One love, one heart, Let's get together and feel all rightHear the children crying (One love), Hear the children crying (One heart) Sayin', "Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right." Sayin', "Let's get together and feel all right."Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa (Bob Marley who would have been 60 on the 06/02/05)

Whadup gangstas,
Nope its not Thursday or Friday, its just me getting the mail out sort of on time this week. 2 new additions to this email Miss Nadia (a lovely young lady whose birthday I forgot last week, my bad sista) and my brada from anada mada Damsie (Anthony Odama), a better gentleman, u will never. Guys welcome, and feel free to speak your mind we all know that I do, and today will be no different ;-). Should you want to read some of the previous articles or wish to respond to any of the articles please visit www.mondaymail.blogspot.com.

Empowerment, Affirmative Action, Employment Equity, Affirmative Procurement, Ownership, Equity, Management, funding, funding funding. All words that are floating around the business world louder and louder these days. Last week, a colleague and I were fortunate enough to attend a BEE symposium in the Western Cape, yes you read right, a BEE symposium in the WESTERN CAPE, and might I add a well-attended one at that. There were some good speakers.

How often do we hear this statement used to define Empowerment…”Blacks sense of entitlement and White fear”? There was this Economist who came to speak about BEE and the Economy and she (a non-BEE she) said that statement is in fact incorrect it should read “White entitlement and Black fear”. White entitlement in terms of wanting things to remain as they have been in the past and blacks fearing that things just wont ever change. It made me think…

Now in my mind I think BEE is a great thing for the nation, I hear some people thinking you would... My answer…I do… Oh happy days… lets look at this scenario…capable young man, did my time at university at university, got a job at a reputable institution to complete my articles… but now tell me something, here is Yaw Peprah, black guy, born in Ghana, raised in Umtata, parents other than being ultimate nice guys, aren’t CEO’s or chairmans of anything other than maybe the Ghanaian community in the Transkei, didn’t attend private school. Then there is Michael Loubscher, white guy, same qualification as Yaw P, educated at Bishops, Michaelhouse, Hilton, St. Andrews (some top private schools in SA) maybe his folks were sat on this, that and the next board. They both go for an interview at Nedbank, ABSA, Standard Bank, FNB. In all honesty, who do you think they would hire? But that is irrelevant right now, I want to give you some of my thoughts after listening to some of these people talk and the questions that stemmed from their respective presentations.

There are a few bleak people out there that are very miffed about the thought of ‘giving’ away parts of a business that they have spent a while building, possibly even generations. My question to those people is were it not for the laws of the past that gave you the acres and acres of profitable farmland, on which some tribe was probably settled I might add, would your business be where it is now? That factory you built, had it not been the practices that restricted black education to only a level where they can be your labourer, would your organization be where it is right now? But you know that’s not relevant either. I really hate dwelling on the past, but unfortunately we are the product of our past practices.

Its all about a shift in mindset, girlz and boyz, its all about a shift in mindset. 2 weeks ago 3 of us go to the office of a prominent Cape business man. 2 white guys and me. We are there to speak to the man about raising some finance. The whole meeting whilst we are talking finance, the conversation is between the 3 of them, I took no exception, new guy, first time at the client…then all of a sudden the client turns his chair and his attention is diverted to me… “I heard a story last week one of my colleagues’ son in law, cruising in a black merc with his wife, was hijacked in their complex…” what?! Does he think I know where the car is? Is he looking to me to help this friends son in law finance a new one? Somehow I doubt it was the latter…A shift in mindset that’s all it takes!

People start off most of their criticism and their venting by saying government says that…if I am not mistaken, BEE is not a law, it’s a mere guideline that government is going to use in terms of its business, and at the moment you are free to choose to empower or not to empower your organization. Government doesn’t need to be empowered, as a matter of fact, neither do you. Government is not waving a fat stick telling organizations, empower or else, at the moment its merely saying this is how we’d like you to do it. I have sat in a few meetings and all I hear are businesses angrily stating how this whole empowerment thing is such a balls up! I must just give my business to blackie. And that grinds me. If all the funds in the world available for BEE transactions belonged to me, I would not fund this business. I would not fund it because, firstly that business’ empowerment may well not be true empowerment because the seller’s mind is not right. S/he is entering into the transaction because they feel they have to. They feel that they are being unfairly treated. To that person I say, go home to your 3 acre plot in Bishopscourt, in your R750k car…drive past your worker on the way to the taxi rank in the hope of making it to his little shack that could well have been burnt down…and then come back and discuss whats fair with me.

Firstly a successful BEE transaction will require a positive mind change for all parties involved. The seller should enter into the transaction with good intentions, so too the buyer. The seller should be a willing seller, they should be excited at the fact that they are able to assist a nation of people less fortunate than them. The buyers should enter into this transaction with the aim of adding value, but not only value cos they are black or cos they know people in this, that and the next place. They should be willing to put in an effort to make a success of the business because the spin off effects will definitely be felt throughout the economy. Sure there are many capable black people that can not afford to put up any capital for these transactions, but in that same breath you cruise into the meeting in an X5, carrying a Nokia 9100i communicator, dressed in an Armani suit…spare me the I don’t have any security bull. If you believe strongly in the deal, scratch if u must to find something to put up as security. It reduces the strain on the seller, and helps build the relationship with the seller.

Another thing that irks me is when people always try and put the blame of lack of funding solely at the feet of government. Now I am by no means a politician, actually very far from it, but we wont go there. In my mind this present day government, has done so much good for the nation, other than the threat of a civil war (which I believe may well have been won by the government), what was stopping them for saying, hmm I want that land, and that land and that business and this business…absolutely nothing, I think. Would the international community have frowned upon them, perhaps, but if u look at the history I am sure they could have gained mammoth support from other African Nations, Russia and a few more countries. But instead they chose a diplomatic way. They made a suggestion. A suggestion that was all-inclusive, a suggestion that still left the majority of the country’s economic wealth in the hands of the minority. Yet the minority is up in arms. Small businesses are crying foul because they can’t fund their BEE deals. Vendor finance them! How much will it really cost you not to have a BEE partner? How much will it cost you to ‘give’ some of your organization away…u are a smart person you do the math.

Houses, roads, water, sewerage systems, electricity, interest rates cut or not, Zimbabwe, DRC, Ivory Coast, HIV/Aids, the next president, unemployment, corruption, crime. All issues we want the government to sort out, now you tell me where on earth do you expect the big T to find time to deal with your R3million deal? With respect, doing a R3 million deal takes as much, if not more time than doing a R50mil deal, so u tell me where do u get the most bang for your buck if you are a financier?

We are all in a position to educate those around us. Government doesn’t have to do everything, we have the power to make a change, all u have to do is believe you are doing the right thing, sincerely want to make a change in this nation, u complain about the crime etc. being so high in this country, what are you doing to make it right? U r complaining about govt not making money available to do your BEE deal, are u paying all the taxes you owe? I could go on. But right now we are all in a position to make a change, we can educate those around us!

BEE didn’t just start now, many moons ago it started. How do you think Afrikaners got to the positions of power that they currently hold? No one frowned then. It was so much worse then, because it was a win lose situation what government is proposing today is a win win situation and yet people frown. I’ll say it again, drive from Cape Town international airport towards the city, look to your right, u tell me whether this empowerment thing is a good thing or not. U might be thinking well what is empowerment going to do for those families living there, well u never know they could be an employee of XYZ limited that is doing an empowerment deal that includes a staff trust. Let me ask you what difference will it make to them?

Birthdays
22nd Victoria and Lindsay
25th Abena
26th Themba, Louise, me

May u all be blessed on the days of your birth and the year till your next anniversary.

Maximum respect and keep it tidy!
Y

I'm not afraid, Of anything in this world, There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find, A decent melody, A song that I can sing, In my own company
I never thought you were a fool, But darling look at you, You gotta stand up straight, Carry your own weight, These tears are going nowhere baby
You've got to get yourself together, You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better, Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
I will not forsake, The colors that you bring, The nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted, By the light you brought to me, I listen through your ears
Through your eyes I can see
And you are such a fool, To worry like you do, I know it's tough
And you can never get enough, Of what you don't really need now, My, oh my
You've got to get yourself together, You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
…………
And if the night runs over, And if the day won't last, And if our way should falter, Along the stony pass
And if the night runs over, And if the day won't last, And if your way should falter, Along this stony pass
It's just a moment
This time will pass – Stuck in a moment (U2)
Greetings sports fans, yet another hot day in the Cape, beautiful day it is, if only we didn’t have the water shortage we are having here in these parts.
I trust all is well with you guys. I cant complain much, but then again if I could who really wants to listen. Oh wait you guys will listen, well at least read. I was thinking in the shower the other day, about the only time during the day I do much thinking. I was thinking how many people do you know that are always concerned about people knowing their business or assuming to know their business.
This email is not directed at anyone in particular, just in general, but if u feel that I am writing this specifically about you and you want to be bleak with me, well unfortunately I cant do anything about it and you are more than welcome to feel how you want to feel, but do bear in mind I did say.
You have recently gotten/broken up with your girlfriend/boyfriend, you have just got/lost your job, you are moving, someone thinks you like someone else…basically it just feels like someone is in your business. Generally what is our first emotion? Anger? Who told you? Why are people discussing me? What are people thinking about me? Blah blah fishpaste! My comment is ya it may be slightly irritating and possibly concerning BUT:
1) are these allegations true?
2) Will other people knowing about it change the fact?
3) Do u know who you are and what you are about?
Then fork boss what does this all matter? We get ourselves in a fuss for no apparent reason. So what if people are discussing you or your affairs. Nowadays, I shrug my shoulders and give it the good W…E…(whatever). Frankly I feel rather important that people want to spend their time discussing my affairs, clearly I am important enough for people to want to know what I am doing.

At the end of the day all its about in my eyes is do I know who I am, do I know what my intentions are? If my answer to these two questions is affirmative then really, at the risk of arrogance, fork what everyone says. I refuse to lose sleep over other people’s issues. I have so many other more pressing issues to deal with.

Anyway what I am getting at is in your affairs, it may be difficult most times, but try and keep your intentions pure so that under scrutiny you can walk with your head high. If u keep your business above board, then who can say what about ur biz, even if you don’t, at the time when you were doing what you were doing, you thought it was the right thing for you to do at that time, so I guess u must be more than willing to live with the consequences of your actions, whos law is it, I think its Newton’s, and it goes for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. If you do this, what people say about you or your affairs will mean as much to you as much as Bill Gates worrying about where he is going to get money from to feed his family today!

Birthdays
- 8th Kwaku,Bibi and Mr Degbor
- 12th Garrin
Anyway I am out for today, time to go home. And they say we don’t work here in the Cape. You all be good my lovelies. Respect!

Last week saw the 60th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz, which lead to the end of the Holocaust. It started off as boycotts of Jewish shops and 7 years later 6 million dead.

Hitler was an angry man when he came into power. He had it in for Jewish people all though his 10 year campaign to get into power. He always blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in the 1st World War and the subsequent economic hardships and he wasn’t shy to make his feelings known. Not only did he despise the Jews, he also put forward some racial theories, painting the picture of a fair skin, blond haired, blue eyed German as the supreme form of human…the master race…Aryan.

The process of ostracizing the Jewish people was pretty methodical and I suppose well thought out, as are most German things. Jewish people made up 1mil of Germany’s 55 million population, how the 1 mil can influence the war etc. is beyond me, but anyway…

So it began…

Boycotting of Jewish owned shops, then a seemingly never-ending series of laws and decrees culminating in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which resulted in German Jews being deprived from their German Citizenship and forbade intermarriage with non-Jews…(South Africans does this sound familiar?). It was ridiculous, they were removed from schools, banned from professions, excluded from the military service it even went as far as them not being allowed to share a park bench with a non-Jew. At this same time, there was smear campaign underway orchestrated by Minister Joseph Goebbels. The aim of this campaign was to portray Jews as enemies of Germans. This message could be heard on the radio stations, it could be read on posters, in newspapers, hell state sanctioned anti-Semitism was the norm in Germany.

But the day that set the Nazi holocaust machine in motion was the 9th/10th November 1938, a night termed by many as “The night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)”. On this night 17 year old Herscel Grynszpan shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official in Paris. This killing was in retaliation for the harsh treatment dealt to his parent at the hands of Nazis. This was just the excuse the Germans were waiting for to set into motion the Nazi killing machine. 90 Jews killed, 500 synagogues burnt, jewish shops and businesses vandalized, 25 000 Jewish men hauled off to concentration camps.

The Jews tried to flee Germany, but no country would accept them, States and Cuba, said sorry for you (y they didn’t try Africa who knows, oh wait I know…too many nig ga’s J) so back to Europe they returned.

But they would not be safe there. In September 1939 the Fuhrer (supreme leader) set the German machine upon the world. German troops somped into Poland, home to over 3 million Jews. The Jews were forced into Gethos to await their fate. Plenty of them died a slow and painful death from hunger and disease. Enter Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was the leader of the Nazi SS, Hitler’s most trusted and loyal organization, composed of fanatical young men considered racially pure according to Nazi standards. Anyway…in 1940, Himmler ordered the construction of a concentration camp near Osweim, infamously named Auschwitz. The initial purpose of the camp was to hold the Polish prisoners who were to be used as slave labour at German-run factories to be built nearby. Whilst this was going on, Hitler was carrying on merrily on his way conquering Europe. His biggest gamble came in 1941 when he decided to take on the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union lived about 3 million Jews in isolated little villages known as Shtetls. The modus operandi was that the invading armies would lead the charge trying to take over the country, and in hot pursuit would be 4 SS special action units known as Einsatzgruppen, whose job was to systematically round up and shoot the inhabitants of these Shtetls. The driving force behind the team leaders of the 4 SS units was a little competition they had going to see who could amass the most Jewish murders. Back in Germany, Himmler summoned Rudolf Hoss to Berlin, informing him that the Fuhrer had ordered the final solution to the Jewish question (Judenfrage as it was termed). So off trots Commandant Hoss, to the site where Auschwitz II was being built. Auschwitz II was a larger camp which was to house 4 large gas chambers, designed to be used for mass extermination. Whilst this camp was being constructed, the German army in Russia was using experimental mobile gas to exterminate Jews in special trucks that had been converted into protable gas chambers. How’s this for insane, the Germans would put Jews in an airtight truck and feed exhaust fumes into the truck from the trucks engine. After a while they found this method impractical because you could only kill 50 Jews at a time…at a push!

In 1942 the machine was in full swing, Jews all over Europe were being sought and deported to occupied Poland, where they were being gassed in new extermination centres at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. How’s this for a small request…”I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear” these were the words of the Governor of Poland Hans Frank. 2 million Jews were on the way to the chamber. Every detail of the execution was planned. The trains to transport them, the Jews were lied to, they were told that their stop was a transit stop, their clothes were being disinfected and they were all going to be sent for a good shower. The males and the females were split up. They were de-robed, hair cut and marched along a narrow path nicknamed by the SS as Himmelstrasse….the road to Heaven. At the end of this road was a tiled bathhouse when everyone was inside this bathhouse, the door was slammed shut creating an airtight seal. Carbon monoxide, fed from a diesel engine was then pumped into this chamber. Carbon monoxide was then altered to Zyklon B (prussic acid) pellets combined with cyanide. Guess who had the task of removing the bodies, remove gold fillings and search the orifices of the deceased for hidden valuables? Yip u guessed it, special units of Jewish slaves. But wait there’s more, the Jewish people that were being railed to their deaths were charged for the train ride, under the pretence that they were being relocated to other parts of Europe. After they arrived at the death camps, the prisoners were asked to sign post cards to send back to their families telling them how well they were etc. and that they awaited their arrival.

Getting people onto these trains was not too much of a hassle because firstly there were the postcards and secondly, the ghettos were so horrendous that many left willingly even if it was to be placed in work camps. Once the trains arrived, a selection process was conducted on the prisoners. The young and healthy were allowed to live and become slaves the rest were marched down the ‘road to heaven’.

These camps were for a large part a secret, but in 1942, word started spreading about these camps, the English were the first to speak then there were demonstrations by Jewish-Americans in 1943. But this resulted in inaction. A War Refugee Board resulted from the increased pressure on Fraklin D Roosevelt. This WRB helped save many Jewish people from the death camps in 1944.

The biggest inroad into these death camps came when 2 people escaped from the camp and wrote a detailed report of the camp, which was then forwarded to the Vatican. The Germans tried to squash these claims by inviting the Red Cross to visit a high class ghetto which was obviously a farce. Happy little Ghetto, stores, café’s banks, classrooms…as soon as the Red Cross had left, cheers to the inhabitants of the Ghettos.

The Jewish people did show some resistance. The most notable being a 28 day stand off inside a Warsaw ghetto where 730 Jews battled 2000 SS soldiers. In Treblinka there was a revolt in 1943 which resulted in Himmler ordering the dismantling of the camp, next was Sobibor, where inmates killed 11 SS men, 300 escaped, 250 were hunted down like dogs, 50 survived, Sobibor was also closed. All over the world, many non-Jews were helping Jewish folk by providing shelter for them and helping them to safety. Denmark saved its entire Jewish population by transporting them to safety by sea. Italy and Bulgaria refused to cooperate with Germany’s deportation requests.

In 1944, the war turned against Hitler, The Fuhrer was losing grip, the allies were annihilating his troops on all fronts, but the killing camps carried on as is. Actually it was almost like the SS had lost focus on the war, instead of using trucks for the war, they were using them to transport Jews to Auschwitz. The killings and cremations carried on at an un-precedented pace roughly 9000 a day. On 24 July 1944 the first camp, Majdanek was liberated. As the troops neared, Himmler ordered the detruction of all the gas chambers. The Reich was crumbling, death marches were used as a replacement for the gas chambers. On the 27 Jan 1945 the Soviet troops reached Auschwitz. It was only then that the full extent of the Nazi regime became apparent to the British and the Americans.

On the 30th April 1995, Hitler was surrounded by soviet troops. He realized that he was no longer the Fuhrer he had thought he was, upon this revelation he took his own life.

Birthdays
31st Jan Refilwe RamoG

I am out of here peeps have a wikkid weekend.

Y