Cuban Engineers UPDATE.

Latest happening regarding the importation of 24 Cuban Engineers is that they have arrived in South Africa. There are two versions doing the rounds currently (1) that have been here since October 2020 and have been learning English and (2) they only arrived yesterday. But with the blatant lies being told by the minister Lindewe Sizulu I am no longer able to say which happening is correct.

Sizulu has stated publically that the reason she got engineers from Cuba is that (1) she was unable to get ANY local engineers with appropriate qualifications to work in remote areas, (2) the Cuban engineers work for a stipend and therefore financially it makes sense.

According to all sources that are available, there are NO local highly qualified engineers that were approached by Sizulu to commence with work. These currently unemployed engineers WOULD JUMP AT THE CHANCE TO EARN SOME MONEY! A quick search of local media does not reveal a single instance of Sizulu or her department advertising or inviting our local engineers to apply to do any work. President Ramaphosa has in the past stated, that where possible we must use local expertise to getting South Africa moving forward. If the minister he appointed is hiring foreigners then we must wonder if the President is merely spouting lip service to the world, or is his minister just doing as she pleases?

Lindiwe Sizulu, South African Minister of Human Settlement

On point number 2 above the figure getting thrown around for the costs of these 24 Cuban engineers is a whopping R65 million! This is apparently for a period of 2 years. So if this is the stipend that Sizulu claims tmthey are paid while in South Africa it’s one hell of an amount. Rumour has it that the balance is paid to the Cuban Goverment.

Consider this – if the engineers only get a stipend and the contract for their services is let’s say R40 million, yet we are led to believe that the costs amount to R65 million. The government pays over the R65 million, but R25 million is siphoned off and split between someone in Cuba and someone in South Africa. The taxpayers just think they are being ripped off for paying so much, the unemployed know they are being shafted by being sidelined from working. And possibly some person, or persons, is making money by means of corrupt dealings. I would love to be proved wrong in my musings about why we need Cuban engineers who have no knowledge of local conditions being brought in to South Africa (are Cubans considered valid BBBB-EE employees?) or why the public were kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything.

 

Apologise to all Dogs

My dog sleeps about 20 hours a day.

He has his food prepared for him. He can eat whenever he wants.
His meals are provided at no cost to him.

He visits the doctor once a year for his check up, and at any other time during the year if any medical needs arise.
For this he pays nothing, and nothing is required of him.

He lives in a nice neighbourhood in a house that is far larger than he needs.
He makes no contribution to the running or maintenance of the house.
If he makes a mess, someone else cleans it up.

He has his choice of luxurious places to sleep. He receives these accommodations absolutely free.

He is living like a king, and has absolutely no expenses whatsoever.
All of his costs are picked up by others who go out, work hard, and earn a living every day.

I was just thinking about all this, and suddenly it hit me like a brick in the head…

My dog is a Member of Parliament!

 

Lioness

 

Black Education

A bridge too far?

On Thursday last week there was an interesting article in News 24 in which Rabelani Dagada, a lecturer at Wits Business School, and a Programme Director for ICT Governance and Risk Management, told a debate on affirmative action that the apartheid-era Bantu (Black) education was far better than what is now being taught under the new post-apartheid government (ANC).

I went to my good friend Google and Linkin to see who this Wits academic is and from what base he is making these statements. Needless to say I found a man who has walked the walk and is in a position to make this assertion without fear of contradiction or favour.
I have quoted from the news article by News 24 and added some of my own comments in italics.
“It was far better in terms of quality than the education that our kids are receiving nowadays. That is where the problem is”.

And we now have these children finishing school and university with an education that is not up to standard. Pass rates have been dropped to such low levels that you only need to know less than a third of a subject and that okay to pass you. Here in the workplace we have graduates who can barely put a paragraph together in a coherent manner that have English as a subject that was passed in Matric.

“Affirmative action should be about empowerment. The best way to empower is not to take from those who have and give to those who don’t have. It won’t work.”

This statement in various guises has been bandied around for a long time and in various countries. Yet the ANC has seen it fit to ignore this warning and taken as much as they possible could from those who had and kept it for themselves. They didn’t even take the time to consider that there many who had worked very hard to get where they were without the help of the previous government. By giving those who didn’t have, a push through the education system, we have skewed the education which is necessary to take our country into the future.

Dagada said South Africans could only be empowered through proper education.
“After 20 years of democracy, the education levels have plunged. It’s worse than the so-called Bantu education. The best way to do transformation, empowerment is to provide quality education.”

And from Pik Botha at the same function:
Former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha said South Africa, under the ANC’s leadership, had moved away from former president Nelson Mandela’s principles. He said the country’s affirmative action policies were mainly hurting the black majority.

“How much further down must all of us go before we say this is enough now? Our education is far behind, it is the worst in Africa, [but] it has the highest per capita expenditure.”

Botha said Zimbabwe’s education system was better than South Africa’s.

“When is this going to change? At state hospitals black patients must wait for three years for an operation.”
Botha said when Mandela became president, he was careful not to lose skilled white people.
“He said we must not lose the proficiency of the whites. They must not leave the public service, but they should help us to train people to achieve that same proficiency,” said Botha.
“They have now removed all those people.”

 

photo mix

With winter approching it is now the time to get out there and take photos of the changing seasons.

This morning I passed a lane of trees with some brilliant colours but due to running late I had not taken my camera and missed that perfect moment when the light and everything just seemed to come together. I totally forgot that in an emergency I could have wipped out my cell phone (mobile) and hopefully have at least got something to show.

 

Tomorrow morning I want to go out and try get some shots in black and white. Could be interesting!

 

South Africa versus the United Nations

 

As a follow up to my blog of yesterday:

It seems that the South African National Defence Force has been rapped over the finger as to the troops that are being sent into combat zones in Africa by the United Nations.

A senior member of the UN has raised a concern about the discipline and preparedness of the South African troops in countries such as Sudan. This follows various incidents which cumulated in the raising of these concerns by the United Nations. The United Nations suggested that they would be willing to send instructors to help get the troops battle ready.

In response to this offer it seems that Lt-Col T Mashalaba has sent a very strongly worded letter (tirade) to the senior members of the United Nations troops  indicating that nobody other than South Africans would be allowed to train his troops (Battalion 10) and that if anybody was sent to train them they would receive no co-operation from the SA troops.

Now once again we are seeing the total arrogance of our leaders who under the circumstances should be more than happy to receive any help that they can. Or are they more interested in ceremonies such as the one where 10 ceremonial swords were presented to the North Vietnamese army?

Sadly this attitude of Lt-Col T Mashalaba cost the life of Rifleman Vincent van der Walt (23) when they were sent into a dangerous area where they walked straight into an ambush.

Brig-Gen Xolani Mabanga seems to think our 2500 troops deployed in Sudan, DRC, and Mozambique (why?) are very well trained and claims to have no knowledge of the correspondence by the United Nations or the reply by Lt-Col T Mashalaba, which apart from being sent to members of UNAMID, was also sent to senior member of the United Nations in New York.

For his edification I have included an extract of the letter that Lt-Col T Mashalaba penned.

(Source Beeld – my apology for the bad copy but at least it is readable 🙂 )

Just a pity that this arrogance is costing the lives of our troops who in all truth should be protecting our own borders.

 

Trust the Military to look after your kids?

 

Quite some time ago I did a blog about a general in the South African National Defence Force who was caught cheating during promotion exams. He had copied answers from a fellow candidate.

At the time he had the rank of a general and after being found guilty of cheating he was demoted to the rank of major. This on its own was enough to raise some eyebrows as the expectation in military circles was that Sithabiso Mahlobo should have been cashiered from the army without any benefits.

But after his demotion in 2002, Sithabiso Mahlobo was once again promoted up through the ranks and in 2008 was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. Not bad for a cheat!

As Brig-General he was put in command of 46 Brigade who will soon be deployed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to fight against the infamous M23 rebels. He is responsible for the training of these troops under his command and yet according to military expert, Helmoed-Rӧmer Heitman, no officer that has been found guilty of a crime such as cheating in exams should be allowed to lead or train troops.

I did a quick check on both the American and British armies to see how they would apply military laws. Well, even a rumour of a bit of hanky-panky could be enough to ruin your career. Any sniff of anything irregular or contrary to military law was enough to get you kicked out, without even a pension to help you get through the rest of your life.

So why did Sithabso Mahlobo get to stay on in the army, and how did he move up in the ranks when he, previously all on his own, displayed adequate reason that he wasn’t fit to even lead a platoon on garden duty?

Actually while musing about Mahlobo and his shenanigans I got to thinking about Rear-Admiral Kyanysile Litchfield-Tsabalala  who just happened to falsely claim for a stolen government laptop after a conference she was attending in Sandton, and for lodging a false claim for accommodation at a guesthouse, and for assaulting a junior naval staffer who wanted to search her car when leaving a military base.

She was found guilty of 2 criminal charges (see above) for defrauding the State in 2007 in a military court instead of a civilian court. The excuse at the time was that it due to her high rank. Yet even after being found guilty she still remains the Navy’s director of transformation (department set up to move more blacks into the navy according to BEE (Black Equity Empowerment) even though most of them cannot swim.) Even though the Military Court of Appeals confirmed her convictions, she has continued to be paid her monthly lucrative salary.

By all accounts she has some very powerful friends all the way up to the minister of defence and seems to have some hold over them to ensure that she isn’t kicked out in disgrace.

Now taking both stories into consideration it seems that the message that is being sent out to the rest of the defence force is that corrupt behaviour by senior officers is most certainly being rewarded instead of being condemned with all the suitable negative repercussions that should be applied.

I feel sorry for those members who are trying to make a success of the defence force yet are being thwarted by the very people who are supposed to lead them.

tomorrow I need to do some serious musing about kids getting killed because of inadequate training and how the UN has even told us so.

 

Future happenings?

 

ANC Election sticker

 

Dear Employees:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that

Jacob Zuma is our President and that our taxes and government fees will

increase in a BIG way.

To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by

about 10%.

 

But, since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state

of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead.

This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I

didn ‘t know how to choose who would have to go. So, this is what I did.

I walked through our parking lots and found sixty ‘ANC ‘ bumper stickers on

our employees ‘ cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let

go.

I can ‘t think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for

change… I gave it to them.

 

I will see the REST of you at the annual company picnic…….which WE can

now afford….!!

 

Doesn’t the government look after the people first then themselves?

For those who don’t want to read anything long, skip down to the bottom for a bit that sums up the situation as it currently is.

I was under the impression that most governments that are voted in democratically, are there to govern the country/people on behalf of the people, that voted them into power in the first place

Since the ANC came into power here in South Africa they have built up a culture of spending money as if there is no tomorrow. Prior to coming into power they had to depend on the rest of the world to fund them as they claimed not to have any funds to keep operating.

The Mangaung conference (Bloemfontein to us older folk) cost the ruling party’s conference more than R100m. Most of this had to be paid upfront in full as many businesses had not been paid for the ANC’s centenary celebrations held there earlier in the year.

The spending on the Mangaung conference was equal to what the party had spent on its year-long centenary celebrations which means that a total of R200m had been spent purely on the ANC and not on the people they are meant to be representing.

Apparently the following vehicles were seen at the parking lot for the conference (this could not be confirmed but comes from a source normally pretty reliable)
106 BMW X5’s,

28 RANGE ROVER SPORTS,

211 BMW 5 or 7 series sedans,

11 MASERATI’s,

103 MERCEDES BENZ sedans,

6 HUMMERS,

9 FERRARI’s.

Now using the low side of averaging prices for these vehicles it comes to a staggering R351m!! Not bad going for the previously disadvantaged is it? I wasn’t previously disadvantaged according to the government, yet I couldn’t afford most of the cars that were there. Not even a second hand one!

It was your and my taxes that ultimately paid for these cars as well as the luxury accommodation, decadently luxurious and excessive food and drinks (all free!!), wives, spouses, lovers, friends and family.

And only a peep is heard from the people that they are unhappy.

So we continue with the old refrain that the government doesn’t have money for  RDP (matchbox houses at R50 000 each) houses, proper medical facilities where patients don’t die due to lack of care/medicine, an education system that has failed the pupils where the pass mark is artificially manipulated to ensure a good pass rate, a police force that is rife with corruption due to low salaries and improper training, subsidies for old age homes and other care facilities no longer happens, sewerage plants round the country no longer working, water and electricity supplies erratic due to no funds for maintenance. We have people dying in the rural areas due to lack of food/water. The number unemployed has long ago passed the 25% danger point.  And the list goes on……

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”  — Margaret Thatcher

The folks who are getting free stuff, don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.
The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!
Now…  The people who are forcing the people to pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
So…  The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
Now understand this: all great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded.  The reason?  The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.  Thomas Jefferson said it best:  “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not”.
The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff.

 We have one chance to change that at the next election will we?  

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The following was received from a black colleague of mine who I considered very pro-ANC.

A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!
Zuma:     Gone!
Schooling: A decent pass rate not a manufactured one!
Culture:  Western Standards not 40 wives cared for by the tax payers!
Corruption Free; No one with a criminal record has a position in Government! (and that includes most of those now warming the benches in Parliament!)
We the people are coming. Let’s take a stand!!!

Now it is becoming very interesting.

 

Constitution

 

 

Currently the Americans are embroiled in difference of opinion regarding the second amendment and the right to bear arms. The Americans take what is said in their constitution very seriously and don’t take any changes or misinterpretations to it very lightly.

Now here in South Africa we have a so-called constitution that the rest of the world raved about as it was drafted in such a way that it would protect the citizens of South Africa as well as foreign nationals within our borders. It was hailed as one of the most progressive in the world and enjoyed high acclaim internationally.

Following the repeal of apartheid legislation, South Africa held its first fully democratic national election in 1994. The final Constitution was adopted in 1996 and phased in between 1997 and 1999. South Africa’s Constitution states that South Africa is “founded on a commitment to achieve equality, to promote and protect human dignity and to advance human rights and freedoms”. The Constitution enshrines the principles of supremacy of the rule of law, universal adult suffrage, regular elections and multi-party democracy. The Bill of Rights contained in Chapter 2 of the Constitution is one of the world’s broadest, guaranteeing freedom of speech, movement and political activity, and providing persons accused of crimes with many legal protections including the right to a speedy trial and the right to remain silent. (Victims of crimes seems to have less rights  J )

The Bill of Rights also enshrines the right to access to adequate housing, food, water, education and healthcare, and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy or marital status.

NOW IF THE ABOVE IS TRUE AND THE GOVERNMENT IS SUPPOSED TO ADHERE TO THE CONSTITUTION WHY DO WE STILL HAVE PEOPLE WITHOUT ADEQUATE HOUSING, COMUNITIES WITHOUT WATER, PEOPLE DYING OF HUNGER, SHODDY EDUCATION AND A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM THAT IS FAILING THE VERY PEOPLE IT IS SUPPOSED TO HELP?

NEARLY 20 YEARS ON, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE “BLACK EMPLOYMENT EQUITY” (BEE) WHICH IS TOTALLY RACE ORIENTATED? THESE LAWS ARE CONTRADICTORY TO OUR CONSTITUTION AND EXCLUDES ALL OTHER RACES OTHER THAN BLACK, FROM BEING ABLE TO COMPETE IN THE WORKPLACE FOR JOBS OR WORK.

HOW COME THE REST OF THE WORLD JUST SITS BACK AND ALLOWS IT? WHEN THE PREVIOUS GOVERNMENT APPLIED DISCRIMINATORY LAWS, THE WORLD WAS QUICK TO APPLY SANCTIONS.

OR IS IT NOW A CASE OF TURNING A BLIND EYE SO THAT THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT   CAN SELL SOUTH AFRICA TO THE COUNTRY WILLING TO BUY IT CHEAPLY?