Unions are capitalists as well.

Trade unionism is the primary form of labour movement in fixed capitalism. It is base on the idea that the isolated worker is powerless against the capitalistic employer. And to overcome this handicap, the workers organise into unions and with the strike as their weapon.

I am not too much into labour movements but I believe they are important and to some limited extent do help workers. Striking though is their coming and the nature of their survival. When industrialization intensified in Europe in 1700 to 1800 AD this period witnessed the emergency of organised labour movements. Noticeably, unionism is directly proportional to capitalism meaning that capitalism is not an inverse proportion of unionism. They hate each other, but interestingly as capitalism increases so is the power of the unions.

The paradox however is that unions are capitalists as well. Unionism depends on membership at nominal fee. They take from already vulnerable in the form of membership money while capitalism buys labour from people at lesser price. Therefore both capitalism and unionism take from the vulnerable or poor. The only difference is that unionism play god and capitalism play devil's advocate in the eyes of the poor.

Practically, which is rather painful but a reality, no one is on the side of the poor. Indeed if COSATU in South Africa is the voice of the underpaid and exploited why if mine shafts are closing it does not take over. Surely they can do with the accumulated membership fees of over decades. It draws me to conclude that some things exist because they are just a “necessary evil”.

HIV and AIDS need to be declared as a matter of national security

Mbeki questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, arguing that it is not this virus that causes death. He quoted number of people who have been living with the virus for years. Instead he is convinced that it is poverty that kills people not the virus.

Now it is his deputy within the party who argues that after a "quickie" with an positive person one can take a shower to minimize chances of getting HIV. Not only that I am embarrassed as a man but feels that we are failing the whole nation. For mother nature's sake he doesn't even tell which shower, warm or cold, that helps to reduce chances.

I do not believe in media censorship but for the matter of national security the story was not supposed to be published. We have a very vulnerable society, traditional healers say their version of how the virus operate, gender issues-some women being forced to have sex without using condoms, alcohol and drug abuse, and now politicians playing into people's heads. I believe this is becoming too much.

I imagine the number of people who say "yes it is true the president said there is no relationship between the virus and AIDS, you can see even the minister of health doesn't take TAC serious and now the deputy president of the ANC has proven that HIV is not a problem"

Honestly for the sake of the country and many lives that have been put at risk by this irresponsible reporting the story was not supposed to be published. As a country we are facing a crisis. HIV and AIDS I believe has reached a point where it has to be declared a national security concern.

We also need an urgent legislation that will enable prosecution of people who make irresponsible speeches around HIV and AIDS and also to prosecute those who intentionally infect others.

To women heroes

They fastened their belts and went to the trenches and fought with great bravery and dignity. Under unimaginable conditions they produced outstanding leaders of great strength and wisdom. Their husbands were migrant workers practically they were "married single mothers". Under those harsh conditions I never, in my tender years, heard or see street children neither did I heard of an infant found in the dust bin nor found deserted in the wild. Our fathers, their husbands were paid almost nothing. Some of these fathers could not even send remittances because their wages were enough to sustain themselves in their respective hostels. Yet our mothers, women of quality and strength pulled through.

Uneducated and in absence of their husbands sent their children to school little they knew about education yet they did send their children. I am fortunate to have been raised by these women. My grandmother ( also "my father") a woman of 1914 and she is still going strong. And my mother( also "my father") she does not have any formal education. Neither does she know classroom but she can read and write because her brother taught her. Both these women inspired me and set a good example. There are many other mothers I respect who produced many people of great prominence. The pity is that these women are not mentioned as heroes. Their pages are missing in South African history books.

For instance who knows Mandela's mother, Walter Sisulu's, Govan Mbeki's, Winnie Mandela's, Joe Slovo's etc. Surely these women did South Africa a great job by raising such fine leaders. As I write here I wonder who is the mother of the current state president because I assume a sizable number of South Africans know about Govan Mbeki. What is wrong?!

Today we have these modernized women who are likely to organize big marches for abortion and safe nights so that they can go out to drink until they drop. Our mothers fought and marched for good causes.

Dedicated to all forgotten "real" women heroes not to 'our modern women nudists'.

A "liberal racist"

A liberal is a person who upholds and seeks to protect two basic principles: individual freedom and equality. However liberal tradition mostly attaches property rights to give meaning to these principles. Liberals argue that these principles are a skeleton unless property rights are articulated, attached and protected by law. It therefore follows that these principles are useless outside a guaranteed private ownership of property.

However a genuine liberal will have to carefully consider and understand the original position. Philosophically, the original position is a hypothetical situation in which rational calculators, acting as agents or trustees for the interests of concrete individuals, are pictured as choosing those principles of social relations under which their principals would do best. However crudely in this position, the rational calculators do not know facts about their principals which would be morally irrelevant to the choice of principles of justice. This restriction on their reasoning occludes information, for instance, about principals’ age, sex, religious beliefs, etc. Once this information about principals is unavailable to their agents, the plurality of interests disappears, and the problem of choice is rendered determinate. Rawls calls this condition a veil of ignorance. John Rawls’s writtings are available online.

What we need to be clear about is that to be a liberal is not for every Dick, Tom and Harry. A true liberal can and will not defend South African apartheid or to a large extent Zimababwean colonial property rights. He/she can not argue that expropriation of land from whites in Zimbabwe is a violation of constitutional rights. A true liberal will argue that Mugabe is “intra” than “inter-wrong”. “Intra” in the sense that he is being accused for redistributing land to his party people and friends, that is an injustice to African Zimbabweans but to take from white is to sow a fertile ground for liberalism in that country. After redistribution of land they can then discuss a genuine transition to liberalism. What he is doing, in theory, is reversing the situation back to original position which will cater for a proper negotiated lasting settlement.

This then come to my conclusion: a liberal that argue for the protection of apartheid and colonial property rights is in fact a racist worst than Terreblanche and DeKock. I would like to add that in South Africa the only party that was liberal was Democratic Party and liberalism died with the party what we have today are just bunch of ………..