OUT TO LUNCH
You may have seen it too and wondered WTF? It appears on most of the SA news websites I visit (including this one) and reads thus:
‘Rámpóşá Reveals the Truth
in Live Conference’
Rámpóşá Surprised Everyone and Left Them Speechless With This Statement
I was intrigued to find out who this Eastern European sounding Rámpóşá was and discovered on clicking on the page that it was our very own perpetually surprised and shocked Cyril (Frogboiler) Ramaphosa.
What Cyril has done according to this story (which must be true because it has been posted by Google Ads who are known for their strict adherence to political correctness) is devised a scheme with Pravin Gordhan to eliminate poverty once and for all.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The two have got together to introduce a Bitcoin based wealth system that “allows South Africans to generate wealth from the comfort of their own homes”.
The two have apparently collaborated in secret to form a multi-billion-rand deal which will get together with Bitcoin Era to generate wealth out of thin air and this has apparently caused a ‘frenzy’.
Hardly surprising since the “jaw dropping” initial results have given early participants returns on average of R53 977 a day and allowed them to leave their jobs and tell the boss to get stuffed.
This is clearly a brilliant ruse on the part of Ramaphosa and Gordhan to stamp out corruption. After all, who would want to risk a grilling from Zondo by sticking your fingers in the government cookie jar if all you have to do is participate in Cyril’s Bitcoin scheme with guaranteed returns like that?
The in-depth report by not so well known journalist Mitchell Bason of “the Mirror” dated Sunday April 11th 2021 shows a picture of Ramaphosa and Gordhan apparently at a Bitcoin conference with the explanation that Cyril was initially against Bitcoin but Pravin managed to convince him of its life giving qualities which is why the two allegedly blew R2.6 billion of tax payers money to set up the system.
It’s not clear where this quote comes from but according to Mr Bason “This is the first step towards a universal standard income that will allow people to live how they want and deserve to live …. Unfortunately our investment will only allow a limited number of South Africans to participate. Our long term goal is to make this the standard form of income for all South Africans”.
There follows a screen shot of Cyril’s Twitter page dated February 16 extolling the virtues of this new magic money tree. The story continues with a news clip from SABC News and the comment from Pravin Gordhan that “the Banks hate me for making Bitcoin trading accessible for ‘regular’ people”.
Priscilla Maseko, a 37-year-old single mother of two boys lost her job last October and wondered how she would survive. She initially put in the minimum investment of R 3000 (an amount which anybody who has recently been made redundant just has hanging around) and went off to watch TV leaving the system on ‘auto-trade’.
Within an hour she had made R22 266 because the auto-trade option only picks the winners. She now earns R73 500 a month and the children’s toy cupboard is full.
What is so extraordinary about this great news story is that mainstream financial media have failed to run with it, other than allowing it to appear on their web pages.
Much as it would be wonderful to live in a fantasy world where you could really make R50 000 a day from doing nothing except putting a small wager on a dead cert investment life isn’t really like that.
Running a story like this which is obviously a load of old horse manure is incredibly irresponsible and I’m staggered that Google South Africa allow it.
Quite what’s with the Rámpóşá thing is also confusing but maybe this weird mis-spelling gets around some legal technicalities. However, both Ramaphosa and Gordhan are extensively credited as being the creators of this brave attempt to create a universal standard income and their endorsements are equally extensively quoted.
Not everyone is as clever as the average Politicsweb reader and I’m quite sure there will be people who will click onto this load of cobblers, believe it to be a genuine news story (it is disguised as such) and go on to lose money.
Where are the advertising standards people when you need them? They’ll rush in with sirens blaring and blue lights flashing when someone complains about homophobia in a lager ad but when there is a clear case of hyperbole, misrepresentation and financial skullduggery they are nowhere to be seen.
***
A few years ago, after the release of her bestselling book ‘Not Without a Fight’, Helen Zille was ‘no-platformed’ at the Franschhoek Literary Festival for her comments about colonialism and how Singapore had turned the experience to their economic advantage. It was a cowardly act on the part of the timid organisers of the Franschoek Literary Festival which had been veering to the left for some time.
It was particularly cowardly because it was an 11th hour cancellation and many visitors to the Lit Fest were hoping to hear Zille speak and get their books signed. But the invertebrates who run the show gave in to the wokists and clearly they would rather welcome the likes of Eusebius McKaiser, Rebecca Davis and Max du Preez to the town rather than opinionated best-selling authors like RW Johnson and Helen Zille.
Fortunately, COVID put paid to their nonsense last year and it looks as though this year’s festival is also cancelled. Hopefully, when the Franschhoek Literary Festival next takes place it will be under a more enlightened management who will invite speakers that people who pay to go the festival actually want to hear.
After all, I suspect it wasn’t the audience members who asked for Helen Zille to be cancelled; it was some of the other festival participants.
I’m hoping there will be a mention of this in Zille’s forthcoming book, ‘Stay Woke Go Broke’ which is due to hit the bookshops at the end of April.
My esteemed colleague Andrew Donaldson made mention of the book in last week’s column and had a problem with the term ‘woke’ being used which he felt was a mistake and appealed to those who are “dim and doctrinaire themselves”.
While I would describe myself as politically rather more right of centre than Andrew I don’t think our respective political views would cause either of us to don a balaclava and lob petrol bombs at one another.
When it comes to the toppling of statues I honestly can’t be bothered to have an opinion either way and if people want to glue themselves to underground trains as a protest against climate change then so be it. Equally so be it if they then get roughed up by frustrated commuters.
The problem with the term ‘woke’ is that it isn’t something we right thinking people have dreamed up to describe the ragbag of entitled social misfits we have to endure in our daily lives.
It’s the term they use for themselves without any hint of irony. They also seem to like the term ‘progressives’ even though it’s a word that describes precisely what they are not.
Let’s take cancel culture for example. Who could possibly describe as ‘progressive’ a desire to silence voices in academia? Or to ban books that are suddenly discovered to be ‘problematic’? Or to ban old TV comedy shows? Or to cause a teacher in rural Yorkshire to go into hiding for fear of his life because he mentioned a prophet during a religious instruction lesson?
Or to decide what words we can use and what words we cannot use? These actions would find favour with most of the more repressive regimes in the world and certainly can’t be regarded as progressive.
Wokists love to ‘call out’ people for what they regard as deeply offensive behaviour. To fully understand this one must appreciate that a wokist crawls out of bed in the morning looking for something to be offended by.
It’s a form of mental illness greatly encouraged by social media. These are joyless and humourless individuals. If they can find an ‘offensive’ Tweet that they can re-Tweet and, in so doing, shame somebody by taking it out of context then that is regarded as a good morning’s work.
Even better though is to whip up the hysteria of the social media mob and demand that the perpetrator lose their job and be dragged to the Equality Court or reported to the SAHRC. Wokists begin life as the unloved class snitch. They become the twitching net curtained neighbour that reports a gathering that breaches lockdown rules.
If they get into a position of authority then they will concentrate on destroying from within the institution that pays their salary, all in the name of diversity. In the UK at the moment the National Trust, custodian of many fine country houses, is busy rewriting the history of those magnificent homes to highlight the many social injustices that enabled those homes to be built.
So if you visit Petworth House don’t expect any explanation of the wonderful Grinling Gibbons wood carvings.
Some years ago I was in a production of ‘The Crucible’ which tells the true story of the Salem witch trials. In the play all the hysterical children have to do is say they saw some woman in the village talking to the devil and that is enough evidence for the Witchfinder to sentence a perfectly innocent person to death.
That’s pretty much where we find ourselves now and the madness will continue if we keep taking these people seriously.
The only problem with speaking out against these idiots and exercising your right to freedom of expression are the many inherent risks. Freedom of expression has become something of an elitist luxury item these days: reserved for those who are thick skinned enough not to give a toss about any social media fallout and are unlikely to be materially affected by any consequences. Happily, I qualify on both counts.
(For further information search ‘Generation Diddums’ on the PolWeb search engine. I could have put a link here but I want you to do some work. As always, I look forward to your comments.)
