South Africa has the world’s highest concentration of Zombies. These are not illegible, flesh-eating Zombies, they’re far worse. They look like you, sound like you, and can at face value act like you. But there’s one major difference between you and them; you have a fully formed brain, they do not. You might be thinking what do these Zombies look like and where can you find them? The quickest way to find this unique group of ghouls is by simply gaining the client list of Mabuza attorneys. This list will show you some of South Africa’s most well-known Zombies who have for years been called corrupt and selfish and all kinds of names. Whereas I like to believe that these people are in no way any of these things. They’re zombies, they can’t be corrupt because they can barely comprehend basic law, let alone manipulate it.
So, strap in for the Zombie safari as I take you on a trip down Zombie lane and try explain how all of South Africa’s major social ills are a consequence of diet above all else.
South Africa’s prolific crime statistics can only lead one to believe that South African’s are a unique breed of humanity, violent, sticky-fingered, and short-sighted. A combination that is not unique to South Africa but is wildly prolific in states like ours that also happen to have freakishly high Gini coefficients.
So what does a Gini coefficient have to do with crime and diet?
So massive disclaimer, I’m going to swing wild and wide on this one, some ideas here may be genuinely insane and others so controversial they must be true.
Super genius and Professor of Artificial Intelligence Nick Bostrom in his book, “Super Intelligence” cites Iodine as a potential route to Super Intelligence. I’m not going to go into detail about this now.
This is both startling and suspiciously intuitive. There’s that famous American saying “Corn-fed” in description of a curvaceous or voluptuous man or woman. The saying essentially suggests that one’s physical appearance is a consequence of diet above all else. Of course, this is not a scientific fact, and an analogous form of reasoning. However, one should never discount the value of old wives tales and analogies, ask my dog Edward Jewnner, he literally invented the vaccine by listening to boAuntie.
Let’s for a minute assume that diet in the first 1000 days of a child’s life can affect outcomes around IQ as much as genetics. Children who are born with a specific strong set of genes for a specific condition let’s say, speed will live up to their genetic potential with a good diet and exposure. But a poor diet will not make them painfully slow but will mean that there Olympic like speeds that their genetics contain will not be manifest. This is logical, your abilities do not come prepackaged from birth. Exposure, diet and habit help shape, form and build the body you carry around on this Earth.
Now the body is a wildly complex feat of engineering that we have an evolving understanding of. The mind, the brain and consciousness are fields where we have a severely limited understanding.
We know all three exist, but the nascent field of brain to machine interfaces has shown us that our understanding is still in its infancy. We have a very limited understanding of how to improve the brain, but we have a very good grasp of how to damage the brain. Hitting it, exposing it to harmful chemicals, excessive alcohol consumption etc. These events for brain destruction or damage are at a later stage. These are issues one needs to concern themselves with at the latter stage of one’s life. But what about the first few years. What if the difference between a Lawyer and a Foreman was not genetic but dietary?
What if the difference between understanding cogent foreign policy and thinking all Africans are Nigerians was a consequence of vegetables instead of prejudice?
How would we view the less intellectually aware through this lens?
What if people of color are not genetically inferior in intellectual pursuits because of genetics but rather because of diet?
Could such a framework help us alleviate and more efficiently diagnose the massive dearth of unmotivated unemployed talent in this country?
Preparing to be cancelled
Such a framework by its definition is inherently incendiary and lends itself to the promise of racialization of intelligence. A subject that has repeatedly handicapped people of color and justified some of the most awful injustices in human history. However, like any disease or condition solving it requires accurate diagnosis.
The story of Mabuza Attorneys
My curiosity around this stems from an off-chance engagement I had with an employee of Mabuza Attorneys – they have represented Arthur Fraser, Tom Moyane, Ace Magashule and Jacob Zuma.
For those who aren’t aware, Mabuza Attorneys are some of the greatest legal losers in human history. These cats have taken losing to a new level and do it with such consistency and efficiency that one believes that they should win some award of some kind.
Sitting with this employee I posed the question as to why so many prominent former state officials employ them as their attorneys with their atrocious record? It made no sense, why would anyone consistently back a Losing horse? But then I thought about the night before this meeting, I was in a packed Soccer City watching Bafana Bafana make thousands of bookies ultra-rich by putting on a football reinterpretation of the Sharpeville massacre against Brazil.
The gentleman in question suggested it had to do with brand loyalty. This makes sense when one has a history of success, you can see this manifest in Manchester United supporters in the post-Ferguson era. They believe the ship will right itself eventually based on their historical performances. This makes a bit of sense. But Mabuza et al had no such record and even worse these people didn’t have any kind of actual relationship with the firm or its namesake. I pressed the young employee until he admitted he couldn’t fully understand why they kept coming back to Mabuza with suicidal legal suits and continuously kept losing. And continuously kept thinking the same input would result in a different outcome. After a few BBBEE flavored whiskeys the truth finally came out.
“They’re not that smart”.
We both knew this was the case, but I wanted it to come out of his mouth.
Now don’t get me wrong not all of these sophisticated chimps are dumb, and some are really good at one thing – Magashule at not brushing his teeth. But the one thing that they all share is that they’re all very poor at connecting the dots and seeing the bigger picture. What was even more disturbing was that I knew several of their children - via my toxic private school trash connections - and they were rational, somewhat intelligent young men and women. Whereas their parents were unable to make basic logical connections.
A meeting with Jacob Zuma.
I have a rare privilege. Well, a few. However, in this instance I am one of few South African citizens who has met and engaged with all 5 democratically elected South African Presidents. I remember meeting President Mandela, the man was a charismatic sexy giant who could melt the Arctic circle with a smile. Thabo Mbeki was the biggest narc I’d ever come across, but he was very bright and a super prefect at scale. Kgalema Motlanthe was a technocrat, bright, not very charismatic, but you know, fine. I’ve met President Ramaphosa on a few occasions. He’s very bright, very camp, and has intense big brother energy. He’s guarded and standoffish, which reminds me a lot of me when I was stuck in the closet.
Then there was Jacob Zuma. I was told by many people that he was incredibly charismatic like a young Jeffery Epstein. I was told he had incredible interpersonal intelligence. There were so many things I was told and almost none were true. If I’m frank, he sounded and behaved exactly like my super-racist, ignorant, xenophobic grandmother. He was incoherent, couldn’t engage in complex ideas, had no ideological stance, and essentially looked like a 49-year-old overweight father in the Finals of the 100m Sprint at the Olympics. Completely out of place.
What was extra suspicious and curious about Mr. Zuma were his children, I’d engaged with at least 121 of them – they’re about 5000 - and they weren’t highly intelligent. But they were light years ahead of their father in terms of intelligence.
Which made me wonder and ponder how and why this was?
Did Mr. Zuma only fornicate with extremely highly intelligent woman and his potato genes were offset by their intelligent ones? Or maybe Mr. Zuma wasn’t an imbecile because of his genes but because of his diet in his early childhood?
The plot like Mr Zuma’s intelligence, thickens.
Do you know what Food Apartheid is?
I know what you’re thinking, “another social ill conveniently packaged as some kind of derivative of Apartheid?”. Well yes and no. Remember the term “Apartheid” went on a global world tour from the 70’s to the early 90’s. So it’s popularity as a term to describe some kind of systemic injustice is a consequence of its ferocious popularity as a punching bag during this period. Secondly Food Apartheid is not a de facto racialized idea, the concept can affect almost anyone, all you need is a few conditions to manifest it.
Firstly let’s define Food Apartheid/Food Deserts.
According to the Annie E Casey Foundation, “Food deserts are geographic areas where residents have few to no convenient options for securing affordable and healthy foods — especially fresh fruits and vegetables.”
Quite simply put areas and communities without access to key dietary ingredients, meats, fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. I’m going to be focusing on the last of the big five culprits of FA – Food Apartheid for us cool kids.
As you close your eyes you can see these areas in your mind, there’s tons in RSA and if you cast your memory and gaze even further they’re even more prevalent in Brazil, Mexico and the USA. Our three closest neighbours in the Gini Index and G20. Food Deserts in high income earning countries are seen as more sinister than in low income earning countries. A poor kid in rural Zambia has no functional national supply chain to worry about for his daily enrichment. His food is from subsistence farming. A poor kid in Rural Brasil relies on Extra or some other retailer for their daily sustenance. This backed up by their social welfare program Bolsa De Familia. Meaning that this child never has to concern himself with starvation unlike his Zambian counterpart. However being full without the right ingredients in your diet can lead to some unpleasant outcomes.
Let’s Talk Salt or rather should I say Iodine.
Forget Omega Fish Oil and Ritalin and any other hog wash around brain improvement, it turns out one of the most powerful factors in Brain Development is iodine. You know the stuff in your salt.
SALT!?
Damn Skippy bitch!
Here’s something wild to think about, over 2 Billion people globally suffer from some form of Iodine deficiency. And the areas worst affected by this also happen to be some of the poorest in the world, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Coincidence? I think not!
Now here’s where the bass really kicks in “iodine deficient populations average between 12.5 and 13.5 IQ points less than normal populations”. Think about that for a second. The poorest parts of the world generally have the lowest IQ’s per capita. And the countries with the highest all seem to have 1 thing in common, they tend to have iodine and fish rich diets. Except Belarus and Lichtenstein, I have no clue what they eat.
Now it must be stated here that I am making no consideration whatsoever to genetic profiles, people in these countries could also be blessed with genes that help them have higher IQ’s. My focus is on looking for the correlation or maybe even causation between IQ and Diet.
Iodine. It seems almost laughable doesn’t it. Something so simple having such a largely disproportionate effect on IQ.
The thing I drown my popcorn in is the primary cause of my country’s economic collapse!? Let’s unpack this again, Mr Potato Head President was unable to understand how he was annihilating our economy because he was not fed enough salt as a child? I know it sounds crazy, but let’s dig a bit deeper and further into the role that early childhood nutrition plays in brain development.
How to make babies and the future generation’s smarter
Now I’m about to throw a whole cacophony of terms at you that I barely grasp, but have been shown to scientifically improve cognition in children.
Next to improving Iodine intake the next best solution to improving cognition in a child is docosahexaenoic acid aka omega-3 fatty acid. Improving maternal intake of this precious, yet readily available supplement can help considerably with IQ improvement. Especially when the supplement is fed to the mother pre-birth and then when the child is breast fed and then their diet is supplemented with this. When done correctly you can increase a child’s IQ by up to 5.2 points!
5.2 Points on Zuma would at least give him the ability to pass Matric, not the Rhodes Scholar we needed but a much better navigator than the Moronic Tonic who struggled to read out numbers aloud.
Now I know your first instinct is to say that it’s more complicated than that. And I agree it is. However my concern Is his intelligence. Whether or not Mr Zuma was malicious is irrelevant, what concerns me is how he could be so dumb and how he struggled to grasp such simple topics whereas his children seem only mildly dumb. The only logical outcome I can come to is that A) his wives/partners had super high IQ’s – I severely doubt this – or that some other condition affected him to cause his brain to stop working. Or rather to not form correctly.
How the Moronic Tonic came into power is not my concern, but how he could be so bad at everything does.
Even the corruption was Grade 5?
So where are we?
Jacob Zuma is a callous imbecile as a consequence of poor nutrition in the first 1000 days of his life. The biggest deficiency’s he had were around Iodine and Omega 3 fatty acids. This caused his brain to not fully form. Once he came into power he was simply unable to make prudent decisions as a consequence of not having a fully formed brain. Therefore he did what any other intelligently deficient person would do and made short-sighted decisions that enriched him in broad daylight and then was bemused as to how people knew and why they were upset. It’s kind of like playing hide and seek with a 4 year-old and they hide behind a curtain and you can see his whole silhouette and his feet and he’s still perturbed how you found him. Now imagine that as your president!?
As much fun as it is to make fun of the Cockamamy Granny it raises a more terrifying question, how many other children in this country have suffered this same fate? How many of them currently rule over us – here’s looking at you Nathi Mthethwa! How many are relegated to the role of degenerate, lazy or incompetent when in actuality like Jake the Rake they were just not fed a sufficient amount of calories containing Iodine and omega 3 fatty acids at birth and during pregnancy?
Could we solve our current major issues around youth unemployment and paltry matric pass rates by stopping the problem at the source?
Instead of simply providing social welfare cheques for at risk mother’s maybe we should provide them with mandatory dietary considerations? I know this may not sound constitutional, but let’s be realistic, it’s a nice document and that’s it. What the great nations of Azania need are results and improving our general IQ quotient by a simple 3 points could have gargantuan consequences for an economy and country devoid of options, hope or ideas.
I understand that improving South Africa’s IQ Quotient won’t solve all the problems we have, but it would make life a lot easier if our top officials had some basis of intelligence and we weren’t constantly being led by the dumb, lazy and indifferent. It’s kind of like being able to do a sub 11 100m as a Football player, it won’t guarantee you a place in the Premier League, but it will make your chances of getting there much higher.
So now what should we do?
First and foremost don’t listen to idiots like me. As much as I deride the Champion of die Domkops the underlying issue and it’s cause are very real and very serious. As a citizenship we can help the problem by doing basic things, donating omega-3 fatty acid rich foods to charities like Ladles of Love promote the consumption of Iodine by pregnant woman with financial incentives – get your diet right till you give birth and we’ll give you R2000!
That might sound a bit radical, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the converse – the current situation where Grade 11 kids cant read.
We need to urgently increase all funding around optimal nutrition for pregnant woman in this country and share findings with our neighbours. We need to dramatically attack the problem of iodine deficiency across the world and lastly and importantly we need to stop calling people stupid.
It’s fun to think of Jacob Zuma as a potato with eyes, it’s cheeky and mild retribution to the myriad of problems he created for you and I. But it’s more important for us to not simply write people off as stupid when innumerable factors could have contributed to their cognitive deficiency’s. We shouldn’t limit these people, but like someone with a BEE or Pollen allergy we should identify that such a problem exists and understand that there may be some limitations to their abilities. I will be the first person to raise my hand to say I don’t have the natural cognitive abilities to be a rocket scientist. So if one day you found me to be the head of Rocketry in the Departments of Rockets, you should immediately question why I’m there when I obviously don’t have the cognitive skills or background to fulfil the role. My race shouldn’t be used as the justification of this outrage but rather the fact that I know sweet fuck all about Rockets. And yes I’m also aware of how easily we can racialize this as an excuse to deny brown people certain rights and services. I get it. But some brown people just shouldn’t be in those positions – here’s looking at you again Nathi Mthethwa! And their inability is not based on their genetics but from the fact that their brains, they’re just not fully formed.
In summation I ask that we look forwards and stop calling people stupid when they’re actually handicapped. Can you imagine what life would feel like if everywhere you went you were surrounded by Space X senior Rocket Scientists and you had no idea what Rocket Science even was? That was Jacob Zuma’s life everyday as president, the poor bastard could barely understand his job let alone perform it. We need to practice more grace with people like him and remember they’re not invalids, but simply not fit for certain roles. I’m sure he would have made a wonderful gardener or colouring in specialist, but not the president of the biggest economy in Africa. Lastly let’s not racialize this, I know far more white morons than black – here’s looking at you Carl Niehaus! The goal for our country should be to get the right people in the right roles and those people should have an IQ to match.
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