The African National Congress’ policy conference kicked off in Johannesburg this week. Its intellectual equivalent of mud wrestling was over a truckload of documents analysing party organisational renewal, nationalisation, job creation, investment and land redistribution.
There was also President Jacob Zuma’s catchily titled but ponderously composed Second Transition centrepiece of policy proposals, which is his personal manifesto for a second term masquerading as deep thought. His deputy and potential rival Kgalema Motlanthe cruelly dismissed it in passing as as ‘a smattering of Marxist of jargon’, basically turgid and conceptually inadequate. Worryingly for Zuma, many of the delegates agreed.
Nowhere among all this earnest introspection, however, was there anything at all about book burning. For this was the illuminating juxtaposition. While ANC delegates lined up to flex their mental muscles to shape South Africa’s future, just a few hundred kilometres north outside Polokwane, the future of another generation was going up in flames. Literally.
Thousands of never-distributed school textbooks were being shredded and incinerated in Limpopo, where 5 000 schools had still not received their 2012 curriculum textbooks six months into the academic year. The books, many new and in plastic shrinkwrap, included volumes in English, Pedi and Afrikaans for maths, science and economics, for Aids education, as well as piles of poetry and plays.
Among those deemed ‘unusable’ because of curriculum changes, even as library reference works, were Shakespeare’s Macbeth and a biography of Nelson Mandela. The Basic Education ministry was meanwhile scrambling to meet a second court-ordered deadline for all outstanding textbook deliveries in the province.
It is disconcerting that education officials in an education ministry believe that no book is somehow preferable to a slightly dated version. It is pathetic that officials in Limpopo and possibly the Eastern Cape – the other province where civil society NGOs have humiliated the Basic Education ministry with due performance on delivery court orders and where the national ministry has taken over the failed provincial departments – are so slow to distribute textbooks that syllabus changes render them ‘unusable’.
While there is little common sense in continually changing syllabi and the having to pulp the textbooks, there might be commercial sense. EduSolutions, a company managed, according to Beeld, by senior former government officials, held the R700m annual tender for Limpopo’s school textbooks. Presumably, the more books scrapped, the more they have to produce.
This week EduSolutions, which was fired by Limpopo’s education administrator a few months back, lost a court application to be reinstated. It boasts that it already manages ‘the entire supply chain’ for public schools in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and says it will sue for damages.
It emerged in court that EduSolutions – the company motto is ‘one hand washes the other’ and its website chronicles its ties with Zuma and his foundations – was one of 23 tenderers for the Limpopo contract. It won when the other 22 were all disqualified without reasons being given. Criminal investigations are under way.
None of this is particularly unusual. There can scarcely be anyone left in the country who will be surprised at what is just another example of the most inept and corrupt administration that South Africans have yet had to endure. And we thought the Nats were incompetent wankers…
What is notable, though, is how the debacle reflects the poison of ignorance that spreads when education fails. The ANC is obsessed with theory, with jargon, with elaborate Marxist constructs. As if policy will miraculously translate into progress.
Rather get the textbooks to schools and teachers into classes. More of a challenge than all the airy-fairy cerebral prancing at the conference, but ultimately more effective.
The final, half-baked, response from the ANC Youth League says it all. ‘We demand that all be given the obligatory pass as the situation is stimulated by the government itself. The lack of support materials … comes with a lot of misfortunes to learners.’ The SA Democratic Teachers Union response is similarly crass and ill-considered. The only issue to their minds is that if their members have to work extra hours in order that learners can catch up, overtime pay is non negotiable, failing which they will strike.
The ANC can have as many policy conferences as it wishes. None will make up for the present lacuna in leadership.
Eish!
The old system was that Principals got allocated a sum to buy books for the year. It was never enough so second hand books were also used – traded in every year at the School’s Book Exchange.
The only thing wrong with that system appears to be that there were no tenders involved, so no profit for pals.
While Nero fiddled ….
…. or while Zuma fiddled ?
Wonderfully well worded: “policy proposals, which is his personal manifesto for a second term masquerading as deep thought.
… the future of another generation was going up in flames. Literally”
It makes one’s blood boil – and run cold – at the same time.
The entire textbook debacle is a storm in a teacup fabricated by the DA using the legal shenanigans for political grandstanding. No other democracy in the world has ever experienced such an attach on the Education Minister!!
Firstly, the entire “book burning” label is a shameful gutter politics fabricated by the usual suspects to spread FEAR , like during the Christian crusades where entire libraries were torched by the crusading armies. Just like the rabid DA supporters labelled our Protection of State Information Bill the “Secrecy Bill”
Secondly, our Minster of Education has repeated asked these “children advocacy” groups, actually DA sidekicks, to settle this through negotiation rather than using our court system. But they stubbornly refuse to because it suits their political objective to portray the government as “bungling idiots”. This is why the DA is not a legitimate opposition party.
Thirdly, most good teachers will tell you that most of these textbooks aren’t even needed for our kids to get a good education!!!
This entire blog deflects from the single-most important agreement that the conference has achieved – agreeing that land reform must include expropriation with compensation to undo the grand theft of land under apartheid. http://southafricana.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-arc-of-history-bends-towards-land.html No Constitutional amendments needed nogal – amazing eh? LOL
Well, when my eyes followed the news camera that swept the crowded conference venue , during Zuma’s closing address, my heart sank. This bunch of giggling, bored, sleeping people did not impress me . They determine our future path the country is set to follow. No , it is totally believable when seeing the calibre of person responsible for setting policy, that books are burnt, teachers strike, education is neglected. The young are only been modeled in the image of our great uneducated and ignorant president .
I think you should take into account that in the last election half the electorate did not vote – which means that the ANC really only got 1/3 of the vote!
Totally unlike the 1994 election when the percentage poll was very high.
Notice Harris manages to refutes nothing and makes claims without evidence.
Firstly, he somehow manages to connect criticism of textbook burning…with crusaders burning books during the crusades. Wait, what? How does this make any sense?
Secondly, as is his usual intellectually dishonest tactic, any organisations that criticises government are labelled “DA sidekicks”. Zero evidence to back this up. Nothing.
Thirdly, he tells us “most of these textbooks aren’t even needed for our kids to get a good education!!!” On what grounds does he justify this statement? None, he just resorts to abusing exclamation marks.
“No Constitutional amendments needed nogal”
Haven’t I told you hundred times that the property clause allows more radical land reform? But you just kept misrepresenting what it said. Funny you don’t criticise the ANC for sticking with an ineffective policy that was never required by the Constitution. Oh wait, I forgot, you are a propaganda troll that has nothing of substance to say and will blindly defend the ANC.
Ohhh….Harris…..we used to have horses with blinkers on to keep them quiet in busy traffic.
Where did you get yours???
Apologies for kicking the man and not the ball. I leave it to the referee to give me a yellow card
@Reducto
Maybe I should explain my point s l o w l y again.
William uses the term “book burning” – an age old tactic used to instill the fear of God into believers. This scare tactic is also used by the US Republican neocons regularly e.g. spreading fear by claiming that Obama’s healthcare plan calls for “death panels”! So, William’s tactics help to sow fear and division so that the minority white tribal DA can divide and rule like in the WCape.
I still maintain that good teachers don’t textbooks. However, I do agree good teachers are the exception. I’ll also admit that our Education Minister has dropped the ball by not delivering textbooks in a reasonable timeframe. However the way the usual suspects exploit and hype this issue without following due process or even taking the time to speak to each other as human beings, is SHAMEFUL and speaks volumes of the deep racial divisions in our society.
Oh, and thanks for correcting me on the point that expropriation does not require a Constitutional amendment after all…I was sweating there for a while, phew!
@Harris: Maybe textbooks aren’t needed for certain courses in a university setting, where students have access to a well stocked library and online resources. However, to say a good teacher can overcome a lack of textbooks in a school setting is baffling. Unless it is an incredibly small class, which is not the case here, textbooks will be vital to facilitating learning.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Students lacking textbooks six months into the school year is the time for court action to force the relevant department to fix the problem not negotiation.
While rambling on about the Republicans, you try deflect from the fact books that are needed were burnt.
@Dave Harris
Maybe I should explain my point s-l-o-w-l-y as well:
The ANC maintains the youth is about to burst into a ball of flame because it is so neglected, but everything the ANC omits to do to make the lot of the youth more bearable points to the inference that that is what the ANC wants to happen.
This could be a bad miscalculation, because our youth may be uneducated, but they are not all stupid. Whether all kids want to read all books available, available they should be. And in 18 years, quite a collection (or number of collections) could have been built up.
And let’s face fact, anyone would need an IQ well below average to believe that the non-delivery of text books can be blamed on anyone other than the ANC. So hang on, until its chickens come home to roost. And ask those kids without text books whether they think this is a storm in a teacup.
Expropriation in the Constitution can not be without compensation or payment of fair value and must be for state purposes, which do not include for housing or farming.
I guess the ANC is going to try and get the Constitutional Court to re-interprete that.
@ Dave Harrris, Once again I must agree with you when you say: “The government should not be portrayed as bungling idiots.”
You are right. This is a complete understatement:
The government are corrupt, conniving, lying, thieving, inept and lazy bungling idiots – a disgrace to the people of South Africa -.and the laughing stock of the world.
Otherwise you have surpassed even yourself:
Despite your inevitable non-factual, twisted, biased motivers and distortions, your attempt to bend and defend this disgusting ANC episode from their record of abominable corruption (even by your grudging ‘admission’ that the Minister ‘dropped the ball’) is in itself a disgrace.
The ANC now stands for Arrogance, Corruption and Nepotism – and they prove it over and over again.
It is not the ANC of Nelson Mandela. – they have simply hijacked the acronym.
Today the ANC is the ruling cANCer of this country.
Those who blindly support them, will have a debt to pay to society, their children and the future of this country.
“EduSolutions – the company motto is ‘one hand washes the other”. Shouldn’t that be ‘one back that scratches the other’?
As usual in these columns, there is a wealth of opinion regarding policy and ‘mechanisms and structures’. And as usual the television screens show packed halls of chanting, singing and dancing ‘conference delegates’.
And as usual no-one refers to the elephant, or rather dinosaur, in the room. The fact that the ANC does not possess the intellectual capital to run a country and hides this fact with rabble-rousing rhetoric.
The other fact is that South Africa is swiftly being overtaken in world trade by countries like China, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria et al …. who realize that the only way to create ‘a better life for all’ is through concerted hard work, quality education and governance with integrity.
Let me point out that the 1913 Land Act claims have been paid out -95 percent of them, and the remaining 5 percent are disputed and probably fraudulent.
This has NOTHING to do with the 1913 Land Act, but EVERYTHING to do with the ANC ignoring the Homeland problem for 18 years.
Also that far from buying land, the ANC has been selling land for 18 years – all the state forests, municipal, regional and state and parastatal land. Imagine where Canada would be if they had sold their state forests?
Plus that Sol Plaatjies was right that “the South African Native” lost land – but probably 20 percent at the most of the blacks had white South Africa as “the land of their birth” – for the vast majority of them “the land of their birth” was a tribal Homeland.
AND if South Africa is to be returned to “the indigeneous people” all the land would have to be returned to the Browns, since both Black and White are colonisers – and ,in fact, the largest tribe, the Zulus, arrived in the North of the country in the same century that the Dutch arrived in the South.
@dave
“to settle this through negotiation rather than using our court system” – the department is impeding the kids’ constitutional rights, and you say ‘let’s negotiate’? Lol.
As I understand, no land can be expropriated without compensation. Market value must be compensated according to constitution. The difference will be that farmers cannot merely name their price.
Also, the willing buyer/seller concept was scrapped by Mbeki’s team, yet it was still discussed last week. Does nobody take minutes at these meetings? Lol
Harris: The Minister of education “dropped the ball”!
How very quaint and colonial of you to say so Dave harris.
She dropped the ball. Quite. She dropped the ball darlings. Give her a break WSM will you? Team Angie EduSolutions is in fact a jolly good team old chap.
LOL!!!
@Reducto
Late delivery of textbooks is not the end of the world! Why does the DA and their cohorts use the court system and create hysteria about such an oversight?
@MLH
But isn’t it exactly the DA and their cohorts in the media that created this hysteria in the first place? Our youth are about to burst into a ball of flame because of late textbooks!!!
@Charlotte
I can’t understand where this hate comes from in calling the ANC a “cancer”? Its really this brand of racism that’s really the festering cancer in our society. That racism causes people to resort to using the legal shenanigans instead of speaking to each other like human beings to each other to resolve simple issues like late delivery of textbooks.
@Max
Isn’t “dropped the ball” American?
Your attempt a sarcasm is oh so quaint but so misdirected! LOL?
@Graham
Sorry to rain on your parade, but compensation WITHOUT expropriation of land obtained illegally IS allowed under our Constitution!
Yes, not only were copious notes taken but the stopwatch was started…tick-tock, economic liberation in our lifetime remember?
@Harris: We aren’t talking about late delivery by days, but by half the academic year! How can you even dispute the impact that would have on a child’s education?
And again, you are resorting to your intellectually dishonest tactic of associating any organisation that takes on government with the DA. The organisation that brought the court action, Section 27, is a good faith organisation with partnerships with the TAC, Students for Law and Social Justice, Equal Education etc: http://www.section27.org.za/partners/
Instead you attempt to smear this organisation as a “DA cohort” with ZERO EVIDENCE! Have you no shame?
Actually the ANC never tried the “willing buyer/willing seller” in the first place – either because they always intended to steal the land eventually anyhow, or because they thought that jobs would pour in and land would not be needed.
A few years ago Patrick Craven agreed with me on SAFM that Trevor Manuel’s budget of R2 billion a year (out of R500-R799 billion)was never enough to buy the land they said they were trying to buy anyhow, but his explanation was that they did not want only to buy what others wanted to sell (which is about 16 percent of the land every year) because they did not want white homelands where blacks had not bought land.
So there you have it in a nutshell, and from the horse’s mouth. This is about forced intergration, not land.
Browns can’t have a Homeland in the Western Cape, Whites can’t have Homelands, but ALL the Black Homelands must stay pristine Black under tribal chiefs?
Once again, he attempts to distort and twist it.
With his well-deserved reputation as the most prolific anti-white racist troll one could even imagine, the greatest irony is Dave Harris talking about racism!!
Referring to the government as ‘the ruling party cANCer’ (which it is) points purely at a POLITICAL PARTY whose only knowledge of running a country, is into the ground.
It does not mention race, nor has anything to do with race:
There are many black people who do NOT support the ANC (in fact, more and more); as there are many black people active in the DA today or who support other opposition parties.
@ Dave H. … S-l-o-w-l-y, s- l-o-w-l-y …now, so that it will sink in: When one criticises the ANC., it is a political party that is being criticised. Not a race.
Don’t muddle it up with your own rabid anti-white racism.
‘Late delivery of textbooks is not the end of the world’
Six months is not late, it is a bridge too far.
@Dave: “Late delivery of textbooks is not the end of the world!” You might be right. The quality of education and some of the teachers and some of the schools in many places, might not need textbooks.
The ANC might not even need educated voters.
” Dave Harris #
@MLH
“But isn’t it exactly the DA and their cohorts in the media that created this hysteria in the first place? Our youth are about to burst into a ball of flame because of late textbooks!!!”
Exactly what we need to destroy the old text books. You hit the nail on the head.
@Charlotte
“I can’t understand where this hate comes from in calling the ANC a “cancer”? Its really this brand of racism that’s really the festering cancer in our society.”
FYI, cancer is not a race related disease. But often related to inhaling smoke. Where there is smoke, there is fire!!
Maybe the youth has already burst into flames, hence the smoke which could have caused the cancer.
Maybe you are confusing cause and effect in this case. But…who cares….as long as the ANC has consensus on how the planing document is called all will be safe and prosperous for the next 100 years of ANC rule.
@ Phew D Harris. This was over the top even for an agent provocateur.
The only people who still refer to “TEACHERS” the way you did are ignorant people who don’t know that the ANC eliminated them 18 years ago as an integral part of the new education policy [ with which i have no problem apart from the fact that it is generally not yet working but as a revolutionary collaborator i accept that we may have to sacrifice five to ten generations of LEARNERS before people get the message that they are there to learn...].
Since you appear ignorant let me update you on a complex and evolving experiment.
Firstly schoolchildren are now called LEARNERs because that is their task:.. They are required to LEARN: at between six and seven levels of cognition, of which the KNOWLEDGE contained in the textbook is only level one. An intimate understanding of it would only earn a ‘mark’ of 25% tops. [In 'your' day an intimate understanding of the textbook would have given 100%. That is the past.]
Our function as ‘classroom learning mediators’ is to enable the achievement of levels 2-7 progressively… in order to achieve a satisfactory spread of results across the l .
seven assessed levels in G12 [and at tertiary]. Textbooks only cover level ONE!
The system does not allow time to cover level one in class that’s why they are LEARNERS. The timetable is allocated for levels 2-7… Without textbooks no
LEARNING beyond elementary can occur… so the kids are programmed…
@GSM, with this conference, ANC has once again proved its mettle as a liberation movement and it is good that you and et al have taken so much interest in this momentous gathering. Not only did you have the opportunity, to engage with the policy documents, a priviledge accorded to non-members. What is heartening is that these non-members, without any experience in revolutionary or progressive thinking, can get an insight into something which must really is mind-blowing. No other revolutionary movement does this especially before conference convenes. Another benchmark! Insodoing, noting all this interest, one would really want engagement from society as a whole. This engagement (one would expect) would be underpinned by vibrant, deep, intellectual thought. Hence it brings me to the question GSM, what is the relevance of the Limpopo education non-delivery especially to the conference? I ask this question simply becos education is a govt responsibility and surely we should rely on the govt processes to deal with this issue.Of course there will be consequences. Personally for me, this was a set-up, Smacks of a frame. The usual suspects (wow). Especially to co-incide with the conference. Not only was the analysis by outsiders very poor. The idiocy and mediocracy was shocking. I think that we should be exposed to the edu manipulation and ”sources” should be revealed so that normal thinking Afrcans can see what we are dealing with. Question, can you articulate any of policy…
We miss the point again! The book burning saga in Limpopo, my home province, is just a symptom of how our entire education system is broke. We are being told that the backside of a donkey is education.
Painfully, embedded individuals such as Dave Harris, have succeeded in convincing incompetents that they are doing a good job.
The trouble is that the late-textbooks affair was not caused by EduSolutions (which Saunderson-Meyer admits was kept out of the loop by the administrators running the Limpopo Education Department). Nor was it caused by Angie Motshekga. It was caused by the unbelievably incompetent administration installed by central government in the Limpopo Education Department, who repeatedly blocked the purchase of books (in part because central government was playing musical chairs, sacking the person in charge every couple of months.
The actual people in charge of the problem are the Treasury. Who were also the people who cut the provincial budget and caused the problem in the first place. No wonder they can’t manage it effectively. But of course, at the back of it is Zuma’s desire to punish a province that doesn’t support him for a second term — and nobody’s daring to mention that.
@Dave
Agreed, but then only those people who illegally acquired land under the 1913 act, and still live there, will be affected. If the land has been sold, then the current owners must be compensated market value.
Regarding policy shift, the ANC have therefore not done much since 2007 (since scrapping of willing buyer/seller principle). Tick tock? Hope that stopwatch has Duracell batteries…
NO JOBS is a result of the wrong economic and labour policies – NOT anything to do with education.
There are NO JOBS for the educated as well as for the uneducated, for prisoners trying to rehabilitate, or young people trying to get into the job market.
The ideas of Lekota AND Nelson Mandela that eductaion gives you a job are over a century out of date.
Education does not even necessarily give you more income – there are plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, chefs earning more money than doctors or university professors, IF they work hard, have a work ethic, and establish a reputation.
BUT in the democracies of the West there are jobs both for the educated asnd skilled AND for the uneducated and unskilled. Because they do not have this communist ideal that all must earn the same – both the lazy and the hard working, both the criminal and the honest man!
@Tofolux. 2 short questions:
1. Who is GSM – and et al?
2. Would they have any idea what you are going on about?
The 1913 Land Act claims have been paid out -95 percent of them, and the remaining 5 percent are disputed and probably fraudulent.
This has NOTHING to do with the 1913 Land Act, but EVERYTHING to do with the ANC ignoring the Homeland problem for 18 years.
And the wrong economic and labour policies which discourage investment and the establishment of new businesses.
And the totally corrupt tenderpreneurship system of getting profit to pals to do the jobs done by the Civil Service, municipalities, hospitals and Public Works before.
PLAYING WITH FIRE …
and with books
and with education
and with children
and with their future
and with people
and with populations
and with tax-payer’s money
so that with all their dirty dealings
the ANC government always has plenty of money to burn
- but never get their fingers burned
and that, despite their performing sluggishly
they can play happily
and spend lavishly
and squander selfishly
and waste indiscriminately.
while the dreams of thousands of learners
go up in smoke …
After the great conference the ANCYL demanded that the disempowered learners be given a mark of 70% because of the mess made by government in not delivering books.
This opened my eyes to what the real qualifications are in South Africa to meet ANC requirements. MARKS are all that count, not education. A whittled down martic certificate is now worth 35% which is a huge failure of 65% of the work is unknown. The ANC cares not because they can brag of an increase in the pass rate but don’t worry about the decrease in the the education rate. These poor learners now have to go into the next grade and they will all fail even though they have 70% pass marks. From the president down it is MARKS that count, not education, ability, experience or qualifications. To be a minister you need:-
1. 15 marks for time served in the ANC.
2. 15 marks for bowing down to Zuma
3. 15 marks for turning a blind eye to corruption
4. 15 marks for being a family member
5. 10 marks for being a crony of the president or other high official
6. 10 marks for having served time in jail
7. 10 marks for having evidence that needs to be covered up and
8. 10 marks for your song and dance abilities.
As can be seen from this a mark/score of 70 or 80% is easy to obtain so your next stop is a government post where your marks count and the door to the treasury is open wide for you.
A 70% mark according to the ANCYL and the ANC is all you need, but this does not relate to anything in the real world.
I was reading The Herald (7 July 2011) and came across an interesting little article. It was how JZ and S. Maphumulo were in exile in Swaziland together and they made each other a promise: If one was to die the other would look after his family. All very noble that. Then I read further and how there was a lavish ceremony where a house was going to be handed over to the deceased comrades’ family. The house was built and paid for by African Access Holdings which is the holding company for Edusolutions.
That does not sound too bad but then I thought a bit more about it and realised this coincided with Edusolutions monopolistic rise in book/textbook supply. Also, African Access Holding and its subsidiaries have a strong KZN presence (I looked at their website!) and lastly, here I might be naive, but is it not wrong for a company to fulfill a personal obligation of our president?
Each one by itself is not too bad but all together makes one wonder…
There is no book that can be rendered useless such that it must be shredded. Government needs to build libraries in schools and community halls in order to keep a few copies of the old text books for each year. There must be no community hall without a library. The old ones can be donated to deserving African schools via the Gift of the Givers. Books are very important to mankind and knowledge is power. That is why European fascists came to Africa to steal or destroy any trace of the tomes that contained knowledge of mathematics and science in particular. There is ample material to back up such claims.
I see that latest Zapiro cartoon satirises the R2 billion allegedly to be spent on a plane for Zuma and his deputy.
R2 billion a year was ALL that was allocated in Trevor Manuel’s budget to buy land for about a decade, and half of that was spent on administration.
As I have pointed out before, including on the radio, the ANC has only been PRETENDING to buy land for farming.
@Chaka Lemba – thank you, you said exactly what I was thinking!
it’s hard to believe that we don’t just all ignore DH and Tofolux – they are the definition of internet trolls. They have nothing useful to add to any discussion, and what they do say is such a load of rubbish that I find it easy to ignore. Their only use for me is that they give me a certain amount of amusement each week.
@blogroid
Textbooks are not meant to “program” kids. Your apartheid mindset of “programming” kids is the underlying cause of the racism, violence and corruption we see in our divided society today!
@Graham
“only those people who illegally acquired land under the 1913 act, and still live there, will be affected. If the land has been sold, then the current owners must be compensated market value.”
Not true, in fact tell us what the law is for the receiver of stolen property.
“Hope that stopwatch has Duracell batteries…”
Not, sure if you quite get that, as beneficiaries of apartheid, time is not on the side. The DA’s attempts at trying to slow down land reform using legal shenanigans is short sighted and destined to fail – just like apartheid did.
@Una
Agreed. Sometimes the old must be destroyed to make space for the new. The burning/shredding/destruction of some of those old textbooks that preach the views of those eurocentric fascists who spread false values and misinformation through their versions of history etc. , sometimes is the only answer.
Harris it is shameful to trivialize the non-delivery and wasteful unnecesary burning of books that are intended for the needs of some of the most neglected and educationally disadvantaged children in the world. You call it “a storm in a teacup”, unfortunately the “minister dropped the ball”, you say. Your cliches serve to trivialize what is in fact very real criminal delinquency and neglect on the part of those responsible. It’s truly shameful. Equally shameful is the way you label as racist anyone who dares think critically about the behaviour of the ANC. People become in your eyes, white supremacists, DA-supporting white tribalists, boas and so on. These are stock responses. They are your hardened fixed ideas that say so much more about your own binary adolescent style of thinking and your own rigid attitudes than they do about the critical ideas and observations you attack. Your ideas would be hilarious if they weren’t so appalling and harmful to the real needs of real children.
@daveharris and @tofolux
Nothing like a good story getting in the way of the facts.
The textbook debacle has been lead by Section 27. A NGO with no political bias. Check their website, and you will be surprised by the talent they have at their disposal. Much of that talent is from previously disadvantaged groups who still had textbooks in school.
Why do neither of you deal with the issue of Edusolutions. This is clearly the problematic area. This has nothing to do with the DA. The awarding of this lucrative tender needs to be fully investigated. This is not a mere OVERSIGHT!!!!
Kids without books and teachers, patients without doctors and mecication……these are not figments of peoples imaginations. These are realities that the ANC simply cannot deal with.
You have forgotten that we USED TO have good black teachers, policeman and nurses in South Africa – before the 1985-1999 Black Civil War in the Townships.
Black Civil Servants were targetted and killed by the “liberation” method so praised by Winnie Mandela of “matches and necklaces”. They were labelled “sell outs” for working for the State, AND for being mainly Christian Democrats oposed to Communism. Some of the facts are in the book “People’s War”.
Both Mandela and Tutu refused Buthelezi’s requests for those 20,000 deaths ALSO to be investigated by the TRC.
“The Victors Write History” (Winston Churchill) is particularly true of a Civil War.
It is only now, 60 years later, that the true facts of the Spanish Civil War are being uncovered.
And still today Americans don’t realise that Lincoln “freed the slaves” without compensation after the American Civil War to bankrupt the South.
@Dave
The constitution only refers to those who acquired land illegally in 1913 (even those people are entitled to comparable redress).
If you bought the property afterwards, you are then protected under the constitution (the transaction is legally secure) and must receive market value upon expropriation.
Haha, only saw your earlier comment now – “but compensation WITHOUT expropriation of land obtained illegally IS allowed”. YAY get paid AND keep the land! Double bonus!
” The DA’s attempts at trying to slow down land reform using legal shenanigans is short sighted and destined to fail”. I am all for land reform, and surely with the Constitution on government’s side, this could be sped up regardless?
@Harris and Graham: The history of the acquisition of the property and the market price are factors taken into consideration in determining an amount of compensation that is just an equitable. Thus Graham is wrong when he says that the exact market value must be paid, but Harris is wrong when he says land can always be expropriated without compensation when its initial acquisition was illegal.
It would not be “just and equitable” to expropriate without compensation and punish someone who may be the fourth or fifth owner of the property in question for the wrongs of the person who first acquired it. You can’t just leave someone (and his/her dependents) destitute like that. The compensation will be vital to help set themselves up with an alternative means of earning a living. However, this compensation does not have to be market value.
Kaptein Harris and Toffee Whatsaname are the living proof that the ANC is failing abjectly, for it is only those failing so dismally who have need to behave as they do: blame others (one does not blame others for one’s successes), make extravagant and laughable claims (one does not have to, achievements are obvious for all to see), deflect from the issues (one is quite happy to talk about issues of success), turn everything into a race issue (successful people are comfortable in their skins) etc. etc. etc. Everything they say is so obviously in desperate defence of failure, definitely not in content affirmation of success.
Thanks Reducto, misunderstood that.
@dave harris
The textbook issue is not a ‘storm in a teacup’ we have kids who went for over half a year without the necessary means to study. That’s a tragedy and it’s unfortunate that the issue has been politicised, but this is the world we live in. I think it’s important that we’re careful to maintain perspective when defending our chosen parties and ideologies.
I read your blog and it makes sense.
The question, to my mind is not whether land restitution, etc is needed/necessary, the question is can we trust our current government to carry this out without the self-enrichment and maladministration that seems to have infected all areas of governance?
“You can fool some of the people all of the time. And you can fool all of the people all of the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time” … except apparently in the case of ANC supporters:
Like Zapiro’s cartoon of Zuma as the emperor in his non-existent ‘new clothes’, ANC supporters continue to believe anything (i.e. that Zuma is beautifully dressed or that the ANC is not lying to them) – simply because they blindly follow what they’re told to think.
How will they explain this to their children one day ?
@Max. Well put. It is incredibly shameful to trivialise the non-delivery of textbooks to schools, what with the already disgraceful matric results across the country. This only further perpetuates what is already, in my view, a crisis. Presumably Harris doesn’t think youth unemployment is already an issue? Harris, your comments are beyond embarrassing….
Despite all the comments about the policy conference, no one seems to have any serious challenges to any of the policy. The conclusion therefore must be that everyone agrees that the policies are good. The red herrings thrown are simply that, red herrings. And for some of us who have been exposed to the gevaars, once again we see the gevaars dominating the thoughts of others. But let me congratulate all on this forum, for agreeing and engaging with the policies. The least we can say, is that we are moving forward, despite the little irritating noises that will always be there. We are moving forward to a second transition.
@ Mabetoa
Your mature insight is commendable. You have hit the nail on the head. Except for the blog bit.
@ Harris and Tofolux. Ag shame man…… Keep on trying, maybe you’ll break through the veil of ignorance one day.