Political Language

Reading about the cruelty of the Israelis towards the Palestinians can make a person impatient, thinking that he is reading an old story that has been the same for many years. It hardly seems possible that the Israelis could increase the torment they are inflicting on the people they have dispossessed and cast into confinement and misery. Yet indeed the Israelis are still inventing and inflicting worse and worse atrocities to force upon the Palestinians. See, in the short linked article below, what the Israelis are now doing with their checkpoint controls. Likewise, as South Africans we can become impatient with comparisons to our own experience, with the use of the term “apartheid” in other contexts. Yet it seems accurate in this case. All valuable activity has been concentrated by the Israelis within their “own” areas. Israeli goods are dumped in the areas where the Palestinians are also dumped and held under Israeli military control, killing economic activity there. Palestinians who are compelled to seek work over the checkpoints are harrassed and humilated every day. Now these Israeli-made chokepoints are being tightened further. The logic of Israeli colonialism leads inexorably towards disaster. It offers nothing to the Palestinians except pain and increasing pain. The manifest logic of Israeli colonialism, like that of our own past colonialism of a similar special type, leads to one rational conclusion: it must go, it cannot be compromised with, it has to be overthrown. The state constructed with bulldozers must itself be bulldozed. The Israeli’s may say this means they will be driven unto the sea, but the SA whites are not in the sea. Not unless they are having a nice holiday. In South Africa, only a few of our 11 official languages are well served by dictionaries. There are many dictionaries of English and Afrikaans, in these languages, such as the many versions of the Oxford dictionaries. And there are dictionaries for translating other languages in and out of English or Afrikaans. But there are very few dictionaries of the other languages, written in those languages. Any language that does not have its own dictionary, in the language itself, is at a huge disadvantage. Why not propose the construction of “wiki” dictionaries (wiktionaries) for all our South African languages, co-operatively, on the Internet? The wiki principle means that anybody who cares can contribute to the work, from any connected PC, anywhere. This idea comes out of an interaction with a visitor to South Africa from the Basque Country (Euskal Herria) a member of the liberation movement Batasuna named Aitor Txarterina. Aitor told me that these oppressed people, whose language is threatened, conduct study circles in the language, with a “social objective”. Like a Communist University language section. The illegal raids on Jacob Zuma’s properties and on the offices of his lawyers by the NPA/Scorpions, after they had already charged Zuma, are causing the goggas’ corruption case against JZ to fall apart. The claim of a “prima facie” corruption case against Zuma was a complete lie when it was made by the then National Director of Public Prosecuations, Bulelani Ngcuka (husband of the woman who was given Jacob Zuma’s job as Deputy President) nearly three years ago. After Zuma had forced them last year to name a date for the trial, the goggas went on a fishing expedition using Judge Ngoepe’s signature on a document that allowed them to seize “any records” of “any nature” that “might have a bearing on the investigation”. See linked document below and thanks to the Mail and Guardian for telling it like it is for once. Also from the Mail and Guardian, in-depth reporting on the three so-called “cross-border” areas where unilateral administrative action has enraged the population. As one Moutse man said: “We voted for the ANC and now it doesn’t even bother to inform us when it makes important decisions that directly affect our lives. I thought this was a democracy.” Quite. Links: Apartheid Gates, Israeli-only crossings, Counterpunch (528 words) Zuma goes for the KO, Mail and Guardian (528 words) Khutsong, Moutse, Matatiele-Maluti, Mail and Guardian (2019 words)