David Beresford
Another Country
The passions stirred by a letter last week with regard to Another Country could not be accommodated in the usual place this week and are published below instead.
Readers pay the price
Dear Sir,
I quite agree with the comments made last week by Mr B Potgieter. I, too, have been reading with increasing irritation the weekly output of David Beresford in the column Another Country.
Running his column seems to me to be a form of affirmative action for medically challenged journalists, for which your readers pay a high price.
Much as I sympathise with his plight, his constant references to it have become an indulgence on his part.
Giving him the space to indulge in this way is an editorial misjudgement, albeit with the best of intentions. Kenneth Gillespie, Happy Valley, Plettenberg Bay
Bogus objectivity
Dear Sir
On what grounds does your columnist, Mr Beresford, arrogate to himself the right to pronounce a nation ”brain dead” (”Is SA brain dead?”, March 23 to 29)?
By what right does his illness of the brain justify his interminable attacks on our president, Thabo Mbeki, who has, after all, been given a clean bill of health by the people in their millions? The title attached to his column, Another Country, is clearly an attempt to create a bogus impression of objectivity. So far as I am concerned the sooner he decamps to another country the better. Mrs M Sithole-Nedwill, St Lucia
Soldier on, Mr Beresford
Dear Sir
That is the most outrageous letter I’ve ever read, that one last week about David Beresford. I pray for him every week when I’ve read his column. The thought of the hardship he has to go through; the shaking and getting stuck in doorways. Another Country is a nice, self-effacing way for him to describe his predicament and I think it would be horrible to change its name, as Mr B Potgieter suggests, to ”Cripps Corner”.
Mr Beresford is a young man with a brave heart. You can see that from his photograph. (I do wish he would tell us the rest of the story about what he found when he shaved his beard off! Life is, after all, meant to be fun).
Tell him to soldier on. He gives courage to us all and that’s from someone who has suffered nothing more than a chronic case of tennis-elbow in a long life (73 years). Best wishes. Edwina Wighte, Zululand
Impact at the rockface
Dear Sir
In reply to Potgieter B, may I say I do agree with his sentiments, but must draw your attention to the impact the column in question has ”at the rockface”, so to say. Last week I had occasion to sentence a man to a long term of imprisonment for reasons I will not go into here. As they led him away he grimaced at me, waving a piece of paper. I had the paper seized and discovered it was an article headed Another Country by Beresford D, as to the dangers of constipation. Of course there is no way of knowing whether the prisoner had another purpose in mind. As Cicero had it: ”Lex civius romanus putem est.” Purcher CJ, Supreme Court, Botswana
Seeing is believing
Dear Sir
I have seen David Beresford and I can tell you the photograph does not look anything like him. Lizzy Yates, Pringle Bay
Make allowances for him
Dear Sir
As a member of the historically disabled community may I come to the aid of Mr Beresford. I, too, cannot stand reading his column, which never seems to have any meaning when one gets to the end. But I think that in the new South Africa we should make room for people like that, otherwise we will never learn to live together properly. Yours. Anthony McGill, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales
Where’s this country?
Dear Sir
I would like to know what country it is, this Another Country this gentleman, Mr Beresford writes from. It is not enough just to know it is ”another” country, we have the right as paying readers to ask which country it is so that we can look up who is its head of state and listen to its national anthem on the Internet.
There are all sorts of things one can do once a country is named, like looking at its stamps and perhaps going on from there. Do you know a ”penny black” is one of the most valuable stamps in the world. It just goes to show the stamp people are not racists. So you see, you can know all sorts of things once you know the name of the country. C Stafford, Welkom
A man must eat
Dear Sir
Everyone is entitled to earn a living, including Bulgarian car mechanics. I’ve sent this reverse charge. If you have any trouble with that complain to the AA. Yours truly. S Venster, chair, South African Garage Owners’ Association, Estapona