The Putrification of South African Politics

The most advanced enlightened constitution in the world, a leading light among democracies, a truly equitable document providing a framework for good governance and equal opportunity for all people to share in the wealth of the Nation.  Sounds great doesn’t it? Its sweeping and dramatic and hints at a society where fundamental human rights will be observed above State interests, allowing the people to develop and prosper right?

We all hoped so when we voted ANC in 1994, the heady euphoria, the feeling and belief we could accomplish anything in a country where a Muslim could be minister of something, and a minister still drove his beat up Jetta around Cape Town himself. Government was accessible and worked for the people.  Other Nations envied us from a distance, wishing they had the harmony and success that we did, all living together, and working to build what would become a truly great Nation in Africa, a feat hitherto unreachable in a continent plagued by corruption, violence, human trafficking, war crimes and all manner of human rights abuses.

We were going to rise well above all that, and prove to the world that we had the indomitable spirit that would prove them all wrong. We were a nation reconciled, intent on building a better future for all of our people. So in order to combat racism, the government started to enact racist laws.  I know who knew you could fix racism by being racist? Interestingly at this point, not one member of the international community that had campaigned so vociferously for the abolition of apartheid actually said anything about the resurgence of racism in South Africa. The much vaunted ideals of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which had become the rallying point for the anti-apartheid movement,  suddenly became collateral damage in a much more insidious conflict, fought well away from the prying eyes of the pro ANC activists, who nodded wisely about restorative actions and justice, dispensed under what could only be seen as dubious circumstances.

We hoped the new administration would address these things but alas Mbeki, for all his diminutive size, was no statesman. In order to garner support among his own party he proceeded to further tarnish the reputation of the country and the spirit of the constitution, by not only endorsing the enacted racist legislation, but by sponsoring additional racist legislation which it was clear he hoped would secure him a second term in office. The silence form the rest of the world had by now become a feature of the South African political landscape, it seemed that the rest of the world was done with liberating South Africa, and very little interest other than perhaps taking most of our GDP in somewhat shady business deals was shown by the rest world in our progress.

The African National Congress elective conference in Polokwane in 2007, was the real eye opener for many people, and the death of democracy in South Africa. The lead up to Polokwane and the recall of a sitting President demonstrated that South Africa was run by the 2800 delegates that had voted for Zuma, and that they would stop at nothing to loot the country of every resource available. Perhaps coincidentally at that point our GDP growth suddenly slowed down, foreign investors driven away by the largely racist requirements of doing business in South Africa. Government became largely about looting the public purse for the benefit of cronies and to repay political favours, the President became a corporation, grabbing shares in companies, and ensuring state tenders were allocated to them, frequently without any tender process, corruption became the accepted order of the day. The putrification of the government rapidly spread to lower tier government positions, particularly in the provinces, where gross maladministration was allowed to flourish for as long as the funds lasted. Abuses became the daily norm, and instead of accountability, the government chose rather to defend the abuses as rightful entitlements. Motorcades of blue light flashing expensive vehicles containing minor functionaries became the daily spectacle on the roads, intimidating and threatening anyone who would not scuttle out of the way of the plenipotentiary in the back seat. Accidents resulted in deaths and maiming of victims, without much accountability for the perpetrators, some cases taking 5 years to resolve or more. Compensation for victims in these cases has never been recorded.

The destruction of the economy is well underway, instead of stopping corruption, the current regime is making reporting on corruption a criminal offence, the introduction of the Protection of State Information Bill, will effectively make whistle-blowing punishable by 25 years in jail. With that as a backdrop, the way is open for mass looting of taxpayer funds, another arms deal, Toll Road Projects, re-capitalisation of the railways, all work to go to either companies owned by government players, or to companies willing to inflate prices and provide substantial kickbacks. In part this feeding and looting frenzy may be driven by the knowledge that the ANC will be elected to power for another term by the current electorate, or it could be just playing out the African theme of viable countries turning into dictatorships like Zimbabwe, never to recover economically within the lifetime of the dictators. To call South Africa a democracy would be to ignore the most of the criteria that make countries democratic. A plebiscite of 2800 voters among 48 million is hardly democracy. The hoodwinking of the majority of voters through propaganda and outright lies to secure the public vote, though the intervention of social media’ has been reduced and vociferous reactions to certain public issues have caused the government to back down and show the public that public opinion counts for something at least.

The crippling of the Judiciary has been accomplished by electing judges who are openly pro-ANC, and are elected in the understanding that they will called on to deploy their skills [sometimes questionable] to suit the party. Irrespective of the legality and feasibility of the requests, this was glaringly illustrated by the Willem Heath input into the quashing of the rape and corruption cases against Zuma. Who quick to learn from the past, promptly ensured that should he ever be charged again in the next few years, the effectiveness of the country’s high courts would be stymied, and he would in all probability never face prosecution. Not surprisingly, very few jurists are accepting nominations for the high courts. After the installation of a judge of dubious integrity, who among other things admitted to god having told him he would be elected to the Constitutional Court as chief Justice. Subsequent to his controversial appointment he has tried to force fellow judges to attend religious instruction events, irrespective if they wanted or not. Transformation has become the buzzword of those seeking to implement structural changes to the courts, effectively crippling them and ensuring if nothing else, the short term survival of the corrupt cadres, who might be interested in evading prosecution long enough to secure their retirement.

The biggest issue and the means to fix it, remains the absolute widespread corruption in all tiers of government, which for the meantime keeps the media frenziedly occupied, with daily and even hourly exposure of instances of government corruption, costing taxpayers Billions of Rand every month. Every day brings news of a fresh corrupt scheme concocted with the express purpose of defrauding the taxpayer. Government commissioned a National Development Plan [NDP] and Hundreds of Millions of Rand later and an impressive 400 page report later, it becomes apparent that the NDP is yet another crony vehicle for cadres who missed the previous gravy trains.

That pipe of trash that someone smoked

The Pirate Bay's press release, Interesting in the extreme.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for

the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edison’s patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North American East coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disney's biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.

If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complaining about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition.

We've proven that their existence in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.

We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a Swedish friend said this:

The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.

They want to make the internet into a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers.

The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the American people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.

To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and TV shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complaining that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

The great Linux Noob Experiment

The Objective: For a total Linux Noob to experience the Operating Sys. as a hard-core Windows  user, to be open minded and experience the software, with the objective of deploying it in a business environment. 

The Machine:           My venerable HP / Compaq 6910p

The Specifications:  Duo Core 2.4 GHz, 32 bit, RAM reserved for Linux: 2.9 GB

Install spec:              Dual Boot, as per Ubuntu 11.10

Display:                    1440 X 900 pix’s

Installation

After downloading the ISO file from Ubuntu mirror servers, I decided to burn it to disc, using Power ISO, a long-time favourite for this type of work.  The initial objective was to use the disc to carry out the installation from disc as per the Ubuntu site suggestion. BUT, all that windows user experience and laziness kicked in and in short: Power ISO was used to mount the image in virtual drive and the install was run from there. 

The dual boot / boot manager process worried me, as I have not done one of these since XP stopped being what all the cool kids played with. My trepidation was unwarranted and my concerns amounted to precisely nothing. It occurred to me that the initial installation was probably better than a lot of Windows installs I have done in the past.

On to the main installation which followed on from the dual boot setup, seamlessly, funnily enough I was expecting to see the enter license information here portion of the installation, and then I remembered that Ubuntu is free software, like Android OS, its cousin once or twice removed, but never forcefully. So far the Linux experiment had cost me nothing at all. I brightened up considerably, bracing myself the all the horrors of open source software and the need to learn to write code to make it work.

None of that happened. It installed, no problem, detected the hardware, no problem, connected to the WIFI network in the office, no problem. Updated it-self, no problem. Offered various User interface options, some of my online/ real life friends had suggested Gnome 3 User Interface; I used the vanilla version of the Gnome 3, works beautiful. On to the serious stuff.

First Impressions of Applications

I thought I would need a mail client, so I downloaded Thunderbird from Mozilla, it worked had no built in calendar. Turns out Ubuntu carries an Office bundle which includes Evolution Mail and Calendar, caused me to uninstall Thunderbird, with mental apologies to Mozilla, as I like their applications, but Evolution just works better. The other Libre Office applications all seem to do the job, all seem to be compatible with Microsoft docs. Interestingly, I was able to import .PST files into Evolution Mail and Calendar, so 8.4 Mb of address book was imported via the network from a shared folder, no problems. Oh did I forget to say that the network connection was painless? Consisted of inputting the network password after enabling the MAC address on the router? 

The next major test was how well and how effectively 3G connectivity could be established. Bearing in mind the somewhat diabolical nature of W7 with 3G devices [ Firmware, Network interfaces, general connectivity, yada yada, generally experienced with network USB type dongles] The latest Huawei E36 HSDPA+ modem from MTN was inserted into the USB port,  and it appeared that nothing was happening. As I went to start muttering and fiddling with the network settings, the dialog window said: You are now connected to the GSM network.  So much for struggling with installations from MTN, to get control of the modem..

A minute or two later, the experience gained in setting up the modem in windows, was utilised to get into the network device settings and I had HSDPA+ functioning and was surfing away and downloading mail to the machine. And sending responses via the Evolution mail client, which had been no harder to set up than any version of Outlook. All the expected option were in the Evolution mail client, it seemed like a direct clone of Outlook, spam filters, junk mail filters all in evidence. No problems there.

Next, the browsers, present in the install was Firefox, worked without issues, imported my Bookmarks from the windows version, as a html file, no problem, same with Opera for Linux, no problem. Ubuntu has also come with Epiphany web browser, which I opened and it seemed to work as well as any of the other two browsers, no problems there.

Then I had a brainstorm, why not try Chrome to see if I can break something? Off to the Ubuntu cyber store and Chromium duly installed. Its fast! It’s faster than FF or Opera on the same sites. Definitely faster, so where to from here, more tests or just use it for a while? 

In the spirit of using it for a while I also tried variety of twitter clients, this area needs work! The best of the lot was Turpial, which worked most of the time. It was susceptible to becoming occasionally unresponsive.

Skype works, no issues to report, a variety of messengers, work well, supporting Gtalk, Mxit, MSN chat and all of the other suspects, all work on my accounts.

Movie players /streamers that came with Ubuntu all played my clips, audio and video.

Observations

The whole package works well, it’s easy to install, its user friendly if you don’t expect a Windows clone, take the time to figure out what goes where, it will make the experience more pleasant. The Linux OS appears to me to have a lot to offer, in some ways it was far easier than Windows, in others, I just had to learn new menus options, like anything that’s different it can cause frustration if you’re impatient with it.

The really big question for last: Would I go out into the wild armed only with a Linux machine to do business? 

Long Answer: I have many years of experience on Windows machines, enabling me to resolve many issues on the fly, from that aspect I would not be comfortable yet, BUT with a few more WEEKS of Linux exposure, I have no doubt that I would be comfortable to switch Operating Systems and not become frustrated because of functionality issues. 

The other issue of course is cost, Cost of W7 professional compared to cost of Ubuntu 11.10 is a strong motivator to people who rather limit their spend on software licences, but don’t forget to bear in mind that not ALL applications are directly translatable from W7 to Linux, TweetDeck is only available for Win and Mac and it was the one app I really missed. 

Many people opt for Hootsuite,  browser-based cross-platform, no issues there.

Lastly, if you’re the kind of person who abhors change and resists it at every turn [still using that old Nokia 6310i ?] rather don’t get involved in try Linux, avoid the stress. If however you are not averse to mildly different things and would like to pay nothing for your next OS, then by all means, go for it, and I hope my experience will be valuable to you.

Happy Centenary or Something..

To refer to South Africans as long suffering, would be the same as referring to elephants as heavy and smelly, both statements are true, but both are stating the obvious. As I’m not writing about elephants right now, I’ll restrict my observations and opinions to my fellow non-elephants, the long suffering South African.

I have a deep love and consideration for my fellow long suffering South Africans, who have waited patiently for freedom, economic upliftment and an honest government for well over 100 years. Except for one brief moment after 1994 when suddenly the sun shone on all the people of South Africa, and we felt that together we could accomplish anything, very little has changed for the people of our Nation.

The Duality of bogus Democracies.

Up until the end of apartheid, South Africans laboured under the impression that they had every say over their futures and obediently flocked to the polls to rubber stamp the apartheid regime’s get back into power card, in the belief they were doing the right thing by voting them back into power. How different would they have felt, if they had known, for instance; that every election was rigged by the incumbent racists of the time? Would they still have had such an unshakeable belief in the ‘leaders’ had they known the depth of the deception and deceit perpetrated on them to keep them compliant? The undisclosed amounts of taxpayers’ funds used to make shady arms dealers extremely rich, the millions upon millions evaporated as sanction busting, when in truth, most imports came in at inflated prices with kickbacks paid into Swiss bank accounts.

Of course under the historical minority rule, it was easy to suffocate the details of these massive frauds and to use the most basic of scare tactics to ensure continued secrecy, Rooi gevaar and Swart gevaar were terms calculated to cause the most ardent detractor and objector to cower in a corner and be thankful for his sip of brandy in the knowledge that it may well be his last.  The people cowered under sustained repressive conditions where the dictatorial tyrants of the day used every means at their disposal to quash resistance and to extend their reign of repression as long as possible.

Fast Forward to today, what has changed? 

The most ardent transformationists, will no doubt yell that transformation from a functioning society to a failed state has taken too long, and that the wealth of the past has not survived in sufficient quantity while being stolen in the present. Our society is dominated by criminals in suits, passing themselves off as the government. The very people they keep promising to help, the poor masses, are getting poorer at an alarming rate.  We share the dubious honour of being among the most unequal countries on the planet, as measured by the Gini Coefficient. This is not due to the masses being downtrodden by the rich, but by the rich kleptocrat classes becoming greedier and amassing more wealth at the cost of the poorer middle classes. The middle classes carry the brunt of the taxation which is siphoned off by the kleptocrats in the ruling party. The 70% of the nation are the very poor who live on less than One US Dollar a day, are kept pliant by social grants which keep them voting for the current kleptocrats. 

Education, the key to any Nations development and growth, is kept at farcical levels, producing vote cows, just educated enough to vote for the kleptocrats at every election. The kleptocrats, have become an army of professional blacks, admitted to by prominent writers and thought leaders, they only mission in life to keep the grand theft going for as long as possible. From the worlds most hailed constitution to the lowest form of racism in 17 short years, the labour and employment laws have been redrafted to embrace “fair discrimination” equating to smearing faeces on the face of justice. Where the bill of rights and the founding statement of the Liberation movement, specifically excluded racist bias, the amendments to the constitution make them law. Human rights it appears have no place in the kleptocracy of South Africa.

So what has changed in the last 100 years you ask?

Certainly not apartheid, it’s still going as strong as ever, it may have changed masters, but the dogma is still the same. The blue light brigades are however louder and far more aggressive, and they have scant regard for killing people on the road. Don’t forget to get out of the way of the kleptocrats.

The corruption has escalated to heights no one dared dream possible, no one talks about millions any more, when it comes to taxpayer funded extravagances, the buzzword is Billions comrades. Arrogance has escalated all out of proportion as well, comes with the ease of legislated corruption, no doubt. 

So, until money runs out like in Zimbabwe, Happy Birthday to the ANC…

NOT SO MARVELLOUS MAIDS - how to chase away customers.

Not so Marvellous Maids.

With the regular maids service closed for December break, and two teenage boys in full “tidy” mode for the duration, we resolved to contract a once off char-lady to do some cleaning to keep the house safe for the parents. We contacted the local branch of Marvellous Maids and after paying R250 in advance made an appointment for a char-lady to spend the day at the house, to do general routine cleaning and some clothes steaming.

The char-lady arrived at 9h00, was shown the areas needing attention, and also informed that she should ask for anything she needed. As I was working in the study, she was also told that as soon as he was ready to clean the study I would move to facilitate her work. So far so, good, I then had to leave the house, and left the char-lady to continue her tasks. One of the boys was there with her, in case she needed any assistance with materials or directions to where anything required might be kept.

On our return later that afternoon, the char-lady had already left. As the service had been pre-paid we made a cursory inspection of the house, to ascertain that all was as expected. Despite my protracted absence the study had not been cleaned at all. Neither had the clothes steaming been completed, nor had any of the dustbins been cleared, annoying as this had been the motivation to contract the work out in the first place. As the service had been paid for in advance, there was no option but to contact the company and convey our dissatisfaction with the service. 

From the outset, the contact person at Marvellous Maids, a Mr Sipho Kunene was not only difficult to contact, he was defensive, and as the matter developed he became downright abusive. My initial contact with him, in which I conveyed my dissatisfaction, was answered with a mail that plainly informed me that I was the cause of the incomplete work, as he did not know that I had in fact not been in the study for most of the day.

He went on to offer me a 10% discount on the next visit, over which I had severe doubts as to whether I wanted it or not. When I rejected the offer and reminded him that the initial service had not been satisfactory and that he should address that issue first, he upped the offer to 25% discount on the next visit. He added: “our final offer is 25%. This offer is not in anyway an admission of guilt on our part but as a remedy to the situation as our valued customer. The fact of the matter is that the char lady in question tried her best to complete her duties but was hindered by circumstances beyond her control.”

When I wrote back and explained that all I wanted was to have the service properly rendered as contracted initially and that I saw that remedy as being a visit at no charge, Mr Kunene launched a tirade about underprivileged communities and that I was in fact trying to: “takes us back to the years we all do not want to think about.” The race card it seems is never too far out of reach. As to my stated intention to share my experiences with others on http://Hellopeter.com Mr Kunene had this to say: “I am sorry hellopeter.com will only make us more popular than you thought. No Thanks”

My final communication to Mr Kunene was to state that all I required in terms of the Consumer Protection Act was to receive the service I had paid for but not received in full, his reply was: “I am sorry that I have to deny you this service. It constitutes Human Rights abuse.” Mr Kunene did not elaborate whose human rights were being abused in his opinion, in terms of not getting what I paid for, I would assert that my rights as a consumer had been abused. Clearly in exercising my consumer rights I had in his opinion wandered over to abuse someone’s human rights.

Marvellous Maids? I don’t think so.

The National Planning Commission and Other Myths and Fables.

Trevor Manuel’s NPC and his NPC jam on the net, highlighted how desperately short of cognitive power we are as a nation. I spent some 8 to 10 hours participating in the NPC jam, what alarmed me the most was the still blatantly racist emotions and opinions being expressed by people who had at that point enjoyed some 17 years of freedom, under a government they had chosen. The participants all seemed to want to be rewarded for the accident of their birth pigmentation. A notion no doubt fostered and reinforced by the previous three corrupt governments as part of their long term strategy to remain in power, by keeping the largely ignorant, electorate labouring under the fear of a possibility of return to apartheid, should the current party be removed from power. Understandably most of the suggestions and proposals seemed to be aligned with continuing the racist fear mongering and highlighted the dangers of a return to white controlled apartheid.

No one seems to have stopped to consider the demographics of a truly democratically elected opposition government, and how it would impact on the well-being of the majority, if not ALL South African people. Without over labouring the point, the demographics are simple. Any party wishing to become a majority would have to be representative of ALL the people, there is no way on earth, or in South Africa for that matter, for a return to power of a minority racist party. We as a people would NEVER consider a return to minority rule. It stands to reason, that even if the ANC were to lose the next election, the government elected by the people, would be a majority government, and in contrast to the current corrupt structures, would not be afforded an opportunity to descend into the kind of all-pervasive carefully concealed power mongering and corrupt practices that have taken South Africa as an economy to the brink of failure, due to gross government mismanagement and corruption.

Seen against that backdrop, the NPC has little hope of success, because the entrenched cadres of corruption at all levels of government, have no interest in any change that would affect their vested interests and corrupt deals with government. Any meaningful change that would truly benefit the Nation of South Africa is diluted and reshaped to protect current interests. As with many other African failed states the inevitable collapse is delayed for as long as possible to allow the members of the Kleptocracy as much time as possible to leech as much money as possible from the system before it collapses, to allow them to live their lives of luxury in a another country, benevolent to the their excesses, and happy to be the custodians of their Billions of Dollars, unjustly gouged from their people.

We not only need the NPC’s plans to be implemented, we desperately need a new mind-set not only from the voters who have traditionally voted the very people who carefully maintain the mass voting public in poverty, while becoming fabulously rich from doing so, but a mind-set change among the intellectuals who for some perverse reason, refuse to see how supporting a structurally corrupt regime in public, keeps the majority of the people in abject poverty. The very people who despite their education and obvious enjoyment of the privileges stemming from blatantly racist practices will like the elite above them, try to maintain the status quo for as long as possible, little realising that when the masses wake up and make radical changes to the sitting government, they will not be spared in the ensuing turmoil and their carefully protected privileges may well also disappear overnight. As is the case with most artificially privileged classes their privileges will be the first to evaporate under a new order.

We cannot continue see people die of starvation in a country with Africa’s largest GDP, just as we cannot continue to use legislation to keep the people deprived of a say in the running of the country, and expect 70% of those people to live on less than a Dollar a day, while government spends Billions in public funds on hotel accommodation, aircraft charter flights, shady arms deals, dubious global events like COP17 and police VIP protection, to keep the masses away from them. The government and not civil society is the responsible agent in maintaining the chasm between the rich and the poor. The very same government seeks to pass laws to remain in power for as long possible by concealing the evidence of their malfeasance by passing draconian information laws in the kangaroo court concealed as a public forum of government.

The vast majority of South Africans are kept uninformed of the real issues, while being mercilessly indoctrinated to maintain the current gross inequities being visited upon them by the current regime. For every person that can see the injustices, falls the duty of educating those that can’t see how the exploitation and lies are keeping them in a state of arrested development.

My experiences at Mellodramatik Murkathon South Africa. Part 4

 A multi-part story of deceit and corruption.

Repeated Fraud

During the course of the events described above, Jester attempted to obtain bank statements from one of the banks that the company transacted with, under false pretenses. Simply put, he attempted to use a signature card which was 5 years out of date to collect the statements from the bank. The bank called to verify the statement delivery, and alerted me to the actions of Jester. The statements were not handed over to him, and the matter reported the company’s attorneys for inclusion into report to the registrar of companies.

The fraud however was only just beginning; shortly after that episode I became aware of a fraudulent meeting of the shareholders of the company. The said meeting had never taken place, at the address and date and time mentioned on the resolution arising out of the fictitious meeting. The resolution was to remove me from office, suspend me and replace me with Jester, no surprises there. Fraud was once again alleged, along with gross dishonesty. A successful application was made to the Johannesburg high court, with costs to remove the resolution from the records of the company, and of the registrar of companies as well.

At this point I resolved to sue for damages as none of the allegations had been proved, and no investigation had ever been carried, only the empty accusations stood. So an action claiming 2 million Euros was started in the Johannesburg high court.

It came to my attention via Mincehere that he intended coming to South Africa again to ostensibly finish his kangaroo court exercise, and I resolved to use this to serve the summons on him for the civil claim for damages, and to inform him of the courts overturning of his fraudulent self-election to the board of directors. In true cowardly fashion, Mincehere strove to conceal his intentions until the very last moment regarding the real reason for his visit to South Africa, which was to once again attempt to suspend me, for the same reason as the year before, without ever having proved the previous claim. This time however he was fully under the impression that he had the power base, by virtue of his self-appointment to the board of MMSA, he was still blissfully unaware of the order granted by the Johannesburg high court removing him and his cronies Gamez and Jester from the board. 

In his arrogance or incompetence, he ordered me to collect him from his Johannesburg hotel so that he could then suspend me at the offices of Melodramatik. I duly collected him some two hours after the appointed time due to excessively heavy traffic that day, and transported him to the offices of MMSA in Booysens Reserve. His opening statement was to produce another letter of suspension almost identical to the one produced the year prior. I then questioned him as to his jurisdiction empowering him to deliver the suspension to me an employee and director of MMSA. He haughtily informed me that I was no longer a director of MMSA, and he was now the new MD of MMSA. In the same breath he offered to negotiate a separation package, offering six months’ salary and all of my accumulated commissions, which according to him, had not yet been credited to me. I questioned him regarding his authority to negotiate on behalf of the parent company, and he looked at me and lied that he had negotiating authority. So to test him I named a figure I was willing to accept. He replied the figure was totally unacceptable, and in that case I was once again suspended and I must leave the premises immediately and hand over my keys and computers and remote to Jester, his accomplice at this point. At that point I think, that I laughed at him, and handed him correspondence detailing that he was in fact not a director of MMSA, not the MD of MMSA, and I called the police and had him and Jester escorted off the premises. 

The following day, after a visit to a customer, I returned to the office to be confronted by Mincehere, Jester, a lawyer, and a hired gunman, who informed me that his function (while opening his jacket so I could see the holstered weapon) was to remove me from the premises’ by force if necessary. I invited the gunman to go ahead and remove me, he declined, and so I once again called the police reaction unit, gave the Captain commanding the unit a copy of the court order, and once again removed Mincehere from the premises. This time I provided the parent company in the USA with a comprehensive report detailing Mincehere’s actions in South Africa. Other than a confirmation receipt I was given no other indication that the matter was receiving any attention.

On Mincehere’s departure, the lawyer representing him, the hired gunman and Jester handed over an undated notification of a shareholders meeting to be held a month from then, all attempts at a suspension had now ceased. The notifications of the meeting were invalid, but at that point I had already decided to terminate my relationship with Melodramatik, I decided to attempt to negotiate an exit package with the legal representative who was channeling all of the communication between me and the company. Leigh Saunders, the lawyer then proceeded to play for time, in attempt to hold the meeting and remove me from office.  I had consulted with our company lawyer, who also represented me in this matter, and I devised a strategic exit from the company. 

The day before the “shareholders meeting” was due to take place, I received by fax, another apparently fraudulent document. This was to be the piece de resistance of the series of fraudulent documents in this matter. It was a voting proxy, issued by Mincehere to himself, granting himself voting proxy in the meeting of the shareholders of MMSA. In this document he claimed to not only be a shareholder of Melodramatik Germany, but of MMSA as well. To make the fraud complete, he had already voted on all three items on the agenda to remove me from office, and install himself and his accomplices in my place. The meeting never took place. The paper trail was merely to withstand scrutiny by the registrar of companies, on receiving this document I resolved to execute my exit strategy. I left the next day, without notice, and without any successor to hand over to, and this fact caused me some consternation, but I accepted that I had done as much as I could under the circumstances. Notification of the only board members final resolution was served on the lawyers representing Mincehere by telefax, and in true Mincehere style, nothing happened for over a week. This effectively absolved me of any claims by the company against me for any matters relating to my departure.

Interestingly the time Jester took up office and began once again to utilize fraudulent means to achieve his aims and objectives, the first was to use my old e-mail address to send mail to recipients unknown, to give the impression that I was still in office. The second was to telephone Nedbank card division and to attempt to make changes on credit card accounts belonging to me. The third was to call MTN mobile networks and to attempt to change the bank account debit order details on my cell phone account.

It appears that to Jester, the end justifies the means no matter what. However when it comes to keeping deadlines, and scrutinizing documents properly, he falls woefully short, and his lack of attention to detail has cost the company the use of a delivery vehicle which he failed to agree to a transfer to the company in the time allotted for this.

His lack of administrative capability extends to failing to pay out the leave pay held by the company on my account, this transaction is now some week and a half in arrears, and will be reported to the department of labor at the earliest opportunity.

Further misrepresentations

It appears that Jester also misrepresented himself to several banks, issuing what can only be described as illegitimate instructions, without any mandate from the company shareholders. Included in the raft of doubtful mandated instructions was a repeated refusal to pay for services and expenses incurred by the company, on a credit card issued to me. It has come to light some two years later that, the instructions he issued were without mandate and the bank was given a mandate two months after the issues of the instructions from Jester which prevented the settlement of due expenses.

Among the due expenses are included some ZAR300,000 in leave pay, and ZAR 330,000 in commissions. Jester was also party to the launching of a lawsuit to the value of ZAR1,500,000 as counterclaim to the Euro 2,000,000 for defamation, against Melodramatik and Mincehere. The lodging of the court action by Jester also had the effect of freezing ZAR 660,000 in a pension fund due to me.

Ironically, no one from Melodramatik has ever considered how ludicrous it was to try to take action against an employee, because in their own words: “an estimate did not match a projection” when it came to an annual budget.