Julius & The Hong Kong Hash House Harriers

When I travelled to the North in October, I was accompanied by my buddy Stretch who had paid his first visit to the Southern Desert - we stopped at the Tropic Of Capricorn to take pics:


After setting my camera's timer I scrambled to get into the picture but, alas, I was too slow ...


I noticed that the reverse-sides of the Capricorn signs on either side of the road were plastered with stickers and messages left by travellers who'd stopped here.


Visitors from all over the world had left their mark.


I followed Dom's blog link and found an entry on his Namibia visit - I also found an image of him at the Tropic when he'd pasted his sticker on the sign.


Is that a Japanese Bunny? - and "Ratpanat"? ... that sounds like a word from Malaysia, or Singapore?


Disrupted by routine - Germany, Japan and Australia were here.


Though there is a hint of humour in this sticker left by the Hong Kong Hash House Harriers, (whoever they may be), there are also deadly serious undertones to it.

For those who don't know who Julius is, he's Julius Malema, the obnoxious, recently unseated ex-leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) Youth League.

Malema is most notorious for inciting his followers by singing the anti-apartheid struggle song "Dubul’ iBhunu - Shoot the Boer" at his political rallies, hence the 'I'm not the Boer' reference on the sticker.

The word 'Boer' means farmer and is used more generally to refer to the whole Afrikaner population and, in a wider, derogatory sense, to all white-skinned people.

Even though South Africa's High Court has ruled that the song is 'hate speech', there are still people, like enlightened guru Bono of U2 fame, who jet into South Africa and the security of a luxury hotel, then declare that it's OK - there is a time and place to sing this racist song.

The inconvenient truth is that since 1987 almost FOUR THOUSAND white people (mostly Afrikaners) have been murdered in South African farm attacks, often tortured and slaughtered in the most barbaric way.

If you have the stomach for it, you can follow the links and read the list of victims' names and gory details here.

In light of the above, it would be interesting to learn on which occasions precisely, does Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bono deem it appropriate to sing a song which incites people to genocide - perhaps just before Malema's minions go out marauding?

The Washington-based organization Genocide Watch has rated South Africa as being at Stage 6 on it's 8 Stages of Genocide scale.

To me, the most frightening aspect about Malema is that, even though he's been temporarily disabled, he may well become a future President of South Africa.


Cartoon by Zapiro



... and on a lighter note, we did finally get it right - well, sort of ...

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