Your phone isn’t personal. It’s a data sensor with a camera.
In 2026, privacy isn’t a feature. It’s a fight.
If you haven’t audited your device, you’re not the user. You’re the product.
Here’s the 18-step Ghost Protocol to take your phone back 👇
Here’s Devi Govender lamenting how the government has dumbed down the basic education system since, and she specifically mentions the year 1996.
What she doesn’t say though is that 1996 is the year that SA adopted the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution policy and all its austerity and fiscal discipline (cost-cutting) measures.
Beyond the disastrous Outcomes-Based Education, the adoption of GEAR in 1996 shifted the state’s focus toward policies of fiscal discipline and deficit reduction. In other words, less and less spending on public goods like basic education.
This austerity had immediate effects on schooling as the government offered Voluntary Severance Packages to thousands of experienced teachers to cut costs.
It was at this time that many of the most qualified educators, often in specialized subjects like maths and science left the public system, moving to private schools or leaving the profession entirely.
Meanwhile, OBE required highly skilled teachers and well-equipped classrooms to work. Implementing it while simultaneously cutting costs and losing experienced staff was a recipe for the systemic decline Devi started noticing.
This period is often described by historians as the “neoliberal turn”, when the social goals of the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme were watered down by the market-friendly constraints of GEAR.
Now, the same people complaining about the country’s poor education system would also be the first to oppose any suggestions of increased spending on education, in which case they then fall back on placing the responsibility and blame on “parenting”, which is exactly what Devi does here.
They demand world-class standards but then refuse to fund the radical interventions required to achieve those standards.
The same demographic that laments “dumbing down” is also the most resistant to the budget reallocations needed to fix rural and township schools. Focusing on parenting allows for a critique of the system that requires zero financial sacrifice from the critic.
This creates a “user-pays” education system. If you are a “good parent” with money, you buy your way out of the dumbed down system into private or former Model C schools.
If you cannot, your child is left in a system that was intentionally thinned out by the fiscal discipline of the late 90s.
In essence, Devi Govender is suffering from nostalgia for rigour that ignores the costs of providing that rigour to 13 million learners (9 million of which have to be fed by the government from the same budget) instead of the small minority the pre-1994 system was designed for.
Your phone isn’t personal. It’s a data sensor with a camera.
In 2026, privacy isn’t a feature. It’s a fight.
If you haven’t audited your device, you’re not the user. You’re the product.
Here’s the 18-step Ghost Protocol to take your phone back.
For those of you who don’t know, VLC also allows you to watch 150–300 live sports channels plus over 1,800 free TV channels worldwide
Here’s how (using safe and public links only):
Install VLC (Free)
Windows / Mac / Linux: videolan .org
Android / iOS: Search VLC in your store
Get a public playlist
Sports-only: https://t.co/ABAhZgOv2O
Full TV (News, Movies, Kids, Music): https://t.co/JvWFFSE7ik
Open VLC → Network Stream → Paste URL → Play
Use Playlist view to switch channels
Some streams take a few seconds, VPN may be needed for geo-blocked content
Channels are public & community-maintained and availability can change.
Enjoy free TV & sports safely
cc: Rollandex