Vuvuzela blowing instead.
Then I thought of writing about the Human Rights Commission Report criticising the City of Cape Town for not providing proper toilets to the poor and destitute of our City, but discovered Gavin Silber had already said what I wanted to say on the Writing Rights Blog.
Soon the fever will pass, sanity will return and with it my critical faculties. Meanwhile – sorry dear readers – no attempt at insightful and critical analysis of the legal and constitutional issues of the day seems possible. Once the World Cup gets started I promise to return.
Ag.
The Human Rights Commission?
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
You must be joking.
Actually it’s a joke.
Nobody takes that bunch of jokers seriously.
Just another failed constitutional institution.
Not to worry, I wouldn’t have the sustained attention required to read one of your blogs with all the vuvuzelas blowing.
Henri, once again I am forced to agree with you. The HRC are a bunch of do-nothings. Useless, shameless troughdwellers.
How is it possible that this country has regular service delivery riots when we have an Ombudsman and the HRC?
I personally kept Jody Kollapen informed every step of the way in our fight to get compensation for surrendered firearms as required by S137 of the Firearms Control Act.
Now the matter is before the Western Cape High Court – again – because he did nothing but pocket his salary every month. The salary YOU paid him.
How much could he have mitigated the damage to the fiscus by, had he acted? R1B? R10B? More?
Well, we’ll see.
Then I tried to get a copy of the HRC file on compensation for gunowners using PAIA. You can imagine how that went.
Since people are relaxing…I have two questions I would have LOVE to have answers to…and I know either prof or someone else will help..I feel it, the answera are here!
Question 1: Post of April 16, 2010 prof said “…the practices of the one religion is a criminal offense while the practices of the other is only illegal..”. Could someone perhaps explain when does an illegal activity or action become a criminal one? My immediate (legally uninformed) mind says illegal = criminal.
Question 2: The recent blog on the Protection of Information Bill.
Since we are still allowed to ask such questions…I was wondering do we know whose idea this Protection of Information Bill is, the actual people who woke up from some nightmare and thought Yes! that’s the thing to do? Mo Shaik et al. perhaps? From whose mind does this emanate? If Prof doesn’t know, anyone else perhaps?
I know there is a Tshabalala out there who will score these two for me, in the spirit of nation building people!! Blow your information vuvuzelas!!:))
@Ewald,
Ad question 1:
Something is criminal when it legally, traditionally is that way [like murder, assault, theft - stemming from the old Romans where the legal system inherited it] or when it is by direct/explicit legislation declared to be criminal [like crimes re drugs or firearms, etc]. “Illegal”, well maybe if it offends the constitution [discrimination ] or the wider law [defamation], without being criminal [ = going to jail] as such.
Ad question 2:
It will definitely have been dreamt out within the so called “intelligence community” – ie NIA, SAS, SAPS security branch/crime intelligence, and military intelligence. In olden days it would typically have come from the State Security Council of PW Botha. So the “staatsamptenare” are asking Parliament to give them that toy. For them to play with, and to use to motivate bigger departments and higher salaries, etc. And they’re telling the parliamentarians that the country need this. But it clashes with the preamble to the constitution and PAIA. And the basic notion of an open, free society where government are open to [and the friend of] the people. It belongs to those ancient times of the “Cold War” – big, bad Russia vs the West. And to the notion that the people and knowledge by the people of government and its inner workings are dangerous to the government. They’re telling parliament that the civil service needs to be protected from knowledge by the people/citizens – as they’ve got something to hide.
In the nineties, white liberal lefties were extremely cautious when criticizing the ANC or its surrogates. They always followed the 20:2 rule. They would first criticize the regime with 20 lines of vitriolic text and then timidly criticize the ANC in 2 lines.
Note how Gavin Silber does exactly the same. He writes 26 lines on the shortcomings of the City and 6 lines on the shortcomings of the ANCYL; failing to even mention that it was the ANCYL who tore down the enclosures that the City finally erected around the remaining 50 odd toilets that sparked this outcry.
If Gavin Silber does not have the balls to speak truth to power, he should stand aside – perhaps there is a woman in his organisation with more guts.
But my biggest disappointment lies with Pregs Govender – the person who popularised the phrase: “speak truth to power”. The HRC must remunerate their commissioners very well. What else could motivate a seemingly intelligent woman to recommend bullet proof toilets as a solution to the toilet war?
Pregs, I know your ANC handler will discipline you for this, but visit: http://www.da.org.za/newsroom.htm?action=view-news-item&id=8396 No newspaper in South Africa is prepared to publish the content of this – the official response by the City of Cape Town – because it will be in violation of the 20:2 rule. It highlights obstacles to the provision of basic services in townships, pertaining to issues of consultation, labour procurement, vandalism, theft of copper and brass fittings and pipes, issues of ownership, etc.
Although I’ve enjoyed the Bafana Bafana game last night, nevertheless I recall that the early Roman Empire kept the poverty stricken and abused populace distracted with their circuses, employing cruel hate (killing of early Christians, awh, those lions, so magnificent, pity they were eating the faithful chained to those poles) so as to maintain their own false and elitist power. Always these horrid regimes (Hitler included, think the Olympic games in 33, is that the year?, employ these circus events) and now in Africa as the greedy pimps, Fifa, it titles its self and their so called world cup. Heroes they are not, greedy exploiters they most certainly are.
Forget not I ask, the Zapiro cartoon: “See what we have accomplished?”, while on the periphery the poor cry out soundlessly.
I’m as guilty as any, loving the Bok/France rugby game this afternoon as a brilliant and exceptionally game, and then looking forward to the UK/US football/soccer game tonight. Distraction, eases the soul so falsely. Are we truly lost, worth considering as true humanists, is that possibly?
What a game these illusionist play, and so many dollars in the pocket. Successful reality is upliftment, not entertainment.
Justice in South Africa
The NPA has established 56 dedicated courts (for FIFA), with assigned prosecutors and magistrates, to process these cases as quickly as possible.
Three men have been sentenced for the armed robbery of three foreign journalists in Magaliesburg, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said today.
Advocate Menzi Simelane said: “Two of the accused were convicted of robbery with aggravating circumstances and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment each.
http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/Three-sentenced-for-robbery-of-foreign-journalists-20100612-2
The Mafisa scam is the smallest of four major investigations into corruption at the Land Bank that have dragged on for years.
A property finance unit that violated the bank’s agricultural mandate by spending hundreds of millions on golf and polo estates, and a R100-million AgriBEE fund milked by senior bank officials and politically connected associates, are also being probed.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article501302.ece/Land-Bank-staff-member-arrested-in-Hawks-probe
@ Henri
Thank you very much for clarifying that! Most appreciated, now I get it:)
Heard a birdie that Irvan Khoza made a pretty penny.
U guys are either ignorant, stupid or both. This article intention is to have the opposite of what you all are doing, i.e, argue argue argue argue argue all the time – cant you guys just chill from politiking?….damn
You see, Spuy, this is a blog about our Constitution, a blog where far too little debate is relevant to the Constitution or politics as a norm.
I have held Sirjay’s view that this World Cup is more panem et circenses for a long time.
Sport on TV is the opiate of the masses. Part of the process by which elites try to divide humankind into players and audience.
sirjay jonson says:
June 12, 2010 at 17:03 pm
SA’s football extravaganza is fully in accord with advanced Liberalism’s principles of social control :
“Liberal-sm is thus part of the modern attempt to put nature and the social order in the service of human will. As such it culminates the centuries-old attempt to replace custom and religion by human will and this-worldly reason as the basis for life and thought, other expressions of modernity such as Bolshevism and Nazism having destroyed themselves through irrationality, violence, and corruption.
The modern attempt to base social order on will is comprehensive. Science helps us control things physically, and what they are for us is molded by symbolism, social relationships, and biochemistry. People today believe they can manipulate such factors; they expect physical and social technology to permit reconstruction of all human reality and a large part of nature into a single rational system subject to man’s will and devoted to its satisfaction. Such an orientation toward power makes advanced liberalism radically secularist and antiparticularist. Because the world is to be re-created with man’s pleasure as the standard, human power, and thus the means of power—money, position, manipulative skill—are all that truly matter. History, tradition, biology, and religion become ob-stacles to be overcome or irrelevancies to be put to the side rather than part of an order of things to be valued and accepted. Power and pleasure become the ultimate goods, and other goods make sense only by reference to them. Body and soul are placed at the service of desire, contemplation debunked as an illusion, pushpin (now called “popular culture”) declared as good as poetry, and religion turned into a “preference.” “
See, Spuy, when people defend the DA I start asking what the DA has done about issues important to me….(Particularly when a municipal election looms and I have not received a lights and water account AGAIN this month….A word to the wise – The DA had better be pretty damn convincing that it is not part of this nefarious unconstitutional law to limit the amount of dogs I may own!)
Licensed to kill in lawless SA
http://www.iol.co.za/index.phpset_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20080824083757233C2\\12047
Licensed to kill in lawless SA
August 24 2008 at 09:17AM
By Jeremy Gordin and Eleanor Momberg
One hundred and thirty-three murders – 69 of which were
committed more than two years ago – and as yet not one murder conviction.
A disgraceful fracas in the Johannesburg city centre, with Metro
police closing off part of a highway and exchanging live gunfire
with policemen, yet, two months later, no charges have been laid.
These are just two scenes from a society in which lawlessness
has apparently become the order of the day, rather than safety and
security.
‘We have so many cases of selective law enforcement that the
wheels have come off’ Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, said: “If we continue being a lawless
society, which is what we are doing, we are well on our way to anarchy.
The point is that, as admitted by Johnny de Lange, the deputy
minister of justice, the system is not working.
“The second point is that, if the law is broken, then the
authorities must act. But we have so many cases in this country of selective
law enforcement that the wheels have come off in general.”
The Sunday Independent this week attempted to find out what
progress had been made in four high-profile incidents that occurred in
the past few years – the police fracas, the deaths of 69 security guards
during a strike in 2006, the murder of two Johannesburg Metrobus
drivers during a strike in 2007, and the xenophobic violence in Gauteng.
No one has been convicted of murder in connection with the
deaths of the 69 security guards who died during the security guards’
strike between March and June 2006. Many of the guards, who were
accused of being scabs during the strike, died in the network of railway
lines that connect Pretoria and the East and West Rands with
Johannesburg.
Most were flung from trains. But many were also shot or severely
assaulted.
Superintendent Eugene Opperman, a spokesperson for the South
African Police Service, said this week that there had been “a few”
convictions for assault and intimidation in connection with the murders.
‘Where the unions are involved, there are not going to be
charges brought’
A June 2007 statement by Superintendent Lungelo Dlamini, the
Gauteng police spokesperson, said that, “by May 29 2006, 11 suspects had
already been arrested across [Gauteng] and they were facing
charges of murder, attempted murder and assault with grievous bodily harm”.
But Opperman confirmed this week that no one had been convicted
of murder.
“In cases, like these, where many were killed mainly by being
thrown off trains by their supposed colleagues, it’s very difficult to
make murder charges stick,” he said.
No charges have ever been laid for the March 2007 murders of the
two Johannesburg Metrobus drivers, who were found burned beyond
recognition in Kagiso on the West Rand, during the Johannesburg
bus drivers’ strike, a senior official of the Johannesburg metro
said.
“The thing is, where you have political involvement, where the
unions are involved, there are not going to be charges brought,” said
the official, who asked to remain anonymous. “That’s the way it is.
You can forget about it.”
There was better news regarding the 62 people murdered during
the xenophobic violence in May. A number of cases have been prepared
in connection with the xenophobic murders. But none has come to
court yet and Tlali Tlali, the spokesperson for the national prosecuting
authority (NPA), was unable give any firm dates for trials.
Tlali said that 56 cases relating to xenophobic violence were
“trial ready”, but had been postponed for further investigation and
bail and legal aid applications.
In addition, said Tlali, there were 351 cases, involving 1 331
people, that were pending. But they were not trial ready yet.
The charges listed by the NPA for the xenophobic violence had
theft, robbery, rape, public violence, house breaking, assault,
inciting public violence and arson appended to them – with murder low
down on the list of the charges.
Regarding the fracas on June 25 this year, when 400 striking
Johannesburg metro policemen blocked off part of a highway and
had a gunfight with police service members, Wayne Minnaar, the
spokesman for the Johannesburg metro police department, said that the
department would hold a press conference this week at which it would be
announced whether the incident would be dealt with internally or by the
NPA in open court.
Opperman confirmed that a decision was imminent on how the
charges against the striking metro police would be dealt with. “[It]
could be that it will be an internal matter,” he said.
The Sunday Independent has contacted Charles Nqakula, the
minister of safety and security, a number of times since Thursday midday,
asking whether he had any additional information about any of the four
incidents, and asking him to comment on justice being delayed
being tantamount to justice denied.
But the minister had not responded by the time of going to
press.
o This article was originally published on page 1 of Sunday
Independent on August 24, 2008
Guys I am going to watch the Cameroon v Japan game here in Bloemfontein. Remember that history will be made as this is the first soccer world cup game to be played in Bloemfontein. Arent you guys just happy for me?…..
I hope you enjoyed the game.
The precedent is well established in this country though that there can be no normal sport in an abnormal society.
I know I was being a killjoy. I am pleased for the streetvendors that they are doing so well – this looks like a very cold winter. If ever there was a nation that showed the indomitability of the human spirit, that could adopt the slogan ‘Yes we can’ it is South Africa. This World Cup shows what the past 16 years could have been. The people of Orlando hosting a rugby final televised right around the world showed the world what South Africa can do.
Did you see Carte Blanche on Sunday? South Africa had 6 engineers that know astronomy is not something you look up in your local rag every day before you set foot out of the house. Overnight, we have 1000, South Africa is at the cutting edge of radio astronomy. Huge props to the Dept of Science and Technology.
Yes we can.
But not with this government, we can’t. They let us down all the time. Make this country look ridiculous, shame us across the world, treat their minorities as ‘the enemy’ whom they wage an unrelenting cultural war against.
Condemn six million of their own friends and family to a painful lingering death.
Literally steal the food out of the mouths of the poorest of the poor who are most dependent on service delivery. Run their hospitals into the ground. Destroy their tires with potholes that are not fixed. Transform the criminal justice system into one where the families of one in every 8 homicide victims have the closure of a perpetrator caught tried convicted and locked up.
Hello Afrika tell me how you do it?
Media lied about SA, World Cup fans say
17 June 2010
Francis Hweshe
Foreign fans who ignored negative reports about South Africa and flocked in for the World Cup say they’ve had a great time here but are angry that their media misled the public about this country.
They feel thousands were denied a lifetime experience.
Sowetan caught up with fans watching games live on TV in the string of bars and coffee shops lining Cape Town’s famed Long Street.
The street is a melting pot of all the cultures and races. It is also known for its wild night life and high fashion.
English soccer fans Sharon Bishop and Paul Veniato are in the country for the first time. They said local people had been “very friendly”.
“This World Cup means everything to the country and to the continent. The people are proud of their country. We can feel that this is an African World Cup,” Bishop said.
“We ignored the British press – they make up stuff since it sells papers. They like creating fear,” Veniato said.
The two, who supported Cameroon against Japan, said they would be supporting most of the African teams during the tournament.
US fan Billy Thinnes, who was having a drink with four compatriots, accused the UK media of “portraying South Africa the worst”, which was “not an issue in the US”.
“I wish the Americans were as welcoming as South Africans. People here treat us like natives. We are going to be supporting Bafana too,” Thinnes said.
“We have crime in the US and everywhere in the world. One has to be ‘smart’ to be safe.”
Andrey Surcer, a Canadian living in Japan but supporting Slovakia, said: “I want to get hardcore African experience like I see on TV. I would love to see South Africa win. I have seen people with nothing who beg on the streets blowing the vuvuzela. It means a lot to them.”
Dutch fans Robin Simon and Margriete Privee said they were having a great time though pickpockets stole their phones.
“But we don’t have a problem,” they said.
Nikolai Doedelmenn from Germany said he loved the improved infrastructure, such as roads and stadiums, ahead of the World Cup.
“Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The vibe in Long Street is great. Bafana fans are awesome,” Doedelmenn said.
He complained of crime after being threatened with a knife and robbed in Grassy Park.
He asked the government to close the gap between the rich in Constantia and the poor in Khayelitsha.
http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1152134