My peace was interrupted this morning by the xenophobia being peddled by some twit in a suit on television. Now while the SABC is free to choose whom they invite to appear as experts on any particular matter, the fact is that getting a dude who claims to be the shadow deputy minister of defence and military veterans (which he is not), as opposed to the deputy shadow-minister of defence and military veterans (which he is), indicates that perhaps the SABC needs to refine their search criteria.
And apparently the Minister of Defence (and presumably military veterans) Lindiwe Sisulu was unavailable to appear alongside the deputy shadow-xenophobe, who incidentally is from the self appointed moral hyenas of our rainbow nation, the DA. So we were treated to a five minute discussion on our supposedly poriferous borders. Our borders, mind you, with Lesotho and Zimbabwe that is. He said nothing about the longest South African border, being our unguarded and unmanned eastern, southern and western coastlines.
He also failed to mention our borders with Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland and Namibia. But that’s a small matter, it is very rare that the DA gets anything right, and why would they want to offend their Mozam-Portuguese or Namib-German donors, let alone going after Botswana which, according to the DA, is the only stable African country, or for that matter for interfering with the Kingdom of Swaziland where so many South Africans have holidayed, sometimes even without their wives.
The twit from the DA, his excellency, the deputised representative of the shadow-minister for defence and military veterans, wants more policing of our borders and he wants this from the military, that is the SANDF not the SAPS. Fair enough, after all the SAPS has enough to do in respect of suppressing service delivery protests and other social malcontents. So the DA suggests the border patrol and guarding divisions of the SAPS become part of the SANDF and that the SANDF, together with customs and immigration, should ensure that our borders are less porous.
Now while this xenophobic twit from the DA’s shadow chancery may have grown up listening to all sorts of stories about the frontline states, and even more stories about liberals who dodged the SADF draft “as moral conscientious objectors” (or lazy-arsed, pot smoking, liberal hippies); it must be quite an adventure to go and inspect the borders of our state and make judicious statements claiming that the country is vulnerable and prone to invasion.
Of course the xenophobic twit from the DA knows nothing, because he evidently doesn’t understand that Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia are all places were the South African rand is accepted as currency, and indeed are all countries whose citizens live and work and learn in South Africa. In fact, the very existance of the SA Common Monetary Area and the SA Customs Union, suggests that there should be no borders or restrictions on movement between the SADC countries at all. Or are such arrangements only for the white people of Western Europe?
But the worst part of the xenophobic attack perpetrated by the DA on national, public television this morning was the suggestion that Zimbabwean and Lesotho nationals are coming to South Africa (illegally) and are placing strain on our resources. Naturally at this point I would have hurled a brick at the television, but I am rather fond of watching the Canadian ICS agents patrolling their border with the USA on SABC 3, which I’m sure is what has inspired the DA’s shadowy war veteran to film a reality TV interview in a river bed on the Zimbabwean side of the border. Oh, the thrill of living dangerously.
But I think what is most annoying is that the DA is a liberal party which supports, by its own declaration, an open opportunity society; except that they don’t mean this in the real sense, just insofar as they need to justify the issuance of contracts and tenders to white business people in the Western Cape. Because an open opportunity society would predetermine that the SADC, the SADC and the (SA)CMA were made up of the same member states and that in and among the 14 or 15 member states, there were no borders, no needs for visas, residency and work permits; and no undue harrassment of anyone who was a SADC citizen.
However it seems that the DA promised an open society, they were elected into office in die Weskaap on the basis of an open society, but now they are peddling a closed society; and that is fraud in anyone’s language./em>
Finally, I would like to understand why the DA is condemning people who in the Western Cape have proposed a variable wage rate, that is less than the R55 per day which is the Cosatu approved minimum wage rate? Given that free enterprise and the market economy suggests that fixed and minimum wage rates are counter productive and prevent the producers, manufacturers and wholesalers from cutting their output prices to retailers and in turn that this prevents the retailers from cutting their prices to their customers.
Now unless the Western Cape farmers are just greedy bunch, who will take the lower wage-earners and not pass these savings on to the customer, we can see that stimulating competition in the wage and labour market is imperative.
After all we are in a recession and if I want to reduce my consultation fee from R2 500/hour to R500/hour so that people like the shadow-minister for defence and military veterans can actually afford my services, that’s my right — because the only thing that wage fixing does is to drive illegal employment underground and out of sight; while reducing the number of people who actually find employment.
Personally I would rather have full employment at a lower wage rate (and then hash the retailers for price cuts to reduce the cost of living) than partial employment at a higher wage rate; but then again this is my experience as an unemployed and destitute person, who cares more about the welfare of the people living in inhumane conditions all over the country than about the suited elite, prophesising this DA-Cope-logic of amaKweraKwera.
Even the IFP supports an open SADC, albeit one that recognises the sovereignty of our Kingdom of KwaZulu, but an open society nonetheless. After all the Niger-Congo (A&B) people are one people, although we speak many languages and have many customs and cultures and social orders throughout Southern Africa.
And just as a side note, to the shadow minister for defence and military veterans, you claim that South Africa is a friend to every dictator and that our foreign policy violates our own human rights culture; and that this situation is the ANC’s fault; but I have just seen your surrogate matriarch on TV, the US’s Secretary of State, Hillary “I don’t go down on Bill” Clinton; and she was having tea with Hamid “The mayor of Kabul / Agent for Unocal & Co” Karzai, a person who is accused of stealing both of his two election victories.
And since the DA would never dare to criticise the US Democratic Party or its leaders, given just how lonely those Harvard nights can be, and just how the US-DP has influenced the structure of the innards of the DA, it must then be acceptable for democracies like the USA to be in bed with human rights abusers, but unacceptable for us poor Africans to be friends with the same human rights abusers.
By the way, you do know that Hamid Karzai is the biggest horse, smack, junk, heroin and shugars dealer in the world; and that the Obamanians promised to close the Guantánamo Prison and withdraw from both Iraq and Afghanistan — but that none of these things are happening any time soon.
But just to be clear, the DA is adopting a “NO MEXICANS ALLOWED” policy in South Africa, because good fences make for good neighbours. And while they say this we all think, if only there had been soldiers, customs and immigration at Table Bay to tax, control and stockade Van Riebeck and his very, very merry lords.
After all, we South Africans have more in common with our siblings from throughout the SADC and Sub-Saharan Africa than we do with any jumped up xenophobe of European origin bearing a South African passport or not.
But nonetheless we must be grateful that this early in the game the colonial-DA and colonised-Cope have announced that they are Anti-African xenophobes and racists — because I don’t hear anyone complaining about the number of Chinese people who are taking away jobs from South Africans by undercutting our wage rates.
Calculate the life expectancy of a political party in SA that welcomes foreigners. Majoritocracy is fun!
One point on your minimum wage theory – it makes not a microscopic speck of difference what wage farmers pay their employees or who keeps the money especially when we’re talking fractions of R55 a day. At the end of the day, costs for some agricultural inputs have gone down and the cost of agricultural produce in many instances has also gone down significantly (the price paid to farmers). Now in countries like the UK where there is some competition as opposed to the cartels that operate here in FMCG and retail – and there’s still plenty of price-fixing there – then you’ll note that there has been an average drop in the price of many products to the consumer. Here they’re kept artificially high not because of prices at the farm end but wastage, inefficiency and greed at the other end, as well as that all-pervading corporate mindset from the idiots in suits that the masses are just all stupid and deserve to be ripped off.
Well, still sad to see that racism is being kept alive on Tl by this jumbled rubbish, writtem like the author was on tik. Is he (it) promoting flouting the min. wage proposed by COSATU to accomodate non SA citizens who are here illegally? Or is it promoting changing the law? Why attack the DA in such insulting terms when, for once, they seem to be in step with governemnt policy? Or are you a govt lickspittle and too scared to attack the ANC directly? There is lots to be debated about xenophobia but not by mixing up the DA, SA and the world in insulting, childish metaphors.
Please tl – try improve standards; not lower them.
Well, now we know who you plan NOT to vote for.
You may not have meant to, but you have just given me reason to scream with laughter. Thanks!
There have been stories late this week about both west Africa and east Africa forming economic blocs. Their people don’t seem to mind inter-relating. Can you imagine the performance here if just a few more of other nationalities were allowed in the poach the precious workers’ jobs? I suspect the DA is just trying to spare lives.
i agree – but once the workers are getting paid less in order that the retail prices can be reduced… there will be a whole different kind of consumer activism on the pavements…
… and did anyone see the irony of Mrs Yengeni criticising the labour brokers (person A) because they derived revenue from the provision of services by one person (person B) to another (person C)… and i was just thinking… if A was the chief whip of the ANC, if B was a European arms supplier and if C was the south african people… then such facilitation fees would be acceptable… Mrs Yengeni?
but if youre not part of the branded gentry then, labour brokers are haraam… interesting – i also condemn labour brokers – that is people who artificially impose themselves between worker and employer and drive up the wage rate and thus the CPI, while deriving income for themselves in the process… yes Labour Brokers fit this description, but strangely enough so do all of the trade unions…
its amazing what people will do and say to hide the losses that the trade unions’ pension funds have suffered over the last 10 years…
@avishkar there seemed to be only one consistent thread in your blog and that thread emotionally trashes the DA. Such emotional trashing is not worthy of further comment.
The so-called reasoning and foaming-mouth anti-DA twit has now become the laughing stock with his defense of indefensible politics.
????
fact… the DA IS BOUND to support an open integrated SADC, SACU and SACMA/MMA – saying that the ZIM borders are porous is hardly a legitimate DA position – and the DA is bound to support wage rate flexibility and to oppose minimum wage rates
???
but i note the trend on TL – slate the DA and people call u names, slate the ANC and the teacups rattle in support… shame.
and for the record it is deputy shadow-minister not shadow deputy minister.
…”now… where is the move to formalise the creation of the shadow-cabinet under the leader of the official opposition, and to create specific job functions/designations of shadow-minister and deputy shadow-minister? given that they shud have the same status and wage rate as the chairpersons of portfolio committees… “…
from, Avishkar Govender (C) 2002, from Opposition Spokespeople to Alternate Government to Shadow Cabinet – Improving transparency and accountability through increased public choice.
I have to ask if you have any understanding what implications the opening of borders has on a countries economy and infrastructure. To have so many millions of illegal immigrants and let me be very clear non tax paying residents. The very fabric of our society can not sustain these people. The additional needs of water, electricity, sewage, social welfare and healthcare absolutely can not be sustained. At least in Europe there are well managed governments and strict policies between governments. Residents no matter what their nationality have to be registered so that cross border contribution and payments can be made for your own citizens. This will never happen in Africa.
I did not see the interview to which you refer but assume you refer to David Maynier.
Now, there is a great politician in the making and on the rise, and I use the word “politician” in the nicest possible sense. He is a truly good man voicing his views and trying to make SA a better society, which is more than you appear to be doing.
You are just a naysayer
@Aviskar
“Of course the xenophobic twit from the DA knows nothing, because he evidently doesn’t understand that Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia are all places were the South African rand is accepted as currency,”
You have obviously not been to Botswana where you would have a very hard time using Rands to purchase goods. Our currency, the Pula is not of equal value to the Rand. It is usually stronger than the Rand by anywhere up to 40%. Batswana would never allow you to use a considerably weaker Rand to shop here. We do not accept any other currencies, be it Euro’s, dollars or Rands. Ours is a strong economy with a strong currency underpinned by a stable, trusted and respected government. It helps to get your facts straight before making embarrasing and sweeping statements which are untrue. Need I say more?
Avishkar you are such a treasure! One of the last true intellectuals and thoughtleaders.
You are right that the DA is primarily concerned about white interests and now they are worried because the majority of the African population in the Cape are foreigners (local Africans having long flown the nest).
On the other hand I do think that the DA does have good intentions- Zille, for instance, seems to be genuinely concerned about the poor (of late). The DA does try hard to help with the unemployement problem (here and there). I think what the DA minister was probably trying to do was pander to 9what he consideres to be) popular sentiments among blacks- that the majority of local blacks do not want African foreign national to come down here in droves-and in this way he might have been trying to garner some black votes. this is not the most inspired strategy but it works, sadly. The DA has been neglecting their African electorate 9and potential electorate) perhaps to punish them for not having voted for them in substantial numbers but now they are trying to do all they can to, well, garner more black support so they can do better in the next election.
I wonder who implanted this barbaric item to the minds of some South Africans. Can’t they think that there are other South Africans living to other countries.
In an ideal world there would be good reason for people of different countries to move either way. If enough South Africans are not keen to work in Zimbabwe and the other SADEC countries, that should tell you something. Because we struggle to export ar profit off the continent (thinking particularly about foreign subsidised agriculture), I believe our best marketplace is on this continent, but it is true that South Africa cannot afford to see her own economy threatened because it is propping up all of those around us. This is something that the poor seem to have worked out, despite their basic understanding that it is only jobs that are at risk. In fact, it could become far more…and we have a lot to lose. Particularly to the Chinese. It used to be to the Russians, hmmmmmmm…
In my opinion, the issue of Xenophobia remains closely linked to both the culture of blame and entitlement. People do not want to take responsibility and hence, should something go wrong, someone is to blame – full stop.
It really never occurs to the people on the ground that ‘their’ jobs are really not theirs, but the entreprenaurial efforts of some people, who by the way, may not happen to be indegenous South Africans themselves, and who also happen to be motivated, to a larger extent, by profits.
In the long term, these business people will drift away from locations where its difficult to do business, towards places where it is percieved relatively cheaper to do business.
We have already seen this with most technology companies prefering to outsource their operations to countries like Taiwan, India, China etc, where labour productivity is percived to be higher relative to cost.
What is sad about our South African situation is that most of our politicians are awre of this fact, but instead of educating the general populace about the dangers of their behaviour, politicians actually ride on this hysteria and exploit it.
@Alan, zimbabweans accept rands as currency from other zimbabweans in botswana