Just Thinking

As the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is in the news again and South Africa is asking questions about its leader I am reminded of this column I wrote in 2011 about one senior appointment to the organisation then.  After reading it think of our choice of people who are supposed to play leading roles in the NPA and other important institutions of our country: Judge Willem Heath has been re-appointed to head the Special Investigations Unit (SIU).  He is the founding head of the unit under President Mandela who stepped down after the Constitutional Court ruled that a sitting judge can not head such a unit.  Heath resigned as a judge after President Mbeki refused to grant him early retirement and eventually stepped down as the head of the SIU. President Zuma has brought Judge Heath back.  There was a huge outcry when President Mbeki let him go.  One would expect that there would be ululations now that he has been brought back.  Alas, there is no such.  There is outcry from t

There was once an advertisement by South Africa’s intelligence services.  It was the first and the last one I’ve seen from them.  It punted some of their achievements, including silencing the violence linked to Pagad.    Their punch-line was that people notice when things go wrong. I found that true as we as people tend to notice and criticize when things are going wrong.  It is easy to take what is good for granted and not worth commenting on.  I guess, that’s why the loudest voices are those who are not happy.   Allow me to do something different and comment on what is good.  One of my favorite songs is that of Baby Face “Simple Days”.  I find myself responding when he mentions that they were a struggling family of nine that shared a four roomed house.  I would silently respond that we were about seventeen people sharing a three roomed house at 147, Matakata Street in Mbekweni. One would wonder how can that happen.  I can tell you that every room became a bedroom at night.  T

We moved to the state of Bayern on our fourth month in Germany.    Having spent the first month in Saarbruken in the Saarland, we then moved to the State of Bayern (Bavaria).    When we were still in Saabruken a man was assigned to us.    He was meant to teach us all we needed to know about Germany and help us deal with some administrative issues.    He held seminars with us for two weeks.    In one of the Seminars    he was talking about the history of Germany and the discussion touched on the two World wars and the Hollocaust.    One of the questions that we ended up discussing was whether there was anything genetical that made Jews hated in a number of countries. We actually argued strongly that genes do not come into it.   That opened up an opportunity to raise a question about Germans.    One of these was whether there is anything genetical about Germans that has led them to be central in both World Wars.    The group figured that if we could discuss the possibility of genet

Growing up in Mbekweni I got used to being associated with the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC/Poqo) when visiting other townships. This is because Paarl has been viewed as a PAC stronghold since the 1962 Paarl uprising that was led by that organisation. The history of the PAC struggles can not be told without mentioning Paarl 1962. That was when a mass uprising consisting of hundreds of men took place. They marched in the morning of November 22 from Mbekweni and Langabuya to town with the intent of attacking the police station and prison. The Late Minister of Justice in the ANC led government Dullar Omar recalled this event when accepting an award for Human Rights in 2004. Omar who, in 1963, was one of the lawyers who were to defend the men recalled that: “ The PAC was particularly active in Paarl. Suddenly hardly without any notice the so-called Paarl riots (the Poqo uprising) exploded on the South African scene. These poor migrant workers had had enough. They marched through

The South African liberation struggle was carried along by songs that served as a vehicle for the message and also mobilizing for action.  Steve Biko aptly captured this importance of songs in this way: “Any suffering we experienced was made more real by song and rhythm which lead to a culture of defiance, self- assertion and group pride and solid...arity. This is a culture that emanates from a situation of a common experience’   These songs were for also communicating and bringing political awareness to those that could hear.  This was the case in my own personal experience as I got to know of many liberation struggles leaders and martyrs through song as the media was not supposed to write about them.  I remember asking my grandmother who (Oliver) Tambo was after listening to the song ‘Phesheya kwemifula sobabamba nezingane zabo, ilitye lika Tambo linkqonkqoziwe lovulwa ngubani”.   The song was about heeding the call of Oliver Tambo to fight back and I can remember Mthu

The schools have just opened and a lot has been said about learners’ results and the role of teachers. Some have been branded good and others bad, a debate that I will not get into. I have had teachers who had no concept of hard work whilst I have also gone through wonderful teachers who played a huge role in who I am. I learnt from my teachers a lot more than the curriculum provided for. There were those I vowed not to emulate and those who inspired me to greater heights. I want to use this column to honour some of these teachers and reflect on the lessons they taught. I was in Standard 4 (grade 6) when a teacher said something that stuck in my mind. He told our class that a good thing about life is that you don’t have to lie in front of a car to know that it can injure or even kill a person. You only had to know of someone who was hit by a car. What this taught me was that I do not have to repeat mistakes that other people commit in order to learn of their effects. That

The schools have just opened and a lot has been said about learners’ results and the role of teachers. Some have been branded good and others bad, a debate that I will not get into. I have had teachers who had no concept of hard work whilst I have also gone through wonderful teachers who played a huge role in who I am. I learnt from my teachers a lot more than the curriculum provided for. There were those I vowed not to emulate and those who inspired me to greater heights. I want to use this column to honour some of these teachers and reflect on the lessons they taught. I was in Standard 4 (grade 6) when a teacher said something that stuck in my mind. He told our class that a good thing about life is that you don’t have to lie in front of a car to know that it can injure or even kill a person. You only had to know of someone who was hit by a car. What this taught me was that I do not have to repeat mistakes that other people commit in order to learn of their effects. That

The term education refugees that was used by the Western Cape Premier and Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Hellen Zille to refer to students from the Eastern Cape caused a    stir.   A lot of people that I met were hot under the collar because of the use of the word.  I do not want to get into the merits of the debate suffice to say that the Premier ultimately apologized after a lot of trying to justify herself.    This was after some even from her political party voiced concerns and one of these was a Democratic Alliance’s Councilor from Khayelitsha, Siphumle Yalezo.    He asked the Premier to explain the comment to prospective black voters in his Khayelitsha constituency.   What I found more interesting is the public relations (PR) aspect of the discussion.    I have once written in this column about an incident that took place when I was still a University of Cape Town student and writing for a student newspaper there. Mrs. Zille was responsible for public relations at

I left South Africa on July 31 this year and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on the morning of August 1 on what is my first trip overseas.      I am here as part of a group eleven professionals from Southern Africa.    There are four South Africans, three Zambians, two Zimbabweans, one person each from Swaziland and Malawi.    I am the only one from the Western Cape and the other South Africans are based in Gauteng.     The majority in our group, seven in total, are economists.    The group varies in age from just over twenty years to just over fourty.    We are part of a one year program called the International Leadership Training in Regional Economic Development and Trade.    Four months of our time in Germany will be spent as interns in different companies and organizations.    The program is organized and hosted by the Deutsche Gesselschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).    I plan to use this year to learn in the seminars but also outside of them.    It is m

I left South Africa on July 31, 2012 and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on the morning of August 1 on what was my first trip overseas.      I went there as part of a group eleven professionals from Southern Africa.    There were four South Africans, three Zambians, two Zimbabweans, one person each from Swaziland and Malawi.    I was the only one from the Western Cape and the other South Africans were based in Gauteng.     The majority in our group, seven in total, were economists.    The group varied in age from just over twenty years to just over fourty.    We were part of a one year program called the International Leadership Training in Regional Economic Development and Trade.    Four months of our time in Germany was to be spent as interns in different companies and organizations.    The program is organized and hosted by the Deutsche Gesselschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).    I had planned to use that year to learn in the seminars but also outside of th

We managed to catch the last few weeks of Summer in Germany.  We were warned of the approaching Winter and the weather is starting to change now. There are more groups of people from different places that are hosted by our hosts GIZ. It is interesting how I had to come to Europe in order to deal directly with Africans from the north of South Africa . Since I have been here I have met people from Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbambwe, Congo (Brazaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Equitorial Guinea.  My Facebook contact list is becoming Pan-African. We have interesting meetings as, consciously or unconsciously, they are punctuated with checking each other out.  Some of the things that happen on the continent and how our countrymen had treated each other sometimes raise their uncomfortable heads.  A Zambian guy cornered me and a fellow South African who works at Treasury in Pretoria and reminded us about the `xenophobic' attacks that took pla

I write this column with the words of Ben Okri in mind that, “To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they could unwittingly help along the psychic destruction of their people… Great leaders understand the power of the stories they project to their people.” As much as I am prepared to criticize and speak against the negative in Mbekweni I also believe I have a responsibility to tell the good stories. I was going through the social network site Facebook when I read the status of Thami Mbongo where he declared that he is proudly a son of “Mbekweni and represents people of Paarl” wherever he goes. Thami is currently touring with the Tempest, a stage production that has a theatre luminary like John Kani starring in it. Njana, as Thami was known growing up in Mbekweni has starred in a numbe