China - Africa's new colonial master

Dear African Leaders,

        Yippee, isn’t it Great! The  Chinese are coming, sorry they’re actually here.  They’re swarming all over Black Africa.

         They have come as saviours of this dictator riddled, corrupt, incompetent, poverty stricken continent and are busy showing the clueless, work-shy locals how to put in infrastructure and how to build office blocks, bridges and other impressive structures.

         So you mustn’t do anything to offend them. You must all follow the excellent example set by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. He and his Government ensured that the Dalai Lama was not given a visa to enter the country when he was invited to attend the 80^th birthday celebrations of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

         This Tibetan, Buddhist high priest has been living in exile for years and has been hounded by the People’s Republic of China ever since it took over his country.  It has done its best to ensure that he doesn’t get into countries it can easily kick around.

         And those are mostly in Africa.

         A White friend, who travels a lot in Central and West Africa, told me that whenever he has taken a flight in this part of the world recently he has been just about the only non Chinaman on the plane.

         Of course the pay off for the little yellow men is a lot more than just keeping Tibet’s spiritual leader out of Africa.

         Could it be minerals and other raw materials to keep the burgeoning Chinese economy on the up and up? And will it mean that the Chinese will one day make everything in the world while everybody else is starving because that cut price, oriental competition has closed all the factories where they earned a living?

         You Africans mustn’t deluded yourselves into thinking you can apply your normal job reservation policy to these new colonialists.

         In South Africa for instance the Black Government has replaced Grand Apartheid, the previous White Government’s Whites only policy, with Grand Black Economic Empowerment. This is designed to ensure that Blacks outnumber every other race in Government and business by 10 to one or more.

        But they dare not try that with the Chinese. My friend tells me that on Chinese construction sites in West Africa you won’t see a single Black. Everybody is Chinese, even down to the labourers pushing wheel barrows full of cement.

         So however much they improve the infrastructure in your countries there are billions of Chinamen who all have to be working before they will make the slightest dent in your millions of unemployed Blacks.

         That’s what happens, my fellow African’s, when you sell your soul. And I wonder how much you leaders are getting out of this sale and whether you were happy to take your fees in Renminbi or if you got it in Dollars.

         You’ve been complaining for years about what White Colonialism did to your countries and your self esteem. So who will you blame now that the Chinese are doing the same thing all over again?

         But as you leaders have proved time again you don’t care a damn about what happens to your subjects as long as you are alright living in your mansions and travelling the world in your private jets.

         As you might have gathered I live in South Africa and I wonder if you could ask our President if I could have permission to replace our Black cook, maid and gardener with Chinese because I’ve just invited President Hu Jintao to stay for a few days.

I’m worried that if I don’t do that he will be insulted and that’s a risky thing to do to your Master. And it could also be very bad for the development of our country.

        It goes without saying that he won’t have an entry problem like the Dalai Lama because he doesn’t need a visa to visit one of the new outposts of the Chinese Empire.

         Yours respectfully,

         Jon

P.S. I heard that women in China are flocking to plastic surgeons to have their slit eyes made more Western so presumably Africans will soon be forced to have it done the other way round.

Western Children need Chinese discipline urgently

Dear Parents everywhere,
          Our history of militarism, apartheid, forced removals and the deliberate erosions of family and community bonds is the worst foundation for a harsh, unempathic and emotionally abusive style of parenting.

          It’s this kind of attitude that is busy sinking the Western world and making more and more brats of our children.

          Judith Ancer, a Johannesburg based psychologist put forward this lame excuse for taking it easy on South Africa’s children. She was commenting in the Sunday Times on Amy Chua’s sensational book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

          Chau, who has two daughters and lives in New Haven, Connecticut, has caused a world wide controversy by comparing the wishy-washy Western way of bringing up kids to the much stricter Chinese method, which she advocates.

          Nowhere is this be-soft-on-the-children more prevalent than in South Africa.  It has caught this approach from first world, Western nations. Parents are not supposed to lift a hand to them and any teacher who tries is more likely to be hauled before the school authorities than the delinquent, little monster.

          Discipline has become a dirty word with the result that morality has gone out of the window and we have psychologists making excuses for all kinds of bad behaviour. If only I had been taken to one when I was at school?

          I never passed exams because I didn’t do any work but would that have been explained away because I had divorced parents; was caned too often and had a great, great grandfather who was shot for desertion at the battle of Waterloo?

         If I had been sent to a shrink then I am sure I would have been a better person now and I would not be putting a lot of nonsensical and annoying blogs into space.

                 The fact that the ‘militarism, apartheid’ etc that Ancer talked about ended in South Africa 17 years ago when a Black Government came to power hasn’t stopped her and a host of others from using this as an excuse for backing all kinds of things that don’t work.

          For the Government this explains why it has not built enough houses for the poor; the rocketing crime rate; its many other failings as well as  why a lot of its members steal from the state on a grand scale.

          If South Africa was to implement a dose of that Chinese discipline that gives the death penalty to corrupt officials there would be a lot of vacancies in Government ranks. As it is we’ll just go on justifying their behaviour because of all that baggage in our past.

          Continuing her assessment of Chau, Judith Ancer wrote, Her arguments are not based on any coherent, scientific theory of healthy child development.

          Judith tell me, How many people bring up their children ‘scientifically’ like rats in a laboratory? And what proof is there that this method, whatever it is, produces better children than the majority of us who develop outside a lab?

          Surely the real test of Chau’s, Chinese Tiger method is: Have her offspring turned out to be the kind of children that most people would want?

          The psychologist in me diagnosed her as a brittle narcissist with unresolved performance anxiety, Ancer continued. She clearly has a high IQ, but scores really poorly on any measure of emotional intelligence.

          Doesn’t that description, without the high IQ part, apply to just about anybody whose views we don’t agree with?  And Judith if you practise scientific theory in your profession you should not be giving snide opinions about somebody who has not been on the couch in front of you?

          Chau’s Chinese formula denies the child TV viewing; acting in school plays and other fun things and it tolerates nothing less that an A grade. The Western model she believes accepts mediocrity where parents praise their children for trying hard when they get low marks.

          The South African Government is doing it’s utmost to go along with this promotion of mediocrity by accepting a mere 30% as a pass in National Matriculation, examination subjects. Who knows it could be down to 20% or even lower next year because the Minister of Education would love to be able to proudly announce that everyone who had taken the examination had passed.

          Nobody seems concerned that we are producing a nation of dunces who are going to be expected to compete on the international stage with the industrial might of the Chinese and the rest of the Asian Tigers.

          I’m waiting until the pass rate gets down to 10% before trying again for my Matric certificate.         

          Great empires eventually collapse because once they have it all they get complacent and then everything goes to pot. And that’s exactly what’s happening in America and the rest of the Western world beginning with the way parents are being encouraged to bring up their darlings.

        When we are all ruled by the Chinese one of these days our children will start respecting their parents and their teachers once again and the world will be a much better place with strong discipline being enforced all round.

          So bring back the cat-o’-nine-tails, sorry I meant the cane, at schools for a start before we all go west.

          Yours sincerely,

          Jon, an Old School Disciplinarian, who was one of the few failures of that system and has the scars to prove it.

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone?' on Amazon.com  It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

Wake Up Call to Cricket Administrators

Dear International Cricket Council,

          What a lot of slow moving, fuddy-duddies you are. My pet tortoise would show you a clean pair of heels.

          You are determined to keep at least one foot in the Bradman era when it took the Poms a year to get to Oz by boat. And tours lasted six months.

          Catch a wake up if you can. With Australia/England and South Africa/India test matches currently underway it’s long overdue. We are now in the hi-tech age so all LBWs, caught behinds, run outs and other not so obvious decisions should be reviewed by the TV umpire automatically. And he should have the power to immediately correct any mistakes made by the on the field umpires.

          Currently we have the ridiculous situation that in some test matches, but not in others, each side can have a certain number of challenges per innings, much like they have in tennis. They lose one if they’re wrong but not if the call is correct.

          Then on field umpires can call upon the TV umpire for help when it comes to things like run outs and dicey catches but not when they have difficulty in arriving at an LBW decision. So the result is that television replays show that batsmen are wrongly given out LBW almost as many times as they are told to walk legitimately.

          And it doesn’t help when you have international umpires still at it when they are nearer a century than most batsmen. Do you ever insist on having eye and hearing tests for these pillars of the game?

          The argument that it would waste too much time if the TV replay was automatic should be no-balled straight away because cricket is by nature a slow moving affair. Why do you think you can’t get the Yanks to play it? And why do you think that five days have been allocated to test matches if everybody was expecting a lightning fast experience like ice hockey.

          A batsman comes in, takes guard, and moves his bat around until the umpire tells him it’s where he wants it. Then he digs up the pitch to mark his territory; walks around a bit to see where the fielders are and waves to various girls in the stand. Then he tells the umpire he needs the sight screen moved because the bowler has changed his mind and decided to go round the wicket.

          Did you say you are worried about slowing the game down?

          Satisfied that the batsman is ready the umpire signals to the bowler to go ahead. As he runs up the batsman steps to one side signaling that somebody has walked across the sight screen. The bowler then has to walk back to the boundary and start his run up all over again.

          And you chaps are worried that permanent TV reviews will spoil the game. What matches have you been watching in recent times?

          Have you ever noticed how the umpires do their bit to ensure that nobody gets a move on? They don’t worry about the spectators. Who cares about them? They’ve already paid so they can wait. That’s why test match play is stopped at the slightest sign of failing light.

          These policemen of the game remain silent while a captain has a half hour powwow with the bowler and various players to discuss tactics when things are going against them. Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, specialises in having team conferences on these sorts of occasions.  

        

         The fact that a player’s entire career can be badly affected by wrong decisions which would never occur if the existing technology was used to its fullest extent has not dawned on you stuffed shirts who control the game from the armchair of some members only club.

          Wake up from your old fashioned dream. The way you are governing the game is Just not cricket; at least not the way it should be played in the current age.

          Regards,

          Jon, a lover of fair play.  

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16 coming up 17 years after South African was supposed to have become a colourless society under the new Black dominated Government the independent DSTV network is conducting a survey for its SuperSport channels to get viewers opinions on its cricket commentators. And one of the questions asked is: Are you Black, Coloured, India or White?

          No provision has been made for the Chinese even though (before the days of political correctness) a particular type of ball bowled was called a Chinaman. Presumably that was a ball that went between the chink in the stumps.