A national sporting star  in our country, Caster Semenya has been treated unfairly in my opinion.  Ironically she joins another young woman, Zola Budd as being quite possibly the two most discriminatory victims in the history of women’s athletics and in my view their treatment belongs along with the momentum that motivated the #ME TOO movement.

In both cases the ladies concerned have sadly earned the right to repeat the legendary cry from Mohammed Ali… reiterated this week by Ms. Semenya: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be”.

 

In this decision the international athletics federation demonstrates the straight jacket of memic conformist behaviour… and the absurdities of the outcome.  As a parent of two daughters who were each, in their respective times and disciplines, National sporting champions; the issue of what was consumed by either was a mandatory consideration dictating the grocery bill.

 

We have the entire Russian team cancelled from performance because they have  failed mandatory drug testing, a world class tennis player cancelled at the height of her career for a ‘drug’ offence… Their crimes: they were enhancing nature’s gift to them.

 

We now have the absurdity of a performer ordered to TAKE performance blighting drugs… The side effects of which could be as inherently damaging to long-term health as the medical argument against enhancement suggests.

  

As for deciding what is a correct level of testosterone in a woman’s body surely we now need to have a rule that stipulates a ‘correct’ level of estrogen in a male body… Seriously? 

 

The entire thing reeks of some form of fascist style controlling mindset evolving along with this populism mania that is sweeping a planet full of people who aren’t comfortable with the exponential pace of a changing global economic system disrupting accepted patterns of thought… After all perhaps the Klevas running sport should be introducing a third category into their events: a transgender category.

 

In yet another Trumpian indication that people generally are becoming, what we call, in our turf,  “Gatvol”  [for the offshore reader “one’s bowels are filled beyond overflowing”.] the two allegedly main parties in the UK suffered a massive drubbing this week in their local government elections when an almost record breakaway from both left and right parties occurred with close to fifteen hundred plodding councilors losing their jobs, not withstanding any contribution they may or may not have made to their respective boroughs. Tough.

 

Here at home we have elections this coming week for the national government and the provincial administrations [there are nine provinces]. Each citizen has two votes one for National and one for Provincial. Unlike the English who only had a choice of four or five parties plus random Independents… we have some forty-eight parties and a possible court ruling in favour of Independents who presently are not permitted… to everyone’s ‘sudden’ surprise. A curious example of what the Chinese call a “Grey Rhino”. One understands that there is a constituional court hearing pending.

 

A cursory evaluation of all of all 48 of them this past week, in the Daily Maverick, revealed that a massive percentage of the parties were founded by persons who were “gatvol” [again, sorry] with the ruling party. And, presumably, since the party is currently under the hammer for rampant acts of country destructive looting, they were either cut off from lootage or opposed to lootage … obviously none are openly setting out that position.

 

Interestingly Forty Seven of the parties are inherently socialist in orientation and only one, a tiny almost non-existent party rather like the name it espouses “Capitalist” … , actually wants to grow the country by “free trade” whatever that means to them. 

 

They are so tiny they are only attempting to gain a Parliamentary seat not a Provincial… So if one was to support them one would have to split one’s pair of votes.

 

Ivo Vegter of the Daily Maverick has put forward a powerful argument for supporting this venture. I was curious about them when I read the bios of all 48. They were the one in a niche that made sense. They carried a vision based on production rather than consumption. Regrettably when stripping out the hype, consumption, is the fundamental premise of the other 47: if I may put it simply. Therefore they The Capitalist Party were the one that stood out as a possibility, especially once I had established that they were not exclusionist: something parties with such names often communicate.

 

“So I went a Googling sir”. She said.

 

There have been other random ‘loose cannons’ in the past that never made it; or did: and then bombed or simply frazzled. That was then: Now is Now. I usually enjoy Ivo Vegter’s writing and respect and agree with the arguments that he presents. Sensible arguments that I am going to support.

 

I’m doing so for two reasons. Partly it is part of the feckless obtuseness demonstrated elsewhere by others. I also refuse to vote against things; I want to vote for things… Especially things that have proved successful sufficiently often to prove consistency.

 

Mostly though my main reason, oddly enough, is thus. Some of us possibly retain a memory of a phenomenally courageous woman:  the late Helen Suzman, lone Member of Parliament for the [now deceased] Progressive Party in the South Afrika of the Dispossession era.

 

She sat alone for decades in our former fascist Parliament, hated by ALL others in that wounded place. She dealt with horrific abuse, poured daily at her from her opponents… many of whose descendents sit today cluttering the main opposition party.

 

And in the end SHE WON. She had the idea that eventually arrived: whatever its random merits.

 

I also do this in the full knowledge that in a world running on veritable Quadrillions of Fiat [aka fake] money as credit, the idea of Capitalism in its primary “fFree Market” [sic] format is almost an endangered konstrukt.

 

Kapital is a foundational building block for a stable society and a world running on credit is like a world running on quicksand. So I should like to see at least one person in parliament ‘doing a Suzman’, pronouncing their love for the substantive nature of Kapital at the very least: in a place that to all intents and purposes is exclusively concerned with “Feed Me!!!”: ripping the last flesh from the carcass: before it is all gone.

 

They could also be the only party capable of quantifying the Capital cost to Casper Semenya of the horrific and grossly unfair rights violation she has experienced. Someone has to do it and Yay to them.  You guys have my vote