Dancing to their tune

It was to be expected that news of Lolly Jackson’s death would elicit a flood of self-righteous com mentary on the man and his life.

The fact that Jackson made his fortune by running strip clubs seems to rub a lot of people up the wrong way. It would be interesting to know just how many of them frequented Jackson’s establishments and so con tributed to his said wealth.

We’ll probably never know the an swer to that question, but we may be able to find the answer to another.

Why do people look down upon exotic dancers and strippers and the business they are a part of as much as they do?

One will, for example, hear many comments about how Jackson sup posedly exploited women and how all exotic dancers are being exploited by their employers.

Now, naturally, some dancers out there probably are exploited by their employers, but that can be said for most industries.

Some may not like their jobs, but that will hardly put them in some special minority either: a great many of the world’s workers don’t love what they do, but do it in order to put food on the table.

If we deride strip club owners for letting desperate women work for them, then what about all the other industries that employ desperate people (which in the current econom ic climate includes just about every one)?

The only difference is that stripping pays much better than many of the other more “respectable” career choices out there.

A lot of the negative attitude toward stripping is probably religious, and predicated on the idea that women’s bodies are somehow dirty and evil, and that any expression of sexuality is sinful.

But remove all the dogma and brainwashing from the equation, and what do we find?

A room full of women who want to show off their bodies to an audience keen to appreciate them.

Certainly most women probably don’t find the idea of parading naked in front of a group of men (and women) appetising, but to each their own.

And many men don’t have any interest in watching strangers from the opposite sex gyrate around metal poles wearing their birthday suits.

But what harm does it do the uninterested parties if some people do choose to work and entertain them selves in this manner?

None at all.

Perhaps then a lot of the animosity aimed at strippers, strip clubs and their clientele stems not only from religious indoctrination, but also from jealousy.

Jealousy that your body isn’t as toned as a stripper’s, jealousy that you don’t have the self-confidence that they do, or jealousy that some men are free to enjoy a night at a strip club while you aren’t.

But neither jealousy nor an uncon scious revulsion of the female body are valid reasons to vilify an entire industry.

As is so often said, this is a free country, and Jackson made the most of the freedoms that were given him.

His path might not be one that others would choose for themselves, but it’s one he blazed in a unique, unapologetic and ultimately ex tremely successful fashion.

For that, for the work opportunities he provided for so many women, for his contributions to charity and for the entertainment his clubs provided, he deserves at least some respect.

Originally appeared in The Citizen, 06/05/2010.

Thin coat of cruelty

Take a long hard look at our society and it soon becomes clear that people don’t treat other people very well.

Look a little longer and it also becomes obvious that people don’t treat animals very well either.

Fortunately, there are people out there who do great work to prevent the ill-treatment of animals.

Unfortunately, many of the proponents of animal rights take their views to such an extreme that they become albatrosses round the neck of their cause.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) this week demonstrated just such behaviour when they released a Press release begging South Africans to “not involve animals” in the upcoming Fifa Soccer World Cup.

Such a call would probably lead the average person scratching their heads in bewilderment. How could animals be involved in an international sporting tournament in the first place?

Read a bit more and it’s revealed that all the panicking is about a company apparently selling animal-friendly paint that can be used to colour the hair of dogs in various bright colours.

This could be used, for example, to turn your dog into the ultimate Bafana Bafana supporter by adding a bit of yellow to his ordinary, drab coat.

But wait!

According to the SPCA, colouring the hair of your dog is irresponsible and may lead to stress and “fear-biting”.

Now one has to wonder why on Earth your dog would bite you if you were to simply brush its hair. If that’s the case canine paint should be the least of your worries.

But apparently this is just not on, because, says the SPCA, “live animals are not toys”.

Neither are live humans, but we often paint them in a variety of colours, then dress them in skimpy out fits and make them dance in the rain before rugby matches, with no ill effect.

As long as the proper animal-friendly products are used, what exactly is the problem?

The SPCA suggests that as an alternative dogs should rather be dressed in jerseys sporting a team’s colours.

Maybe SPCA bosses spend too much time in their air-conditioned offices to notice, but the sweltering African climate can make life quite uncomfortable even for us furless members of the animal kingdom, even without jerseys.

That’s beside the point though. The crux of the matter is that pets are private property, and that as long as no laws are broken and animals are not treated cruelly, the SPCA should butt out of people and their pets’ private lives.

It’s bad enough that they daily kill countless pets simply because they think that their owners’ yards are too small, or because the fences aren’t high enough to meet SPCA standards.

This, of course, while frothing at the mouth whenever some other group or person happens to kill animals (for food, scientific research, or as part of cultural practices, for example).

The ordinary pet owners of this country care more for their own pets and know better how to treat them than the SPCA ever can.

Paint your dog or don’t paint your dog. But don’t let the SPCA decide for you, or fall for their propaganda that it has anything at all to do with cruelty towards animals.

Originally appeared in The Citizen, 29/04/2010.

Musings on an April morning

I have seen the light.

After many years of being an opponent of religious fundamentalism, I have decided to embrace it and become a religious fundamentalist myself.

It all happened after a long correspondence with a professor of theology, Dr Uno Aprile from the University of Minsk.

He made it clear to me that faith is indeed more important and more powerful than evidence or reason.

Human reason, and what is called human “wisdom”, can only go so far.

Look at the state the world is in today, and what we have managed to achieve with the human intellect that humanists take so much pride in.

War, plagues, famine, rampant immorality – these are the fruits of the liberalism I once championed.

When one takes a hard look at the evidence (without relying on it too much, for that would mean a return to the tyranny of reason) it becomes clear that all the suffering and evil in the world is the direct result of the erosion of traditional religious values by relativist philosophy.

The post-modernists who took over in the universities of the world after World War 2 have done more to imperil the souls of people than any of the many pernicious philosophies that preceded it.

Before they arrived on the scene people had certainty, the sort of rock-solid certainty that only blind faith can bring.

Can anyone deny that the world was a much better place before April 1, 1946, and the rise of the atheists and others who would deny the proper place of fundamentalist belief in our lives?

The following decades would bring only ruin, perhaps best exemplified in the antics of the hippies.

While these drug-addled, long-haired, tie-dyed delinquents are fortunately long gone, the effects of the movement they championed are felt by everyone in the Western world to this day.

They questioned things that should not have been questioned, and as a result we now have a situation where people feel free to doubt the religion they were brought up in.

Women forsake their God-given purpose on this earth and instead try to make it in the corporate world, running around like blind mice in pantsuits, while their children are suffering at home and the stove remains cold.

The destruction of traditional marriage means that men can no longer be assured of a warm meal and a clean house when they get home from work.

Disobedient children can no longer be Biblically disciplined, because divinely mandated corporal punishment is suddenly illegal.

This erosion of parents' rights started when it became illegal to stone disbodient youths at the city gates, as the Bible demands.

Back then we should have known that it might have started with them taking away our stones, but that our whips and rods would be next!

Feminism, the sexual revolution, gay “rights” (shouldn't that be “wrongs”?), none of these abominations would exist if we only clung to the wisdom of bronze age peasants!

Those who have the wisdom that only years of ignoring mainstream “facts” and “knowledge” can bring will know what I mean.

As for the others, they're just fools.

Originally appeared in The Citizen, April 1, 2010.

Don't count on it

Something strange happened in Britain this week.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which at best could always be categorised as an insignificant also-ran on the political scene, suddenly became a major contender in British politics.

Just a week ago, the ruling Labour Party was hard at work figuring out how to gain the few percentage points of support it needed to pass the Conservatives in opinion polls.

Then, in the space of a few days, the Lib Dems shot past Labour, and according to some polls are now even more popular than the Tories.

What happened? This game-changing ocurrence was the result of a television debate between the leaders of the three parties.

Such debates are a mainstay of American politics, but this was a first for Britain.

And right now, Labour and the Tories must be kicking themselves for agreeing to what they must have thought would be a fun, insignificant piece of political theatre, but has instead turned their duel into a three-way race with the Lib Dems.

Before this happened, there was not one single indication that the Lib Dems were going to become a player in national politics.

But how quickly things can change!

Interested local observers might well wonder whether something similar could play itself out over here.
Could an insignificant opposition party (and face it, at the moment they're all pretty insignificant in the greater scheme of things) suddenly challenge the hegemony of the ANC?
And could proper televised debates between party leaders be the catalyst for such a shift in the status quo, as it was in Britain?

Probably not, for a variety of reasons.

One of them is that there's very little evidence that South Africans approach politics in the same manner that it's approached in Britain, the US and other democratic republics.

Our political system may have all the trappings also found in those other countries, and look just like it, but it does not and cannot function in the same way, thanks to the behaviour of voters.

It should be pretty obvious to everyone by now that the vast majority of voters, of all political persuasions, vote with their hearts and not their minds.

For them, voting is like supporting their favorite sport team, and the only people who bother to read election manifestos or can even give a reasonable explanation of a party's platform are the party officials who draw them up.

Another, closely related reason is the worrying strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through the country.
It's evinced by such remarks as Julius Malema's infamous “there's no Pedi word for hermaphrodite” comment. There is actually, but Malema didn't know it, and was proud of it.

And so a television debate, which attempts to engage intellectually with voters to make them decide on who to vote for, is not going to have much of an effect.

It might be worth mentioning that it's this same anti-intellectual approach that gave the Americans eight years of George W Bush, someone who was “down to earth” and who you “could have a beer with”.

But then we have plenty of evidence of what such an approach leads to right here.

The Lib Dems deserve all the credit in the world for making the most of the opportunity they were given, but they could work with an electorate that allowed them the opportunity.

Sorry, but that's not going to happen over here.

Originally appeared in The Citizen, 22/10/2010.

Is it worth your life?

Earlier this week, Transport Minister S'bu Ndebele described South African roads as “lawless”, something known only too well by those of us who put our lives on the line on the country's roads.

The Minister seems however to have been referring more specifically to the non-payment of traffic fines and the fact that a lot of people don't turn up in court for traffic law cases against them.

But it's the other sort of lawlessness that is the real problem on our roads – the reckless and dangerous driving that kills thousands of people every year.

Every single day, people die in traffic accidents due to the negligent and aggressive behaviour of motorists who insist on driving as if they are the only people for whom the country's highways and streets were built.

And every day, there are just as many close calls. Talk to friends, family and collegues, and you're sure to hear harrowing tales of escaping death by only a few milliseconds or centimetres.

The only thing more disturbing than the incidents themselves is the frequency with which they occur.

One of the most tragic aspects of this situation is that it's all so completely unnecessary.
Despite a big pothole problem in many areas, our roads are in pretty good shape and cannot be held responsible for the carnage.

Once again there are some notable exceptions, but most cars on the road are relatively new and in roadworthy condition.

This means that there is but one thing that can be blamed for the majority of fatal accidents, and that is driver (and pedestrian) behaviour.

How often do you see a car driving 50km/h above the speed limit and moving dangerously and illegally across lanes simply to gain a single car length?
Is arriving at the next traffic light two seconds before the car you just passed worth your life or those of other motorists?

Evidently it is for quite a few drivers out there.
And getting more people to pay their traffic fines is not going to solve the problem.
Traffic fines and other punitive measures such as ones coming into effect under Aarto only come into effect after a crime is already committed.

It's the same situation we find with violent crime: the police can naturally only respond once a crime has been committed, and even then, apprehending a murderer does not undo his actions.

The only way to bring safety to our roads is to bring an end to the mentality that leads to reckless and negligent behaviour – a traffic fine isn't going to make anyone value his or his neighbour's life more.

As with the other crimes that ravage our communities, we need to ask ourselves where this callous disregard for human life comes from.

At what point, and for what reason, does someone feel justified in putting at risk the lives of innocent people? What switch goess off in their heads that makes them decide that they are willing to kill and maim to get to the pub before the game starts?

The only thing that's obvious for now is that obviously parents, schools and churches are failing miserably to instil in our citizens a respect for their and others' lives.

Originally appeared in The Citizen, 15/04/2010.

What unites us?

The murder of Eugene Terre'blanche once again throws into relief the fact that there is precious little uniting South Africans.


Beyond the fact that we're all lumped together in a piece of land with some very arbitrarily determined borders, what is there that we really have in common?

Perhaps the only things that truly unite us are our differences and the fact that we seem all too ready to kill for them.

And despite the image that the outside world might have of South Africa, these differences don't run neatly along racial lines either.

Right-wing Afrikaners reserve a special hatred for liberal Afrikaners, and the liberals in turn can't stand the right-wingers.

And both of these groups on either side of the political spectrum can't stand the “fence-sitting” moderates in the centre.

The decades of violence that have rocked KwaZulu-Natal also make clear that the Zulus are not some homogeneous group with shared interests and political views.

A list of all the racial, religious and social groups in the country and the differences that divide them would be a very long one.

Such differences are of course a fact of life not only in South Africa but in other countries as well.

In some nations the differences are fewer than the similarities.

The vast majority of Iraqis, for example, are Arabs and Muslims, yet the fact that some are Shi'ites and others Sunnis leads to the sort of violence that constantly threatens to tear the country apart.

Then there's the US, the world's racial and religious melting pot par excellence.

Its population comes from practically every nation in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, and there are followers of every single religion you can imagine and probably a few that you couldn't.

Yet despite all the many – and make no mistake, very real – differences that divide them, they are ultimately united as Americans in a way that makes their country infinitely more prosperous, stable and peaceful than Iraq or South Africa.

Without this sort of unity we will forever remain in a fragile state where the actions or utterances of extremists on either side of the political spectrum could plunge the country into chaos and violence.

Now more than ever then we need new and innovative approaches to nation building, because the ones attempted thus far have obviously failed spectacularly.

Nobody can say for certain what form an effective approach will take, but one thing that is certain is that nation building efforts need to be based on much more than trying to engender loyalty to a soccer or rugby team.

We need much more than 90 minutes of solidarty while watching 11 men kick a ball around a patch of grass.

But maybe there is no form of nation building that will be effective. Maybe it's just not possible to unite all the people of this country, with their 11 official and many unofficial languages, their different religions, their varied political views.

It does seem rather silly to assume that just because people share a certain space that they must inevitably get along.

Will that style of wishful thinking prove to have been justified in the case of South Africa?

Only time will tell. But if recent events are any indication, we won't have to wait very much longer to find out.


Originally appeared in The Citizen, 08/04/2010.

To JuJu or not to JuJu ...

Why is Julius Malema (in)famous? The unfortunate answer is that the ANC Youth League leader is well known only due to the efforts of the journalists he berates as part of a “white boer” conspiracy against him.

Malema is a household name be cause of the inane statements he habitually makes, statements so out of touch with reality and so filled with hate and venom that incredulous reporters can’t help writing stories about them, and audiences can’t help reading them.

Each of Malema’s public speaking appearances is like a gruesome traffic accident, and the media-consuming public are like the motorists stuck in a traffic jam, slowly moving past the scene of the crash.

Although they know that nothing can possibly be gained from looking at the mangled bodies and twisted metal, and that it will only end up upsetting them, they look anyway.

It’s the same with a Malema speech.

Whether he’s singing songs calling for the killing of sections of the popu lation, advocating the murder of political opponents, trying to rewrite history or simply giving expression to his obsession with race, the one thing all his utterances have in common is that they are totally lacking in any sort of merit or value.

The man is not a member of government, nor is he a public servant of any sort.

Inconsequential is perhaps the best way to sum up the man and his utterances.

He’s merely a wandering clown employed to keep the populace's at tention away from matters that really affect them, such as the lack of service delivery and the fact that the rich in this country, both black and white, continue to get richer while the poor – black and white – continue to get poorer.

Malema, of course, is one of the few who keep getting richer and richer, insisting that he's a champion of the poor while sipping his obscenely expensive French champagne.

Writers of letters to newspapers often complain about the coverage Malema receives, but one has to wonder whether these people would really be happy if the media did not report his antics.

While the falsehoods of the enfant terrible of South African politics may be recognised as such by those familiar with history and current affairs, there are those who believe everything that Malema says.

And those people then go on to make real-life decisions based on the latest bulletin from the Malemaverse.

It could be argued that this fact does at the end of the day make what Malema says newsworthy. But is that enough justification to reprint calls for violence and murder?

What do you, dear readers, think?

Should South African media outlets stop reporting on Malema, and in so doing deprive him of his main method of spreading propaganda?

Or do you think that simply ignoring the man would be irresponsible and negligent on the part of journalists?

Originally appeared in The Citizen, 25/03/2010.