When I left South Africa for my new life in England as a young musician with long hair and no money, Mandela was still in prison.
I visited Robben Island when I returned for the first time to South Africa after the end of the Angolan Border war heralded the first free elections in my lifetime.

This is my picture from inside Mandela’s cell on that first visit. My first destination on visiting in 1994 was this location. Where Thatcher’s ‘Grubby Little Terrorist’ spent some 27 years. His view for 18 of his 27 years. While Thatcher lived in the Ritz.
I look back now on how things were and marvel that we have never held the miscreants to account.
We live in an era of endless denial. Qualified immunity for everyone who ever held the levers of power or sucked on the nourishing teat of those who did hold the levers of absolute power.
Those in power since records of leadership politics began have never faced accountability, excepting after bitter bloody war removed them.
Even when the changing tides of historical revision expose the barren rocks of their extreme cuntitude the story stays the same.
Margaret Thatcher was PM when I moved to England. Her right wing thuggery leading to so much misery for so many was never made right. How they roared her onwards to kill and maim in the name of GREAT BRITAIN. The IRON LADY. With the black heart. Idol to many I knew who revered her hateful suppression of the poor and especially the Black poor, for Queen and Cuntery.
One day in 2004 I visited Cape Town aquarium, where I noticed Margaret Thatcher standing next to me. To her right, another five feet away from us both, separated by a thick sheet of aquarium glass, a large Great White Shark sailed past. The moment is frozen in my memory like a hi-res photograph.
Her criminal son Mark-the-terrorist-entrepreneur lived in CT at the time. (Another example of qualified immunity for criminals related to the rich and powerful.) Thatcher was clearly visiting her dodgy son, accompanied at this time only by one elderly gentleman.
Ironic we should bump into each other outside the shark tank.
As anyone who know my story knows, I once met P.W Botha, in 1980, while in the uniform of the Apartheid Army he commanded.
In that moment, three feet away from him with eye contact, I found the urge to insult him to his face irresistible.
Seeing Thatcher in that moment, when our eyes met standing just a few feet away, I was overwhelmed by the urge to say the word cunt. Loud. With authority. I was compelled by my awareness of her dark past to at least let her know her behaviors had not gone unnoticed by all.
My cognitive process was advanced to the point my mouth started to move in preparation for this voluminous one word address. I had already determined one optimal word would be the full extent of our exchange. Says it all really. Why embellish.
My girlfriend at the time, a moron of some note, saw this event unfolding and pulled me away. One of few regrets in my life is that I missed that small opportunity for redress. The other is that moron girlfriend who would go on to do far worse than pull me away from a dutiful opportunity.
How these odious right wing racists keep walking away from histories recall remains the reason I believe our failure to prosecute historical crimes, even in absentia, will be the undoing of our democratic model of governance in which even the poor get a say.
Thatchers good buddy Reagan is another assassin lackey of the rich who has left such harm in his wake that the USA and the world remains blighted to this day as a consequence. The homelessness in the US is the most obvious legacy of Reaganomics but a deeper look at the laws he passed reveals the extreme harm he visited on all Americans not in the top 5% of wealth.
When it came to accountability poor Ronnie couldn’t remember. And no one bothered to promote the evidence of Ronnie’s crimes against 90% of the US population. The 1985 Beirut car bomb was signed off by Ronnie. Women and children. Whoops.
The scoundrels of history who seize power and then abuse it to reward the rich and crush the poorest always walk away with medals and glory and never accountability.
Lord Kitchener genocided most of the Boer Population in 1901, the first genocide of the 20th Century, killing some 80% of the Boer women and children in concentration camps to win the 2nd Anglo Boer War.
Deliberately.
Scorched earthing their entire agricultural economy, destroying the future for many generations. But that’s not taught in English History class. Statues of Kitchener abound.
His face adorns “Your country needs you” posters from WW1 encouraging boys to go and walk into certain death to keep King and Country aristocracy living the rich life their entitlement demanded.
Kitchener and his like continue to be celebrated as great Brits. With vast estates rewarding family to this day. Many of which owe their very existence to the proceeds of slave trading, none more so than the Royals.
Same in the US. Only recently has the political will caused Robert E. Lee statues to be taken down. And even there, there is great resistance from the right who celebrate the treasonous sedition these traitors represented with their Confederate war for racist rights. Free labor is great for becoming rich. Worth killing hundreds of thousands of people for. And then facing no accountability?
Having statues built in their honor. And having people so groomed in the racist religious right traditions of conservatism they celebrate their criminal hate as something to be proud of?
Our living criminal abusers of democracy in the name of greed to benefit the rich by stealing the lives of the poor like Donald J, the grifter son of a KKK thief were elected because of their transparent racist criminality. Not in spite of it.
Unless we evolve an effective rule of law by lawmakers able to prosecute actual meaningful crimes effectively we will continue our death spiral to a burned out planet. With puppet lawmakers put in place to ensure the law never holds the miscreants to account. “Laws made for and by the rich” wrote Paul, my one time socially alert mate in Ripley when I had a studio there.
I hope I live long enough to see the dawning of this new age where the miscreant idiots elected as lawmakers are separated from the means to protect the villains of history from full and complete accountability.
The failure to start prosecuting these types of class crimes will smooth the path for the next generation, the Boeberts and the Trailer Greene’s, to continue glorifying idiocy in the name of more-for-the-racist-rich and less for the disenfranchised poor until the tipping point presents a country whose majority live below the bread line. Happy to reap their rewards for meek submission in poverty in the rich afterlife they believe is real.
The fact Trump is not in jail since January the 7th, 2020 serving multiple life terms is hard evidence that we have no effective rule of law.
Instead we need a Jan 6 committee to spend countless hours explaining what we saw live on TV? The President sending his stormtroopers to kill Policemen live on TV and then head home after his good days work without a single arresting officer in sight?
We are that dumb-all-over. Just as Frank said so many times in his short brilliant life of prophecy for America.
In the meanwhile we see nasty cruel greedmongers continue winning seats as lawmakers in the USA. Ensuring their brand of hateful greed-racism continues benefiting rich white men past the blip of Obama.

Having left South Africa two days ago for what is likely to be last time following the death of my mother at 87, on the plane I reflected on the end of an era in my life.
Fatherless at age ten. Fully orphaned at 62. And my first thought on the plane back to my home in CA was how much I regret missing my opportunity to interact appropriately with Thatcher with my one word speech in 2004. I am consoled by knowing I made the most of my opportunity to address P.W Botha as I did in 1980.
Mostly, seeing South Africa in 2023, almost 40 years after I left, I am sad Mandela’s legacy did not pan out better for South Africa. But take away this lesson from my life in the four legal systems where I have lived though four nationalities.
If you do not hold criminals accountable, more criminals will appear to do far worse.
The law must be fair and equal. And apply fairly and equally to everyone.
It’s time we end qualified immunity for establishment figures. Like corrupt judges who commit larceny and perjury in Britain’s courts knowing they enjoy qualified immunity. (For reference google witness-tampering family Court judge Michele O’Leary in the 2015 judgement of Adler vs Broulidakis. I will put the link to the book about that in the comments below.)
In conclusion.
Amendments to the laws of every land aspiring to democratic principles must be introduced without delay – with miscreants past and present tried without delay.
Laws matter only if Justice matters.
To end with a quote from a Conservative British PM, John Major.
“There can be no harmony in a lawless society.”
That starts with effective laws that represent every citizen equally.

It’s good to be back in the US of A today after two trying weeks in SA burying my mother in a big Greek Orthodox funeral filled with tears. Revisiting many landmarks of my early youth.
I treasure this great part of being American. I have this freedom to entertain you with words of my choosing. Free of censure. It’s not a freedom I had living in South Africa.
I know for many, especially those in Russia, this type of writing is not possible. I think I do it for them. Be the change. Take down those rotten criminal grifter leaders. Freedom of speech is much better than Putin’s tyranny.
#powertothepeople

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