of being outspoken


I'm trying to catch up with my work and all the other things I need to do before we leave for Mali on Tuesday.

One of the things on my list was to buy Christmas presents for my brother and his family, so I went to Heather Moore's studio. I can't tell you what exactly I bought because my brother reads my blog!

But do yourself a favour and visit her Etsy shop (not you, Geoff. Or Maria). An extra incentive is that she is donating a portion of the profit from her Borrowed Spoons design to Peninsula School Feeding.

Last night was the last Isandla Development Dialogue of the year, with the title "Speaking truth to power". (I'll post Adrian's report that reflects all four of the speakers on Monday.) One of the speakers was the wonderfully forthright and outspoken Rhoda Kadalie (see pic). I'll leave you with some sound-bites:

"I am irritated by people who do not serve their country well because of political patronage. South Africa has become a haven for poor affirmative action appointments, where people boldly put themselves forward for jobs they are not qualified to do."

"So many people who fought for freedom now keep quiet in the face of political correctness, out of fear of blocking their access to patronage. It's stifling critical, independent thought. It contributes to the deluge of self censorship in all levels of society. Look at HIV - no one in cabinet was prepared to question the president on his idiotic approach to Aids. They all suspended their intelligence."

"As NGOs we shut up for too long because we were so happy to have our democracy. Now is the time for us to speak out, or we will become like the country on our border."

And from Judge Dennis Davis:

"We need to get to a place where transformation is not equated to race. The struggle is really about getting to the point where we can transcend our history and see each other, not as different races, but as humans."

If you want an opinion on the new kid on the SA political scene - now totally bizarrely to be known as COP - take a look at Afrodissident here.

Congress of the People sounds very noble. But COP? Don't people consider acronyms? Especially in a country where police brutality was the norm for so long?

And what about cop-outs? (Not that I'm suggesting that they are.... just that the choice of names opens a door for people to use that phrase against them).

Very strange.

The name does have a proud history. The original Congress of the People was the meeting in the 1950s where the Freedom Charter was adopted. Look on this ANC page (!) for more info.

The ANC is planning to challenge this choice too, but according to Lekota, the party has already taken legal advice and has no plans to come up with anything else.

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