“…the trouble with having the vote, is that other people have it too.” JR Lucas

JR Lucas is quite an interesting bloke with a rather convincing argument "proving" free will but that's not the point today. I just like the quote I used in the header.

Today I'm with Steven Friedman in his Thoughtleader column.

"This was not mob rule. In the main, it was active, democratic participation, precisely what the ANC’s preoccupation with public displays of unity has denied its conferences for the past 17 years. If the Zuma delegates are now in the majority in the ANC, and this is how they intend to act at future meetings, the ANC may well be in better democratic health than it has been for a very long time."

I don't know if I know enough about Jacob Zuma beyond the Zapiro showerheaded caricatures and his disconcerting middle name "GEDLEYIHLEKISA" (the one who smiles at you while causing harm to you). (per Fred Khumalo).

I do believe that there may be better candidates for a future president of the country - but who, and why haven't they shown their hand?

But - while his historic actions are questionable he is currently saying the right things:

On Zimbabwe:

"It is even more tragic that other world leaders who witness repression pretend it is not happening, or is exaggerated. When history eventually deals with the dictators, those who stood by and watched should also bear the consequences.
“A shameful quality of the modern world is to turn away from injustice and ignore the hardships of others,” he charged.“There is no substitute or alternative to democracy, even in instances where we feel that democratic processes threaten our personal interests."

And on crime:

“In a country with no death penalty, the laws must bite”

I have a vision of Foucault style drawing & quartering. (Read the harrowing preface to Foucault's Discipline & Punish here). And even the lily liberal in me may argue for that.

While friends apply for residency or pack quickly for other climes I think I'm in for the ride. Looking forward to it in fact.

In a comment some 20 months ago I wrote this:

1. We are not a normal democracy,
2. Despite this, our democratic and legal checks and balances are far more robust than Russia's were, and
3. We ain't seen nothing yet!

And to close, Evita Bezuidenhout has inimitably chipped in - likening JZ to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Happy Holidays.

Everything bad is not new but it still smells queer

Jonny Steinberg writes in his opinion piece in Business Day.

"Why is it important to remind ourselves of these continuities? Because if yesterday’s illusion was that everything bad would vanish, today’s illusion is that everything bad is new. So many of the black, working-class people I have interviewed recently express nostalgia, insisting that life was more stable in the old days. Their amnesia is destructive. It robs them of the capacity to measure what has changed and what hasn’t, how far we have come, and how little we have moved. Without that perspective, we have no ground beneath our feet; we risk driving ourselves insane."

Please bear this mind my dear ladies and gentlemen who at every turn and around every braai fire are exhibiting renewed and anxious ambitions of packing for Perth. Perspective is a long term game. Hang in there with me.

There seems to be a current buzzing mindset that the book of the South African Dream began with the 1995 rugby world cup win as the opening chapter (the release of Nelson Mandela as a prologue) and has just reached it's finale with the 2007 spoils marking the final chapter and the end of a flirting golden era.I disagree - if anything these events are minor parentheses on a single chapter of the story of this land.

It's complicated living here but I'm a firm believer in the mantra of "The more things change the more they stay the same."

But one has to bear in mind that it is the nature of the place - the country has its own Jungian consciuosness - it cannot be changed to fit in with our own normative view of just what it means to be part of (this) civilisation.

As Carl Jung himself noted on arriving in Africa :
"I kept thinking that the land smelled queer. It was the smell of blood, as though the soil was soaked with blood."

Hello There

Where have I been?

– a most unproductive day in office today as I sit barefoot and sockless in support of Jake White and his prodigies. May the force be with them tomorrow. ....So let me venture back into the netherworld of blogging with a newsy bit of diary writing to assure all that I’m still alive, kicking and slowly pickling my liver.

Still sailing my sinking ship at work, dodging icebergs and the like. Seems a bit rough though in that I think my principals are losing patience and are likely to pull the plug or sell the family silver from under my feet. I am not sure that I blame them – but it’s a bugger to think that a year’s worth of 70 hour weeks may have been in vain.

The industry still runs on diesel and nicotine and has an official language of bad English but it’s been a good ride. And my clients are still full of shit. But as Johan Rupert always said – don’t diss your customer – “The customer is king – he pays your salary”. Now on that case – how come he (Rupert) gets the inside track on the Rugby World Cup – flying in and out of France – hobnobbing with players etc. & Ernie too. Seems that if you’ve got serious cash then you getto watch good rugby.

On the home front been renovating my old place with it’s wooden floors and lekker back stoep, and the wlaking distance to office. Now gone are the passages and poky fin de siecle bedrooms – having made way for large airy open plan living space. One word of advice though – don’t try and actually live in a place while knocking down almost every internal wall in the place, relocating bathrooms and demolishing kitchens. Must admit that pots & pans scrub up very well in the bathtub. Oh hindsight is such a perfect science is it not?

To end a brief paragraph from Bryan Magee’s “Confessions of a Philosopher”, a paragraph which – if I was half as bright as him I would have written about myself.

“All my life I have been brimming over with an almost uncontainably powerful desire to live. I feel it as an ever-present drive, thirst, lust, of which I have been inescapably aware since childhood. This drive would have to be somehow broken before I could calmly accept my own demise, which until then will mean accepting the unacceptable. I should not, however, misrepresent myself—it is not only with my personal survival that I am concerned: I have also a greedy, sharp-edged curiosity about how things are, a clamant need to understand, that will not let me relax; and about this there is something impersonal and objective. I believe I would still have it if I were indestructible.”

Peachy day in PE today. Love and happiness to all of you.

Albert Ellis - A Stoic to the end

Albert Ellis, archetypical stoic and the father of CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) died aged 93 on 24 July 2007.

A great article and his final interview in Prospect Magazine.

Some epic quotes :

"He is also a colourful character, given to swearing like a fishwife (he has suggested that Freud's ideas were "horseshit from start to finish") and insistent on his view that "most human beings are out of their fucking minds." You could say he is a modern Diogenes: foul-mouthed, free-thinking, trying to liberate us from the mental habits that make us miserable."

And on being fired from the board of the institute that he created: "Ellis himself manages to stay stoical about the whole nasty business. "They [the board] have behaved abominably," he says. "But they're fucked-up, fallible human beings, just like everyone else.""

His writing and thinking is a model for survival of the fucked-up human beings we all are.

Why I stay

On being pushed why I stay, and why I want to stay. I finally figured it out. I'm a gambler through and through.

I could see this sky from many safer places but I think I'd just detest the people around me if I wasn't here.

I just hope the dice roll well.

"Goudstad stoutgat/Ek moet net aan jou boud vat/Vergeet nou maar jou, wat/Vir jou het ek ietsie spesiaal

Kaalgat in Kaapstad/Kan ek maar by jou slaap, skat/My reënjas is al papnat/Vir jou het ek ietsie spesiaal

Chorus:Dis ‘n kwessie van tyd/Sê die missies vir die meid/Dis die bloed in die pan/Dis die blos op die wang/Dis die vloek van die slang/Dis die moeilikheid met die man

Voodoo in Windhoek/Ek wens ek kon jou blinddoek/Jou boyfriend kan ons inboek/Vir jou het ek ietsie spesiaal" - Valiant Swart (Boland Punk)

.

Capsicum Frutescens (var. tabasco)

At last I've found it. The cure for airline food.

While it gets the odd skeef look from the tannies sitting next to me when I whip the bottle out my laptop bag, what the hell, it makes a surefire difference to "chicken or beef?".

Time

Time: The only finite resource we have.

"Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget"
- David Bowie (Rock & Roll Suicide)

Reportedly based on the the poem Chants Andalous by Spanish poet Manuel Machado:

La vida es un cigarillo
Hierno, ceniza y candela
Unos la furnan de prisa
Y algunos la saborean.

Translated as:

Life is a cigarette
Cinder, ash and fire
Some smoke it in a hurry
Others savour it.

Sorry folks that's all I can the time I can afford to post at this point. See you in a month or 2 when I predict some normality....