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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:For Ramaphosa, is it better politically to pardon Zuma or let him go to trial? Go to trial to show that he is serious about dealing with corruption. So long sh
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Feb 15, 2018 00:07
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Phlegmish posted:How is Ramaphosa when it comes to the AIDS epidemic, or medicine in general? I'm assuming a lot better than Zuma. The ironic thing is that this was one of the few things Zuma was much, much better than Mbeki on. (In terms of actual politics and policy anyway. Somewhat less so in terms of his personal life.) Toplowtech posted:I honestly think that if things really turned that bad and he risks prison, he will just choose exile and run to the airport. But hey a few trials may be fun. We learn the real reason South Africa withdrew from the International Criminal Court.
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Feb 15, 2018 02:10
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Also JFC can someone explain to me why the DA is trying to remove their own mayor from power in Cape Town, in the middle of a water crisis? Like, sure, throw some blame at her for the crisis itself (even though there aren't any really good solutions), but now is really no the time for this kind of political power play.
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Feb 15, 2018 02:18
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She got caught out over irregular spending on home improvements financed from municipal coffers (sounds familiar) after the DA denied it - and the city subsequently failed an audit cause of "tender irregularity". Then someone accused her of trying to solicit a multimillion bribe... Not a good look for them
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Feb 15, 2018 02:34
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:- More bullshit claims from the army about Boko Haram and Shekau fleeing "in hijab" quote:He is desperately trying to escape the theatre disguised as a woman dressed in Hijab. We reliably gathered that to avoid detection Abubakar Shekau alternates between blue and black coloured hijabs. He was last seen in a black hijab,
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Feb 15, 2018 14:36
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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OK wow, Desalegn just resigned.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:10
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:OK wow, Desalegn just resigned.
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Feb 15, 2018 17:20
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Grouchio posted:Where could I find some good analytical pieces on Ethiopian politics?
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Feb 15, 2018 17:32
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I just hope the Muslims make a big push into Africa because as an American I have NO interest in doing that myself... maybe there should be more immigration to America allowed? I could get behind that (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 16, 2018 00:40
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Well Zuma's son is on the run, which is always a good sign about a politician and his family. Also looks like one of the Gupta's was trying to flee the country. With all their money and resources I doubt they will ever see the inside of a prison cell but this is a good showing of things and I hope it continues.
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Feb 16, 2018 01:05
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We'll see. African parties are typically very consensus-oriented. Something tells me Ramaphosa would rather shift the narrative to his expected turnaround of the economy rather than further stir the pot.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:28
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:I'm interested in this too as I really don't understand what the gently caress is going on over there, first they killed Oromo protesters by the hundreds, now suddenly we have political reforms and a resignation from the prime minister. https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/id/1299/vaughanphd.pdf Grouchio fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Feb 17, 2018 09:56
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A3th3r posted:I just hope the Muslims make a big push into Africa because as an American I have NO interest in doing that myself... maybe there should be more immigration to America allowed? I could get behind that what
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Feb 21, 2018 06:29
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R. Guyovich posted:what Oh good, I thought I was the only one who had not even the slightest clue wtf he was talking about. In retrospection, I think A3th3r probably has not the slightest clue wtf they were talking about.
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Feb 21, 2018 09:47
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President Ramaphosa: We're going ahead with Land Expropriation [from Whites] without Compensation Rammy what are you doing? You do realize this is going to transform South Africa into Zimbabwe by doing this, right? Riiiight? Has the ANC learned nothing from that basket case? 
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Feb 24, 2018 05:28
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Grouchio posted:President Ramaphosa: We're going ahead with Land Expropriation [from Whites] without Compensation How do you plan to resolve the continuing racial disparity in commercial agricultural land ownership after years of various governmental schemes to address this have only yielded marginal results (though AgriSA will vocally contest that)? I think people have this image in their head of "White Farmers" being an old guy in khaki shorts and his wife pottering around on a farm somewhere and not the massive large scale transnational agribusiness conglomerates that have increasingly snaffled up farming units since the 80's.
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Feb 24, 2018 20:25
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kustomkarkommando posted:How do you plan to resolve the continuing racial disparity in commercial agricultural land ownership after years of various governmental schemes to address this have only yielded marginal results (though AgriSA will vocally contest that)? I think people have this image in their head of "White Farmers" being an old guy in khaki shorts and his wife pottering around on a farm somewhere and not the massive large scale transnational agribusiness conglomerates that have increasingly snaffled up farming units since the 80's.
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Feb 24, 2018 20:27
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Grouchio posted:So you're saying/hoping that this decision won't end up like Zimbabwe for some reason. Also is Ramaphosa doing anything regarding Cape Town day zero? If land is expropriated and handed to local community based co-operatives, as has often been proposed, why would it if they had sufficient government support? (which granted in the early pre-Mbeki transfers they often did not)
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Feb 24, 2018 20:35
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kustomkarkommando posted:If land is expropriated and handed to local community based co-operatives, as has often been proposed, why would it if they had sufficient government support? (which granted in the early pre-Mbeki transfers they often did not) Given how poorly the South African government seems to manage generally, why would they do a better job managing this? Forced farm transfers are an absolutely fantastic way for state capture and corruption. Don't joke yourself that anyone in the upper eschelons promoting it gives a drat about inequality, except insofar as they want to improve their personal inequality upon others. Yes it probably would not be as catastrophic as Zimbabwe, but wow that is a low bar to set.
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Feb 24, 2018 21:58
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Willing-buyer willing-seller didn't work particularly well, first refusal didn't do much - I think expropriation is the only real thing left to try outside of just abandoning the 30% target all together and the sheer amount of hectares we're talking about here makes market value compensation untenable if you want to take transfers seriously. Does it have a potential to backfire horribly through mismanagement? Yeah of course but that doesn't mean the idea is without merit. I mean p. much any policy announcement made can be followed with the caveat "but the ANC will probably gently caress it up" kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 22:10
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How has the SACP been reacting to the change in leadership? I remember they were fairly anti-Zuma at the end, but Ramaphosa's pro-business tendencies don't seem like something they would support.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:17
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Badger of Basra posted:How has the SACP been reacting to the change in leadership? I remember they were fairly anti-Zuma at the end, but Ramaphosa's pro-business tendencies don't seem like something they would support. They backed Ramaphosa's leadership bid (as did the Unions, which he helped build in his trade union days) and are largely seen to support him for the time being - but they did field and successfully elect some candidates at local by elections last year under their own banner which was a first. Still some rumbling they may field candidates in the next election and remain in coalition with the ANC to strengthen their identity but preserve the tripartite alliance.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llP1o4AB0AM&t=256s Well okay then. 
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Mar 1, 2018 08:00
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Julius Malema seems like one of a very few people where the politics in a country would likely be better if he were disappeared. I guess it's a mixed blessing that South Africa's government is no longer competent enough to run a repressive secret police apparatus. Edit: "However, Malema said [...] "A lot of land remains idle, you don't need stats to know. Just go to Stellenbosch, which is owned by white people. It is just idling land." Possibly because they don't have any loving water in Stellenbosch. It's hard to farm without water. Also I'm also not super up on my South African history, but also wasn't Western Cape essentially uninhabited when the first white settlers came there 400 years ago? My basic understanding was that the Afrikaners are as native to Western Cape as anyone else, and looking at the ethnic groups of South Africa, I don't see any whose pre-1800s settlement was anywhere even remotely close to West Cape except for Afrikaners and the San and the Khoikhoi, who had a small population spread out over an absolutely massive area. Reading more about this, it looks like a some of the reason for their tiny population (±20,000 for both groups together in the 1700s when settlement started in earnest, ranging from Cape Town all the way up to central Namibia) was due to decimation from smallpox and other diseases. That's kind of interesting, I didn't realize that imported diseases made such havoc on any African groups. I guess they were so insanely remote that they had not previously been in close-enough contact from old trade routes. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 1, 2018 10:52
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Grouchio posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llP1o4AB0AM&t=256s Saladman posted:Julius Malema seems like one of a very few people where the politics in a country would likely be better if he were disappeared.
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Mar 1, 2018 18:41
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Grouchio posted:President Ramaphosa: We're going ahead with Land Expropriation [from Whites] without Compensation My understanding is that a Constitutional Amendment would require a 75% majority in the National Assembly, which means that this bill has no legal standing without that vote. So the article's title seems, uh, a little misleading. 
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Mar 1, 2018 19:54
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kustomkarkommando posted:How do you plan to resolve the continuing racial disparity in commercial agricultural land ownership after years of various governmental schemes to address this have only yielded marginal results (though AgriSA will vocally contest that)? I think people have this image in their head of "White Farmers" being an old guy in khaki shorts and his wife pottering around on a farm somewhere and not the massive large scale transnational agribusiness conglomerates that have increasingly snaffled up farming units since the 80's. why don't they just frame it as confiscating land from agribusinesses then?
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Mar 1, 2018 20:09
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Typo posted:why don't they just frame it as confiscating land from agribusinesses then? Most of the framing about land expropriation doesn't sound like the EFF who like to talk up taking land back from the archetypical Boer (incidentally why Stellenbosch is one of their focuses) to play to their base, though they do also frequently talk about "white monopoly capital" having a stranglehold on land ownership - getting cold feet about expropriating land to say construct permanent housing that the country is in desperate need of to lift people out of unsanitary and dangerous informal slums because some people are shouting about white farmers seems oddly limiting. There's also extensive discussion in land reform with how to deal with government held fallow land and underdeveloped land held in common in places like KZN but this usually gets drowned out in the discussion.
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Mar 1, 2018 20:39
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Majorian posted:My understanding is that a Constitutional Amendment would require a 75% majority in the National Assembly, which means that this bill has no legal standing without that vote. So the article's title seems, uh, a little misleading. There isn't even a bill. It's "we're going ahead with starting a consultation process to figure out how we might do this", which makes that headline even more misleading. Saladman posted:Also I'm also not super up on my South African history, but also wasn't Western Cape essentially uninhabited when the first white settlers came there 400 years ago? I know you kinda sorta correct yourself later in your post, but  ?R. Mute posted:Don't post... anything anymore, really. Christ.
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Mar 1, 2018 21:09
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Typo posted:why don't they just frame it as confiscating land from agribusinesses then? Well the talk is a lot more about "redressing a grave historical injustice", which was that land was taken from black people and given to white people under both colonialism and apartheid. I don't think it matters a lot to the average poor, black, landless South African whether the face of their oppressor is Jannie Kleinboer or Big Agric. (It matters in terms of realpolitik in a neoliberal world, and Ramaphosa is well acquainted with the insides of that world, but he also needs to work with his party and base.)
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Mar 1, 2018 21:44
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Jannie Kleinboer is a much easier rhetorical target than Big Agriculture, anyway. Much less dangerous too.
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Mar 1, 2018 21:51
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Saladman posted:Julius Malema seems like one of a very few people where the politics in a country would likely be better if he were disappeared. Hmmmmmmmmmmm
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Mar 2, 2018 00:09
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R. Mute posted:Jannie Kleinboer is a much easier rhetorical target than Big Agriculture, anyway. Much less dangerous too. So I've actually gone and looked into this a bit, and while there has been a consolidation of farms (there were about 2/3 as many farms in 2013 as in 1996, on roughly the same area), quite a lot are still fairly small. In the Western Cape, the average farm is about 1728 hectares, or roughly 4km x 4km. Another statistic is that there are ~1M farm workers in the country as a whole (estimates I found varied), and ~40K farms, so the average number of labourers per farm (likely counting the farmer) is 25. Working: http://www.nda.agric.za/docs/statsinfo/Abstact2013.pdf 11500000 ha/6653 farms = 1728 This account of the 2012 agricultural workers strikes is from an anarchist website, but is thoughtful and includes details not often reported in the press: https://zabalaza.net/2013/02/09/reaping-what-you-sow-reflections-on-the-western-cape-farm-workers-strike/ quote:Across the Western Cape, and in the aftermath of the first suspension of the strike, thousands of farm workers were fired or suspended. Many more had disciplinary actions taken against them. When the strikes recommenced, some farm owners even locked workers in on the farms, preventing them from striking. Added to this, some farm owners hired private security to intimidate workers. In one instance in Robertson, a farmer drove around with a shotgun threatening to shoot CSAAWU workers that were out on strike. This is not really "big agric" stuff, especially the solo farmer driving around with a shotgun threatening his workers. I'm starting to feel like the "old guy in khaki shorts" stereotype may not be that far off. I mean, it's an old guy with a security team and a few dozen labourers, but it's still not Big Agric per se (although Agric SA does seem to kinda fill that role). And yeah, that old guy in khaki shorts is almost always white -- nearly 3/4 of the agricultural land is owned by white farmers. https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/who-owns-sas-land-20171028 Meanwhile, farm labourers are subjected to horrifying working conditions, including substandard housing, the displacement of around 6 million people since the 80s, regular rapes and beatings, disruption of unionisation attempts, and actively building structures to suppress wages. https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/08/23/ripe-abuse/human-rights-conditions-south-africas-fruit-and-wine-industries https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica2/Safarms7.htm https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/8871/ Also, to put things in a macroeconomic and policy context, farming accounts for something like 2.6% of the country's GDP, and the vast majority of the country's food is imported. Other than the optics, you could take away every one of those 30,000 rich, abusive, white people's farms and do pretty much anything you want with them without having an appreciable effect on either the economy or food security.
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Mar 2, 2018 00:17
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There’s some kind of major attack going on in Ouagadougou right now. Gunfire and smoke reported near the PM’s and army chief of staff offices, ditto the French Embassy. Looks pretty bad.
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Mar 2, 2018 12:52
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pantslesswithwolves posted:There’s some kind of major attack going on in Ouagadougou right now. Gunfire and smoke reported near the PM’s and army chief of staff offices, ditto the French Embassy. Looks pretty bad. Yeah. Apparently some terrorists in a car opened up fire on passersby before blowing their own car up. Reports are that three attackers were killed attempting to assault the defense chief of staff office, while four were neutralized in their attempted attack of the French embassy. I don't have much more details. My brother who is there told me he was overflown by a military helicopter that flew low enough to need to dodge traffic. Too bad he didn't film that. The situation seems to be under control now.
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Mar 2, 2018 16:26
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Just finished listening to a bbc world service docunentary on African Minerals, a British company involved in illegal land grabs and the murder/torture of striking workers, activists, whistleblowers and investigators in Sierra Leone. It's pretty shocking that companies like that are still freely allowed to go about their business in first world countries in this decade.
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Mar 12, 2018 17:10
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tekz posted:Just finished listening to a bbc world service docunentary on African Minerals, a British company involved in illegal land grabs and the murder/torture of striking workers, activists, whistleblowers and investigators in Sierra Leone. It's pretty shocking that companies like that are still freely allowed to go about their business in first world countries in this decade.
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Mar 12, 2018 18:25
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tekz posted:It's pretty shocking that companies like that are still freely allowed to go about their business in first world countries in this decade. They've never been condemned for these acts; and when uppity third-world countries tried to put an end to this kind of behavior, the CIA was never far to support a fascist coup to make sure these companies were allowed to continue.
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Mar 12, 2018 20:04
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Grouchio posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llP1o4AB0AM&t=256s So I actually had this in the back of my mind, and thought it might make a good educational opportunity: The EFF subscribe to a Fanonist-Leninist philosophy, meaning violent revolution to full communism with a side of decolonisation. It's pretty obvious that what Malema was talking about in that speech was that they are holding back and participating in the democratic process right now, but that they were reserving the option of revolution in future. Given that 75% of agricultural land is owned by white people, it would be against the EFFs own mandate to say anything else. You can argue about whether you think this is a good idea (I'm not sure I do), and about whether you trust Malema's sudden transformation into a full blown communist (I don't), but it's dumb to act surprised when a Falinist-Leninist talks about the possibility of seizing the means of production by armed revolution against the colonialists who currently hold it. tekz posted:Just finished listening to a bbc world service docunentary on African Minerals, a British company involved in illegal land grabs and the murder/torture of striking workers, activists, whistleblowers and investigators in Sierra Leone. It's pretty shocking that companies like that are still freely allowed to go about their business in first world countries in this decade. Canada is literally the worst for this. As in, 75% of the world's mining companies base themselves here because the government gives no fucks about their human rights abuses (or their tax dodging). https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wdb4j5/75-of-the-worlds-mining-companies-are-based-in-canada https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/03/11/canada_must_do_much_more_to_promote_ethical_mining.html http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yves-engler/canada-just-cant-quit-its-most-abusive-mining-company_a_23060899/ E: Fanonist not Falinist. Dunno WTF caused me to type that. Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Apr 9, 2018 |
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Mar 12, 2018 23:09
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Lead out in cuffs posted:So I actually had this in the back of my mind, and thought it might make a good educational opportunity: The EFF subscribe to a Falinist-Leninist philosophy, meaning violent revolution to full communism with a side of decolonisation. It's pretty obvious that what Malema was talking about in that speech was that they are holding back and participating in the democratic process right now, but that they were reserving the option of revolution in future. Given that 75% of agricultural land is owned by white people, it would be against the EFFs own mandate to say anything else. If I was South African I'd vote for him. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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