Voter Registration Weekend - All you need to know

Syria: Smoke, mirrors and suffering

Perhaps the only certainty in what has turned into an international political game with much smoke and many mirrors, is that one day can make a lot of difference. 

On Monday it seemed that the world was barreling into its biggest crisis in years: an American attack on Syria loomed, one that could trigger the first major showdown between Washington and Moscow since the Cold War. Fighting in Syria could engulf the entire region, fuel prices would go through the roof, we would all feel some pain. 


By Tuesday morning everything had changed. A proposal, apparently from Russia, for Syria to submit its chemical stockpile for international control was accepted by the Syrian foreign minister. In the US the Senate vote on Obama’s planned strikes on Syria was put on hold. 


The world paused for a moment and wondered if Russian Premier Vladimir Putin had not, in an astonishing powerplay, outmanoeuvred US President Barack Obama and was starting to pull from his grasp America’s pole position as superpower. 


But Obama was not to be outdone so easily. Demonstrating a lot more mettle than his detractors would have us believe him capable of, he opted to give diplomacy a chance, with the proviso that if the Syrians and Russians did not act in good faith he would schedule a congressional vote to endorse his decision to use force. 

By “threatening to threaten,” says Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, Obama retained “leverage to keep the Syrians and Russians focused on implementing any agreement – but without having to test Congress’s real willingness to let him fulfill that threat”. 


Of course, the pain and suffering of Syrians being reduced to armwrestling by men in white collars in boardrooms is all very interesting for those who watch from a safe distance. As is the understandable fact that nobody in the US, the UK or Europe, wants to get caught in an intractable war. But the question remains, what is the fate of ordinary people caught in the crossfire in Syrian to be?

And with the focus on Bashar alAssad and his chemical weapons, what exactly are the rebels, possibly with chemicals of their own, getting up to? 


According to Friedman, thousands of Muslim youths have gathered from as far away as Australia to join the rebel jihadist militias fighting to create, not a multisectarian, pluralistic, democratic state, but one that is orthodox Sunni Islamist. This adds to the terror of residents in the Christian and Druze suburbs of Damascus already cowering at the threat of persecution from extremist al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels who have moved into their area. 


Whichever you look at things there are no good outcomes. 


This week a UK doctor working in Syria offered to pay for Labour leader Ed Miliband to spend a week in that country to see the suffering of people. Certainly the plight of civilians should concern anyone who likes to call themselves humanitarian, as should the situation overall, which is not on the backburner and could still result in the biggest showdown since the Cold War. Tomorrow may make all the difference but then it could mean nothing at all. 

Editorial opinion, Daily Dispatch, 12 September 2013 

SA Government watching Facebook and Google

The South African government had over the past year submitted 14 requests to Facebook and three to Google to get information about certain users.

Facebook granted none of the requests and Google granted one after receiving a court order in a case involving defamation, the Beeld newspaper reported.

Following Google’s example, Facebook has just published its first half-year report on government requests. According to Facebook and Google, the merits of each request are thoroughly considered before the information is released.

Well done to both companies for not bowing to government bullies!

Pro-gay church sign goes viral

St John’s Anglican Church, located in Niagara Falls, Ontario, has received a lot of attention this week for one of its signs. Looking to promote tolerance and acceptance towards the queer community, the church erected a signed that said: “Jesus had two dads, and he turned out just fine!”


Someone took a picture of the sign and posted it on Reddit. The image has been viewed over a million times and been shared through social media.

Earlier in August, Australia’s Gosford Anglican Church posted similar messages, critical of those opposed to LGBT rights, and speaking out in support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The most popular sign read: "Dear Christians, some people are gay. Get over it. Love, God."

Finally, real Christians are reclaiming the Church!

What links the Spy Tapes, Seriti Commission and the Arms Deal?

Next Tuesday, 03 September, the Gauteng North High Court will hear Jacob Zuma’s application for leave to appeal against the Court’s order compelling the National Prosecuting Authority to comply with the order of the Supreme Court of Appeal to hand over the record of decision (including the “spy tapes”) that were used as reasons by the NPA to withdraw 700 charges of corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering against Jacob Zuma before he became President in 2009.

If that sounds confusing, that’s because it is.

It describes just a small part of the many twists and turns that Jacob Zuma’s legal team has taken to make sure he never has to appear in court to answer the charges against him.

Even if the High Court refuses the President leave to appeal, we expect Zuma’s legal team to continue their delaying tactics.  After ten years of legal obfuscation, prevarication, evasion and stonewalling, they have still not exhausted all their options. Their next move would be to petition the Supreme Court of Appeal, directly, for leave to appeal against a High Court order to comply with a previous order of Supreme Court of Appeal handed down 18 months ago. And that way they will probably win another few months.

There seems to be no end to the detours lawyers can take on behalf of clients who have a bottomless pit of money. If it were not for the South African taxpayer, Jacob Zuma would long since have had his day in the dock.

The DA has already spent millions of its own money trying to get to the truth in this matter. We will not give up because the principles involved are so important to our democracy: that everyone is equal before the law and that the National Prosecuting Authority must act without fear, favour or political influence.

But President Zuma’s continued cynical use of taxpayers’ money to avoid handing over the “spy tapes” (that supposedly reveal a political conspiracy against him) was a particularly bitter pill to swallow in a week when the mineworkers of Marikana were refused the same advantage.

The Constitutional Court ruled last week that it could not compel the state to pay for the workers’ legal representation at the Farlam Commission of Enquiry into the tragedy that unfolded on the platinum belt a year ago. While we understand the Court’s rationale - that it could not dictate to the executive how to spend scarce public resources - it only serves to underscore how much public money is being squandered by our president protecting his personal interests. 

Indeed, if we were to use the “public interest” as the yardstick for spending taxpayers’ money on court cases, we would stop funding the President’s endless diversions, and start funding the Marikana mineworkers so that they can appear before the Farlam Commission on a level playing field.

After all, the taxpayers are funding the police’s crack legal team of three advocates; and Lonmin, the mining company involved, is not financially constrained when it comes to legal representation. Each relevant government department has its own legal representatives for the Commission. 

Yet the mineworkers are expected to go unrepresented.  If they were appearing in a court of law, they would qualify for legal aid. But this right does not extend to a Commission of Inquiry. We think this arbitrary distinction is unfair and places the mineworkers at a disadvantage from the start. This cannot be in South Africa’s interests.  We need to know the truth of what happened during that tragic week of August 2012. And legal representation for the miners will help us get there. As the old adage goes: Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

This brings us onto the controversial Seriti Commission into the Arms Deal where South African taxpayers are also covering the costs. The State Attorney will lead a team of advocates which will represent each government department involved. These are the Department of Defence and Military Veterans, Department of Trade and Industry and the National Treasury, former ministers who have been subpoenaed (Ronnie Kasrils, Mosiuoa Lekota and Alec Erwin) and the present minister in the presidency (the then minister of finance), Trevor Manuel, and former president, Thabo Mbeki.

We conservatively estimate that it is costing R41 999 200 per day. The total cost of the Commission is R101 874 284. Every witness is being cross-examined by lawyers acting for the government.

This means that if any interested party (such as the DA for example) wishes to challenge the state’s version of events, they would have to retain lawyers for the entire duration of the commission to cross examine witnesses in the same

If voters re-elect their abusers, they have no-one to way. This is clearly unaffordable to any except those who can rely on the taxpayers’ “largesse”.

Apart from all the other problems plaguing the Seriti commission, perhaps the biggest is that it does not provide a level playing field to all parties so that we can eventually get to the truth of the corruption in the estimated R70-billion Arms Deal. The costs have ballooned from R30-billion since it was signed in 1999.

But every democracy gives its taxpayers a chance to rectify these gross abuses of power. That chance is called a general election.  That is the mechanism that a democracy offers the people to fire leaders who abuse their money to advance their private interests.

If voters re-elect their abusers, they have no-one to blame but themselves. After all, in a democracy people get the government they deserve.

By Helen Zille, From SA Today.

The (un)sustainability of the South African welfare state

In political terms South Africa can best be described as a social democracy with the typical characteristics of the welfare state. Social spending now accounts for approximately 60% of total government expenditure, including an extensive set of cash transfer payments in the form of social grants.

State provision of education, health services, low-income housing, social old-age pensions, and disability grants has been part of South African public economics for many years, and State provision of circumscribed social services is apparently accepted in principle by South African civil society as an expression of social solidarity. What is rather at stake is the quality of the services delivered and whether they offer value for money.

However, what has become controversial is the extensive system of social grants paid to millions of individuals. The deterioration in government finances in the past four years has raised awareness of the risk to the fiscal sustainability of this programme.

For example, it is often mentioned that the number of beneficiaries of government grants (currently 16,5 million) now exceeds the number of personal income tax payers (4,5 million) by a wide margin.

The total cost of social grants in the current fiscal year is expected to amount to approximately R120 billion, including about R6 billion in administrative expenses. This is equal to 10,4% of budgeted consolidated government expenditure, or 3,5% of GDP, which is relatively high for South Africa’s stage of development.

The National Treasury’s projection that expenditure on social grants will grow by 7,5% per annum in the next three fiscal years, with the number of recipients increasing by 2,2% per annum, appears credible.

Because social grant payments are financed from the general revenue pool, their sustainability in the medium term is therefore embedded in the sustainability of government expenditure in general. The growth in expenditure on social grants over the past four years in particular has contributed to the increased structural budget deficit. A big problem is that it constrains capital expenditure.

Jac Laubscher of Sanlam of Sanlam believes that an increase in the tax burden of between 1% and 2% of GDP to lower the structural deficit in any case appears to be on the cards. This should be sufficient to also take care of the sustainability of social grant payments in the medium term.

But of course one need to distinguish between short-term and long-term sustainability and it is perhaps the latter that needs our attention more.

It will serve South Africa well to take note of other countries’ experiences in this regard – Europe serves as a good example of how the unsustainability of an ambitious system of social protection can creep up almost unnoticed on the fiscus. The lesson is that one should in the first place not allow social security to develop into a non-sustainable situation.

The ANC generates much of its votes from economically disadvantaged communities which rely on social grants for survival. Therefore it is not flawed thinking to believe that the ANC could use promises of increased social grant expenditure to draw votes in upcoming elections.

There is a real danger of over-promising in the short term that could lead to major financial issues in the long term. Politically, this is a real tightrope situation in which the government needs to balance social expenditure with what it can afford.

Russia promises to enforce anti-gay law during Olympics

Despite assurances from the International Olympic Committee that LGBT athletes and tourists will not be charged under Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws during the Sochi Winter Games, Russian Minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko said all of his country's laws will be enforced.

"No one is forbidding an athlete with non-traditional sexual orientation from coming to Sochi, but if he goes onto the street and starts propagandizing it, then of course he will be held accountable," Mutko explained.

"As a sportsman, he should respect the law of a country," Mutko added. "Come (to Sochi), but don't get young people involved, don't make propaganda. This is what we are talking about."

The vague law, however, means that even wearing a rainbow flag pin, or saying a little too loudly that being gay is okay, could lead to a run-in with the law.

On Monday, Vitaly Milonov, the man who helped pass the bill in the Russian parliament, also insisted gays would not get a free pass at the Games.

He said: "I haven't heard any comments from the government of the Russian Federation, but I know that it is acting in accordance with Russian law. And if a law has been approved by the federal legislature and signed by the president, then the government has no right to suspend it. It doesn't have the authority."

These statements will certainly increase calls by several groups to boycott the Olympics. But, as others have suggested, it may be a good thing to see Russia arresting athletes during one of the most watched televised sporting events in the world.

Zuma’s copter flights clip air force wings

Expensive daily helicopter flights between President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home and King Shaka International Airport are straining the South African Air Force budgets. This was claimed by the South African National Defence Union (Sandu).

An insufficient budget has led to half the Gripen fighter squadron being placed in storage‚ and the Agusta A109 light utility helicopter fleet being grounded. Flying hours per pilot have been cut by as much as two-thirds and numerous maintenance contracts have been placed on hold.

Sandu national secretary Pikkie Greeff said while many air force units were being starved of resources for operations and training‚ money was being spent to transport Zuma. In KwaZulu-Natal‚ two coastal helicopter squadrons have received no funding this year for sea and mountain rescue operations‚ but have funding for VIP flights‚ according to a report.

Beeld newspaper reported on Tuesday that 15 Squadron‚ in Durban‚ was allowed a small number of flight hours for training‚ but 300 hours for VIP flights. Zuma uses his presidential jet to fly to King Shaka Airport in Durban and two Oryx helicopters to fly 100km from there to Nkandla.

Beeld says these helicopter flights cost about R36 000 each.

Beware of dodgey ANC vote cons

It would appear the 2014 election machinery has already been set in motion. The Saturday Dispatch reported on allegations that a government funded programme was being used as a campaign tool by an ANC councillor.

Workers, who form part of the extended public works programme (EPWP) in Ngqamakhwe, were allegedly told at a meeting to get ANC membership cards. The meeting had been called to discuss work schedules. It was further alleged that workers were told not to assume the jobs were theirs since there were ANC members without work.

The implicated ANC councillor admitted asking workers to join the ANC!

These are early days for electioneering and such claims are bound to emerge as political campaigns intensify. However, allegiance to a specific party should never be a prerequisite for any job – irrespective of how low level the job might be.

In a country where 4.6 million people are unemployed and 2.3 million are discouraged job seekers, people are desperate to put food on the table. However, there will also be those preying on the desperate for their own selfish gain.

In Buffalo City Metro, another ‘jobs disgrace’ has befallen another ANC councillor. The circumstances, however, are different, with the councillor and two others accused of selling council jobs such as those as grass cutters and cleaners. To secure one of these jobs, job seekers are allegedly asked to pay between R500 and R1 500. A case of theft under false pretences has since been opened against the ANC councillor and the couple.

Political leaders should be cautioned against using deception to grow their party’s voter base, and communities need to stand up against these dishonest politicians and see that they are adequately dealt with.

Archbishop Tutu: Gay people loved by God, SA must fully accept and embrace all

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu yesterday said he does not support a homophobic God. “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I’d say sorry. I mean, I’d much rather go to that other place,” he told reporters in Cape Town. 

“We have to build a society that is accepting and it is not a free society until every single person knows they are acknowledged and accepted for who they are.” 

He was speaking at the launch of the United Nations “Free & Equal” global campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality in Cape Town. The campaign aims to raise awareness about homophobic violence and discrimination.

Tutu said many people felt they could not be comfortable in their skin because of potential ridicule. He was aware that many religious leaders promoted the idea that it was a sin to be anything but heterosexual. “There is deep anguish for many of us that they can imagine that God would create someone and put them there and say ‘I hate you. I hate you for who I made you to be’.” 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the campaign’s success would be measured by how many countries chose to decriminalise LGBT preferences and the measures they put in place to offer protection to individuals.

South Africa, the Schizophrenic Republic

At the recent (June 2013) Alan Paton Literary Awards ceremony, eminent Constitutional Court Justice, Edwin Cameron, eloquently described the duality of South Africa today:

We are now nearly twenty years into our constitutional democracy. Much has been achieved -perhaps more than those of us who tend to worry realise.

Almost all violent crime is down. Compared with 1994 the murder rate has halved. The government's housing programme has put many millions of South Africans in their own homes. In 1994, just more than half of households had electricity; now 85% do. In 1994, just more than a third of six-year old children were in school; now 85% are.

The average black family income has increased by about a third. And, through the system of social grants totalling about R120-bn every year, the very poorest in our country are afforded some elements of a dignified material existence and some access to a measure of social power.

Most importantly, these material gains have been achieved in a functioning democracy.

Our polity is boisterous, rowdy, sometimes cacophonous and often angry. That much is to be expected. But after more than two decades, we have more freedom, more debate, more robust and direct engagement with each other -and certainly more social justice than 20 years ago.

But after listing these not inconsiderable achievements, the learned Judge goes on to note that "all is not well". In this regards he cites the evidence: a political debate that is "divisive to the point of annihilation"; the prevalence of a "race rhetoric that often substitutes for performance". Gross inequality, largely racially structured persists two decades on and in other areas, everything from schooling to basic services evinces an "institutional decay and infrastructural disintegration that have reached dismaying proportions."

Unsurprisingly, last year saw the highest number of service-delivery protests, and nearly nine out of ten of them were violent. More and more municipalities and national departments fail to meet the basic auditing requirements.

He concludes this list of lamentable failures and shortcomings with this warning:

Not unconnected with the accounting chaos, the tide of corruption washes higher and higher. It threatens to engulf us. The shameless looting of our public assets by many politicians and government officials is a direct threat to our democracy and all we hope to achieve in it.

To many, the culture of high minded civic aspiration that characterised our struggle for racial justice and our transition to democracy seems distinctly frayed, if not in tatters.

What are we to make of these essentially two South Africas? In truth, we live in both of them and there is enough evidence to point to our country either becoming a fast tracked success story of the future or a failing state, remembered for the big things it got right two decades ago, but for the many things which have gone wrong since then. Perhaps the truth lies in both directions, a sort of "schizophrenic republic" (as James Baldwin dubbed the USA) with islands of success and achievement afloat in a sea of sleaze and dysfunctionality.

If you go back to the list enumerated by Justice Cameron, you will see that many, although certainly not all, of our post -1994 achievements have happened in arenas outside the ambit of the state or government. Although the government has in fact delivered many services and entitlements to the poorest and most marginalised, it has failed in other key areas of state performance, from providing certainty to the investor community and so creating conditions for sustainable growth and employment, to achieving good and balanced labour relations and basic, never mind good, maths and science education to the next generation.

It is easy, but in my opinion, wrong to see in this state-failure the failure of our country.

Extract from speech by Tony Leon, 23 July.

Employment is the key to reducing inequality

18 years after the end of Apartheid, South Africa is still a country of insiders and outsiders. The insiders have access to jobs, income, skills and assets, but the excluded live in poverty, without skills and without jobs.

According to a study conducted by the South African Institute of Race Relations, for every R7.70 a white South African receives in income an African South African receives R1. This gives a ratio of 7.7 to 1. To arrive at these figures the total income of all people in the particular racial group was divided by the total number of people in that racial group.

However, data obtained from Statistics South Africa on average monthly earnings shows that the ratio of white to African earnings of the bottom 5% of earners is 3.4 to 1, for median earners 4.2 to 1, and for the top 5% of earners 2.7 to 1.

In other words, when only employed people in each racial group are taken into account, the discrepancy is far smaller than when everyone, including the unemployed, is combined.

Incomes include earnings, grants, investment income, and other revenue from the Government. Earnings refer mainly to wages and salaries of employees.

The above ratios show that when the degree of inequality between income and earnings distributions is compared, the biggest inequality in South Africa is between the employed and the unemployed and that income inequality is heavily the result of high African unemployment. If you take into account that half of all working-age white people are employed compared to only one out of four African people, it stands to reason that if we want to combat inequality we need to focus on fuller employment.

It is only by generating much more employment – and fixing a flawed education system that leaves many Africans with few marketable skills – that the country will be able to reduce inequality.

This data further illustrates the ANC’s inability to create an environment where more can be employed – In fact the unemployment rate has increased dramatically since Jacob Zuma took office.

The DA has a plan to break down the barriers that keep so many locked out of opportunity. We plan to generate a dynamic economy that includes everyone. Our plan paves the way for a very different future: one of innovation, entrepreneurship, investment and growth.

The DA’s Growth and Jobs plan outlines how the DA will reduce poverty and create jobs by putting South Africa on a high-growth path. Our plan outlines how the DA will break down the barriers to opportunity by allowing an open and inclusive economy to develop in which each person has the skills and the resources to become a productive member of a dynamic, integrated and forward-looking society.

The document below outlines how we will build this new society of opportunity. http://www.da.org.za/docs/13004/DA%20Plan%20for%20Growth%20and%20Jobs.pdf