ANC wants parliamentary debates back on TV

Sibusiso Banda

African National Congress is planning on approaching the SABC in reinstating live parliamentary debates broadcast in one of its channels in the afternoon.

ANC caucus resolved to request the public broadcaster show live broadcasts of debates in the National Assembly that were stopped years ago when the SABC started experiencing cash problems.

At the time, the Mail & Guardian had reported that the national treasury gave SABC a bailout in the form of a R1, 47-billion government guarantee, coupled with strict conditions, including turning around the SABC’s finances. A R1-billion draw-down was made immediately available to settle urgent outstanding financial obligations, but the remaining R473-million is still subject to the broadcaster presenting clear revenue targets and cost-cutting measures.

“The SABC must reinstate its live broadcasts of afternoon parliamentary sittings to ensure debates are followed by the majority of South Africans,” reads the resolution.

Minister Muthambi explains Hlaudi promotion

SibusisoBanda

Communications minister Faith Muthambi said there was no pressure in her decision to appoint SABC’s Hlaudi Motsoeneng to a permanent position.

The minister told journalists in Pretoria that upon making the decision to officially appoint Hlaudi as the Chief Operations Officer on a permanent basis, she considered various reports and recommendations that were sent to her.

Muthambi cited the recommendations and submission make by the SABC board, the Broadcasting Act, shareholder’s compact, Thuli Madonsela report, Hlaudi’s success track record to date and also a report of a law firm that was appointed by the public broadcaster to investigate the allegations made by the public protector.

“The appointment of the independent law firm by the SABC board to investigate all issues raised was the most responsible way to deal with the Public Protector report,”

The minister described the law firm as “credible” but did not disclose of its name.

Getting tested together is like the “I love you.”

The only real question you should ask before you have unprotected sex is: ‘when last did you get tested?” Actually, even if you are in a serious, committed, long term deal and one of you is on birth control that’s not enough. Not in this day and age.

You should both go for a full range of tests: from HIV to herpes to thrush or All OF IT!  You don’t really want to about your partner’s sexual past: how many girls your partner has bedded or just how kinky you girl was with her ex. Getting tested together is like the “I love you.”

There needs to be trust before these details are put on the table. And the best way to get there is by knowing that you’re both clean – and taking medication to get to the all clear. But there is a certain level of openness that is allowed. I mean you want to be able to tell your partner what you like in the bedroom without coming across as having a degree in promiscuity.

In the same breath you don’t want your past experience to make them feel insure about their level of experience. Still, the most important thing is staying safe and keeping your partner safe. Stick to that rule – the pleasure you get from each other will be on another, better level.

There is no law at present in South Africa forcing people to let you know they are HIV positive before they sleep with you. But a person that infects their sexual partner while knowing their HIV status could be charged with murder, attempted murder or assault under the South African law.

How much should your partner really know about your sexual partner? How do you protect the one love from the disease and still keep from losing them if you have an STI

This is why I wanted to know what my status was

Most people have heard and understand the cliché: Ignorance is bliss. We’ve all been there: where we felt better off for not knowing because the truth would be uncomfortable, painful – or just totes awks!

A bunch of people have used this excuse to justify not getting tested to themselves. I think they simply don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. There are scared to face the consequences of their behavior.

I think I am wired differently. 

I fear the unknown and the only way to conquer it is to find out. This is why I wanted to know what my status was. I TOOK THE INITIATIVE. My worst test was super scary. I went with my girlfriend to show that we could trust each other. I was afraid of what would happen if I turned out positive. Would she leave me? Would she think that I cheated on her and not consider that I’d gotten it from a previous sexual partner. If she stayed, what would it mean for our sex life? What if we wanted to have kids eventually?

With all those questions running through my head I can’t describe how I relieved I wad when our results both came out negative. Sure, sometimes what you don’t know won’t hurt you. But when it come s to HIV the opposite is true.  If you don’t know your status not only can you hurt your lover but yourself as well. If you don’t use protection, if you don’t change your lifestyle, if you don’t take your meds – chances are things won’t work out too well.

So I rate ignorance is not bliss because being sick isn’t blissful. So take the step in the right directions and get tested.

MANDELA: Tribute to a hero

MANDELA: ICON, HERO AND FLAWED HUMAN: Force of nature. Father of all nations. A messiah of our times.


Yet Nelson Mandela, described so often as a gift, an icon, a legend and even a saint, was flawed like any other human. Mandela was aware of his failings, and he struggled to be recognized as a man rather than a representative of an immaculate ideal.

He said many times that he was part of a collective that sought to eliminate the cruel system of white rule, even as understandably proud South Africans, some with commercial intent, craft more portraits, statues and commemorative knickknacks in his image and name more roads, buildings, schools and hospitals after him.

Known by his clan name, Mandela mixed humor, generosity and empathy in an irresistible potion that some called “Madiba magic.” But those who knew him well sometimes saw a cold, haughty side. His children lamented that he was not there for them, even after he left prison. His association with dictators like Moammar Gadhafi who had opposed apartheid suggested that Mandela made political compromises as a free man.

Mandela often sparred with F.W. de Klerk, the reformist white president and his partner in sharing a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to apartheid. De Klerk said after Mandela’s death that the two became friends after they both retired.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised Mandela for reconciling the races as South Africans emerged from apartheid and elected the former prisoner as their president in 1994 elections, defying grim predictions of racial war. However, unlike most other prominent figures who paid tribute, Tutu briefly noted Mandela’s weaknesses.

“He retained in his Cabinet underperforming, frankly incompetent ministers,” Tutu said of Mandela. “This tolerance of mediocrity arguably laid the seeds for greater levels of mediocrity and corruptibility that were to come.”

He said Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95, exhibited a “steadfast loyalty to his organization and to some of his colleagues who ultimately let him down.”

Tutu was referring to the African National Congress, the main liberation movement and current ruling party that is the front-runner ahead of national elections next year. It has lost some support because of corruption scandals and poor service delivery in a country still plagued by economic inequality, reflecting disillusionment that things have not turned out as well as many hoped when Mandela was at the helm.

The remarks highlight how Mandela’s record as an activist and prisoner before the end of apartheid, captured in his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom,” is widely known and admired. His record as president is less scrutinized.

It is too much to expect that Mandela would set a new South Africa, traumatized by decades of a social system that denied the vote, equal education and other basic rights to the black majority, on a path to success in just one five-year presidential term. His retirement from politics was seen as a trademark gesture of modesty, a spurning of the cult of the individual. Many South Africans, though, regret he did not take the country further forward with his moral authority by serving another term.

Criticism comes, too, from South Africans who believe Mandela and his allies in the early 1990s were too eager to accommodate the white minority which still dominates the economy. When ANC leaders negotiated an end to apartheid, they did not insist on restructuring of the kind that happened in Zimbabwe after independence, fearing it could destabilize the country.

Mandela told business leaders in Cape Town shortly before the 1994 election that the country was struggling with high unemployment, low investment and growth rates and an income distribution system that was “terribly skewed” toward whites.

That imbalance is still in force, according to Julius Malema, the expelled head of the ANC’s youth league and now leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party. The upstart party seeks to harness the poor’s discontent, and Malema has said it is time to redistribute wealth.

“All evidence of the past 20 years reveal the simple reality that those who had to take forward the struggle for economic freedom did not do so,” the party said in a tribute to Mandela, in an indirect criticism of the revered leader.

Decades earlier, his decision to endorse violence as a last-ditch means of fighting apartheid was seized upon by the white overseers of race-based repression as evidence that he was a terrorist. The ANC’s armed wing was later involved in bombings that killed civilians.

Mandela has said he regretted his distance from his children, not just as a prisoner of apartheid but later, when politics and public duty claimed him. He was divorced twice, splitting with second wife Winnie Mandela in 1996.

Ahmed Kathrada, an activist who was imprisoned with Mandela, said his old friend was deeply worried while in jail at unwittingly projecting a saint-like image to the world.

Kathrada also quoted Mandela as saying: “I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.”