LONDON — This week London columnist Simon Lincoln Reader takes a pot shot at a number of issues bothering him. First in his scope is the word transformation used on a Cape Times poster announcing ‘SONA – No liberation without transformation’ and he warns that Iqbal Survé “will shaft the entire Republic.” The other word he hates is “game-changer”, especially in oil and gas discoveries used by both President Cyril Ramaphosa on the Total discovery and Jacob Zuma when shale gas was found in the Karoo. Simon says in an era where leadership is ‘defined by travel voucher scandals, or Gold Field’s troughs, or Louis Vuitton bags stuffed with cash”… ‘it’s best the stuff should just stay in the ground.” From South Africa he turns to the UK, where left leaning student unions have censored Tory politicians, feminists, gay rights activists and even race campaigners. He says the middle-class white social justice worriers do not like self-made black people, they prefer them “moaning” or “wildly incoherent”. – Linda van Tilburg
By Simon Lincoln Reader*
Monday
Fastened to lamp posts in Cape Town’s parliamentary precinct, the Cape Times’ announces: “NO LIBERATION WITHOUT TRANSFORMATION”. Underneath a message for the President from His Most Serene Petroleum Slick Iqbal Surve.
The last time I heard the word “transformation” used with such otherworldly abandon was sometime in the early 2000s, when Connie Malusi boasted that he would transform what was then Johnnic. And he did: he transformed it from a big company into a small one. Same thing with Iqbal’s AYO – but only more sinister: the Public Investment Corporation has been royally submarined, and now Iqbal wants to widen his scope to shaft the entire Republic.
Mark my words: he’ll continue to get his way. As long as people like Baleka Mbete continue to attend his pre-State of the Nation lunches. Why does she always look as though she’s just been sucking sour balls? Who is giving these things to her?
Tuesday
The state of left wing media.
Two weeks ago, something called Turning Point was launched in the UK, an extension of the US university campus initiative, promoting awareness amongst more students subjected to the ideological persuasions of their teachers. The left’s media response alone justifies the initiative: a writer for the Independent, an activist called Lizzie Dearden, and one for The Guardian, a cyclist called Peter Walker, both immediately accused Turning Point of having far-right and anti-Muslim links.
In their crosshairs, a young woman called Candace Owens, the co-founder of Turning Point. Candace is engaged to George Farmer, the Chairman of Turning Point UK who I’ve met a few times and find okay-ish. He is the son of Michael Farmer, a successful mining fund manager who was the Conservative Party Treasurer. Lizzie and Peter made other leading remarks about George – a few degrees back from the former’s standard hysteria that groups akin to the Boeremag are about to unleash hell upon Europe – but on the same journey non-the-less.
Both failed to mention that Candace Owens happens to be black.
Wednesday
And that is because she is the wrong kind of black, you see. The modern, middle-class white social justice warrior detests blacks who do not conform to their plantation narrative – they like theirs moaning, like David Lammy, or wildly incoherent, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or taking a knee, or squealing for the genocide of Jews in outraged millennial speak. To them successful, self-made people like Candace and Herman Mashaba, or independent thinkers like Tony Sewell, are Aunt or Uncle Toms. Sell-outs.
Lizzie, Peter, The Buzzfeeders, Huffington Post bloggers are all unwitting victims of the very thing Turning Point has set out to confront – that creeping, consuming madness of hypocrisy and identity paranoia that results in things like tacit endorsement the moment blood spills on the streets of places like Caracas. These people have literally been programmed.
Thursday
The phrase “game-changer” must be criminalised, and those who apply it to oil and gas discoveries must be tortured.
Twice in successive years Jacob Zuma used it during state of the nation addresses when referring to shale gas deposits in the Karoo. Cyril Ramaphosa has now done the same, referring to Total’s discovery in the Outeniqua Basin.
I was once enthusiastic about shale gas in the Karoo. I borrowed heavily from the Econometrix report commissioned by Shell and compiled by the late but great Tony Twine (I don’t think it was unreasonable for anyone remotely conscious of poverty to delight in resource discoveries). But my enthusiasm resulted in a confrontation with TKAG’s Jonathan Deal, who would later gang up with some clowns – taking exceptional liberties with their day-pass from the local booby hatch – to accuse me of malfeasance.
Although he was possessed of none of Wayne Duvenage’s charm, I came to respect Jonathan’s work, and admired how he advanced it from environmental activism to genuine political agitation. Sort of like my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend.
Friday
So this discovery cannot be examined outside the context of nine wasted years and its incumbent, oinking political class – in the present, one increasingly frustrated by the erection of checks and balances, a group of people just as foul and dangerous as a methane explosion. In the absence of selfless or unimpeachable officialdom, modern history has proved beyond doubt that resources are actually catastrophes; if discoveries such as Total’s occur within in age of leadership defined by travel voucher scandals, or Gold Field’s troughs, or Louis Vuitton bags stuffed with cash – or Ministers, pissed out of their heads, wobbling on the steps of Parliament – perhaps its best the stuff just stays in the ground.
