Blame the third force
2008-05-14 08:19
Brandon Faber, News24 User
"A third force could be behind the recent escalation in violence against foreigners living in South Africa," reports The Sowetan. This conclusion comes courtesy of Home Affairs Minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
"It is strange that people who have lived together for many years are suddenly at each other's throats," says the good minister.
"There could be people who are stoking fires." Another report predictably blamed Apartheid for "desensitising blacks" and boldly states that the violence is a reflection of the poor self-image held by many black South Africans because of the "years of political strife."
Of course.
I'd like to remind the minister that years ago we did not have seven million Zimbabweans taking up space in our country - mostly in Gauteng. I'd also like to congratulate the minister for admitting that illegal immigrants have been living in the country for years without government doing a thing about it... We've known it all along but it's nice to hear an official admittance of incompetence.
Anyway, you don't feel like reading the same old arguments about logic, accountability and responsibility - and I don't feel like writing about it.
For the record, however, I agree with the latest assumptions of "third force" interference. I'd also like to recommend we dig up Verwoerd's bones and torch them in public as a symbolic gesture of disgust at the outbursts of xenophobic extremism.
Really, I do.
I also think the people of the Flat Earth Society have a valid point. I've long not believed all this so-called photographic evidence presented by satellites, scientist and the like. No brothers and sisters, it's all a giant conspiracy to trick us into believing conventional wisdom and buying into the rolling propaganda machine fuelled by western powers.
According to Wikipedia, the modern Flat Earth Society describes the Earth as being a disk with a diameter of about 40 000km. The sun and moon are both discs about 52km in diameter (although some sources say that the sun and moon are spheres) and are about 4 800km above the Earth. The stars are 160km above the sun and moon.
So, then, just in case you did not know: The sun and the moon are roughly 4 X as far away from the earth as Jo'burg is from Cape Town.
The stars are only a little bit further away so we should be able to star-hop in our own little craft really-really soon and, should you decide to travel from one end of the earth to the other, you'd only have 40 000km to cover before you fly off the edge en route to that great big spaza shop at the edge of the universe.
I, for one, am happy to accept the rationale of the Flat Earth Society.
I am also happy to accept that a "third force" is behind the violence in Alex and that apartheid is to blame for global warming, the new Dros Restaurants TV commercial and that new pothole on the corner of Beyond-help and Habitually-ignorant drives - somewhere close to the Union Buildings.
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