Response to Pierre de Vos article on Discovery Bank's racist share scheme

This is a response I wrote to a Pierre de Vos article defending Discovery's scheme. Unfortunately the Biznews mods haven't approved my post. Maybe it isn't ragebaitey enough?

Pierre, I think I can answer your first question. The reason so few people who hold one set of views but not another that superficially resembles those, is that different principles are at work. None of these people are denying that race or other foci of identities exist. What they/we object to is codifying the mere existence of those foci into inequality before the law. I think you simply misinterpret an admittedly sometimes poorly expressed objection: we oppose race-based redress measure not literally "because it requires racial classification", but because of what use that classification undeniably is intended to be put to: creating inequality of opportunity, by treating people differently before the law.

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "construct" or "anything essential", but I believe you are mistaken to say that race, gender, or sexual orientation are "constructs and do not say anything essential about who we are as individuals". Or at least, they are not only constructs. What is a construct is how much these categories should matter in various contexts.

On to the meat of your article: you are a constitutional law expert and I am not, so obviously I must defer to your legal analysis. But I need not defer to your moral analysis. What you have convinced me of with this article is not that Discovery's share scheme is just, but that SA's constitution as written (or maybe only as interpreted in the tests it has been put to?) is contaminated by ideas I want as far away from me as possible. I used to think that the constitution is "basically okay, in no need of repair or other tinkering", but now my view is changed, if it (or maybe rather its interpretation) approves of the unequal treatment before the law of people based only on superficial identity differences. Andile Ramaphosa (Cyril's eldest son) must be in the top 100 of privileged people in this country, but merely because he is black he should attract even more privileges wherever he goes, being able to step into jobs or win tenders or pursue academic qualifications, opportunities which are closed to me merely because my skin is white, even though my net worth is maybe a thousandth of Andile's? If you cannot see that this is obviously not right, then I don't know how to persuade you. Perhaps you will point out that the "overwhelming majority" of prospective Discovery Bank clients are not Andile Ramaphosas. But how exactly are Andile, and more broadly black members of the middle and upper class, discriminated against today? Which opportunities are denied to them because they are black? Where are they denied respect in ways that giving them free shares will remedy? How does this compare to the opportunities denied to white youngsters born after 1994, who get told they are "not demographically representative" and can't have this job / can't go to medical school / can't win a tender?

Perhaps I should leave my disagreement here: "You do not have to show that the scheme is necessary to achieve the redress goal, but only that the measure must be reasonably capable of achieving the desired outcome of redress." I wonder if it may turn out that Discovery know something about black consumers' financial habits that they can't afford to talk about publicly. Something that, were it more widely known (or admitted), would undermine the condition that this scheme be "reasonably capable of achieving the desired outcome." Time will tell, but don't say I didn't warn you if in 5 years you squawk about Discovery "oppressing" its black customers through higher interest rates on loans or something like that. Without ever explicitly having to base that credit decision on race.

Ways the City of Cape Town lies to you: registering off-grid solar power systems

Lately the City of Cape Town is driving me up the wall with its intellectually dishonest defenses of its increasingly invasive regulations. I suspect this is in no small part due to the Democratic Alliance's strong results in the last few local elections. They simply don't feel that they need the consent of the governed, so they make up whatever regulations and bureaucracy-serving edicts they see fit, with little to fear from a captive ANC-phobic electorate. They cynically wield this fear (largely justified, but prostating ourselves to the DA is not the only way to protect ourselves from ANC predation) as a weapon - a thought-terminating cliche.

My criticism in this post is centered on the front page article of the Constantia Bulletin, 19 July 2018, by Karen Watkins. As usual, this Watkins article reads like a press release from whomever she was interviewing. Exactly zero probing and challenging of rationales, barely even lip service to counter-arguments. This would no doubt be different if the article were about some pseudo-scientific BS like "electromagnetic hypersensitivity".

1. Presumably quoting Xanthea Limberg, Watkins writes that "off-grid systems, or systems not connected to the grid directly or indirectly through a building's internal wiring, such as a solar-powered pool pump, must still register with the City so that they are not mistaken for an unauthorised SSEG installation".
   
   My response: not being mistaken for an unauthorised SSEG installation does not constitute a reason to force residents to register such systems. In our legal system, we are generally presumed innocent until proven guilty. Under that principle, a couple of solar panels on someone's roof should be presumed to not be an unauthorised SSEG installation until proven otherwise.
   
   In fact there's a very large class of households that the city must realise cannot be the home of an unauthorised SSEG installation: all those with prepaid meters. Prepaid meters are (or were, at least, when they were a new thing) designed specifically not to allow reverse power feeding: they do not allow power to flow from someone's rooftop PV installation onto the City's distribution grid. That's one very easy way to eliminate many cases of "mistaken for an unauthorised SSEG installation".
   
2. "Ms Limberg urged people to register their systems for the safety of occupants and City staff, for grid stability and quality, the legal risk and grid cost."
   
   Bullshit, Ms Limberg: a solar power system that is not connected to the grid does not endanger City staff at all - that's inherently what "not connected to the grid" means. The safety of occupants is a valid concern, but maybe that should be up to the occupants to negotiate with the property owner? And who says there even are occupants besides the owner or the person who installed the oh-so-scary photovoltaic panels?
   
   Registering generating systems also has zero effect on grid stability and quality. Registering only creates a paper trail; it doesn't move electrons around in an electricity grid. Besides, we're talking about systems that are not connected to the grid!
   
3. "Dr De Decker said the City could readily see transgressors on aerial maps and could check the address to see if owners had the necessary approval."
   
   Maybe just bad journalism from Watkins, because Dr De Decker is a system installer and has a commercial incentive to scare people into engaging their services. If instead this is a true reflection of the City's intentions, I would be very curious to know if such action would constitute a legal search. Spying on us like this, which is ostensibly justified to produce maps, but more recently also to inform municipal rates valuations, sans any concrete suspicion of wrongdoing, does not feel like justice. It feels like enduring the Stasi of East Germany.
   
4. "Dr De Decker said ... She explained that if several houses were generating and using solar power and a cloud passed overhead, there was a resultant surge of electricity demand on the City's power. The City has to make provision for this as it puts pressure on the electrical transformer in the area."
   
   What nonsense is this? The Sun shines best at noon, which is nowhere near the morning and evening demand peaks which do stress the electrical infrastructure. And at worst, the full demand of these houses suddenly appears on the grid, just as it would in the absense of solar power and for which the electrical infrastructure is sized anyway. This sounds just like the thought-terminating cliches that I expect from a municipality, so I have to wonder if Dr De Decker is simply repeating City materials.
   
   If anyone incurs problems from sudden fluctuations in load, it is Eskom. I fail to see how City-owned infrastructure suffers from such fluctuations. And in any case, most solar power systems I've seen come with a storage system: a bank of batteries, that can certainly absorb the miniscule load variance that a cloud passing in front of the Sun would cause.
   
5. "There is currently no fee for registration itself" HAHAHAHA and I have a bridge I'd like to sell you, it goes all the way to the moon you see, if you believe that there won't be a fee in future, once people are registered and captive to the City's predations.

David Lipschitz, apparently the only person not bought into his own lies in this story, "believes this new legislative requirement will drive more people away from providing electricity for themselves and, worse, it will drive away a massive opportunity for homeowners and business owners to put in bigger systems than they need so they can supply excess electricity into the grid, day and night." Indeed. Just finding out about this requirement today has made me lose interest in installing any solar panels on my roof. Luckily I've barely spent any money on supplies so far.

But I'll have my petty revenge. From now on, when I turn on my water heater so that I can shower in superarctic temperature, I will do it when it is least convenient for the City's "grid stability" pseudo-concern: at 7am or at 7pm.

#HandsOffOurInternet: My response to the Draft Online Regulation Policy

I am submitting the text below as public comment on South Africa's Draft Online Regulation Policy. Read more at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deep Links blog and at the Right2Know Campaign's website.

This is the first time I am submitting comment to draft law. Normally I consider myself too unimportant and too uninvolved in lawmaking for my commenting on draft law to be a good use of my time. But this draft policy is simply so bad that I feel compelled to comment, lest the FPB underestimate how offensive this draft is, by even one person's response.

My stake in this matter is both as an occasional content creator, and as an ordinary South African who feels offended at the idea of a supposed constitutional democracy's government insisting on inserting itself into every transaction between consenting humans (adult or not), where it is not wanted. Wherever government impinges on my life, I have stress, and by impinging itself onto every instance of sharing a creative work, it maximizes the harm its regulative efforts do.

I cannot respond to every element of the draft which I find problematic. There is simply too much. In almost every sentence I find an offensively obstructionist, parochial and regressive provision. This is the year 2015, and the draft harks back to PW Botha's 1986 government. It too seemed to have the view that every publication which is not explicitly allowed, must be forbidden (or at least classified).

What I want the FPB to do instead (although cynically I cannot expect this to occur) would be to repeal its empowering laws and then disband itself. The few shreds of law that I would like to see remain can easily be absorbed into other ministries' laws - but as for the vast bulk of it, I wish it were simply gone.

The first thing the FPB should, in my opinion, do is to toss the Draft Online Regulation Policy in the metaphorical bin where it belongs, and start again. It might start again by amending the Film and Publications Act. Ideally by replacing 90%+ of its content with blank space. Any concerns of platform-neutrality are immediately addressed if the FPB had the commitment to democratic principles to give up on its (false) ideal of classifying every publication. Mandatory classification of publications is a Soviet bureaucrat's lifeblood, not the sort of stuff that a modern democracy is made of.

The FPB must choose. It must choose whether it wishes to be an embarrassment to South Africa, Africa, and humanity as a whole, or if it wants to be a respected entity in a respected democracy. Sticking to this draft policy is the former, and abandoning it and trying again is a step in the direction of the latter. It must choose between regulatory capture, and meaningful civil liberty.

Political certainty or ethics?

SANRAL has failed to raise bonds at a bond auction. The Financial Mail attributes this to "uncertainty". Fair enough, to an investor, certainty is always better than uncertainty, all other things considered equal.

Isn't there a shortcut though? Act ethically - stop mining a captive audience for cash just because they have little option but to pay - and they won't cause political problems for your plans.

I have nothing against toll roads in principle, but I have a real problem with captive states handing over public assets to (quasi-)private interests along with de facto monopoly power. And despite my sometimes-libertarian leanings, I do not want to leave it to the market to decide how many roads should cross a countryside, for the same reason I don't think I would like the libertarian outcome of private nature conservation (I suspect there just wouldn't be enough of it).

But the way SANRAL seems to be exploiting its privileged position leaves a bad taste in the mouth. They are enclosing the commons that we have already paid for (and we continue to do so with the fuel levy we pay regardless of which road sections we use) simply by improving or even merely maintaining a stretch of road - perhaps adding a lane and probably also counting tolling facilities as "improvement". Then they have the gall to tell us that their tolls do not constitute double taxation [PDF]. It all looks, smells, and sounds like pigs feeding at the trough.

So to those of you who are fortunate to be investors, especially any of you who get to have a say in your investments' operations: try agitating for ethical behaviour, for treating customers with a little respect, leaving some money (read: value) on the table to make transactions worthwhile for those customers. (SA steel producers: yes, I'm also looking at you and your import parity pricing [PDF].) Perhaps these variables are ones you have a little more control over, unlike the notion of "political stability".

You are just as guilty

The NYC General Assembly has published a declaration of the occupation of New York City. While I'm glad that the occupation seems to be gathering momentum and mindshare, and while I have sympathy for the sentiments behind the many "facts", I do believe that the 99% are not being completely honest about their complicity in the situation they're protesting. Let me add to the confusion. In the same order:

They have failed to use their shares in corporations, held via pension funds, as their voice with which to disapprove of bailouts. They have failed to put heat on underperforming executives.
They have failed to start their own corporations free of inequality and discrimination, and have chosen to continue to patronize corporations which do make themselves guilty of these blots on humanity's character.
Their farmers have chosen freely to use monopoly seeds; likewise they have chosen freely to poison their rivers with fertilizers and pesticides.
They have refused to use moisturizing creams not tested on rats first.
They have continuously sought a path of conflict with employers, when they use their collective bargaining power to exclude non-union workers from the workplace.
They have chosen freely to pursue an advanced education, one that is in excess of what any reasonable person would think of as a "right", and have chosen freely a field that is expensive to study, vulnerable to cyclical variations, and perhaps not even all that useful.
They have chosen freely to buy only the cheapest goods, goods that are cheap because only workers outside the US are willing to scrub toilets for less than a king's ransom. They have chosen freely, also, to run up their lifestyles to the point where their expenses match their incomes, so that they can afford only the cheapest of each of the very many goods they "cannot live without" (yet use only a few times before throwing them out).
They have ridiculed those concerned about privacy before being so was hip, as "net kooks".
They have continued to vote for the same two bought parties, despite knowing all along that campaign contributions run the show. That's if they even bothered to get their lazy asses to the voting booth. And nowhere did anyone hold a gun to their head and force them to vote for a bought candidate from one of the only two parties who have won anything in the last X decades.
They continue to demand unimaginable amounts of electricity, demand which (until only very recently) only oil can meet. They have refused to take public transport, because that is only for poor people and losers. No, a car in every garage is sine qua non!
They have continued to forgive unforgivable sins, such as fouling beaches, murdering wildlife in the process, spilling chemicals, and creative accounting.
They choose to let the media hold the reins to their emotional state. They have continued to worry more about bearded men in turbans attacking them with anthrax than about the disgustingly fatty freedom fries and polymer burgers they stuff down their throats, like daggers into their coronary arteries.

(You may interpret uncontested agreement where I have not mirrored a "fact", if you wish.)

I do not suggest that corporations are blameless. They are plenty guilty! Nor do I even suggest that what is in the 99%'s eye is a beam, but it is at least a little splinter. Corporations are composed of people, they depend on people as customers and employees. So do politicians in a procedurally if not spiritually democratic country. Yet the supposedly good 99% of men did nothing, and then evil happened. And now everyone acts surprised.

But please - do continue doing something, so that more evil may not happen. Better late than never:

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.

Malemagate - some contradictory thoughts

My opinion of Julus Malema is mixed. I abhor the interests he is willing to sacrifice in his quest to the top, but I can only admire how he strategically pursues his. The fact that his interests differ from or even oppose mine, does not mean that he is "stupid", as many seem to think. That he flunked woodwork in high school means that he flunked woodwork in high school, not that he is incapable of making something out of himself. Anyone who doubts that he has made something out of himself, should please explain how this man is able to afford the Breitling watches and other trappings of material wealth, as well as the political influence, that he seems to enjoy.

The meaning of a message is the response it elicits

If there's one thing you need to know about NLP it is this. I find it somewhat arrogant to suggest that the entire meaning of a message can ever be embedded in only its form and medium. We say that jokes are funny not only because there is something inherently funny about their words, but because we laugh at them. When most of an audience misunderstands a message, it is not the audience that is "wrong" or "stupid", but the message that is inadequate. Accepting this tenet of communication frames the problem as a pragmatic, empirical one, where outcomes are more important than intentions. This is how it should be, if you care about getting what you want.

When Julius Malema sings Shoot the Boer, it means exactly the reaction it's getting: fearful white people making a brouhaha, Afriforum taking him to court, the ANC retreating into their afro-laager crying foul over the legal challenges. Malema is finally in a spot of trouble, so part of the meaning of this song, when he sings it, is, "I'm scared. Please help me by showing solidarity with me. Here's a pro forma enemy for you to use as an excuse." (This is now. I believe he has been singing this stupid "song" for longer than he's been in the poo.)

I don't treat seriously any suggestions that when Julius sings this so-called song, he intends literally to command members of his audience to go out and shoot people. I don't even take seriously the suggestion that any members of his audience interpret it as that, let alone being likely to execute its instruction. It's far more fun just to freak these white people out. Always them and their white tendency to fear the nag van die lang messe (night of the long knives).

The 48 laws of power

Read this book if you want to recognize Juju's master plan. He wants to be president, and if we keep reacting to him the way we are, he's going to get there.

Remember those armed bodyguards walking him to the Cape High Court? That was spectacle (Law 6, Law 37) from the sop shelf. Afriforum? Law 2 (learn how to use enemies). Getting others to keep him in the news with lawsuits etc.: Law 21 (play dumber than your mark). Coming up with some new scandalous thing apparently every month, and having everyone react to that: Law 31 (get others to play with the cards you deal). And when he calls for nationalizing mines? I bet that's just Law 45 (preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once).

But I think there's a law that Julius forgot about: Law 1 - Never outshine the master. He went too far when he muttered something about regime change in Botswana. Time will now tell if he, or Jacob Zuma, will pay the price.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But words can never hurt me. Most people reacting so vehemently to Malema's antics don't even understand the language in which he sings that stupid song. It's like going to the opera as an Englishman and fussing about the Italian words the soprano belts out, the Italian words an Englishman doesn't even know.

A double standard?

When some paler member of our society gets caught out saying the word "kaffir", it is an instant political and commercial death penalty. I'm undecided about whether a stupid racist epithet warrants the ending of a career. Refer again to "Sticks and stones may break my bones" above - I believe there is far more harm in a superficially liberal capitalist (wordlessly!) overlooking black employees for promotions, merely for being black, than there is in some unreformed Afrikaner going all kaffir-this-kaffir-that at a braai, yet who never gives practical effect to any of their lingering prejudices. Yes, I believe that such people exist, and even that they are not uncommon. To them (and I encourage fearful white people to apply this qualifier to the meaning of "boer" in that stupid song), the word "kaffir" is merely a colloquialism for "black man", a bad habit they learned in our bad old days. At the braai the word means only the response it elicits from others at the braai - there is no lynch mob or shotgun commando or any other hostility. Most likely there is a mild feeling of superiority of a kind that the men present probably feel towards women too, but mostly the connotation is that of a very-different man, and not much, if any, hostility. And, as surprising as it might seem, I have heard the word "kaffir" being used in an almost reverent fashion, where it's meaning seems closer to the original "unbeliever" - an affirmation of both differentness and respectability. (That's not an argument for using the word. I wish white folk here would just forget that past-expiry-date word.)

Yet when some ANCYL leader (whether as the present incarnation in Julius Malema or as previous ones in Peter Mokaba) sings some "liberation song" whose words literally translate as "kill the farmer" or something to that effect, words which almost all white people recoil at as vehemently as black folk recoil at the word "kaffir", one needs to drag these ANCYL leaders, kicking and screaming, to a less inflammatory stance.

I accept the truth of the saying, "The victor writes the history books". The victors here have decided that the punishment for getting caught saying "kaffir" shall be the political death penalty, while for similarly inflammatory utterances with inverse polarity, there shall be only a delayed (if it comes at all) and grudgingly administered slap on the wrist. This imbalance grates me. In my perfect world, people in positions of influence would receive the political death penalty equally, whether they said "kaffir", "kill the boer", or "wait till Mandela dies".

What to do if you dislike Julius Malema

DON'T PANIC.

Your reaction is his source of power: stop feeding it. The next time he mouths off about something and the media rejoice over the opportunity to hit high circulation numbers, ask yourself whose cause you are helping in gobbling it all up. Can you, personally, make him recant his statements? Didn't think so. Would you, personally and directly, be affected even if he does get his way and has mines nationalized? Not really - unless you own a mine. How likely is it even, really, that he would ever get his way? Do you think Patrice Motsepe will just roll over and let the government take his mine(s)? Or the trade unions, who own large chunks of the mining industry? Apply those critical thinking skills you claim to have as an advantage over him! Remember that whenever Julius is in the news, there is probably something else that got pushed out of the news. Something boring and unimportant like your right to know about the "Zuma tapes", for example.

In short: stop caring so much. That is what I do. There are many ways to push my buttons to get me upset, but Julius Malema ranting about something isn't one of them. I care more about YOUR caring about Juju, than I care about him himself, and my writing this post is more about you and your reaction than it is about Mr Malema.

I realise that in writing this post I am feeding the monster I wish to vanquish. I see this as a tactical retreat - giving up a little territory in the hope of finding reinforcements from the army of the apathetic.