Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus is living on borrowed time I suspect. Last week she made a speech echoing pretty much everything I wrote in last week's column thus committing the unforgivable sin of negativism (see below). Thanks to pernicious campaigns like the propagandist and money spinning Lead SA those of us who are a mite critical of the current administration are no longer permitted to speak our thoughts, however sensible they may be.
Well we are but be assured that the lefties will be down on us like a ton of bricks. As poor Ivo Vegter found out last week when he posted a piece on the Daily Maverick website defending the use of "rape" as used by Free Market Foundation executive director Leon Louw in an opinion piece he had written for BizDay.
Louw had used gang rape as a metaphor for how governments get business to agree to absurd new legislation, in this case the controversial Business Licensing Bill. He made it quite clear that he was referring to regulatory gang rape. Before you could say Jimmy Savile the wrath of the entire feminist/activist/professional victim movement was upon him.
The Twittersphere was full of swivel eyed lunacy and poor Louw apparently received a letter from 40 outraged (what else?) wimmin activists presumably demanding an apology and refusing to accept the use of the word "rape" to mean anything other than the violation of a woman against her will. So bad luck Alexander Pope.
Louw was his usual decent self and discussed the problem with the complainants but faced with 40 spitting harridans he probably had no option. Ivo Vegter then wrote his piece and got into even more trouble for trying to defend Louw's freedom of speech. The favoured tactic of the loony left is to drown out civilised discourse and resort to insult. One particularly poisonous comment was from Charlene Smith, an ex SA struggle journalist who has pushed off to live in the US of A where she could dispense her dubious wisdom in comparative safety.
Her contribution was thus "Ivo Vegter has always been a rather boring little man. The sort who resorts to adolescent shock tactics-dropping his pants or someone else's-to get attention away from the fact that he is a dull writer. I suspect he has small dick syndrome". Hardly impressive stuff from someone who claims on her Facebook page to be a multi award winning journalist. Such was the level of debate from the outraged wimmin activist crowd.
Having worked briefly with Vegter on The Maverick magazine I can vouch for the fact that he is neither boring nor short and that his writing is far from dull. In fact, I would recommend him over me any day if you want a decent bit of analysis. Of course, his views on fracking are a bit suspect but nobody's perfect. As to his dick....well I haven't played squash with him so I am in no position to comment.
So what is this all about once the tear gas and smoke has cleared? Well it sure as hell aint about rape being an awful and far too common occurrence in SA. It's all about a group of wimmin victims who believe their rights trump everybody else's. How dare we use a word that might possibly offend a sensitive woman?
In future Mr Louw kindly send your copy to be pre approved by the Wimmin's Activists and they'll tell you what you can say - you cheeky misogynist you. And of course it's about people who lead rather drab and uneventful lives demanding and getting a bit of media attention. Just imagine the chit chat at this week's coven meeting...."we really did it to that Leon Louw and Ivo Vegter dint we? That'll show them. Bastard men."
Have you ever heard such nonsense or, indeed, anything so dangerous? But I'm afraid that loony leftism is creeping across the land and thanks to social media, idiots who wouldn't otherwise have their voices heard are able to muster reinforcements on Twitter and howl down any point of view with which they happen to disagree. Which is why it's important to expose them as the uncouth charlatans they are. To do otherwise is to let the howling mob win the day.
I was shot and left for dead in 2007. I feel constant pain from the 9mm bullet lodged in my pelvis to this day and suffer terrible nightmares. I don't want to make a big thing about it but I would like you all to stop using phrases like "giving it his best shot" and "shooting the lights out".
The memories of this bodily violation are much too painful for me and being shot is no laughing matter, particularly if the guy with the gun aims properly. Failure to observe this simple request may lead me to become another outraged, foul mouthed, demented perpetual victim.
***
Apropos Gill Marcus and me and our negativity. It's not only Dot and Kumar who we have upset with our humble economic observations and suggestions that if we don't extract a digit then we'll soon be on the third world scrap heap. Cyril Ramaphosa has also told us to stop whining about SA's problems.
"We must move away from being the biggest complainers" he says and he is, of course, absolutely right when he says we must also offer solutions. I didn't have to think long and hard about this one but one obvious solution occurred to me. Vote for somebody who can run a country without plundering the public purse in 2014.
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