The Wicker Man

In ancient Celtic times, the wicker man was a large wicker effigy of a human being. It served as a scapegoat for all the ills of society, such as unwanted pregnancies, stillbirths, drought, warm beer and bearded women. Celts with their Black Sabbath Brummie accents and Asterix hats burnt the wicker man, thus ridding society of all its perceived ills.



The classic British cult horror, The Wicker Man (1973). Not to be confused with the retarded remake which starred Nicolas Cage (from the year that Cthulhu has cursed forever, for that very reason, 2006).

It worked to rid ancient England of its ills, because the villagers actually placed those who caused unwanted pregnancies, stillbirths, drought, warm beer and bearded women in the wicker man before they lit it. Whether those immolated with the wicker man deserved this or not, it certainly worked wonders to lower the amount of unwanted pregnancies and bearded women. When is the last time you saw a bearded woman? I rest my case.

Upon considering the wicker man and the classical logical fallacy of the straw man argument, one can't help but notice the similarities. I mean they're both effigies of men, made of straw (or wicker), and they burn.

The difference is that a real wicker man quickens the return of some men (and bearded women) to dust, while a straw man argument is a form of character assassination.

Here in Mzansi, we never had a wicker man. No, here wicker is far too useful for building shacks and filling the vacuum between your ears. We have a curious practice called necklacing instead. I'll spare you the gruesome detail. Suffice to say you better hope nobody comes knocking on your door when lightning strikes somebody.

I wanted to see either a wicker man or a straw man up in flames, if it's the last thing I did before Egoli. Well, it's currently winter here in a summer rainfall territory, meaning it's hardly necklacing season. I also haven't seen a bearded woman since the last time I went to the traffic department. Imagine my delight then when I found a straw man argument in the news.

"NP is back, itching for a fight"

The NP (the National Party) was the party of the 'architects of apartheid'. This fact is often pointed out by the ANC when they want to do a bit of character necklacing themselves. The fact that the NP was also the party of the architects of our democracy is not so often pointed out in these sessions. They don't serve to instill the sklavmoral, you see.

Regardless, this is not an instance where the ANC spewed forth their habitually obtuse drivel. Nay nay, this is a case where a journalist spewed forth ANC-like obtuse drivel. Of course, this is hardly surprising considering the innate affinity of those in soft sciences for sklavmoral, but damn it, I was looking for a straw man argument and I was going to see it proverbially in flames, immolated by necklacing, if it's the last thing I did before Egoli.

The nature of the yeast

Clearly, the author of NP is back, itching for a fight is brewing.

• The piece is littered with ad hominem attacks which have more in common with infecting Sefrikans with ideology as opposed to being informative. Isn't the media supposed to trust Sefrikans to have the ideologically ideal equal brain capacity each human possesses to formulate our own opinions?


• There are serious journalistic ethics and standards contraventions. There is no clear separation between news and opinion. Competing points of view are not portrayed in a balanced manner, nor are they characterised objectively. It's like a Polokwane conference.


• The presentation is not in a standard, formal variety of English. This is due to the atrociously exaggerated improperly opportunistic use of adjectives.

After a bit of googling, I learned that the author is in fact a columnist. The piece originated as a column in its native Sunday Independent, yet it was syndicated as news for iol.

It is thus not the author who had been negligent, but the editors of iol who decided to present the opinion of a columnist as news against better judgement. All you disinformation conspiracy theorists, reach for your alarm bells. The time is nigh to wear those tinfoil hats.

Dic mihi solum facta, domina (Just the facts, ma'am)

Sticking to the facts, the piece would be much shorter. Next time, think of the trees, you capitalist pigs! This is the same piece, minus the adjectives, plus my own bias:

• National Party spokesman Juan-Duval Uys was an employee of Cape Town councillor Badih Chaaban. Uys is no longer associated with Chaaban. In fact, Uys is currently a witness against Chaaban in an assault case.


• The NP is well aware of its past racially based practices. It is trying to bridge the gap between the races by having a more demographically representative (yawn) membership and launching a youth group to appeal to more black people. The youth group is to be launched by disillusioned ANC youth (read: members of the ANCYL who haven't received a Model C-class Mercedes Benz yet).


• The NP is well aware that the DA has become a refuge for former Natte who switched from wearing khaki to wearing Nigerian buba without realising that wearing Nigerian man dresses is not exactly showing your ethnic solidarity.
  
  Uys and his party are trying to win back the favour of these voters by claiming to implement non-racial employment policies once they come into power. I'm thinking they'd need bigger Mercedes Benz luxury vehicles if they're going to succeed with this one.


• The NP is well aware that being associated with its Protestant Afrikaner past is going to be a stumbling block for many who adhere to different religious faiths. More specifically, the NP learnt from the blunders of the ANC that the majority of people want the separation of the church and state, or pay lip service to that noble concept at the very least.


• Uys blames Marthinus 'used to be kortbroek but is now tree-hugging buba boy' Van Schalkwyk for proverbially floor crossing (read: taking the standard bribe of a Model C-class Mercedez Benz) to the ANC and disbanding the NP without consultation with the rest of the party members.


• Black diamonds, the rising black middle class, who just like white Africans (read: colonialists in PC terms) my age did not grow up under apartheid and were largely unaffected by it and definitely not responsible for it, are disillusioned by the leading party's talk of revolution.
  
  Most of us are easy pickings to a party who manages to move away from ethnicity issues. The Anglophile black youth are more in tune with Y-fm and Usher than with the ANC and Stalin. They are unashamedly more skilled than their unskilled counterparts, they are unapologetically ready to make money and they rightfully feel that they don't need to rely on BEE to prove that they are worth as much as whiteys with degrees. Uys is trying to sway them to the NP side with his envisioned youth brigade and his talk of more realistic employment policies.


• Uys is trying to cash in on the relative respect former president and Nobel peace prize winner F.W de Klerk enjoys. De Klerk should enjoy this respect for being integral to the transition from apartheid to a social democracy (read: serfdom that realises it needs to keep capitalists on a leash to feed the rest of the animal farm), but in reality de Klerk just has respect because he is associated with another former president, Nelson Mandela.
  
  De Klerk is evasive and weary about being associated with the Neo-New-National Party, but the link has already been forged in the popular press.

Why I will not vote for the NP

"On religion, the NP says it respects the practice of all, but will not tolerate Satanism."

That's like saying you're a non-smoker, except for menthol. As far as I am concerned, this dark Satanic anti-revolutionary legion is yet to be discovered. Of course, you get the odd Slipknot ninja, who is disowned even by Satanists for being an idiot. Next thing Uys is going to tell us that Rodney Seale is going to be the vice president once they come into power.

I am apolitical (libertarian at best), but I do feel that voting for any party except the ruling party at any point is a good idea to prevent a disproportionate amount of power in any party's court. We don't want a de facto single party state like the ANC has run into the ground for the past 15 years.

ANC apologists are quick to point out that we've had an impressive economic growth rate of above 4% for the past couple of years. They are not so quick to point out that in 1995, our GDP was 1 548 100. In 2005, our GDP was 1 523 254. For the period of 1995 to 2000, the average household income actually decreased. The GDP took a huge dump from 1995 and took until 2005 to recover. This means we spent an entire decade just catching up with what the minority managed to achieve all by themselves during apartheid.

We're not anywhere near actual growth. The key to surviving our public health system is not getting sick. We have a serious brain drain, just like the entire world apparently, but our skilled people are leaving to fix the entire world's problems because of our crime and our mampara BEE serfdom (which is bound to get worse if the Tzars of the ANC implement their Hugo Chavez-like nationalising of privately owned property as per the proposed expropriation bill).

Because they retain their skilled people, other emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are riding the wave of the global recession while South Africa is still following the white rabbit after the tired 'rich get richer while the poor get poorer' sloganeering down the socialist dream world rabbit hole.

How can the poor get poorer? They're already rock bottom poor. You can't take nothing away from someone.

From what I've seen, the NP are committed to rectifying these wrongs. They are making a big splash in a small pond, but they are hardly offering anything that other opposition parties like the DA, IFP or the UDM aren't offering already.

The difference is that the DA and the UDM would allow me to be a Satanist if I really wanted (as does our wonderful constitution). If you're going to have an effective group, you're going to have to live with views you don't agree with.

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson

In other words, a free society is a society without the wicker man. Now if there were a political party with a bearded woman, they'd automatically get my vote!