Thomas Johnson - The Blog

The DA is experiencing another melt-down in the Cape Town council with the resignation of five DA councillors including chief whip Shaun August . This came at Mayor Patricia de Lille's farewell speech to council on Thursday October 25. In a deal with the DA, she is to resign on October 31. But the latest Bowman Gilfillian report, leaked to the media, has fingered her for not reporting irregular spending to council and other matters. The report recommended criminal charges be laid against her. (Note this advice is incorrect. Irregular spending and/or not reporting it is not a criminal offence unless it involves criminal conduct .) The deal that will see her leave is now in question because it was predicated on withdrawing disciplinary charges and not pursuing related matters. The disciplinary charges against and criminal charges based on businessman Anthony Faul's affidavit were suspect and thin. The National Prosecutions Authority dismissed the criminal charges. De L...

My responses to William Saunderson-Meyer’s (WSM) Politicsweb column Ramaphosa is not doing so badly : Has WSM lately been imbibing the same potent stuff the Ramaphoria back-up choir like Ray 'Ramphoria Masterstroke' Hartley and the fawning media have? Not long ago he wrote "Mind the Ramphosa credibility gap" and now he's saying the man is "sheer genius". (Note the similarity with Hartley's " masterstroke ".) Now I know there's a not-so-secret club of admiring journos because they use similar words to describe him. Apparently WSM is the newest member since September 28, the credibility gap article. LSD, a hallucinogenic drug, "can alter a person's perception of reality". So can too much Johnnie Walker Black at Mahogany Ridge, that well-known scribbler watering hole. WSM lists Ramaposeur's leadership problems and then turns 180 degrees and says his vacillation, indecision and tardiness is all part of a ...

I read few local media now.  A few years ago I noticed a decline in the quality of the Sunday Times, the country's leading newspaper. It became more noticeable around the time Tiso Blackstar acquired them and they introduced the tabloid-style look with large headlines and images, City Press style, to unsuccessfully hide lack of content. More op-eds replaced news. I think with this latest debacle it transitioned fully into a tabloid. Supported by the holy of holies, the Press Council and its “code”, the media presents itself as moral and ethical arbiter and font of all wisdom. But when it suits itself, promotes agendas, are tendentious, censors and self-censors and often is afraid to offend political and business elites rather than following the story wherever it leads and serving the public interest. And the line between reporting news and making it has been crossed. One form of censorship, and self-censorship, is online publications not having comments or blocking commentator...

This post is in response to UCT professor Harro von Blotnitz who replied to my comment on a recent The Conversation article " South Africa won't create jobs unless it settles on a new social compact ".  Von Blotnitz asked how we can use South Africa's history to create jobs. I wrote: I’m loathe to give advice about what should be done to get things “back on track” (was it ever on?) because the ANC government and big business who have the power to make the necessary changes have consistently refused to do so despite possible, likely solutions to growth, development and employment been well-known. Further, beyond whatever ideology – Minerals Energy Complex/pure capitalist, socialist, National Democratic Revolution and now state capture – is prevalent at any one time, there’s a mindset, a conditioning, to accept things as they’ve been as the normal way of doing business. I’m pessimistic because I believe it’s hard to undo – a form of brainwashing, I suppose. This...

When the Jobs Summit was announced, I knew, like I'm sure others did, it was going to be a talk fest. And it has been that – an orgiastic spewing of verbiage, with everyone including me, giving his or her opinion after the fact. There's the liberal-left like Business Day's resident Ramaphoria boot-licker Ray Hartley who think it as "masterstroke", and others like academic Alan Hirsch who wrote "undoubtedly the outcome of the recent summit is positive".  They and others including (white) BDay/Tiso Group readers forget the ANC's one (only one) speciality of churning out economic strategies that immediately are consigned to File 13, mouldy and unread. So it is with this summit, the nth iteration of one or other development strategy since 1994. These ramaphorias, including the ground zero of the outbreak, the entire ANC, past and active members, might suffer from a contagion like porphyria – a nervous system disorder – and insanity, which the 20th c...

I read Olivia Godlhill's article  Philosophy is the new battleground in South Africa’s fight against colonialism  in Quartz, 30 September 2018, brought to my attention by David Benatar's  critique  of it. It's typical of the biased, tendentious op-eds where the "facts" are couched in a way to present or lead to a particular agenda, ideology or conclusion. This example, South Africa’s white right, the Alt-Rightand the alternative , is common of the liberal-left academics and media. Without knowing anything about African philosophy and its status as an academic subject, I can see, and aware readers will soon realise, Goldhill doesn't strive for balance but to frame the narrative in a particular way: the alleged victimhood of black students studying philosophy at South African universities (e.g., her opening tale of PhD student Tony Shabangu, poor lad); the "Euro-centric" nature and whiteness of faculty, subjects and dead philosophers; the extant ...