/ 16 January 2014

Letters to the editor: January 17 to 23 2014

Letters To The Editor: January 17 To 23 2014

Rhodes legacy ignores atrocity

It would appear that the worship of Nelson Mandela has reached such great heights that anything that he could say or do had to be revered and yet he himself said that he was a mere mortal and was no saint. Indeed.

I am concerned with the manner his name has given legitimacy to Cecil John Rhodes, who was the arch British imperialist with Lord Milner and Lord Curzon of the round-table notoriety. Rhodes even had a whole country named after him – Rhodesia – now changed to Zimbabwe in remembrance of the Great Zimbabwe Ruins that Smuts denied was the work of Africans, such was the denigration of African culture during the heyday of the Empire and white supremacy.

There is a Rhodes-Mandela Building in Cape Town and I learn that a Rhodes-Mandela scholarship has been set up in Oxford and a Rhodes-Mandela house.

The Rhodes scholarship was set up to tutor successors for the maintenance of the British Empire.

Did Mandela himself sanction this and how did it come about? Or was this done behind Mandela's back and knowledge? It raises question also of the proprietorship of his name in this manner that is objectionable to many. If Mandela did sanction it, what gave him the right to do so?

I doubt very much that any Israeli leader would allow their name to be used with that of Adolf Hitler in this manner.

Of course we also know the matter of reparations from the colonial West, which is still an ongoing issue with their previous colonies, that is, as in the case of Namibia, Germany is refusing reparations for the holocaust of the native population there.

Must we now, in emulation of the Rhodes-Mandela examples, have a Sam Nujoma–Hitler memorial to forget the past annihilation of the native population in Namibia?

South African history is a history of colonial atrocities. Neither Mandela nor any other leader should wipe out that memory. – Yasien Mohamed, Cape Town


Elders must speak out against anti-gay laws

An open letter to the Council of Elders [the humanitarian group made up of leading figures such as Graça Machel, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan]:

This week Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed legislation that will subject the LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex] community of Nigeria to emotional and physical torture. This follows similar legislation waiting to be signed in Uganda.

The effect will be detrimental for human rights as a whole for Africa, with Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi showing a similar leaning of political opinion.

Nigeria's laws will destroy the lives, freedom, dignity, job prospects and freedom of its LGBTI citizens, who will face 10 to 15 years of imprisonment for merely being who they are, or wanting to love someone.

These laws will also tear families and communities apart as this legislation places pressure on parents, brothers, sisters, uncles and friends to turn in people they care for as they themselves could be jailed for five years for failing to report an LGBTI individual.

With clashes flaring up between Islamic and Christian communities in Nigeria, the spill-on effect of vigilantism could also see mob "justice" being focused on LGBTI individuals.

The hardline approach of the Nigerian and Ugandan governments will see the paternalistic tradition trump human rights and equality.

We, as the directors of the Gay Flag of South Africa not-for-profit organisation, and other Africans implore the elders to condemn this gross injustice publicly and remind African leaders of Nelson Mandela's example. – Eugene Brockman


ANC rewrites history to shape future

In "ANC suppresses real history to boost its claim to legitimacy" (January 3), Steven Ellis comments thoughtfully on the subject of history and its influence on the future.

There is no doubt now that the ANC government is manipulating the history of the struggle to overthrow apartheid. It has built up the contributions of its leaders and has tried very hard to exclude any role that others have played.

The day before the arrest of Madiba at Howick Falls in 1962, he addressed a group of us in Durban about his tour of African states. (I was invited to that secret meeting as a member of the Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the ANC at the time). He had explained to the African leaders why the ANC was going to take up armed struggle.

I was also a member of the illegal Communist Party of South Africa. I later found out that it was the Communist Party that had led the charge to embrace armed struggle and had in fact designed the Freedom Charter.

Many years later when I returned from exile in 1992, I went to the archives in Pretoria to try to find out why the Special Branch had persecuted me. I was told that there were no files available because two truckloads of documents had been removed, including most of the SB files. Even the minister of intelligence at the time had no idea where those files were. I found that to be very suspicious and surmised that it was part of a cover-up to present an audited version of the past.

In 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress organised the anti-pass demonstrations. Robert Sobukwe was the leader of the PAC and had assured the minister of police that this was a peaceful demonstration of people coming to police stations to be arrested because they had left their passbooks at home.

The massacre at Sharpeville led the PAC to form Poqo and later the Azanian People's Liberation Army. Sobukwe was arrested and kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island for many years, being regarded as too dangerous to be released.

Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, was also a victim of the racist regime but was not supported by the ANC at the time. In fact, the ANC was very critical of Biko, who was regarded as a United States agent, and members of the ANC were told to avoid him.

Today we are spun a very different yarn. The 1976 student uprising is painted as a product of the ANC alliance and the truth is conveniently buried.

And we are never reminded that Biko was an admirer of Sobukwe and visited him in Kimberley. – Costa Gazi, Cape Town