The Mob Mentality

Dear reader

I hope that you are doing well as you sit there.  For a lot of people I know this year did not start off as well as they had hoped, and I hope that it is not the same for you.  Work-wise the people in my immediate surroundings are stressed and already feel overworked despite having taken a holiday in December, and I believe that people, like me, who did not take leave during Christmas and New Year are especially feeling this year already.  I pray that the year improves in general.



February is also the beginning of South Africa's Strike Season that lasts until around October or November. This year we have already seen several service delivery protests, mining protests, as well as Post Office protests, all of which were accompanied by strikes, and most with violence. This, of course, has caused our economy to suffer again, leading to hardworking people who don't go on strike and useless strikers alike to feel the pinch of a reduced salary in the form of a weakened currency (the Rand) and rising costs of living.  As the gap between rich and poor rise and the middle class slowly disappear, the ANC is at it once again handing out food parcels and making lofty promises to poor people who on other occasions starve in an attempt (very successful I might add) to buy votes.

The sad part of all this is that the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, went and stuck their head in a bees nest (again) and fumbled the start of their opposition campaign (again) by being dumb enough to announce a presidential candidate that is not only not a member of their own party, but is the head of another opposition party.  How Helen Zille, ex-party leader of the DA, could ever think of trusting Mamphela Ramphele, another ex-ANC  Prima Donna who got axed from the Gravy Transportation Party (let's be honest, the corrupt use of taxpayers' money in the ANC has grown so large you can buy a fleet of gravy planes, never mind trains, for all ANC MPs and higher-ups) because she happened to vote the wrong way for a party leader, is entirely beyond me.  Now I'm in no way a political mastermind, but even I could see through the thin exterior of Mamphela's fancy clothes, Medusa smiles and fancy spin that she's nothing but a political two-dollar hooker standing on a street corner flashing every black voter she can get so she can keep up with her fancy lifestyle that she got so accustomed to when she had her snout at the trough of taxpayers' money. 

Of course the fumble has hurt the DA, and there is no telling how many votes, both white and black, the DA will lose due to this incident.  Hopefully it won't be much, but this fumble has even caused me to rethink my vote for later this year.  That said I'm still sleeping on it, mulling the consequences and weighing it with my faith, values and beliefs.  I'm in no way a stalwart supporter of the DA (if you haven't already noticed I'm far more conservative than liberal...well now you know), but I do believe a strong opposition is the only way to break the corrupt ANC's grip on this country, and I am willing to cast a vote that breaks some of my principles so that a bigger catastrophe don't hit this country.  As I said: weighing of options and principles and beliefs and faith.

My other hope out of this debacle is that all South Africans see Mamphela for what she is, and shun her so badly at the polls that she and her party become another political corpse, much like the ill-fated Cope has become. In that way we can see some form of justice served on her.

Another surprise this week, one that happened quite late, was the fact that JuJu actually spoke some sense for a change. Today he held an election campaign in Mamelodi, and blamed the people there for the lack of service delivery.  The reason? They keep voting for the same people.  I was so astounded by this I honestly thought that JuJu had taken his detractors' advice, went to get a lobotomy, upgraded the mind he exchanged to that of a super-intellectual, and became one of SAs political super minds.  Of course, he completely rubbished my theory just mere hours after his sudden bright spark moment, but for a moment there was a glimmer of hope for him.

The Mob Mentality

Another thing happened in the last two weeks that had me interested.  Now only a few of you would know this, but I was a regular reader of David Bullard's column "Out to Lunch", as well as the articles he posted after his firing from the Sunday Times. A lot of the things David wrote intrigued me, and he spoke quite a few truths that no ANC-voting, racist black man could deny (such as the very article that got him fired from the Sunday Times).  And while I don't agree with everything that he wrote, I don't doubt for a second that he at least has a certain intelligence that very few people in this country possess.

Last week Michelle Solomon, a very outspoken woman claiming to be a rape survivor, posted an article on how David Bullard harassed her online through his articles and twitter account. The article went on to show evidence of how David Bullard harassed her repeatedly about not reporting her rapist to the police, and calling her all sorts of things that I won't repeat here.  If you want you can have a gander at the very article here.  The short and sweet of the whole debacle is that Michelle wanted to out her rapist publicly, perhaps on her blog, but never reported him or her rape to the police.  There is also the chance that she could be nothing but faking it and using rape as a means of getting attention, something David Bullard is calling her out on, but there is no hot-button proof other than the fact that she comes across as someone just seeking attention.  The jury is truly still out on this one.

My first reaction to this was come to the defense of Mr Bullard. I didn't start attacking people, but merely posted that they should wait before attacking Bullard as he hasn't yet had a chance to respond to the article.  This post, however, has mysteriously disappeared from News 24, but luckily got posted to my Facebook account.  Picture below:

It didn't help the fact that Michelle Solomon's article got posted to Women24.  A quick gander at the website will make any right-minded person realize that the site is a breeding pool for far-right Feminists that border on Nazi-like devotion to Feminism.  The comment section quickly filled with these die-hards flinging insults and rhetoric David's way.  Again I posted a few comments (again glaringly missing from News 24):

Of course it didn't stop with the article.  It wasn't long until regular feminist column writers started sprouting anti-Bullard drivel like weeds on fertilized soil.  These of course, were mere logs on an already burning fire, but then came the gasoline for the fire in the form of an article posted by someone claiming to be a rape survivor.  The article was posted by someone anonymous, so there's no real way to verify the validity of it except for the fact that I know rape survivors who have had to go through the same trauma as what the article presented after reporting their rapes. 

Fuel on the fire indeed, as the Femi-Nazis all jumped up and down and wrote bloody murder in the comments section against David Bullard. Yet no reply from David Bullard.  No his side of the story.

I would be disingenuous if I didn't point out that David tried to make all this go away by donating to Rape Crisis, which was rejected by them, making him look even more guilty of just actual harassment.  He also continues to defend his position, in typical Bullard style, by asking straight questions and making in-your-face comments, but there's yet to be a proper reply from him other than the fact that Michelle Solomon is lying about being a rape survivor.

It is very sad that the whole saga had to come to this point. A whole mob mentality developed in mere hours around an article one women posted that claimed to be a rape survivor.  Now, before I go on I must say this:  I don't condone David Bullard's actions in any manner. I also don't know if he is being truthful or being misguided.

That said, I also state here that I don't condone any of the actions of the Femi-Nazi brigade or anyone that posted remarks against Bullard without allowing him to respond in kind to Michelle's claims.  Have we as a people stooped so low as to pick sides before hearing the other party's response?  Where is our sense of Justice? Have we fallen so far down the hole of senselessness and injustice that we would attack people merely on the whims of a single article? Or a bunch of tweets? Do we even understand the reason for David Bullard's actions?  Isn't he perhaps right?  What if there is some merit in why he is doing what he is doing?  Is he perhaps right about Michelle Solomon being nothing more than a pretender?  And if so, isn't she the real villain here, causing damage to other real rape survivors? 

Well, we will probably not know now, will we?  Because whatever sensible talk or debate that we could have had is now completely impossible due to a bunch of fools all riled up by a bunch of articles.  Even if David were to come out with a valid argument or response that exonerates him, there would probably be no-one who would want to hear him because he has been labeled by people before he could defend himself.  It's a sad day for freedom of speech, and a sad day for anyone with a valid argument that is unpopular but perhaps true.