Clive Simpkins

The Devil's in the detail

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South African Speaker Industry Transforms

From Meetings SA July/August 2008. Click on the article to open in a larger format, in a new window.

Is African 'promiscuity' actually genetic?

Thabo Mbeki, notoriously touchy on the topic of alleged 'African promiscuity' (see end of posting) will find the following a relief. If you haven't picked up on the fascinating research into a gene that helps/helped Africans cope with early variants of Malaria, but which now potentially makes them more vulnerable to HIV infection, then read this report. It's one of several from around the world this week and may well account for some of the awful HIV/AIDS stats in this country. Let's hope the scientific gurus can look at gene manipulation, rather than purely a vaccine, in the fight against the pandemic. Click on the image to open a larger version, in another window.

This is what Mbeki had to say on topic in an address at the University of Fort Hare. He later made more angry and quite crass statements in a similar vein. This particular snippet is excerpted from the Financial Mail online. Danke.

In an address at the University of Fort Hare in late 2001, (Mbeki said) that people "who consider themselves to be our leaders take to the streets carrying their placards, to demand that because we are germ carriers, and human beings of a lower order that cannot subject its passions to reason, we must perforce adopt strange opinions, to save a depraved and diseased people from perishing from self-inflicted disease".

Speakers, Bureaus and Agents

Who said I can't be diplomatic when the occasion demands? Here's what's just appeared in Meetings SA, July/August '08 edition, on the topic of Speakers, Bureaus and Agents.

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Did you know that the National Speakers Association of Southern Africa (NSASA) is now known as the Professional Speakers Association of SA (PSASA)? For more about the PSASA go here and if you want to e-mail the PSASA administrator, Nikki Bakker, click here.

Food for thought

Regardless of the good reverend's very Christianity-based use of the exercise, it's nice to ask ourselves, 'What would I have done?'

Whose life did you touch today?

I had a surreal conversation yesterday. Got caught at the same table as a 'Karate mom' with two pre-teens who attend private schools. She's a business professional, as is her husband.The kids have just spent a vacation week on a 'spirituality program' - something the mother says is 'very important' to her.

In the next few sentences though, she expressed her anger. Her domestic worker (been with her for years and years and 'is like a mother to me', quote unquote) had brought (without prior consultation) her one young daughter back to spend a little time in the domestic Kaia on the rich-bitch's property. The rage was all about, 'Does she realise it's another mouth for me to feed?' I looked at her intently, waiting for her to burst out laughing at her own joke. But it wasn't a joke. Here she is, with kids in expensive extramural pursuits, private schools, regular (according to her) overseas holidays, and the food consumption of one little African kid is resented. It beggars belief.

I said to her, 'You're a Hindu woman, aren't you?' Yes. I went on 'In your religion you're taught to feed the stranger because the stranger might be God.' She knew that. I said, 'Then maybe you'd better start looking at things differently.' You're right, she said. Dunno how much of the conversation will stick.

Just for the record, news articles in this last week indicate that more than half of South African children go to bed at night without enough food, or no food at all, in their tummies. What are you doing about it?