Welcome back from the long weekend, everyone. Now back to the slog and grind.

The Daily Mail is generally utter garbage – after all, they publish Piers Morgan’s columns – but it remains widely read, both in print and online.

We couldn’t help but notice their rather provocative headline late last week, so let’s take a closer look.

Be warned, that headline is something of a mouthful – “Is South Africa heading for civil war? The country is lurching ever closer to conflict as its volatile Zulu president vows to seize land from whites – while Afrikaner fighters train in the bush“.

Shall we? I’ll just pluck a few of the spicier passages:

Zuma delighted supporters at his 75th birthday celebrations a few days ago with fiery rhetoric instead — and in doing so sounded the death knell for the Rainbow Nation…

The economy is undoubtedly in peril after government bonds were downgraded to junk status. Once a net exporter of food — as neighbouring Zimbabwe was before Robert Mugabe seized land from whites in a programme of ‘racial transformation’ — the country is now forced to rely on imports to feed the population.

Unemployment is 90 per cent in some townships, and riots — described as ‘service delivery protests’ by the ANC — are so widespread and frequent they barely get reported…

Crime is rampant — with more than 50 murders a day, many sadistic and barbaric — while South Africa is shamed by an appalling record on rape, with a woman sexually assaulted every 23 seconds.

Unfortunately it’s tough to argue on the rape front, because whatever the exact stats we are still a country shamed. Are we really relying on imports to feed the population, though?

Of course there’s a closer look at JZ and his rape allegations against the late Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, perhaps better known as Khwezi:

In 2005, when he was accused of raping the daughter of an ANC friend, he denied the charges, claiming it was consensual and it was his duty as a ‘Zulu warrior’ to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga — an African wrap — and he could not leave her ‘unfulfilled’.

‘In the Zulu culture, you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready,’ he told the court. ‘To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape.’

Despite knowing that the woman was HIV positive, in a country where one in three carries the virus, Zuma was unfazed by criticism that he hadn’t used a condom. ‘I had a shower afterwards,’ he said, cheerfully.

None of us really know how rich Zuma is, and he more than likely has money squirrelled away somewhere secret for a rainy day, but the Daily Mail estimates his wealth as somewhere between “£15 million and £100 million” (R259 million and R1,7 billion).

Let’s get to the bit about the ‘Afrikaner fighters’:

These are run by leaders of the Kommandokorps, a volunteer force who wear the brown military uniforms of South Africa’s old apartheid-era forces. On remote farms, recruits are being trained with pistols, pump-action shotguns and 303 rifles.

More than 2,500 volunteers, aged from 14 to 38, have been drilled. Their leader is Colonel Franz Jooste, a former officer in the old South African army, who fought what he calls ‘black terrorists’ in secret operations in Mozambique, Angola and Zambia.

‘We are in a heightened security situation,’ he told me. ‘We have to prepare for anarchy and how we can protect ourselves.’

The Daily Mail actually filmed one of these ‘training camps’ back in 2015 – check that HERE.

Let’s skip ahead to how journalist Andrew Malone chooses to end things:

I have never forgotten an exchange with one of Mandela’s advisers after I moved to live in Johannesburg 20 years ago. He was shocked when I said I didn’t own a gun. ‘You’d better get one,’ he warned. ‘Africa is a rough continent — anything can happen.’

I didn’t buy a weapon then. I might now if I lived there. For, if Zuma and his cronies choose to follow this corrupt, ruinous and racially destructive path, it won’t matter who ends up president of this magical, troubled country. They will be fighting to be King of the ashes.

Err, OK bud.

Magical and troubled perhaps, but this idea that every South African needs to carry a gun really is dated.

Let’s just say when Malone tweeted out a link to the story some folks weren’t buying it:

We shouldn’t really help the Daily Mail spread their fear-mongering, given that they’re one of the media outlets to blame for demonising immigrants ahead of the Brexit vote, but this one deserved a quick once-over.

Now back to answering the backlog of emails that have piled up over the long weekend.

[source:dailymail]