"earing" with an "eish!"

We're live flogging from the CTICC on the august occasion of the Judicial Services Commission hearing. A'ight?

09:06 Ten minutes to kickoff. Your humble scribe is seated behind Judge Mogoeng's proud family, who sit right behind the judge. The room is empty. Some eager students to my left. NGO-looking types to my right. Cavernous hall. Fake proteas, you get the mood.

09h25 The commissioners trickle in. I was wrong about kickoff time. I've just had the honor of shooing Mudene Smuts, former FairLady editor and occasional Justice Shadow Minister from the family seats. The ersatz proteas are eclipsed by a phalanx of queer activists with technicolor banner.

Suddenly a surge of chanting lefties (and Mark Heywood) fills the room.
Spirited toyi-toying rocks the house.

09h57 Dikgang Moseneke, The Ousted One, enters. The chamber chokes with gravitas.

10h05 Kickoff. The Ousted One (To1) introduces advocate Smith, but the Deputy Minister sticks a spoke in the wheel. Her attempt at filibuster is parried by To1 and buttressed by Ngoako the crook, and derailed and now my head hurts. But the Minister Jeff is putting his foot down... Here follows lengthy fireworks, in which a majority evolves against an incidental motion on the agenda. There's alarming disquiet at the idea of public deliberations.

10h30 The nays have it. The DA lost (momentarily) a bid to reopen the nominations. Enter Mogae.

10h38 "I have been projected as 'this man who hates women', 'this man who hates gays.'" -Mogae Mogae (MM)

10h40 MM reads his CV. Parries published attacks. He sets a trap for himself by suggesting that the criticism of him is based on only three cases.

10h55 More fire. To1 reminds MM that he's only on page 9 of a 47 page reply. Bra Jeff rises to defend MM. Dikgang backs down.

11h15 MM continues to refute the claim the he is the mess-ogenistic spawn of Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin. His logical grammar is consistent: "I'm not the worst there is." In this room's halogen glow, proof and refutation elide.

11h28 The fiddles flare. "I come from a poor background. My mother was unemployed..." And the man chokes up. This earnest display of emotion is followed by recollection of his struggle credentials ("labelled by government as communist", "my political position was known by my boss... so that not once wad I given a political trial to prosecute (by the apartheid government and the stoogely Bop kangaroo satrap.)

11h37 My blasted Android battery screws us all. Good night.

12h18: Question time. "we thank you for your dignified silence during what has been an onslaught." Judge Bernard Ngoepe.

12h42: My crap battery won't allow blow-by-blow through the questions. But the shape of the afternoon is clear: most commissioners will ask leading questions (like the bland one about access to justice he's fielding now), while the substance-based minority will be filibustered away.

OnePeeEm: Presidential proxy Bra Jeff layers on the sycophancy.

13h10 MM bucks under the first (moderately) challenging question: "i haven't done as much work as I would have liked" in considering the mechanics and wisdom of converging the apex courts.

14h10 Yummm. Boeber for lunch. You missed the part where Moseneke reminded Our Man that the job calls for intellectual leadership. Fortunately, the bumbling Deputy Minister with the fetching eye flutter saved him.
"The problem with the world is that the ignorant are cocksure, and the wise full of doubt." -Bertrand Russell
"I have no doubt, in my own intellectual depth." -MogoengX2

14h29 (It's not Moegoeng, but the paucity of the JSC that's the embarrassment.)

14h30 Divine Telepathy... MM raises the bigger point: briefing patterns are racially skewed. Even by the government. Well, this links with the tendency to protect weakness, rather than allowing (Black) excellence.
The reason why apartheid era briefing profiles have been preserved by the present government (MM's point and language) is that the government doesn't believe that technical acumen is the province of Black people. This is reflected in the timid questioning of the government appointees to the commission.

Indeed, technical questioning was largely outsourced to two geeky White folk, with most of the rest (and all of the government appointees) focussing on a medley of leading questions ("do you agree that improvement of the maintenance courts enhances women's access to justice?") and praise prose.

SometimeAfterlunch: The nerdful professor asked MM to speak the unspoken reasons why it's insulting to imply that someone's gay. Our man ducks like a goose.

To1: Why not just deal with it head-on...
MM: But how does one do that?
To1: If you listen you'll find out.
MM: There's no need for sarcasm, Deputy Chief Justice.
To1: (dignified silence and a panga-stare.)

This led to the afternoon's Van Der Merwe joke:
Oom Koos: Do you have a short temper?
MM. We all make mistakes.
OK: In fifteen years on this I've never seen such arrogance.

With which the Oom triggered an orgy of sexless apology.

With my battery to rude health restored let's add:

1. I can't cover the Sunday morning session as I'm leaving town.

2. I expect a 15/7 vote in favor of confirmation. But then math is not a Truecents virtue.

3. Twas a chilling contrast between Bernard Ngoepe's spirited defense of MM and his silent disinterest in the human rights concerns and evident lack of the candidate's intellectual rigour.
Given the shape of the Gauteng Judge President's priorities I'm relieved that my life of crime plays out eMzansi.

4. Something similar is true about the Minister and his Deputy. Favouring Mogoeng is perfectly compatible with defending human rights, but you do need to kick the tyres, which those two had zero interest in doing.

5. MM's opening statement ran into 47 pages in which he dealt with the criticism levelled against him.

6. Something needs to happen to transform the JSC from a rubber stamp into a tyre-kicker.

7. By his own admission, MM is not the intellectual type. "I've never really had a passion for publication," explaining why he's published not a thing. His answer about why he declined to explain his dissent in the gay-bating case was helpful:

A) "There was a minority judgement and I didn't see the sense I'm adding two or three sentences."
B) "It would have taken two/three days to pen an opinion."
C) "In hindsight I should have added an opinion, however superficial."

From which we conclude that our incoming Chief Justice dissents (and decides?) superficially, on the basis of reasons unavailable to him at the time, and writes at the breakneck rate of one sentence per day.

Divers Fan-quotes:

"I would like to refute any suggestion... that I am homophobic.

"That cautionary rule... has not been abolished."

"I fully embrace the Christian faith... My church... does not have at its core values... that homosexuality is... deviant. The church is not founded on homophobia."

"Protecting the rights of homosexuals is my duty... as set out in Romans 13."

"That I have not delivered a ground-breaking judgement is neither here nor there."

"At the time there was no certainty about whether a judge's spouse or child could appear before him."

"Perhaps, on reflection, I should have submitted an argument, however superficial."

"Honourable Chair, I feel there is no place for impatience here. I deserve a chance to state my case."

Zapiro Alert: "My concerns (about Freedom of Expression) are vindicated by some of the cartoons that have been published."

Sent from my HTC

Eid (non-Hosni) Mubarak!

Ramadan 1432 - the month we felt the world shift axis. Let's relive the history:

Give us this day our DailyBeast

Recipe: Tomasky post-hoc potpouri
Ingredients: time, a large weasel.
Method:
1. Wait for a foreign-policy crisis to arise.
2. See what Obama says.
3. Wait.
4. Keep waiting.
5. See how things turn out.
6. If it turned out well (e.g. Libya), credit Obama's speeches.
7. If it turned out craply (e.g. Bahrain) write something about Tea Party terrorists.
8. Stew a little.

What makes this recipe a fail-safe success is that Obama's foreign policy is a textbook case of Implausible Deniability (ID(TM)). ID(TM) works according to a simple formula:
1. Wait for a crisis to arise.
2. Wait for it to disappear as quickly as it arose.
3. Keep waiting.
4. If the clock runs out, then say/do something ambiguous.
5. Get senior staff to make unambiguous, mutually inconsistent remarks.
6. Wait and see.
7. If the outcome was favourable, interpret your speech/action in 4. to paint you as a causal factor.
8 If the outcome was unfavourable, interpret your speech/action in 4. to paint you as sufficiently removed so as not to be blameworthy.
9. Pick one of the statements in 5. to support the interpretation in 7/8. Since they were mutually inconsistent by design.

President Kgalema Petrus Motlante

Since a lot of rubbish has been written about this week's municipal election, please allow me to break my silence on the matter (by the way, apologies for not telling the result in advance - I was uncharacteristically clueless.)

The election results can be viewed at the splendidly put-together website of the Independent Electoral Commission. The summary of the all-in Vote:

ANC 63.65%
DA 21.97%
IFP 3.94%
NFP 2.58#
COPE 2.33%
Independents 0.89%

Bottom line: This was a good election for the National Freedom Party, and a crap election for everyone else:

1. The National Freedom Party (NFP).
A party born three months ago to a woman (Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibie) whose name is totally unknown to South Africans, managed to tear in half the baby born to Gatsha Buthelezi in 1975, finishing fourth overall. This at a time when a KZN homeboy is national president. They'll continue to grow in the Eastern province, and will eclipse Inkatha unless Buthelezi is dispensed with.

2. The African National Congress (ANC).
Gone are the heady days of two-thirds majority. They're back to slightly better than 1994 levels. But 64% is a landslide in anyone's vocabulary, and they held onto the Nelson Mandela metropole in spite of everything. Enough for contentment, but nothing to cheer about. Just because you're big doesn't mean you should stop growing. The euphoric celebrations are largely theatre, but partly testament to the fact that at least some factions in the party have given up on ever attracting White and Coloured voters.

3. The Democratic Alliance (DA).
Supposedly the big winners on Wednesday, they've finally managed - after seventeen long years - of surpassing the 20% gained in 1994 by FW de Klerk, the custodian of Bantu Education (and my poor spelling), askaris and the Transvaal faction of the National party. Congratulations, I suppose. What's happened is that the DA has acheived it's dream of locking up the opposition, without denting the bedrock of ANC support. Do the math. The ANC is at slightly better than 1994 levels. The ANC is at its worst level of rudderlessness in democratic history. Its hapless leader is clearly at sea. It faces the greatest, most open resistance to its rule ever. That the DA failed to capitalise on these laboratory conditions is a shocker. The party can crash through the ceiling, but it will do so at the price of it's current identity and cohesion. And not soon.

4. The Congress of the People (Cope).
Mosioua Lekota has finally accomplished his ambition of driving his party into the ground. There was no need for potshots from the opposition - the terror inflicted by the president did it all.

5. The Inkatha Freedom Party (NFP).
For whom this election was like having on-stage tickets to a performance of that well-loved conjuring trick called sawing-the-lady-in-half. Paradoxically, this strengthens Buthelezi's hold on the party, as there's less to fight for, and in the NFP his party rivals have an alternative home with better growth prospects.

6. Helen Zille (Botox Belle).
She'll maintain her hold on the party amid rising tensions. As the belief persists that the party is growing, it will attract greater numbers of the knife-wielding careerist who stab their way to the top of party structures. There'll be pressure to promote black branch leaders to senior positions of real influence within the party, and in the same way that the ANC struggled to control its candidate-list process, the DA's cohesion will give way to resentment from stalwarts, and White voters who feel increasingly alienated from the leadership crop.

7. Mangosutu Buthelezi kaShenge (Gatsha).
Just because you're a party head doesn't mean that you've political influence. Since South Africans have grown to love his droning magniloquence, there'll be plenty of airtime for him yet. RIP.

8. Patricia de Lille (The Mother).
She's reached the height of her political career. Well done. She'll be an inspiring mayoral figure, and a fitting leader for Cape Town. Unfortunately, she lacks a base in her new party, which expects her to be an order-taker. This will create tension, which she'll lose. Don't be surprised when she resigns, although I can't imagine where she'll go to.

9. Gedleyihlekisa Jacob Zuma wamSholozi kaNkandla (JZ).
There is something in the breakdown of the ANC's results to provide ammo to his rivals (see my ANC remarks above.) Also, the conduct of this election, with party leaders forgetting to register candidates, and branch level uprisings against the candidate selection process, and manipulation of the lists, and the open boycott by traditional supporters augur ill for his reelection hopes next year.

10. Fikile Mbalula (Bra Fiks).
He took time off from the Sports Ministry to play senior campaign manager for the ANC, and he came through. His career goes up from here.

11. The Dagga Party (DP).
The audacity of Dope!

South African Press Association in a war against arithmetic

And I quote:

"By 11.30am, the ANC had 11.9 million votes (63.31 percent) followed by the DA with 4.03 million (22.9 percent)...

There was a total voter turnout of 6 967 181 people." - Sapa

Let us pray

I’ve always had a problem with the word Islamist. We don’t speak of Christianists, or Judaists. People who believe in Islam are called Muslims. But it's rude to make sweepingly hostile remarks about Muslims, so we invented the word Islamist (which really just means Muslim) as a veil for anti-Muslim insults. After all, when’s the last time you heard the word Islamist deployed in a favourable context?

Here are sentences you'll never hear:

1. The President paid a visit to leaders of the local Islamist community.
2. Moderate Islamists called for restraint.
3. In a special address, His Holiness the Pope called for improved relations between Christians and Islamists.
4. Controversy followed proposals to open an Islamist preschool near Ground Zero.
5. In a day of fierce clashes, innocent Islamist civilians were set upon by Zionist settlers.

Wikipedia quotes a 2003 article in Middle East Quarterly:

In summation, the term Islamism enjoyed its first run, lasting from Voltaire to the First World War, as a synonym for Islam. Enlightened scholars and writers generally preferred it to Mohammedanism. Eventually both terms yielded to Islam, the Arabic name of the faith, and a word free of either pejorative or comparative associations. There was no need for any other term, until the rise of an ideological and political interpretation of Islam challenged scholars and commentators to come up with an alternative, to distinguish Islam as modern ideology from Islam as a faith

Sweet as it is, that rationale just begs the question as to why ideologues like George Bush and P.W Botha should not be called Christianists. Check Jy!?

Black Hawk Drowns

In the post-Christmas euphoria of that nice lady and the judge getting shot in Arizona, POTUS polled in the low 50's, and the pundits were over-the-moon (or rueful, depending) on his apparent unassailability. On the heels of His lame duck victories a regular (hence well-informed) reader of this blog was prompted to ask

Tax deal (yuck, but a success I guess), repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Zadroga bill for 9/11 workers, and the NewStart treaty all within a few weeks of POTUS being written off as useless ... will it go on?

As usual, the Truecents wet blanket was close at hand. In our SOTU note we remarked that

Last year saw the Republican's winning the battle of ideas, and consolidating their cooption of the Hope/Change strategy. The current political momentum is theirs to lose. I'm calling Barry at 47% on RCP (and a similar level on the rolling Gallup) by the end of March.

Today is March 31. The RCP average has Obama's approval rating at 47.2%. I say this as a prelude:

1. The downward drift confirms the oft-cited anomaly that people like Obama - except in his capacity as administrator. He did well at the New Year precisely because he wasn't doing anything, having handed over his legaslative agenda (DODT, Tax-Cut extentions) to Republicans. The bounce you saw then (as I may have pointed out at the time) was a reward for him faking not being himself. As soon as he'd get to act (which we'd predicted would have happened by the end of the first quarter) the kudos would be withdrawn.
2. I'm gonna stop calling the approval rating until closer to the election (i.e. not before 2012).
3. The Libyan misadventure has not been the fillip one would have expected. Remember, this poll was taken days AFTER Monday's over-hyped and belated casus belli.
4. The political momentum (remarkably!) stays with the GOP. In a weird sort of way (which I'll expound upon later, if I've not already done so) this is good for progressives. I mean real ones.