Research tells us that a disconcertingly large number of Americans fear the Illuminati, the Knights Templar and the Elders of Zion. These gullible souls swallow the air candy of the conspiracy theorists that such evil organisations are plotting global domination, although there’s no evidence that they even exist beyond the imagination of the likes of Dan Brown, author of the blockbuster Da Vince Code.
The Brits in turn plump for machinating Freemasons – an organisation that at least does exist – as having a sinister albeit waning influence within government, the judiciary and the police. And in South Africa we twisted at the hands of the Broederbond, which for almost 50 years did more to advance the interests of white, Afrikaner males against all comers, than a century of legislated affirmative action will ever be able to achieve for their black counterparts.
The real scourge when it comes to impending doom, however, is not a secret society. The most dangerous organisation, given the chaos and ignorance that it demonstrably has left in its wake over the past two decades, is the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu).
Jostling at the hoof heels of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is Sadtu, astride its dunce’s donkey, Ignorance. For while Death is inevitable, lack of education is the single most effective facilitator of War, Pestilence and Famine.
This week Sadtu cheerfully washed its hands of the appalling state of the country’s educational system, saying that its only priority is the interests of its members. It was reacting to a rebuke from Congress of SA Trade Unions’ general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who said that the federation had to account for the silence of teachers, which had made possible the recent debacle of Limpopo pupils suffering for months without schoolbooks.
Sadtu’s general secretary, Mugwena Maluleke, is technically correct. It is not the duty of a union to discipline its members. That is the responsibility of the employer, while the union’s job is to make sure that the procedures followed are fair.
Maluleke, however, is being disingenuous. Sadtu has a responsibility wider than bread-and-butter membership matters. Its members are employed specifically to advance the educational welfare of public school pupils and hence Sadtu is honour bound to assist them to achieve this.
Sadtu has instead perversely used its muscle to intimidate the government, to thwart necessary reforms and controls, and to pursue outcomes that damage the kids under its members care. The professionalism and commitment that is a critical component of an educator’s job is entirely absent from Sadtu’s way of operating.
Sadtu’s knee-jerk response to the absence of textbooks in Limpopo schools – unreported by its members but uncovered by educational NGOs – was to threaten a province-wide strike unless their members were paid for the extra work resulting from the education department’s catch-up plans. That’s the kind of bayoneting-the-wounded tactic at which Sadtu excels and with which it has stubbornly blocked every attempt at critical educational reform relating to teacher accountability, commitment or competence
According to government figures, a fifth of teachers in public schools do not show up for work on Mondays, rising to a third at the end of the month. In any given year, Sadtu is responsible for the lion’s share of strike and go-slow activity in the country.
As a result, SA performs near the bottom of every international marker for literacy and numeracy, including those for the African continent – a region not renowned for quality schooling. This despite SA spending R190 billion a year, a fifth of the national budget, on education.
The union’s ability to deploy more than a quarter of a million militants explains why the government is so poep-scared of it. Only counter-mobilisation by the 12 million pupils in state schools, backed by their more than 20 million parents, will likely curb Sadtu – Soweto 1976 for the new era, with a remastered motto, “no liberation without education”.
the story of the dog and the tail, who is wagging who?
Sadtu is known for having objected to inspectors visiting schools. Quality control?? What quality??
However, departments are not much better. In my village, Northern Cape, the head master of the High School, coming back from holiday was called up for a meeting in Kimberly (700 km East) on the first day of the term and away for three days. With a shortage of teachers….at least one class did not have supervision on the first three days of the term.
The headmaster of the primary school was also called away for 3 days. Same gap in supervision.
Good and inspiring start of the new term for both schools. Almost purposefull creating chaos by the Department.
And they are powerless to act because they are shackeled by their own labour laws. Oh, the irony…
Maluleke is right William! The problem is that government capitulated and allowed SADTU more rights in the name of them being stakeholders. SADTU has a immoral and suffocating stranglehold on the education of the African child, in particular, because of the abdication of responsibility by government. The employer should appoint the best suitable candidates to teaching and promotion posts in education. An unwritten rule exists for deployment of SADTU members to promotion posts in the vast majority of African schools? The strategy is to dominate SGB’s with their members and contemptuously manage the parents who should be the majority and pivotal decision makers in comradely appointments.
A people’s government should keep SADTU at bay by allowing them only the space to defend their members and not to become educational decision makers through stealth.
Government should implement and hold teachers accountable to the minimum standards as determined by the curriculum statements of each grade and discipline teachers who perform below these. The textbook saga in Limpopo should not be used as a blanket excuse for failure to achieve the minimum standard. Any teacher worth their salt would still achieve a decent pass rate because there are a myriad resources other than prescribed textbooks for a particular year which could have been used in the absence of textbooks. In any case they merrily collected their full salaries without teaching! A CLASS ACTION IS NEEDED!
To dismiss legitimate conspiracy theories which show how the 1% with their secret organizations, corporations, NGOs, various corporate structures, wield power and influence over the rest of society is to deny reality! But to now pin the blame of our problems now on trade unions shows your destructive neocon agenda, similar to some rabid US Republicans or UK Thatcherites that peddle their¨free markets¨ to serve the interests of the 1%.
Furthermore, the Broederbond has not disappeared but simply morphed into businesses that still largely control our media, economy and together with ex-colonial powers, secretly fund those NGOs to influence politics. Remember, the entire textbook debacle is a storm in a teacup manufactured by secretly funded NGOs, who together with the DA dominated media, aim to score political points on the eve of our next elections, to serve the interests of the 1%. Why is there no outcry when Afrikaans is used to keep schools white? Why is there no outcry when kids travel long distances to school? Why is there no outcry when even university graduates cannot find jobs???
To escape our economic oppression we need to focus on the real issues of land reform, affirmative action, nationalization and eradicating racism in our polarized society. William of course, tries to avoid these REAL issues as much as possible!
Dave, you are on a hiding to nothing and I sense a bit of self hate on your part, assuming you are white. Afrikaners have a right to this African bread language and a responsibility, with all wise South Africans, to protect and promote it just as much as all other indigenous languages. Surely, it has been advantaged in the past but today, like all others, it should be considered a national treasure and an asset worth preserving.
Conversely, you are an unscrupulous and shrewd material beneficiary of the current state of mediocrity. Possibly some consultant who tells the powers that be that The Emperor has beautiful clothes while you well know that he is naked. You remain relevant as long as the vast majority remains inadequately educated, unskilled and unemployable.
Blacks, in particular Africans, should not make the mistake of oppressing others as the Nationalist Party did because as a wise man once said: “To keep a man down, you have to remain in that position because once you let go he will get up and walk away.” In this instance it means that Black South Africans will not progress but remain in the same position, blissfully keeping down others.
It is your ilk that exploits the real fears, material conditions and painful past of the majority to keep them exactly in a state of poverty! Despite the past, the vast majority of white South Africans are a valuable asset which only wise leadership can harness to the benefit and eventual emancipation of the majority
hahaha kom Drivel Harris, please o dear please show proof how the Broederbond morphed into big business and your NGO theory.
Dave: “Furthermore, the Broederbond has not disappeared but simply morphed into businesses that still largely control our media, economy and together with ex-colonial powers, secretly fund those NGOs to influence politics. Remember, the entire textbook debacle is a storm in a teacup manufactured by secretly funded NGOs, who together with the DA dominated media, aim to score political points on the eve of our next elections, to serve the interests of the 1%. “
@”Dingleberry” Dave Harris
This is a classic – one of your best to date.
You have penned some beauts in your time, but this one is an absolute pearler – had me in stitches!
“Legitimate conspiracy theories” is an oxymoron – a contradiction in terms!
If they had any legitimacy, they would not be conspiracy theories.
As for the broederbond controlling our media, the largest media organisation by far in South Africa is the SABC, which is controlled by the ANC appointed SABC board.
Surely if this mythical 1% (“third force”?) was as secretive as you suggest, even a sleuth like yourself would not be able to identify them?
By the way, the only people that have the power to “control” our economy are those in control of monetary and fiscal policy (the setting of interest rates and inflation targets, and the collection of taxes and spending of tax money).
Last I heard only the ANC government had that power.
Perhaps you were playing “Monopoly” when you wrote your latest missive, DH?
Dave, go to jail, go directly to jail, and do not pass “Begin”.
Dear Dave, you keep on pumping out the same old stuff without a direct link to the subject on hand.
Please describe your version of “economic oppression” in todays world and in SA.
Please describe your ideal goal for “Land reform” and how to achieve this.
How does Affirmative action differs from racism in a country where the affirmative action benefits the majority.
How can SA become a non racial society as the governement support and enforces this AF and other racial based directives and policies.
We might just not understand these things all too well. Thanks
We may think that these textbooks were not delivered because of incompetence. It’s not incompetence. What if this was deliberate? What if education and upliftment of the poor is not a priority for government because an educated class will not vote for the incumbents currently running the country. So it’s to the benefit of the government to have a poor working class without education so that they can continue to remain in government and exploit the poor.
An educated class will have higher expectations of their government and the most important thing about the president chosen will be how competent he or she is, how honest he or she is not how well he can dance and sing.
Union-bashing is an easy thing to do, but it would be helpful if there were any evidence backing it up. SADTU certainly goes on strike, as is its right, to the advantage of its members and the disadvantage of scholars. Agreed, it should take its responsibilities seriously, and does not do so. However, SADTU is not responsible for the educational crisis; that is the fault of the government, and a great deal of that fault revolves around financial issues — most recently, the stealth GEAR which Gordhan and Zuma have imposed. If there’s not enough money to go round, you can hardly blame the teachers for wanting their salaries to get paid first.
What also bothers me is that the attacks on SADTU fit neatly into the broader anti-union, anti-worker campaign which is continually waged by big business.
Dave Harris, you are so funny (are you trying to be???)
Harris. Pray tell, what are you doing to eradicate racism? You regularly label people as beneficiaries of apartheid and other such labels. Perhaps you should practice what you preach?
In a Democracy teachers and nurses are Middle Class professinals; but since Communism recognises no Middle Class, only the “exploited” and “exploiter” we have the bizarre situation of “worker” teachers striking against “exploiter employer” who is the ANC state, Cosaut’s partner in the Alliance.
Our pre-1994 black teachers, nurses and policemen, were specifically targetted for killing as “sellout” by the Communist ANC in the People’s War of the townships.
They were mainly Christian Democrats, like the original ANC, and opposed to communism. Most of the Christian Churches were collecting for Bibles to be smuggled into Russia at that time.
With the exception of Bishop Tutu, who when asked about the fact that the ANC was communist, replied that he was not worried about communism because blacks were “too spiritual” to be communist. (Ref: “RabbleRouser for Peace”)
Which is no doubt why Mandela chose him to conduct the mis-named TRC.
I do not see why Mr William Saunderson-Meyer starts this article with generalising statements about conspiracy theorists. The topic of his article is a matter warranting deep and focussed deliberation, agreed, but the opening is a topic he must open on another day… and he will surely have many respondents such as Dave Harris and others like myself.
For Mr William Saunderson-Meyer to flippantly throw away the theories about the Illuminati, the Knights Templar and the Elders of Zion as figments of imaginations is ignorance in the biggest meaning of that word… ignorance. Some of us who have dabbled into the ‘conspiracy theoricies’ have had reason to pause and look around, and evidence is there to suggest that these theories may hold some truth in them.
According to ‘experts’ in conspiracy theories, one of the biggest tricks the so-called Illuminati have mastered is camouflage,… by denying their own existence… and by inference, Mr William Saunderson-Meyer places himself right in the middle of that ‘camouflage’ trick… and it will not be unreasonable to charge that he, Mr William Saunderson-Meyer, could be furthering those groups’ agendas by this and other such articles.
What’s your take on that, Mr Dave Harris?
I also have a conspiracy theory:
Dave Harris is secretly William Saunderson Meyer. They are the same person:
I know this because – in order for a blog to generate interest and response, it needs debate and controversy. A commentator needs a FOIL to kickstart debate, audience attention and engagement. Without the foil, interest would dwindle.
This is why WSM has invented an alter-ego called Dave Harris. He is pre-empting disagreement with his views by deploying an extremist antagonist twit-clown to appear to be trying to hijack the role of official blog opposition. In so doing, he garners much more support for his views and arguments than he would if there were no Dave Harris. Plus he gets a good laugh out of reading those who sincerely take Harris seriously.
The Knights Templers did exist, were persecuted by the Roman Catholics because of their Judeo Interpretation of Christ as the Jewish Messiah, and their remnants after they were massacred, fled to Scotland and took over the Freemason movement there.
The Roman Catholics then persecuted the Freemasons, and their leaders the Stewart Kings of Scotland. Eventually the papacy funded the Germans to take over the monarchy from the Stewarts, from which Germanic line the present Queen descends. Both the Papacy and the Anglican priesthood supported the Germans – both were opposed to the Steward/Freemason creed of freedom of religion.
@Max: I feel so sorry that you discovered my trick. I have had so much fun in being my own controversional alter ego.Please do not tell the others
)
@Max
re your Conspiracy Theory that ‘Dave Harris ‘ and William Saunderson-Meyer are one and the same: It actually makes perfect sense. (Look what people do for ratings.)
… A bit of a problem, though, if perhaps WSM gets muddled up with his secret name and ‘Dave Harris’ trashes the ANC instead of his alter ego!
In the meanwhile, Max, best laugh this week!
@”Comedy Club”
You think it’s funny. I say it’s obscene. It’s obscene that a beneficiary of apartheid should belittle by mockery, a stalwart of democracy, so relentlessly. It is indeed obscene – but not as obscene as the SADTU logo illustrated here. What I would like to know is who designed such an onanistic insult to democratic teachers of South Africa. Just because it is marginally more subtle than The Spear, does not make it any less of an affront to the dignity of teachers and indeed books (and people of the book) everywhere. One cannot be sure, but the visual evidence points to Brett Murray himself being the designer. The graphic style is very similar. This shows that Murray is indeed, and always was, a subversive counter-revolutionary. You mark my words.
Back to schooling: in any normal world, pupils complain to parents, who complain to teachers/unions, who complain to head teachers, who complain to provincial government, who complain to national government. If parents achieve nothing by doing this, they will begin to mutter to employers who will mutter to friends, who will sooner or later mutter to someone in the media or in opposition. And then the truth will out.
The fact that this utter lack of service delivery took seven months (it has also been said that text book non-delivery has been going on since at least 2005) does not convince me that anyone in Limpopo (and now the Eastern and Northern Capes) gives a damn about their own, or their children’s education.
We know that pre-1994, Bantu Education received strong criticism. What’s happened between then and now? Has the ANC so terrorised its own electorate that none will come forward pleading victimisation? Must everything be left to NGOs and opposition parties? Gee, SA, I thought you had more guts than that. Please start standing up for yourselves.
@ manquat
You’re right: “it’s to the benefit of the government to have a poor working class without education so that they can continue to remain in government and exploit the poor.”
In fact, S.Africa doesn’t need education at all: Why even bother with it?
Look how well Malema did: He had no education (didn’t even pass woodwork) and just for a few years standing and shouting and awarding illegal tenders (even though he was chucked out of the ANC) he made a fortune.
Look at ANC politicians. Expensive cars, clothes, homes, holidays – exorbitantly paid for doing no work (even if they knew how to do it – and able to steal the rest, and bugger the poor.)
Anyway, stupid voters go hand-in-hand (or hand-in-pocket) with ANC politicians.
So 3 cheers for SADTU (“astride it’s dunce’s donkey Ignorance) for ‘cheerfully washing its hands of the country’s educational system” and playing along so nicely with the ANC.
the Creator seems to be the only one with common sense here. SADTU is not responsible for the lacks of the DBoE. Its members are also its victims – just ask them about the constant policy changes and the policies contents since 1994 which they have been directed to follow regardless of their knowing better …. In deprived schools, they are to teach to overcrowded classrooms of disadvantaged children and expected to have results similar to those of much better off ex-Model C schools where most children at least come from functional homes…. They are also expected to play surrogate parents, social wellfare agents, etc. And they also are people, with their onw life and problems.
Please
S.A.D.T.U.
or
Shameful And Disgraceful Teachers Union
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
Hey there SADTU
Here’s looking at you
And at your disgusting irresponsibility too
Of course, you’re responsible for the mess – which ain’t nothing new
But when it comes to education, you haven’t a clue
As far as teaching our children is concerned
We’d like something new
And to you, SADTU
A great, big BOO
Dave Harris has achieved success again. He has turned a reasonable blog on Sadtu’s messing up our kids education into a slanging match about nothing. He says:’To escape our economic oppression we need to focus on the real issues of land reform, affirmative action, nationalization and eradicating racism in our polarized society. William of course, tries to avoid these REAL issues as much as possible!” No idiot, those with zero or poor education will never ever achieve economic freedom or enjoy the fruits of any ‘real issue’ being addressed. Please tell us where nationalisation has worked anywhere any time in the world???????
Brent
Teachers are either white collar Middle Class professionals belong to a professional organisation like nurses, doctors, architects, attorneys, engineers, accountants OR blue collar “workers”. They can’t be both.
I repeat – Communism has no Middle Class!
I am sorry but any profession needs quality control. Was it not SADTU who lobbied for the abolition of school inspectors? The consequences of this are what we have. Granted, there are dedicated teachers but there is a lot of rubbish that are interested in their cheque and that is it.
And yes, it is a consequence of Bantu education…but it could have been rectified in ten years by retraining, retrenching bad teachers and instilling vocational pride in the profession. But votes are more important!
Getting rid of the teacher training colleges was also a huge blunder. The problem colleges should have been transformed into centers of excellence. Universities are not the place to train practical teachers.
OBE was a train wreck.
Handing out tenders to dubious businesses is also a blunder. But heck, the shit follows the money and the education budget is the largest.
Stink after stink. What a mess! But heck, I’ll take 8/10…
Okay …. i’m sorry to interrupt this increasingly devoid and pointless diatribe, and return to certain key ideas that got lost here in translation.
Now writing here as a white working class, first level septuagenarian contemporary classroom learning outcomes mediator who “would not belong to any klub that would have me as a member.” [GMarx.]; and one who manages classroom enquiries into business matters, production systems, ethical business practice versus conflict of interest rulz, free market economics, dysfunctional economics … the broken nature of the fractional reserve multiplier, and, currently the economic argument for the atlantic slave trade et al… i have come to believe that anyone who has not spent at least a year in a modern south african high school school is so out of touch with what happens that it is scary.
So forget this word “Teacher”; that is not our purpose even though everybody thinks that is what it is that we do. Okay so maybe sometimes we… do: when it is for a gestalt purpose… otherwise our function is to mediate [and facilitate where necessary an environement in which knowledge can be discovered.
“We are not there to teach people to be as clever as their cellphones…”
Our job is to create knowledge workers for the knowledge economy our Pres’ spoke about a while back. Get the message… it’s real. It’s oh seven hundred in the morning and you’re ALL saying NO! Rubbish!: it’s 6 o clock last night..
Now the second part of my rebuttal to the argument’s key premise concerns the legality of what is described… since what you suggest hovers on hate speech, were i to take it seriously.
I may not cane a learner, or even touch one. To do so is criminal and unwelcome. Did i cane when it was de rigueur…? Yes. Did i enjoy it? No. Am i glad i don’t have to do it? Yes. Is the school learner permitted to hit me? No. I can, and have, on the rare post-revolution occasion when it occurred, had the learner ‘charged’.
The use of archaic language in a headline already determines that you are curiously unaware that we have moved into a world so different to any previous world; that the ‘schooling’ with which you are so familiar has become as obsolete as the BAntu Ed system, of earlier despisement [sic].
Nonetheless. Given that the Bard’s “reluctant ‘schoolboy’ creeping like snail unwillingly to school” is still alive and well and, being normal, it will create issues and difficulties… That is why we would beat them…[ and of course it worked well ... for the manual labour based economy that has characterised our world for all of time : until now. Do only what you're told. Don't think.]. Now that is exactly what we do want: THINK… And the resistance is legion.
At the top of THINKING is the age of knowledge and we are not good with knowledge: as we are discovering.
So you who still talk of TEACHERS discover… ironically… that you promote NO-THINK.
@ Lyndall: Communism has no “class” at all.
Lennon
Communism has no class – because all the “intellectuals” got thrown into labour camps in both Russia and China, including teachers and doctors and writers, as counter-revolutionaries!
THEN the Communist elite developed!
“Dave Harris” comments are so absurd, and so filled with genuine malice that they are both funny and grotesque. However some of the responses to them are genuinely funny, as malice takes itself so seriously that it has no counter to satire and humour.
“This week Sadtu cheerfully washed its hands of the appalling state of the country’s educational system, saying that its only priority is the interests of its members.” Well, that’s honest at least. A bit like a doctors forum saying ‘we don’t give a continental rat’s ass if our patients live or die, as long as our doctors earn a fortune, do no work and support us.” SA can forget about ever getting education right. It would be better to just close the education dept, give the entire education budget back to the citizens to spend on KFC and cellphones, and stop going through the whole meaningless charade.
@ Lyndall: My comment was intended as a pun.
Let’s have no complaints from parents whose children have not received text books due to the gross negligence of the Dept. of Education, the ANC and SADTU – and whose children have unsuccessfully had to face midyear exams,
- or from parents who swallow the Minister of Education’s outrageous excuses or Zuma’s lame platutudes in defending her.(He didin’t hesitate to award himself another huge salary hike though)
- or parents who accept the garbage of an improvement in the Matric pass rate -only because the actual pass mark dropped to 30% !
- or parents who are still prepared to even hear the blame for this whole debacle being pinned on Apartheid and not the Minister of Education – who should have been sacked ages ago
or because SADTU teachers spend 50% of their time out of the classroom (report on Radio 567)
… in other words: bottom line. – All parents who voted the ANC in again.
Of course they should have complained. Ages ago. What stopped them?
Was it a feeling of resignation and helplessness against the continuing negligence, corruption and self-serving thievery of the ANC? – or because they chose to blindly look the other way?
But to all parents, who actually allowed their children’s future to be destroyed by voting these incapable, crooks in again – shame on you!
Don’t complain: You got what you voted for.
And if you let it happen again, you will continue to get what you vote for in the future.
@Tommy Madikoto
Harris cannot be white as he carries a huge chip on his shoulder, always moaning about his BoAs, beneficiaries of apartheid. Similarly Lyndall carries on about communism like a broken record from previous era (BTW bible smuggling to Russia had stopped long before 1994!)
Both these characters distract from a focused debate on issues in this forum.
We have had a year of eulogising the “Mandela Legacy” but Mandela has not spoken for himself since he dissapeared from public view during the World Cup.
Which makes me wonder if they have muzzled him for fear of what he, himself, might say.
@lyndall: …..”Mandela has not spoken for himself since he dissapeared from public view”…….
For heavens’s sake, what do you expect at 90+. Some are better than others at that age. Some are better sometimes but not all the time.
Please!!
Nguni
The reply to your inaccurate comment, which should be removed if my reply embarrasses, is that smuggling Bibles to Russia stopped before 1994, because communism failed long before 1994. The last fall of the hammer was the breaking down of the Berlin Wall in 1989
Nguni
This is probably what they don’t like and delete:
After the Berlin Wall fell De Klerk assured the whites that the Communist threat from the ANC was over, which is WHY 70 percent of them voted for reform.
bernpm
If he is OK even part of the time he can give an interview then can’t he?
Bill Clinton and the Surgeon General said he was in good health, so presumably he can still speak for himself.
I had 3 of my grandparents live to close to 100 – and believe me they were all lucid until the very end.
I think it was in 1996 when Sibusisu Bengu was introducing the first new system that a march to parliament happened in Cape Town. I was part of that march. The people marching were teachers and parents who had looked at the system proposed and concluded that it could work if:
1. Class sizes were small, preferably 10 students or fewer
2. Every school had a well-resourced library
3. Teachers were better trained than Bantu Education had generally allowed
As it happened, most of the marchers were better educated than Bantu Education had allowed. The argument was that we did not have the resources for such a system in place and that it would be a massive failure jeopardising a generation or more of all our people. SADTU lined the route of the march and literally spat on us. They called us racist and counter-revolutionary despite our honest concern for all our people.
SADTU? Phhhhh!