As it is in the South, so shall it be in the North

I know there are many people blogging about the ANC recalling Thabo Mbeki, so I won’t take up any more virtual space on that topic here, because I have already …

Sticking with politics, however, I have noticed that the world tends to have something against intelligent people … like Thabo Mbeki. I am not entirely sure if there is a prejudice against intelligent people, or whether there is a tendency to use people’s intelligence against them. This observation of mine is not based on scientific study, but on mere dipping-into-the-newspapers.

Case non-study South Africa: in the beginning – ca. 1999 – people liked Thabo Mbeki. There were disgruntled mutterings about an exile running South Africa, but those were kept to a minimum and generally people were happy that he was president. There was an understanding that South Africa had an intellectual president.

Case non-study United States of America: in the beginning – ca. 2007 – people liked Barack Obama. At first there were doubts about a black man running for president of the United States, but then he proved to be more popular than Hillary Clinton – a woman! – and the mood changed and people were happy to support his bid for president of the US as the Democratic Party’s candidate. In The New Yorker of March 2008 Obama was commended for his intelligence and for his style in Talk of the Town:

Obama’s ability to contemplate the contradictions in Americans of all colors without going mad – to be made stronger by them – accounts for his power as a politician. He also pays the electorate the supreme compliment of assuming that it, too, can appreciate complexity.

I was buoyed by this take on Obama’s use of complexity. It made me think back to Mbeki’s ideas on HIV and AIDS and how South Africans did not appreciate Mbeki’s use of complexity, nor did we appreciate that Mbeki expected that we could appreciate complexity.

Case non-study South Africa: enter Jacob Zuma. He likes to sing and dance. South Africans warm to him because he’s apparently not an intellectual.

Case non-study United States of America: enter Sarah Palin. She can see Russia from her house. Middle American mothers warm to her because she has children and because she’s not an intellectual like Obama.

Case non-study South Africa: South Africa wants to be led by a man they would not call intelligent.

Case non-study United States of America: America wants to be led by a woman no-one would call intelligent.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the world that is suspicious of intelligence; maybe it’s just South Africa and the States.

Unconstitutional Practices

Another Saturday. Warm enough to do some washing. Oh, the President of South Africa has been recalled.

There are some things that are not clear to me, though, and I hope that someone more informed than myself will be able to help me out: if Thabo Mbeki is being recalled as President of South Africa by the ANC because he has been implicated in unconstitutional practices, then where does that leave Jacob Zuma who has also been implicated in unconstitutional practices, viz. that of accepting a bribe from Shabir Shaik? And if the implication of someone in the ANC executive in something unconstitutional is intolerable to the ANC, then why is Jacob Zuma allowed to be president of the ANC?

To misquote Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: something is rotten in the state of South Africa.

Charly’s Bakery

I had been planning to write about serious stuff, but I found myself at Charly’s Bakery on Roeland Street in Cape Town and being a visual person, I was distracted by the colourful cakes and golden pastries – and being a person who likes food, I was distracted by the cakes and pastries. So, I decided to post some images from the bakery.

As one does when one is out about town, one eavesdrops on what people are saying. As is the case with eavesdropping, though, one can never be too sure of the details, so all I can say, then, as a social journalist, is that I think that Charly’s Bakery will be moving to Canterbury Street and I think they will be moving into the old Beinkenstadt Bookshop building at the lower end of Canterbury Street on the Castle side of Town.

CHARLY’S GALLERY (all photos with my cell phone)

Inside Charly's

Cake Display

Petit Fours

Chocolate Cupcakes

Milk Tarts and Muffins

My Decadent and Unfinished Brownie

Outside Charly's