STOP PRESS

(What a funny phrase -- once meant "Hold everything! Important new news!")

The evening with Mensa (see below) was a load of fun. They didn't throw too many big words or IQ riddles at me. They did throw a zillion D2 questions, and kept on throwing them in the bar for 90 minutes after I was officially off duty. Several times Mensans who had picked up on one aspect of what I was saying gave their own replies, which were not necessarily close to the reply I would have given.

That was a tantalising glimpse of what a relief it will be when this subject is democratised, as it were, different people pursuing in different ways the so-far lonely notion that thorough democracy rectifies the wrongs that scrawny democracy creates. (And I get the new challenge of suppressing the urge, while reading the way someone else sees it, to screech "How dare you! You get it wrong! Stop poaching!")  

This was Episode 2 of my pre-election series for The Star. I'd like to think it brings up stuff that doesn't end because an election happens. What it certainly brings up is a rugby-scrum of evidence to support D2. Most people in this tale – one conspicuous exception – have nil notion of control or even influence over the circumstances of their lives. Look at the growth that awaits when they get issues they understand, leaders they know, a set of bridges in place of what is now a chasm between themselves and the exercise of political power.

At a dinner of the think-tank Common Purpose, Mphumi is commanding, regal, strong. My mind's eye sees a clear picture: husband in the BEE priesthood, kids at a Saint Someone school, a Sandton flat, a new 4x4.Then she says her community has a problem with a river. That doesn't sound very Sandton. She supplies an address. It doesn't look at all Sandton.

Directions are south from Joburg, by landmark. Left at the BP, right at the gravestones, left at the broken robot. I arrive in Zonkizizwe and discover that Mphumi is a sangoma. She lives in a shack, smaller than a 4x4's garage.

Thanks to The Star and its colleagues in Independent Newspapers for making me a journo again, briefly. I'd forgotten what fun it is to get a sore bum bouncing in the back of a bakkie over a dirt road to meet unlikely people and learn something you hadn't thought of. Also, how absolutely uplifting South Africa is beneath the overlay of political bullshit. Nice people, wherever you go. I should know this. I kindof do, but when you spent enough time sitting in suburbia seeing your world through media eyes, you get misled into the media's focus on what's wrong. (And don't blame them, as I've said before, blame the consumer. If my paper, accurately stating that 99 999 planes have landed safely, must sell against your paper saying "Plane Crash!" I go broke and you buy yachts).

Well, here's the first in the series. I run it here on D2 because (a) I have to put something new here, and am hopelessly bogged down with replies to queries that are dotted all over the site, and (b) this stuff is as D2 as I've ever known. Take this article below, the people in a mess about parties, a mess about kings, and a mess about mines, and imagine if politics did actually answer to them like the propaganda says it's supposed to. That's three ex-messes coming up. 

God was in a terrific mood when he made Pondoland, though that's a thing we're apt to forget. We have a national ethic that says "Peninsula, wow!", "Kruger, wow!", Garden Route, wow!" "Pondoland, where?"

     It doesn't help that Pondoland – north east Cape, above Port St John's -- is where the N2 turns runty, scuttling inland and filling itself with twists, turns, and buses that need "I Brake Anywhere" bumperstickers. Not to mention chickens, cows, pigs, goats and 20 kph bakkies that lost their rear lights before Mandela moved to Pollsmoor.

     This is the Wild part of the Wild Coast, as opposed to the wimpy part down where the 20th century restarts with tarred roads and stuff. Here the flavour is more 19th. You get a sense from your map. Running south from Durban is a rich bead necklace of towns, their names darkening the west edge of the Indian Ocean. Below them, an empty patch interrupted solely by the optimistically named Port Grosvenor, which hasn't berthed a ship in 127 years.

Well, newish.

My daughter Emma tells me that all I do on this site is say the same thing over and again. She’s a healthy presence, Emma, keeps one’s feet upon the ground. I appreciate her perspective. Which doesn’t mean that I share it.

My perspective is that I haven’t yet said it right. The central point is so compelling that once you cross the threshold it speaks for itself. But until you cross the threshold you have a blur of wrong ideas, like everyone scurrying about voting all day, and wild duplications of expenses, and Mtubatuba legalising the shooting of Presbyterians.

So when things are raised by nice guys like, here, Ian and Dirk and Tim (and I seem to have railroaded Helmut in towards the end too) I reply. A cruel ou might say I ladle the reply on with a trowel. The cruel ou might be right, but hey, for these nice guys, and for you, I’m trying to make it make sense.

So here is a bunch of replies, unvarnished, arising from the e-mail exchange that is tucked behind the replies.

Republished here on my site by courtesy Moneyweb. This piece marks the overdue resumption of a neglected column on Moneyweb. In its way it represents a step forward in D2-thinking. You may wish to check the comments on Moneyweb, whose readership, as you may guess is about a zillion-fold D2's. (You'll probably fairly easily detect one reason that the column became neglected). - Denis

My friend Shaun forwards "QUOTE OF THE CENTURY". This is the fourth time that "QUOTE OF THE CENTURY" descends upon my Inbox, and the second that it is sent to a single recipient, looking for an opinion. The other two times it went to many recipients, looking for a sneer.
Shaun is fine. So is the first ou who sent a query, Ian. This is appropriate stuff to bounce off friends.

Bit by slightly tardy bit, this site gathers up its petticoats and moves in a forward direction.  Here at last is a change to the front page. This is a column I did for Moneyweb. It was intended to introduce D2 to complete newcomers, but a D2 regular told me that it advanced his grasp of what I'm getting at, so here it is on D2's site, too. There are several replies in the Moneyweb version, if you're interested (though a lot fewer than to the standard-brand column.)

Mense, gut tells me it’s time I gave you a rollicking column completely free of anything that smacks of better world & so forth. And kop says: “ja, okay, next week.”

Right now I do a thing I’ve spent some time plucking up courage to do. This is to present to you my new website, http://www.democracyversiontwo.com,which is entirely about better world & so forth.

JS Mill, Tom Cobley and a Cryzy Strylian with Brynes