Jacob Zuma and the debate on the evils of polygamy
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Much can be said about cultures as practised by the peoples of the world. One aspect that in particular consumes many words is the argument as to whether some cultures are better than others. It’s a value judgement that should or shouldn’t be made.
Depends entirely on your point of view as to how you vote on this!
Here’s one to judge if you feel strongly enough. The current President of South Africa is facing the culture police at the moment. The question being asked is whether it is right for him to practice polygamy in a modern society such as South Africa. Not only that, should he be chastised for his numerous extra-marital offspring.
Just as an aside, and for the pleasure of throwing a curveball, doesn’t it take two to tango? Women are prepared to live in polygamy and produce babies with a married man. Why is nobody wondering about that? And sure there are some countries where the women do not have a choice, but they do in South Africa.
Would you consider polygamy bad? In other words is having more than one wife morally reprehensible? What about Tiger Woods and all his activities outside the marital bedroom? Is that bad? If not why are his sponsors leaving him in droves…
Where does the concept of being faithful to one partner come from one wonders. It’s somewhere in the commandments of course. Don’t drool over your neigbour’s wife is written on one of the tablets.
Monogamy is not only dictated to by the Christian faith. Other societies and nations, for instance Vietnam, that are not predominantly Christian also oppose polygamy. On the other hand Muslims seem to support polygamy. Check this map for the world wide acceptance or not of polygamy.
Of course one can argue that polygamy could have been a necessity. During war filled years many men were killed in battle leaving a whole bunch of widows unattended to. Some men took pity on them and brought them into their private harem. This definitely worked for some.
But is that still necessary? In a country such as South Africa where women have rights and opportunities do they still have to have a husband to look after them? One would imagine that argument hardly applies.
Having speculated about all of the above, and leaving out many further valid points that could be made both pro and con the culture debate and where polygamy fits into it, there’s one last point to be made here.
Does it really matter whether Jacob Zuma the current South African President has four or even six wives plus 20 kids some made with non-wives?
Who really cares? And as for Tiger Woods. Please, get a life.
Happy New Year to the year of the Tiger
By · CommentsThe lunar New Year which was celebrated on February 14 in this year of 2010 has a special significance in Vietnam. Not only in Vietnam of course. China and Malaysia amongst other Asian countries also believe in the importance of this occasion.
As with traditions surrounding Christmas or Easter as celebrated by the western world, the lunar New Year also has many more aspects to it than one jump from midnight into the next day.
There are many smaller celebrations that add to the entire event. The most significant part though rests on the family and the community it provides. Of course to start with, the ancestors will need to be honoured.
Vietnam is traditionally still a rural society. The migration to big cities has only just started. This means that almost all Hanoians will migrate to the country side during this time to honour their parents, grandparents or even great grandparents.
It’s a time of visiting, catching up and bringing gifts. Most gifts are in the form of food. This is important in more ways than one. For one whole week all traders and shops close down. If you intend to visit you better bring food!
But then in Vietnam all occasions where gifts are brought, a gift of fruit is always appreciated. That or a contribution of money is welcome. In fact one of the main gifts during this New Year celebration is a red envelope with money.
The money is not necessarily given to assist financially as the amounts are often quite small. The envelope with it’s content is given as a good luck charm. It’s even called ‘Lucky Money’. Wishing for wealth is in fact the big idea during the New Year celebrations.
At the same time as the old year is given the shove, you will find Asia calculating investment and money making opportunities in the new lunar year. The year is under the auspices of a new animal. In this new year the Tiger rules, with an additional element attached. This Tiger is a metal tiger. That means a whole string of further influences on ones money making efforts.
Buying shares? Then focus on buying stocks that have something to do with metal. Construction could be a good investment for instance, or so it is believed.
Many people from the west observing this culture might consider this emphasis on luck, star constellations, ancestor worship to be based on superstition and not worth taking seriously.
But then the so called developed West tends to make its investment decisions on a whole string of indicators that could be considered as unscientific as the belief in the year of the metal Tiger in Asia.
At the end of the day we are all dictated to by our emotions. Hard logic doesn’t play too big a role in our lives whether we live in Vietnam or in the USA. So who are we to say that believing in the power of our ancestors or the influence of a metal Tiger is any worse than the rules the West lives by!
Would you like your child to become collateral damage
By · CommentsImagine this scenario. Your child, or the child of another family member or friend, is seriously injured by somebody else. This other person is totally unrelated to you, is using guns and bombs in a battle with somebody else about an issue that you can’t even understand never mind would wish to participate in. Happening right where you live.
When you complain that somebody’s spokesperson assures you that it’s inevitable that in an operation of this particular size there would be collateral damage. In other words, shut up and put up with it.
This is exactly what military officials are saying about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The US (just for a change) and allied forces (just for a change - any British there?) are launching a huge offensive again.
Brig. Gen. Nicholson, the commander of the operation, seems to think that this “war’ justifies using airstrikes in civilian areas. Where does this guy come from? What nasty hole has he escaped from? And what country is giving him the authority to perpetrate such crimes against humanity?
It is beyond comprehension that lives of ordinary people are so totally insignificant that they become collateral damage. They become a statistic, a number, a non-entity a thing that has no rights.
How have we become so immune to the fate of people living in countries where world powers are fiddling around for some unknown reason. It’s not even as if we don’t know about what is happening there. We are watching it on TV, reading articles in the media, on blogs and on YouTube. No excuses.
And please nobody with half a brain can possibly excuse this war in Afghanistan as being part of the ‘Fight against Terror’ hype? After all how wrong were these same powers in Iraq?
Terror, what terror? Weapons of mass destruction? What weapons. Armed forces? What armed forces. Not found in any significant numbers in Iraq. Are they in Afghanistan? A handful of Taliban? Most of them are probably sheltering in Pakistan by now.
So what is really going on in Afghanistan? What could possibly require the numbers of troops that the US is sending to this poverty stricken country? 98 000 by Summer of 2010. This is in addition to the numbers of the Allied forces which is another 40 000 or so.
Add to this the unbelievable superiority of technology such as war robots/drones, military weapons and aircraft hardware the US and Allied Forces have the use of and one wonders what is going on? What kind of resistance could possibly withstand this superiority? A handful of people in dish-dash-ah riding camels?
But besides the incongruity of the war, what we as human beings need to feel outrage over is the loss of lives. Ordinary citizens such as children and their parents and grandparents! What are we doing about this injustice. Are we just sitting back and believing this nonsense about the necessity of these deaths to secure our safety?
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu has these perfect words to offer us: “To remain neutral in situations of injustice, is to be complicit in that injustice.” What do you think?
Owning up to your mistakes
By · CommentsHere’s the question. If somebody has wronged you and they apologise as soon as they know they have made the mistake what is your reaction? You will probably forgive fairly quickly, especially if it was a minor transgression.
If that person, however, takes a long time before they admit to their mistake and apologises you could take a fair while longer before you accept the white flag. You might even terminate the friendship.
Now before you roll your eyes and click off this article thinking:- yugh one of those new age articles, let me quickly reassure you otherwise and give you an example that you might be able to relate to.
The headline that caught my eye today was in the New York Times and it said that ‘Toyota has pattern of slow response on safety issues’. The immediate reaction could be that of course this is so. After all Toyota is a Japanese company and Asia doesn’t like to admit to mistakes.
This is not because Asian companies are necessarily evil. It’s because as head of the organisation you just cannot afford to make a mistake. If it’s a serious mistake you could even be expected to commit suicide. At the least you need to resign. You can see that this is not exactly an incentive to confessing to having made a mistake.
Going back to the opening question what could this mean to Toyota if it is a company that doesn’t like to admit to mistakes? The worst possible scenario probably. It could mean losing customers. In Germany sales are already down by 20%. In the USA Ford and Chevrolet are celebrating an unexpected bonus.
Having now made this big deal about Asian CEO’s being reluctant to admit to mistakes, let’s have a look at what happens in the West. Well actually almost the same in some cases.
Cast your mind back to Arthur Anderson in their time one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. They got caught with their fingers in a rather messy scenario. Instead of immediately apologising and making a huge showing of how they are fixing the situation, they went into denial mode. Even got sued.
End of Arthur Anderson. It took about 8 months for one of the biggest firms to die. Could Lehman Brothers have survived if they had admitted to having problems instead of denying all rumours up to the day before they closed their doors.
Could Toyota die a horrible death? Unlikely. The sticky gas pedal is not a company killer. But if they had reacted sooner to the problems of the gas pedal, which it appears has been around for a while, the cost and damage to the company would have been far less serious.
There have been great examples of companies weathering serious knocks because they stood up and admitted to their mistakes really quickly. And the quicker they reacted, the sooner the story went away.
So lesson of the day, react quickly. Whether you make a mistake dealing with a friend or as a business owner even big company executive. The quicker you react, shout mea culpa and make every effort to make good the sooner you are out of trouble.
It’s difficult though. Sometimes the option of keeping quiet in the hope that all will go away seems such an easier one to take. Beware, it could end up being a lot more dangerous though!
Remembering the fall of apartheid twenty years ago
By · CommentsRemembering the day February 2, 1990 in South Africa! On an epic day the then president de Klerk offered South Africans, of all persuasion, and the world a total dismantling of the apartheid regime. Read an excellent article on this here.
It makes one reflect that anything is possible. Not many South Africans considered this option a possibility. And yes there was a fair amount of resistance amongst the ruling white class after its announcement. But by making this step publicly and with conviction there was just no going back.
How often do we hesitate before we take a tiny step. We agonise over the consequences, the possible fall-out, the damage to our ego and the expected personal humiliation we are sure we will be subjected to.
And none of that is significant really. When a single person can stand up and announce a huge change of direction for his country, a total reversal of all things previously fought for and held onto then our small challenges feel insignificant surely.
But it’s not only our individual small changes that become minute in comparison. It is also the foolish stances that politicians all over the world take in their determination to protect their authority or avoid losing face in their mindless effort to hang onto a bad status quo.
If one small relatively unknown politician can change the fate of an entire country, then those other little politicians can do a lot more to ensure that their subjects are offered a life of equality, justice and freedom just to mention a few of the rights many people never get to experience in their lifetime.
Well done South Africa. Well done to both W F de Klerk and Nelson Mandela for showing the leadership required to make the impossible become possible.
