Dirty Diplomat?

It was in the news a short while ago, albeit on a very low key. So many people missed the article.

Now it has once again surfaced with additional information which means that more focus is now being given to the case of the dirty diplomat.

It seems that David Kweti Nkosi who represents South Africa as a diplomat, is leaving a trail of filthy, damaged rental premises behind him.

Previously he was stationed in New Deli where the costs of repairs and cleaning the unit he and his family stayed in, came to R53 612,20. The government paid the bill for the damage (with tax payers money) but this has not been repaid by Nkosi as yet.

Now Nkosi and family have outdone themselves. While staying in Vienna it seems that the cleaning of the rental flat they were staying in amounts to R714 000,00!

Now my question is, is this the caliber person we have representing South Africa? Why was no investigation done immediately after the New Deli damage was reported, and why wasn’t he recalled?

Now after the damages were reported to the flat in Vienna there should be big red warning lights going off that Nkosi isnt fit to hold any diplomatic position.

Once upon a time it was frowned on if any member of an embassy even got a parking ticket. If you did anything that would reflect badly on the South African government, or people, your career in foreign countries quickly came to an end.

Now I’m hoping that minister Naledi Pandor will do her job properly and ensure that Nkosi is recalled and never given a post outside of South Africa again. Our reputation overseas is already so besmirched that we dont our diplomats having no respect for other people’s properties.

 

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!

 

Jacob’s reply to the Nkandla scandal

In the last few weeks we have had the report issued by the Public Prosecutor’s office regarding the excessive amount of work done to Jacob Zuma’s private dwelling in KZN.
Apart from the ground not even belonging to the president, and being leased from the local tribal chief, it seems that an amount of over R260 million was spent on upgrading.
The president now claims he didn’t know what was being done to his private residence and therefore why should he have to pay any of the money back!
During my musings while travelling to and from work, I began to wonder how can it be that the person chosen by his political party to run the country, for the good of all citizens, cannot even keep track of what goes on at his own house?

I also thought it was pretty nifty of the president to state in Parliament that his family had paid for their own homes to be built. This is very noble of him. Yet it doesn’t explain how come the tax payers have had to pay for a visitors centre, cattle kraal and chicken run, swimming pool, amphitheatre plus a tuck shop for one of his wives. So the president makes a mistake and addresses parliament “in good faith” and conveniently forgets about all the other items that were being built.

The ANC as a liberation party was against the forceful removal of people from where they had lived for years. District Six is an example of this. Yet when Nkandla needed to be upgraded there were at least three neighbouring families that had to be relocated. The costs of relocating these families ran to R7.9 million!! For that type of money the State could have built a couple of houses for other needy people or even a much needed clinic.
And above all the relocation and setting up of some of the installations involved unlawful actions and constituted improper conduct and maladministration. These did not comply with section 237 of the Constitution.

Will the president stand up and with hand on heart declare that he was once again totally unaware that the very constitution that he swore to uphold, was being flaunted?

Now the president is saying that he should not be held responsible for the upgrade even though he tacitly accepted the implementation of all measures at his residence.

So, if the president doesn’t want to repay just over R240 million as “he didn’t ask for it”, why are we the motorists in Gauteng, expected to repay the funds that were wasted on the e-Toll system linking Pretoria and Johannesburg? The upgrade to the roads should have easily been covered by the BILLIONS that are made from the fuel levies for the purpose of funding road maintenance. The public has from the very start stated that they did not want the e-Toll system as it was not properly thought out and would hurt a lot of people when implemented. The Government has to get money from the e-Toll system as they need to pay back the pension fund the money that was used without obtaining the required permission to do so.

Another bit of my musing had to do with trying to reconcile how Zuma’s architect, Minenhle Makhanya, was paid R16.5 million. I cannot see anything that would justify being charged such a large amount of money. And now I hear he has got another government contract to do some more work for them !! This gravy train just keeps on steaming ahead with no sign of letting up.

 

NKANDLA

 

President Zuma Behind Bars

Visiting Soweto – News24 photo

Not really but when I saw the photo my wicked sense of humour took a turn for the better!
But now that I have your attention here is my most favourite person in the news again.
After failing to take charge of Pretoria’s Metro Police after getting kicked out of Ekurhuleni Metro Police he is once again at it..

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; (thanks to William Shakespeare – As You Like It: Act 2 Scene 7)
As I stand in the wings watching the play unfold in South Africa the often used quote by Shakespeare comes to mind.
We have a comedy in the making with the appointment of Robert McBride to be the next head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).
In a time when the South African Police has such a tarnished image of corruption, brutality and a total disregard of basic policing, one is left to wonder why this appointment is being made.
I find it totally laughable that the ANC’s Western Cape chairman, Marius Fransman, has the gumption to state that McBride is “a hero, patriot and committed civil servant to the people of South Africa”. As far as my memory serves me, once upon a time, civil servants and especially those representing the government had to be beyond reproach with no criminal records, strong morals and impeccable ethics.
Our incumbent president Jacob Zuma has in the last while stated most categorically that he is trying to clean up the government (can he start with himself, I wonder?) and then we hear about McBride, once again surfacing like a rotten smell which just doesn’t want to go away.
When completing your application for employment in the government you are asked if you have ever been found guilty of any criminal act. Now even if we discount the Magoo Bar bombing in which civilians were killed because it was politically motivated (shouldn’t this ruling then also be applied to the Boeremag who accidentally killed a women while blowing up train lines?).
McBride and others members of his terror cell were granted amnesty for the attack. The Truth and Reconciliation commission actually stated that this act was a “gross violation of human rights”.
Or even if we by some long stretch of the imagination should agree that McBride was totally sober after his Christmas party celebrations when he crashed his car on the way home. And we would then also have to wonder how he was found not guilty of trying to defeat the ends of justice while the doctor who issued the results of the blood test without even seeing McBride was found guilty of misconduct. We would also have to ignore the bullying of witnesses by his security minions to a point where they and their families were to terrified to state anything in court. Mcbride was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment. This was later set aside leaving many wondering who was pulling the strings.
Then we have a small incident of being arrested in Mozambique while doing some gun running. Was he just trying to smuggle arms and ammunition into places such as KZN where innocent victims were being slaughtered just to try destabilising the area? He was found guilty and sentenced to jail time but once again his powerful friends in the ANC pulled some strings and he was sent back to South Africa.
What about being involved in an assault case while in the company of underworld bosses at some escort agency? Wonder if he and the previous head of the police and Interpol, Jackie Selebi, were house friends?
In looking at the farce of appointing heads of police we must include Bheki Cele and Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega in this illustrious gathering of players. None of the previous appointments made any positive impact on crime in South Africa and it may be stated that crime actually got worse. Police brutality by far exceeds anything that the previous government did. Corruption is seen as an additional source of income to some police.
SO HOW DOES MCBRIDE EVEN COME INTO CONTENTION FOR THIS POSITION WHERE HE WILL BE INVESTIGATING PEOPLE FOR THE VERY SAME THINGS HE IS GUILTY OF?
1) President Zuma’s ANC are not serious about fighting crime or corruption. Is it far more lucrative to have it continue while they are in power?
2) Why did Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa support the nomination of McBride. Was pressure put on him by higher powers?
3) Does President Zuma want to avoid the possibility of having someone appointed from outside the ANC who would be independent of politics? Maybe Zuma learnt his lesson when he appointed Thuli Madonsela as public prosecutor!
4) According to the (Democratic Alliance) DA the advertisement for the post seems to have been tailored to McBride’s CV. Makes me wonder who was responsible for authorising the changes…
In a recent survey people were asked about problems in South Africa and it is not surprising that fear and mistrust of the police came second to being murdered during a robbery!!

 

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.”

 

Abused

I was told my blog is far too long and nodody reads long articles, but I just dont know how to trim it without losing the jist of what I was musing about…..

I must firstly say I have never been abused or abused anybody else in my life. This is why I am battling to understand how a person can keep going back into a relationship that is just so wrong.

In the last year I have seen a well-educated lady become involved in a relationship which everybody else around her said it was heading straight for a disaster.

Family and friends tried to talk to her but to no avail. She even went so far as to say that she would drop all her friends to be with this other person. From the beginning of this relationship everybody told her that it was totally wrong. The other person was married and had a family that he was supporting yet he pursued this lady with a passion and promised that he would divorce his wife and marry this lady as soon as it was possible.

This relationship was on and off quite a couple of times with some serious verbal fighting taking place. The male involved constantly verbally abused this lady calling her every bad name under the sun. Then while they are “broken up” she is inclined to tell anybody and everybody all the sordid details of their affair. I wonder if anybody really wants to be around her anymore.

Yet after every break up we find this lady contacting this male once again, and then they get together again and the whole process starts all over again. At every break-up the abuse gets worse and worse.

Here at work everybody now knows what is happening and why her work is suffering. Her social circle also knows of this sordid affair and how she is being abused.

Yet with everybody telling her to get out and start enjoying her life, she still continues in this abusing relationship seeming to be addicted to it. She just keeps going back no matter what he calls her. He keeps talking of loving her, but after a night of passion, he goes straight back to his wife.

Now – I know there is a vast difference between IQ and EQ but when it comes to total stupidity I have a serious problem with people who keep banging their heads repeatedly against a wall coated with steel knobs in the hopes that the very next time somebody would have put a pillow in the way. All that happens is that sometime or the other there is going to be serious pain and lots of blood all over the place. I’m not even talking about the possible loss of her job when the bosses decide one day that they can no longer put up with all the side-shows and emotional outbreaks at work, or the number of days that are being taken due to “not feeling well”.

Please give me your views on this as I am totally at a loss, yet I feel I cannot just turn and walk away.

 

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.

 

SERIOUSLY?

It has been an interesting week or so here in South Africa. There have been heat waves, floods, strikes, fires and court cases 

Here are some musings that kept me busy this week while driving to and from work as I don’t use my phone, nor drink coffee, or heaven forbid, put on makeup while travelling:-

Pretoria/Johannesburg Hi-way:

In the last week I have noticed the local traffic officials on the hi-way are traveling in unmarked vehicles with only a sticker on the door stating that the car is being used by the local Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC). The blurb at the bottom of the sticker states that the cars are sponsored by Avis. (What happened to all the powerful BMW’s that were donated just the other day?)

Now I was just wondering if there could be a conflict of interest that Avis may request that any traffic fines that their company picks, up be overlooked in the spirit of a mutually benefiting agreement?

I do suppose that both the traffic department and Avis will both deny any knowledge of any agreement but going by the history of how business is conducted by our councils it would still leave me wondering. And what use are they on the hi-way as they have to obey all the rules of the road as they don’t have any flashing blue lights to open the way. (This alone must be tough that they now have to leave home early like the rest of us just to get to work, and not rely on their blue lights to get them through the traffic even though there is no emergency!)

In some parts of the world they are aiming at zero fatalities on some of their hi-ways. There is a drive/campaign currently on here in South Africa to reduce the amount of collisions and deaths on our roads. To quote  the  Deputy Transport Minister, Sindisiwe Chikunga in July 2012, ‘there was nothing normal about 14 000 people dying in South African road accidents every year.’  But this morning I once again witnessed a collision where four cars were involved with related fatalities. Now, I don’t have any personal grudge against busses and taxis but it would seem to me that drivers of these vehicle seem to operate way above the law without any fear of prosecution by the traffic officials. Just prior to the collision, in the lane going the opposite way, I saw a taxi exceeding the speed limit of 100 kph  (for public transport vehicles) travelling in the emergency lane then ducking right across four lanes causing cars in those lanes to have to apply their brakes to avoid the taxi. Then not even a hundred metres further on, the taxi swung back across all the lanes with the same modus operandi as it had used to move from the emergency lane, thereby causing other motorists to apply their brakes to avoid a collision. Just in front of me there was a traffic official sitting in an official traffic department vehicle with all the bells and whistles (lights, decals, colouring etc). He obviously had the exact same view of all of this happening as I did. Yet he just adjusted his posture in his seat to a more comfortable position and continued on his merry way as if nothing untoward had happened. It is this perception that taxi and bus drivers are untouchable that allows them to break the law with dire consequences to other motorists.

I must also mention that the only vehicles I do see them pulling over are those with foreign number plates. Could it be that they are easy pickings? Just wondering…

 Pretoria:    

If I was a tourist, I would never guess that Pretoria was the capital of South Africa if I were to look at the state of the city center and the suburb, Sunnyside. To put it mildly, it is dirty, smells like a latrine, and is in a state of utter disrepair!

But what caught my attention in the news, was an article of a strike of city council bus drivers that was averted. It seems that their gripe is that of the 200 plus busses used to service Pretoria, there are only 20 busses that are capable of running! The mechanics at the bus depot are having to resort to cannibalizing spares from other broken down buses, as they have no new spares that can be used to get the broken down buses back on the road.  My question is what happened to the funds that must have been budgeted for by the council for maintenance and repairs of the bus fleet?  The ratepayers in Pretoria  (apart from government buildings, officials and diplomatic properties) still pay their rates, yet we cannot even keep the cities buses running or keep the city clean.

Bloemfontein:

My current favourite person in South Africa is Free State rector Professor Jonathan Jansen, who has in the last while made some most enlightening statements which really make sense and highlight topics which the government and the population need to take note of.

On Monday Prof Jansen took a full swipe at both the government and the Minister of Education AngieMotshekga. He was addressing the first-year students and told them that they were not to become like South Africa.  He said that it was an utter disgrace that the minister boasted about the pass rate in matric (grade 12) for 2012 when the required mark to pass was only 30%.

He went on to say that he was willing to expel any students on campus threw stones, hit anybody else, treat women without respect and just generally were angry. This stance of Prof Jansen is something that the government should have applied a long time ago but I personally think that the government has been using the strikes and disturbances to further their own agendas.

The quote by Prof Jansen that really made my day, was something that my late mother used to say to us on occasion:  “You may be poor, but you can behave decently.”

The ANC and FNB

Now it seems that ANC and its youth branch have put some serious pressure on FNB to withdraw the ad campaign which aired last week. (And this after it was proved that they gave Zuma a loan under suspicious circumstances)

It is very sad that the ANC was able to put on enough pressure that the bank had to withdraw the campaign as they feared for the safety of the children that took part.  It seems that the participants may have been threatened and now feared reprisals as it is alleged that the ANC called the participating children’s action as treason against the state.

No wonder the ANC wants to bring in the Freedom of Information Act! Then they would be in a position where they could just ban children speaking about what they want as free citizens of South Africa.

Here is an extract of the ad campaign where children are expressing their hopes and views of a free South Africa.

Many years ago, in 1976, a group of brave young people stood on the ground where we are gathered tonight.

From this very place, they took their first steps towards freedom.

It is because of people like them, that I was born free, born from the very roots of Limpopo, in the greatest country in the world.

But we are not here tonight to talk about revolution.

We are here to talk about belief, and what belief can do.

Today, we, the children of South Africa, would like to share the following message with you:

There will be a day, when the difficulties we see before us now,

the greed, mistrust and anger, will be behind us.

There will be a day,  a day when the violence, and our indifference to the violence,

will be a thing of the past.

A day when the children of this land will no longer be slaves to their illiteracy, but free to write their own destiny.

There will be a day when, instead of blaming each other, we’ll build each other.

Instead of hurting each other, we’ll help each other.

The challenges before us, cannot be solved by money, or petty politics, protest or violence.

All of the great things we’ve done, we’ve done together, by helping each other.

 

Now the ANC states that the bank is ‘disrespectful’ and that it is appalled by the campaign which attacks the ANC, its leadership and government.

 “FNB, in an obviously lame attempt to recreate an Arab Spring of some sort in South Africa, uses children to make unproven claims of a ‘government rife with corruption’,” spokesperson Khusela Sangoni-Khawe said in a statement.

Now I’m sorry to say that both the ANC and it’s youth league must sit back and reflect on the very bit where they say that unproven claims are being made against a ‘government rife with corruption’. Just in the last few years we have had corruption charges leveled against members of parliament, ministers, city councils, police, government departments as well as members of the ANC and the ANCYL. What about the various commissions appointed to investigate corruption? The Arms Deal spring to mind, involving the very head of government. What about the violence in the country? Is this just a figment of imagination that the children don’t see? One wonders how come there have been allegations of government involvement in these violent strikes.

I also wonder if this is the start of the ANC applying censorship by pressure instead of the law?

As Bob Dylan once sang – Now is the time for your tears. (The times they are a changing)

 

Oh yes, the campaign went viral, so let’s see the ANC try stop the world from seeing it now. If they had kept quiet it would most likely have stay local J J

 

 

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