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POPSReckless rhetoric or freedom of speech? South Africa has a democratic constitution that protects freedom of speech. In saying things like this is Bishop Tutu trying to place an unconstitutional limitation on freedom of speech?
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POPSBrits suffer from metal theft For a long time South Africans have suffered from metal theives. A few months ago we were without electricity for two days, not because of Eskom load shedding, but because of cable theft. Twenty years ago the aluminium railings were nicked from a railway bridge down the road, over four separate nights, and no one heard a thing. Cell phones have mitigated the inconvenience of telephone cable theft, but it can still disrupt Internet access. And many have been late for work because of the theft of railway signal cables. Now, it seems, the Brits are suffering from the same problem. Will it rile up even the phlegmatic Brits so much that they'll start burning railway carriages and stations when the trains are late?
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POPSThe "third force" behind xenophobic violence? Could the ugly face of capitalism be behind the violence against foreigners that we have seen over the last couple of months? There have been taxi wars in the past, now it seems to have spread to other businesses.
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POPSNine milliion South Africans want to emigrate According to a recent survey, some nine million South Africans want to emigrate. And 2430000 believe they have the funds and qualifications to do it. Something tells me that this survey is deeply flawed.
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POPSSouth Africans pay more for electricity As shortages of things like electricity, oil and even food grow, so will conflicts of interest. Ideally, southern Africa should try to produce its own electricity for the whole subcontinent. As supplies of coal and other fossil fuels dwindle, there will be increasing reliance on hydroelectricity from the Zambezi and the Congo -- but countries along those rivers will want to serve themselves first, and sell the surplus to others -- while there is a surplus. So which rout to go -- cooperation in the subcontinent, or autarky?
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POPSKill the bastards! After urging the police to shoot to kill, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security has now advised ordinary citizens to do the same if they are threatened by criminals pointing guns or other lethal weapons at them.
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POPSNo more child witches in DRC? Whether the law can be enforced in such a fractured country is indeed a moot point, but so is the idea of these "deeply-held" beliefs. These beliefs, to all accounts, appeared quite suddenly in recent history. Perhaps they could disappear just as suddenly. What we need to find is what it takes to make them disappear, and perhaps it could help to find what caused them to appear in the first place. The DRC, like other African countries, has long had many people who believe that misfortunes are caused by witchcraft and sorcery. What appears to be new is the belief that these witches are young children, and that it is occurring on such a scale. Perhaps it is the very fractured nature of the society that is causing these beliefs to spread and be deeply held.
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POPSStorm in an aluminium smelter Valli Moosa, the chairman of the Eskom board, and former Minister of Environmental Affairs, said at a meeting last night that South Africa would not have a power crisis if there were no big aluminium smelters, but said that this as a sensitive matter, as the row between Standard Bank and BHP Billiton shows.
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POPSSchadenfreude? For the last three months South Africans have been complaining about Eskom's failures in planning and bad management, as if it is the only organisation to suffer from such incompetence, and as if South Africa is the only country to suffer from such misfortunes. So perhaps there was a certain sense of relief, not to mention malicious glee, to see that British Airways seems to be unable to organise a piss up in a brewery. And there was the gent of Sky News muttering at 20 minute intervals about the damage it was doing to "brand UK". At least we're not alone.
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POPSWitchcraft-related crimes
The recent arrest and appearance in court of three men accused of ritual killings in the Eastern Cape has highlighted the problem of so-called muti murders, one of which is that they are rarely highlighted. In another country one or two murders would be sensational. Eighteen murders in a small town within a few months should rival the Virginia Tech killings in the USA for newsworthiness -- at least in South Africa. But no, things like the Virginia Tech killings got more coverage in the South African media than serial killings in our own back yard. Why is this? Is it because many of the Virginia Tech victims were white, and the Mzamba victims were black? Are deaths of white people more newsworthy than the deaths of black people? And what happens to these case? So often it is reported that someone has been murdered, and that muti killing is suspected, and then no more is heard. If someone charged, that may be reported, and no more is heard. Is anyone ever convicted?
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POPSRacial integration through social engineering? Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa's urban residential areas remain almost as segregated as before. Now the eThekwini Municipality plans to change that -- by allocating housing on racial lines.
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POPSSA police arrest 1,500 in church The South African Police now seem to be playing a game of "blame the victim" was we are seeing scenes that we have not seen since aparthneid ended in 1994. The government has watched as Zimbabwe turns into a fascist dictatorship and hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured into South Africa. The SA government has said very little to the government that has driven them out, but instead treasts the refugees almost as badly as they are treated at home. During the South African liberation struggle South African exiles found homes in neighbouring countries, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mocambique, as well as places further away such as Britain, Sweden and other European countries. Yet now when we have our freedom and others flee to us for asylum, we persecute them,
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POPSElectricity not being exported, says Eskom Eskom says that electricity is not being exported to neighbouring countries when there is no surplus. But isn't it a bit late for President Thabo Mbeki to be meeting with Eskom management to ascertain the extent of the problem? According to Cosatu, it was President Thabo Mbeki himself who opposed Eskom's plans to expand its generating capacity.
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POPSOur great Mikado, virtuous man Our great Mikado, virtuous man when he to rule this land began resolved to try a plan whereby young men might best be steadied. So he decreed in words succinct That all who flirted, leered or winked Unless connubially linked Should forthwith be beheaded.
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POPSNigerian Christians join in witchhunts Witch hunting is a very ancient practice in Africa, but in the past it has not generally been something that Christians have engaged in. Western-initiated churches, which have been influenced by modernity, have tended to regard beliefs about witchcraft as superstition, and encouraged people to discard such views. African-initiated churches have taken witchcraft beliefs seriously, but have generally urged witches to repent, and teried to rehabilitate them (whereas in pagan African society witches were often thought to be incorrigible and deserving only death). But now new denominations, which appear to be mainly neopentecostal, seem to be persecuting suspected witches in a manner reminiscent of the Great European Witchhunt of early modern times.
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POPSGordon Brown boycotting EU-Africa summit in Lisbon British Prime Minisrter Gordon Brown is boycotting the EU Africa summit this weekend because of Zimbabwe's poor human rights record. It is good to see political leaders taking a principled stand for human rights, and it would be nice to see more do so. Unfortunately, however, Mr Brown's stand is somewhat hypocritical, as he is still in favour of introducing 90-day detention into Britain. When Tony Blair tried to inrtroduce 90-day detention two years ago some Labour MPs, to their credit, rebelled and blocked it. No kudos, however, to the British media, which continually rederred to Mr Blair as occupying the "moral high ground" on the issue. If that is so, the ground Mr Mugabe occupies must be stratospheric.
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POPSJurisdictionalism hits Anglicans Anglicanism in the USA seems to be on its way to becoming a tangled mess of separate jurisdictions even more complicated than the jurisdictional mess in the Orthodox Church there. Some US Episcopalians have linked to Anglican dioceses in various parts of Africa, and now South America has jumped in. For the last 150 years or so the Orthodox diaspora has led to competing episcopal jurisdictions in places like Western Europe, North America and Australia. One can find overlapping juriisdictions of Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and other bishops. Now the same thing is beginning to happen among the Anglicans, with Kenyan, Ugandan, Nigerian and now Argentinian bishops having overlapping jurisdictions. At least among the Orthodox, despite language and ethnic differences, there is the same faith.
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POPSBritish control orders Any hopes that the replacement of Tony Blair by Gordon Brown might arrest Britains slide towards a fascist police state have been dashed. Brown's recent defence of "Control Orders" sounded just like Vorster's defence of banning orders against government opponents in apartheid South Africa. And the British Control Orders are virtually indistinguishable from South African banning orders, and in some ways even more restrictive.
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