A different view on current affairs & history
Perhaps this series of photographs should be called eclectic as there is no overarching theme aside from their evident beauty. Perhaps one can invent a collective noun for stunning photographs. I propose an old English word now is disuse but which I can still recall from studying Latin under the tutelage of Mr Wright at Alexander Road High School in the late 1960’s. How about pulchritude of photographs? No. It doesn’t take your fancy. Too old fashioned?
This is not a uniquely South African phenomenon or even the propensity of the ANC. The previous Nationalist Government aka “The Apartheid Regime” would without qualms use the British atrocities during the Boer War as a point of argument. The Arabs used it against the Americans when George Bush Junior obligingly used the “inflammatory” word “crusade” to describe the American invasion of Iraq. So why do certain peoples, nations or political parties have a predilection for harping about the past?
Main picture: President places the blame for South Africa’s “challenges” squarely on the first white in South Africa – Jan van Riebeeck
The fact that President Jacob Zuma stirred the racial pot before the ANC’s meeting in the Western Cape by proclaiming that the landing of Van Riebeeck in Cape Town in 1652 was the commencement of South Africa’s problems was both a blatant lie and vicious distortion of the facts was ignored by most commentators. Instead with the proverbial racial hackles raised, the Rainbow Nation bifurcated into racial segments as if cleaved with a meat chopper.
One wonders what level of general knowledge that the average university student in South Africa possesses today? Look no further than the Wits University SRC President and fifth year law student, Mcebo Dlamini with his contentious comment “I Love Hitler”.
Earlier this week the SRC President posted a photo on Facebook comparing the Israeli Government to the Nazi Regime. As if the ire the Jewish Students were not sufficiently incensed by that photo, he added “I Love Hitler” in the comments section.
Main picture: The Mampara himelf – Mcebo Dlamini
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Everybody has to be a handyman periodically. In these cases the person who performed the occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations around the home clearly had pretensions of becoming an engineer. It is not that these improvisations do not work – they clearly do – but they lack the finesse of a properly executed engineering job. From the obvious crudity, the term Heath Robinson springs to mind as they all bear this hallmark.
Main picture: Earbuds that will not tangle
One day when I was in about standard 4 Mom decided that she needed a spoon rest while she was cooking. I asked her what it was and I said that I would make her one, in fact I would make her a double one. She described it as having a concave part where the bowl of the spoon could lie and a raised bit at the back for the handle. With these scanty design specifications, I went to work. I incorporated the technical features and added some customisation of my own. After a few days of cutting, filing and sanding pieces of fruit case wood, I produced my masterpiece piece
Main picture: Lost in Translation
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They say that much of what we are, we learn at the knee of our parents. Well, I learnt my fear of spiders from Mom. Maybe she learnt that from her mom but, then again, Granny Dix looked so stern that she would have scared away the spiders. Mom was terrified of them to the point of irrationality. Unfortunately for her, the rain spider is endemic in Southern Africa and, I must admit, they are big, hairy and scary. To her they were not the gentle rain spider, they were the worst thing she could think of – tarantulas.
Main picture: One of at least 6 rain spiders that inhabited our bedroom
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What possessed Britain to attempt to subordinate a primitive, desolate country that was trapped in the Middle Ages? How was it possible that a third rate force could massacre 17 000 British soldiers with only ten survivors – a surgeon and an officers wife amongst them? This defeat even exceeded that against the Zulus at Isandlwana in Natal.
The country in question is Afghanistan, a country wedged precariously between two expanding Empires – the Russian and the British. The Russians under the Tsars during the nineteenth century were rapidly expanding eastward towards Alaska whereas the British were initially content on the Indian subcontinent.
Main picture: Alexander Burnes – Scottish explorer and adventurers & fluent Persian speaker
Three economic criteria have dominated the world economy since the crash in 2008: the Central Banks have been mandated to maintain low inflation – not more than 1.5% – , Quantitative Easing and extremely low interest rates. All had one objective in mind: to ease the economy gently and gradually out of depression and to stimulate growth. The result has been continued deflation in consumer prices, moribund inflation while asset prices have surged. This scenario is unsustainable and will have consequences in the near future.
After galloping inflation in the nineteen seventies – the culmination of decades of Keynesian policies – inflation rates ratcheted up. The stimulant effect of the drug benignly known as inflation now presented deleterious effects. Drastic action was called for. Easy money flowed into unsustainable or delinquent assets such as leviathan but unproductive such as British Steel, British Airways and British Coal. No longer was the propping up of bloated uncompetitive entities viable.