ANOTHER XENOPHOBIC VIOLENCE BEING PLANNED IN SOUTH AFRICA
Those South Africans who hate foreigners, especially their African brothers have organized what they call OPERATION DUDULA focusing entirely on so-called undocumented people from Africa. South Africa media are reporting that the Police Service is getting ready to deal with raw violence particularly in townships around Johannesburg. No matter how much work the police in that country do – and they are experienced in such matters, lives would be needlessly lost and people would be robbed of all their belongings.
Why some South Africans believe they should periodically shed the blood of their African brothers on home soil is something we find difficult to understand. There are indeed economic migrants but most of those African brothers who end up in the townships of South Africa are fleeing wars or famine in their own countries. They arrive in that country with almost nothing but facing the reality of further struggle far away from home, they work very hard and build small businesses, some of them marry women from the host communities and start their families but when things like the so-called Operation Dudula is launched they lose everything to looting and destruction done by their very neighbors.
South Africans don’t need anybody to tell them how the rest of Africa stood by them during apartheid. What they are doing now looks like a serious stab in the back. We call on African leaders to start planning now to protect their citizens in South Africa. It’s not enough to always say words of condemnation after the bloodshed.
There are politicians inside South Africa who are doing their best to let the manipulated young South Africans in those townships know that African brothers are not their enemies. African brothers do not control the economy or foreign policy of that country. They are simply there to save life and get something to eat. Our leaders in the rest of black African should work with those politicians to keep their citizens safe.
This MUST STOP NOW!
SPORTS AND THANKSGIVING PROGRAMS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE
There’s a sense in which school sports and thanksgiving programs are becoming oppressive. While the government is doing so much to lower the cost of getting children through school without having to sacrifice other services at home, we have noticed that normal athletics sport meetings and thanksgiving services are beginning to drain money out of parents in unprecedented ways.
To be fair to the schools, a lot of that extra money that parents spend could rightly be described as self-inflicted expenditures. We however believe that the schools have a role to play to stop parents from going overboard for such routine items on the school calendar. We describe such extra spending as self-inflicted for the following reasons.
1. Instead of simply attending religious services and standing at strategic locations along the route of a march to cheer their children on, parents now go to their meetings with school authorities and insist on having a band set or two exclusively for them so that they can join the march. From what we’ve seen they don’t really march in any order, they dance along throughout creating their own spectacle. What’s all that about?
2. School athletics meetings have now become some kind of carnival. The parents behave in the same way they now treat NPSA exams. They prepare a lot of food and drinks and overwhelm the children. There is nothing wrong with getting basic drinks and snacks for the little ones but such elaborate preparations are totally unnecessary.
3. We believe we should also say this: if parents believe that they must make a carnival of every school activity then they should be ready to spend their own money. This idea of printing envelopes and attempting to take money from other people for this kind of carnival is wrong. It is very wrong. It must stop NOW.
KEN BRIMA IS COMPLETELY OUT OF HIS DEPTH AT THE NSA
We have not had the misfortune of meeting a public official as incompetent and clueless as Ken Brima of NSA. He has no idea what his real job in that place is and he does everything to cover that up behind arrogance. We are not in the habit of questioning every appointment Principal makes because we understand the dynamics around some of these appointments done in his name. However in his FOURTH year in office, he has now had enough time to act against those officials that have clearly failed. Ken Brima has failed at the NSA. We always thought that people holding such positions should be people whose names are easily recognizable in the sporting community. Anyway he has the blessing of a big man who has now been cut to size.
There are many things going wrong at the NSA including their overwhelming focus on travelling abroad to every small competition involving the national football team, obviously because of the per diem they collect, the breaking up of the agency itself into small cabals to perfect their infighting, the open warfare they are conducting with their supervising ministry and the inability of the BOARD members to do their job properly.
We recently reported how the SLFA took hundreds of millions of Leones from an account opened by the NSA for the FA Cup competition of 2019 without the knowledge of the two signatories to that account. For the records this money was previously rejected by Queen Johansen calling the presidential support a politically motivated offer. The new SLFA administration now took that money out of the bank for God knows what. Ken Brima refused to talk to us about it. The SLFA promised to return the money after receiving subvention from FIFA. There is no evidence they have done that. The NSA has refused to address the issue. Ken Brima wants to create a little Island in the sun inside that NSA building, totally marginalizing the Minister of Sports and the newly appointed Director of Sports in the ministry. Good luck to him.
SIAKA STEVENS STADIUM: WE WAITING FOR THE JOB TO BEGIN
Assuming things go as planned it would take TWO YEARS before crowds returned to the Siaka Steven Stadium for any major event. The facility has been handed over to a Chinese company for rehabilitation. Chinese construction companies work hard and with a secure 40 million US dollar budget we have reason to believe that they might even finish the job before the stipulated time.
Many people are going to miss the place for different reasons:
FOOTBALL SPECTATORS: Many spectators actually go to that stadium not for the quality of the football but to meet people and have a jolly good conversation on match days. All of that is gone now. Only the real diehards would travel across the country at weekends to watch the matches. The jury is also still out on how much enthusiasm the matches are generating in the host communities. That is very important for the finances of the clubs.
ALCOHOL JOINTS AND CAR WASH BOYS: About half a dozen alcohol joints had sprung up at the entrance to certain stands and the owners were doing really good business whether on a match day or not. Those ones are in deep trouble now. The Chinese workers are not going to tolerate the idea of people running night clubs in their works yard. The risk of people being hurt by things being stolen from their store is too high to take. The same goes for those car wash boys who constantly hang around the presidential stands to pretend to be cleaning visitor’s cars without being asked to do so. It’s time for them to go and stop stealing a living from fans who only give the cash to stop them from breaking into vehicles. It has nothing to do with any cleaning job they do.
FOOD SELLERS AND SHAMELESS BEGGARS: We feel sorry for a few women who sell food inside the stands on match days. They provide a vital service and make good cash. They now have to look for new market centers. Those are the kind of people who would pray for the job to be finished long before the two year period. We hope they move quickly to the other playing grounds in Freetown and be prepared for the dangers of doing business in those places.
As for those BEGGARS, many fans would feel happy to be rid of them. They are shameless and persistent.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (18/04/22)
