It is for me one of the decibelthat reverberate o so soothingly and salubriously with this universe.
Zapiro keeps our relatively young democracy alive, kicking
and growing. Zapiro nurses an otherwise
as-yet-quite-sickly democracy.
What or Who is Zapiro? You may be asking. I will tell you in due time, but may I be for this brief moment allowed to dwell on our societal maladies and illnesses as South Africans?
IN a nutshell, methinks we are a veritably much afflicted society where the syndrome is that of dog wagged by its own tail and our national cart is almost
always put before the horse.
Please let me explain myself.
Please let me explain myself.
CIVIL SERVANTS
Ever heard about service delivery protests where state property is routinely wrecked by beserk, confused and ignorant masses of people who confuse animate objects with the inanimate? Seen some torched municipality building somewhere in your neighbourhood?
Well that would be part and parcel of the status quo in South Africa and of course elsewhere in Africa, and Somalia should come to your mind if I as blog writer and your as my reader have the same page.
These upheavals where violence is wreaked mainly against state property happens almost always where you find civil servants from the lowest to the highest lording it over the citizens that put them in employ in the first place.
The worst case scenario for such impundence by the civil servants is of course a civil war but fortunately for us South Africans that is still a far cry even where it could be worst.
Well that would be part and parcel of the status quo in South Africa and of course elsewhere in Africa, and Somalia should come to your mind if I as blog writer and your as my reader have the same page.
These upheavals where violence is wreaked mainly against state property happens almost always where you find civil servants from the lowest to the highest lording it over the citizens that put them in employ in the first place.
The worst case scenario for such impundence by the civil servants is of course a civil war but fortunately for us South Africans that is still a far cry even where it could be worst.
Be that as it may, how many times have you walked into some government
office in our republic post-1994 and you listened to this guy or girl the other
side of the counter barking down at you when you request for services for which you
are supposed to be paying tax? A myriad!
How many times have you read stories of a citizen getting
into trouble for maybe wagging a finger at the State President’s motorcade? A
myriad! (even some minions around the president’s motorcade prefer you driving
yourself to an early grave rather than staying in the road when the blue lights
of so-called VIP vehicles wish to overtake you)
Now, this abnormality of ‘servant usurping master’s role’ is
very rife in our post-apartheid South Africa, leaving many of us
thinking that perhaps Apartheid is not dead, but has rather changed its skin
colour.
THE LAWYER-CLIENT CONFIDENTIALITY RAPED BY TOO MANY SOUTH
AFRICANS LAWYERS
You can find aforementioned societal malady even amongst a fraternity that is probably the best-trained (in comparison to civil servants ) to take instructions: the veritable which shall imbibe and internalize all the tricks of the master who in this case is the client!
Problems are the apparent toadiness 'softness' of too many black lawyers in South Africa particularly when the court is constituted by a white individual judge or magistrate. The second problem is is of course coming with the next video which seems to blame to blame at least partly to Freemasonry this apparently hamstrung nature of legal defence counsel in South Africa.
Problems are the apparent toadiness 'softness' of too many black lawyers in South Africa particularly when the court is constituted by a white individual judge or magistrate. The second problem is is of course coming with the next video which seems to blame to blame at least partly to Freemasonry this apparently hamstrung nature of legal defence counsel in South Africa.
We were in fact looking at the legal fraternity, with particular focus to counsel that defends the accused citizen.
I mean when I began to fight acts of corruption in my state
department that will obviously remain nameless, I paid this guy in Pretoria to
defend me against false accusations only to hear him say: “Since you say you are a blood relative of
the Swazi King Mswati's who is 4th cousin to you, why don’t you just emigrate
to Swaziland, Mr South African Phiri and stop trying to stop the rotten
individuals who are working for an invincible state?”
I could have puked when I heard this flamboyantly dressed
lawyer say such in his office around Pretoria’s Church Square in 2004. How on earth could a lawyer in any democracy
say such a thing which effectively translates into elevating corrupt civil servants into gods and goddesses over the citizenry to such an extent that whistle blowers are in this so-called lawyer's eyes are left
with no option but to go to exile ‘just because there is a powerful blood
relative in that exile’?
In his own mind, I wondered, what does he think has happened
to one of the pillars of law in any civilized land for a lawyer TAKING INSTRUCTIONS
FROM HIS OR HER CLIENT?
I am relating here a story that of course happened to me back in 2004 (3 years after being falsely charged by individuals black and white motivated by both politics and racism), but as of 2013 I see more
and more incidents of such legal idiots making a mess of accused people's cases in the
same fashion.
I have in that respect asked my fellow South Africans (laymen and lawyers alike) if, by any chance, THIS IS CAUSED BY CLIENTS WHO ARE IGNORANT OF THEIR RIGHTS IN THE PRESENCE OF LAWYERS. But the more prevalent viewpoint from my research is ‘in present-day South Africa DEFENCE LAWYERS come 'to the rescue' (albeit paid-for rescue) of their clients with the pre-conceived idea that the client has no clue of what his or her own case is’!
I have in that respect asked my fellow South Africans (laymen and lawyers alike) if, by any chance, THIS IS CAUSED BY CLIENTS WHO ARE IGNORANT OF THEIR RIGHTS IN THE PRESENCE OF LAWYERS. But the more prevalent viewpoint from my research is ‘in present-day South Africa DEFENCE LAWYERS come 'to the rescue' (albeit paid-for rescue) of their clients with the pre-conceived idea that the client has no clue of what his or her own case is’!
This basically makes the state and its prosecution right all the
time even before the trial begins! And personally as blog author I believe this to be one of the chief reasons why South Africa economically develops not at
the speed which we anticipated when we all black and white fought against
Apartheid, if for economic freedom and
prosperity for all: IF YOU THROTTLE AND DAMN ALL THE RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE OF THE
LAND OF ZION/AZANIA/SOUTH-AFRICA BY MEANS OF THESE IDIOTIC BUT ARROGANT LAWYERS,
WHERE IS THE BIBLICAL SALT OF THE EARTH TO CREATE PROGRESS FOR THIS CRADLE OF
HUMANKIND AND THE REST OF THE WORLD?
Maybe I am busy dreaming up this problem I see almost every South
African Court day, a problem around legal defence counsel where only some weeks
ago I saw a meat-guzzling
legally-trained guy running to the point of tripping himself all for a client
whose only fault was to ask for a minute for looking for his witness before a trial
started in the Court of the magistrate in Mamelodi and the lawyer got
palpitations for the sole reason that the magistrate of the day was white and thus panic-stricken
black defence counsel saw himself too black to explain to the honourable magistrate
that his client was only out to get his witness without whom his defence case
was constitutionally impossible.
If I am dreaming these problems up, well let me ask you if
you are South African black or white:How many times have you been legally in
trouble or in need of legal services of particularly a lawyer you pay from your
hard-earned salary only to find that the constitutional idiot starts dictating
to you the client as to what must happen with your case?
“A myriad of times!” I bet that will be your response if
indeed you are South African, particularly black.
Indeed it is still a very sick society this one, and these
well-trained dogs of ours as citizens (be they South African lawyers standing
for the accused in particular, or civil servants of all stripe and stature if even
as high as the state presidency of the day) should know and understand that, as
it is said in the great Afrikaans Language of South Africa “(Al dra ‘n aap ‘n
goue ring hy bly maar net ‘n aap) The monkey wearing the golden ring still
remains a monkey”.
What this means is: the fact that you individually make a
lot of money out of the position us 50-million-or-so South Africans gave you as
our senior civil servant CHANGES NEVER YOUR STATUS AS OUR SERVANT AND YOU
SHOULD THEREFORE NEVER GET TOO BIG-HEADED BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS IN YOUR POCKET
FOR WE WILL ONE DAY MAKE YOU PAY FOR THAT VANITY OF YOURS.
Blog author’s plea is: Please do start respecting citizens,
Good People Who Are Servants For Civil Society In South Africa.
Good People, Please do Take instructions very properly if
you happen to land in attorney’s shoes and do not try to be a Smart Alec on
Phiri’s case just because Phiri’s case
is part and parcel of your statistics.
Please try to remember that YOU
ARE NOT THE ONE ACCUSED OF MURDER, RAPE ETC. (but I am)!
In the same vein, if you are state president, cabinet
minister, executive mayor, member of parliament, chief justice or any of the
fancy positions, STOP TELLING THE NATION ABOUT YOUR PEDIGREE AND WHERE YOUR
PARENTS CAME FROM AND WENT FOR WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT HISTORY OF THIS DAMN
SERVANT OF OURS CALLED YOU!
I mean, we really do not want to read your biography;
reading in any case has the side-effect of corrupting an individual’s mind,
particularly when you read such rubbish as over-exalted biographies of South
African politicians serving in government of any day. Please save us from that anguish and mental pollution. We plead that you just do your damn civil-servant’s work that we
employed your for, since that is what democracy essentially is!
Mr JONATHAN SHAPIRO AND SOUTH AFRICA’S PREMIER CARTOONIST
Despite all the writing I might have achieved above, I have a heart-rending confession to
make. It is the fact that I must be a
very bad servant for the craft of any wordsmith or writer.
In that respect, I also most unfortunately forgot a simple English adage
that teaches us: ‘brevity is the soul of with’.
In other words, I now feel I I
talked and wrote too much hereinabove when in fact I should have said:
“Happy birthday, Zapiro!
It has been a long time since that fateful Monday 55 years ago when your
mother gave South Africa the wonderful gift that you have been for the local
democracy. Twenty-thousand-and-ninety days of life is nothing to sniff at when
some of us still only dream to reach that age.
But far more importantly, you have in my view strengthened our democracy
like no other man or woman could. And if
you were a rock star, maybe the picture for this blog would have looked this
way:
But how would a guy reading me from China or President Zuma’s
Malawi understand who Zapiro was.
May God bless you, my brother, Zapiro (and by the way, I got
permission from your mediamen to use that picture and one of the pictures that
moved and shook South Africa from your brush)
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