What a Waste of Council Tax.

As the conference of the governing African National Congess (ANC) has drawn to a close the South African leg of Chris Brown's tour has also ended. Unlike the European leg and Rihanna's associated 777 tour which were intended to generally increase levels of annoyance and irritation during the COP18/CMP8 by making it look like certain nations were being gifted with details of Rihanna's private life the South African leg had a much more specific purpose.

The replacement within the COP/CMP process for the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA) is something called the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) which was obviously created in Durban during the COP17/CMP7. As a result South Africa are very proud of this and key players in it's formation. The intention was that questions about Brown's safety and security in South Africa would put pressure on the South African delegation delaying progress on the ADP. The question over the safety and security of visitors/holiday makers automatically brings up the Ani Dewani murder case. Ani Dewani was a Indian/Swedish dual national who was murdered in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2010 whilst on honeymoon and since then the South African authorities have been very keen to extradite her husband Shrien Dewani - a British/Indian dual national - from Britain to stand trail for her murder. Although I don't think the Dewani murder was anything other then a private enterprise it did take place just before the COP16/CMP6 summit in Mexico and since then Britain have been doing everything in it's power to prevent Shrien's extradition in order to put pressure on South Africa. Just for added confusion the Swedish link also bring in the Julian Assange case and the Indian link brings in the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland which itself brings in the issue of Rihanna's alleged pregnancy that marred the second US Presidential debate.

As a lot of people are now thinking that Brown's not worth the price of the bullets to kill by the time he actually arrived in South Africa there were precisely zero threats to his safety and security so Brown himself had to make some up. Primarily this involved him creating a bit of drama at a shopping mall in Durban that's shown in this video; http://vimeo.com/55728748 Basically it shows Brown walking through the shopping mall surrounded by security and team members filming him essentially holding a giant neon sign over his head reading; "I'm a celebrity look at me!" in order to provoke a reaction. At first no-one actually seemed that bothered but members of Brown's team had made sure there were a group of his fans (basically teenage girls) corralled together ready to burst into hysteria as he walked past. As it often does this hysteria rapidly spread drawing out shoppers and shop workers to join in creating what local security and police might have considered a bit of an issue. The following day Brown used Twitter to post a photograph from one of his fans showing two baseball caps from Brown's "Black Pyramid" clothing line. To most people this just looked like Brown sharing with the world that one of his fans was excited about their new clothes. However for someone like me who has spent far to long around English football crowds this would remind you of the "What a waste of council tax!" chant; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCXHbCYvzjI Basically if the police patrol infront of a football crowd as they often do if it's a boring bit of the game the crowd will chant "What a waste of council tax. We paid for your boots. We paid for your coats. We paid for your hats." before chanting "Two hats! Two hats" over and over again. Due to the English accent and the noise of the crowd this sounds like they're calling the police "Twats" but they're not because that would be swearing and that would be illegal. 

The idea of these two events was to promote discussion about public order policing of protests/riots. With many South Africans becoming more and more angry that the end of apartheid has not brought about a noticeable improvement in their standard of living protests/riots are becoming more and more of an issue as shown by the Marikana mine shootings and the protests that took place during the ANC conference. Within the ANC there are primarily two main factions with very different views on protest/riot. In one camp there is the somewhat authoritarian ANC leader Jacob Zuma who would be very happy to pick up tips on silencing protest. In the other camp there is former Youth wing leader Julius Malema who has taken a leaf out of Robert Mugabe's book by getting supporters to take to the streets in riot and occasionally attack white owned farms. Malema's camp would be very much angered by the sight of the Zuma camp picking up tips on how to silence protest. The idea was to enrage these two camps in order to get them at each others throats making the ANC conference an even more tense and aggressive affair then it was. It was around Wednesday (19/12/12) that Brown's handlers worked out that this course of action would also have a negative effect on US interests in the middle-east.

Brown is now apparently heading off to a concert in Lagos, Nigeria. Although a major oil producing nation Nigeria has long suffered with unrest and poverty. This mainly stems from the fact that successive Nigerian governments have basically been chosen by and run for the interests of western oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP. Under President Goodluck Jonathan this is slowly starting to look like it is changing. Therefore the US obviously want to use Brown to put pressure on the Nigerian government to see how this is changing. The only problem is that this level of interference is likely to derail that process strengthening  the influence of non-US oil multi-nationals or drive the new Nigerian government closer towards the Chinese. With groups like Boko Haram and veterans of MEND knocking around there are more then enough violent and connected people to threaten Brown's safety and security in Nigeria. However as with South Africa there seem to have been no threats. Therefore the US is trying to use the issue of Brown's punishment for the 2009 beating of Rihanna. They laid the groundwork here through the Jessica Tata trial. Tata is a Nigeria/US dual national who caused the deaths of four children at her daycare centre before fleeing to Nigeria only to be extradited back to the US. To help or hinder Canada is currently in the grips of a custody dispute over the Ikea monkey.

For his part Brown is also trying to raise the tension by speculating that his relationship with Rihanna is back on. This included posting and then deleting a photograph showing them together that was actually taken last week in I think Paris. This of course was also intended to trick Rihanna into taking him back by playing on the loneliness she must be feeling as she takes a holiday in Barbados which she originally had intended to share with Brown. For her part Rihanna is sometimes making it look like the relationship might be back on and at others making it look like the relationship is definitely over. Sadly I think this is just her being genuine and really serves to underline why I'm really not happy about the way this has played out because relationship break ups always hurt and are rough enough on the people involved without them having to consider the wider geo-political implications.

20:40 on 21/12/12.