Struwwelpeter: For Zille it signals the beginning of the gradual end of the ANC government
If you don't like it, don't come back
SOMETHING for you to ponder about: In Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has created a “tent city jail” to save millions of dollars on another expensive prison complex.
He has jail meals down to 20 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He has banned smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails, and took away weightlifting equipment.
He says: “They’re in jail to pay a debt to society, not to build muscles so they can assault innocent people when they leave.”
He started chain gangs to use the inmates to do free work on county and city projects and save taxpayers’ money. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination.
He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only allows the Disney channel and the weather channel.
He cut off coffee because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a waste of taxpayers’ money. When the inmates complained, he told them, “This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.”
“This is hell. It feels like we live in a furnace,” said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for two years with 10 more to go. “It’s inhumane.”
Joe Arpaio, is not one bit sympathetic. “Criminals should be punished for their crimes – not live in luxury until it’s time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can come back in to live on taxpayers’ money and enjoy things many taxpayers can’t afford to have for themselves.”
Way to go, Sheriff! If our prisons were like yours there would be a lot less crime and we would not be in the current position of running out of prison space in South Africa.
(Thanks Garth)
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Herewith some extracts from an interview with Helen Zille, as published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (Translated)
Helen Zille, a South African of German stock, has made a success story out of the Western Cape. Her party is also driving out the African National Congress (ANC) in other parts of the country.
This month Zille led talks with representatives of the EU Commission in Brussels. Zille’s dream is of an open society in which ancestry and inborn characteristics play no role and in which everyone has the same opportunity to develop freely. However, many parts of South Africa are still at least as far removed from this as the Flemish and Walloon parts of Belgium are.
The ANC, which has run the country since the end of Apartheid in 1994, is in crisis. Under Jacob Zuma corruption in South Africa has reached previously inconceivable prevalence. The symbol of this corruption is the president himself: there are more than 700 pending lawsuits against Zuma -for corruption, fraud and money laundering.
Zuma’s upgrades to his property in his hometown of Nkandla – paid for with 17 million Euros worth of taxpayers’ money – are currently the subject of heated debates in parliament. But Zuma’s power is crumbling.
A few days ago, the trade union confederation Numsa terminated their allegiance with the ANC. The trade unionists want to start their own party as the former liberation movement no longer cares for the rights of workers. Other unions have expressed similar intentions.
This should be good for South Africa’s democracy. For Zille it signals the beginning of the gradual end of the ANC government.
Issues of race and exclusion have surrounded Zille her whole life. Her mother, who was considered half Jewish by the Nazis, fled Germany to England during the Nazi regime and, a short while later, came to South Africa. Her father, a nephew of the Berlin painter, Heinrich Zille, had also emigrated to South Africa.
“My parents hardly spoke about the Nazi era,” says Zille. “They did not dwell on the past.” Zille does not want to look back either. “I am always moving forwards. I cannot help it.”
She has been Premier of the Western Cape since 2009, having previously served as the mayor of Cape Town. Since the DA has run the province between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the infrastructure has been expanded massively. More and more international and South African conglomerates have established themselves in Cape Town instead of in Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic metropolis.
Foreign investments currently amount to R30,1 million (€2,2 million) for a total of 80 projects. This is R8 million more than when the ANC ran the Western Cape.
The success of efficient provincial government attracts many to an otherwise ailing country. In the last ten years the population of the Western Cape has increased by thirty per cent. “And why do they all come to the Western Cape? Because the economy works here, because we have clinics and functioning schools, and because there are jobs and the prospect of a better life.”
Whether she flourishes will become clear in the municipal elections in 2016.
( Thanks Balt)
