{"id":332,"date":"2012-08-16T11:48:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T11:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tlu.co.za\/dev\/2012\/08\/16\/tau-sa-s-monthly-international-bulletin-for-august-2012\/"},"modified":"2012-08-16T11:48:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T11:48:52","slug":"tau-sa-s-monthly-international-bulletin-for-august-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tlu.co.za\/en\/tau-sa-s-monthly-international-bulletin-for-august-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"TAU SA’s monthly International Bulletin for August 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEWARE THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAdjusting\u201d to the ANC and the consequences thereof.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Stockholm Syndrome: This syndrome refers to a group of psychological symptoms that occur in some persons or groups in a captive or hostage situation. It is sometimes referred to as a Survival Identification Syndrome.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

In early June of this year, a meeting was held between Afrikaner groups and the ANC. A former National Party minister Mr. Roelf Meyer facilitated the meeting which was attended, inter alia,<\/i> by some commercial farmers and was designed to discuss the government\u2019s land reform policy. In press pictures, Mr. Meyer was seen laughing and joking with ANC bigwigs including Mr. Gwede Mantashe, secretary general of the ANC, but it was the ANC which was laughing all the way to the bank. TAU SA\u2019s public statement at the time explained why it would not attend \u2013 numerous TAU SA requests to see the country\u2019s president, the Minister of Water Affairs and the Ministers of Transport and the Police were systematically ignored. All efforts to get appointments were fruitless.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

So what was to be discussed under the sponsorship of Mr. Meyer? If the government is not prepared to meet representatives of organized agriculture, it can only be assumed the Meyer meeting was a public relations exercise for the ANC, with the hapless attendees along for the ride.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

There is a growing trend in South Africa, particularly within the Afrikaans press and other organizations, that reconciliation (from one side only of course), a healthy guilt complex and \u201clive and let live\u201d with the government is the way forward. Attitudes within the English language press seem to have hardened, although there are still sycophants who urge us not to be pessimistic: that \u201cfalse alarmism\u201d is wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But the University of Pretoria\u2019s politics lecturer Mzukisi Qobo says we must \u201cface the truth\u201d. (Business Day<\/i> 29.6.2012).   He says \u201cpeddlers of good news\u201d are trying to convince us that things are not so bad. \u201cAnyone who dares point to the reality of a creaking public service or worsening leadership is likely to be reminded that there are many good stories happening elsewhere in the country\u201d. They point to Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Iraq as being worse than South Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing as dangerous as unguarded optimism\u201d says Qobo. \u201cIt is a convenient refuge for those who find reality too discomfiting and want to be left alone to wallow in their apathy. They think that to be discontented is a bad thing when in fact it is the absence of meaning and too much comfort in the face of crisis that gives succor to bad leadership. What our optimists don\u2019t realize is that they are fostering idle indifference. Action is a progeny of discontent. It is when we are deeply dissatisfied with a political framework which lowers the benchmark for success and excellence that we are most likely to take action and insist on meaningful change.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Qobo\u2019s words should cause those who are succumbing to a group version of the Stockholm Syndrome to take stock of themselves. Now that we are enslaved by the ANC, let\u2019s make the best of it. Let\u2019s sit down and chat and try and get them to be \u201creasonable\u201d. After all, it\u2019s all we\u2019ve got left. They run the country, they have the power and if we\u2019re nice to them, maybe they\u2019ll leave us alone! For the sake of peace and quiet, we can overlook the ANC\u2019s bad governance, its corruption, its venal theft and plunder of the country\u2019s assets, its corrosive indifference to the needs of the people, its dismissive contempt of criticism and its wholesale destruction of a country that took 350 years of hard work to build. Let\u2019s all be friends, even if the ANC treats us with disdain. They are our captors, but so what? We can\u2019t do anything about it so let\u2019s just get on with it and stop complaining!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Qobo quotes US admiral Jim Stockdale who survived torture in captivity during the Vietnam war.   He didn\u2019t try and escape from reality by invoking a false sense of optimism. This \u201ccripples human agency by leaving everything to fate\u201d. Stockdale\u2019s counsel is that \u201cyou must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end\u2026 with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality\u201d. How many times have we heard that \u201cit has to get worse before it will get better!\u201d Who says it will get better?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

AT THE SAME TIME<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

At the Meyer group\u2019s convivial get-together, the ANC\u2019s Gwede Mantashe assured the meeting that land reform without compensation wasn\u2019t the policy of the ANC. Soon after, at the ANC Midrand policy conference, delegates passed a motion where the \u201cwilling seller, willing buyer\u201d principle regarding agricultural property ownership, was rejected. In mid April, TAU SA\u2019s legal representatives told the Equality Court in Johannesburg that it is more dangerous being a farmer in South Africa than being a member of the police. This evidence was proffered in the case against the ANC and its Youth League\u2019s Julius Malema on the hate speech issue. The song \u201cShoot the Farmer\u201d has been widely sung at ANC rallies, with no comment from the ANC\u2019s hierarchy and no strong objections from others in civil society who should have been shouting from the rooftops about this exhortation to kill! <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

During the ANC\u2019s centenary celebrations in KwaZulu\/Natal in April and May of this year, President Jacob Zuma sang (in Zulu) – \u201cWe will kill them with a canon (gun); They will flee, shoot them; You are a Boer, we will kill you; You will be killed, you will flee\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

(During this period, blacks occupied a farm in Komatipoort and ordered the farmer to leave. The levels of aggression displayed by the crowd were similar to the same type of behaviour exhibited by land invaders in Zimbabwe.)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It was AFTER the President\u2019s outburst that Mr. Meyer organized the meeting with the ANC. Did Mr. Meyer complain to the ANC about these obvious crimes, urging people to kill the farmers? Or is this to be cast aside in order to\u201d get along\u201d with the ANC and the President?<\/span><\/p>\n

The government\u2019s Green Paper on land reform and its Draft Land Tenure Security Bill have caused shockwaves not only within the farming community but throughout the country. Why bother talking to the ANC when they are at the same time<\/i> undermining commercial agriculture? (Has Mr. Meyer read through these destructive Bills?)   At virtually the same time as Mr. Meyer\u2019s affable June 6 meeting with the ANC, TAU SA declared in a press release that ANC Youth League threats to occupy farms and put farmers\u2019 safety in jeopardy was being taken very seriously. \u201cIs it meaningful to stay involved with government forums?\u201d asked TAU SA. \u201cWe are being deceived and cajoled in official circles while being threatened and intimidated outside these circles.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

STATE PRESIDENT<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The State President continues with his obfuscation about land ownership (the old 13% black\/87% white ownership fiction), and it\u2019s time those who care should take action to counter this propaganda. South Africans who do not want to see their country descend into yet another African abyss should do all in their power to disseminate throughout the world the appalling failures of ANC rule. There are not enough \u201csuccesses\u201d to counteract the decline.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Are citizens really content to \u201cgo along\u201d with the third world \u201cvalues\u201d of the ruling party? Where our hospitals are death traps, where doctors are raped and where a cake and a bottle of Coke will get the nurse out of her chair to attend to you? Where our municipalities don\u2019t function, yet salary increases and bonuses are lavishly awarded? Where the civil service\u2019s inertia, incompetence and corruption degrades us; where you can buy a passport on the street, forge your matriculation certificate and indeed your Ph.D. documentation; where the government cannot keep the country clean, where it pollutes the water and trashes school books? The ANC has turned South Africa into the world\u2019s laughing stock, so why the obsequiousness towards them? <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

If there is no public discontent and rebellion against certain media and groups who continue to urge us to reconcile with criminals, incompetents and thieves, then we deserve everything we get.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

When farm murders figures cease to shock us so that we consider it \u201cnormal\u201d that those who supply South Africa\u2019s food are wiped out; when we say Thank Heaven we were not killed when thugs rob and assault us, then it\u2019s time to take stock. There was a time when the police WERE dependable, when the hospitals WERE the best in the world, when our fences WEREN\u2019T bedecked with barbed wire, when our transport ran on time, our cities were clean, our civil service functioned efficiently, and our borders repelled transients, criminals and illegal entrants to what used to be a sovereign country.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to remind the ANC that if they don\u2019t ship up, then they must ship out! It\u2019s our constitutional right to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

(Our next bulletin will deal with Dr. Gregory Stanton\u2019s publications and speeches on genocide, and how this categorization applies to the murder of South Africa\u2019s farmers within a world context.) <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEWARE THE STOCKHOLM SYNDROME   \u201cAdjusting\u201d to the ANC and the consequences thereof.   Stockholm Syndrome: This syndrome refers to a group of psychological symptoms that occur in some persons or groups in a captive or hostage situation. It is sometimes referred to as a Survival Identification Syndrome.   In early June of this year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-english"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t