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?