‘If I go, I will be a Georgian." - Boer Farmer on Emigrating to Georgia

Boer farmers head for new home in Georgia

Facing the threat of land reform, white South Africans are looking to pastures new

Shaun Walker in Moscow,
Independent.UK
Tuesday, 9 November 2010

South Africa and Georgia have little in common aside from a tradition of wine-making and a turbulent recent history. But a group of white South African farmers say starting a new life in the former Soviet state could be the solution to their troubles at home.

South Africa's 40,000 white farmers, mainly Boers – descendants from Dutch settlers – say they fear that South Africa's government is threatening their livelihoods with land-reform policies. When they first came to Africa, the Boer Voortrekkers, or pioneers, left coastal colonies to forge a path to the interior of the country in search of fertile land. Now some of their descendants believe the answer to their problems might lie thousands of miles away in the Caucasus.

In what would be an extraordinary migration, the Georgian government has invited South Africa's farmers to buy up land in the country for next to nothing in exchange for bringing their expertise and knowledge of modern farming methods.

Papuna Davitaya, Georgia's State Minister for Diaspora, said: "We are looking for investors in our agricultural sphere, because Georgia historically always used to be an agricultural country but in Soviet times we lost these traditions."

Triumph of African Cultural Stupidity: Cultural 'Anti-Racist' Demands to Deny Africans Honest Feedback, to Improve their Competence

Denialism, Self-Delusion and the Non-Delivery Factor

Administrator, TAU-SA/TLU-SA
Vrydag, 05 November 2010 15:31

It is dawning on South Africa that there are two very separate and distinct mindsets at work in the country, and it seems never the twain will meet. Newspaper columns and letter pages, as well as talk shows and phone-ins, are replete with what “should be done” and ”why is this not done?” and the now over-used word “unbelievable”, from citizens aghast at the unfathomable behaviour of the ruling classes.

The logic of one mindset is not the logic of the other. Who would think that after the abysmal failure of the South African land redistribution programme, the government would continue with it, albeit under different guises? Who would believe that after wantonly destroying Zimbabwe and rendering his people to grinding penury, the South African government would ask the United Nations to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe’s president, a perpetrator of human rights atrocities? Who can fathom a government that month after month - indeed year after year - places advertisements for desperately-needed municipal staff, stipulating that they are “equal opportunity employers”, meaning skilled whites need not apply?

How is it that despite embarrassing service delivery failures, the wholesale plunder of taxpayers’ money by tenderpreneurs and government employees, the nepotism, the lowering of standards in health and education, the failing feeding schemes and the abuse of the social welfare system, the miscreants simply carry on as if nothing happened. There is no shame, no sense of accountability to those who pay them and indeed to South Africa as a nation. Indeed, when many are fired for incompetence, mismanagement or fraud, or all three, they go to court to demand huge payouts that they believe are their due! Denialism is at work here, and this brings us to an interesting explanation of this phenomenon now doing the Wikipedia rounds: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Fugard betrayed by lying, greedy corrupt intentions of ANC elite?

Playwright Athol Fugard lambasts modern South Africa

Veteran South African playwright Athol Fugard has issued a stark warning about the direction his country is going in - and has urged younger playwrights to tackle the widespread injustices he sees as undermining the post-Apartheid settlement.

By Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph.UK
Published: 10:52AM GMT 05 Nov 2010

Veteran South African playwright Athol Fugard has issued a stark warning about the direction his country is going in - and has urged younger playwrights to tackle the widespread injustices he sees as undermining the post-Apartheid settlement.

Currently rehearsing his latest play The Train Driver, at Hampstead Theatre, Fugard, 78, has spoken out about his growing sense of disillusion. Having written, and co-authored, a number of seminal anti-Apartheid plays in his time - including The Island (1972) and Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) - he revealed this week that the need to address South Africa’s ongoing ills is so urgent that he has no plans to retire.

“The truth is that the new South Africa needs committed playwrights who are prepared to bear witness to what is going on every bit as urgently as the old ones did,” he declares in an in-depth interview with the theatre podcast website www.theatrevoice.com. “The essential responsibility lies with young playwrights and I’m not sure I can see them rising to that challenge - that’s what disturbs me.”

He delivers a furious attack on the government of President Jacob Zuma. “I have to live with an appalling sense of betrayal in terms of the present government in South Africa. When I think of the moment when Nelson Mandela came out of jail, and when I think of that day I stood in a queue a mile long under a blazing sun to cast my vote in our first free general election… when I think of that day and the euphoria that swept through the country that we were going to really get it right and turn our back on the appalling past and be a truly open democratic society with compassion and a sense of justice - that’s not the case.”

“In a sense we have got to start again,” he continues. “It’s a very fluid - and a very volatile situation in South Africa. On my side there’s a sense of betrayal. I hate to name names but men who I thought would stand up and speak out against the degree of corruption and everything that’s going wrong in our country simply concern themselves with getting richer. Look at the degree of corruption in high places in South Africa. Desmond Tutu has gone on record time and time again and said to us fellow south Africans that we have lost our way. He is absolutely right.”

The Train Driver is based on the true story of Pumla Lolwana, who in 2000, stepped in front of an oncoming train with her three young children on the Cape Flats. Fugard has described it as “perhaps the most important play I’ve written... It’s the emotional journey I’ve travelled in dealing with my inherited legacy of South African prejudice and what you do with that blinkered vision of reality”.

» » » » [Telegraph.UK]

Fugard feels betrayed by his country

November 7 2010 at 11:32am
By Melanie Peters, Weekend Argus

Veteran playwright Athol Fugard, 78, has lashed out at President Jacob Zuma’s government for the high level of corruption and has said he feels “betrayed” and disillusioned by the direction his native country is heading.

He expressed his strong views in a frank interview – which has made headlines in British newspapers – with a podcast website www.theatrevoice.com.

He was talking before the UK premiere of his latest play, The Train Driver, at Hampstead Theatre.

Fugard, born in Middelburg in the Eastern Cape, was a key figure in the cultural struggle against apartheid and has often been referred to “the conscience of his country”.

In the interview he said: “In a sense we have got to start again. It’s a very fluid – and a very volatile situation in South Africa. On my side there’s a sense of betrayal. Men who I thought would stand up and speak out against the degree of corruption and everything that’s going wrong… simply concern themselves with getting richer.”

Fugard said: “When I think of the moment when Nelson Mandela came out of jail, and when I think of that day I stood in a queue a mile long under a blazing sun to cast my vote in our first free general election… when I think of that day and the euphoria that swept through the country that we were going to really get it right and turn our back on the appalling past and be a truly open democratic society with compassion and a sense of justice – that’s not the case.”


Veteran playwright and theatre director Nicholas Ellenbogen described Fugard’s comments as “naive”.

He said Fugard, who is now based in California although he still has a house in the Eastern Cape, had been out of the country was not fully aware of what was going on.


Author Zakes Mda said there was nothing new or even specific in Fugard’s “lambast”. He was not pointing out any specific problem.

“Playwrights, young and old, cannot be prescribed to by Mr Fugard about what to write or not to write.” - Weekend Argus

» » » » [IOL: Weekend Argus]

Fugard feels 'betrayed'

Saterdag, 01 September 2007 10:29 BBC
PRAAG

Victory, which premiered in the UK city of Bath, paints a bleak picture of modern South Africa. It centres on a violent burglary of an elderly white widower committed by two black teenagers, Freddie and Victoria.

Fugard told BBC World Service's The Ticket programme that he took the theme after his own home was burgled on four occasions in the last two years - the last of which involved someone he trusted.

"It gave a focus to a sense of betrayal I've had growing in me with time, as I looked at what South Africa was becoming and the direction it was heading in," he said.

"I compared it with what I had felt 12 years ago when, together with millions of South Africans of all races and creeds, we stood in long queues to cast our votes in the first ever democratic election.

"That was a moment of incredible euphoria, of hope, that South Africa would in fact - as it did - turn its back on the violence of its past and try to forge a new identity."

Fugard, who initially became famous through his works about South Africa under apartheid, has set a number of his recent plays in the same village as he reflects on how the country has changed since those first democratic elections in 1994.

He said that it showed how burglary, violent crime, drug abuse "and all the attendant horrors of what the world is made up of now" have reached even this remote place in the Karoo desert.

He added, however, there is a "slender note of affirmation" in the fate of the young woman, Victoria, at the centre of the play.

Fugard established his reputation when he worked extensively with two of South Africa's greatest actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona.

Together they wrote three groundbreaking plays, including The Island and Sizwe Banzi is Dead - performed and workshopped in black townships.

He said that taking these plays into the townships, and talking loudly on stage "about things that were only whispered about" was, for him, "an absolutely defining experience of the potency of theatre."

And he said that, though he is now 75 years old, he still writes "with the same joy and the same sense of celebration.

"Underlying even the bleak in my opus is celebration - the celebration of theatre," he added.

"I was talking to the director of the Bath production of Victory this morning - and I just felt so proud to be a member of the theatre community.

"This community stretches all the way back to Shakespeare, and even earlier. Ours is a very noble profession, even though in many cases we've been the outcasts of society."

» » » » [PRAAG, via BBC]

UK Audit firm launches new arms deal probe - TimesLive

UK Audit firm launches new arms deal probe

Politicians, business leaders set to be named


Nov 7, 2010 12:00 AM, TimesLive
Subashni Naidoo & Monica Laganparsad

South African politicians and businessmen who pocketed R1-billion from the arms deal are set to be named in a new investigation by Britain's auditing watchdog.

The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) is to investigate KPMG, which advised BAE Systems on offshore companies that were used to pay "commissions" to influence the awarding of lucrative contracts in South Africa's R47.4-billion defence procurement package.

Controversial businessman Fana Hlongwane, who was an adviser to then-defence minister Joe Modise when the arms deal was initiated, will be a key figure in the latest probe.

It follows an investigation in the UK and Liechtenstein into alleged payments of more than R200-million by BAE to him.

The company, which has also been under investigation by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) since 2007 for issuing bribes in South Africa, recently "settled" a £286-million fine for failing to comply with global anti-bribery rules.

The boardhas initiated the latest probe after corruption cases related to the arms deal were mysteriously dropped by South Africa's Hawks unit in September.

The audit, which will involve scrutiny of KPMG's confidential records, is set to reveal substantial financial evidence - and disclose the names of influential individuals - who, in exchange for cash, helped BAE supply Hawk trainer aircraft and Gripen fighter jets to South Africa for $2.1-billion.