24 January 2010

Tribal king declares secession from South Africa

This hasn't received much attention outside of SA:

On 14 January 2010, the king of the tribe Nelson Mandela belongs to served a secession notice on the South African Parliament. Only weeks after being sentenced by a South African court of law to fifteen years in jail for culpable homicide, kidnapping, arson, and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm (all charges dating back to an event in 1995), the lawyer of King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo declared that the abaThembu tribe would now form the independent state of Thembuland.

According to media reports, the new state – to be headed by the king who is out on bail – may comprise as much as sixty-five percent of current South Africa, in line with the pre-colonial boundaries of the tribe's land, including all of the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, parts of Gauteng and the Free State, as well as the cities of Johannesburg and Durban. The king's supporters claim abaThembu to be South Africa's largest tribe with more than ten million members.

Dalindyebo – who is better known by his praise name, Zwelibanzi – is one of a handful of rightful monarchs in South Africa and a former operative of the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), in Angola. Only the more surprising, then, that his legal team accuses the ANC government of a political trial aimed at replacing Dalindyebo with a puppet king.

South Africa, whose constitution attributes tribal kings a largely ceremonial role, neighbours two constitutional monarchies, Lesotho and Swaziland.

13 January 2010

Keeping my stalker busy

I found that one good way of demonstrating to people that I am indeed getting (cyber)stalked is by leaving comments to blog posts.

Wherever I leave a comment – still under my own name, despite all the defamation –, you can be sure that the next comment (unless it gets moderated) is from my stalker, reiterating the same tired old lies.

This has been going on for two years now.

How sick must that person be?

By leaving comments, I can lead him or her around the Internet like a dog on a leash.

Read my previous posts on the cyberstalking campaign against me under this thread:

www.erichkofmel.blogspot.com/search/label/cyberstalking

06 January 2010

"Anti-Democracy Agenda" now online

Please circulate widely! Blog about it! etc.

In January 2009, I started this blog – now called "Erich Kofmel Himself" – and a blog on political theology, now called the "Political Theology Agenda".

From the outset both these blogs bore the logo of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS). The renaming of the blogs at the end of last year was part of an improved online strategy of SCIS, which also includes the addition of a third blog in January 2010.

That new blog is called the "Anti-Democracy Agenda":

www.anti-democracy-agenda.blogspot.com

Description: "Conferences, Books, Articles, Trends: The Anti-Democracy Agenda is run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) in order to serve as a focal point and the premier resource on the net for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice as well as old and new alternatives to democracy. It wishes to facilitate the exchange on anti-democratic thought and practice across boundaries, be they disciplinary, ideological, national, cultural, generational, philosophical, religious (or non-religious), etc. By disseminating information on research, publications, and events, it hopes to increase awareness of the various traditions and current trends, and raise the academic and public profile of anti-democratic thought and practice worldwide."

Already, there are almost thirty posts on the Anti-Democracy Agenda. Namely, those posts on anti-democratic thought made here during 2009 and around twenty new posts introducing in detail scholarly resources (books, articles, and so on) for the study of anti-democratic thought and practice. In future, I may continue to post personal comments on anti-democratic developments here, while posting more objective news on the Anti-Democracy Agenda. (Where I will of course also provide links to posts made here.)

The Political Theology Agenda too seems finally to get properly indexed by Google and now holds top spots for "political theology" searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Throughout 2009, it accrued 75 posts, of which 31 during November and December 2009. I expect the number of posts in 2010 to be significantly higher, in line with the increasing number of people working on issues of political theology/-ies in all conceivable academic disciplines and the scholarly in- and outputs to be expected from this.

Just as I knew last year that the time had come for the Political Theology Agenda – the field had grown enough since 2006 to sustain such a blog –, the number and quality of posts on anti-democratic thought and alternatives to democracy I made here, the new publications and developments to be commented on in 2009 convinced me that the time had come for the Anti-Democracy Agenda. It will be sustained by things to come.

The term "Agenda" indicates the rationale of both blogs (and such further Agendas as SCIS may see fit to start in the future): originating from Latin, it means that "which ought to be done", a working programme – doing, acting, making. A list of matters to be worked on, to be taken up, to be contributed to. Notably, a schedule of events and readings, and a research agenda around which to coalesce.

These Agendas give visibility to novel areas of research, provide a focal point to informal networks of scholars (both at universities and independent) and people all around the world and from various backgrounds that may not know each other now and maybe never get to know one another. They provide resources, all in one place, for the benefit of those who come newly to the field or are just curious. They are an invitation to participate.

The time has come to give that kind of focus to the research agenda on anti-democratic thought and practice.

Feel free to leave a comment or contact me.