OUT TO LUNCH

As the Bard of Avon famously wrote, “when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions” which rather neatly sums up the news cycle of perpetual gloom in South Africa.

We have long become used to rejecting the notion that things can’t get any worse in this country as every week brings fresh news of corruption, crime, collapsing infrastructure, violence, mayhem, economic sabotage and thuggery, much of it at the instigation of political parties.

However, the news that broke just before the Easter weekend that those lovable rogues the Guptas have been spotted in that land of banking secrecy, Switzerland, probably wins this year’s award for sheer gobsmackery. I mean, these days nobody is surprised to learn that yet another ANC or EFF politician has helped him or herself to other people’s money with little or no chance of ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.___STEADY_PAYWALL___

And when another municipality goes broke or another coalition falls apart then nobody is really surprised because we’ve got used to that sort of thing as the beloved country continues its relentless downward spiral.

But the one hope we did have was that the Gupta brothers would be extradited from the United Arab Emirates to face the full might of the law; or, as it turns out now, the full mite of the law.

It beggars belief that the South African government and the National Prosecuting Authority only learned on last Thursday evening that the extradition hearing took place almost two months earlier on February 13th and was unsuccessful. What are we paying these clowns for?

We were all under the impression that Atul and Rajesh Gupta were arrested in Dubai way back in June 2022. The feedback given to the ever gullible South African public was that they were languishing in a Dubai jail while awaiting extradition proceedings to bring them back to face justice in South Africa.

One might have expected a few media pics of them in prison garb staring mournfully through the prison bars as they contemplated their future. As far as I am aware no such media pics exist which does seem odd given the huge publicity they enjoyed.

Even if the paparazzi are not allowed inside Dubai prisons one might have expected an official communication from the Dubai prison authorities confirming the arrest and imprisonment. Once again, nothing.

However, the real question we should be asking is whether any of Pres Frogboiler’s over-remunerated cabinet colleagues flew out at any time to check whether the Gupta’s were in fact in the slammer and the answer to that seems no.

Surely with a case as important as this is to the future of the country a weekly update would have been the very least we should have expected? So to find that the ANC have yet again been sleeping on the job and were completely unaware that the extradition had been refused back in February comes as a huge shock ….except that it doesn’t if you consider who is involved here and accept the possibility that the last eight or so months have been nothing more than an elaborate con trick on the part of a very sleazy government to make us all think that they are finally cracking down on crime and corruption.

The reality is that if the Gupta brothers had been extradited to South Africa then some sort of trial would have to be arranged and that would mean that a lot of very embarrassing facts and damaging accusations would be likely to come out.

Even with a well-chosen, tame judge (I am led to believe such creatures exist in the judiciary) there would still have been plenty of dirt that could have been dished ahead of the 2024 election. This refusal to extradite the Guptas on extraordinarily weak grounds would thus rather suit the ANC.

The only surprise is that any of us are surprised given the fact that South Africa prefers to hang out with pariah countries like Russia and Venezuela and is now internationally recognised as a gangster state.

***

If you thought New Zealand was a loony left disaster zone under St Jacinda Ardern then it appears to have gone even further downhill since her successor, Chris Hipkins, took over the reins.

A couple of weeks ago there were massive demonstrations from Trans activists in Auckland after UK anti-trans activist Posie Parker (her real name, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as Posie Parker) turned up to give a speech in support of women’s rights.

Posie Parker holds the quaint but now outdated view that men who think they are women shouldn’t be allowed to participate in women’s sports or use women’s toilets or changing rooms because they are still biologically men.

This makes her a Nazi apparently and a Trans Exclusionary Radical Female (TERF) and, just to drive the point home, the trans activists who turned up in Auckland in March far exceeded the number of anti-trans activists who turned up to support Posie Parker.

The LGBTQUIA+ trans lobbyists even tried to attempt to get NZ immigration to refuse Ms Parker entry into the country on the grounds that her presence would be a threat to public order. But the NZ High Court ruled that her entry to the country was legal so it was game on.

Her address to her supporters never happened because she was heckled, booed, doused with tomato juice and eventually escorted from the baying mob (many of them very excitable men) by police and her own supporters to spend a few hours in the relative safety of a police station before flying out of the country ahead of her next scheduled appearance.

Looking at the footage of the chaos it is perfectly clear that Ms Parker would have been torn limb from limb had the trans mob (whose motto is ‘Be Kind’) got any closer. “I have grave fears for this place” were here departing words, “this country’s f****d”.

One might have accepted that this was a slight exaggeration understandably caused by a very traumatic experience until the New Zealand PM was asked a simple question by a journalist…..what is a woman?

Mr Hipkins is, according to Wikipedia, aged 44 and was married to a biological woman with whom he has two children. Although only married in 2020 he has since separated from his former wife Jade. Perhaps his sexual confusion was a contributing factor.

It’s a great pity that the NZ journo who asked the question didn’t press on with further questions. For example Mr Hipkins, did you notice any difference in your respective body parts when you were attempting to father children? Why do you think it was Jade and not you who got the swollen tummy thing and who gave birth to the children? How would you rate your own attempts to breastfeed your children?

If the premier of a country like New Zealand is this confused when it comes to simple biological matters then heaven help the Western World should China decide to expand its influence in the South Pacific.