Whitewashing the documentary

Whitewashing is a metaphor used to describe the practice of glossing over facts to create an overly skewed perspective craftily engineered to misrepresent the facts. Its quite understandable that western media’s dominance is bound to create stories that tend to resonate with their target audience, after all, as the old African proverb goes: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter”.  Filmmakers of documentary style genre, like docudramas however, should at least exercise restraint in their use of dramatic license to at least maintain documentaries to serve its true purpose - a reliable historical record.  Even though docudramas are dramatized re-enactments of actual events, sometimes even filling in gaps, they still need to adhere to the basic facts.

This year, two documentary style movies, The Impossible and Searching for Sugarman, have taken whitewashing to extremes. Here the collective experience of our diverse world is hijacked by telling stories exclusively through the lens of white privilege - a middle class British family in The Impossible and two  middle aged white South African men in Searching for Sugarman. Even though these movies are technically well made, the dangers of whitewashing are brought into into sharp focus.  

After watching “The Impossible”, a recent docudrama about the devastating Boxing Day tsunami that killed almost a quarter million Asians, one can’t help but wonder at the chutzpah of the filmmaker to totally ignore the magnitude of death and destruction suffered by the Asian majority. Asians that do appear in the movie are relegated to insignificant roles, almost voiceless, lurking, almost cowering, in the background. This flies in the face of reality,  where many Thai who were  instrumental to the survival of many white tourists that survived the calamity, were totally ignored. Furthermore, the magnitude of the calamity was barely mentioned, if at all! Years from now, many who see this movie will certainly have a warped perspective of this cataclysmic tsunami. The Guardian’s review and to a lesser extent the New York Times, raises this egregious social injustice while the rest of mainstream media pretends it does not exist. Even the lead characters Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, in that article, offer disingenuous excuses to justify their complicity in this whitewashing of a tragedy of this magnitude. Seems like the desire for fame and fortune once again trumps the truth.

Searching for Sugarman is another recent documentary that brings to life beautifully, but oh so woefully inaccurately, the nostalgia of growing up during the 70s and 80s under apartheid. At  time when the ANC was rapidly achieving their goal of making the apartheid state ungovernable, it was the relentless waves of student protests in the 80s that opened the eyes of the world to  the brutality of apartheid regime in its final throes. The movie glosses over the fact that it was really the black (African, Coloured and Indian) school kids that initiated, persevered in the long march to freedom. The majority of black kids sacrificed their education and in many cases, their lives, when they rose up against the might of the apartheid military state. The fact that white schools never participated in these protests is totally ignored in this movie which seemed dead set on whitewashing the liberation struggle.

The movie hypes the strange paradox of Rodriguez’s popularity confined to a South African fan base but unknown in his hometown of Detroit. The fact totally omitted in the movie was that Rodriguez was actually immensely popular in Australia and New Zealand as well and even toured these countries with big name bands e.g. Mignight Oil. Conjuring up an “unexplainable phenomenon” by disregarding obvious facts is just plain dishonesty.  

The far-fetched explanation that "the first opposition to apartheid" among white youth was influenced by Rodriguez's  anti-establishment message or the provocative lyrics in a conservative white Christian society like South Africa also makes little sense. In reality, the first opposition to apartheid from high school students were brutally crushed by live ammunition as seen in the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Furthermore, the mass student uprisings of the 80s drew incredible inspiration from freedom songs from all over the world, the likes of Pink Floyd, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Marley etc., and many African struggle songs.

Ironically, this documentary fixates exclusively on the white audience in concerts staged in Cape Town - now seen by many as the last bastion of apartheid. The reality of course, was that the Rodriquez phenomenon was catalyzed by black university students and was only later embraced by a few sympathetic white university students - a small minority of their overall student population who were trying to make sense of these school uprisings that they only heard about through the news filtering in from their relatives overseas, since the apartheid state had total control over mainstream media.

The Rodriguez effect touched all young South Africans not just privileged white youth since his music carried universal themes that transcended race and class. The conspicuous absence of people of colour in a movie that supposedly focuses on the effect of music on a black liberation struggle, is strange indeed. This is yet another example of how reality is whitewashed by moviemakers bent on peddling the “white saviour” theme - that old Hollywood prescription that seems to guarantee box-office success!

The “white saviour” theme, is yet another form of whitewashing, peddled by western media since the dawn of the movie industry. However, its now metastasized to all genres, even documentaries! A cursory analysis of early Disney movies shows how people of color and foreign accents are routinely stereotyped . From the gilded days of Hollywood, to today’s corporate dominance of mainstream media, the white experience has become normative in spite of our world that’s rapidly becoming a huge melting pot. This perplexing paradox reveals the giant blind spots that have now calcified in western culture. Heck, even India’s Bollywood prefers casting light-skinned Indians in leading roles - another twisted, yet predictable, manifestation of the “white saviour” phenomenon given its own centuries old domination by British Imperialism.

The winds of change, however, are blowing. Independent filmmakers are breaking the stranglehold of Hollywood’s big studios and technology weakening the entrenched outdated business model of the entire media industry. Quentin Tarantino is one of the lone moviemakers that has courageously broken the mold with black actors, largely marginalized by Hollywood, by casting them into powerful leading roles in movies like “Pulp Fiction”, “Jackie Brown” and “Django Unchained”.  Similarly, Ang Lee’s recent movies, e.g. “Life of Pi”  attempts to reverse the age old stereotyping of Asian actors by western media. Here in SA, Gillian Schutte’s recent eye-opening article on the SA film industry highlights the danger of the hegemony of our local film industry by the old guard and the difficulty of breaking into exclusive club dominated by old white males. More black movie producers, directors, writers etc. are needed to create a diversity that reflects the real world.

Whitewashing propagates an insidious form of cultural imperialism, that gives rise to stereotypes and prejudices that ultimately feeds the false ideology of white supremacy. The cumulative effect of whitewashing results in hundreds of thousands of Asians that lost their lives through the tsunami or the millions of blacks that lived, struggled and died under apartheid, to become the voiceless, the unseen, the non-existent. History has shown us that propaganda is invariably a precursor to the greatest evils unleashed on humankind and these documentaries that usurp ownership of the facts, is tantamount to a brazen invasion and occupation of our collective consciousness.

As someone wisely said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." At a minimum, we are duty bound to guard against the abhorrent practice of whitewashing documentaries by speaking out and fingering the perpetrators.

The long arc of history bends towards land restitution

Yep, I've taken the liberties with Martin Luther King's famous quote "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice...", but I'm sure he'll forgive me.

Every developing and developed country has initiated major land reform in varying degrees to move away from the oppressive feudal systems that created landless peasants out of the majority that almost invariably ended in bloody revolutions. Here in South Africa however, we have an even more poisonous history of land grabs that were sanctioned initially by colonialism, then imperialism, followed by apartheid - one of the greatest crimes against humanity. Today, a more insidious form of land grab, unbridled gentrification of certain parts of our country, that has gained momentum since our liberation in 1994.

The Problem

A groundswell of support from our youth are now demanding economic liberation in their lifetimes!

This is hardly surprising given the stark socioeconomic disparity along racial lines that's seemed to have worsened in the last decade. The visible component of this disparity is that whites still control the major part of our economy with white men dominating corporate boards since they occupy over 91% of CEO positions, and balk at government affirmative-action initiatives. The invisible component meanwhile is not immediately obvious, but much worse, since true land ownership can be easily be masked by holding companies, fronting entities etc.

Throughout human history, land ownership has been the single biggest generator of wealth in western style governments and leveraged as a mechanism to pass down wealth from generation to generation. Furthermore, in the western tradition, governments made use of awarding and controlling land use rights to expand the power of the state. In Africa the land grab began with the tide of colonialism that swept over the entire African continent as colonial powers plundered the vast natural resources of the indigenous populations. This went on for centuries and is still continuing in various incarnations under the guise of "free trade". In SA however, this problem was further exacerbated by apartheid's draconian laws that dispossessed blacks from over 90% of their lands.

The economic significance of land ownership can be better understood by this incident in the Americas. When black slaves in the US were freed in January, 1865 they were promised 40 acres and a mule - the idea was to provide arable land to enable former slaves to be self-sufficient. The very least they could do to atone for slavery. When the presiding US President Lincoln was assassinated a few months later in April 1865, this promise was immediately revoked! This underscores the value placed on land ownership.

The Causes

Centuries of conflict over land began when colonialists first arrived on our shores but got progressively worse with each regime culminating in an orgy of land grabs during apartheid. Since our liberation, all attempts to correct this through negotiated land reform has had almost negligible success and simply touched just the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile our mainstream media, who are supposedly acting in the public interest have been strangely silent on this crucial issue for decades!

"The Native Lands Act of 1912 prohibited the establishment of new farming operations, sharecropping, or cash rentals by blacks outside of the reserves, which made up only 7.7% of the country’s area. Inside the, reserves an artificial form of “traditional” tenure with maximum holding sizes and restrictions on land, transactions was imposed. Subsequent policies of “black spot removal” transferred the large majority of, black farmers who had legitimately owned land outside the reserves into the homelands where tenure, restrictions, high population density, and lack of capital and market access made commercial agriculture, virtually impossible. Labor laws that discriminated against blacks in favor of white workers and generous, capital subsidies contributed to successive evictions of large parts of the black population from white, farms, where they had been employed as labor tenants and farm workers (Binswanger and Deininger, 1993)."

The destruction and generations of suffering that these laws wrought on black communities, is the real evil of apartheid!

1. Not only were 80% of the population pushed onto 8% of the land that whites did not want, but black farmers where further destabilized inside these reserves as well.

2. The Native Lands Act of 1912 was only repealed in 1993, just one year before our liberation! More damning evidence that whites were not prepared to give an inch until they were forced to.

3. For almost a century, the massive land grab by the whites were "legitimized" by these inhumane laws. Since our liberation, more rules (e.g. willing buyer-willing seller) and more bureaucracy (e.g. Land Claims Commission) have been injected into the process slowing down land redistribution even further.

The Group Areas Act of 1950, lay the foundation for a systematic ethnic cleansing by apartheid government in order to speed up the land grabs. Since these "mixed areas" were a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime's false ideology of "apart-ness" and "group identity", these forced removals also ripped apart the social fabric of settled communities for generations and caused untold pain and suffering for millions of African. Coloureds and Indians. Many of the South Africa's freedom fighters that spearheaded the resistance came from these mixed communities like Seapoint, Sophiatown, District Six, Cato Manor, South End and countless other undocumented, untold stories of pain and suffering brought on by forced removals. The destabilization and destruction of these mixed communities also sought to quash any pockets of resistance to apartheid's grand plans. Another apartheid tactic was to utilize vast swaths of lands as buffer zones to keep races separated and as a means of militarily controlling these townships and in the case of uprisings.

This Act alone resulted in the wholesale expropriation of prime real estate across the entire country and displaced communities were pushed out to outlying areas far from the cities or desirable locations. More destructive however, was the resulting instability endured by millions of Africans, Coloureds and Indians for many generations, who lived in a constant state of limbo, waiting for the order to move out when alternative housing became available in one the numerous apartheid ghettos that were largely pits of poverty, crime, gangs, drugs etc. and lawlessness since the old established communities, with well defined social hierarchies that had existed for generations, were suddenly obliterated.

Thus the grand theft of apartheid intensified.

These days however, a silent gentrification of the Western Cape is currently underway since 1994, under the influence of the Democratic Alliance. This YouTube clip on the Rogues of Cape Town or Tourism is stepping on us highlights one aspect of the tragedy caused by gentrification in Cape Town and surrounding cities. Property in Cape Town in now beyond the reach of over 99% of local Africans, Coloureds and Indians. This is just the tip of the iceberg, since this phenomenon is prevalent throughout the Western Cape. The old money from the spoils of apartheid is now protected under the guise of capitalism and free markets by the government in the Western Cape seeking to turn the City of Cape Town into a "model city" for South Africa through the marginalization of blacks to prove their "white efficiency" in governance - again, more flawed thinking from a political party that was once closely aligned with the old National Party.

The Results

South Africa now has greatest per capita racial economic disparity in Africa, and quite possibly in the entire world! So its no surprise that the latest UN-HABITAT report shows South African cities topping the list of most unequal cities in the world.

The economics of centuries of artificially created land shortage coupled with the the bureaucratic morass of arcane, complex rules, regulations and documentation has taken its toll. To add insult to injury, this embarrassing situation is made worse by the fact that the historic grand theft of land now has to be redressed by the victims paying the perpetrators for land restitution! This has taken the form of an outlandish and totally failed strategy of "willing buyer, willing seller" - a cruel joke which has resulted in the entire democratization of land redistribution coming almost to a grinding halt! At this rate real land reform may only be feasible at the end of the century - 2099!

For many centuries before 1994, white owned farms were heavily subsidized by successive regimes in an attempt to expand its reach and control into the rural areas. This trend has striking similarities to the how American colonizers grabbed most of Mexico and Native American Indian Lands (compared to the early tribes that roamed the east and west) until the days of the brutal frontier expansion into what was commonly referred to as the "Wild West" where the word genocide was not even conceived yet.

The townships, locations, homelands etc. were usually located in lands that whites did not desire or was conveniently located to facilitate a migrant labor pool that usually involved long commutes. The artificial shortage of land created by these laws also resulted in inflated home prices in some of the "wealthier" black neighborhoods. After our liberation, the repeal of these laws resulted in another property bubble as blacks were finally allowed to spread into other areas. In an obscene act of double-dipping, whites largely in control of the private real estate economy, stacked the deck and further capitalized on this frenzied property bubble by selling off their homes at exorbitant prices since banks, in cahoots with wealthy real estate investors, suddenly became lax in their usually strict lending policies. This widened the vast socioeconomic disparity along racial lines since whites were in the prime position to capitalize on generations of property ownership.

Where to now?

Well it all depends...

When the youth of South Africa now demand "Economic liberation in our lifetime", the mainstream media controlled by our powerful media cartel - a relic of the old apartheid propaganda machine, are quick to label it a "land grab" instead of what it actually is in reality, LAND RESTITUTION. Strange that our media elite never exposes the obscene land grabs during apartheid or nobody is stepping forward to relinquish some of their ill-gotten gains!

With youth unemployment at stratospheric levels and a world wide recession that is still ravaging countries across the world, South African youth need to be empowered to spark that entrepreneurial flame and become more self-sufficient. Land ownership is be one way help our youth move towards greater self-sufficiency. There are many novel ways to leverage our natural resources and sustain our economy e.g. subsistence agriculture (similar to densely populated villages in China and India), eco-friendly housing - much of which is already an intrinsic part of African culture, ecotourism - allows tourists to get a real taste of South Africa away from those sterile five-star hotels etc. This will enable our younger generation to participate in building real wealth and creating family owned businesses that could be handed down to future generations.

Its imperative that the beneficiaries of apartheid's great land grab now engage honestly and expeditiously with the government in a good faith attempt to bring about true land reform or face even dire consequences.

The time already squandered since 1994 by legal wrangling, political games, finger pointing, and delay tactics were shortsighted and will certainly result in a even more disadvantaged negotiating position for current apartheid landowners. Claiming the sky is falling because of land restitution, blaming the government, denying that apartheid's land grabs were illegal, equating farming to a rocket science that blacks are incapable of, or simply saying that blacks cannot be trusted with farming land, are all insulting and grossly demeaning to millions of blacks who have borne the brunt of apartheid's evil for generations. On the other hand, acknowledging the current mess and the need for immediate action is a prerequisite to honest negotiations. As many astute observers, analysts and historians have pointed out repeatedly to the beneficiaries of apartheid, that this time around, time is not on their side.

The Myth of DA Liberalism

Since our liberation, the Democratic Alliance supporters are quick to position themselves as "liberal", "non-racist" and "left leaning" etc. Nothing could be further from the truth! Looking closer at absolute numbers of voters from 1981 to the most recent election in 2009, we begin to see a pattern of voting that brings to mind the old African proverb - "A leopard can't change his spots". Sad but true in SA.

The graph above depicts white voting patterns from 1981 to the most recent 2009 elections for parties garnering more than 3% of the white vote. NP(National Party)/NNP(New National Party) [red], CP(Conservative Party)/HNP(Herstigte Nasionale Party)/NRP(New Republic Party)/(FF)Freedom Front [orange] , PFP(Progressive Federal Party)/DP(Democratic Party) [green], DA(Democratic Alliance) [blue]. Its clear from the graph, where most of the NP voters landed after the 1994 elections. The data speaks for itself!

Those pesky blind spots that just won't go away!
Centuries of white supremacy and apartheid indoctrination has created giant blind spots to where our self-proclaimed "opposition" party actually think of themselves as the official opposition party. They fail to see that even an opposition party needs to be reflective of the demographics of the country otherwise its just another tribal party serving the needs of its own "tribe".

Is black leadership an oxymoron within the DA?
The DA has utterly failed to attract black (African, Coloured or Indian) voters in any significant numbers. The upper echelons of power in the DA are still dominated by whites who have immense difficulty promoting blacks into leadership positions. This is mind-boggling since we do live in an African country that is overwhelmingly black! Recently they DA had to stoop to the shameful ploy of "buying" its way into the Independent Democrats in order to window dress its leadership.

Anyone for some NP-Lite?
The DA is a hybrid relic of the old National Party (NP) mingled together with racists from the CP, HNP etc. and a sprinkling of liberals, depicted in green on the graph, from the PFP and DP. Most of the liberals, a small minority of whites, have either switched to the ANC or abandoned the DA altogether in disgust.

The DA train wreck.
Watching the DA leadership is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. They seem to be stuck in their old apartheid mindset and far more interested in parroting their racist counterparts, the neo-cons of the Republican Party in the US, by employing the politics of division to cling to power in the Western Cape not realizing the political instability they are inadvertently creating in the region.

Instead of taking responsibility and cleaning up the mess created by apartheid which, based on the graph above, they supported until the bitter end in 1994, the DA prefers to persist in engaging in petty politics to cling onto their ill-gotten gains - the wealth accumulated from their privileges and government handouts during the apartheid era and centuries of colonialism. Over the last decade, by hijacking the role of the opposition party, the DA have proved to be a hindrance to our transformation into a Rainbow Nation.

Lifestyle audits - have we gone cuckoo?

The recent calls for lifestyle audits from some quarters is troubling. Lifestyle audits is the kind of that cancer that can quickly and silently metastasize through any government and suffocate the vibrancy of a multi-party democracy. The very term "lifestyle audit" is unclear and it also conjures up images of a big brother like monstrosity, feeding on its own citizens until it collapses under the weight of its own bellicosity.

Like other tax agencies around the world, SARS (South African Revenue Services) has a distinct, well defined mandate and vision - its primary task is to collect taxes and and ensure that our tax laws are being enforced equitably. SARS is not an anti-corruption agency to chase after people that "appear" to be breaking the tax laws based on their lifestyle, political affiliations, race or any other arbitrary criteria. There needs to be clear, concrete evidence of violation of our tax laws before SARS "goes after" after any citizen. Anyway, once a case warrants criminal investigation, it really falls into the realm of the law enforcement rather than tax administration.

The dangers of "lifestyle audits" is that its a fuzzy term that becomes nothing more than profiling law abiding citizens based on their appearance of some kind of opulent lifestyle according to the whims of some government bureaucrat who may not like you. So the chances are highly likely that YOU could very well be next! For instance, how many of us fall into one of these potential categories that may trigger a dreaded "lifestyle audit":

• Driving a fancy cars.
• Living in a large mansion.
• Too many trips on a yacht or a private airplane.
• Having a fetish for expensive jewelry, clothing, hats, books, electronic goods etc.
• A taste for expensive cocktails or fancy restaurants.
• Taking too many frequent vacations locally or abroad.
• Having too many kids or sending them to fancy private schools.
• Too many wives...I had to throw this one in. ;-)
• Member of a country club or some other organization.

Anyway, you get the picture. Its pretty easy for some of us to even fall into MORE than one of the above categories.

The objectives of lifestyle audits are equally dubious. Is the intent of the tax administration to maximize the collection of under-reported taxes? If so, lifestyle audits simply penalize citizens that display their wealth while the tax dodgers that hide their wealth in offshore bank accounts are given a free pass. Its a well known fact around the world that the major cases of tax evasion involves corruption politicians, fat cat executives, criminals etc. that make use of elaborate schemes involving complex sham financial transactions by leveraging offshore facilities e.g. unnamed Swiss bank accounts and tax havens, that totally outfox SARS who have no jurisdiction to pursue suspects overseas.

On the other hand, if the objective is to root our corruption, then the mandate of SARS needs to be expanded to include anti-corruption functions. This poses an even bigger risk of concentration of power in a single state institution that sets the stage for bad things to happen - politicization of SARS eventually leads to rampant corruption to the extent that ordinary citizens may rightfully start to feel that they need not pay their fair share of taxes any longer if they disagree with SARS political agenda. A critical mass of tax protesters may lead to a collapse of our tax system, which has huge implications for the social and financial stability of our democracy.

Using the tax system to settle political scores is a dangerous precedent that can be easily abused by ruling elite to conduct character assassinations of any political opponents. Remember, due to the nature of the complexity of tax laws, any tax administrator worth their salt, can uncover, distort and twist facts on ANYONE'S tax return, to make them look unethical, criminal etc. - pick your poison. So rest assured, ALL of us, including our families are exposed to this draconian power of lifestyle audits.

Lifestyle audits have been tried in various democracies especially in times of economic instability where everyone is sensitive to obscene wealth in a climate of financial belt-tightening. However these type of audits have been consistently ditched because of its inherent incompatibility with freedoms enshrined in democratic constitutions. For local organizations and individuals to bray for the injection of lifestyle audits in our democracy is short-sighted and myopic. Lifestyle audits should be kept where it belongs, in movies and police states and the tabloids - it has no place in a free society.

Our looming 100 day window of opportunity

An ancient Chinese proverb states - “Even the Gods cannot help those who do not seize opportunities”.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup (FWC), has ushered in a window of opportunity for all South Africans to seize with both hands! To put our best foot forward towards healing the old wounds of our tragic past. To reach out across the racial divide. To show our gratitude to the world for this gift of the hosting the FWC that cements our inclusion into the world of nations and has enormous potential to create buoyant economic conditions here in SA amidst a sea of recession that tightens its grip across the rest of the world.

Its a chance to recapture that Madiba spirit that constantly threatens to dissipate like the morning mist over Table Mountain, as we come to grips to the damage wreaked by apartheid on our social fabric. Another chance, in spite of our strained history, to warm up to each like that balmy breeze over the Indian Ocean. A golden opportunity to establish SA as a world class tourist destination to tourists who would otherwise not usually view South Africa as a holiday destination, or to business investors who may not be aware of the upward mobility of a burgeoning middle class previously shut out of our economic system.

In the last few decades, most of the world held their breath and from afar cautiously observed SA, as a petri-dish of human experimentation coming to grips with their false belief system of racial superiority. This caution turned to amazement through our ability to transcend past injustices, non-violently, through the power of forgiveness. Much of this was made possible by Madiba's vision that embodied the nobility of our human species.

However, recent developments in the media surrounding the FWC, revealed the divisive antics and harsh tones reminiscent of the old apartheid days of media manipulation that leaves one truly perplexed and ambivalent of the role of our media in an emerging democracy like ours. A recent spate of media reports, all within the span of a single week, simply served to further whip up fear and hysteria surrounding the biggest international sporting event in the history of Africa! At the risk of seeing the wheels fall off, even FIFA, had to step in, to implement stricter controls to keep renegade journalists on a short leash in an attempt to quash the hysteria that had the potential to spread like a veld fire. The most stunning aspect of this fiasco, is that most of these journalists and media organizations, are South African! International journalists seem to be much more responsible in using freedom of speech responsibly compared to our own journalists who see nothing wrong in screaming "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or berating FIFA's judicious media controls as too draconian.

Where does this macabre form of premature schadenfreude - reveling in the misfortunes of others, come from? What makes Mandela and the majority of black South Africans embrace the rugby world cup as portrayed in the movie Invictus, while on the other hand many white South Africans spurn the 2010 WC and some even go as far as jinx this once in a lifetime event with their outlandish negativity?

Under the National Government during apartheid, all media was strictly monitored and controlled in ways that would even make the Chinese government blush. In order to lengthen the shelf-life of that poison called apartheid, the seed of fear had to be implanted into the limbic system of the white populace. Today we see some in the media, employing similar dirty tricks, craftily engineered to instill a sense of fear in potential tourists to our shores. The following sensationalized incidents, bordering on Internet hoaxes, created headlines in SA media:

1. "stab proof vests" by an imaginary UK based company.

2. etv's concocted "criminal interviews" where the go-between mysteriously "commits suicide". e.tv's abuse of our freedom of press laws that guarantees protection of the sources to spread public hysteria is short-sighted and shameful.

3. International French journalist "Sophie Buillion" being "brutalized" while there was no coverage of this incident during that week on any of the reputable news media, including major French newspapers.

Another recent example of this hype designed to spread fear, is the "controversy" surrounding the vuvuzela, a unique South African creation. Suddenly the vuvuzela is now depicted as an "instrument of war" and seemingly "scientific" studies, subsequently refuted by established scientific organizations, claim that the vuvuzela damages one's hearing irreparably at a certain distance. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs, akin to pond scum, are capitalizing on this using fear based marketing to peddle costly ear-plug devices which promise to prevent "irreversible ear damage". Firstly, whats wrong with simple disposable ear-plugs, bought for a few cents for those sensitive to load noises and secondly why don't these con artists market these costly ear-plug devices at rock concerts - notorious for their ultra large booming speakers that have been one of the primary cause of tinnitus in the developed world.

Yet another damper to the FWC was the anti-competitive price-fixing practices of local airlines and hotels designed to price-gouge tourists, creating an additional sour tone to potential return tourists. It seems like sometimes free enterprise needs to be reigned in for the greater good of our society, for example, this is why ticket scalping is outlawed at venues in most countries and watchful eye of consumer organizations serve to keep order in free enterprise system that could so quickly go awry with unscrupulous businesses that seem to be rife in our nascent democracy.

We all know that rampant violent crime is a festering problem in our society, and has been so for the last decade, under the misguided leadership of the autocratic Mbeki regime. Its also understandable that some in our society want to leverage the FWC to get government to take firmer action against crime, but one wonders why crime has become this gargantuan, sensationalized issue during this FWC and not other international sporting events like rugby or cricket, also hosted in SA in the last decade. Also, in spite of herculean efforts in completing the facilities and transportation systems in time, some bloggers in our media continue to predict doom and gloom for the FWC and come up with even more creative ways to abuse our free speech by spreading misinformation and fear about our FWC - a once in a lifetime event in our country. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Football is perhaps the most international of all sports, with a thread that binds our world in the spirit of our common humanity and love of the game. Fortunately, these positive forces dwarf the ill will that lurks in the hearts of some our very own citizens. As Gandhi wisely reminded us to "be the change", its up each one to us to make it happen.

Just like a parent lovingly supports their kids sporting activities, so to, should our own citizens support the event by making some positive contribution:

• Maybe attending or watching one of the matches with a friend from a different culture, religion or race.
• Being hospitable and supportive to tourists.
• Communicating with friends and relatives around the world e.g. via the web, to share the excitement generated by this event.
• Building international business alliances with the exchange of ideas.
• Attracting the attention of international students to consider South Africa as one of their study-abroad options.
• Speak out against the naysayers and false prophets of doom and gloom, just as we spoke out against apartheid.

I'm sure there are many better suggestions out there, so don't by shy folks!

As South Africans, haven't we learned enough of the tragic lessons of this win-lose mindset of the architects of apartheid? So lets try playing a WIN-WIN game for a change!

Imagine the benefits of the exposure SA obtains as sports lovers all over the world direct their attention to the games for an entire month, being played the beautiful southern tip of Africa! Giving tourists a close-up glimpse of the striking beauty of the African countryside, its majestic wildlife and warm, gracious people is a marketing dream for most country's tourist boards and we should capitalize on this serendipity.

So regardless of how the FWC turns out for our team Bafana Bafana, the one sure thing is that, this is a turning point in our history where we are finally offered a seat at the table of the world of nations - a truly remarkable achievement for a young country still finding its feet after centuries of darkness. Remember, in the long run, a successful FWC guarantees that everyone wins in some way and this once in a lifetime opportunity for most South Africans, will be either be missed by short-sightedness or seized on by people with the foresight to create positive change in our broader community and the world around us. At last, a chance for us to show the world what that famous "southern hospitality" is all about!

[Published in Mail & Guardian - Thought Leader posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010]