The New Standard for the Poor

When early this morning I switched to the BBC News Channel I jumped for joy: It was announced that the US government plans to sue the ratings agency Standard & Poor over its rating of mortgage bonds at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis!

It must be two years now since I first questioned the legitimacy of ratings agencies: Standard & Poor’s, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings lead the exclusive club of a handful of such agencies and are the names most commonly heard when especially “down”-ratings of countries (and corporates) have been announced with such monotonous regularity during the past years.

What people do not understand is that these agencies are not government agencies or organizations brought about through international agreements and representation. These are all privately-owned organizations which - and I will bet my bottom dollar – given the opportunity, can and will use their influence to make money out of destabilizing national economies.

Likewise the US Feds (the Federal Reserve System) are privately owned! In the same vein, it is incredible that non-governmental institutions in the UK could have been responsible for fixing the libor rate.

It may be quite a revealing moment for you if you could spend a little time on inquiring into the board membership and the ownership of these different organizations that so negatively impact the quality of life of the man in the street and our ability to make a decent living. I have - and it has opened my mind to a number of unpleasant truths.

Remember that there is no such thing as conspiracies. There are only loopholes, which given a chance and the course of human nature, that people will take and get away with if Joe Soap and friends don’t start putting the screw on these privately-owned businesses.

It is time that we, the people, start taking back our power and start forcing politicians to be responsible for the decisions that govern our quality of life and our future. Our future must be wrestled back from the realm of boardrooms and it must be placed again where it rightfully belongs: Within the debate of democratically elected parliaments!

Of pigeons and starlings

My maternal grandmother once told me, very confidentially,  that birds, because they sing so beautuifully and because they have wings and can fly, were the angels that we read about in the Bible. I cannot remember exactly how old I was when she imparted this secret knowledge to me but, what I do remember, is that around the age of four, when I had found my first dead bird, that Grandma's theory starting puzzling me. I might have seen dead birds before that incident but, it was at around four years old that I understood what "dead" really meant. Japie, the Rhodesian ridgeback that my parents had when I was born and whom had become my great friend and protector, had died suddenly and, I knew that he was dead, because my mother had explained death to me.

But, when I first registered that birds also could die I became mightely puzzled. If little children had to die and go to heaven to become angels and then visit us as little birds, why dit they have to die again? When I asked my mother if angels could die, this thoroughly modern woman first of all informed me that there were no such things as angels and heaven, and secondly, even if there were, that nothing could die twice. According to her, death was a once off and final event - period.

Not only had I  encountered my first dead bird that day but I also had my first face to face encounter with the first conflict that two vastly different truths can evoke. When my mother then asked me why I had  asked the question I simply replied with a non-committal "just".  Even at that age I realised that there could be great potential for tension when two truths had to be considered. So, I opted for accepting that both truths could co-exist and I walked off, keeping the peace between two very feisty women.

But, accepting two truths did not keep me from spending a lot of time, collecting, examining and burying the inert bodies of grandmother's angels – mostly pigeons and starlings - who had become the victims of road accidents. In the street where we lived there was at least one death a day and often, driving with my mother, we accidently would hit a pigeon or starling that did not fly up fast enough or, sometimes. these aves would fly directly into the car’s windscreen or radiator.

When I started driving, I too had a few collisions with angels. I remember, in particular, one hot sumer afternoon in Commissioner Street in Johannesburg’s CBD. In quite heavy traffic and going slow, the car connected two pigeons which were either too slow or too interested in whatever they were scavenging off the road.

I stopped, got out and found one pigeon dead and the other still flapping its wings. I took the mortally injured pigeon in my hand and I felt it trembling with pain and fear. Its one red-rimmed eye looked straight at me. Was it accusing me or begging me? I hesitated but then looked away and wrung its neck.

I remember vividly the sudden urge to void both my bowel and bladder. Also, and, as a consequence (and for several nights thereafter), just before I fell asleep I recalled every detail of that “mercy killing” incident and wanted to throw up.

One eventually rationalizes such an incident and the memory is only brought forth when one sees a pigeon dead in the road. But that doesn't happen that often anymore. Despite that fact that we are blessed to live at high altitude and in a city which has the world’s highest number of trees per square kilometer, as well as the highest number of bird species of any other city, it is rare, nowadays, to find a dead bird in the road. And, surprisingly, both the bird and car populations of this city have increased dramatically over the decades.

Waking up in the city of Johannesburg is a sight for green eyes.

So how come there are more birds but less feathered ones dead on the tarmac?

The answer: Darwin.

The pigeon and starling populations of Johannesburg are perfect examples of how the theory of natural selection is at work in living - and observed - bird species. Those birds which were too slow and not adapted to city life 50 years got taken out and, therefore, had fewer descendents in each generation. In my opinion the city's slicker and auto savvy birds that remain and flourish are offspring of the alert fast ones that easily could take to the sky long before a vehicle was upon them. Now and again the odd genetic throwback still dives into a car and probbaly dies with few or no individuals sharing its behavioural disadvantage. The reality is that in 2012 there are dramatically fewer road deaths involving birds than in 1962.

A very common bird in Johannesburg : The "Hadeda" or Sacred Ibis

But I still remember that hot summer afternoon in Commissioner Street as if it had happened yesterday. And even now, on a hot Johannesburg day like today, the memory evokes a distinct feeling of nausea and, I wonder if Darwin's process of natural selection, as I write, is selecting for or against killing angels?

The last paragraphs of "The Inevitable"

Isaac Asimov once wrote: "It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."


And, the world as it will be, only will be because it will have made the transition to an inevitable next epoch - as it was the case before that and before that.

For humans, if we survive, none of our knowledge of the past nor of the present and, none of our old or new perceptions will be relevant in terms of the changes inevitably coming to our world. Neither will anything we ever experienced be as frightening or as exciting!

There will be a whole new way of thinking and living together and none of the isms we knew before will have a refrain in this exhilarating future. The best of all is that change will not have been brought about through the intervention of a movement, an organization or a dogma and, therefore, for this new lease on life we will not be indebted to any human agency. We will invent new processes of perceiving things and new ways of living together and novel ways of communicating with each other and with the universe and, we will do so only because Mother Nature will have forced us to do so. MDK130110

Telkom (Spermcount) - A Really Big Wank

Van my vriend Daan Smit in Pretoria!

Ek is nou so kwaad jy kan 'n eier in my gat veras, never mind kook.

Telkom natuurlik.

Die foon en internetlyn het op 13 Oktober (presies 'n maand gelede) buite werking geraak. Ek het dit op Maandag 15 Oktober by die werk aanlyn gerapporteer. Daar het ek boodskap gekry dat 'n sogenaamde area fout reeds gerapporteer is en dat ek nie hoef te rapporteer nie. Ek het nietemin gerapporteer.

So 'n dag of twee later het ek weer navraag gedoen en is ingelig dit sal so 'n so dag of twee neem en dan is dit reg. So of dag of twee later skakel ek weer en hoor toe somme r- in een gesprek - dat dit eers so 'n week, en toe so twee sinne verder, dat dit so drie of vier weke sal neem.

Kan ieemand my kwalik neem dat ek my gruwelik vererg het vir die totale oningeligtheid en arrogante houding van die Telkom operateur? Elke keer kry ek dan ook 'n sms wat my inlig dat die klagte "ge-eskalleer" is!

Daarna het ek ander kanale gevolg. Verlede week het ek my internet diensverskaffer, MWEB gekontak en binne 'n paar uur kon ek begin vordering sien. Saterdag, (amper 'n maand later) kom tegnikus by my aan. Na lang gesoek en draadtrekkery op die paal, lig hy my in dat dit die kabel tussen die "boks" en Albertstraat in Waterkloof is. Daar gaat hy toe. Sou glo na Kabelafdeling eskaleer.

Paar dinge geleer

• Telkom telefoon-operateurs het opleiding dringend nodig

• Telkom telefoon-operateurs lieg

• By Telkom beteken die woord "eskaleer" fokol

• Ek moet die land verlaat of ek gaan 'n beroerte kry

Netnou bel een of ander HR karakter van Telkom my wragtag en vra dat ek moet die operateurs moet "rate". For crying out loud! Die blerrie foon is steeds nie reg nie en ek moet hulle "rate" op grond van wat? Diens?"

The Poor Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs

This very moment - as we move into the 7th day of November 2012 – I received an sms stating: "The City of Johannesburgs [note no apostrophe!] bank details have changed with effect from 1/11/2912, please deposit at Standard Bank account number AA45."

This "world-class" city - as it is so widely advertised by spinning the truth - is actually "bankcorrupt". The roads are crumbling, the inner-city is falling apart and we pay rates and taxes at levels never before attained. The mayor and his executive committee run around obfuscating all the critical issues - which are legion and which are multiplying exponentially by the day. Who do these megalomaniacs thinks they are fooling?

The problem is that the council members are now seriously believing their own advertising. And that is very dangerous. Listen folks, maybe it is time you guys start paying attention to the bad publicity your lack of actions are creating rather than to your own glowing advertising?

ABSA must be a bit confused now that they have lost such a big client. The majority of Africa's economies are way smaller than the Johannesburg City Budget!

The media statement from Standard Bank:

Joburg and Standard Bank in new banking partnership


Standard Bank South Africa has beaten four banks in a tender bid to partner with the City of Joburg.

The participating banks were subject to the same rules and requirements, in line with the prevailing legislation, the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).

The City had utilised the services of one of the big four audit and consultancy firms to ensure that the process was transparent and fair to all participants.

"This signifies the beginning of a new partnership with Standard Bank," says Mr. Trevor Fowler, the City Manager.

"We believe the partnership with Standard Bank will support the City of Johannesburg as it rolls out the GDS 2040 Strategy , will assist the City, through commitments undertaken during the bidding presentation, on numerous aspects which are in line with socio-economic transformation and the strategic objectives of the organisation."

In terms of the mandate, Standard Bank South Africa will provide the City with transactional banking services for the next five years. This includes payments, collections and liquidity management; property management; and comprehensive banking services for municipal employees.

The bank will also partner with the City on various socio-economic transformation initiatives which can only auger well for the City as a whole. In line with the City's objectives, the new partnership will enable the City to:

•Drive efficiency and sustainability

•Optimise revenue collection

•Optimally manage cash flows both for operational and capital budgets

•Effectively manage transformation; and

•Ensure service delivery.

To minimise fraud, the City's bank account details will be masked.

For the City's residents paying their municipal bill at Standard Bank branches, they will use a unique Customer Identify Number (CIN) assigned to the City of Johannesburg, CIN no AA45 in the place of the City's account number. The customer deposit reference will be ratepayers' municipal account number for the bill being paid.

In the case of ATM payment and telephone banking, customers are urged to make arrangements with their bank to link the City of Johannesburg from the pre-approved beneficiary list. The beneficiary reference will be the ratepayers' municipal account number for the bill being paid.

Customers using internet banking payments will need to delete any current beneficiary details they have linked on their Internet Banking profiles for City of Johannesburg. Customers will then link the City of Johannesburg from the pre-approved beneficiary list.. Again the beneficiary reference will be the ratepayers' municipal account number for the bill being paid.

Commenting about the new relationship with the City, Head of Transactional Product and Services of Standard Bank, Mr. Neil Surgey says: "Standard Bank has been an integral part of Johannesburg for 126 years. We are delighted to be appointed official bankers to the City and believe that this partnership will benefit all Johannesburg's citizens."

Mr. Surgey reiterated Standard Bank's commitment to Johannesburg and to serving all its people. He says, "Our head office is in downtown Johannesburg where we employ about 10 500 permanent staff. In addition, we make a major contribution to Johannesburg's fiscus in terms of revenue and taxes. Johannesburg is an exciting, vibrant and dynamic city and we are proud to be part of it."


Congratulations Standard Bank! You sure are "moving forward"! Just know that this account is going to billow in the red as more and more residents of this city default on their rates and taxes - and, as the interest payments inversely inflate in the favour of the blue bank!

TO INSURE OT NOT TO INSURE: THE CON CONTINUES

My friend Leigh Jackson stopped at a stop street in Fairmount on Monday 27th August at midday. Obeying the law and reading the road, she duly waited for the car on her right to pass. Suddenly Leigh was hit from behind by a woman driving a large Audi Q5 SUV – and, all of you know how much I hate people in cities driving SUV 4x4’s!

The well-dressed, very angry female driver leapt from her lofty vehicle and was most unpleasant about - what by law – was her mistake. People normally stop at stop signs and, normally they do not bash into other people’s cars. If you get rammed in the rear, by law in most countries, the rammer and not the rammee takes the blame – especially at a designated stop street!

Now, what really angers me is teh fact that despite Leigh, as requested, having obtained 3 quotes ranging from R 10 600 to R 13 766 for repairs to her perfectly roadworthy but old vehicle (at the time of the accident), the insurer, SANTAM, grudgingly is offering R5000 towards repairs! This is an utter shame and, reflects my own sad experiences with SANTAM! Leigh simply cannot afford to pay the balance of the repair costs and, for all intents and purposes, have now become a prisoner of the retirement home in which she lives. SANTAM's only excuse is taht tehy are goingf by teh book value of the car and that the book only starts in 1988 - according to them the last sale of that model was on eBay and for US$ 960.

First of all, it is important to know that Leigh has devoted all her life to educating young South Africans in the art of communication as well as teaching heritage and environmental conservation to students and children. She tirelessly lectured for very little pay and, now, as an elderly citizen, lives on a limited income. Her car is essential in keeping her in touch with the world – as she says, it is the only member of her family that she has left in this world.! And, now, this member is injured and Leigh is left high and dry.

I wonder how the driver of the Audi Q5 SUV will feel when she realizes that Leigh’s whole life has now been impacted upon through that accident? I know that SANTAM could not give a shit and will us eteh excuse fo book value. In my opinion they used to be one of the most respected short-term-insurers in the country. But, through personal experience and the derogatory remarks I hear about them, they now probably rate amongst the least-liked in South Africa.

This accident was not Leigh's fault. Why must she be the one to suffer?

Graduation & Accreditation Address PRISA/ PROVOX/ University of the Witwatersrand: Mixael de Kock: Thursday, 3 April 2003

Honoured Guests

Some months ago, when PRISA invited me to be the guest speaker at this event, I fully intended for my address to be brief and to the point. But, recent global developments and the concentration of fundamentalist thinking in many parts of the world have impacted on my own sensibilities and sentiments and, therefore, my story has become somewhat longer than I originally intended. I firmly believe, however, that what I have to say to you this evening is of great importance and I respectfully ask you to hear me out.
Let me begin with a little story.

Once upon a time, in a faraway forest, there lived a bunny and a snake. One day, they happened to accidentally bump into each other.
"Oh, my," said the bunny, "I'm so terribly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I've been blind since birth, so, I can't see where I'm going. In fact, since I'm an orphan as well, I don't even know who or what I am."
The snake replied, "I have the same story to tell so let's help each other figure out the riddle of who we are!"

"Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful!" replied the bunny. So the snake slithered all over the bunny, and said, "Well, you very well may be whatever you think you are and, you may also be what someone else wants you to be, but because I find that you are covered with soft fur; that you have really long ears; that your nose twitches; and that you have a soft cottony tail, I totally and absolutely and in truth and nothing but the truth declare you to be a donkey!"
"Oh, thank you! Thank you," cried the bunny, ecstatic at finally having found a route to its identity.

So, returning the perceived favour, the bunny then felt the snake all over, and remarked, "Well, you're smooth and slippery, and you have a forked tongue, no backbone and no balls. I'd say you must be in Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising, Journalism or Politics.”

The snake replied, angrily: “So what?!” Then coiled itself tighter around the trusting little bunny, squeezing the last of life out of the warm and furry little blind creature and then, swallowed it.

You see, the snake was never blind, never orphaned and very well knew, right from the start, that it was deceiving the bunny. It took advantage of the blind bunny’s trust when they met in that faraway forest. In fact, the snake didn’t even care about its own identity being discovered at that point, for it already had the bunny tightly gripped in its coils.

What I am going to propose to you tonight, is that that little bunny of my story, represents an unsuspecting and random public and, that no qualification in this world will prevent you, the communication professional, from becoming that snake in that faraway forest - unless you are also qualified in and have a real understanding of the meaning of the values that should be driving our direct communication of intent. And these values are: Respect, Responsibility and Truth.

But, let’s pause for a moment and look at the meaning of the word Truth. According to the dictionary it has to do with facts and being faithful, exact, correct, genuine. But, the philosophical consensus is also that truth can never be absolute and that it is many-faceted. Also, the quantum sciences state that no more than a limited amount of the truth can ever be known, for if one attempts to measure reality the very act of observation interferes with the accurate results of the experiment.

Regardless of science and philosophy, I think we all are in agreement that the TRUTH refers to ALL the facts that are known at any given point in time - not just those facts that happen to suit you or your employers or your community or your political party or whatever affiliations or strategic objectives you may have.

Having dealt with Truth, let us now reunite it with Respect and Responsibility. To these, of course, we can add words like accountability, liability, care, concern, trust, conviction - there are so many words for moral and ethical behaviour and, funnily enough, the things they describe follow automatically when Respect, Responsibility and Truth are in place. An even funnier thing is that when you put into practice those three words, together with those they attract, you have an ethical framework from which Reconciliation naturally follows.

Then what is going on in the world now? Why are these qualities absent from the global stage as its actors play out their comedy of errors?

I should like to suggest that the present state of affairs is owing to the fundamentalist way in which we have come to think and which is the reason why we no longer spontaneously include those three important words in our international lexicon. And, while this discussion centers on all forms of fundamentalism, I may as well mention that the communication abuses of fundamentalist capitalism are prime examples of the total abdication of responsibility towards its publics. And, may I also mention that I share the view with people such as George Soros and Prof Noreena Hertz of Cambridge.

Noam Chomsky, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology media theorist and political scientist, has exposed, over his long career, the way in which fundamentalist structures have evolved the science of communication. According to him, these skills are ultimately abused in a process that aims at swaying mass sentiment and manipulating public opinion in a gigantic top-down hierarchy. The “scientific method” employed is to oversimplify issues into single, easy-to-understand messaging.

This approach has nothing to do with the real issues at hand but rather reframes complex issues into headline-length, easy to photograph concepts. Thus, we have the “sound bite” – a strategy of distraction and over-simplification, which carries no real data and no information on which one can make an informed opinion.

This posturing on behalf of fundamentalist ideas, be they religious or business-related, has resulted in numb-and-dumb publics who never say: “I object” or “I don’t believe”. In fact, the public has been lied to so often - and it has been manipulated so thoroughly - that it passively accepts its relegated role of stunned onlooker. Douglas Rushkoff holds that this is exactly the point of the strategy: That citizens and consumers should not be kept informed and should be fed meaningless slogans to rally behind.

Too many communication professionals the world over, rarely question the consequences of their endeavours or even care and they persist in spreading inflated promises, be they the basic premises of fundamentalist religion or the profit-driven aims of fundamentalist economics – and it is the experts who juggle with words, incomplete sentences and inaccurate meanings –and it is they who spread the viruses, the warped values, among unsuspecting and trusting populations. The results are monstrous. One simply has to glance at one’s television screen and the images of fear, and horror and infant corpses to realise that modern-day messaging has very little indeed to do with the experience of reality.

So, why is global communication in a mess? I believe that despite all the fears, the horrors and the atrocities of history, we have learned almost nothing about the importance of accurate and unfettered communication for the smooth functioning of society. Our memories are short and in fact, history as a subject has become quite unfashionable in education. Barely decades after any self-inflicted human cataclysm, greed and opportunism start their spread again because people simply do not know the track record. For every generation there are iterative effects and all because of a lack of insight into the past. The feedback loops feed back upon themselves and, eventually, you have the cacophony of sound we hear today.

May I also propose to you that polite society - and the notion that you should always be pleasant about every issue that bugs you – is at the base of the world’s present inability to communicate directly, respectfully and honestly. We forget that being respectful, responsible and honest does not necessarily mean being impolite or unpleasant or offensive. Wrong assumptions about cooperation, discussion and resolution have given rise to the current fashion for “politically correct” speak and behaviour that each of us is expected slavishly to follow.

In the opinion of the American academic and intellectual, the late Stephen Jay Gould, the custom of acting and speaking PC merits very little commentary because no intellectual argument fuels the fashion. He says that the strategy of, and I quote: “No offence, please, we’re politically correct adopts the fully avoidant tactic of never generating conflict by never talking to each other, or speaking in such muted and meaningless euphemisms that no content or definition can ever emerge.”

Gould continues: “The American culture has actually adopted this unholy contract for many issues that should be generating healthy debate, and surely cannot ever be brought to a fair conclusion if we don’t talk to each other. [We] can only regard such voluntary suppression of discussion as a guarantee that tough be resolvable issues will continue to fester and haunt us, and as a sin against the human mind and heart.”

He asks: “If we have so little confidence in our unique mental abilities, and in our intrinsic goodwill, then what indeed is man (and woman) that anyone should be mindful of us?”

Why, colleagues, is it so wrong to use the terminology: I am unhappy, I feel shit, I am angry, I don’t agree, I protest, I am pissed off, let us solve this problem, let us talk straight. I ask you, has direct and honest language become so questionable in itself, to be minimised and dismissed as pas de rigueur?

It is clear to me that certain communication professionals conveniently and intentionally cause confusion by giving new interpretations to old and trusted meanings. When in doubt refer to a dictionary, but even so, nowadays, I find myself quite unable to reconcile the usage of certain words and concepts with their traditional or standard definitions. That which I read, that which I hear and that which I see, all have been thoroughly impoverished by abusive and careless application.

Like Shakespeare’s depressed and tired-of-life Macbeth, I too declare: “It is the tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Without flying the flag for anyone – least of all Saddam Hussein or, for that matter, Robert Mugabe, or any number of abusive rulers - I am the first to confess – and maybe because I have spotted the PR in the word Propaganda - that I no longer understand differences between words that used to be perfectly clear. I am still amazed how, in recent years, the meaning of the word “liberal” has transfigured into “conservative” and how “conservative” has morphed into “liberal”. We now happily substitute liberation for invasion, terrorism for desperation, democracy for tyranny, partisan for thug, human rights for political expediency. By what demonic process, I ask you, do the persecuted become the persecutors of the persecuted who persecute?

I now also have serious doubts about almost all reports of jubilation, joy, sorrow, life and death. Those who formulate the messages appear to trivialise the importance of either overstating the understatement or understating the overstatement – whichever is the more convenient. Mark Twain’s famous phrase comes to mind: “The report of my death was an exaggeration”.

In this game of perplexed meaning, where do I fit in and who am I? Have I any identity at all? How does the snake see me?

Am I because I think, or am I who I think I am because I don’t think, or am I who I am told to think I am, or am I because I am? Do I think I am because I am told who I am supposed to think I am? This is the mockery of your and my identity. We are subjected to intrusive and obfuscating messages, transmitted by an uncaring and opportunistic communication industry. And that industry comprises you and I - of whom it is said that we are what we think we are not!

And, it is we who bombard others with catchphrases and pay-off lies which now have come to include the superlatives to the superlatives: super super super latest now enzymes; the absolute final and last words in; the most incredible fantastic, amazing; the deepest sweetest weepiest and, in the common experience of the end-user, the saddest and the most bitter and the most irresponsible and the most disrespectful and the halfest of totally and truthfully truest untruths.

That unsuspecting bunny of my story lives under this tyranny of snake tautology. And, as if this humiliation is not enough, communication experts now collaborate with their IT brothers to devise the indignities of computerised abuse. The very technology that should liberate has been turned against the bunny and he is being used for the purposes of manipulation and dehumanisation.

Just recall the frustrations of electronic banking! And, all of us, at one time or another have been victim to the electronic voice, or that ultimate insult, the call centre. The invention of these devices, l suspect, is a strategy for hiding those who take our money and in return give nothing but bad service, bad product and bad attitudes. There is only one thing about these people we can be sure of: The communication of their intent is not honest.

You may say that if conventional protest fails you always have recourse to law. But, even that route is suspect. Party A arrives with its lawyers and PR people carrying an issue under the arm; Party B retaliates by calling in its lawyers and PR people. These tactics result in delays and the buying of time – sometimes decades – and the result is always half-baked and way too late.

I firmly believe that we create our own realities. And, civil disobedience, terrorism and revolt, often, are but the opposite and inverse reactions described by Newton’s laws – expressions of frustration and despair caused by bad communication.

As I see the world, global communication appears to have sacrificed the true values of humanity to attitudes of recklessness and shoddy talk. In the process, all of us may have even lost our sense of humour, our sense of wonderment, and, we may have exchanged compassionate survival for bloodless existence. Have we become magicians abusing our magic for the transposition of meaning rather than the transformation of society?

I am glad to live in a country where I may be at risk of many dangers - but I am not at any risk of indifference as yet. In this country we still express our feelings, speak out on issues and, we do so in a largely respectful way. And, we have much evidence of our successful communication strategies.

First and foremost is the fact, that through good old-fashioned direct talk, and against all the odds, we embarked upon social political and economic reforms which have succeeded beyond expectations and which is an example to the world. We are a kaleidoscope of cultures that live in great harmony when compared with most other countries.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was unique in that it helped explain why bad things happened to good people. Instead of being a tool for Revenge, it was Responsibly designed, Respectfully operated and the Truth, as revealed, finally led to the most amazing Reconciliation in the social and political and economic history of mankind. We confessed to our injustices and everyone could understand what and why happened and who was responsible.

The Reports of the King Commission are cited the world over when people talk about business ethics and corporate governance and appropriate communication with investors and the public. We can hold our heads high for, unlike so many other parts of the world, we have not been tarred with the brush of blatant corporate deceit as yet.

But, now is also the time for South African communicators to proceed with the utmost caution. As we increasingly turn our gaze to the outside world it is easy to fall in line with bad global communication trends. We need to be vigilant, forever on the lookout for the joker in the hand dealt to us from abroad. This joker, the card that can mimic any card in the pack, will bring misfortune and indifference to our communication structures.

On the southern tip of Africa, we experience life and death on a daily and, at times, violent basis. What happens to me and to you and to our compatriots, is integrated into the process of survival and to that reality, no one who lives here can be indifferent. Our population may be largely uneducated and living in the worst conditions of poverty when measured by First World standards, but at least here, for most of us, there still exist the basic values of honesty, respect and responsibility. And - Ubuntu! – we talk straight.

These are the qualities that differentiate us as Africans and which make us so rich. The others - the ones who have sacrificed their true values for the empty objectives of greed and consumerism or religious beliefs – they are the poor ones; they who foolishly defend the indefensible on our television screens.

And do we really care about them? The fact is that we in Africa – and that is true for the major part of this continent – we have been so marginalised by the First World that we may as well congratulate ourselves: Why even bother about their empty values of Brand Loyalty and Brand Recognition? The bottom line of course is, that most of us are too hungry, too sick, too desperate and too isolated to be of any use at all to the snake. We don’t give a damn!

I am truly grateful – irrespective of my and your individual political views – to have a President and a Country who, during the past months, have flown the flag for transparency in the United Nations Security Council. For all our political differences, and for all the unresolved issues we still face, I am confident that the majority of us applaud South Africa’s refusal to prostitute itself to the thinly veiled motives – whether of greed, political expediency or fundamentalist fanaticism – on all sides in this conflict. All of us can today stand up in any gathering in the world and declare, “I am Proudly South African!”

All of humanity stands on the brink of world domination by one victor or another. In the next number of years, it may even be decades yet, irrespective of outcomes of present crises, we are going to be subjected to domination by one or the other world power, one or the other worldview.

And, in the end it will not be the politicians and the businessmen who have envisaged this new world and, it is not they who will ultimately decide the nature of its governance; it will have been you, the Communication Professionals – the advertising executives, the marketers, the PR people, and the journalists – it will be you that would have been responsible for the creation of this new world for all living things. I therefore beg of you that in constructing this world that you will design for us a leader who will ably and accurately calculate humanity’s coordinates and, with vision and clarity, will plot the course of all of life into distant time.

In conclusion, let me remind you that mankind is but one part of an infinity of parts that make up the integrated and remarkably thin layer of life that barely coats the surface of planet Earth. Homo sapiens is also that species which has evolved to a level of intelligence as yet unattained by any other life form on this globe. For all we know it may even be the only intelligent life form in this immense universe of which not one of us can even begin to perceive of its size or its time scales.

And for us in the communication industry, it’s important to realise that nothing stands between our human intellects and our beastly instincts other than the ability to communicate. We, the communicators, share the responsibility to convey intentions directly, honestly and with respect. That is simple common sense and good manners, qualities that are the making of civil society.

It is when this ethical code corrupts – when a forked tongue conveys the message - it is then that we, the communication professionals, stand accused of the worst crimes against humanity. Because when our intent becomes devoid of basic values and our animalistic programming becomes confused with rational intellect – that is when mankind so brilliantly distinguishes itself as the one species that intentionally kills its own.

I congratulate you on your individual achievements and I wish all of you a brilliant career in communication. As a parting shot I shall quote some words by the celebrated Harvard socio-biologist, Edward O. Wilson. In my opinion, this last paragraph from his book, Consilience, is the most brilliant of all brilliant writings and the most inspiring of all visions that have come to us in the last years of the 20th Century.

“I believe that in the process of locating new avenues of creative thought, we [humankind] will also arrive at [a system of] an existential conservatism. It is worth asking repeatedly: Where are our deepest roots? We are, it seems, Old World, catarrhine primates, brilliant emergent animals, defined genetically by our unique origins, blessed by our newfound biological genius, and secure in our homeland if we wish to make it so. What does it all mean? This is what it all means. To the extent that we depend on prosthetic devices to keep ourselves and the biosphere alive, we will render everything fragile. To the extent that we banish the rest of life, we will impoverish our own species for all time. And, if we should surrender our genetic nature to machine-aided ratiocination, and our ethics and art and our very meaning to a habit of careless discursion in the name of progress, imagining ourselves godlike and absolved from our ancient heritage, [then], we will become nothing.