Paul Jacobson

Simone and Kerry-Anne have cracked this baby wide open! They have conclusive proof that Bolton Deventer is none other than Matthew Buckland! And there I was thinking Vincent Maher was masquerading as Deventer …

At last. It’s official. We know who Bolton Deventer is. Minutes ago a tweet was submitted in Bolton-speak, apparently under the wrong user name, and moments later it had been deleted. Highly suspect behaviour, I’d say.

You can see the key piece of evidence right here …

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bolton deventer, matt buckland, expose, exposed

Yesterday I became a case study. One of my responsibilities at iCommons is to co-ordinate its IT/IS function and that includes sourcing a new Internet access service provider. JC, our techie until the end of March, was dealing with DataPro (I think I even suggested DataPro in the first place) so when JC left, I picked up from where he left off and tried to move things along. Because iCommons is a non-profit we are mindful that we are dependent on donor funding and need to make decisions based on that. Anyway, without getting into details I reached a bit of an impasse with our DataPro sales rep yesterday morning about an issue that was a concern for us. I wasn’t happy with the tension that had entered my budding relationship with the DataPro guy and reached out to my Twitter community for help and asked my community if anyone could recommend someone at IS or MWeb Business that I could speak to about an alternative quote. It also didn’t help DataPro much that my colleagues were also a bit put off by this unforunate development.

I quickly received responses from Andy, Jason and Marc (and shortly afterwards, Jacques) and started making enquiries about alternatives to DataPro. While I can understand that people have bad days and are not always polite, we are under some pretty intense pressure back at the batcave and need a reliable solution pronto. I didn’t have (and still don’t have) a meaningful relationship with DataPro and when I experienced that tension, I felt no hesitation look at other options.

I started discussions with a great referral from Andy about possibly moving to Mweb Business (yes, in spite of Jason’s caution) as the next best of a somewhat dubious bunch (although if I had seen his post about MWeb Business I probably wouldn’t have agreed to consider them so readily) and then headed back to the ongoing session at Nomadic Marketing where I was due to speak in a couple hours. I was listening to Mike Stopforth’s talk an hour or so later when I received a series of calls from DataPro about a complaint that had found its way to DataPro’s CEO who passed it down to the sales director who routed it to the sales guy I had been talking to. Anyway, the sales guy was most apologetic and we were able to reach agreement on an arrangement that works for iCommons once we were passed all the tension.

At first the sales guy thought that I had called the CEO and was confused when I told him I hadn’t spoken to anyone else at DataPro. When he checked back with his director he was told that the complaint was “on a website … Twitter …”. I confirmed that I had posted my gripe and explained that where I receive good service, I can be almost fanatically loyal and when I don’t, like most people, I reach out to my community for alternatives. It turns out that all the wonderful people on Twitter I am connected to are a pretty responsive bunch and often my first port of call. I wasn’t sure how the message got to DataPro and was, quite frankly, stunned that someone actually heard what I said and then conveyed that to the CEO of DataPro. This is the stuff of presentation case studies for goodness sake! I found out this morning that Pam Sykes knows DataPro’s PR people and passed the message on to them. Pam was sitting about 5 meters away from me in Nomadic Marketing to boot! If it weren’t for Pam, I wonder if my tweet would have been noticed by anyone connected to DataPro and dealt with. The emphatic response from DataPro’s CEO is a clear indication of how important it is to them to give better service and they deserve some credit for making an effort to respond to my indirect complaint about them.

(In the event I still have their attention, they may also want to do something about the page http://datapro.co.za resolves to – it isn’t the home page and “www” is so 2007!)

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twitter, datapro, listening, pam sykes, complaint, feedback, case study

Ah, the controversy over at Avusa over its (former) … again! You probably know by now that Bullard has been fired due to an apparently racist column which basically said that were it not for the brutal and racist (white) colonialists, the indigenous population would only just be discovering fire and other wonderful things. While there is a clear implication that were it not for the somewhat dubious influence of the white folk, black South Africans would not only be undisturbed by their less savoury influences but would have just barely made it out of their caves.

If anything, Bullard’s underlying assumption that the locals of a couple centuries ago would have simply stagnated and not developed in any meaningful way, whether that be technologically, culturally or socially is the most objectionable aspect of the column. It suggests that black South Africans were (and perhaps still are) fundamentally inferior. Bullard may as well have been writing 20 to 30 years ago when bizarre evolutionary theories were being used to support Apartheid. That being said, his column raises a couple interesting questions and issues for me.

(As a complete thought experiment I find myself what would have happened if the Dutch East India Company and the British had skipped the Cape altogether. How would the local population have developed in the last few centuries? What would an organically African society look like in the 21st century. At some point the local population would have interfaced with the more developed world so I have to wonder if our teens still wouldn’t be trying to pass themselves off as US basketball players and ghetto hoodlums. At the same time how would a truly African society look? Would Ubuntu be the basis of everything that society does? What would its systems of government look like? Would they be tyrannical like we see in our northern neighbour or more communal and participatory?)

Back to Bullard … what did Avusa expect? They appointed him to be controversial. What did they expect when he is required to generate enough controversy to sell papers every week? The last major controversy was about his perception of bloggers and that really generated a firestorm. I remember Colin Daniels celebrating the tremendous amount of traffic the first Bullardgate brought to the then fledgling Times (I believe it was in a presentation at a 27 Dinner). Then it was great to be controversial despite the people he offended then (namely local bloggers) and his association of bloggers with college students in the US who kill their fellow students in their classrooms. Man, I was incensed when I read his columns and watched his videos. I almost backed out of writing for The Times as one of the first blogumists. But he was celebrated as a kind of hero and everyone had a good laugh. Not so much this time around. In fact, The Times hasn’t said a lot about Bullard except a short article, a link to the column and some inane musings about whether The Times will lose money because Bullard isn’t writing for them anymore.

I dislike the man (and have since his blogger stunt last year) and I disagree with his post. I don’t see him as a victim in this or a free speech hero. I think Avusa had this coming after years of playing with fire, pushing the edge through his columns to sell more papers and generate more buzz. It was a matter of time before they got burnt themselves.

Some bloggers have been asking about Bullard’s freedom to express himself (it is a Constitutional right, after all) and I guess it is going to come down to whether his comments constitute hate speech or fall foul of some more pressing right in the Bill of Rights. Either way, his post is offensive even though it isn’t overtly racist. What is a bigger issue for me is how this column highlights what a touchy subject race is in the not-so-new South Africa. I think Saul hits the nail on the head when he posted this:

Here’s a thought: If the editor of the Sunday Times felt that this was racist then why did he have the article published? I’m so sick of South Africans being so uptight about “racism”. We’re so scared as a nation to discuss racism and actually deal with it so we react to anything that might be misconstrued as racism. As a nation until we deal with the past and the present issue we will never get any further.

Given our history it is perfectly understandable that race is a sensitive issue but almost a decade and a half after the first truly democratic elections in this country and race is being used to bludgeon political opposition, social commentary and any kind of meaningful discourse about a range of topics from empowerment to who gets to be in a press conference. We are at a point where all you need to do to cut off an opposing view is to raise the racism card and the white people avert their eyes in shared guilt and the non-whites get to say and do what they want. Maybe us whiteys need to wear some kind of badge and arm-band and be restricted to only trading with each other … Maybe, just maybe, it is time to build that multi-racial society Nelson Mandela promised us a decade ago and which Mbeki and his party quickly forgot when Mandela walked out the door at the end of his presidency. When was the last time you heard the phrase “rainbow nation”?

I do find myself wondering if there isn’t a grain of truth in his conclusion somewhere:

Then something happens that will change this undisturbed South Africa forever. Huge metal ships land on the coast and big metal flying birds are sent to explore the sparsely populated hinterland. They are full of men from a place called China and they are looking for coal, metal, oil, platinum, farmland, fresh water and cheap labour and lots of it. Suddenly the indigenous population realise what they have been missing all along: someone to blame. At last their prayers have been answered.

When are our politicians going to stop the blame game and get on with some real nation-building?

Update: As usual, Ivo and Candice say it better than I did.

Update 2: Bullard has apologised for causing offence and in his apology, posted to Business Day, he talks about his history and his approach to his columns. It is also worth reading Ivo’s continued coverage of this story. Turns out Ivo is a pretty insightful writer himself …

Technorati Tags:
david bullard, bullard, racism, the times, avusa, column, south africa, colonialism, colonists

I was flipping through an insert that comes with the attorneys’ magazine, De Rebus, and I noticed that one of the more tech savvy attorneys in Joburg, Michael de Broglio, is blogging. His blog has been going since May or so and one thing I like about his blog in particular is information about trial dates being allocated by the Johannesburg High Court (8 March 2008 as I write this) as well as both the Johannesburg and Randburg Magistrates Courts. That is handy information to have. Thanks for that Michael.

The one thing I don’t see is any way to interact with Michael on his blog, whether that be through comments or trackbacks. I can understand that he may not want to have to spend inordinate amounts of time fending off spam although spam can be managed pretty effectively with the right tools. I am not sure which platform he is using for his blog. It looks a little like TypePad but it isn’t. I wonder if the platform wasn’t custom made? Either way, it is good to see another attorney blogging. Michael’s firm handles family law, civil litigation and personal injury cases.

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attorneys, blog, court, michael de broglio

One of my clients forwarded this story to me. It is quite scary to think that someone could be charged over R400 000 for what he is informed is a relatively “simple” divorce process. Irrespective of whether these fees are excessive in the circumstances (they certainly seem like a lot!), this case is a good example of why it is so important for attorneys to explain their fee structure up front and for clients to make sure they understand the fee structure and what the costs could be.

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fee dispute, attorneys, advocates, divorce, high fees, costs, legal fees

The Business Day has a story today about some important changes which have been made to the Civil Unions Bill which is presently being considered by Parliament and which is intended to replace the Marriage Act which was declared unconstitutional last year.  Parliament has until the end of this month to pass new legislation or the Marriage Act will be deemed to have been amended to cure the constitutional defects in the current legislation.

The changes to the draft legislation are intended to fast track the passing of the Bill into law.  These changes include removal of all references to sexual orientation and gender and the inclusion of all marriages under the title of "civil union".  In addition, the draft provisions dealing with domestic partnerships have been removed and will presumably be dealt with at a later stage in separate legislation.  These changes represent a significant blow to conservative political and religious groups that have been pushing for an amendment to the Bill of Rights to safeguard the traditional concept of marriage.

I hope to have a perspective from Dr David Bilchitz (who participated in a pretty intense debate over a previous version of the Bill last month), the chairperson of Jewish Outlook, a lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered (I hope I got that right) co-ordinating group once he has had a chance to discuss the latest version of the Bill with his colleagues in detail and form a view on it.  I’ll then post a follow-up with their views.

This process is an incredibly important process in South Africa.  It goes to the heart of an effort to have a marginalised group of South Africans regarded as equals and it is not dissimilar to the fabled struggle by the majority of South Africans to be recognised as being equals to white South Africans after decades of institutionalised discrimination and prejudice.

Tags: civil unions bill, gay marriage, marriage act, marriage, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, jewish outlook, david bilchitz, parliament, constitution, bill of rights, right to equality

The clock started running last year when the Constitutional Court ruled that the Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that Parliament had a year to reform the legislation governing civil unions to enable gay people to marry.  A draft bill called the Civil Unions Bill has been tabled before Parliament and has sparked quite a controversy.  Religious groups are outraged at the proposed legislation and there have been calls to retain the concept of marriage as a "voluntary union between one man and one woman" and rather pass new legislation enabling same-sex marriage and alternative civil unions.

As I understand the Bill, it does not specifically create a category of union for same-sex couples but rather enables people to come together in a recognised civil union that is not marriage.  According to IOL:

The Cabinet announced on Thursday it has approved a bill that will recognise domestic partnerships between adults who choose not to conclude a marriage or civil partnership, and this includes same-sex partnerships.

This change has been long overdue and the passing of this legislation will mark an important shift towards greater equality between people who choose to or are able to marry and those who do not.  Of course it is a tremendously important piece of legislation for the gay community which has generally been treated as a community of second class citizens.

Tags: civil unions bill, same-sex marriage, parliament, marriage, civil unions, religious groups