They’re doing it again. The moral police are making decisions for you and I that they’re in no way entitled to make. I quote here from the Star Tonight of January 28 2012:

Religious organisations and civil society welcomed the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) ruling on Friday that there would be no pornography on pay TV in SA. Icasa spokesman Jubie Matlou said it was decided that women’s right to dignity outweighed TopTV’s right to freedom of expression, and the rights of viewers to receive pornography on television. The Apostolic Faith Mission of SA said on Friday night it was both relieved and delighted that Icasa took the valid concerns of citizens into account. Isak Burger, its president, said: “(The) government must act decisively to protect society’s most vital institutions – marriage and the family.” He added that thousands of children were being exposed to sexually explicit images, and called on the government to introduce legislation to eradicate the proliferation of pornography on TV and the internet. The SA Muslims Network also welcomed the ruling, with chairman Faisal Suleman confirming they had made a submission to Icasa opposing the application. Childline’s national co-ordinator, Joan van Niekerk, said the ruling indicated Icasa’s awareness to protect children. The Family Policy Institute (FPI) described Icasa’s decision as “socially responsible”. Institute director Errol Naidoo said it was a “bold decision” that placed the health and welfare of the family above the profit motives of irresponsible broadcasters. “The South African public’s overwhelming opposition to pornography on national television is now a proven fact,” he said.

Well I beg your pardon, but I don’t think they consulted me or anyone I know, even vaguely. The Apostolic Faith Mission? The Family Policy Institute? The SA Muslims Network? Who are these people and why are they making decisions on my behalf about what I can and cannot see on my television in the privacy of my own home? How dare these people have the temerity to act like an authoritarian censor and determine, from an unqualified position what is appropriate viewing for free adults in a liberal democracy? It makes the debate about the Protection of Information Bill seem positively lowbrow.

A few weeks ago, driving home from a perfectly civilised and restful dinner, I found myself incensed by a self-appointed religious leader on talk radio who decided that the women in porn do it under duress and mostly in abject misery. Now I don’t know how much porn she might actually have seen but I aver she hasn’t seen quite enough of the kind I have – and very many of the women in question either enjoy the experience or are superb actresses who deserve every cent they get. Western women who decide to become porn stars (certainly the successful ones) usually do it because they want to and because it’s lucrative. To insinuate anything else based on their psychological health would require less of a blanket statement and more thorough research on an individual basis – something I doubt the lady in question got to grips with. To do anything less would be akin to saying that people who become teachers are paedophiles because they desire proximity to children. It is a shameful statement and one which any self-respecting feminist is likely to contest with fighting words. I also asked her (and never got a satisfactory answer) what right she thought she had to force her 5000-year old mythological moralising down my secular throat (thereby no doubt, conjuring up a distasteful comparative image of one of her porn stars in her mind). Of course she had no answer, because no such right exists.

The Apostolic Faith Mission and the like, regularly citing the protection of children do not insist on the same right children have to not have their little minds poisoned by their parents or church when it comes to having Jesus Christ foisted into their happy, guiltless pre-pubescence. Instead they will wail about the prevalence of sexual imagery and foul pornography all around their precious children. Let us not forget how these children came to be. Their parents fucked them into existence, using methods not unlike those in the porn films they so loathe. But that is to digress. The fact is that every child will eventually encounter porn, hopefully later in life and hopefully in a healthy way. To pretend that an adult pay-per-view code-locked TV channel will be their first port of call shows just how out of touch these old trouts are with teenagers, modern technology and modern communication. The genie has been out of the lamp since the most ancient of civilisations and you will not force it back in. Children must be raised with healthy attitudes to sexuality and sex and their parents should take care to remember that this duty is theirs alone. No law, Communications Commission or TV channel board member is empowered to raise your child.

So Errol Naidoo, Faisal Suleman, Isak Burger and company, I ask only this: Since I don’t force you to remove stupid religious programming from my television, even when it borders on the ludicrous and offends people like me deeply (like the evangelical Sunday programs which fraudulently purport to demonstrate faith-healing and deeply patronising Muslim programs about a woman’s place in the home); since I don’t infer that your bogus imaginary friends Jesus and Mohammed are an affront to my childrens’ right to be told the truth on television; and since I don’t even need to put a code in to unblock this drivel – all I ask is that you let everyone else watch what they like, and you watch what you like. Nobody has any right to extend their magisterium any further than that. The detritus of religious moral preachment has only shown us one thing – that if morality is left to the religious they will usually do the wrong thing, and do so with divine warrant; and those of us who believe that freedom and decency come not from what you watch or read or learn – but from how much you respect the rights of your fellow man are almost always the ones history favours.

“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.”
- George Santayana 

If I had asked you, in December of 2010, what Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, Laurent Gbagbo of the Cote d’Ivoire, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Kim Jong Il of North Korea might have had on their agendas for 2011, I doubt you would have guessed exile, assassination, The Hague, jail and death, respectively. You might have had an easier time guessing that Greece would default on it’s debt repayments and send the Euro into free-fall or that Julius Malema would go from the summer of his sweet content to o’ercast winter in less than twelve months. Dictators, debt and discipline. At the end of another tumultuous year, we can pause in the evening to decide if the day has been splendid or not.

Seasonal change brings rising temperatures and rising human tempers; the storms of political and economic disruption and the pressures of a world inhabited by (as of 31 October 2011, we’re led to believe) by 7-billion souls. We have borne witness to not only the genesis of these pivotal moments, but also to their second-stage development – and in the case of the Arab Spring, an unseasonably early autumn. I don’t know why we’re surprised, there are always four seasons in a year:

Spring. The people of the Arab world, rudely fast-tracked from what Europe went through more gradually in about 300 years over a period of just weeks, found their voice. The hard fight, especially in Libya, accessible modern technology and communication platforms, and the martyrdom of at least a few brave men and women thrust them into a chaotic new world. For the first time in their cultural history, Arabs in North Africa were able to cast off a mantle of near-feudal autocracy. The real change still looms. Will autocracy be replaced by democracy, as promised – or nefarious, insidious theocracy? Perhaps places like Egypt and Libya will remain anarchic, with military, religious, secular and foreign business interests maintaining an unstable limbo – while the people throw their hands up in frustration. Don’t go buying any green tomatoes in Syria or Yemen just yet either.

Summer. China, in the heat of it’s self-confidence, must feel as if the balmy weather might last forever, but thanks to the stagnant conditions in the world’s economy, clouds are predicted. Growth has fallen sharply, production must follow, and the relentless greed for raw materials must also reach a kind of ceiling. If the Chinese economy stops growing, there will be international wailing and gnashing of teeth. A niggling problem for the Chinese remains the contrast between the burgeoning, sprawling urban society and the rudiment of the rural peasant. They’re like the poor and embarrassing relatives you pretend don’t exist. Either way, change will come even to those nations on the ascendant.

Autumn. The flame of once-hegemonic Western civilisation burns only in America now. Since that flame has begun to flicker in Europe, the precariousness of the continent has become starkly apparent: Seemingly limitless liberal socialism; an ageing population; explosive immigration; petty bureaucratic squabbling in Brussels and societies living on entitlements and beyond their means in countries like Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland – have meant austerity and uncertainty across Europe. The countries that invented democracy now beg for money from Chinese banks and for energy from Russian oligarchs. I don’t mean just to sound dramatic here. It is dramatic. It is a Greek tragedy written in the prose of the economists.

Winter. The famine of North Korea has been a creeping and gradual thing, but more suddenly the globe’s most miserable, lonely and bizarre nation-state has lost it’s Dear Leader. So weakened from within and so devoid of allies without, the hungry people of this once-mysterious and irrationally feared, incompetent Kolkhoz-farm already find themselves in perpetual, dark winter. By the end of 2012, Kim Il Sung’s great totalitarian social experiment will be in tatters. Ideology will have needlessly sent another whole population into the ground. If you thought they cried when they buried Kim Jong Il, just wait…

Our own micro-climate has been less affected by the thundering words of COP-17 and more gently weathered by intra-party posturing: Jacob Zuma’s faction in an increasingly factionalized ruling ANC seems hell-bent on victory at their elective conference in Mangaung next year. They have already quashed the rebellious Youth League, shown determination that weak ministers and police chiefs will be fired and suspended, and pushed through onerous and authoritarian legislation. A more serious, assertive and disciplined order will mark the ANC’s centenary year. Not all of this will be in the country’s best interest. The struggle between the executive and judiciary seems poised to erupt either into open hostility or fizzle into the domination of one (probably the executive) over the other. The latter would be less eventful, but far more dangerous.

Only a prophet or a fool could make predictions for 2012, and those honorifics are not mutually exclusive.  May 2012 prove not to be the beginning of the end, as the Mayans might have forecast it, but the end of the beginning. Happy New Year.

“We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it.” – Claude Shannon

Happy Holidays!

The holidays are upon us. Here is an excerpt from my book “Gareth Cliff on Everything”

(published by Jonathan Ball – available at all leading bookstores and online).

The holidays might be something you¹ve been craving all year. We all love the end-of-year break, and we need it quite badly.  There¹s just one problem: you forgot about all the things that ruined last December for you because it was a whole year ago. Let me explain: there are things about the holidays that can bite you in the backside and turn what should be a festive, relaxing time into a nightmare. Here are ten tips for a happy holiday.

1. You don¹t need to go away to get away. There¹s so much pressure to make the December holiday count. Some people splash out and go to Cuba, America, the Seychelles or Bali. Cape Town, Plett, Sodwana and Ballito can be just as relaxing, and won¹t give you headaches when you do your finances in February. You also might not need three weeks. One week is sometimes enough.
Don¹t be so self-indulgent.

2. Ninety per cent of us don¹t have beach-fit bodies, so we¹re not going to feel too good about being scantily clad in public. You forget how awful you felt when someone you liked last year commented on how hot that other guy on the beach looked, while glaring disapprovingly at you. Just accept that nobody wants to look at you, and make the most of your time on the beach.
Which brings me, conveniently, to point three.

3. You¹re going to eat too much, feel stuffed and have indigestion from all the rich holiday food. You¹ll put on a ton of weight, you¹ll sweat in the heat, and you¹ll hate your body in January. We all think we can moderate this, but we can¹t. Christmas, especially, is pig-out time. Leftovers don¹t help, and neither do the old ladies in every family who feel that their holiday duties consist of them force-feeding you cholesterol-packed rubbish like stuffing and fatty red meat. Just learn to say no. Start practising
now.

4. You might meet some people on holiday. Even with the best of intentions, it is unlikely that these cool new people will still be in your life by June. Normally you¹re already bored with them by the end of the holiday. Maybe they¹re bored with you, too. You¹re not going to meet your new best friend on holiday. Be happy with the people you¹re with ­ family, friends, a lover ­ and forget about that cool group of guys you hung out with at the bar, the girls who you met in the swimwear section, or the celebrity who rented the house next to yours and came round to borrow some booze. They¹re
holiday friends.

5. You¹ll feel guilty that you wish you were single every day you¹re away with your boyfriend or girlfriend. On holiday you¹ll feel a bit hedonistic, you¹ll be caught up in the joy of the holidays and the sense of reckless abandon, and you¹ll behave like a single person ­ but you might not be. This will put your relationship under severe strain because there will be many opportunities for whirlwind romances and fun nights out, but you¹ll have to stay in and do Œcouple things¹. You may end up watching a lot of DVDs. Combat this feeling by accepting the benefits of reliable sex or split up before the holidays start. If you really love the one you¹re with, this tip is invalid.

6. Don¹t spend all your money. Buy everyone a small, sentimental gift rather than splash out on a Pierneef for your mom, just because you¹re guilty that she sacrificed her best years raising you. If you don¹t buy that great-aunt you usually ignore something small, she¹ll harbour a grudge for many years. The Christmas table will be a miserable place for you when she hands you a crummy gift and you have nothing but a smile and reluctant kiss for the old bitch.

7. Your presents will be OK. You¹re not seven years old anymore. When you¹re seven, all those presents under the tree stir up an intense excitement that is the closest any human being comes to experiencing real magic. On the night you expect Father Christmas, every sound is a clue to his being there. You¹re so excited that your little heart beats like an older person suffering from severe cardiac arrhythmia. When you open that present the next day, it is the best thing that ever happened to you. That doesn¹t
happen after you turn 23. You know it¹ll be something practical, domestic or partially edible. Shopping for yourself is more fun. Actually, do that instead.

8. New Year¹s Eve is going to be disappointing. I know I shouldn¹t be so pessimistic, but there¹s so much hype around NYE that people expect it to outclass every other party they¹ve ever had. Chances are that it won¹t live up to your very high expectations. You won¹t even remember the countdown, and there will be annoying people pushing and jostling to kiss you and whoever you¹re with, so you might even end up in a drunken brawl. You¹ll drink too much yourself, lose your phone or wake up with a throbbing headache and a hundred text messages from people whose numbers you deleted two years ago. Just go with the flow and stay more sober than the person on your left Š Unless Charlie Sheen is the person on your left.

9. You might miss work. Not pine after the actual labour, but the routine, the office jokes, the sense of purpose. About halfway into your holiday you may start feeling guilty about things you didn¹t do in the past year, and you might get a little excited about what you could still do in the coming year. This too will pass, but you¹ll notice it becoming more apparent when you hear screaming kids, get badly sunburnt or wake up very hung-over. Forget about it. Work still sucks.

10. You¹re going to be poor in January. You¹ll forget all about your fabulous holiday, your tan will fade, you¹ll be tired within the first week, and people will ask you where you went and what you did for the first three hours of your first day back. After that, they won¹t care, so don¹t keep telling them about the parasailing or the episode with the crocodile in the lagoon or when your wife slipped in the waves and her enormous breasts popped out of her top. Some of them worked through the holidays and they hate you. Just smile.

So whatever happens, whoever plots to screw up your time off, and no matter how bad the bad times are, holidays tend to be windows for some great memories to be made. You deserve them.

From “Gareth Cliff on Everything” published by Jonathan Ball (available at
all leading bookstores and online).

We’ve moved on and accepted that our government are trending the same way as our oppressive former government went. And who can blame them, it’s the only example they’ve had a close personal experience with. So increasingly we must be on our guard as they attempt to whittle away parts of our sacred constitution that guarantee individual freedoms over state concerns. The great new struggle will be against the tinkerers and reactionaries who wish to curtail our purportedly inalienable rights. I have a proposal for government: Why don’t you try out your bright new ideas on yourselves first, see how it goes, and then bring the rest of us under the hammer? In the same week that the salubrious Mac Maharaj scrambled unconvincingly to hide his own secrets, we were told (no doubt with at least a few awkward gestures) that the secrecy bill was intended for matters of state security only, not to hide things we deserved to know about. Let us not forget that the very organs of state security that would administer these vital bits of info were used as weapons in the Mbeki/Zuma struggle for power approaching Polokwane. State secrets seem to refer, in the current kleptocracy, more to those things we’d like to keep for blackmailing each other, rather than let the media tell you about. In other words, we’ll not only decide what you should know, but we’ll decide what nasty things to threaten to use against each other to keep rebellious cadres disciplined. Under the State protection of Information Bill, we’d never have known about Mac’s shady arms dealings… Stalin used to make his secret services gather information, not just about the enemy, but also about the closest of his comrades. He rewarded agents who brought him tales of sexual misadventure, family arguments, miscarriages, personal health problems and other titillating, but private detail. He would then, unscrupulously utilise this information to enforce absolute authority among the ranks. Much of his unadulterated power was amassed by shakedown stories of adultery, inter-alia. In modern, open democracy, this sort of threat is regarded not only as in poor taste, but also as unlawful. Using illicitly obtained information to exact something privately from someone is called extortion. It is completely illegal. The problem with people in politics is that extortion is just another tool of the trade. Actually, I shouldn’t call it a trade since the ugly business of politics is not a voluntary trade from the point of view of the citizen at all. The politicians have no qualms about using every soiled piece of dirty laundry to make their own curtains from. State agencies become haberdasheries for this conversion. Secrets are complicated things to keep. Like white Phosphorus, which must be kept under water to prevent it from reacting with air; or Potassium, which must be stored under naphthalene to keep it from the same, secrets are wont to react. Protection of Information may be a third “P”, even more reactive than the former two elements. Secrets will find a way of coming out – and if an entire state department knows, someone will eventually tell someone on the outside. Then your game is up. Julian Assange embarrassed governments and powerful individuals the world over recently when he published their secrets on the internet. Wikileaks laid bare the complicated dance of diplomacy as a simple battle of egos, a constant jockeying for position and a collection of howling schoolyard put-downs. The world of diplomacy was revealed for the duplicitous farce is always was. Churchill’s ‘Jaw jaw’ had become a hostile game of brinkmanship. Perhaps it had always been that. The point is that the truth came out. The collective efforts of the world’s most powerful governments couldn’t stem the tide. A talented nerd on his laptop in his mother’s bedroom can dig up the juiciest state secrets with a few lucky breaks and a skill for hacking. No law can prevent that, and any government who will try show only contempt for their people and an ignorance of modern communication. State Information? Secrets? Privileged, classified, “Need to Know” clandestinity? Bring it on. The last laugh will be on you.

Many people consider the Protection of State Information Bill, due to become law, as a trifling thing, something politicians and lawyers need to concern themselves with. Many people aren’t sure what all the hype is about. They wore black today because it is slimming, not because they could care less for an increasingly authoritarian and paranoid government which seems hell-bent on further stultifying the already illiterate and mostly apathetic citizenry.

The howls and complaints from media organizations and concerned citizens are being largely dismissed, either as the bias of parties motivated by self-interest, or much worse, as a bleating of the minority, or a class of elitists who think they’re more important than the government. If the government succeeds in tarring the opposition to this bill as a rabble of unjustified whingers, they show their hand in another way – by patronizing and underestimating the self-respect a great many South Africans have for themselves.

Allister Sparks, commentator and veteran journalist said that he thinks not only that the ANC have lost their soul, but also that they have “become very stupid” by attempting to keep information not from the media, but from the people of this country. The minister championing the legislation is none other than Travelgate fraudster and current minister of Intelligence Siyabonga Cwele, perhaps better known for his own ignorance over his wife’s lucrative international illegal drug business. He maintains that the bill is primarily about state security.

The enemies of freedom, openness and truth are of two kinds: Those who are not interested or even aware of what is going on, happily watching soap-operas and giggling about tabloid gossip; and the ANCs own MPs, commanded not only to be compulsorily present at the vote in Parliament, but also explicitly ordered to vote for it. Perhaps conscience will persuade one or two of the latter group to vote for their values and the principles of freedom and democracy, but I am not hopeful. The ANC has shown that it is prepared to give little more than a polite nod to the people who elected, fought and died for it and to devote a lot more of its’ time to keeping snout firmly in the trough of self-enrichment. Those fat, lazy, sycophantic, deployed cadres in Parliament will do exactly what they’re told to do; and so soon there will be a veil drawn over the increasingly clandestine activities of an increasingly dishonest and greedy government.

Revolutions are always preceded and followed by euphoria, public participation, transparency and popular democracy. After a time, the incumbent party get too comfortable, they forget the people, and the reason they were elected. The people become impatient. The government start to resent any questioning of their authority, becoming more and more insecure. To secure themselves they start making laws to control the people, often using examples of the very system they fought against before the revolution. They start to talk down to the people, becoming patronising and even scornful. Not long after that they zero in on their critics and find unsavoury ways to deal with people who criticise them publicly, or who run counter to their propaganda. The slow, steady march toward Totalitarianism has begun.

Ask yourself, whether you’re an ANC MP or an ordinary civilian, what you hold dear: Are liberty, freedom of expression, truth and transparency worth fighting for? If they are not, what on earth is?

Time we did something new on Chronicles… I’ve decided that the wisest stuff usually comes from people who either agree or disagree with me, but who make valid points more eloquently than I sometimes do. For that reason, and based largely on my comments about Julius Malema and the economy below, I have permission from Warren de Souza to re-publish the contents of his e-mail to me last week:

Hi Gareth,

On your blog about Malema:

Central to your debate was the topic of wealth, i would like to elaborate on it to make a point about the difference between where we are and where we should be as a country.

Wealth is relative. Relative to whatever you want to measure it in. Whether it is value, money, things. Which are, in essence, the same. Let me explain. If 3 men sit at a table. The names of each man is A, B and C. And Each man holds R10. Each man is equal in wealth. Equal in money and equal in things. there is no measure of wealth as in terms of relativity it is equal. Now imagine A moves to another table where three men, D, E, F hold R20, R50, R100 each. Now because the man is only holding R10 he feels that he is less wealthy. Less being the key word here, a relative term. One cannot be less equal. It is not a relative term. However the way the ANC should be looking at it is, at the previous table there was only a total of R30, at this table there is a total of  R180 (if A joins the table). And has a potential gain of R170. but at the first table he has only a potential gain of R20. That is a potential gain of 1700% versus 200%. When he was well off he had very little. but when he joined a wealthier table his prospects of being wealthy grew exponentially. What the ordinary South African doesn’t realise is that relative to the rest of the world they are among the wealthiest people to step one this earth. They might not have money or things, but they have human rights, access to water, electricity, education and pension. These things are a measure of value, and have a money value too and are considered things.

What the youth league should be doing is directing their attention to issues of teaching and educating the people in ways that can utilise the extra R170, at the table, as potential. Instead of breeding ignorance and a sense entitlement.

Most South Africans have no idea that they live in such a blessed land, that such amazing people, like Ghandhi, Mandela and the many unsung heroes of the past century have graced our land. That includes the white boys from bryanston and the coloureds in the Cape. We are not aware of it. And the purpose for a march should be to create awareness, but the youth league is creating an awareness that points in the wrong direction. the march is telling the people look how much less money have, not look at how much potential you have.

I know this strikes home with you Gareth, you are such a well read person. Please put the demons to rest on this one and blog about the wealth that every South African holds.

Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Julius Malema gave a “lecture” at the University of Fort Hare to a mixed reception this week. The record got stuck in two places – his old bugbear of Economic freedom and greed-driven intra-party power struggles. Whereas he used, occasionally, to pepper his rhetoric with a few entertaining stabs at whites, Thabo Mbeki or the media, I have to say Im bored with him now. Even Blade Nzimande made a better meal of things in the weekend papers. I suppose that’s how you know you’ve been devalued as a brand. Poor Julius – out of hospital and into a university, just like a cadaver.

Are you really interested in the internal machinations of the ANC at the moment? I’m not. Normally I would be, but the personalities this time round aren’t as much fun. That, and the fact that position-jockeying belies the real reason most members of the NEC are in politics – they couldn’t get real jobs if they wanted to. Which brings me to the economy:

Julius keeps saying that the economy is in white hands and that blacks haven’t got a chance. That’s not untrue, but it also isn’t that simple. Economics are different to science and maths, they’re prone to all kinds of influences and effects that boggle even the most learned of economists. Juju also keeps talking in bold, sweeping statements about nationalization and job-creation. Governments only create a bigger tax burden when they ‘create’ jobs and nationalization is a cock-up for a plethora of reasons that economists will elucidate far better than I can. In fact that very point would be terribly well-received if Julius made it: That the experts are the ones to ask, in a stagnant economy with a USA looming on the edge of recession and an EU looking face-down into the loo, what the right course to chart might be. even China is growing by far less than the projected statistics. Now is hardly the time for wild speculation by a man without even a cardboard MBA from Limpopo. I don’t know the answers, but neither does he. Someone who knows, please lead the way…

On my radio show I play a clip (mostly ironically) in which Julius shouts: “We are fighting for the wealth!”. This is the whole problem. Julius sees wealth as something solid and tangible that can be fought for, like land, trinkets or cash. Real wealth is value. Wealthy people own a lot of course, but most of their wealth is in value: ideas, shares, investments and in working companies. The reason those people are wealthy is (mostly) because they have worked hard, been really clever or been really inventive. If you make an iPad, you’re making something of value for the person purchasing it, and that’s why they give you the money. You can’t fight for those things, Julius.

I don’t believe most people want jobs. Most people who have them hate their jobs. Most people just want money. The problem is that money doesn’t like people, money likes money. I know this is starting to get weird, but bear with me. It takes a long time to grow a big enough heap of money to attract even more. It’s the opposite of diffusion in physics. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. It would be a ghastly politically-incorrect theory to propose, but we all accept it as more or less true, if unfair. Most of us have trouble holding on to the little we have and struggle to make ends meet, let alone build value and wealth. It is the genesis of that wealth that is remarkable, and it is remarkable because it happens for very few people, only a few times. There is no general theory for how you can create wealth, under any circumstances. To economists, most of this is elemental, but to the average person it’s very difficult to comprehend, through clouds of avarice and ignorance, how the really rich amass their wealth. For this we can blame the politicians. They have promised the poor jobs and houses. The poor hold them to that promise and believe it will be the end of their woes. It won’t. Having a job is different from earning a job and getting a house is different from paying for or building your own house. The latter examples have to do with value, the former with things.

Politicians don’t really have much to offer, except for a few encouraging words and some hefty promises. They bring no real value. What does a politician have to give that you would pay for? Right. Nothing. The only way a politician can earn any money is by taking it, in tax, from you, by threatening to clap you in irons if you don’t hand it over. So the people who have no understanding of value are the ones who win the popularity contests and make the rules. That’s not sustainable. As for Julius, he’s fighting all right, but he won’t get the wealth of the wealthy, he’ll just disappoint the poor.

Now since the Springboks were beaten by Bryce Lawrence and a few Australians, and sent home with their ugly caps in hand, we haven’t had much to cheer about. Just a day before that happened, Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the African Cup of Nations – or we didn’t, then we did, then we didn’t. Basically, it was an almightily shit week for South African sport.

Perhaps, like me, you’re an optimist and you’d like to feel better ahead of the weekend? I have drafted a short list of some things we should be grateful for this coming week:

Take Sunday morning, for example: Did you wake up early (at 7h00) to watch the Springboks take on Australia, or sleep in? Did you skip church to watch us take on the first team of our caliber in World Cup 2011? Tough choices, like I said. As an aside for Zane Kirchner (who claimed that it was God’s will that he was selected at the last minute and packed off to join the team in ‘Zealand), why doesn’t God get the blame when the Bokke lose? There’s lots of room for amateur philosophy here… Back to the point…Which will you do on Sunday?

The other tough choices we face include this one: Can our rugby commentators, when they’re not flashing their private parts to minors in industrial areas like Randburg and using disgusting racial epithets, still add value to the game when we all think we’re the experts? I suppose many would say the same about Idols judges and singing – not the bit about flashing the privates, but the part about whether we need their commentary at all… Supersport will soon have to swallow their pride and allow a lying, morally corrupt sociopath to present all their shows. Unfortunately most of our politicians already have more lucrative jobs outside of television. Perhaps Sias being a ginger really is the least of their problems…

Another tough choice is whether or not we allow ageing spiritual people of a peaceful bent to spend time with each other in their twilight years without a paranoid emerging superpower becoming prickly and issuing orders to their lap-dog South African counterparts? The obvious answer is yes, what harm can old men in dresses do? Our own government may have bungled this less-than-diplomatic affair and they may have treated the citizens of this country as stupid infants, but shouldn’t our real ire be directed at the Chinese and their super-fragile ego? A word of advice to China: If you want to be thought of as a superpower, getting involved in the guest list of an 80-year-old’s birthday is a strange way to show your strength. All you’ve done is convince me that everything, including your foreign policy, is Fong-Kong.

The last big choice we have is whether we can be called anything but a hypocrite when, in the face of a rough disciplinary hearing, and finding ourselves stricken with a terrible flu, we check in to a private hospital instead of a state one, all the while calling for nationalization. Why not the nationalized health-care option for the champion of nationalization? I say we harvest your organs (the useful ones below the neck, that is), and give them to sick people who need them more. I call that nationalization in action. Think about it, Julius, you need to do your bit for the rest of the populace. Share the wealth, share the spleens.

Choices can be tough. Our President stood up for himself this week at a tame New-Age/SABC breakfast and insisted he was in charge. Perhaps he is. Decisions are still pending on the Public Protector’s report on Public Works and the police rental deal; Sicelo Shiceka’s 8-month sick leave and alleged misappropriation of funds and the missing R2,3-billion rand the Public Works department seems to have forgotten in the drawer of a desk. The Dalai Lama never got his visa and Susan Shabangu keeps changing her mind very publicly about nationalization. Someone needs to take the wheel… We wait, Sir, for you to make some tough choices.

So many people are struck down with flu at this time of year that my own condition is neither remarkable, nor terribly interesting. What is interesting though, is the marvelous ability the human body has to fight for it’s own health, control of it’s organs and it’s resilience in the face of microbial attack.

You get into bed, early. You feel rubbish. Temperature soaring, aches and pains, headache, upset stomach, even your eyeballs hurt when you rub your eyes. During the night you shiver and shake, you sweat like a pig, you struggle to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Inside you, the more interesting battle wages. Whether the attack is viral or bacterial, your immune system turns into the US military. Not the watered-down, politically-interefered with military we see so much of, but the one that creates shock and awe. Troops of antibodies are deployed into the bloodstream, targeting and eliminating anything that so much as looks suspicious and out of place. The ‘civilian cells’ take cover and don’t venture out. It’s almost like the famous Jewish passover where the good guys marked their doors and their children were spared the wrath of the passing shadow of death.

Bacteria are good at multiplying and creating dangerous waste – which is one of the reasons you feel so dreadful when you’re under bacterial attack. The prevalence of a host of antibiotics – some of which have become almost futile thanks to people not completing courses (which allows the bacteria in question to develop immunity to the agents in the antibiotic that might have destroyed them in larger doses) and using the wrong kinds of medicine, have resulted in an array of superbugs that are impervious to antibiotics and our immune systems. Some of these can be deadly.

Viruses are tougher sons-of-bitches, and more devious – they’re the oldest life forms on earth. Viruses are good at two things – invading your cells and making more of themselves. Because of the rate of their replication, there are always a few mutations – and some of these are advantageous to the survival of the virus, when it is vulnerable. They come encased in ‘capsules’ of impenetrable material and their DNA sneaks into the DNA o our own cells and uses them as a laboratory for making more of themselves. It’s really very rude. Because our immune system’s agents can’t go into the cells themselves, usually this is the end for each poor invaded cell. Lately, scientists have discovered proteins that may make it possible for our own bodies’ defense mechanisms to enter cell walls by means of clever proteins. This, by the way, will really piss the viruses off if it works on a grand scale. I hope it happens soon.

What is interesting though, is how much of our own body mass is made up of ‘friendly’ bacteria. Truly enormous populations of these live in our mouths, guts, even in our brain’s cerebrospinal fluid. Some microbiologists assert that some of our own cellular matter, even parts of our DNA might be borrowed from these advantageous parasites. Actually. it isn’t fair to call them parasites, they’re symbiotic with us – we both do things for each other.

For thousands of years humans have believed that they were the masters of the universe. For thousands of years we have been wrong. We have only in the last hundred years or less begun to humble the microbes that really rule the world, and even then only a small number of them. Thanks to the advances of medicine, science and biology we are able to lord it over a few of these invisible tyrants, but the world is still theirs. They just reminded me by making my entire body rock with coughs and splutters, as if I had no power to resist. I didn’t. I know who the boss is.