Category: Fire (Social)

I paid a visit to the Ethical Co-op warehouse the other day, and Thembi, one of the warehouse staff who’s been there from the very early days, greeted me with a loud “You’re fat!” as I walked in.

I was a little taken aback and didn’t have an immediate response, so she carried on “Yes! You were so skinny when you used to come to the warehouse, and now you’re fat. That’s good, you were too skinny. No stress anymore!”

I know she means “fat” as a compliment, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about her kind words.

Which brings me to the Seven-minute workout. This was a routine developed in 2013 by researchers in Orlando, using the latest research to design the best possible exercise routine, aimed in particular at office workers who don’t do enough exercise in general.

High-intensity interval training is today recognised as providing the most efficient returns for your time. Essentially, bursts of mayhem with brief rest periods between.

It’s claimed that just a few minutes of training at close to maximum capacity (that’s the high-intensity part) can produce molecular changes within muscles similar to those of several hours of running or bicycle riding.

The seven minute workout claims to work out all major muscle groups and give a combination of metabolic and resistance work. The exercises can all be performed from home, without any need for special equipment.

I was sold. Actually, it was the seven-minutes that did it. Egoscue involves long periods of lying in one position, and an abridged routine can easily be 30 minutes. Tai chi? Well, it’s wonderfully beneficial, but it doesn’t exactly build Hulk Hogan arm muscles (if it does, you’re doing it all wrong).

The extremely erratic exercises I would do before involved much pausing to admire the dust mites on the floor between repetitions, so perhaps not as intense as required.

A walk in the forest or on the mountains? Great, but, as well-served as Cape Town is, it takes me more than seven minutes just to get there, and a bit longer to get to the top (unless I’m ‘walking’ with Craig, in which case seven minutes to the top is about right).

So, how does it work?

Each exercise is done for 30 seconds, as intensely as possible, followed by a ten-second rest. The exercises are:

• Jumping jacks
• Wall sit
• Push-up
• Abdominal crunch
• Step-up onto chair
• Squat
• Triceps dip on chair
• Plank
• High knees/running in place
• Lunge
• Push-up and rotation
• Side plank

You can download an app on your phone to help keep track of the order and timings, and go to the New York Times article to read more.

So, how has the routine been for me? Well, I’m convinced that what Thembi saw as “fat” is simply the buildup of lean muscle around my stomach, so I’d say it’s working out quite well. Though I have upped the frequency and occasionally doubled up on abdominal crunches. Just in case.

Related posts:

• Ianstraight with Egoscue
• Tai chi humility

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Way back in April, a lifetime ago that seems like yesterday, I stepped down from the Ethical Co-op, which I’d been involved with from the very beginning in 2005.

There were about 10 founders, mostly drawn from two communities. Permacore, the Permaculture Foundation of South Africa, which is no longer running, and the Community Exchange System, a system designed to do away with the need for banks and central currency, which still is.

The vision was to source and support ethical produce. Organic food was hard to come by, and much of it organic in name only. Many of us used to visit the same places to get the best food, so pooling our efforts and getting them to bring it to us made sense.

The founding members all paid for their first orders, about R200 on average, and so, with a massive startup capital of R2000, it all began. To date, except for a loan from myself to purchase a vehicle, that was the only financial investment it ever had.

Yet, somehow, it’s still going 9 years later. Many other businesses, sometimes with huge financial investment and far greater financial resources, have splashed, crashed and burned.

What was lacking in money was made up for in time, however, with many people making hefty contributions.

From the beginning, and over most of its existence, there was a great team of people involved, feeding off each other’s energy. The skillset was diverse – I had an IT background and built the systems it runs on, and everybody dived in where they could.

Over time, the original members left. Some were no longer able to commit so much time for so little money or better and more interesting opportunities came along. Until, eventually, of the original members, it was just me left. It became a drain on my energy, most of my involvement was spent doing things I don’t enjoy: HR, finances, driving trucks (ok, that one is quite fun, but not so much unexpectedly at 7am after 4 hours sleep), packing boxes, customer service. I think over the years I’ve performed every role there was to perform.

The drain on my time meant I was missing other opportunities, saying no to friend’s invitations, missing my son Dorje’s school activities. And finally, when my mother was dying, it became something I resented, not allowing me the energy or time to share the process with her as I would have liked.

With my father ill at the beginning of this year, I’d finally had enough, and it was time to move on. There was only one viable person to hand it over to at the time, which was Anique, Dorje’s mom, who was involved at the time. At first she wasn’t keen to continue without me, so out went the closure letters to suppliers and customers.

But after an outpouring of support (people usually only say what things mean when it’s too late), she decided to continue it, and I was happy that something I’d put so much love and sweat into would be continuing.

Leaving was hard. I’d put so much energy into it, and the vision many of us had for it, although never actualised, always felt just around the corner.

But I was happy to leave, and have been enjoying a resurgence in energy and the time to explore new things.

When the site launched, in September 2005 if I remember (so this month is its 9th birthday), the code I wrote was already a jumbled mush of spaghetti, thanks to scope creep of the sort comparable to driving to the shops for milk turning into a 3-week trip across Namibia. Eventually it turned into what’s there today, with an automated backend that allows a tiny team to keep things running.

Still today, all the products are listed on one page, a legacy of its original conception as a ‘box scheme’, where a customer would choose from 15 or so items to put in a box. Now there are hundreds of items. Some people hate the long page, but I love it as a customer. It makes searching for items instantaneous, and placing an order very quick.

There were lots of things to enjoy. Being the kind of business it was, designed to do good rather than make its shareholders or founders rich, it attracted lots of inspiring people, who worked for very little reward. Inspiring is not a word I use loosely – I really was inspired and energised by the people I worked with.

There were some tough times too. As with any group of people, there were personal conflicts, differences of opinion. An early test was asking a key founding member to leave. The other members all agreed that this was needed, and it fell to me to tell the person who’d brought me into the project, and was responsible for so much of the early energy, to leave. The person wasn’t happy, and spread all sorts of rumours afterwards, but it was the right thing to do, and the rest of us continued with a new lightness and purpose.

I lost count of the number of times it was called the ‘unethical’ co-op, often for the most trivial of reasons (“My carrots had their tops chopped off this week! I like to use them, and now you’ve chopped them off! How can you call yourselves ethical, you should be called unethical!)

But the accusation never hit home, as the the name always reflected an intention that we did our best to live up to. It saddens me to see something that should be the norm, healthy, organic food, where animals roam free and are well-treated, becoming a marketing slogan, an excuse to price gouge, a race to meet the lowest standard that meets the term. Supermarkets offering free range and organic produce that meets the letter (and sometimes not even that), but is far from the spirit of the term. Food at markets that claims or is assumed to be organic, beautifully displayed, but that I know is simply the conventional food being resold at an expensive price. The prevalence of pesticide-laden farms, with workers facing higher rates of asthma and other health conditions, all while the pesticide fumes they live in are claimed to be ‘safe’.

I still buy almost all my food from the Ethical Co-op. It’s clear where the food is grown, I still know many of the farms where the food is grown, and they’re of a scale that can support small producers, a dire need in a country with so many small suppliers all at the mercy of giant chains squeezing them for every cent.

It was a fun eight and a half years that I’m already looking at through rose-tinted glasses. Thanks to everyone who was part of the journey. Good luck to Anique and all the remaining staff, I hope you can make a thriving success of it.

It’s three days until the elections (well, it was when I started, now it’s one day…), and there’s still no Green Party to vote for, so, to help out, here’s my detailed analysis of every party to help make your decision.

Voting ranks slightly below picking up a cigarette stompie (cigarette butts for those from further afield) in terms of the benefit provided. Removing a single stompie makes a difference. Perhaps that earthworm that was about to surface there has now avoided nicotine poisoning (at best). A single vote? Has a single vote in this sort of election made a difference, ever? No, but collectively at least, the impact is usually slightly larger.

Besides, elections are far more fun than talking about cigarette stompies. There are 29 parties standing in the national elections, and a further five standing only in the Western Cape. Here’s the full list available to me on the day:

1. African National Congress
2. Democratic Alliance
3. Congress of the People
4. Inkatha Freedom Party
5. United Democratic Movement
6. Freedom Front Plus
7. African Christian Democratic Party
8. United Christian Democratic Party
9. Pan Africanist Congress
10. Minority Front
11. Azanian People’s Organisation
12. African People’s Convention
13. African Independent Congress
14. Agang SA
15. Al Jama-ah
16. Bushbuckridge Residents Association
17. Economic Freedom Fighters
18. First Nation Liberation Alliance
19. Front Nasionaal
20. Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa
21. Keep It Straight and Simple
22. Kingdom Governance Movement
23. National Freedom Party
24. Pan Africanist Movement
25. Patriotic Alliance
26. Peoples Alliance
27. Ubuntu Party
28. United Congress
29. Workers and Socialist Party
30. African National Party
31. Indigenous Peoples Organisation
32. National Party South Africa
33. Sibanye Civic Association
34. South African Progressive Civic Organisation

How many of the 34 are even worth considering?

First, let’s knock off some low-hanging fruit, and top of the instant rejection list are the religious and ethnic parties. So, without further ado, there go the Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front Plus, African Christian Democratic Party, United Christian Democratic Party, Minority Front (all currently in parliament) as well as Al Jama-ah, the First Nation Liberation Alliance, Front Nasionaal, Patriotic Alliance, Peoples Alliance, Indigenous People’s Organisation, and the Kingdom Governance Movement. You can argue about just how ethnic or religious these various parties are, but it would just be a pointless debate about how instant their rejection would be, so let’s move on.

1. African National Congress
2. Democratic Alliance
3. Congress of the People
4. Inkatha Freedom Party
5. United Democratic Movement
6. Freedom Front Plus
7. African Christian Democratic Party
8. United Christian Democratic Party
9. Pan Africanist Congress
10. Minority Front
11. Azanian People’s Organisation
12. African People’s Convention
13. African Independent Congress
14. Agang SA
15. Al Jama-ah
16. Bushbuckridge Residents Association
17. Economic Freedom Fighters
18. First Nation Liberation Alliance
19. Front Nasionaal
20. Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa
21. Keep It Straight and Simple
22. Kingdom Governance Movement
23. National Freedom Party
24. Pan Africanist Movement
25. Patriotic Alliance
26. Peoples Alliance
27. Ubuntu Party
28. United Congress
29. Workers and Socialist Party
30. African National Party
31. Indigenous Peoples Organisation
32. National Party South Africa
33. Sibanye Civic Association
34. South African Progressive Civic Organisation

Next off the list go parties I know nothing about. First, the African National Party. If they can’t even get around to putting up a website (although perhaps R100 million for a quick blog has put them off), I’m not sure they’d be that good at getting around to things like reading bills and contributing to policy, or anything else to do with actual governing. With a name like ANP, a slightly too-clever fusion of ANC and NP, you can’t be too surprised that Googling turns up an endless links to the National Party and the African National Congress, and nothing about them. So even if they do actually have a website somewhere out there that they’ve neglected to give to the IEC, I can’t find it.

Honourable mentions in the misleading names department go the AMC (African Moderates Congress) with the Madiba-lookalike in 1994 (but they’re no longer around), and the Republican-Democrats, who sadly, in spite of predictions about storming to victory, didn’t quite make it to the ballot, and, standing this time, the National Party South Africa, no relation to the National Party.

Other parties I exclude as I either can’t find information about them, or they’re limited to extremely local issues and I can’t quite understand their presence on the national or provincial ballot, are the African Independent Congress (founded solely to contest Matatielie’s inclusion in the Eastern Cape rather than Kwazulu-Natal), Indigenous People’s Organisation, Sibanye Civic Association, Bushbuckridge Residents Association, Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa and the South African Progressive Civic Organisation

1. African National Congress
2. Democratic Alliance
3. Congress of the People
4. Inkatha Freedom Party
5. United Democratic Movement
6. Freedom Front Plus
7. African Christian Democratic Party
8. United Christian Democratic Party
9. Pan Africanist Congress
10. Minority Front
11. Azanian People’s Organisation
12. African People’s Convention
13. African Independent Congress
14. Agang SA
15. Al Jama-ah
16. Bushbuckridge Residents Association
17. Economic Freedom Fighters
18. First Nation Liberation Alliance
19. Front Nasionaal
20. Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa
21. Keep It Straight and Simple
22. Kingdom Governance Movement
23. National Freedom Party
24. Pan Africanist Movement
25. Patriotic Alliance
26. Peoples Alliance
27. Ubuntu Party
28. United Congress
29. Workers and Socialist Party
30. African National Party
31. Indigenous Peoples Organisation
32. National Party South Africa
33. Sibanye Civic Association
34. South African Progressive Civic Organisation

19 down, 15 to go.

Enough bullying of the smaller parties. Next off the list are the ANC. The once-proud liberation movement, instrumental in ridding us of apartheid, forgers of the Freedom Charter and the constitution, are sadly now better known for Marikana, Nkandla, the Arms Deal, and the feeding frenzy is only picking up pace.

Off the list too go Cope, whose leaders brought us one of the most remarkable meltdowns imaginable. Conspiracy theorists would say that either Shilowa or Lekota were an ANC plant to poison the new party, and, even if they weren’t, they couldn’t have done a better job of destroying the party with their bitter fight to be the big fish in a rapidly shrinking pond. With them too go the United Congress, the offshoot of the offshoot.

Matching Cope in the infighting stakes are the PAC. From the massive liberation movement in the 1960’s, once larger than the ANC, to the shambles of today.

Azapo, by contrast, hasn’t suffered from the same degree of infighting, and has coherent and well thought-out policies, some of them very good. Science and technology feature prominently in their thinking. However, while solar and wind get a mention, it is business as usual in the energy field. Perhaps most importantly, they are rooted in black consciousness, an understandable response to apartheid, but one that doesn’t match my non-racial dream of what liberation should be.

So, off the list with them, as well as similar or splinter parties such as the African People’s Convention and the Pan Africanist Movement.

Neither do I think government  should just get out of the way, and end to social grants etc, and so off the list go the libertarian KISS.

1. African National Congress
2. Democratic Alliance
3. Congress of the People
4. Inkatha Freedom Party
5. United Democratic Movement
6. Freedom Front Plus
7. African Christian Democratic Party
8. United Christian Democratic Party
9. Pan Africanist Congress
10. Minority Front
11. Azanian People’s Organisation
12. African People’s Convention
13. African Independent Congress
14. Agang SA
15. Al Jama-ah
16. Bushbuckridge Residents Association
17. Economic Freedom Fighters
18. First Nation Liberation Alliance
19. Front Nasionaal
20. Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa
21. Keep It Straight and Simple
22. Kingdom Governance Movement
23. National Freedom Party
24. Pan Africanist Movement
25. Patriotic Alliance
26. Peoples Alliance
27. Ubuntu Party
28. United Congress
29. Workers and Socialist Party
30. African National Party
31. Indigenous Peoples Organisation
32. National Party South Africa
33. Sibanye Civic Association
34. South African Progressive Civic Organisation

27 down, 7 left.

So, this is where I come out and endorse the EFF? Not quite. It’s great to have a party that is explicitly pro-poor. Whether their policies would actually help, and whether their leaders can be trusted to implement them, I’m not so sure.

So the Ubuntu Party then? If the election was based on outright support on my Facebook stream, they’d win a landslide. And no-one else is doing anything like as radical as questioning the private ownership of the Reserve Bank, looking to Iceland as a model to stand up to the banks, proposing massive social investment and employment creation through interest-free loans and focusing on organic food agriculture. I like much of their thinking. But, then it all falls to pieces as they propose free electricity for all based on free energy devices they’re convinced are being suppressed by the global energy elite and that they’ve ‘seen’ in action, but which somehow are not even running anyone’s pool pump yet, have controversial ex reserve bank director and Holocaust-denier Stephen Goodson as number two on their list, and base much of their policy on the sacred number three. Reliable evidence is not high on their agenda, but if you want to protest the system, you could do worse.

Ah, the system. So this is where I come out as a DA supporter. Efficient Cape Town and all that. Yes, in Cape Town you do get a more accurate electricity bill, and when I report an ancient pothole in the township of Philippi it gets fixed the next day. But you also get more efficient applications by shopping mall developers to demolish wetlands, more efficient extolling of the benefits of fracking, more efficient removals of homeless people. I don’t see South Africa’s massive levels of poverty and inequality being tackled by a slightly more efficient corporate-friendly system.

Right, Workers and Socialist Party then? Nationalise everything without compensation, no more private schools (sorry Dorje, it’s off to a class of 50 for you where you’ll learn to appreciate Pink Floyd’s The Wall), all production put to work towards the democratic socialist plan. And with the massive surpluses generated an R8000 basic income for the unemployed. My cross is poised, except that, while their analysis of the problems are reasonably accurate, their dated and failed solutions don’t leave me with much confidence.

Agang then? No to fracking, political party transparency, a focus on education and measures to combat corruption? At least while they bide their time before joining the DA? Her political leadership doesn’t inspire me, but many of the policies are broadly positive.

Bantu Holomisa and the UDM? Still going strong after being expelled from the ANC in 1996 for daring to testify at the TRC, and now gaining prominence by supporting the striking miners in the face of heavy government intimidation. Their manifesto (when I finally tracked it down on their website – the 2004 manifesto was far more prominent) is great at slamming government, and remarkably light on detail. And the UDM has shrunk into a party with a tiny footprint in a small part of the Eastern Cape after it’s birth as a merger between prominent ANC and NP (Roelf Meyer) members and its potential as a significant non-racial party, which doesn’t inspire much confidence.

So, finally, the last one left standing. The National Freedom Party! A breakway from the IFP by their chairperson Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi, the party has seen significant growth, unlike the other IFP offshoots which have faded to nothing. Almost trumping the IFP in the 2011 local government elections, the party has been performing well in by-elections since, and seems to have a well-organised team on the ground. Their manifesto is pleasantly free of ideology and surprisingly clear, pro-poor and with a focus on practical solutions, which I like. It’s very easy to be right, not so easy to be helpful. Besides, I’ve always had a soft spot for orange. So, finally, after 33 rejections, my pen is poised!

Not so fast. They can’t quite shake off their tribal roots, with a section on empowering traditional leaders that raises a few questions, and a populist call for the death penalty.

1. African National Congress
2. Democratic Alliance
3. Congress of the People
4. Inkatha Freedom Party
5. United Democratic Movement
6. Freedom Front Plus
7. African Christian Democratic Party
8. United Christian Democratic Party
9. Pan Africanist Congress
10. Minority Front
11. Azanian People’s Organisation
12. African People’s Convention
13. African Independent Congress
14. Agang SA
15. Al Jama-ah
16. Bushbuckridge Residents Association
17. Economic Freedom Fighters
18. First Nation Liberation Alliance
19. Front Nasionaal
20. Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa
21. Keep It Straight and Simple
22. Kingdom Governance Movement
23. National Freedom Party
24. Pan Africanist Movement
25. Patriotic Alliance
26. Peoples Alliance
27. Ubuntu Party
28. United Congress
29. Workers and Socialist Party
30. African National Party
31. Indigenous Peoples Organisation
32. National Party South Africa
33. Sibanye Civic Association
34. South African Progressive Civic Organisation

So, none of the above? That simplifies things. Spoilt vote or abstain then? Sadly, as a tactic both just support the status quo, and at least some of the above parties could actually be better than that.

Congratulations if you’ve made it this far, and I’m glad I could help clear things up. My final advice? Do something that makes you feel good about your civic contribution and pick up some stompies on your way to the polls (or the beach) on Wednesday.

Related posts:

• Election soothsayer