| Three strikes and we're out |
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| David Shapiro: "The headlines make me sick," exclaimed a harrowed Andrea sitting alongside me at a hairdresser on Saturday morning, "This country has to regress and rediscover its spirituality." |
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| Andrea, a successful self-made businesswoman who grew up on the Cape Flats, was echoing the anxiety being felt by a vast segment of South Africa's adult population. |
| What an alarming contradiction to the mood in the salon six weeks ago when the regulars celebrated South Africa's coming-out ball; a showpiece to the world that demonstrated our enviable organisational capabilities and the quality of our industrial and technological know-how. But like a bashful debutante led astray by a villainous suitor, we seemed to have squandered the occasion. |
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| Andrea's cries were not the anguish of a mother whose daughter thoughtlessly overindulged, but of one whose child committed needless indiscretions that could possibly ruin her reputation forever. |
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| The proposed Protection of Information Act must send shivers down the spines of the baby boomers and those older, a chilling reminder of the '60s when the odious Nationalist government began introducing a succession of laws designed to remove the freedom of the press and clamp down on the actions of individuals and groups who might threaten their power. |
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| It's difficult to understand the motives behind the present government's initiatives apart from the obvious intention of concealing - from the outside world - their failure to come close to delivering on their promises, the cancerous corruption at all levels of authority and their overriding administrative incompetence. |
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| It's even harder to comprehend that those brave and courageous individuals who sat in the dock in 1964 facing treason charges and the possibility of the death sentence would ever put their signatures to the proposed legislation. |
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| If the proposed media bill is strike one, the anger over the allocation of new order mining rights is strike two. |
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| The minister of mines was bold enough to admit that the current act was clearly faulty and that a six-month freeze would be placed on the awarding of any fresh mining rights until the apparent inconsistencies in the law were resolved. |
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| But that doesn't clarify how Imperial Crown Trading - a company that has barely been formed, is lacking in mining experience or expertise, but possesses strong political ties - could be awarded prospecting rights on an established mine. |
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| If that wasn't enough to infuriate the local and foreign investment community, then ICT's involvement in the recent ArcelorMittal R9-billion empowerment deal, a transaction that could net the newly formed mining group a profit of R800-million in less than a few months, has them spitting blood. |
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| What has struck this nation out, though, is the conduct of the staff at state hospitals who have deserted their posts to join the protests over higher wages for civil servants, leaving patients to die without food, medication or care. |
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| No one denies that, like teachers, medical personnel are grossly unrewarded, especially when comparing their meagre income with the bounty that the president's family and close compatriots will earn from the empowerment with ArcelorMittal. |
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| But that doesn't justify the doctors and nurses who took an oath to uphold professional ethical standards from abandoning their obligations to fellow human beings. |
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| The response of the various affected communities has been heart-warming. Stories of ambulances moving weeping babies in the dead of night to avoid the attention of pitiless strikers, of mothers giving birth in private practitioners' waiting rooms and of northern suburbs' housewives changing soiled linen in the wards abound. |
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| Still, it hardly validates the actions of our public servants or aligns their values with the country's Constitution. |
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| Andrea is right. Before the unrest escalates and civil liberties are withdrawn, we need to revisit our past and reaffirm our vows. If not, the skilled professionals will depart for greener pastures, as they did in the '70s and '80s, and foreign investors will retreat. |
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| Sure, countries do not fall over easily, and, admittedly, even in the darkest days of apartheid business flourished. But the gap between the haves and have-nots will widen more dramatically, creating the conditions for ongoing strife. We avoided mayhem last time; we may not be so lucky this time. |