Money Miss-spent
It is disturbing that millions were spent by the City of Jo’burg on the Miss World pageant at Sun City last weekend — and on the eve of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. If we calculate the costs of flying each of 150 or so participants to South Africa, they each contributed three tons of carbon emissions. This is a travesty, particularly for a city that hosted the last UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. This also comes at a time when South Africa’s Gini coefficient (measuring the rich-poor gap) is the highest in the world.
The global financial crisis requires cost savings and the poor look to government to support local economic development and social welfare. Yet the Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC) spent R90-million on this frivolity. As a ratepayer, I would have spent R90-million on:
Repairing the hundreds of potholes on our roads and replacing stolen manhole covers, creating temporary jobs for hundreds of small construction workers and saving motorists on repair bills.
- Supporting food gardens, thereby assisting in food security for marginal communities and informal settlements.
- Upgrading early-childhood educare centres with quality educational resources and materials.
- Revamping the historic Rissik Street post office that recently burned down.
- Subsidising transport for unemployed youth, the elderly and disabled to access the underutilised rapid bus transit system.
- Investing in upgrading primary health clinics and improving pay and working conditions for junior doctors.
- Supporting community technology centres and training unemployed youth in information technology and small-business skills programmes.
- Food parcels and gifts for orphanages and refugee centres to bring some festive cheer to an otherwise miserable year.
These services should be procured from local small businesses and NGOs, thus stimulating the local economy. — Ashraf Patel, Johannesburg
I’m sure I’ll be one of many old-fart Mother Grundies in the complaint queue this week. But let me wave my walking stick. Has the Mail & Guardian‘s ever-increasing popularity driven you to become as greedy as those you want to expose? You attract more advertisers, your pages decrease and you are now more expensive than ever, so please don’t tell us that so-called market forces are driving you down the gutter.
The headline ‘Miss Indonesia linked to child-abuse cult” (December 11) had nothing to do with the story and even less to do with the weird (cultish?) Miss World pageant. It’s hard to believe the story was written by Niren Tolsi, one of the finest young finds in journalism of late. The M&G boasts a few of the best scribes in the land, so why do you have to compete with the smutty tabloids? Such (so-called) exposés do you untold harm. — David Marks, Durban
Apparently it was the Miss South Africa pageant this past weekend and a certain Nicole Flint is now the ambassador of the nation. Apparently, too, there are concerns that she is, in fact, white. Well, klap me with a golf club and call me Tiger! You mean there are white South Africans?
I find it unacceptable that a pale-skinned brunette with great boobs and wonderful legs should win such a prestigious and meaningful title. We all know where this leads. Miss South Africas past have influenced local and foreign policy, established peace in the most notorious of conflict zones, saved millions from starvation and have always been the moral compass for the nation … It is outrageous that we should entrust such immeasurable responsibility and, frankly, the fate of the world as we know it, to a white chick — from Pretoria, nogal.
This injustice ranks right up there with Willie ‘Die Breker” du Plessis winning the 2009 Brakpan Boerewors-Eating Championship and a foreign actress being chosen to play Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in a film bound to have as profound an effect on the box office as quiet diplomacy had on Uncle Bob.
Take heart though, all ye upset souls: at least you are not a certain Daniel Roux, boyfriend of the new queen of the country.
Nicole has stated that her title now comes first in her life — which is pretty kak for Daniel, who was probably looking forward to coming first for some time.
I don’t know about you, but I am heading for the nearest cave to wait out the worst. Nicole is bound to appear in a string of powder-puff ads flogging hair products and nail polish and I, for one, will not stick around to witness the horror of it all. — Brandon Faber
Double agendas
The tripartite alliance is characterised by parasitism and opportunism. Might I remind Blade Nzimande and Gwede Mantashe that the ANC Youth League is a formation of the ANC, not an alliance partner parasitically and opportunistically clinging to the ANC. The SACP has been riding on the coat-tails of the ANC for far too long and it’s about time that it go it alone rather than being so grumpy.
Mantashe is secretary general of the ANC, but at the SACP congress tells delegates ‘to swell the ranks of the ANC” to, as he unashamedly put it, ‘influence decisions [read policies] in both the ANC and government”. This is blatantly parasitic.
Yet when the ANC has its gatherings, Mantashe curries favour with the ANC and gives the SACP a dressing down, wearing an ANC hat. He is a chameleon, like all those with dual memberships. — Sam Ditshego, Kagiso
Does the ANC still need its alliance partners? Isn’t it a conflict of interest for Blade Nzimande to serve as a minister in the ANC-led government while criticising the ANC when wearing his SACP cap?
During [Thabo] Mbeki’s reign, the alliance partners were alienated. But his mishandling of relations with Cosatu and the SACP led in part to his downfall. Jacob Zuma’s career was resuscitated by Cosatu and the SACP and now the left wants a return on its investment. Zuma is failing to show leadership here. Nothing suggests relations will improve. This is just history repeating itself. Isn’t it time the so-called strategic alliance came to an end? — Thabile Mange, Johannesburg
Prawn Utd
I have only just got to see the sci-fi megahit District 9 on DVD (thanks to Mafikeng, the so-called ‘City of Culture” not having a cinema). Apart from my academic interest in the film (depicting a genocidal South African dystopia of an alternate past or near future), I could not help thinking that with the World Cup just around the corner, it’s a pity that a UFO full of eight-foot aliens did not actually run out of fuel over downtown Johannesburg.
Forget about Brazil, Spain and Argentina; with a team of 11 proudly South African prawns endowed with extraterrestrial speed, strength, endurance and athleticism, the competition would be a piece of cake. Fifa president Sepp Blatter could start inscribing Bafana Bafana on the trophy already.– Damian Garside, Mafikeng
Rugby, Madiba and me …
Regarding Shaun de Waal’s review of Invictus (‘Buy a ticket and get a free Mandela”, Friday, December 11), I completely respect the man’s opinion and I wish him much happiness. One of the joys of being a film critic is that you are free to write whatever you like. Everything is valid because we all have wildly different views of the films we watch.
By way of example, the New York Times‘s leading film critic thought Invictus was sensationally good.
There is just one point I’d like to raise with Mr de Waal (who, by the way, writes very entertainingly) and it concerns Morgan Freeman’s depiction of Mandela, which he describes as ‘so-so”.
It may be that he is more familiar with Mandela than I am, but I thought Freeman’s portrayal was uncannily accurate. More to the point, I sat next to Zindzi Mandela at the Los Angeles premiere and she told me she was astounded by how well Freeman had captured her dad.
Similarly enthusiastic remarks were made to me by the person outside the Mandela family who has been closest to him for the past 15 years, Zelda la Grange, as well as by a whole lot of other people too tedious to mention by name but who I dare say have been exposed to Mandela at least as much as De Waal has.
Incidentally, De Waal reveals that he is not a rugby fan yet he quotes some unnamed ‘rugbyites” contesting parts of my book, Playing the Enemy, on which Invictus is based. Having interviewed half the Springbok team of 1995 for the book and having seen most of them since, no one has contested anything rugby-related to my face. Maybe they lack the courage. So if De Waal could help me out, provide a little more detail on what I assume to be more than idle hearsay, I’d be most grateful; I would be keen to correct any errors in subsequent editions of my book. — John Carlin
Cynical, not cyclical, view
Thank you for the coverage of the climate change discussions in Copenhagen (‘Heat’s on in Copenhagen”, December 11). Yet the statement by Valli Moosa that the general public is ‘more to blame than government for not getting heated about global warming” is cynical.
The press has been consistent in giving good cover to climate change concerns. There also appears to be fairly good public awareness but individuals require much more guidance. Government has not promoted sustainable development or climate change mitigation generally.
Private enterprise is ready to launch a massive development of renewable energy technologies, but find Eskom and government, if not actively blocking such development, failing to facilitate it. Hermann Oelsner’s wind farm outside Darling is still struggling despite 10 years of effort to overcome one hurdle after the next, while Eskom continues building and dreaming of coal-fired, oil and nuclear-energy generation models.
The excellent environmental impact assessment (EIA) regime we developed continues to be eroded to allow more unsustainable development.
Government has an excellent team advising it in the climate-change discussions, but this has failed to date to influence government policy. That is why we have such a mismatch between the surprise announcement by government of carbon-reduction targets when this has never before been raised and certainly is not reflected in government policies and actions. —Louis de Villiers
12 days of Christmas
Here is ‘Jacob Zuma’s 12 days of Christmas”, to be sung to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas, the song with ‘a partridge in a pear tree”.
On the first day of Christmas Jacob Zuma sent to me his umshini wami in a thorn tree
(then through the next 11 days to:)
On the 12th day of Christmas Jacob Zuma sent to me
Twelve comrades a-showering
Eleven vuvuzelas a-blowing
Ten bodyguards a-shooting
Nine fatcats a-purring
Eight cows a-mooing
Seven Mercs a-speeding
Six wives toyi-toyiing
Five million rand
Four loaded guns
Three pit bull pets
Two Eskom bulbs
and a cross Malema in a thorn tree!”
Happy New Year! Walala Wasala! — Pieter-Dirk Uys, Darling
In brief
I nearly choked when I read Charlotte Bauer’s puff-piece on nouveau riche South Africans now celebrating the good life at a pastiche chateau in the south of France (‘Pardon my French”, Friday, December 11). I’m not interested in reading about white faux-French wannabes in the Mail & Guardian. Moreover, for Bauer to confess that she also owns property there is just naff. What happened to the Bauer with the dark edge and abundant irony? Please, don’t go all mainstream and mellow on us now! — Herman Lategan, Cape Town
Penelope Nyawose writes that ‘Zuma is a parasite” (Letters, December 11), but it is wrong to compare the president with a parasite. Nyawose must regard herself a parasite. Zuma spent his entire life struggling to free people like Nyawose, but I am trying to find any Nyawoses in the liberation struggle, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, and I can’t recall one. Nkandla must be conducive for VIPs to visit the president there. Nelson Mandela built a homestead where he comes from and the colonisers, PW Botha and FW de Klerk, retired to upmarket places at taxpayers’ expense. — Samsam Mgazie, Midrand
If I place a notice mourning the death of the English language and decent subediting, will you publish it under the heading ‘Obitiury”? — Theo, Rivonia