Yebo Yethu looks Good to Me

Vodacom have a recently started a BEE program called Yebo Yethu that exclusively enables black South African’s to purchase shares in their company. They’ve frozen the trading on the shares for the first 5 years and then only limited trading for the 2 years following that in order to help first time investors understand the benefit of long term investment. What ticks me off is that some white South Africans are branding this as discrimination. They’ve got more than enough great shares to invest in and have had the opportunity to invest for decades and now when an organization wants to help increase the number of non-whites (the vast majority of our country!!) to benefit from investments other white folk start crying foul. It seriously depresses me.

Xenophobia and the Church – an Open Forum

Xenophobic attacks in Gauteng are rocking the press and media world here in South Africa – I think its been reported on CNN as well. This morning I was listening to SAFM and a bunch of guys talking through the whole issue. One phone caller made a rather outlandish comment which I think begs some discussion. This particular caller suggested that the xenophobic attacks we are witnessing are a result of the failure of the church to hold the government morally accountable!? Do you think this is the case? Are we the government’s moral watchdogs? In what ways can we be proactive in this instance?

This is a difficult discussion because categories like ‘the church’ are rather slippery and used differently by different people. When this particular caller used that category I think he had in mind the likes of Frank Chikane and Desomond Tutu. The other difficulty is the root cause of the xenophobia – is it outright xenophobia or simply reaction to unbearable economic pressures?

What do you think…?

***UPDATE (13:50): Tutu has come out quite vocally this morning against the violence pleading for it to end. It would seem to me that Tutu has been, for the most part, a constant moral thorn in the government’s side, irrespective of who the ruling government has been.***

Grudem on Why Poor Nations Remain Poor

Justin Taylor has links to a talk by Wayne Grudem entitled, ‘Why do Poor Nations Remain Poor?’ He also includes a handout with the talk. I haven’t listened to it yet but I just thought it might be interesting to have a listen to… with us being African and all. Interesting to see what a highly recognized, American, systematic theology professor has to say on the subject.