Anyway my weekend was good, yesterday I took Elisabeth out for a long scenic drive to McGregor near Robertson. It was a lot of fun and generally relaxing and enjoyable. There were two things I saw that shocked the shit out of me, not literally. The first one was shortly after exiting the tunnel we saw a baboon crossing the road, he was just ambling at a gentle pace expecting the world to stop for him. This is not surprising because he was the size of a large shetland pony! The second thing was two farm kids travelling on the back of their dad’s Toyota hilux. These were real “Plaas Suens” you know the kind that run around barefoot in shorts playing outside with their dogs and hunting small fury creatures, what was amazing was that one of them was wearing a pink golf shirt. They should be reported to Chuck Norris!
On our way back Elisabeth and I decided to stop at Grand West for the buffet because neither of us had eaten anything much all day. It’s a great deal at R95 but we were too late and they had stopped accepting walk-ins, although now you can book. We settled on a nice Italian restaurant and the food was very good and decently priced. I had a pasta with mushrooms, bacon, cream and chillies and Elisabeth has come calamari. It was yum. Afterwards Elisabeth went to House of Coffees while I spent some time at the Roulette table. I didn’t lose a spin in the hour that I played and walked way R145 up on a R100 stake, that’s a 145% ROI. When I when tell Elisabeth I found out that she’d been sitting that the coffee shop the whole time and nobody had even served her! I blew up at the management and we left.
We went to drop the car off with my folks, marvel at their new gigantic television and eventually got to bed at about 1am. Man it was a good weekend.
Now onto the political portion of this post. If you have no interest in South African politics I hope you enjoyed the first half of the post, but feel free to skip the rest, even though you should be informed! For the rest of you, here it is.
So, I was going to do a complete review of Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation address but I think that the almost 3% drop in on the JSE does a far better job of describing his weak attempt at sidestepping the issues far better than I ever could. I watched the address and then read the full text to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. The text was eighteen pages long, the first ten pages were about how bad apartheid was and how brilliant it was that some women killed herself by walking into the sea. Then there was about half a page about how happy everyone in South Africa is (according to international surveys), then about seven pages of what the government promises to do for us, and a final page about how bad apartheid was and how great the people who overcame it must be.
Did anyone else notice the complete failure to talk about what has already been delivered? Why this omission you ask? Well actually it’s quite simple, the government hasn’t delivered anything. Gasp! They’re too busy lining their own pocketsses and raping aids activists to even care about the people. So, what do they do when they eventually have to report back on their progress? Muddy the waters and confuse the issue, that’s what. Actually it’s a brilliant tactic, nobody in their politically correct, right mind could bad mouth you for being against apartheid, fortunately Schpat has never been politically correct.
When will the government or, to be more to the point, the ANC stop pushing the emotional buttons of segregation and oppression and actually start delivering to the people and earning their votes? The answer is probably never, ol’ bob from the north is still doing it today, and with great effect. As long as the general population, the people, of this country continue to allow themselves to be manipulated by politicians, that are too busy building empires to care about them, this country will not improve.
Politics is just like any other game, much more effective when everyone plays fair.
Oh I forgot to mention that almost an entire page was devoted to how we are going to prepare for the 2010 soccer world cup. And now the president is taking matters into his own hands and has instructed SAFA to explain to the presidential portfolio committee why BafanaBafana did so badly in the African Cup Of Nations. I’m glad that with oilgate, travelgate, gravy plane, and the zuma rape trial they have their priorities straight!
Indignantly
Schpat Out.
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2 comments:
Also. Don't expect massive change in the government policies.
Quite frankly, they work. Uneducated people don't have very effective bullshit filters.
And as the continually lowering standards of education in this country show, there's not much interest in changing that.
Note, I'm not calling the populace stupid, just uneducated. So they're not willing to go find things out for themselves. If someone *coughtheincompetentDAcough* actually tried to speak to them, you'd start getting some movement of opinion.
And that little bit of a trickle could start things moving - almost certainly not a DA victory, but probably more honest/clever (not the same thing) campaign next time.
Yeah I kinda agree with your thoughts. I'm seriously considering a vote for the ID because Miss Delille seemed very cogent the few times that I met her. Also I believe that sould the DA and the ID collectivly hold a majoroty of the votes in the western cape they will form a coalition. The only problem is that I'm not sure that the ID will win my ward and only ward seats count when determining who wins the election, so srategically it makes more sense to vote for the more popular opposition party. Just my 2c.
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