Article from the Daily Voice

Here is the article I mentioned in the posting about Obama's inauguration. Its from a tabloid here, and like tabloids in the USA and UK, I think its read mostly by the less-educated. The reason I find this article so interesting is that the writer gets across some important points regarding politics here. Such as Jacob Zuma who may become the next president even though he is facing corruption, money-laundering and other charges. I've kept the typos.


From the Daily Voice Fri 16- Sat 17 January 2009

“Do the Maths”

Today we will be doing what is called maths, which is short for Manthamenatics.

What is it? How does it work? What is it good for? And how do you actually do it?
Well let's start at the beginning.
Maths is the science of adding and subtracting funny little symbols called numbers from each other.
For instant: one, two, and three—I'm sure you've come across them before.

Cool
Adding is when you combine one or more numbers with each other to create a new number.
Example: One plus one equals two. How cool is that? I think it's amazing.
And just imagine how much space you save all the time when you can write two instead of having to write one plus one all the time!

But. As always, it's not bladdy perfect, this maths vibe. As soon as it gets a bit more complicated it actually becomes difficult, and before you know it you're more confused than Tony Yengeni heading toward a red light.

Example: Take ou Mathews Phosa for instant.

He is the treasure General of the ANC. Which doesn't mean that he is a general in charge of a treasure but more like a sergeant major in charge of an overdraft.

He's the money guy for the ruling party and one would hope that he would be very flippen good at maths.

I'm not sure if he is but he sure is passionate about it.

Earlier this week, when Mr Zuma, president of the ANC, was once again up for corruption and fraud charges and was getting nicely back in the sh!t, Mr Phosa tuned that they had not yet reached the point where the political and moral cost of supporting ou Zuma had become too high.

Intergrity

Great for Mr Zuma if you consider that so far it's only cost the ANC their integrity, a massive split in the party, credibility in the eyes of the world and, most likely, a thing called a “two thirds majority” in parliament.

I don't fully understand it but it's maths and I think it's important.

You see, maths can be very creative.

The previous president of our beautiful country was also an expert at maths.

He proved, for example, that millions of people suffering from HIV and AIDS in South Africa are worth less than one principle...that he is right.

And that's not all. Our government is adept at this “couple of millions equals less than one” maths and have gone to great lengths to denemonstrate it to us over the years.

Here are more examples:

What is a friendship with one old, mad, and sick dictator worth? Come on I know you can do it—just concentrate. Got it yet? That's right!

The lives of millions of innocent people and the economy of an entire region! Excellent!

That's right guys, one Mugabe is worth about one and a third whole Zimbabawes because otherwise our whole way of dealing with them makes but f**k-all sense if you ask me.

Here's another one: What is one old crony in a uniform worth to a country full of people who have to stick to rules and laws, and pay taxes and vote and sh!t?

I know! A year's worth of massive salary!

Crook

That's what the government pays Mr Jacky Selebi who is not even working now that he's being investigated for allegedly being a crook, but had his contract renewed for another year anyways.

Even after he lost his job as the boss of Interpol and was too much of an embarrassment o actually go to work anymore.

Now that's creative people.

What do we learn from all of this? Where does the path of knowledge lead us?

It teaches us the following: Mathamanantics is not an exact science, it's a creative art. Expecially if you work in South African politics.

The question is not whether you can add one and one but rather: do you want to? And who's picking up the bill?

Dreadlocks in South Africa

I have had dreadlocks for 6 years now. I started them when I was here studying abroad. I had shaved my head since it was something I always wanted to do, and as it was growing back, I thought, hey, I'm in Africa why not get dreadlocks? So I went to a hair salon and asked them to make me some dreadlocks. What they did to my 3-4 inch hair was to put it into clumps and put wax all over them. What I ended up with was a head full of wax, and it was quite painful. I was assured that when my hair grew, it would grow dreaded. This wasn't the case and my hair just got nasty. So I went to another salon, this time in the township accompanied by my boyfriend at the time who translated for me what I wanted. They said, oh, this was done all wrong! But then what they did was to pull apart the big clumps of wax and clump my hair into smaller clumps of wax. He did tell me to rub my hair and head with a wool sweater or towel and this would tangle the hair. This worked and small dreads started to form. Once back in the States I learned about metal combs and backcombing the hair and rolling it and this excellerated the process. It was 2 years before it looked like I had dreadlocks. Lots of work.

I didn't know this before, but dreadlocks mean something in South Africa. It's not simply a hairstyle, but they are associated with rastafarianism and rebellion. I don't know a lot about rastafarianism, but dreadlocks, reggae music, and smoking massive amounts of marijuana are often associated with it (this isn't what it is actually about). Nearly every day as I walk around here in Cape Town someone greets me because of my hair. With some groups of people, having dreadlocks means having instant respect, I'm suddenly in some underground network of people without even knowing it. I don't try to explain to people I am not a rasta, I just go along with it. It's easier that way, and it's kind of fun.

I often get called "rasta" and at a heath food shop the other day I was looking at the shelves and the guy at the shop said "Hi rasta, how are you rasta? Can I help you rasta?" He was really friendly, and gave me his number, the number of his reggae DJ friend, names of clubs playing reggae, and said he could hook me up with marijuana, any kind I wanted, just give him a call. I get offered to buy marijuana a lot because of the dreadlocks, and I thought how different things are here, that even though marijuana is illegal, a guy working at a health food store so blatantly offers it to me. In the States, in Portland, people don't offer marijuana to me on the streets. I think even though I have dreadlocks people can tell I don't smoke. I have found smoking marijuana changes the energy field and makes it all wobbly. Like a Malawian guy staying at the backpackers we were at. He is nearly stoned all the time, and his energy field is compressed and wobbly.

I have noticed two things seem to be big here that I didn't expect: rastafarianism and followers of Osho (more on Osho another time). I am on a quest to find out why rastafarianism is so popular here. It's more than just smoking lots of dagga (local term for marijuana), because they could just be pot heads and not consider themselves to be rastas. I've talked to a few people about it, but haven't gotten the key yet. My hunch is that it has something to do with African pride (Haile Selassie an important guy in the philosophy was the Emperor of Ethiopia), and an idea of unity and love. Although I hear people talk about this "love" I haven't met anyone embodying it. That wouldn't make the philosophy wrong, I certainly don't meet many people following different religions who embody their faith either.