A couple of things - I agree with you on the "when we" crowd getting together to moan about how good things used to be in the past, but this was different. It's about the fourth estate doing its job to expose corruption and criminality, even under severe threat. Also, although it's hard to tell from the photos I ultimately selected, but there were a lot of black people in the audience as well. This issue of The President's Keepers transcends racial boundaries - ordinary South Africans are deeply p***ed that this man has effectively stolen their country.
I am not for or against Zuma, just like I am not for or against Trump for that matter. But I find it unbalanced how everyone just keeps getting on the anti Zuma bandwagon because everyone else is on it. Most people on the wagon cannot provide thorough well-reasoned argument why Zuma is "stealing their country" - whatever that is supposed to mean! Everyone is an expert. We are a bunch of Intellectuals Yet Idiots. Except Zuma. And that is why he was elected. What if he is the true man of the people? And the DA, the elite people in the ANC, like Pravin Gordhan, are just career politicians? Again, I am not saying Zuma is corrupt or not corrupt, I am just yearning for some balanced debate. Which is almost entirely missing on this issue. And yes, I agree that is the fourth estate's job and they do it well when they are not hijacked by the state like I think the New Age is. But how do we know the other news agencies are not also compromised? If not by the ANC or Zupta, but the DA (also just a very political organisation with its own massive problems) or the EFF or some foreign organisation? https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
Hi again, the Guptaleaks and associated reporting, as well as court findings against Zuma, have already conclusively demonstrated his corruption and criminality - it's not up for debate. That people jump on the bandwagon without having informed themselves of the facts through the effort of reading and critical thinking is inexcusable -
I agree with you there.
What Jacques Pauw has revealed after exhaustive investigation adds significantly to the body of work by others who've preceded him. This is not trial by public opinion. It's well documented work, not opinion or hearsay. The few times Pauw speculates in his book, he says so...but his point of departure for speculation is documented in detail.
The foregone tax revenue collection from known criminals (including Huang and Mazzotti) in cases which were close to conclusion in 2015 (as in SARS was about to collect until their leadership and lead investigators were ousted) is staggeringly in the hundreds of billions of rands. What that could have done for funding higher education!
Interestingly, it was when the Sunday Times took the bait in 2015 and starting publishing screaming headlines about the rogue unit in SARS that people demonstrated how gullible they were as they believed the story without questioning the obvious holes (I remember thinking at the time that the story sounded holier than Swiss cheese...but everyone jumped on the bandwagon and I didn't know anything about how SARS operated and had no position of knowledge or evidence from which to debate - so I bought the book Rogue and read it so I could understand the facts of the story).
It's incumbent on every citizen/patriot in this country to understand the issues and interrogate them from a perspective of fact and evidence, not opinion or prejudice. I disagree strongly with you that we need some "balanced debate" on Zuma - the courts concluded he was corrupt when they convicted Shabir Schaik, and it was only because of clever legal maneuvering he was able to escape conviction.
What the multitude of investigative journalists have since uncovered is that we were all clueless as to the extent of the web of corruption - the family involvement in tobacco smuggling (one of the primary motivators behind the dismantling of the crack investigative unit in SARS and the replacement of the SARS Commissioner with one more aligned with his interests), that he did not pay his own taxes as President, that he was employed by a private company as President, that he used the state security apparatus to neutralise opponents and worse - as a slush fund (of billions of rands) not accountable to the Attorney General for purposes of rewarding cronies and possibly funding NDZ's nomination bid...the list goes on and on and on, and I haven't even touched on the SOEs and Gupta involvement there.
On compromised news agencies? The investigative teams of amaBhungane and Scorpio work across agency lines. They have been picking through the terabytes of data (as they have indicated to the public, mainly in the form of e-mails) handed to them by a Zupta insider, as yet unnamed. Another forum to watch is the diverse panel assembled every week on Editing Allowed, which provides a platform for leading print editors from competing platforms to share their views on unfolding issues. And ANN7 and the New Age are owned by the Gupta family; they have ensured that both the TV channel and newspaper are distributed through government channels, at government's cost.
By the way, I hope you've been watching the Eskom inquiry these last few weeks. Most illuminating, particularly the testimony by former Eskom Chairman Zola Tsotsi.
Balanced debate? The time for debate on Zuma is well past. The hard evidence is overwhelming that there is a criminal in office. Balanced debate on whither the ANC? Perhaps. It's an organisation with a worthy past and should not be defined solely by the current leader. The ANC itself needs to decide how it wants to handle itself if it wishes to remain a party of the people or a group of self/Zupta-serving cronies enriching themselves at the price of this country.
So yes, balanced debate between informed parties, not people making fun of the man - and my goodness, I hope by now people have stopped thinking he's stupid. He's not. He's a brilliant strategist as evidenced by the complex empire he's built up over time, and how he consistently avoids any form of prosecution or penalty for it.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that arguably this is simply a case of a bunch of intellectual westerners trying to impose Western ideas of morality and law on people of other ethnicities. How racist! Actually it is worse than that. The entire system is designed in a way that makes the indigenous peoples out to be criminals.
I guess my main point is that this is a battle that cannot be won. There are no winners here.
Nobody's calling Mcebisi Jonas, Vytjie Mentor, Pravin Gordhan or Makhosi Khoza criminals. They were among the first to call out this criminality, and as far as I can tell they are indigenous people.
Plesier!
I like, but at the same time, I get a bit nauseious (or however you spell it) at a bunch of old white people talking about how bad the government is.
A couple of things - I agree with you on the "when we" crowd getting together to moan about how good things used to be in the past, but this was different. It's about the fourth estate doing its job to expose corruption and criminality, even under severe threat. Also, although it's hard to tell from the photos I ultimately selected, but there were a lot of black people in the audience as well. This issue of The President's Keepers transcends racial boundaries - ordinary South Africans are deeply p***ed that this man has effectively stolen their country.
I am not for or against Zuma, just like I am not for or against Trump for that matter. But I find it unbalanced how everyone just keeps getting on the anti Zuma bandwagon because everyone else is on it. Most people on the wagon cannot provide thorough well-reasoned argument why Zuma is "stealing their country" - whatever that is supposed to mean! Everyone is an expert. We are a bunch of Intellectuals Yet Idiots. Except Zuma. And that is why he was elected. What if he is the true man of the people? And the DA, the elite people in the ANC, like Pravin Gordhan, are just career politicians? Again, I am not saying Zuma is corrupt or not corrupt, I am just yearning for some balanced debate. Which is almost entirely missing on this issue. And yes, I agree that is the fourth estate's job and they do it well when they are not hijacked by the state like I think the New Age is. But how do we know the other news agencies are not also compromised? If not by the ANC or Zupta, but the DA (also just a very political organisation with its own massive problems) or the EFF or some foreign organisation?
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
Hi again, the Guptaleaks and associated reporting, as well as court findings against Zuma, have already conclusively demonstrated his corruption and criminality - it's not up for debate. That people jump on the bandwagon without having informed themselves of the facts through the effort of reading and critical thinking is inexcusable -
I agree with you there.
What Jacques Pauw has revealed after exhaustive investigation adds significantly to the body of work by others who've preceded him. This is not trial by public opinion. It's well documented work, not opinion or hearsay. The few times Pauw speculates in his book, he says so...but his point of departure for speculation is documented in detail.
The foregone tax revenue collection from known criminals (including Huang and Mazzotti) in cases which were close to conclusion in 2015 (as in SARS was about to collect until their leadership and lead investigators were ousted) is staggeringly in the hundreds of billions of rands. What that could have done for funding higher education!
Interestingly, it was when the Sunday Times took the bait in 2015 and starting publishing screaming headlines about the rogue unit in SARS that people demonstrated how gullible they were as they believed the story without questioning the obvious holes (I remember thinking at the time that the story sounded holier than Swiss cheese...but everyone jumped on the bandwagon and I didn't know anything about how SARS operated and had no position of knowledge or evidence from which to debate - so I bought the book Rogue and read it so I could understand the facts of the story).
It's incumbent on every citizen/patriot in this country to understand the issues and interrogate them from a perspective of fact and evidence, not opinion or prejudice. I disagree strongly with you that we need some "balanced debate" on Zuma - the courts concluded he was corrupt when they convicted Shabir Schaik, and it was only because of clever legal maneuvering he was able to escape conviction.
What the multitude of investigative journalists have since uncovered is that we were all clueless as to the extent of the web of corruption - the family involvement in tobacco smuggling (one of the primary motivators behind the dismantling of the crack investigative unit in SARS and the replacement of the SARS Commissioner with one more aligned with his interests), that he did not pay his own taxes as President, that he was employed by a private company as President, that he used the state security apparatus to neutralise opponents and worse - as a slush fund (of billions of rands) not accountable to the Attorney General for purposes of rewarding cronies and possibly funding NDZ's nomination bid...the list goes on and on and on, and I haven't even touched on the SOEs and Gupta involvement there.
On compromised news agencies? The investigative teams of amaBhungane and Scorpio work across agency lines. They have been picking through the terabytes of data (as they have indicated to the public, mainly in the form of e-mails) handed to them by a Zupta insider, as yet unnamed. Another forum to watch is the diverse panel assembled every week on Editing Allowed, which provides a platform for leading print editors from competing platforms to share their views on unfolding issues. And ANN7 and the New Age are owned by the Gupta family; they have ensured that both the TV channel and newspaper are distributed through government channels, at government's cost.
By the way, I hope you've been watching the Eskom inquiry these last few weeks. Most illuminating, particularly the testimony by former Eskom Chairman Zola Tsotsi.
Balanced debate? The time for debate on Zuma is well past. The hard evidence is overwhelming that there is a criminal in office. Balanced debate on whither the ANC? Perhaps. It's an organisation with a worthy past and should not be defined solely by the current leader. The ANC itself needs to decide how it wants to handle itself if it wishes to remain a party of the people or a group of self/Zupta-serving cronies enriching themselves at the price of this country.
So yes, balanced debate between informed parties, not people making fun of the man - and my goodness, I hope by now people have stopped thinking he's stupid. He's not. He's a brilliant strategist as evidenced by the complex empire he's built up over time, and how he consistently avoids any form of prosecution or penalty for it.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that arguably this is simply a case of a bunch of intellectual westerners trying to impose Western ideas of morality and law on people of other ethnicities. How racist! Actually it is worse than that. The entire system is designed in a way that makes the indigenous peoples out to be criminals.
I guess my main point is that this is a battle that cannot be won. There are no winners here.
Nobody's calling Mcebisi Jonas, Vytjie Mentor, Pravin Gordhan or Makhosi Khoza criminals. They were among the first to call out this criminality, and as far as I can tell they are indigenous people.
Do you read a lot?
Good point!