Bloodthirsty Liberal

Today, it’s a two-fer!

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, on Saturday, slammed the recent decision by South Africa’s trade and industry minister to issue a directive forcing importers to remove “Made in Israel” tags from products originating in West Bank settlements, calling it an “essentially racist decision.”

“This isn’t a case of political opposition to the settlements, but rather of singling out a country by special labeling, according to nationalist-political criteria,” said Palmor, according to Walla News.

“It is shocking to think that South Africa of all countries is showing such obtuseness and treading down the slippery slope towards racism,” added Palmor.

Another account of this story claims that South Africa will become the first nation to implement this “trade apartheid”. But, of course, who would know better?

I wonder if they have applied similar boycotts to goods from Gdansk, Poland (Danzig, Germany)? Or Alsace-Lorraine? Or Cyprus? Heck, there are territory disputes all over the world, many of them in—you guessed it—Africa!

Even South Africa is involved in a couple têtes-a-têtes. I’m sure you’ll join me in boycotting the very fine wine they produce there. (Seriously!) We wouldn’t want to reward a people who deprive the Namibians and the Swazis of their just territories by an unjust occupation, would we?

PS: If Israel would just go ahead and annex Judea and Samaria (see below), this would no longer be a problem.

I understand America is to be hated, despised, and condemned at all times and at all costs. I’ve been beaten into submission. Why, we don’t allow gay people to marry (well, actually, we do here in Massachustts).

Even President Obama can’t decide.

President Obama still has not reached a conclusion on whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry, despite months – or years – of supposedly thinking about the issue.

…

Attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships.

That was 15 months ago. Which either makes Obama the most indecisive person on the face of the earth, or a man who is frightened that admitting he supports gay marriage WILL HARM HIS REELECTION CHANCES.

In 1996, Obama offered unequivocal support for gay marriage, only to reverse his opinion afterward.

But enough about Obama’s closed mind.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing:

Lesbian South Africans are living in fear as rape and murder become a daily threat in the townships they call home.

Noxolo Nkosana, 23, is the latest victim of a series of violent attacks against lesbians.

She was stabbed a stone’s throw from her home in Crossroads township, Cape Town, as she returned from work one evening with her girlfriend.

The two men – one of whom lives in her community – started yelling insults.

“They were walking behind us. They just started swearing at me screaming: ‘Hey you lesbian, you tomboy, we’ll show you,’” Ms Nkosana tells the BBC.

Before she knew it a sharp knife had entered her back – two fast jabs, then she was on the ground. Half conscious, she felt the knife sink into her skin twice more.

“I was sure that they were going to kill me,” she says.

She lived, and she was spared one indignity:

In April, Noxolo Nogwaza was raped by eight men and murdered in KwaThema township near Johannesburg.

The 24-year-old’s face and head were disfigured by stoning, and she was stabbed several times with broken glass.

The attack on her is thought to have begun as a case of what is known as “corrective rape”, in which men rape lesbians in what they see as an attempt to “correct” their sexual orientation.

The practice appears to be on the increase in South Africa.

More than 10 lesbians per week are raped or gang-raped in Cape Town alone, according to Luleki Sizwe, a charity which helps women who have been raped in the Western Cape.

Many of the cases are not reported because the victims are afraid that the police will laugh at them, or that their attackers will come after them, says Ndumie Funda, founder of Luleki Sizwe.

“The cases people read about in the media are not even the tip of the iceberg. Lesbians are under attack in South Africa’s townships every day.”

Reports of police ridiculing rape victims abound in the gay community.

“Some policemen in the township mock you saying: ‘How can you be raped by a man if you are not attracted to them?’ They ask you to explain how the rape felt. It is humiliating,” says Thando Sibiya, a lesbian from Soweto.

Where do people get such notions?

South Africa’s Human Rights Commission is investigating reports that Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini called gay people “rotten” during a speech.

The rights group says it has obtained transcripts of the speech to look into the matter.

…

King Goodwill Zwelithini allegedly made the anti-gay remarks in rural eastern South Africa during a ceremony at the weekend to mark the Battle of Isandlwana – a famous 19th Century Zulu victory over British troops.

“Traditionally, there were no people who engaged in same-sex relationships,” The Times quoted the king as saying.

“There was nothing like that and if you do it, you must know that you are rotten,” King Goodwill said, according to the newspaper, adding: “I don’t care how you feel about it … same sex is not acceptable.”

But the king’s office says the newspaper reports were badly translated and the king’s meaning misconstrued.

“At no stage did His Majesty condemn gay relations or same relations,” spokesperson Prince Mbonisi Zulu told the Sapa news agency.

King Goodwill should have studied at Harvard. He would have learned that it’s Jews who are “rotten”, not gays.

At least one fatality

They lined up well before dawn, some driving from the deep countryside with bags of fluffy blankets and neatly packed sandwiches, to wait for the gates to a new life to open. They hoped for a shot at a coveted spot at one of South Africa’s public universities, and with it a chance to escape the indignity of joblessness that afflicts more than a third of the nation. By morning, the line was more than a mile long.

As the gates were about to open at 7:45 Tuesday morning, thousands of students, many accompanied by their anxious parents, surged forward, desperate to win one of several hundred last-chance places still open at the University of Johannesburg. Amid shoving and screams, one woman, the mother of a prospective student, was trampled to death and several others were badly injured in a frantic scrum.

The stampede embodied the broad crisis in South Africa’s overstretched higher education system as it struggles to extend opportunities once reserved for whites to all South Africans. It is a problem of grade school mathematics: Too many students are seeking too few seats at the country’s public universities, which turn away more than half of their applicants, leaving few options for most high school graduates.

Speechless.

- Aggie

Reader Joe sends us this travelogue of an American missionary in Africa:

The sounds of drums and chants filled the air outside the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein on Saturday morning in expectation of the ritual sacrifice of a bull by President Jacob Zuma.

The sacrifice forms part of a cleansing ceremony for the ANC centenary celebrations, and is done in order to invoke the spirits of the traditional ancestors so they could oversee the events.

Attending the ceremony were Traditional Affairs Minister Richard Baloyi, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe and African-American civil rights activist Jesse Jackson.

“We must recognise that the ANC and the people of South Africa have won a great victory. They have overcome the great oppression of apartheid, though it must be said that economic and agricultural apartheid still exist,” Jackson said.

“The USA and South Africa both ended apartheid together, and both now have African presidents.”

Wait, I thought we had a Hawaiian president. What’s he implying?

And if the ANC took power in 1994, how can there still be apartheid, even if it’s just economic or agricultural (whatever that means)? Isn’t the Reverend dissing his hosts? Has Desmond Tutu come here and accused us of engaging in economic or agricultural slavery (whatever that would be)? Not that I’d put it past him.

But Joe was interested in the rite itself:

Earlier, workers and traditional leaders worked together to lead a bull into a makeshift kraal, before tying it to a tree. Zuma will reportedly slay the animal with a spear.

Mantashe said the ceremony allowed members and traditional leaders to enjoy the festivities as they wanted to.

“Traditionally the act of slaughtering has different meanings. All nations have a way of celebration through slaughter… it is all the same but in different circumstances.” Traditional and religious leaders opened the cleansing ceremony outside the church on Friday evening.

The inter-faith service, which contained messages and blessings from representatives of the Christian, Muslim, Rastafarian and traditional African faiths was held at a marquee outside the church where the ANC was formed in 1912.

That’s interesting. I could have sworn South Africa had Jews too. I’ve known a few. Maybe the Rastas swiped their invitations for rolling paper.

Anyhow, when the world’s busybodies next bring up the idea of banning kosher butchering, let’s remind them that “all nations have a way of celebration through slaughter”, and that it can be seen as a kind of “inter-faith service”. Just ask Jesse Jackson next time he’s in Hymietown.

Ha! Got you!

It really is an Apartheid State Update:

More than 50 Somali-owned shops in the South African city of Port Elizabeth have been attacked and looted by local residents.

Police said four shops had been burnt down and about 200 Somalis living near the shop premises had fled the unrest.

A Somali community leader told the BBC there was some resentment in the area about the success of Somali traders.

At least 62 people died in attacks on foreigners that swept the country three years ago.

I hope one of those Old Farts—sorry, Elders—speaks out about this. Des?

Hey Tutu, I can’t hear you-you!

Reader Joe from South Africa responds to my post about the South African national anthem by singing a different tune:

Izette Lubbe got seven distinctions in matric last year – but was still not good enough to qualify for three of South Africa’s university medical schools.

The 18-year-old, who matriculated at Pretoria’s Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool, is still determined to become a doctor, despite her applications being rejected by the universities of Pretoria, Stellenbosch and the Free State.

Lubbe is one of many white matriculants who battle to gain acceptance to medical schools, where race still plays a large role.

…

Medical school admission policies extend from a strict, race-based system in use by the University of Cape Town (UCT) to a “definite effort to accommodate candidates from a disadvantaged academic background” at Free State University.

UCT is clear about its racial selection criteria, by which black students need to obtain 534 out of 900 points, whereas white and Indian candidates have to achieve 700 out of 900 marks to make their “admission probable”.

The university’s website also says that coloured pupils have to score 578 points and Chinese 660.

UCT vice-chancellor Max Price said one of the reasons for the rigid policy was the education system, which is “a mess”.

“The unfairness happens in schools and not in universities. These black students overcome enormous odds.

“They don’t have the internet and parents helping them with homework, and they have very poor teachers.

“After all that, to get 60% you have to be close to a genius and highly motivated,” said Price.

“Most white students who get 80% in matric have been to private schools or attended formerly model C schools and have educated parents who can help them with their homework. They have all those advantages that enable them to do well.”

Price, who admitted that he was generalising, added: “The playing field is not level. To look only at marks would be unfair to disadvantaged students.”

Yes, but…

If you’re telling me that I have to choose between a doctor whose education was “a mess” and one who had advantages, I might have to be persuaded to choose the former.

And the specificity of the numbers is bizarre. In such a diverse society, what if the applicant had black, colored, Indian, and Chinese grandparents? Would he or she need to score the average, 618?

[A]t Walter Sisulu University’s medical school, in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, officials are battling to find enough white students.

The admission policy stipulates that of the first-year intake, 75% of students, has to be black, 15% Indian, 5% Coloured or white, and 5% from Lesotho.

The executive dean of the faculty of health sciences, Professor Khaya Mfenyana said: “We are struggling to get whites and coloureds and this is why we only have 5% for them. On the other hand we have too many Indians applying.”

I feel you can never have enough Indians, especially if they score 700. But that’s just me.

If I can criticize Apple for running a sweatshop in China, certainly I can criticize Nelson Mandela for running a sweatshop in… South Africa?

A South African gold mining company owned by members of the Mandela and Zuma families is accused of exploiting its political connections to avoid punishment over its abuse of workers.

The company is also accused of profiting from selling mine assets it does not own – a claim it vehemently denies.

“I’m drowning in debts at the moment, and I don’t have any food because I have no income,” says Primrose Javu.

“We’re living in a very, very bad condition here.”

She is standing in the kitchen of her small three-room flat, proud of the furniture, TV and hi-fi she bought herself when she was getting paid for working hundreds of metres underground, in a gold mine.

But she knows it will not be long before the debt collectors come and take it all away.

“They can come to fetch it any time, because I am not getting any salary. This company called Aurora, they just ran away with our pay. We don’t get anything.”

Ms Javu’s employer, Aurora Empowerment Systems, took control of two gold mines just outside of Johannesburg around 18 months ago.

Today, South Africa’s mining unions claim the company owes its workers more than 12m rand (£1.1m; $1.8m) in unpaid salaries.

The managing director of Aurora is Zondwa Gadaffi Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela. The chairman is Khulubuse Zuma, nephew of President Jacob Zuma. Another board member, Michael Hulley, is the personal legal advisor to the president.

Despite having no previous experience in the mining industry, a high court-appointed liquidator gave Aurora control of two gold mines after the previous owner went bust. Aurora outbid seasoned mining firms with an offer of 605m rand (£55.5m; $92m).

Since then, the company has been at the centre of huge controversy in South Africa, with critics claiming that the company has committed multiple legal and regulatory infringements, but has escaped any kind of sanction because of the significant political connections of its senior management.

Now, I have no quarrel with Nelson Mandela, who still appears to be a “great man” in history. He’s hardly likely to have anything to do with such shenanigans. I didn’t like his embrace of the Palestinians, but he felt he was repaying a debt. He even went to Israel in 1999 and “absolved” it of any “crimes” for associating with the apartheid regime.

But if this will shut that fat Desmond Tutu up, it will be worth all the hardship these poor people have endured. For me, anyway.

The faculty of the University of Johannesburg has decided to stop working with Ben Gurion University on water purification issues in South Africa. Too many Jews in Israel.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the university said “the Senate of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) today voted to allow its formal relationship with Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Israel to lapse on 1 April 2011. This was one of two options put to the vote in the Senate, the second being to allow the formal relationship with BGU to continue and to develop bilateral relations with both BGU and Palestinian universities.

Sixty percent of the Senate (72 members present) voted to allow the Memorandum of Understanding with BGU to lapse, while the balance 40 percent (45 members present) voted for bilateral agreements.”

Ben Gurion University responded regretfully at the University of Johannesburg’s decision, saying that the South African university’s decision to sever the agreement designed to solve water contamination issues in a reservoir near Johannesburg will mostly hurt South African residents.

University President Prof. Rivka Carmi said that “the only losers in this decision are the people of South Africa.”

In the official letter, BGU said it is still committed to continuing ongoing water, health care, and sustainable development collaborative work with Palestinian researches.

The agreement doesn’t mean that individual academics at UJ wouldn’t be able to pursue academic collaboration with counterparts at BGU, but they would be carried out without formal institutional arrangements.

The vote followed a campaign launched by UJ in September 2010 with a petition signed by more than 250 South African academics, with the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that called on UJ to cut ties with BGU over what they claim is the university’s active support for the Israeli military.

Last Wednesday, UJ held a debate entitled “The Politics of Water Research and the Ethics of Academic Engagement – Should UJ terminate its water research with Israel?”, to discuss whether or not to cut ties with BGU. The seminar discussed a report released the day earlier by UJ entitled “Findings on Ben-Gurion University of the Negev: Institutional complicity and active collaboration with Israeli military, occupation and apartheid practices.”

Speaking of apartheid, how many Jews will be permitted to live in Palestine? 0. How many live in Saudi Arabia? 0. How many are left in Egypt, after the expulsions, murders and property confiscations? How many live in Libya after the slaughters, expulsions and property seizures. How about Iraq, where there used to be over 125,000 Jews? Down to fewer than seven I believe.

The Left is deeply antisemitic.

- Aggie

Do we have “an oversupply of coloreds”? Well, not we. Them:

One of South Africa’s most powerful ministers, Trevor Manuel, has accused the government spokesman of “the worst order of racism” over remarks he made about mixed race people.

Mr Manuel made the comments in an open letter published in a local newspaper.

Spokesman Jimmy Manyi said in an interview last year – which resurfaced recently – there was an “over supply of coloureds” (mixed race people) in Western Cape Province.

Mr Manyi has not commented.

Mr Manuel, a minister in the presidency in charge of economic policy, is the first minister to comment on the row.

“I want to put it to you that these statements would make you a racist in the mould of HF Verwoed [former South African prime minister, dubbed the 'architect of apartheid],” he wrote in the letter published in The Star newspaper.

Surely, he didn’t say that—he was misquoted or taken out of context. Maybe he was talking about laundry, for example. Better to do two loads of coloreds, rather than cram them all into one.

Kinda yes, and kinda no:

“Let me just make some few comments here on the last discussion on coloured people,” Manyi said in the interview with host Freek Robinson.

“I think its very important for coloured people in this country to understand that South Africa belongs to them in totality, not just the Western Cape.

“So this over-concentration of coloureds in the Western Cape is not working for them.

“They should spread in the rest of the country … so they must stop this over-concentration situation because they are in over-supply where they are so you must look into the country and see where you can meet the supply.

So, he’s not down on coloreds qua coloreds, just on their geographic concentration. That’s not so bad. It’s kind of like Harry Reid’s compliment toward Obama that he doesn’t speak with a Negro dialect, or Joe Biden’s marveling how clean Obama is.

Hugely complimentary.

PS: When not referring to me as BTL or Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler, Freek would do nicely. I love it: Freek.

Amazing

Study led by government-funded Medical Research Foundation says more than 37 percent of men admitted to the rape of a woman.

JOHANNESBURG — A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.

A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa’s most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.

More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they’d experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they’d committed violence against women.

A quarter of the women interviewed said they’d been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.

A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl. Of the men who had committed rape, one third did not feel guilty, said Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on both studies.

Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.

“Rape is completely trivialized by a great number of men. It is seen as a legitimate activity,” she said.

Jewkes believes South Africa’s history of racial division and associated trauma is part of the reason of the high incidence of sexual violence in the country.

“Apartheid has contributed to culture of impunity surrounding rape in South Africa,” said Jewkes. Men who were abused or experienced trauma during their childhood are much more likely to rape, she said, adding that apartheid destroyed family life, fostering violence and anti-social behavior.

It is hard to buy the idea that apartheid causes rape. There are a lot of groups who have experienced injustices, including slavery, discrimination, even genocide, without the survivors resorting to rape to decrease boredom. But possibly I don’t understand the unique attributes of South African apartheid.

Also, I am not sure I even believe the research, but I suppose it could be true.

The new study, conducted with a gender rights advocacy body, is the first community-based study of its kind with women in 12 years.

The group hopes to replicate the study across southern Africa.

I just really wonder about the quality of the research. It would be interesting to have another group replicate the original study.

- Aggie