Tenant from Hell, Redux

On 6 June I wrote that our attorneys had informed us that they had “received a call from Lynda’s attorney earlier today requesting the full outstanding balance and our banking details to attend to payment by no later than close of business on Monday, 9 June 2008.” Lynda, you will remember, was our tenant who owes us a boatload of money in past due rent, late penalties, and damages to the flat she rented for two years.

One of the key elements in our battle with Lynda is that she is a hopeless liar. By the time I posted the 6 June blog entry she had promised to pay at least part of the debt we claimed no less than a dozen times, at least twice in writing. Finally, just before we were to go to court, Lynda’s attorney faxed our attorney the above commitment to pay the debt in full.

Well, it was no surprise that 9 June came and went and we didn’t see a centavo. Wise to Lynda’s ways, we didn’t hold much hope of payment and so did not suspend our legal journey. Prior to our next court date Lynda’s attorney, with no explanation or apology for Lynda’s failure to pay on 9 June, again communicated with our attorneys, this time claiming that she could not afford to pay a single lump sum and offering a payment scheme. Lynda was offering to pay a sum weekly until the debt was paid.

Knowing that magistrates often frown on a refusal to accept a reasonable offer of settlement, we declined the offer with the explanation that Lynda had failed to make good on offers of payment in the past and, absent any kind of onerous penalty for failure to make her payments, we had no confidence in her promise to pay. We heard nothing back from Lynda’s attorney and so, after waiting a respectable time, our attorneys filed what is called a “Demand for Plea.” This gave Lynda five working days to submit her plea to the court and should she fail to do so, we could then apply for a default judgement after which her assets could be seized and sold to satisfy the debt.

We waited for ten days for her to submit her plea…basically her refutation of our claims…to the court. After all, this was her very last chance to have a judge look at the claim and maybe—just maybe—let her off the hook. If I was in Lynda’s place, you can bet I would submit a detailed and eloquent rebuttal to the claims, hoping to minimize the amount I would be ordered to pay. To fail to respond at all is to just give the judgement to the opposition.

But that is exactly what Lynda did. We gave her ten days instead of the obligatory five, and still she did not respond. And so, on 14 July our attorneys filed for a Judgement in Default of Plea. Yesterday we received, via our attorneys, a fax from Lynda’s lawyer containing yet another offer of settlement: “…2 monthly instalments of R10 000 as from 01 August 2008 and 01 September 2008 provided that the amount be capped at R20 000 and no further interest, costs, etc. are levied.”

I nearly laughed out loud! What on earth makes that woman think we have any interest in accepting any kind of deal from her? It’s over! Only the formalities are left to attend to. She defaulted, we won, so now it is just a question of getting the paperwork signed and her BMW hauled away by the Sheriff for auction. Yes…she drives a late model Beemer and she is a 35% owner of a lucrative employment agency…it’s not like we are trying to take bread out of the mouths of starving babes, here!

And so we countered with an offer of our own: We are in receipt of Lynda’s…offer to settle. In view of the fact that Lynda’s history is one of making agreements to pay and then failing to do so, we are unable to accept this offer. We will counter with an offer of our own: full payment of all amounts owed in a single lump sum. Interest, costs, penalties, etc. to stop at the moment her payment clears the bank.

The more I thought about the offer, the more incensed I became. This has been a power struggle with Lynda almost from the day she moved into the flat. She actually expected us to cut down a tree, demolish a significant part of the garden and build a garage for her where the front patio stands! When we demurred, reminding her that she leased the flat knowing it had no garage (but secure parking nonetheless), she darkly hinted that she would remember this when it came time to renew her lease. The fact that it would cost a full year’s worth of her rent to build the bloody thing was apparently unimportant…she wanted a garage and we were somehow remiss in not providing it for her.

She ignored the conditions of her lease that were not to her liking, from confining her dogs to smoking to paying her rent on time to watering the garden. When we pressed her to abide by the terms of her lease she responded with indignation and hostility, as if we were overstepping our bounds! Even on the day she finally left, she determined to do so on her terms, refusing to set an appointment for a final inspection of the flat and even refusing to give the keys to us…she gave them instead to the new tenants!

After she moved out and we sent her the results of our final inspection, she had the audacity to substitute her own thumb-sucked figures for the quotes we had carefully and painstakingly gathered. She stole a down lighter from the dining room ceiling and damaged two electrical outlets in the kitchen, which a certified electrician repaired for us at a cost of R1100: Lynda’s offer of reimbursement was R80…less than the cost of a replacement down lighter kit! She damaged a carpet that was in new condition when she moved in…when she moved out there was a circular water stain at least 20”(50 cm) in diameter and the carpet fibre had rotted. Because there is no spare carpet to make a patch and the damage is highly visible, we must replace the entire carpet at a cost of nearly R2000: Lynda’s offer of compensation for this damage was R80 to have the carpet shampooed!

If we had any concern that her blatant flouting of our legitimate authority was based in some kind of personal animosity, it was laid to rest when she treated the court system in the same manner. Lynda has apparently decided that the courts hold no legitimate authority over her either, and so she simply ignores the rules of litigation. She made commitments to pay us both directly to our attorneys and in writing through her own attorney which she failed to keep and she failed to submit documents to the court by the deadlines. She seems to think she doesn’t have to abide by the rules, that she will make up the rules as she goes along and do things her way.

So, after ruminating about this for a while, I sent an email to Hubby: It occurs to me that Lynda is still trying to run things. She is trying to set the terms of settlement…“2 monthly instalments of R10 000 as from 01 August 2008 and 01 September 2008 provided that the amount be capped at R20 000 and no further interest, costs, etc. are levied.”

“I’ll give you this money but on the following conditions…” is basically what she is saying. What makes her think WE have to bend to her conditions? The court is going to take her car away from her and attach her wages if she doesn’t pay the debt, and every month that this drags on is more court costs and legal fees, both hers and ours. There’s no question now that the judgment will be in our favour and for the full amount we claim because she defaulted.

Does she think we are stupid? Or maybe greedy? If we agree to cap it at R20K and we run up another R10K in legal expenses because she again fails to pay (which I suspect is her plan), we would have to go to court to invalidate the agreement because of her failure to perform, and then we have to start the whole process all over again. Why would she think we would want to stop now when we are now just about at the end of it, and we are winning?

I am sure she is trying to minimize the monthly increase in this debt, but what makes her think we would even consider such an offer? Why would she think, after a dozen or more defaulted promises to pay, we would accept a deal with her, especially one that provides no onerous penalty for her default? She could have been off the hook for half this amount if she had just paid up in the first place. The longer she drags it out, the more it costs her…she is racking up R600/mo in late penalties, plus our lawyer bills and hers as well.

We are still waiting to see if she accepts our counter offer…whether she admits it or not, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter because whether she forks over the cash or the Sheriff seizes her assets and sells them at auction to satisfy the debt, she going to have to pay. The only control she has left is whether or not to allow the debt to continue to grow due to her delaying tactics. Her debt to us, including our attorney’s fees, is now at least R20,000. Additionally, she has her own attorney’s fees to pay.

Does being a control freak feel so good that it is worth this kind of money?

The Beatification of John McCain

And so it begins…the supposedly liberal US media has begun its escort of John McCain into the White House with this morning’s headlines: “McCain attends church, visits VA hospital.”

I kid you not…my husband thinks it must have been a very slow news day in America, but if that was the case, why was there no corresponding headline regarding the activities of McCain’s chief rival for the job, Mr. Obama? Where was the “Obama attends church, visits Eternal Flame” or similarly unsubtle attempt to show him as a man of the people?

My distance from America and her daily political angst seems to have afforded me a clarity, an objectivity, that is just impossible when immersed in it. It has been interesting to witness the Right Wing’s continued demonisation of Hillary Clinton, a woman of strength and intelligence and more experience in White House intrigue than all the other presidential hopefuls put together, and its attempts to characterize Obama as anything other than what he is: an educated, well-spoken Christian American male of black and white ancestry. If you believe the Right’s lunatic fringe, he is a black Muslim intent upon paving the way for Islam to dominate America…something I can’t see as being any worse, in the long run, than allowing these lunatic über-Christians to force their antediluvian notions upon the entire populace.

And so the media grooming of John McCain as a political saint has begun. Never mind that he plans to keep feeding young American men to the war machine, never mind that the economy is at its lowest ebb since the Shrub’s daddy held the throne and McCain has no recovery strategy…the media is now more about big business than critical analysis and hard reporting, and the Republicans are more about servicing big business than anything else. Even Jayzus.

Neither McCain nor Obama have White House-worthy credentials…that lone jewel sits firmly in Hillary’s crown. But Americans, ever eager to avoid anything that smacks of hard work…including the work of firing up the brain cells and actually making them think…have chosen to reject the only person with the experience and knowledge in favour of the smooth orator, the glad-hander, he of the polished charm and photogenic smile. It will be interesting to see if the media campaign to buff McCain into an American Saviour. With the media deeming McCain’s venture into a church to be a headline-worthy event, I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what other kind of saintly behaviours the media chooses to showcase.

But one thing is for certain…you won’t be seeing the media shining up Obama’s halo.

Winter wet and windy

It’s the Fourth of July. Today, all over America, people are preparing picnics and cookouts, planning trips to the park or the beach, and looking forward to firework displays. Tomorrow they will b nursing sunburns and hangovers, traditional legacies of America’s celebration of her independence from Britain more than 200 years past.

It is almost 10 in the morning here in Cape Town and it is the dead of winter. The rain alternates between downpour and deluge and, with no central heating, the doggies and I are tucked up in the bed with the mattress pad heater beneath us and a duvet topped by a boutis quilt, weighty and warm, on top of us.

The light is dim, more like immediate post-dawn than approaching noon, and the best news is the infamous Cape Doctor…that stiff and bracing wind so characteristic of these parts…has not decided to pay us a visit concurrent with the monsoon. I’ve never been fond of extreme weather, and one form or another at any given time is all my nerve will take with equanimity. I especially dislike heavy winds and coupling them with a torrential rain is my particular idea of hell.

But, ever the seeker of the silver lining, I will say this for today’s dim and soggy state: the wind is tolerable, there is no thunder, no lightning, and if I go outside for a bit of a stroll, I won’t get sunburned, only damp…and between the clothes dryer and a cupboard full of fat, fluffy towels, that is quickly and easily remedied…and without lasting ill effect.

But the doggies seem to have the right of it, tucked up warmly in the bed, snoozing the foul weather away. Perhaps I should join them…

The Tenant from Hell

So, we had this tenant from hell, whom I shall call Lynda.

After blatantly violating several provisions of her lease…and even arguing with us about abiding by her lease!...she decided to move out rather than renew her lease when it expired. We were relieved, as we had planned to refuse to renew it, she being such a pain in the butt. Her decision to move, we felt, was saving us the wrangle of prying her out of the place at the end of her tenancy.

Well, we traded one agony for another because she stopped paying her rent two months before the end of her lease. In January she called us and tried to get us to accept her security deposit in lieu of the month’s rent but we declined: not only were we pretty sure we were going to need that money to remedy some problems she had caused in the flat…most especially to replace plants in the once-beautiful garden that had died due to her neglect…such a thing was prohibited by her lease. Contentiously, she then informed us that she was not going to paint her flat, making vague references to a previous tenant who had painted before she left (that tenant had damaged the paint in several rooms and voluntarily repainted so she could get her deposit back). If we weren’t willing to cancel her debt for January’s rent by accepting her deposit in its place, Lynda obviously expected to get her deposit back and had no intention of doing anything save moving out in order to do so.

We had a new tenant ready to rent Lynda’s flat before the end of the lease. Lynda’s lease specified she should be out on 29 February and the new tenant was prepared to move in on March 1. At 08h00 on the morning of March 1, the new tenant’s van arrived and disgorged her furniture onto the main patio because Lynda was still in the flat. She adamantly refused to remove so much as a stick of furniture to the other patio or the enclosed, gated driveway to allow Mary to move in, despite her lease having expired and the flat legally belonging to Mary as of that morning. She had earlier communicated to us her intention of remaining in the flat an extra day and when we told her she could not do so…that the flat had already been rented out…her reply was a terse “tough!” By way of response, we immediately hand-delivered a letter to her informing her that her lease terminated on 29 Feb and if she stayed past that date, she would be charged the daily/holiday rate for the flat (which is less than a 5 minute drive to the beach) of R1200 per day for each day she overstayed.

Eventually Lynda got out and we, accompanied by Mary, her boyfriend Tom, and my trusty digital camera, inspected the flat. We had sent an SMS to Lynda asking her to name a time for a joint inspection, but she declined to reply, so we set about inspecting it ourselves along with the new tenants as witnesses. It was worse than we thought. The place was filthy, the paint in every room damaged well beyond what could be considered “normal wear and tear.” A large stain on one wall indicated a spilled (or thrown) cup of coffee or glass of cola, nicotine stains on the walls and ceilings (our leases prohibit smoking inside the flats), and paint actually ripped off the wall where something had been glued to it. The garden, which has an irrigation system, was nearly dead from lack of watering. Holes and cracks in walls. Huge (50 cm!) stain in a previously perfect carpet, patio furniture warped and peeling from being left out in the rain and not oiled, electrical outlets broken…and a black scorch mark on one of them…ceiling downlighters missing, cigarette burns on the Oregon pine bathroom cabinet, and she left with a complete set of keys, which meant we had to get a locksmith out to replace all of the security locks. All in all, the damages added up to nearly R8000…much of which we had to get repaired out of our own pockets as her deposit was less than R4500. Those costs coupled with the past due rents and penalties, brought Lynda’s debt to nearly R15000.

We sent Lynda an itemized statement. We duly noted that we were aware of her new address (she had lied to us about her new address, giving us a location in a downmarket suburb when, in fact, she moved into a posh district in our own upmarket suburb), and specifically inquired as to our missing rent for January and February…did she, we asked, use the rent she owed us to pay for the deposit and first month’s rent on her new digs? Had she spent our money to finance her move to house in a neighbourhood even we cannot afford to live in? In January and February, when we had to delve into our personal funds to make the bond payment on the rental property because she had failed to pay her rent, she had cried poverty to us, claiming that her clients had failed to pay her due to the holidays, and when we pressed her for the rent each week, she became increasingly hostile and resentful of our demands. It was obvious to us, on 1 March when we followed the removal van to her new place, that she had had the money all along, but declined to pay her rent with it. We ended up having to cash in some of our retirement investments in order to pay the bond on the rental property, something we would not have been obliged to do if she has just paid her rent.

So, we sent her an itemized accounting of the damages and outstanding amounts and she fired back an outraged and bombastic reply, denying responsibility for virtually everything. She claimed our expectation that she pay for repainting the flat to be motivated by “greed,” failing to acknowledge the brown nicotine spots on the ceilings, the paint stripped off the wall in one bedroom, the grimy streaks on the walls of the other bedroom, the brown splash stain on the walls. She offered to pay R80 to replace the missing downlighter…less than the cost of the kit to replace it and not even remotely close to the charge of an electrician to install it. She claimed the electrical outlets were broken when she moved in, but the flat was newly renovated when she took possession and her lease gave her seven days to report such flaws…she lived there for two years and never made mention. She even had the cheek to suggest that we pay her for things she left behind: a shower curtain, some broken bamboo blinds and light globes! And, to top it all off, she actually threatened to sue us for defamation for impugning her character! We have yet to figure out how expecting a person to abide by the terms of her lease and pay her rent on time constitutes defamation… Hubby asked, in his reply to her threat, if she was attempting to intimidate us into dropping our claim by threatening to bring a frivolous lawsuit against us, a question to which she gave no reply.

All in all, at the end of her three page diatribe she agreed she owed us one month’s rent plus a few bucks…the total being below R4500…and that she would pay it by 31 March. That gave me a hearty laugh because this was only the umpteenth promise to pay, and if she hadn’t honoured any of the previous ones, why would she be bothered to honour this one? Since our claim was three times what she claimed to owe (and we had no confidence in her paying even that reduced amount), we instructed our lawyers, specialists in debt collection…and rent collections in particular…to begin the process of squeezing Lynda to pay her debt.

True to form, Lynda took umbrage at our audacity…how dare we hold her feet to the fire and demand payment through the legal system? Our attorneys sent her our claim (a copy of the final inspection report we had sent Lynda a month before) and she said she needed some time to respond. Weeks later our attorneys received her response…the same three page diatribe she had previously faxed to us. And when our attorneys telephoned her to request payment, Lynda screamed at her and slammed down the phone! It was at that juncture it became clear that she was simply playing for time, probably hoping that if she dragged it out long enough we would just give up and go away. Obviously, Lynda is unaware of the American reputation for litigiousness…

We pressed the issue and last week our legal fees…which Lynda will have to pay due to the terms of the lease…surpassed R2500. Lynda was served by the Sheriff that we were taking her to court and, once we received confirmation that she had been served, we had to make a decision: apply for Summary Judgement or wait…yet again…for Lynda to respond. We opted for the Summary Judgment.

Now, here is one of the places where American law and South African law differ: in America you just wait for the court date and go to trial. In South Africa you have an option not available in America: the Application for Summary Judgment. In this situation, your case is presented to a magistrate and the defendant submits a synopsis of their defence, and the Magistrate decides if the situation is worthy of spending the resources for a full hearing. If the claim is clear-cut…either for the complainant or the defendant…the magistrate can enter a judgment on the spot and safe time and money on taking the case to a full hearing. Believing our case to be particularly strong…especially since Lynda admitted to owing the past due rent and offered to pay for certain claims (although at laughably reduced amounts)…we told our attorneys to apply for the Summary Judgment. And yesterday we received the following email from

The Application for Summary Judgment has been set down for Wednesday, 11 June 2008.

I received a call from Lynda’s attorney earlier today requesting the full outstanding balance and our banking details to attend to payment by no later than close of business on Monday, 9 June 2008.

This whole thing, including her attorney's and our legal fees, is going to cost Lynda around R20,000. That's a pretty expensive tantrum...

Winter mornings

A few years back, when Nash was our only dog, we fretted what to do for him on rainy days when we were out. We were living in the cottage when had only a narrow strip of pavement for a back garden, and no shelter whatsoever. We settled on a little doghouse made of a resin-like plastic, reasoning that while it wasn’t the Ritz (as Nash seemed to view the inside of the cottage), it was a roof over his shaggy little head and shelter from the brisk wind.

Nash, of course, disagreed, He determinedly refused to consider the structure, preferring to stand pathetically at the back door, dripping wet, those big brown eyes silently pleading for us to let his shivering little dog body into the warmth of the house. It worked every time and the doghouse because one of this bits of flotsam that we all accumulate until we eventually gave it away and it became the white elephant of another person who had a similar back garden…and a similarly inclined dog.

We moved to this house three years ago and put a bed on the tiled, covered, lighted patio for Nash. Now, you must understand, Nash (and all additional doggies) sleep inside the house at night during cool weather, but when we go out, we feel obliged to provide a comfortable, sheltered place for him to rest until we get home. He took to that little basket and pad and made it his own until Candy joined the family and promptly chewed it to bits.

Subsequently, a couple of old carpets served as an insulation against the cold ceramic tile floor and the dogs seemed happy enough with their indoor and outdoor beds until Trinny came along. The other dogs, being Maltese, are fluffy little creatures that need monthly grooming and haircuts. Top their natural fuzz with a fleecy little jersey, and they stay warm and happy on all but the coldest days. Trinny, on the other hand, is a long-legged fox terrier with a coarse, close coat and no winter undergrowth. When the weather turns mild, Trinny quakes like an aspen and clatters those big teeth of hers resoundingly. A jersey helped, but didn’t solve the problem, so we looked into the matter of a new dog bed.

We scouted around and settled on a large hard-plastic bed that was vented at the bottom and had a rim around the base to keep the bed up off the ground. This would prevent cold from so easily leaking through the base of the bed and, if wind blew rain onto the patio floor, would keep the bed dry. With an assortment of old blankets, pillows and mats, along with each other for body heat, we expected them to make a little dogpile for warmth and live happily ever after.

Have you ever considered how amazing it is that these little creatures whom we presume to be so much less intelligent than we are, stymie us at every possible turn? The bed was plenty big for Trinny and the Maltese Mafia, but they didn’t see it that way. Night after night either Hubby or I would have to go out onto the patio and scold the growling little white thugs into letting Trinny into it. And heaven forfend she should have to get up in the night and make her way out to the doggie loo…Nash and Candy would rearrange themselves to take up all the space in the bed and warn off poor Trinny when she got back from answering nature’s call and she, not a stupid old girl, would begin a rather ritualized bark that would not only awaken us from a sound sleep and notify us of her predicament and her need for our intervention. The big doggie bed, as a means of canine social engineering and shared warmth, was a bust.

Winter is fast approaching and not only are the nights cold, the days are beginning to have a decided nip to them. Trinny comes to the kitchen door, clattering her teeth and trembling pathetically in an attempt to gain admittance to the doggie bed in the cubby in our bathroom, but we want the dogs outside during the day. So, yesterday, we made another trip to the pet store, looking for an “igloo” style dog house that might do a better job of retaining doggie body heat during the colder days and evenings. Nash, we knew, would probably turn up his little nose at such a structure, since he had adamantly refused to use the original dog house, but maybe Trinny would find a measure of comfort there.

But there were no igloos that would suit our purposes and disheartened, we started to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, however, high up on an overhead shelf, I spotted some objects that looked rather like denim cocoons. Shaped rather like WWII Quonset huts made of channel-stitched and fluff-filled denim, they had a circular doorway and a padded floor and looked to be just about the size of the travel kennel that our groomer uses to transport the furbabies. It took only a quick examination to determine that these might just be the answer.

Sure enough, Trinny took to it like a duck to water. After I tossed in a smelly little rug from the old doggie bed and a treat, she clambered in, dragging her long legs behind her, and curled up for a snooze. When she pokes her head out to see what’s going on she looks rather like a turtle with a blue denim shell, but she’s obviously quite pleased with her cocoon and, most importantly, isn’t shivering every time I see her.

The Maltese Mafia, however, are rather a different kettle of fish. Candy dislikes the thing intensely and, rather than crawl inside to escape the chill, climbs on top of the thing, collapsing it into a close facsimile of a regular soft-sided dog bed. Nash is not so reluctant to climb in and take a snooze, but he’s not exactly thrilled when Candy climbs on top while he is inside and collapses the whole thing on top of him.

The chill of early morning, however, has a way of overcoming even the strongest resistance. We let the babies outside at about 6 in the morning to do their doggie business, after which they usually hop into the big doggie bed together for another snooze. But now the mornings have a deep chill to them and the open bed has been stored until the warm mornings of summer return. And today, despite her reluctance, the morning cold drove Candy into one of the cocoons to snuggle up with Nash, and this was the scene on the patio as hubby left for work this morning:

Violence and invisibility

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the entire continent of Africa…with the possible exception of oil-rich regions that invite exploitation by first world nations…is completely invisible to the rest of the world.

Yesterday I read, on the CNN website, about violence in Italy: seems there’s some flap going on regarding garbage collection and eleven people got hurt…nobody killed. But not a word about the 25,000 people displaced in South Africa.

Perusing the Reuters site I saw its roll of top stories listed an article about a soccer riot in Belgium that involved 200 people…but no deaths. But not even an honourable mention for the 50+ people who have died violently in South Africa over the last week.

The AP fared only a little better, publishing stories on May 23 and 24, but not considering them sufficiently newsworthy to be listed as top stories. So, if you weren’t already aware that something was amiss in the Rainbow Nation, AP’s website would tell you about earthquake aftershocks in China, cyclone aid efforts in Myanmar, and tornadoes in the Midwest, but the violence in South Africa would never have been brought to your attention.

Yahoo at least headlined the story: South Africa immigrant violence leaves 25,000 displaced, but the link was disappointing, since it led to a story about fighting between the government and rebels in Sri Lanka resulting in 20 deaths. So, even though Yahoo headlined the story, you couldn’t have found out anything about us or what is going on here, since the headline was linked to the wrong story and Yahoo does not provide an easy-to-access means of notifying them of such errors.

To be fair, the AP did have a couple of stories about our tribulations, but you would have to know something was amiss here and do a search on the site to find the articles.“At least 42 people have been killed and more than 25,000 foreigners displaced since attacks began earlier this month by South Africans who blame immigrants for crime and unemployment. More than 500 arrests have been made,” the article says. Maybe it isn’t newsworthy to clarify that the violence has been directed at immigrants from Malawi and Somalia and Zimbabwe? Or that the drug trade the fuels much of the crime here, at least in Cape Town, and is dominated by Nigerians against whom the police seem to be powerless and of whom the local blacks are terrified?

“Cape Town police spokesman Billy Jones said about 400 people had sought shelter on a motor racetrack after 12 people were injured in overnight attacks on an informal settlement in Cape Town,” the AP article goes on to say. I live just down the road from that racetrack…Killarney…and my maid lives across the road from the informal settlement in question. I know at least something of what is going on…for example, I know that so far, no white people have been reported as victims, not even white foreigners like myself. But does the article give this piece of information, a critical bit of knowledge in a country still suffering the lingering taint of apartheid and its attendant racism? No, it fails to specify that the victims of this violence are other poor people of colour, immigrants whom the hard-pressed locals perceive as competition for scarce resources or even predators against them. This omission can easily mislead people into thinking that the violence is indiscriminate, that visitors from other countries are endangered, that local non-black residents are fleeing in fear of their lives, and nothing could be further from the truth.

But I suppose it doesn’t matter, after all. We are invisible to the rest of the world, written off as second rate citizens of third world countries, fifty of our deaths of less value or newsworthiness than eleven Italians bruised in a spat over picking up the trash.

AP article: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SOUTH_AFRICA_IMMIGRANT_ATTACKS?SITE=NCKIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

A little too close to home?

Well, it seems my last post was a little bit too close to home for at least one person...but I have to wonder why s/he didn't bother to post a name or URL and chose, instead to call herself Anonymous. I always wonder about people who post anonymously when the option to leave a name is available...why don't they want their identity associated with what they have said? I find myself unable to take someone entirely seriously if they are ashamed or afraid to stand up for what they have written by putting their name to it.

So my anonymous correspondent takes me to task: Ouch! While I agree that some Christians fall way short of the ideal pattern set out for them by Jesus, I think you're being a little harsh here, we are not all bad! Surely, there have to be some good ones out there? For you to generalize makes you just as bad as the very people you are criticizing!

And I replied: Missed the point, didja?Go back and re-read. Everything posted in pink in this post (and yellow in the previous post) are direct quotes from self-identified Christians. Every one...and their screen names and a link to where those posts are originated is also provided.You may not mind being lumped into the same basket as delusional people who think they are hearing from Richard Nixon in heaven, who believe the Flintstones are historically correct, who think educating women is emasculating and who think torturing children is OK, but I don't want to be associated with these people.Tell me, would you kill YOUR child if s/he professed to be an athiest? There is a quote here from a woman who says she would!Do yourself a favour and go to www.fstdt.com and read the entries every day for a month. Just ONE month. Then get back to me.

What I did not do is to ask this person where I generalized. I made the statement that I do not want to be associated with these people, which is not a generalization but a statement of fact. What comes to mind when you hear the word "Christian"? For most of my life it meant kind, thoughtful, helpful people, people who loved their neighbours and did good works, who helped the poor. People like my grandparents who may not have gone to church often, but who donated to charity, participated in fund raisers for poor people, who behaved modestly, respected others, and were kind, loving people. But today if you say "Christian" to me, what comes to mind are the people we used to call "religious fanatics," nutcases who believed all kinds of fantastical...and impossible...things and who are determined to cram it down the throats of everyone they come across.

Their beliefs are ludicrous, their methods horrific: rape (FLDS), starvation (the family whose 14 year old son died of starvation while they had more than $3000 in the bank..."tithe money" they refused to use to feed their kids), depriving a dying woman of oxygen so they can harangue her one more time with their demands that she accept their religious beliefs (see previous blog), beating children until they submit (see yesterday's blog), willing to murder their own children rather than see them become atheists (previous blog)...the list of monstrous behaviours these people are willing to commit is beyond belief. Treason is a given, as they advocate violation of the Constitution in the pursuit of their ends: conversion of the US into a theocracy.

Generalization? No. By their own words they condemn themselves and when you say "Christian" to me, these are the people who now come to my mind. And given the visibility of the Religious Right, I'm willing to bet that most people, when they hear the word "Christian," these shameful people are what come to mind, not the kind, respectful, loving, helpful people who wore the name in the past.

Go ahead, I dare you...go to www.fstdt.com and read it for a month. Just click the link and then bookmark it. Read EVERY post they put up. Go back to the sources they cite and read the websites these quotes come from. Do it every day for a month and you will have a picture of just how pervasive...and lunatic...fundamentalist Christianity really is.

Then come back in a month and tell me you don't find these people and their beliefs scary...especially the belief that they are mandated by their god to force the rest of us to accept their belief or suffer horrific punishment (and not just in the afterlife...some of these people advocate capital punishment...including burning at the stake for heresy!).

These aren't your grandmother's gentle Christians, these are a whole new and dangerous breed who believe that the word "freedom" applies only to those who believe as they do. Be afraid, be very afraid!