Just Being Brutally Honest

Three things got me fascinated recently and laughing all the way through my nationwide travels. Me and my friends have been having abridged conversations about the tender system. You all know the government's flawed procurement system that doesn’t always deliver the best results because the chaps hired to man it are bloody greedy and want a slice of every pie they have to offer to hungry contractors. Now, our conversation was largely about how this system undermines excellence and rewards mediocrity and incompetence. Herewith are three scenarios.

ONE: The way the tender system is so corrupt it is most likely that if the South African Blood Service issued an invitation for a qualified company to supply it with 100 litres of blood a month for the next five years you would get comrades winning it and later supplying chicken, goat, sheep and cattle blood to the bank. For all you know people might start dying in droves, all with their blood sucked out.

TWO: if South Africa desperately wanted to win a gold medal at the next Olympics and issued an international invitation to bid from a person who can run on our behalf and win the tender, believe me the tender would go to the obese guy who drives an ML Class, that’s even if confirmed fastest man on earth Usain Bolt bidded. The fat comrade will the be told by his inside connection to go and hire Bolt since he scored high in functionality.

THREE: An initiation school is a very important institution to some of our tribes since it lies at the belly of our very survival. Thus, such a ritual is carried out first; by a trained minder who at times should be the child of someone who has run such a school for generations; second; it should be someone with the right ethnic orientation and blessings from the tribe’s elders, traditional leadership and traditional doctors since they are going to entrust their kids with not only his scalpel but his vision. One of my friends said that if such a service was put to tender you would get tenderers from tribes that don’t even initiate bidding or it, claiming that once they win it they will hire a MoPulana, uMndebele or UmXhosa to run it for them as they will be putting invoices to the House of Traditional Leaders.

What a fucked-up patronage rooted system we have for procurement. No wonder two-thirds of government services, that which is procured sucks. Government should stick to supplying IDs, imagine what would happen if they were supplied by a dodgy company called UMXABULO IDENTITY SOLUTIONS?

Immortal Technique on Russian television

God is white – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!!

This is not a conspiracy theory because I’m not trying to conspire against anyone; it’s a fact base opinion, if there is such a thing. I’ve grown to learn and know about God our father, who art in heaven, its lovely story of a lifetime that gives a man like me hope and hope is not something you can pick up from a street. Hope brings life and life…..! Well, Common says life is a bitch depending on how you dress it, I say life is but after death now back to my story, I say I’ve seen God and the dude isn’t black. In my 29 years on this earth I’ve seen everything in black translated into a white superiority. What I mean is, there is a certain favour that is bestowed upon the Caucasian nation and there’s nothing we can do about it. My black consciousness brothers and those who embrace Africanism preached to me about the false ideologies of the white man, through the demonic media, I received and repented but my repentance fell short. They told me about the history of African colonisation and how the white man stole everything from us. I pondered the story and realise that, if the white man can do that, have that kind of power and the rest of wasn’t sleeping then he’s got some godliness behind him. In the bible, which I grew up reading, it is said that God favoured certain people and certain nations (Israel to be specific) just to show-of his glory, well there’s no reason in there why he chose Abraham to be the father of all nations or why he chose Abel over Cain, so I assume it is for show-off…after all he’s the creator. You might be thinking blasphemy at this moment but like Eminem said I’m just giving you things that you think about or talk about in the living room but I have guts to say them in front of you. Ironically Marshall Manthers is a white rapper who dominated the genre, which is known to be a black music or black culture, like poverty over Africa. Now you tell me if that’s not favour bestowed by some high power? Beside, Em’s story, there is a whole lot of the world’s spectre that is dominated by Caucasians like the Media, Entertainment, music, business, finance, sports and controversially, even religion, they presided over us and other races to level where Chika Onyika (the author of The Capitalist Nigger) lambasted to the African nation. Who can blame him?

Although it sounds cliché and funny in a way, but it is true that when you have the favour of God like Moses did, you walk on water or part seas, while your counterparts are just the King Pharaohs following suite but failing to do the same. The charismatic preachers will and can agree with me on this one. Now, the race which I’m accusing of being godly, has apparently stolen everything from the Egyptian philosophy, our resources, history, religion even our identity but they didn’t just steal it they turned it into class. I mean the Germans made cars and we feel like god in them, Russians made guns and feel glory with them, Swedish made porn glamorous and we are addicted to it and the American took a black man to slavery and made American out of him and we cherish him. Now how’s that for being on the Almighty’s side? I sometimes think that maybe my mind is colonised by the white man mentality which sometimes I’m accused of but religion states clearly that there are those who are chosen and those that aren’t, like there’s right and wrong, heaven and hell, white and the others. It is evident that religion is classed according to race and ecology but one thing in common is the fact we put a spiritual figure (God) which we pray to, unfortunately on this case also there is a dominating religion which is run by them white folks. The Veticans, Catholics, they dictated the figure or the picture we should have about their God because they were favoured amongst others. This is not blasphemy; I just saw everything in black translated into white superiority but we don’t see the same…..”Sepedi sere, sehlare sa mosotho ke lekgowa, and the bible says God is our healer”

Chapter 2 (the Bible version coming soon)

The Truth

Two weeks ago City Press publhised article penned by talented and award-winning poetLebo Mashile (Live, Love and Belong) once again exposed the high levels ofintellectual bankruptcy in our society and our ongoing celebration ofmediocrity. For anyone to have opted for Mashile to deliver such a flawedspeech during such an august occasion insinuates that South Africa has runout of history scholars with a proper grasp of anthropology – I protestthat Mashile carries such a mantle lest I proclaim our collectiveappraisal of mediocre intellectualism.First; there is no ‘small’ nation in the face of the earth calledBapulane. There is a ‘big’ nation called Mapulana rooted not inBushbuckridge (as a matter of fact Bushbuckridge is in Mpumalanga and notLimpopo) but Mapulaneng which covers a sizeable chunk of Mpumalanga.Mapulana are found in every corner of South Africa, largely in Gautengwhere they have a footprint. This is information so in the public domainthat a first year anthropology student could have delivered a betterpresentation on. That Mapulana did not have their own Bantustan and arecognized (official) language does not make them less of a nation thesame way Palestinians are not less human by virtue of being denied landand self-determination.Mashile should also understand apartheid’s (especially Bantustans) role incrafting the modern South African identity. Tribes and languages weredeliberately suffocated under the homeland system. I know not of a singleMoPulana who is “very comfortable referring to themselves as both Pedi(sic) and Bapulane (sic)”. The biggest insult one can dish against aMoPulana is to call them a MoPedi.To position Mashile’s flawed analysis within a cultural context I wouldprofess that identity is inherited and never chosen to suit a populisthegemonic agenda. Contrary to her calculated definition of her ownidentity the Mashiles are not Basotho (from Lesotho) but one of the fiveoffspring of the lion (Bana ba Tau Sethlano). They are royalty inMapulaneng. They are in the same league with Mashego, Malele, Chilwane andMogane.Given that Mashile’s diatribe was during the World Summit on Arts andCulture one can sadly conclude that the world now carries that distortednarrow interpretation of our cultural identity as fact. It will beencouraging next time for the organizers to offer such a privilege tosomeone more qualified on the subject like Professor Pitika Ntuli or DrMathole Motshega instead of a poet.All Mashile had to do was to Google ‘Mapulaneng’ and she would have endedup with more academic references, websites and Facebook groups aboutMapulana to assist in her speech instead of perpetuating a dangerousfascist analysis of Mapulana, a victorious and proud nation.

Oppression redefined!!!!

For the first time in my life, I really understoond what it meant to be the "token BLACK person".

From people making sure that I knew that I was different even with my good accent and "great" people' skills to putting in extra hours and effort so that others can see my worth in the work place and not see me as the person as the person they hired just to ration out the whole "affirmative" action thing that - for a long time didn't matter much to me.

In the 9 months that I have spent in this company, I have felt emotions I had not felt in a long tme - anger, hate, frustration, weakness etc.

I had to teach myself most of what I now know, deal with a woman (that has spent the last 18 years of her life in the same company) that wanted to prove to everyone that she knows all things related to work and we (the whole department) are nothing without her, defending myself every second day because no matter how good I thought my work would be - she would always find an error, insults from retailers and so on!!!!! I t goes deeper than this though, more on a tip of "corporate sabotage" as I would call it!!!!!


People just do not want to see other people succeed or simply being better at certain things than them..... you see that, that is what makes people go to hectic extents to destroy all that is good in a person - I would call that evil behaviour and a different kind of oppression.

For that reason and more personal ones ( me failing to see how I could possibly grow in a company that had an extremely intelligent person working a junior position for 12years only to be promoted just because we spoke out when an idiot of not - who happens to be white- got promoted to a more senior position in less than 2years in the same company) and 1 woman that has made me feel how it is to despise a person that I have only known for less than a year.

What angers me more is that I have put myself in an invironment that has changed the person I had been for 25years into this petty thinking, uncreative, nagging person that I have grown to dislike! I don not want that for myself and am leaving it for those who are willing to put up with all types of bullshit in a work place for a constant salary that amounts to peanuts. I have turned myself into a prisoner and have deprived myself of the things I actually do want in my life!

If you are wondering what I am bitching about........... I have just resigned for my job!

The MADNESS has to stop!