Give us this day our dose of moral regeneration

The allegations against president Kgalema Motlanthe, reported in today's independent online, are serious and deplorable.

I'm concerned when a president, someone the people look up to, has an affair and impregnates a 24 year old woman. A few years back ANC president Jacob Zuma slept with an HIV positive woman and later made regrettable remarks about a shower and women asking for it.

Motlanthe has the right to privacy but that needs to be balanced with the fact that he is a public figure. As head of state we expect him to behave in a manner that is beyond reproach and to abide by the Moral Regeneration Movement's charter of values.

People like Kgalema, Zuma, Winnie Mandela and Angie Motshekga are leaders and our children are supposed to look up to them as role models. But I think I'll be damned if I let my child look up to them as role models.

The Firm by John Grisham

Mitchell Y Mcdeere, known as Mitch, has just graduated from Harvard Law school with flying colors when he joins a law firm in Memphis, Tennessee. The firm makes him an offer he can't refuse and he becomes an associate. Little does he know that Bendini, Lambert & Locke, his new employer, is owned by the mafia.

 

The FBI makes contact with him after two associates die under mysteriously circumstances in an accident. From there he learns about the shady business of the firm and how the FBI has been investigating the firm for years.

 

Even though he was apprehensive at the beginning he decides to make a deal with the FBI. He uses his wit and skill as a lawyer to get a favourable deal and help the authorities in their fight against organised crime.

 

This is an interesting book that is not easy to put down until you finish it.

 

Friends of JZ and Friends of Democracy

Following the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment in the NPA v Zuma appeal case on Monday I decided to check the Friends of Jacob Zuma  website for messages of support for the ANC president Jacob Zuma. The Friends of JZ trust was established in 2005 after Zuma was fired by the then state president Thabo Mbeki after judge Hillary Squires found Zuma's former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, guilty of corruption.    

 

Most members pledged their support to Zuma while some attacked the acting Deputy Judge President Harms who read judgment.  True revolutionary, (13/01/2009 07:50 PM) wrote that:

 

The day our shameful judiciary sentences Zuma to prison will be a start of my exile days where as former guerillas we will again rekindle old memories because we will fight the Boers led persecution of our leader...  fortunately we are ready for such a possibility. When they touch Zuma (our commander) they will have overstepped the mark. They must know that we are prepared to die and take up arms in order to defend him plus this country. But thankfully that will never happen... because Zuma is only going in one direction and that is at the Union Buildings, come rain or sunshine. Zuma served time for nothing and we'll be damned before we can allow that to ever happen again. It does not matter whether it is our own who are part of the conspirators, we will clean them all

 

The website contains a long list of documents, inter alia heads of argument, affidavits, judgments, Special Browse "Mole" Consolidated Report, SACP and Cosatu documents which touch on Zuma's persecution by the forces bent on undermining his ambitions to become the state president. It also features a biography of Zuma and a photo gallery with samples of his autographed photos.  

 

Another website of interest is The Friends of Democracy which was set up following the recall of former president Thabo Mbeki as the country's president after Judge Chris Nicholson suggested that Mbeki had interfered in the prosecution of Zuma.

 

The home page has a picture of an apparently distressed Zuma rubbing his right eye and a debate on the decision of the SCA in the NPA/ Zuma case. There is also Thabo Mbeki’s resignation letter from the country’s presidency after he was recalled.

 

Various issues are posted for comments and the debates get heated as critics and members of COPE slug it out in the battle of ideas. Insults fly back and forth in the process. A comment by QedaqmangaKZN (Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 04:48 PM) reads:

 

 The Bum Flashers have every right to follow their leaders whom President Mandela is ashamed of, Julius Joburg Butcher HH Matric Pas's Malema, Angie Do'g Matric Pas's Is Not Important and Reverend Showerhead Kangamam. But please leave us alone to be part of the clever and smart people in the COPE. You see, President Mbeki appealed the Nicholson judgement because he is smart and clever and he knew that he was innocent. He won. Your leader, the Reverend Showerhead Kangaman did not appeal Judge Hillary Squires judgement because he is a dud head and he knows he is guilty;and was too busy with shower and baby oil! That is why we no longer look forward to ANC Today ever Friday!

I couldn’t stop laughing as I read the comments on both websites.

 

New Year, new beginnings

It is the New Year. And this is the time to start afresh. Therefore I’m making changes to my blog and I hope it will be more interesting and lively. I’m going to add more images, photos, poems and stories and essays. If I don’t publish my stories here no one will publish them elsewhere. This is my blog, my writing space. So I’ll go for it.

 

The name of the blog will change from express thought: life from the south of Africa to Tsuai’s World: writing is an expression of the self and a medicine of the soul.

 

My cousin Nombulelo set up her own blog just before the end of last year. I checked her blog and she put powerful poems and images on it. I think this will be an interesting blogging year.