Friday, October 21, 2011

MALEMA’S MOUTH SPEWS THE HATE OF CURRY POWDER




ANC Youth League president Julius Malema might be in more trouble for using a racial slur against Indians during a speech to residents at the Thembelihle township, south of Johannesburg.
He used the slur while addressing about 600 black residents near Lenasia, a predominately Indian community.
"Bana ba lena ba tshwanetse ba dumelelwe gore ba tsene sekolo lebana ba makula mona [your children must be allowed to go to school with amaKula's [derogatory word for Indians] children."
The word amaKula is considered an offensive racial slur in South Africa and is on par with other offensive names the Human Rights Commission has ruled against.
Malema visited the community as part of his drive to garner support ahead of the youth league's economic freedom march next Thursday.
ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said Malema's comments, if found to be true, would be handled by the ruling party's leadership.
"It would be difficult for me to say anything when I have just heard it, but I am sure that if the matter has indeed been said, then it should be raised with the leadership of the ANC and the youth league.
"The ANC discourages the use of such words," Khoza said.
Malema is currently facing a disciplinary hearing for bringing the ANC into disrepute.
The hearing continues next week in the south of Johannesburg.
Yesterday, Malema told residents that they were being robbed of their dignity by being denied basic services such as water and lights.
Malema will lead the youth league's Economic Freedom Youth Mass Action next week, which will target the Chamber of Mines, JSE in Sandton, Johannesburg, and at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where a night vigil is planned.
He told residents to march to the Union Buildings using the M1 free way.
"We need to tell the government that we want to be treated with respect.
"We need to bring back the dignity of black people, especially Africans," Malema said.
Thembelihle residents have in the past months taken to the streets complaining about a lack of basic services.
Another service delivery protest in the area turned violent last month.
Malema told the community that they deserved respect.
"No person should live without a properly built house.
"There is no person who must live without electricity, water.
"You must be respected. You must not be treated like you are monkeys," Malema said.
He also said that, despite voting during national elections, the residents of Thembelihle were still not liberated as they continued to live in distress.
(Taken from Times daily; www.times.co.za

SWAZILAND SEX TRADE NOT THAT BAD…BUT ITS HAPPENING





I know  I might be touching human dung on this one…I mean some people after reading the headline will have misconceptions about the life of yours truly…F@@#$#$ it I am living in this world and I am human just like anybody else, I just love to write (whatever).
With this one I still remember my days as a journalist practising under the leadership of the ever versatile Thulani Thwala who now is mentoring at the Swazi Observer publication where set out our diary and together with the department’s driver I was to do a story on the challenges faced by commercial sex workers (affectionately known as labatsengisako in local circles).
My  mission kicked off on a month end (even though I still cant remember the day) but it was around  2100 and we were to start our mission from the office at the  bumpy Gillian Road to a park which is below the Ministry of Agriculture where most of the ‘girls of the night’  traded before being noticed by the country’s law enforcers.
Upon arrival we were met by mini skirts which were so short that one would have been tempted abandon the mission of interviewing the girls and pay them with the mere E30 night out allowance but because ethics rang at the back of my intelligent skull I kicked away the temptation.
Upon noticing our vehicle the ladies decided to disappear in the nearby bushy area and refused to entertain us as they were afraid of being photographed and end up being positively identfied in the then  highest selling newspaper in the country.
Ok, missed it…I then instructed the driver to quickly drive to another sport which is less than 500 metres from the Ministry of Agriculture spot and went to Kalafata , I introduced myself as a willing buyer and four of the girls (different sizes and shapes) stood in a straight line all of them pleading with yours truly to take one of them and they were quick to advertise their services and body piercings while at the same time willing to reduce the E50 session price if I am willing to take them for the whole  night.
I looked back at my driver and he smiled cause he knew our mission. I then pointed at one who was wearing a blue hooded jacket and a short skirt. Though she was not the most attractive of them all but was the quiet of them all. She was carrying a plastic bag seemingly it was her wardrobe and inside I saw a novel.
She was first reluctant to go with us but I convinced him that this was my driver and after a 30 minutes of arguing she then obliged. We then drove to the city’s park (which is dark at night) and it there I introduced myself as a reporter from the Swazi News.
She was so shocked that she stated that she does not want her time to wasted because she was planning to make  at least E300 during the ‘lousy night’. I then made a pledge that whatever we would discuss I will not reveal her identity but will pay her the E50 she requires.
Before she started she sobbed and explained that she was from Lomahasha and has no relative, job but has two children aged four and two whose fathers she does not remember because every time she had sex she had to be intoxicated.
“After conceiving my second child I decided to quit drinking and smoking and it is my second year I decided to quit. However I am still selling my body because I have to feed my two boys who I have locked in my one roomed flat in Magwaneni”, she told yours truly in a sombre tone.
She further told yours truly that her highest level of education was the Universty of Swaziland First year where she did Diploma in Law but dropped out after failing due to the fact that no one was to pay for her university fees.
“I come here not because I am enjoying it but because I need to get food for my children who do not know I am selling my body but think I am a security guard. Please don’t go and make fun of what I am doing in the newspapers, I will kill myself,” she added.
This turned out to be an emotional revelation than my intended story of “Who are the most frequenting clients” as she went on to reveal that girls as young as 14 years from neighbouring townships are part of the trade and are most of the time subjected to physical abuse by drunk inconsiderate males.


“Another stumbling element in our trade are the night patrol officers who have become a menace to us. They chase us away from the road or at times take us to the police station and detain us. It is so unfortunate that they are also humans and you find that they are some distant relatives to some of us and they know our plight,”
Due to my inquisitive mindset I questioned her if she enjoyed the sessions she offered to her clients but she was quick to mention that she hated sex.
“Some of us don’t have anywhere to sleep unless they find a man to sleep with them for the whole night and all those willing not to use a condom they pay more,” she said.
This story struck me deeply and it for this reason I still remember it like yesterday, soon after the interview she requested that I do not write about what she told me but offered to give me a story that they were now increasing their prices from E50 to E80 due to the rise in food prices in the country.
I then told my driver that we had finished with the lady thus we had to take her back to her spot. Though it is unethical , I then paid her E50 for the interview because she would have missed a client because of the interview.
We then drove back to the newsroom and explained the story to my editor and he understood the situation and the next edition was splashed with another hot selling headline which ran “Commercial sex fees up by 60%”…

GADDAFI’S ORBITUARY AS SHOWN BY WESTERN MEDIA

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya from 1969 to 2011, has been killed after an assault on his home town of Sirte, officials from the country's transitional authority have said.
Ian Jones assesses a ruler who raged against the rest of the world but who was brought down by his own people.

Colonel Gaddafi ended his life branded with the same words that had followed him through most of his military and political career: thug, terrorist, and murderer.
During the tumultuous days in late August 2011 when rebel forces saw their six-month campaign to topple Gaddafi reach a bloody yet successful conclusion on the streets of Tripoli, the Libyan leader was called "a criminal" by President Sarkozy of France; "a dictator" by David Cameron, the UK prime minister; and "a tyrant" by Barack Obama, the US president.
Yet the former soldier, who ruled Libya from 1969 to 2011 and who became the longest-serving Arab leader for over 100 years, was not always viewed with such universal disdain.
In March 2004, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time, visited Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli. Mr Blair praised Gaddafi for his desire to form "common cause with us against al-Qaeda, extremists and terrorism," and for the Libyan leader's recent renunciation of weapons of mass destruction.
Two years later the country was removed from the United States' list of countries sponsoring terrorism, on the approval of President George W Bush. And as late as June 2009, Mr Blair's successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, socialised with Gaddafi during a G8 summit in Italy, speaking of his "admiration and gratitude" for the colonel's "brave" decision over his weapons programme.
Such niceties were quickly and quietly forgotten when, in February 2011, Gaddafi's regime began a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. Within weeks the United Nations had authorised a no-fly zone over the country and passed a resolution allowing "all necessary measures" to be taken to protect Libyan civilians. The first strikes by US, French and British warplanes on pro-Gaddafi forces took place on 19 March.
However throughout his life, whether playing the part of friend or foe, ally or enemy, Colonel Gaddafi consistently relied upon one towering attribute, which had first won him power and then enabled him to retain it for so many decades: his personality.
The road to revolution
Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi was born in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte in June 1942 to a family belonging to a small Arab tribe, the Qadhadhfa. He was raised in a bedouin tent in the nearby desert, before attending a Muslim elementary school and receiving secondary school education from a private tutor in Misrata.
He had displayed a keen interest in history and politics from an early age, and it was in Misrata that a brash and vocal anti-Israeli, anti-western outlook, one that would become a trademark characteristic, first took root. Keen to express such sentiments in actions as well as arguments, Gaddafi joined the Libyan military academy at Benghazi in 1961, graduating four years later.
While at military college, Gaddafi's radical politics and martial tendencies fused into a desire to help ferment, if not lead, an Arab revolution in Libya. He was deeply inspired by the strident nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. The forcefulness of Gaddafi's now potent personality was an inspiration to his fellow students. Together they began plotting to overthrow the Libyan monarchy.
The plan was put into action on 1 September 1969 - and it was a complete success. A small group of junior officers, led by Gaddafi (aged just 27), staged a bloodless coup while the king was in Turkey for medical treatment. The monarchy was abolished and the country was proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic.
So began Gaddafi's 42 years in charge of the fourth largest country in Africa, and the 17th largest country in the world.
A new Libya
Intolerance and brutality were present from the outset. Libya's entire Italian population, a legacy from colonial times, was expelled; political dissent was made illegal; and all forms of Christianity, including the calendar, were either abolished or replaced (the year of the coup, 1969, being formally retitled 1389, dated from the birth of the prophet Muhammad).
In 1977 the country was rebranded the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the last word being commonly translated as "state of the masses". Yet Libya was anything but a socialist paradise. Citizens were encouraged to spy on and shop each other. Up to one in five Libyans worked as informants. The press was censored. State-sponsored assassination became common, both internally and externally, with "hit squads" being deployed to murder Libyan dissidents living abroad. As recently as 2004, Gaddafi offered a million dollars for the death of Ashur Shamis, a journalist who had been living in Britain since the 1960s.
Such repressive machinery was kept in place by multiple layers of security forces in thrall to Gaddafi's now fully developed cult of personality. Identified formally as "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution", his image was reproduced everywhere: on posters, statues and flags, on stamps and currency, in textbooks and newspapers, and on the state television network. Gaddafi's philosophy - an autocratic mix of capitalism and communism - was promoted and popularised in The Green Book, first published in 1975 and required reading for all schoolchildren.
Yet he did bring prosperity to much of his country, if not all of his people. With the 10th largest oil reserves on the planet at his disposal, Gaddafi's Libya had the potential to become very rich very quickly.
Some areas of Libya saw immense investment. Gaddafi's principles were flexible enough to welcome many workers and industrialists from western nations, so long as they brought expertise that could benefit his country's infrastructure. Millions were spent over a period of almost 25 years in building a spectacular trans-Sahara water pipeline, named the Great Man-Made River project, in order to end water shortages among areas of rising population. And the CIA's World Factbook of 2009 showed the average life expectancy of a Libyan to be 77 years: only one year less than that of an American citizen, a statistic atypical for the African continent.
But areas away from oil-fields and the rich coastal towns were scarred by long-term unemployment. And from the mid-70s onwards it was increasingly the case that much of the country's income from oil was spent on purchasing arms and sponsoring dozens of paramilitary and terrorist groups around the world, including the IRA.
It was this activity that began to bring Gaddafi into repeated clashes with other countries, particularly those of the west.
Sponsor of terrorism
In 1976 Gaddafi bragged openly of his links with the IRA, and talked of "the bombs of Libyan people" exploding on British streets. Relations between the UK and Libya deteriorated. Worse was to come in 1984, when Libyan diplomats inside the country's embassy in London fired on demonstrators outside. A British policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, was killed. Diplomatic relations were broken off; WPC Fletcher's killer has never been identified.
In 1986 the US bombed Libya in retaliation for the planting of a bomb at a nightclub in West Berlin that killed three and injured 229. Air strikes were launched from US bases in the UK, prompting Gaddafi to step up his financing of the IRA. Then in December 1988, a plane flying from London to New York was blown up over the village of Lockerbie in the south-west of Scotland. A total of 270 people were killed, including all 259 people on board.
Two Libyan agents were later indicted for the crime, and it was Gaddafi's decision to hand over the suspects to a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands that led to the United Nations suspending sanctions against Libya in 2001.
So began the period of reconciliation between Libya and the west. Gaddafi's motives were, once again, shaped by his personality. He passed intelligence on Islamic extremists to MI6 and the CIA, as much out of a fear for his own life and status (he was nearly assassinated in 1996) as on moral grounds.
Within days of Saddam Hussein being overthrown in 2003, Gaddafi outed himself as an owner of weapons of mass destruction, stealing a march on his critics and winning plaudits from unlikely sources. Tony Blair was soon beating a path to Gaddafi's tent. In June 2010, Gaddafi sat just two places away from President Obama at a dinner at the G8 summit in Rome.
Uprising and downfall
All these gestures of rapprochement came to an abrupt, violent halt in February 2011.
Inspired by anti-government protests across the Middle East and north Africa, pro-democracy demonstrators staged uprisings in towns and cities across Libya. Within days, rebel forces had seized control of Benghazi, the country's second city.
A civil war began as troops loyal to Gaddafi fought back, initially very successfully, until Nato air strikes enabled the rebels to counterattack and begin a slow but steady advance towards Tripoli. For his actions in waging war on his own people, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi on the grounds of crimes against humanity.
Gaddafi remained defiant to the last. Early in the campaign he vowed "we will fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya". He stayed in Tripoli even when it was clear the city was about to fall to rebel forces. After fleeing his compound on 23 August, he broadcast a message pledging "martyrdom or victory". The same force of personality and self-belief that had propelled him to power and then helped him maintain rule for over four decades was evident in his final words.
Gaddafi was killed after an assault on his home town of Sirte on 20 October 2011. He reportedly died from wounds in his head and legs. It was unclear whether he was hit in a Nato air strike on a convoy fleeing Sirte, a firefight on the ground, or in concrete tunnels within the town itself.
Muammar Gaddafi was married twice, and had eight biological children, seven of them sons. His second wife Safiya Gaddafi and daughter Aisha were believed to have fled into Tunisia in May 2011.

No Access to Deeds Office-GOVERNMENT PLEASE DEVELOP UNUSED PUBLIC SECTOR LAND AND BUILDINGS

While we swimming in the tide of dead economy may government work to at least give local Swazis the chance to build  at least 20 000 homes by 2015.
With such direction the government will achieve through the release of the land farms it is holding on …It seems like the country does not care to improve these infrastructures  for commercial purposes . The amount of land is holding on is more than twice the size of Mbabane and Manzini combined. May the honourable Minister of Housing move a step further to help Swazis across the country reclaim and develop the hundreds of acres of unused public sector land and buildings which could be used to deliver schemes the communities want to see in their areas.  
This will help empower Swazis and be able to request a sale of public land and buildings by filling in a simple and user friendly forms which will replace the current system that benefits the country’s cabinet which has been a system which has been obscure and restrictive on the ordinary Swazi who are still dreaming of benefitting from the country’s natural resource.
My approach on this matter is a call for an improved process for requesting the sale of public land and property which will be one way of applying for land to be released by government departments and will also apply to land owned by councils and other public bodies.
Let the ordinary Swazi have access to the details and maps about land owned by government and councils and other public bodies so we as Swazis we can see the unused land thus request its sale thus fulfil the dreams of the country’s constitution of forming a bedrock of the Community Right to Claim Land as a Swazi Citizen.
It is no hidden factor that government is the country’s biggest landlords , so at a time we desperately need homes it has a critical obligation of making these sites available for developers and communities.
It is disheartening that Government has not  quickly the ambitious challenge to release land to the Swazis who do not have access to land and decent houses.
In the next three years I will surely preach the same gospel and ensure that this unused land is available for us ordinary Swazis to purchases through the same discounts our current Cabinet enjoyed.
I am just not pleased that local communities do not have an option to improve their local communities by developing unused land and buildings instead we are forced to battle through quagmire of bureaucratic obstruction and indifference.
Lets hope as from the next quarter the ordinary Swazi will have a simple access to the unused land and thus enjoy our right to development.