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Being a day away from the start of the biggest sporting event in the world, and after a negative piece on the World Cup earlier, I thought it was time to balance out the scales a bit. Although a few people will still have their negative sentiments about the world cup (while their closeted positive person is waiting to escape), no one can deny the positive feelings and hype in the air. Everyone across all racial, gender and economic classes is getting into the thick of things with the support of our team after a recent spate of successful matches which has certainly boosted confidence levels all round. Hopefully Bafana Bafana can pleasantly surprise all of us with spectacular performances against tougher opposition in the coming games. I, myself not being much of football fan, will catch most of the action on TV, and hopefully one or two at the stadiums.
For all the tourists that have already come, and those yet to arrive, I hope that they experience the warmth and beauty of our country, and are positively infleunced to return again in the future. And finally for the Wolf parting shot - Go Bafana, tear the opposition to shreds...
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 We are already less than 100 days away from the World Cup, and all the hard-work and hype will come to fruition soon. As usual we can always count on Zapiro to give us a good dose of reality in the face of political absurdity.
Our young democracy is already a sweet sixteen year old, though promises, promises and yet more promises to the electorate remained unfulfilled. However, when it came to a real money spinner, billions of Rands were dished up like the watery gruel found aplenty at soup kitchens for the homeless. So what is the real commitment of our government? Makes you wonder doesn't it? It seems to be no real secret that a vast majority, if not all, of the contracts put on tender for the building of new stadia or the renovations of existing ones, went to "well connected" consortia and corporations. Most organisations required no past experience in the contracts tendered for, oh no - the reason being that the work was subsequently sub-contracted (at a hefty profit, no doubt). The story didn't end there though, with contracts being sub-contracted over three, four or even five levels. The real loser in this whole scenario? The tax-payers who had to fork out the billions of Rands for this farce. If anyone is a fan of Donald Trump's The Apprentice you would no doubt have watched a few episodes where people were fired for going marginally over budget. Soccer City (Johannesburg), went R1 billion over budget to cost R3.2 billion. That's almost 50% more than budgeted for, yet discussions on the topic are trivialised as if mere cents were involved. The reason given for the excessive final cost was rising material costs. But how much can be attributed to the hefty middlemen profits that were obviously worked into the costs? With the obvious corrupt mindset of the current crop of esteemed people in charge, South Africa's future prospects do not bode well. The white-collar elite are content in playing demi-Gods with taxpayers money, while the impoverished majority remain so. Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities somehow gives one a feeling of déjà vu. Sixteen year old South Africa is pregnant from a Zuma presidency. Let us all pray that the aftermath is not Julius Malema, or God save us all. Politicians and lawyers, both these professions are synonymous with liars; where half-truths, lies and spin doctoring are used to make people look good. The recent events leading to the toppling of Mbheki from power were based on perceptions created by the Judge Nicholson ruling, and not by confirmed facts. Therein lies our conundrum - ordinary stones are polished into "priceless" gems. Is there any place left for the truth, and what does it say for the future of our beautiful country?
In his resignation address to the nation, Mr Mbheki in no uncertain terms denied ever interfering in any judiciary process and in particular the Zuma case. The Zuma camp, on the other hand conveniently took the Judge's words as confirmation of their own earlier "suspicions". This over and above the fact that Zuma's financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, was found to have had a "generally corrupt relationship" with Zuma. The guilt or innocence of one party in such a situation, by implication confirms the guilt or innocence of the other party. But where do we find ourselves here: one man behind bars, and the other on the verge of a tainted presidency. Public opinion, on the ANC NEC's decision to recall Mbheki is still divided, based on whether you are pro-Zuma or pro-Mbheki. I am pro-"none-of-the-above", and merely see Mbheki as the lesser of two evils. The recall of Mbheki, after the National Prosecuting Authority decided to appeal the Judge Nicholson ruling, might be see in some quarters as the ANC flexing some political muscle in an attempt to squash further attempts to prosecute Zuma. The message from the ANC to the judiciary might be perceived as saying: "We have the power to remove a President; who are you to challenge us?" Where does this leave the NPA, and Mbheki for that matter, regardless of whether he may or may not have been pulling strings in the NPA? If the NPA doesn't proceed then Mbheki's alleged involvement may be confirmed, but if the NPA does proceed, Mbheki's alleged involvement is not necessarily disproved - a lose-lose situation for the NPA, Mbheki, the people of this country and our country. Going further into the cases against Zuma regarding his relationship with Shaik and the arms deal; we are by no means any closer to the truth. Zuma's applications to have certain evidence disregarded, doesn't give one much confidence in his innocence in these matters. The poll on Interface on SABC3 on Sunday about whether the arms deal chapter should now be closed was unanimous - 90% voted no. His fanatical support base definitely believes otherwise. The actions of his supporters during the rape case and during the many other corruption cases including the September one are cases to note - mock funerals for Mbheki were performed, and Zuma, his fellow comrade, did not condemn theses actions. The interview of Mantashe on Interface did bring some interesting points to the fore such as policy issues are decided by the party and not the man/woman in any particular position. Interesting then that the Party remained silent when Mbheki was taking flack from certain quarters for "his" policies that were seen as too business friendly. Coming back to the actions of Zuma's supporters, we have the inflammatory statements by the ANCYL leader, Julius Malema: "We will kill for Zuma". His abrasive approach is in direct contract to the reasons given for removing Mbheki - the need for more stability in the ANC and government. On a side note Mbheki's main bodyguard, Captain Frans Ramashilo, was assassinated just days before the NEC meeting to decide Mbheki's fate. The demise of Ramashilo was uncharacteristically low key in both the televised and print media. What was it again that Malema said? Seven months ago I saw an ad in the newspaper for the economically priced, feature rich IBM Lenovo 3000 N200. Excited by the idea of owning a laptop, I made my most expensive impulse purchase to date. The laptop came pre-installed with Vista Home Basic which was painful to use considering the meagre 512MB of RAM included. After popping in an addition 1GB, Vista was definitely much more responsive.
After sorting out the Windows portion of of things, I turned my attention to Linux. I had previously had Ubuntu dual booted with XP on my pc, which I had by now already sold to recoup some of the cash for the laptop. Ubuntu had worked like a charm on my pc without any hitches and I expected the same on my laptop. I gave Gutsy Gibbon a go only to discover that not a squeak was to be heard. Many hours of research into the sound issue led me to this thread on the Ubuntu forums. The suggested solution (which had worked for other people with the same laptop) was to edit the alsa-base file: sudo edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and add the following line to the end of the file: options snd-hda-intel model=lenovo Upon reboot I was met with a sharp white noise from the speakers. Booting from the Ubuntu cd, I removed the added line in the alsa-base file to return my laptop to silence. I eagerly awaited the next release of Ubuntu in May, to see if the problem would be fixed with an out-of-the-box install. Sadly this was not to be, and I decided to try out other distros. Ubuntu Ultimate, Opensuse and Fedora all left me without any positive results. Then a good Samaritan was kind enough to give me a copy of Mandriva 2008.1 (Free). That too, on initial install was speechless, but with a minor tweak regained the power of sound. Adding this line: options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=lenovo to the end of the /etc/modprobe.conf file did the trick upon restart. After using Mandriva for a couple of days, I think I stumbled upon the solution to the white noise problem in Ubuntu (haven't tested my theory out yet). I normally use headphones to listen to music on my laptop while working. I also have the microphone cable plugged in even though I rarely use the microphone. When removing the headphone and microphone cable (in any order) a white noise would start on Mandriva similar to the Ubuntu noise at start up, after removing the second cable. Tweaking the mixer settings led to the cause - the front microphone boost on the output tab. This could possibly be the problem in Ubuntu, because when faced with a no-sound issue you are advised to enable everything in the mixer and set at maximum volume. A little off topic - the wireless LAN on Madriva 2008.1 does not work on initial install. Download the microcode image for your hardware from here, untar (extract), and copy the ucode file into the /lib/firmware folder. Wireless LAN should be functional on reboot.  You are probably wondering what can I say about the effervescent Isidingo star Ashley Callie that has not already been said. I have been asking myself the same question. Ashley was the face behind the on screen character of Leoni Haines (Lee for short) and made the role her own to such an extent that the producers of the show had no other alternative but to write her character out of the script.
Watching the many interviews of the other stars of the show at the time of her untimely passing, it was revealed that Ashley had been a major influence on the people she had worked with and a cornerstone to the success of the show. Three months on and Ashley's character is still mentioned on the show with the renaming of the Winter Ball to The Lee Haines Charity Ball. This will no doubt be the shows way of remembering Ashley. We very often take people for granted and don't realise their true value in our lives until it is too late. For a lot of people this was case here too. What's done is done and we can only salute a truly fine person and great South African actress who will be sorely missed by one and all of her friends, family and fans of the show. Photo gallery. |
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