Denial

For those who seek them the universe is full of signs. These signs are portents of what is coming along as we hurtle thru the multiverse at an unconceivable speed and those of us riding Gaia’s back spend our lives dodging all the slow moving flack that lies around in our path. The signs and portents are guides for us to dodge more and be ambushed less often.

The most deadly of all signs that blind us to the oncoming blights of stardust, gamma rays and leftover asteroid belts, of general flotsam that lurk in wait for us to come crashing through, is DENIAL.

We are almost unable to read denial, certainly in ourselves. How could I accept that a habit that has lived with me for so long that it has become comfortable is really the habit that smashes up my aspirations? I resist and deny… don’t I? And you? Don’t you…? Of course not, for you are never wrong are you? It is only I who am regularly wrong isn’t it?

It could well be that in twelve months time the entire bizarre business involving the Mc Cann’s and their missing child Madeleine may be perceived as a complex game of denial. The evidence is beginning to mount that something happened to the child, that the parents are overwhelmingly responsible for what happened, and that the entire oh so plausible global hunt for her was no more than an opportunistic cover-up exercise rooted in denial on the part pf the parents. Perhaps. [It is also possible that she was stolen from her bedroom by a genius child thief as Azaria was once stolen by a dingo; notwithstanding that her mother went to jail for her murder.]

In the same way the evidence for the re-racialisation of South Africa under the current administration is mounting and the denialist behaviour is increasingly reminiscent of the era that was supposed to have ended in 1994. If ever a philosophy had its roots in denial it was the old Apartheid thing… Who can ever forget those homburg-bearing, ill-fitting suit clad men trotting out their platitudes about how the so-called “blacks” actually appreciated apartheid; and relished the opportunities it gave dark citizens to engage themselves in far away dusty homelands. If that wasn’t denial what was.

I was reminded of that last week when the Malaysian foreign minister [interviewed on BBC’s Hardtalk programme] said in response to probing on the racist behaviour of the Malaysian government in respect of their treatment of their Chinese and Indian minorities. “They are allowed to have their own places of worship. And they are happy.” he said.

So denial had to be the order of the day when a furore was aroused by the observation that the inclusion of so-called “white” workers in an “ESOP” [employee share ownership programme] proposed as part of its transformat6ive black economic empowerment campaign would disqualify the employer the giant SASOL company from getting Brownie Points in the great black transformation game presently under way in South Africa [Southern Azania][SA].

Able spokespersons have been deployed at length from the DTI [Dept of trade and industry] to deny that they observation was meant to be racist. “That was not what we meant at all,” they cried. “Not what we meant at all.”

The most potent example of this drift to a new post-racist, neo-racism in South Africa and its accompanying denial behaviour, is the mounting clamour amongst well-placed stooges of the new emerging racially structured order or things. This subject matter is so-called “white” women. The call is to remove them from the list of those citizens who are supposed to receive preferential treatment in the workplace, in respect of job opportunities, because of their past oppression. Few people would deny that white women were generally denied the opportunity to advance in our pre-94 society. There is a considerable body of so-called White society today [in both SA and elsewhere] that still believes that a woman’s place is either on her back with her legs open or in the kitchen preparing to feed the other end of her “man”.

However it would seem so-called “white” women have proved somewhat too competitive for Mr Manyi, a so-called Black African male who is higher up the list mandated by the Employment Equity Act [EEA], of those persons deemed unable to gain preferment through the globally fashionable competitive means and who must as a result get preferential treatment. Is Mr Manyi effectively calling for preferential treatment for his own particular class over all those others who have also been downtrodden... of course... he may even be thinking male only provided it is his kind of male... the male dominant version of the new order is making a serious comeback with such gender put downs as virginity testing at traditional female subservient reed dance ceremonies.

In a world predicated as it is on brutal survival-of-the-fittest competition any system of administration that impedes the selection of the most able candidate for preferment will constitute a competitive barrier, no matter that it is regarded as morally correct. Markets take no account of morality they respond to moral hazard and perceived risk. Any system that rewards participants for factors other than performance begins the creep to moral hazard, and an eventual competitive crunch.

For instance; the Foreign Minister of Malaysia was unable to accept that Malaysia’s competitive position in the south east Asian economic sphere has been eroded over time because so many of its most talented citizens have moved next door and set up shop in competition. Denial means ignoring the fact that one persons moral righteousness is perceived by another person as an Achilles heel. The present market meltdown in the global economy

It is also true that some influential spokespersons for the State machine [in SA] have dismissed these demands [to discriminate against so-called ‘white’ women] as unrealistic and undesirable, and of course “unconstitutional”: as if the original EEA was in tune with the spirit of the Constitution. But it is equally true that their sensible opinions have been pretty well drowned out in the clamour that has swept the media waves over the past few weeks.

What is equally true however is that this current demand from the emerging, previously disadvantaged, nouveau race-lobby that so-called “white” women be struck off the list of affirmative beneficiaries of the Employment Equity Act, because they are apparently becoming either too prolific or too successfully competitive, poses an interesting dilemma for policy makers in our monopolistic one-party state.

The paradox is that the Employment Equity Act, an Act that completely discriminates against so-called “white” male talent, has not stopped the most talented [of said ‘males’] from progressing. Unfortunately a rising number are becoming successful elsewhere: the Malaysian experience is being repeated here. It is widely acknowledged by all but the Malaysian “Bumiputri” beneficiary Malay class in that country, that the export of talented Indian and Chinese citizens has been a source of fuel for the tigerish emergence of competitor nations in South Eat Asia.

There is also evidence mounting in South Africa that the least talented so-called ‘whites’ in the former, now disempowered, ruling class in South Africa are coalescing into a formative criminal underclass, and represent an emerging problem for this nouveau racist government that will return to haunt us all come 2020.

The double paradox would be that proscribing white women from reaping what meagre benefits are trickling their way off the empowerment bandwagon would turn so called “white” citizens into a de facto persecuted minority. This means that the outcome for those outraged racists like Mr Manyi, who has been in the forefront of this campaign, may well be different to what was envisaged.

What would be the outcome of formally defining the former oppressor class in this country as a persecuted minority, quite aside from the smug satisfaction that would accrue to the new neo-racist lobby.

By way of exploration: what has happened to the 4000 plus, so-called “white” farmers dispossessed of their properties in the land of the evergreen fantasy next door. We are told often enough about the hundred or so who went to Moz, Zambia and even Nigeria.

However that still leaves about 4000 unaccounted for. From all accounts very few of them are hanging around in Harare waiting for better days. And only a handful have tried their luck in other emerging African states. It seems, from persistent anecdotal reports, that they have evaporated into the global “White” diaspora, where their relatively scarce farm management skills may well have been welcomed, in places that struggle to attract farmers to that most difficult and unattractive trade.

There were originally some 300,000 so-called “white” persons in that delusional country before the persecution era got under way. While we rightly comment on the millions of black citizens of talent who have migrated out of the country in the wake of a system that discriminates against all but the Zezuru tribal grouping, we forget that nearly all those hated whiteys have also set up shop elsewhere. Today there are fewer than ten thousand left which, depending on your point of view, is either good or bad. However I know of very few who have left and joined the global diaspora that have not dramatically improved their lives and their conditions of life.

With White women ticked off the list of beneficiaries of the broad based redistribution process that is unfolding all around us, the field is thrown wide open for an exodus of, “shame:… poor-white refugees”. Everybody on the planet except us and maybe Malaysia is hunting for reasonable talent and battling to keep what they have: someone who can repair a motor car, stove, fridge, drain or fix the books, sell goods to customers; and all the other things that take place in this glorious virtual money world the so-called “white” person invented.

[Specifically, for those who take the preceding statement to be politically incorrect…It was invented by two Scotsmen: the well known Adam Smith and the less well known 18th century “philanderer, gambler, murderer and father of modern finance… John Law”]

So from the viewpoint of the racist clique that is mooting this change, the benefits will all pour their way. Rotten whitey is out of the picture and he can’t hide behind his bitches anymore and the main manne what count can get whatever loot they haven’t already earmarked, and the party can roll on for at least ten more years or so. [After all Mr Mugabe has kept a much smaller party going for 27 years not out.]

Any so-called “black” person over eighty will tell you that this [SA] was a racist society, dominated by “them” since ‘they’ came here and took over. Cynics might suggest that the core error of the Afrikaner clique who hijacked the country for forty four years was the codifying of a covertly racist system into an overt racist system, thereby letting an ancient genie out of the bottle and releasing the furies. That was the beginning of the end for the Afrikaner clique… forty four years is hardly epoch denting.

This is the same Pandora’s box that lies in wait for the proponents of this foolish idea abouiut delisting so-called ‘white’ women.. Open the box and create a persecuted minority and reveal your hand.

Mr Mugabe’s behaviour in Zimbabwe in waiting twenty years to play his race card revealed him as a man who negotiated in bad faith. Revolutionaries aside few people willingly negotiate with someone who is known to be a dishonest broker. The great South African rainbow nation so-called miracle was also created on the basis of a negotiated settlement. There are many who feel that the deal was a poisoned chalice. The current ruling clique is obviously becoming more blasé about the repercussions that markets hold in store for those who mess with this mirage we call the modern economic model. The Greeks called this mood “hubris” and the so-called “gods” always punished Hubris.

Those who negotiate in bad faith may well become personally enriched, but sooner or later the country itself will be made to pay the piper. In a brutal global marketplace no one chooses voluntarily to have dealings with those who have a reputation for sharp practice. Mr Chavez in Venezuela will make this uncomfortable discovery over the next decade, and we may well also rue the day we chose to base our new consensus on a revised interpretation of the Codesa Conference and the negotiated settlement we created in 1992.

I would say that it is arguable that the increasingly ruinous plight of the rump of the White minority in South Africa has played a salutary role in making a negotiated settlement between rival Iraqi factions in the Middle-East all but impossible. This ruinous evolution is not too noticeable in the affluent Northern suburbs of Jozi but it is manifestly apparent in places only thirty kilometres away.

The message is plain: Those who are stupid enough to give up power for a mess of pottage will soon discover they have no power at all. That is increasingly the lesson that outsiders will take from this proposed shift in our national consensus. This new oppression of the former ruling class will gradually prove embarrassing to those parties that tacitly supported the oppressed citizens in South Africa in their just struggle for “Liberty, equality and fraternity”, no matter how smug they may seem to be at the moment that everyone is getting their just deserts.

On the other hand becoming a persecuted minority could be immensely advantageous for that part of the white community that sees itself under siege in an ocean of crime, corruption and incompetence, as the system cracks under the strain of supporting increasing numbers of persons who believe that a job is a right without any responsibilities.

There are indications that nearly two million skilled and talented people have already evaporated from the country over the past thirteen years and one hears daily accounts of skills shortages that are apparently putting a brake on our attempts to reach a 6% growth rate. Those who have left are not exclusively from the despised “white” minority either; there are plenty of so-called beneficiaries of the new system that have taken the high road to a more peaceful life.

In his interview on the BBC’s Hardtalk programme this last week the Malaysian foreign minister played as adept a game of denial as any of our spokespersons here, when probed about the racist outcomes of that country’s Affirmative action programme: the model for our own. He dismissed the news as of no account that some major Funds managers in so-called Western markets were no longer putting money into Malaysia, in part because of the inherently destabilising effects of racially structured decision making in a global meritocratic market environment.

One remembers that Afrikaner politicians were equally dismissive of those who threatened financial hardship for the proponents of Apartheid. The present economic realignment taking place over the sub-prime meltdown will leave more than a few managers with a new risk averse profile; and places that court policies that are overtly divisive will lose position to those that are more solid, and local citizens will pay the penalty in the form of an interest rate structure [and other cost elements] about one hundred percent more expensive to operate in than those prevailing amongst many of our most able competitors.

“Nice” people will increasingly shun dealings with overt racists and those who bully their ‘victims’ This fate is befalling Israel who are finding few friend in dark times Gradually the only ‘friends’ the new partners of avarice will have left in a world made razor rapacious by the globalisation trend, will be those ‘honorary’ ‘former disadvantaged clusters called: ‘’the emerging Asian giants, who are themselves flexing 19th century, ‘robber-baron’ pretensions and somehow seem to have emerged from oppression with a more efficient, or perhaps useful, battery of skills than we have at our end of the planet; where we seem to have become bogged down in a form of proxy conflict called crime and corruption. But which may more appropriately represent an evolved form of Resentiment, to use Nietzsche’s term.

Those who ignore the signs that tripped us up in the past because they are blinded by the mote called denial are doomed to pass them again and again. There are rumours that the Mozambicans who grow cashew nuts struggle to break into markets ‘they’ [Mozambique] once controlled; because many of the markets today, thirty six years after the revolution, are supplied and dominated by the descendents of those who were dispossessed back then and driven out of their farms and holdings and presumably went off to grow these items elsewhere.

It was Groucho Marx I believe who said that one should always be polite to people when you are on your way up in the world since you never know when you are going to meet them again on your way back down.

Happy blogging