" A heart untouched by worldly thing, a heart that is not swayed by sorrow, a heart passionless, secure-that is the greatest Blessing."

-The Buddha, sutta Nipata

" Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained wealth in their youth , perish like old herons in a lake with out fish."

-The Phammapada

Although the Buddha had great wisdom at birth, he sat in training for six years; although Buddha dharma transmitted the Buddha-mind, we still hear the echoes of his nine years facing a wall,"

-Dogen, Rules for meditation

" The most extreme happines

is the self-emanation of self-power;

Happy are the myraid forums, the myraid revelation

As a welcoming gift to my faithful pupils

I sing of yogic happiness."

-Milarepa, The song of the Yogis’s joy

The officials of the state, ecclestical to secure, will find their lands seized and their othe property confiscated, and they themselves made to serve their enemies, or wonder about the country as beggars do. All being will be sonk in great hardship and in over powering fear; the night and days will drag on slowly in suffering;

-Thubten Gyatso, 13^th dalai hame of Tibet

 Censorship by South African authorities has led to a dramatic increase in organized crime and even to the worldwide spread of disease, including foot-and-mouth disease.

More than 30 South African journalists, including myself, regularly post uncensored news about developments in South Africa on the Web site censorbugbear.com.

The site is very popular among the more than 1 million South African expatriates who have already left the country since 1995 and now live scattered throughout the Western world.

Reports on censorbugbear.com first disclosed the spread of FMD to South Africa and the failure of the government to stop its spread within South Africa and to other nations it does commercial business with – months before FMD began making headlines in Europe and the U.S.

Some background: The International Epizootic Organization in Paris, which is the international veterinary reporting agency to which more than 180 countries are signatories, reports that the present strain of foot-and-mouth disease started its relentless march among Western commercial herds about three years ago.

The identified strain comes originally from Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and China, where FMD outbreaks among livestock remain unreported internationally and are being treated instead of the livestock being culled.

FMD-infected livestock lose massive amounts of weight but do not necessarily die from it. The disease takes away the livestock's commercial export value for fresh dairy and meat products to all Western countries, which have much stricter veterinary control requirements than Asian countries.

Far Eastern island nations such as Australia and New Zealand have managed to successfully protect their FMD-free export status by throwing up extensive veterinary barriers against FMD from the surrounding countries and have thus far remained free of it.

Endemic FMD in Asia

This strain of FMD remains endemic in many Asian countries to this day - where the livestock is not culled – as is now being done in Western countries such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

In most Asian countries except Taiwan, where strict Western-style veterinary controls remain the norm, local authorities do not insist on culling the FMD-infected livestock to eradicate the outbreaks. Instead these animals are treated with antibiotics for this viral infection and the authorities mount a vaccination program of the surrounding herds to prevent further spread of FMD.

Carcasses of this tainted Asian livestock still find their way into the Western food chain, however. The carcasses are ground up for cheap livestock feed widely exported to Western markets, where it has found its way into cattle feed widely sold to many European farmers.

The carcasses of millions of infected FMD-animals in Asia, including China, are ground into cheap livestock feed, which in turn is sold to Western countries in vast quantities – thus spreading the Eastern variety of the FMD virus far afield.

South Africa's Role

The South African outbreak was first identified on Sept. 22, 2000, at a pig farm in Camperdown, where kitchen slop bought from Asian ships in local harbors had been fed to livestock.

South Africa has its own strain of endemic FMD that is always present in its wildlife such as wildebeest on the animal sanctuaries. Because of extensive veterinary barrier controls this African strain has not invaded human habitats since 1938.

However, when the Asian strain was identified in Camperdown. The South African authorities; fearful of losing their valuable status as an FMD-free zone from which fresh meat products can be safely exported to Europe and North America failed for at least three weeks to notify their country's first FMD outbreak in commercial cattle to the International Epizootic Organization.

Moreover. The South African agriculture minister; Mrs. Thoko Didiza, who told news media she did not know how devastating foot-and-mouth disease could be for the commercial market, did not order any preventive control measures such as road blocks against the first outbreak at the Camperdown pig farm for a full seven days after she had been notified. This led to a disastrously expensive outbreak that spread to two other provinces before it was eradicated with an extensive culling of commercial cattle and a vaccination program of the surrounding tribal traditional cattle.

South Africa's formerly lucrative fresh meat export market has suffered multimillion-dollar losses since the outbreak.

What is clear is that had South African authorities taken steps immediately, the disease may have been contained and its spread to nations outside South Africa stopped.

A vigorous free press would have motivated South African authorities to take action against FMD.

Next in this three-part series: "South Africa's Role: Anthrax Set to Spread to West."

Everything was manipulated and now that we have left that system it is hard to understand how we let ourselves be deceived that way; how we allowed things to develop the way they did."
Cecile Pracher is head of the archives at the SABC and was for more than a decade present at the weekly music censoring meetings.
The system was simple. The South African record companies had to supply the lyrics for all records they published. Then Cecile and her colleagues at the State Radio music archives scrutinised the songs line by line. Whatever was not compatible with the ideology of the apartheid system would then be banned.
And there were thirteen straightforward rules.
Rule number one was: swearwords are unacceptable. Then followed rules prohibiting lyrics with obvious sexual references, occult elements, allusions to drugs, and, of course, openly political messages.
So actually it was easy for Cecile and her colleagues to manage the South African music censorship. If they were not sure what to do they would rather choose to prohibit than risk getting trouble with the powerful Afrikaner lodge - Broederbond - which dominated all important sectors of South African society.
I had no definite idea what a music censorship archive would look like prior to being permitted access to the SABC archives. Perhaps I imagined seeing endless shelves of files. But because of the straightforward set of rules the "banned music" files take up just a few meters of ring binders.
They contain no proper explanations. Almost exclusively these are limited to annotations such as "political," "unacceptable," or "swearword." The rules were accepted by bosses as well as musicians and record companies. Only in rare cases did the record companies bother to object - they knew complaints would take them nowhere. To avoid that radio hosts should fail to notice a banning order, the archive "helped" them by scratching banned records with a nail.
So "scratching" was not limited to rap music at the archive...

Records were available
The South African music censorship was efficient mainly within the broadcasting sector. Records which were not played were mostly available in the shops and even during the tightened cultural boycott of the 1980s record sales were not affected.
Campaigns such as Little Steven's boycott of the Sun City entertainment centre kept many Western pop artists from visiting South Africa, but their records were still available, so for the multinational record companies it was business as usual.
The highest censorship authority in the country was the Publications Control Board which could prohibit sale or distribution of any type of publication, however the lists of fully banned records are relatively short.
The most famous examples are the musical "Hair," "Jesus Christ Superstar," Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Sipho Mabuse's album "Chant of the Marching," Peter Gabriel's song "Biko," and the many songs about Mandela. The SABC was so efficient in its inside censorship that the state's control board could concentrate on literature, magazines, T-shirts, posters etc. - and the lists of "banned publications" are endless.


The consequences
There is no doubt that the period with prohibitions has had serious consequences for the South African music scene. In racist South Africa the classical European music tradition had top priority. Apart from the system's disregard for the development of popular music, it also obstructed any kind of miscegenation of genres or cultures.
Johnny Clegg was one musician who early on broke away from the cultural dogmas of Afrikaner society. His cultural tour of Zulu life was opposed by the system. What Clegg termed "cross-pollination" the system looked upon as "bastardisation."
A major personality like Paul Simon was needed to make many white South Africans realise that South Africa's own black musical culture would be of interest to the rest of the world. Therefore it might not be unreasonable to claim that South Africa skipped what are likely to be the ten most important years of world music. During the 1980s when the interest of the West in world music became economically interesting even for the major record companies, the South African music scene could not benefit from the resources which in other areas gave South Africa an advantage over other African countries. South Africa had - and still has - a developed industry, efficient media, an abundantly varied musical tradition, and a relatively strong economy. If the system had allowed and even supported merging of the various forms of music South African music would likely have taken a major part of the world music market. Such a theory, at least, is as likely to be true as so many others. Instead the so-called "bubblegum" music evolved which pleased a large young audience but was of no interest abroad.
As an extension of that wave we now have the kwaito wave including the best-selling boomshhaka. This type of music also does not generate much interest abroad.
Johnny Clegg on the other hand got himself a major audience in France which was the major world music market in the 1980s. Normally he should have been followed by many other South African bands. That would have given a boost to the South African music scene and encouraged record companies and media to attempt more musical mergers.
Talking of the South African rainbow nation the government, in terms of cultural politics, forget that those words must be followed by a stimulation of the colours of the rainbow actually merging into new colours.


Communicating in symbols
"Textually censorship forced us to develop a symbolic language which the audience would quickly understand," Johnny Clegg says, "but if censorship in that way stimulated linguistic development it smothered us musically." "I remember endless discussions when we were mixing the music. If I wanted more powerful drums or guitar it was always quietened down. Music was meant to 'heal.' While theatre turned more political music became more toothless and we are still suffering from that," believes Johnny Clegg.
When I ask him how he interprets the entire system of control that evolved during the apartheid regime his answer is surprising.
The anthropologist Johnny Clegg does not believe that the white Afrikaners needed to dominate entirely due to a superman ideology.
"I believe that control is an expression of a deeper need, an ideological need, which relates to a feeling of racial or ethnic inferiority. Or to the identity crisis of a particular group of people - either historically, religiously, or socially. I think that the purpose of the political control really is to calm or satisfy a deep feeling of insecurity. I don't believe the story that they wanted to control because they 'felt they were better.' Because we have had too many proves that 'we' are not better. 'We' just could not let the world or 'our enemies' see that." (c) opy right 2002  Craig