TheTroublemakerTimes

Preface

This is a response in three parts.

The first, is a polemic.

The second part will deal with contextual criticism of Africa, a sadly lacking aspect of the ever entropic nature of the growing “tabloid-ness” of British and European media.

The third will be, an unashamed, unabashed defence of our new democracy, the underlying discourse of which shall be the assertion that this current legal “fiasco” is not proof of our demise, but rather testament to our success.

 

On the 31 March 2009, Peter Hitchens, wrote a piece for the Daily Mail in London, entitled He has four wives and he faced 783 counts of corruption: PETER HITCHENS on South Africa’s next president.

In a deeply matronly tone, chumped up with sarcasm and typically European superiority, and a good dose of self-righteousness, Mr. Hitchens has taken a swipe at Jacob Zuma, South Africa and even Nelson Mandela. No stranger to controversy, veteran commentator Hitchens, takes punch after punch at South Africa and our next president in a nasty little piece that just drips with the underlying sentiment that so often is the inarticulate discourse in commentary, by yet another self-involved voice, masquerading as informed opinion from her Majesty’s island directed at us savages in the Colonies.

The salvo begins right out the starting block like a machine gun, with Mr. Hitchens asking his millions of  readers  how they would feel about Gordon Brown singing “umshini wami” while dancing. This just above a picture of JZ in traditional attire with  the caption below ” Zuma loves to Dress up and Dance Like a Zulu Warrior”

It’s a pathetic and crude attempt to portray Zulu and African culture as backward, tribal and savage.  When black men dress  in traditional dress, they “like to dress up like Zulu warriors” but when white British men don kilts and hats, and march around  blowing the modern equivalent of a pig’s bladder then it’s Scottish culture, quaint and meaningful too. The war-going-garb of the Scotts is fine from funeral to formal function,and the occasional wedding too in her Majesty’s dark Kingdom, but not in Africa, oh no. 

In Africa its proof of the pudding eaten, of savagery, and backwardness and  then some.

They can play Scotland the Brave, a war song in civilized, skirt wearing Britain and environs.

Hell, I’m sure Gordon Brown hums it in the shower. Oh yes, and they can let the Americans sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

They sing it in the UK too.

They blast these dreadful dirges out on their bag pipes, well skirted up,like not very good  transvestites and lash out the very macabre lyrics of their war tunes set to screeching pipes and second rate tunes:

“trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

 He has loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword”

They gather en mass to remember in deeply held affection, those days of old when tribal Scots in skirts, with beards,whisky breath and sans underwear, tore down the hills to slaughter their enemies who lay helpless on the ground, tortured by that wailing pig skin screech they so lovingly coddle, in their civilized memorials to their bloody history of conquest.

Yes, dear reader,  swords,lightning and grape trampling  along with warmongering deities are ok, machine guns in the hands of blacks, no never, God no.

And singing dancing black men with votes, even worse.

Perhaps if we played pig bladder instruments and wore multicolored frocks?

Umshini Wami, is as historical a song as the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Scotland the Brave, you won’t find them dancing to the stuff, that’s because they don’t really have a beat, and of course white men can’t dance.

That Umshini Wami is a battle song sung by our men and women when they went to war against apartheid, against the machine of the State and all odds for freedom, is irrelevant to him. That it is a song with great historical value to South Africa is of no concern to Mr. Hitchens. That it is about liberation from the violent oppression of one of Her Majesty’s Colonial left overs, by freedom fighters who fought a huge military machine, sometimes just with matches and tyres is meaningless to Mr. Hitchens’ grandly civilized mind.

How would you feel if your leader faced charges of corruption, he questions sarcastically and smarmy like.

They are so much better at this in the civilized world than us with our Zulu savages and corrupt officials. Gosh if only we could be so vainglorious as them.

Sophisticated and civilized nations would not put up with this nonsense.

This is his implication.

Really now?

I wonder, how do Mr Hitchens’ readers there in the western democracies of civilization feel about allegations of  Tony Blair’s corruption?

“In Britain, Tony Blair has been caught up in the sort of sleaze and corruption allegations that his Labour Party used to great effect to bring down the Tory Government in 1997.The facts are simple and undisputed. At least four of Britain’s richest men made loans worth millions to the Labour Party before the last election. The loans were kept secret and shortly afterwards Tony Blair recommended those same four men for peerages.

Rafael Epstein reports from London.” http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1597414.htm

Or better yet, what of John Major’s claims about Mr. Brown and his Government?

“Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, has launched a withering attack on Gordon Brown, warning that Labour is now more sleazy and less competent than the Conservative government he led to a landslide defeat in 1997.

While he acknowledged that there had been individuals in the Tory Party who “misbehaved” in the 1990s, he said that under Labour the problems of “sleaze” had become “systemic”.

Recalling Tony Blair’s attacks on his own government, Sir John mocked Labour over the two separate police inquiries that have been launched into its finances in the last two years.

“I think if they were to say today ‘whiter than white’ or ‘purer than pure’, people would just laugh,” he said.

Sir John compared the tactics adopted by Tony Blair . There was, he said, a “clear pattern” linking the row over Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation to Labour in 1997 to the current “proxy donors” scandal involving property developer David Abrahams – with “serial offences” in between.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/1572706/John-Major-accuses-Labour-of-systemic-sleaze.html

 

Do you see any prosecutions?

I don’t.

But never mind just Her Majesties country and allegations of fraud and other mischief. Does Mr. Hitchins ask his readers how they would feel about Mr Berlusconi, Italy’s  sitting president, who has been on trial since March 2007 on charges of giving £350,000 from alleged “secret funds” to David Mills, his former tax lawyer and the estranged husband of UK Olympics minister Tessa Jowell?

“Even if Mr Berlusconi is eventually successful in having the charges against him dropped, the judges indicated that the case against Mr Mills will continue. Judges in Milan ruled that the Constitutional Court should decide whether the law violates constitutional principles, including the one that all citizens are equal before the law.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/3140413/Silvio-Berlusconi-corruption-charges-taken-to-Italys-highest-court.html

Or his predecessors, in uber civilized Italy. 

“The same cannot be said of the oligarchy he replaced. For most of the post-war era, Italy was run by a cartel of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats who, though notionally rivals, tended in practice to prop each other up like two exhausted boxers. A party membership card was your IOU: when your friends took office, you would become a headmaster, or a political editor, or get the contract to build a parking lot.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2009/02/18/labour_could_teach_berlusconi_all_about_corruption

Lets not forget too, the French with their Chirac Option, which simply prevents prosecution of their  sitting head of state, never mind even trying to go to trial.

Any mention of that?

Not a word by our smarmy, self righteous prophet of the doom of civilization at the hands of Zuma.

Legislating against prosecution is how the civilized do it in France.

Ignore it, is how they do it in Britain.

Then again, this all begs the very big question:

What about Clinton ?

“- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance 
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates* 
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation 
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify 
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly 
- First president sued for sexual harassment. 
- Second president accused of rape** 
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- First president to be held in contempt of court
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions 
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
- First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court.”

http://www.prorev.com/legacy.htm

 And lets not forget Hillary,

“▪ A $100,000 windfall from cattle futures after a $1,000 investment.

• The Castle Grande real estate scam.

• Her role as attorney for the Rose law firm in what would become the endlessly controversial-cum-criminal Whitewater affair that would follow her to the White House.

• The serial philandering of her husband, which cast her – depending on one’s viewpoint – as a clench-jawed stoic, a perpetual victim, or a willing collaborator.”

http://www.therant.us/staff/swirsky/03132006.htm

 

When Jacob Zuma is accused of crimes and acquitted of rape, and the NPA decides not to prosecute, it becomes a “ fast-approaching catastrophe..(and)  a source of shame and apprehension to millions of honest people, white and black, in South Africa itself”  in Hitchens mind.

Not happy with just that, and to add insult to injury, “.. grave news for the civilized world, which needs no more failed states.”

The USA, France, Italy, UK, no problem!

When it happens in South Africa it’s the end of civilization.

What this reveals, dear reader, is a deeply seated racism and superiority that languishes in the deep, morally stagnant, psyche of men like Mr Hitchens and his fans. This blatant and outrageous hypocrisy is astonishing in the extreme.

I for one am left speechless.

How very dare you !!!!

End of part 1

 

Epilogue of sorts:

This is the second time I have been upset by European, and particularly British snobby, rubbish, journalism, the last time I found myself outraged by Gideon Rachman’s disdain for the American Dream. You can find that piece here :euro-trashing the american dream or how to blame pandora for your bad taste.

Postscript

For my non South African readers, you should know that the singing of “struggle” songs is an historical and cultural part of our Nation. I suggest you view the following video of JZ singing, not Umshini Wami, but other songs, take note too of his demeanour and that of the crowd.

That this is not just a black, or Zulu thing, linked to tribalism and such like nonsense from Mr Hitchens is evidenced by the following video of Helen Zille, leader of the mostly white, middle class, opposition:

And, of course, JZ singing Umshini Wami (Please will you bring me my machine, my machine, my machine gun):