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If you gave them some money it would only make you feel better boet.Get involved - dont wave a cheque book.
by bright spark

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26 August 2010 11:26

Diamonds, unpolished in Turffontein's muck

Denis Beckett visits the district of his formative years, is appalled - and inspired.

JOHANNESBURG - For months of awol, I apologise to Moneywebbers who noticed. To Moneywebbers who asked, I say No, I wasn't fired, I'm not sick, I'm not retired (what's that?) and Alec has caused me no offence, let alone leave-in-a-huff offence. I was busy. I was about to return anyway, but on Monday a thing happened to chase me up.

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20 April 2010 04:20

Land reform is treason

Why doesn’t Gutto & Co ask what happens to redistributed land and the people on it?

JOHANNESBURG - I just had three days of solid uniquely Seffrican joys. I was going to tell you in a thousand words. But...

I gagged over the Sunday Independent churning out Verse 12 288 (approx) in the 15-year-old song "Give Us More Land Reform", the planet's only known entity more tuneless than a vuvuzela.

This was by Shadrack Gutto, chairman of the Centre for African Renaissance at Unisa, and I have to reply.

First of all let me say a lot of peaceable things.

Such as: nothing is more boring than the black-white ping-pong that passes for debate in SA - "you darkies stuff up" versus "you honkies caused the ills".

We're about to get close to that terrain, and it's uncomfortable. I'm tired of seeing race-loaded aspersions flung from distances...

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18 March 2010 00:24

The Carpe Diem era

It is time we stop our country following the crumbly trail of Africa.

Our local Community Police Forum (CPFs) asked me to speak at their AGM, and wanted me to propose a topic. I said I'd like to address why, in this crime-obsessed society, the annual meeting of a police precinct containing some 50 000 adult people would not have more than 0.03% attendance.

I got keen on that question, as I thought round it, and I'd like to submit to Moneywebbers a condensed version of the speech:

********** 

Riparile, goeie naand, molweni, shalom, namaste, sanibonani, goeie naand, dumelang, salaam aleikom and good evening. When CPFs came in 15 years ago, this was wonderful exciting new-age new-world empowering news. Imagine, we the mere people could actually meet the police, be involved, influence them.

At an earl...

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01 March 2010 12:32

There is no real beneficiary from the new racism

There is only a loser; the regular humble South African who needs a growing economy.

JOHANNESBURG - I stiffened the sinews, clenched my teeth and tackled the 134 comments addressed to two recent columns. One was by me: "if today's fashion is ‘give the job to the black oke!' tomorrow's fashion will be ‘bring back the whiteys!' ". The other was Frans Cronje on Politicsweb saying much the same thing, though better researched: "the cliché of South Africa's future and irony of its recent past [is] that affirmative action disempowered its greatest proponents while empowering its most fervent critics."

I expected wading through these 134 comments to be sewer-repair work, clothes pegs on the nose. How nice to discover that no, comment-lines are not only populated by bile-and-imbecility merchants, there are real people with sincerity and ideas, explori...

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16 February 2010 12:35

Let's move beyond race or else we're doomed

Denis Beckett provides scenarios on how to move beyond our current predicament.

JOHANNESBURG - The worst, the deepest, the most indefensible sin that a columnist can commit is to say "I told you so". It should be in the contract: "I told you so" means instant beheading.

Unless you use the dreary phrase "as I said in my column of nineteenvoetsek..." For that you get water-torture first.

You now know that I am about to say "I told you so". And I claim Beginner's Exemption because I don't believe (!?) I've ever done this thing before.

As I said in piles of nineteenvoetsek columns: when we started to thrust melanined people into roles that they wouldn't fill if they didn't have the melanin, we guaranteed that melanin would later become a handicap. 

Let me say that in plain Seffricenglish: if today's fashion is "give the job to the b...

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