Leaves caution behind

You have a broadband or ADSL or DSL or cable or LAN Internet connection, but Outlook Express (or another program) still insists on bringing up a box saying Dial-up Connection whenever you try to send/receive mail. And neither sends nor receives mail. Read the rest of this entry »

So just who do you or I, typical South African drivers, give several hundred rands to each month? Well, Engen and Total are linked to human rights abuses in Burma, likewise Caltex/Chevron with additional interests in dodging climate change issues. In 1990, while it was placing ads in the then Weekly Mail & Guardian extolling the virtues of human rights and democracy, Shell had its very own, apparently forgotten Sharpeville, in Nigeria; there it continues to do huge environmental damage. BP (which may be the least of all evils) has been linked to military repression in Colombia. Overall, it’s really not a very pretty picture. I wonder how many of us give as much money to worthy causes as we do these companies? (I know I haven’t.)

Shell oil flare in Nigeria. Pic: Creative Commons, Flickr user we-make-money-not-art

How do you fix elections in a first-world country? Quite openly, it seems, because you know that the desperate (and inaccurate) collective fantasy that “we’re the world’s leading democracy” will end up outweighing the facts.

Al Gore for president. But will they let him win? Read the rest of this entry »

This was a ride from the dry, dusty, polluted brittle interior of South Africa in early spring to the blue and liquid Cape – a train ride from Johannesburg to Cape Town. It’s been 16 years, I think, since I did this trip. That last time, I was in uniform. This time round, I scored lots of space – Schalk, the train driver with whom I was first lined up for sharing a compartment wangled us both coupes for ourselves. I slept very well in the railways bedding (R35), my head in the Karoo moonlight.

Though it’s now callled the Shosholoza Meyl, this is pretty much the same old Trans-Karoo train of yore, dressed up in a new but now somewhat tatty colour scheme. It’s marketed using the very under-stated slogan, “A pleasant experience” – which is just as well, really, because one’s experience probably could vary somewhat depending on how many people one has to share with. Though they do seem to not book up every last berth, there’s no telling before you get on the train whether you’ll be sharing with one, three or potentially even five other people. Nor is there any way to choose. Which is rather unfair really. But choice is obviously not included in the R320 (£20, $40) ticket.

Booking is a schlep – a ticket reserved by phone has to be physically collected from the station several days before the departure date.

The food is pretty much unchanged from the 1970s. Burgers, fried fish, bacon and eggs. And extremely inexpensive. You’ll dine quite comfortably for R50. I suspect they don’t take credit cards.

The train departs Cape Town or Johannesburg three times a week, and takes between 26 and 30 hours, depending on delays, to get you across the country.

The toilets – oh dear. Not dirty. But rudimentary. Straight out onto the tracks, and no seats. Pity the poor bastards who have to work on the lines.

Yet despite the shortcomings, there was something deeply refreshing about taking this train. In a country now obsessed with immaculate presentation of expensive goods and services, the Shosholoza Meyl just is the way it is. And everytime I felt myself tempted to gripe, the sheer joy of unrushed and spectacular travel shut me up. It was a pleasure being amongst my fellow travellers, happily companionable ordinary South Africans of all hues, with a sprinkling of foreign tourists.

I travelled this way because it was (I hope) lower in carbon costs than flying, allowed more baggage, was most inexpensive, and just good going slowly – and I’ll do it again.

Another advantage was sheer convenience – getting to Johannesburg’s Park Station is much less painful than the haul out to OR Tambo International – and on arrival in Cape Town, I simply got onto another Metro train out to Fish Hoek, from where I might even have walked the last kilometre to my Clovelly mountainside, had not a kind friend collected me and my 40kgs of baggage.

I’ve been back two weeks now. After three months away, it feels it’s going to take me a little while to settle back down again. But I am glad to be back, and feeling more at home than I did previously. My abode – a spacious rented one-bedroom flat – on the Clovelly mountainside proved to be slightly rain-damaged, after one of the wettest winters Cape Town has had for years. But none of my stuff was affected; no-one had broken in or moved in in my absence. Though the guinea fowls, who are extraordinarily noisy at present – spring? sex? it’s not a sexy noise! – seemed to think this might be a possible abode, and quite literally came knocking at doors and windows a few times before they realised I was back. I’ve taken to yelling out numbers at them randomly as we pass each on paths – “get out from under my wheels, no. 42!, my brakes arent that good”. Presumably, this is an indication that I’m isolated and rapidly becoming eccentric.

Except, I don’t really feel lonely here. I know a few of the neighbours by sight, and met a few more when going door-to-door to warn them of the party I held last Saturday evening – which sadly did not turn out particularly noisy! But since I overlook the whole valley, and can see people strolling in the vlei, and with the aid of my great-grandfather’s seaman’s telescope, walking on the beach at Fish Hoek, there’s no sense of isolation. Children’s voices float from the several schools in the valley during the day. Occasionally a cat drops in. The neighbour’s dogs – strange thin, brindled creatures, looking like combinations of wild dog and whippet – remembered me on my return, and greet me joyfully after token barking.

I feel very fortunate.

Somebody asked earlier why there should be a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The reasons are simple:

• The occupation is not working to secure peace.
• The occupation is causing horrible and unacceptable numbers of civilian deaths. It is a racist occupation. I do not deploy the word lightly, and before rejecting my description, I ask you to consider how you would react if the UK army, intent on routing out a terrorist in a British village, decided that the deaths of 18 civilians was an acceptable level of “collateral damage”. I think it fair to suggest that you would be outraged and horrified. Yet no-one, least of all the US/UK forces, appears to be very concerned when those who die are not English-speaking soccer mums, but central Asian peasants.

Clearly, then, the US and British forces give very little value to the lives of those – Afghan (and Iraqi) civilians for whom they are supposedly securing peace and democracy.

You might be even more concerned at 18 deaths in a British village if it turned out that they were killed by a remote-controlled drone, and the forces concerned were not even so worried by the possibility of civilian casualties as to take the precaution of deploying a human-piloted aircraft so as to allow for more precise on-the-spot judgements.

I have not selected the number 18 at random: it is the number of people killed in just one incident, in Pakistan actually, by a US Predator drone based in Afghanistan, and piloted remotely from Nevada. See Foreign Policy in Focus for the horrific details.

Of course, many will argue that withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave even greater chaos behind.

I challenge these people to find me just one example from history where a determined guerilla campaign, much less overlapping campaigns, has been defeated by conventional military forces.

There is no such example. These situations are only ever resolved by fully inclusive political settlements that include even the nastiest and least salubrious parties to the conflict. South Africa and Ireland are clear recent examples.

So long as they reject negotiations with insurgents and Talibans, no-one should be fooled into thinking that the US and UK are in Afghanistan or Iraq for the sake of peace or democracy, or even the security of those countries’ people. These occupations serve only very narrow, selfish national interests; the arguments advanced for them publicly are pure spin.