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Seven Questions Were Asked:
“Why is it that the word communism makes you immediately think of Soviet gulags, but when someone says capitalism, you don’t think of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, or the fact that the United States maintains the largest prison-industrial complex in human history and incarcerates more people than any country on Earth?
Why is it that you just know that the people of the DPRK are definitely brainwashed, but simultaneously ignore all of the publicly available CIA documents admitting to funding psychological operations and media campaigns to ideologically condition their own citizens?
Why does the mere mention of communism make you think famine, but when you're presented with the 18 million intentionally starved in India under British rule and a third of the Irish population wiped out by the same people, there is no mention of capitalism?
Why do you believe that communism crushes dissenting voices, but haven’t even heard of Germany's suppression of the Herero and Nama people’s rebellion in Namibia that wiped out 70% and 50% of their populations and forced the rest into concentration camps, or the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans murdered and tortured in the British suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion, or the three million Indonesians slaughtered by the CIA-backed Suharto in the name of eradicating evil communism?
Why is it that you can pinpoint Mao as a murderous leader in history, but you never think about King Leopold slaughtering and torturing 15 million Congolese, having their limbs severed, all for rubber quotas, or that, under Nixon, Laos became the most bombed country in history?
Why is it that you can say communism killed 100 million as though it is fact, but when you're confronted with the reality that the genocide of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island alone exceeds 140 million, you refuse to attribute it to capitalism?
Why is it that you can recite these alleged crimes of communism without any investigation but with so much conviction, and yet none of the millions of verified atrocities over hundreds of years ever get laid at the feet of capitalism?
So the Western Cape High court is the real Constitutional Court, not the rotting building in Braam. South Africa is a telenovela. Ramaphosa is disgusting.
This is an interesting interdict judgement. You can just rock up now, years after a report is issued, and get an interdict for the taking if you claim that a legal proceeding will humiliate you 😂.
You can show up anytime months after a constitutional court judgement.
The say the commissioners were barracking her. What?
This is a term in debate which means consistently interrupting the person on podium and preventing them from articulating their point.
It’s a good thing we watched with our own eyes. She was asked questions like every witness. She failed to answer and she failed to explain. That’s on her not on commissioners.
We can’t just allow the integrity of one of the greatest legal minds Jusitice Madlanga to be tarnished or smeared because Adv Johnson did not know the difference between an objective and subjective test.
We can’t just sit back and allow black excellence to be attacked because someone unlawfully shared dockets with General Feroz Khan.
A witness who is not being truthful or who is being evasive will get more robust engagement than a cooperative witness. This was painfully explained by Adv Adila Hassim when General Sibiya started crying that she was being too hard on him.
Don’t blame the commissioners for doing their job. The whole article is still trying to find sympathy for a person who has failed to explain the basis for the actions they took. This is administrative law 101, you can’t take action without jurisdictional grounds.
They pretend that there is evidence of a crime in the Mokwele matter. There is none. She applied for a publicly advertised job and had the qualifications and experience. Mechatronics and years supervising a workshop where the technical work was being done. There was no case in the section 27 referral and there is no case in the investigating officers own affidavit.
We know because Brian Padayachee was challenged on this all of last week and he conceded key points. The arrest of Khumalo on the Dineo Mokwele matter was clearly unfounded and based on factless paperwork from Fadiel Adams.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF SOUTH AFRICA
Beloved,
I wrote The Big Five Cartel because silence was no longer an option. You can see where we are today. I have spent too much time away from you, studying them , men and women. I watched, I questioned and I wrote.
What did they think would happen? How do you silence a writer? We can never fight what’s already written. There are book we all fear to write and yet there is this ONE!
Also because my therapist said “journaling helps” and I took it a bit too literally.
For years I’ve been called “controversial,” “too loud,” “too much.”
Translation: I speak in a room full of whispers and apparently that’s a crime. We all have slept with the enemy, we have eaten with cowards and we lost ourselves in love. That all ends when I step into the writing room, everyone is enemy.
I’ve been dragged through courts, spent two years under house arrest, and lost friendships, brand deals, and a few good nights of sleep. We all pay a price for what we have been chosen to become.
People told me: “Jackie, stop writing. Stop talking. Stop naming what everyone sees but no one says out loud at the braai.” Well, the truth dies when we all cower.
But I kept taking notes. With receipts.
Being a vocal minority is exhausting, however someone has to carry the weight.
It’s tweeting the truth at 2am and waking up to 3000 comments, 2 lawsuits, and 1 aunty asking “but why must you always?” It’s the months of research, not reading things online, literally finding the information that’s in this book!
It’s being told “you’re causing division” for pointing at the division that was already there.
It’s doors closing, publishers hesitating, and people suddenly forgetting your number — until they want to know if they are in the book.
The sacrifice was real. Goodness I have fought so hard, you saw it!
There were threats. Headlines that tried to turn me from an author into a scandal. Nights I asked myself: “Is documenting our own stories worth it?”
Yes. Because someone has to say it first so that others can say it louder later.
I wrote this book because South Africa deserves the truth, even when it’s ugly. Especially when it’s ugly.
The Big Five Cartel is about the systems, the networks, and the “no honour amongst thieves” culture that keeps ordinary people trapped while a few eat in the dark. It’s about power without accountability. About not letting them win, brokers, cartels; and the cost paid by women, men, and kids who never asked to be part of it.
This book will make people uncomfortable. Good. Comfort has kept us stuck.
It will be called defamatory, sensational, dangerous. But what’s truly dangerous is pretending.
I am not a hero. I’m just a daughter of this country who decided to document instead of disappear. And maybe crack a joke or two while doing it, because if we don’t laugh we’ll cry.
“The Commission is only the start.” There’s more to tell. So, we shall stand up and say what they can’t. There is more to unmask. More to fight for.
To those who pushed back: thank you. You proved why the book needed to be written.
To those who stood with me: thank you. You reminded me why I kept going.
To you, the reader: read it with an open mind and an open heart. Argue with it. Feel it. Share it as far as possible. But don’t ignore it. We can’t just talk, someone has to document it.
South Africa, we cannot be silenced. Not by courts, not by fear, not by power.
And definitely not by group chats or should we say Cartel’s?
With courage, love, and a little bit of mischief,
J.P
Recent public conversations on polygamy fall short of addressing the greater conversation about masculinity in South African families and communities. Poet, Modise Sekgothe today released the first single of an upcoming album that, for me, provides scope.
https://t.co/nz4AZm06do
Look carefully at these pictures.
On 30 June there will be no march to the mansions.
There will be no march to the luxury estates.
There will be no march to the golf courses.
There will be no march to the beachfront suburbs.
Migrants — documented or undocumented — living in those wealthy suburbs have nothing to fear.
Nobody will be knocking on their gates.
Nobody will be dragging them from their homes.
Nobody will be demanding to see their papers.
The rich will sleep peacefully on 29 June.
They will sleep peacefully on 30 June.
And they will wake up on 1 July exactly as they did before.
But in the townships and informal settlements there will be fear.
The targets will not be the rich.
The targets will be the poorest of the poor.
The migrant living in a shack.
The refugee running a spaza shop.
The domestic worker.
The gardener.
The security guard.
The construction worker.
The unemployed young person trying to survive.
And when it is all over:
No jobs will have been created.
No factory will have reopened.
No mine will have reopened.
No pothole will have been repaired.
No school still using pit toilets will have been fixed.
No hospital will have been repaired.
No clinic will have received more nurses.
No municipality will suddenly work.
No family will escape poverty.
No inequality will disappear.
The rich will remain rich.
The poor will remain poor.
And once again, the victims will be people living in shacks while those living behind high walls, electric fences and private security watch from a safe distance.
The anger is real.
The unemployment is real.
The poverty is real.
The inequality is real.
But the targets are wrong.
The poor are being mobilised against the poor while the real causes of the crisis remain untouched.
THE SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT THOKO DIDIZA HAS DIVORCED HERSELF FROM PARLIAMENT
By Dennis Bloem
The bizarre decision of the Speaker of Parliament, Thoko Didiza, to file a notice to abide by the High Court's decision on President Cyril Ramaphosa's bid to Interdict the process of Parliament's Impeachment Committee, must be condemned and rejected.
Few days ago the majority of the parties on the Impeachment Committee agreed to oppose the President's senseless bid to interdict the process.
This is a very strange development where the Speaker of Parliament divorced herself from members of Parliament and chose to take her own position.
We are nevertheless not surprised by this reactionary decision of the Speaker. The indications were already visible during the meeting of the Impeachment Committee when the ANC was pushing very hard against a decision to oppose the interdict.
We can come to only one conclusion that the Speaker was instructed by her Party the ANC not to oppose the interdict.
It seems like the ANC doesn't learn from their past mistakes. They are defending the indefensible, forgetting that the voters are watching and will strike at the time.
One thing for certain is that the people, the voters, will respond.
**** Dennis Bloem is the spokesperson for the Activists and Citizens Forum
The office of the Public Protector (PP) has warned against "insults" directed at the institution, saying individuals who do so could be fined up to R40,000 or face imprisonment for up to 12 months.
https://t.co/SvWKuBsWOV