Silence is consent
The Zimbabwe government has embarked on an operation that it says is aimed at cleaning up the cities. It is estimated that half a million people are now homeless as a result of this campaign.
On Sunday the United Nations envoy arrived in Zimbabwe to assess the situation. In response to this, it is believed the government has let the army take over the operation.
With help from thousands of Zanu-PF loyalists under the guise of the National Youth Service, the military is said to be building fenced camps where the homeless are being kept. The army monitors the camps and access is restricted.
My fear is that Zimbabwe will become a military state. One knows the fears of living in camps with the army. Apart from starvation, people will have no freedoms or human rights. No political activities will be allowed in these camps. This will eventually lead to civil strife and loss of life.
No doubt, such an environment is dangerous and could create another Rwanda. It is time for the African Union to advise its fellow comrade, before it is too late. — Simon Khulekani Moyo, Rosebank
President Robert Mugabe is not a madman. He is a calculating dictator who keeps fooling the world, especially his brothers in the AU.
His urban clean-up operation has nothing to do with city upgrades. It is a bloody, political game. The cities are opposition strongholds — politically and intellectually. So he has decided to ruralise Zimbabwe.
All this is brutal, inhuman, disgusting and murderous. The reaction from the AU and its members is even more disgusting.
Hiding behind the hypocritical wall of an ”internal matter”, President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders are silent on the senseless government actions in Zimbabwe. But they are quick to speak out against the United States invasion of Iraq, the Israeli onslaught of Palestinian territory, Darfur, Burma and so on.
Speaking out would be a huge step forward and would totally subscribe to all the principles the AU, the African National Congress and so many other organisations stand for. Silence is nothing less than consent. — Concerned and disgusted African, Johannesburg
The writing-off of the debts of numerous African countries would have been the perfect collateral to use to persuade the AU and individual African governments to act on the Zimbabwe issue. As soon as African states feel in their pockets the rabid actions of the Zimbabwean government, they would quickly start re-evaluating these types of infuriating statements, such as those made recently by AU spokesperson Desmond Orjiako, and act to bring about change in Zimbabwe. — ZG le Grange-Petersen
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Presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo may be ”irritated” by the British government pointing out the lack of an African response to events in Zimbabwe, but I am more than ”irritated” by the South African government’s ineffectualness.
When we had Sophiatown and District Six, was there no African response? When Crossroads was demolished, was the leadership of the ANC ”annoyed” about foreign responses?
It is time we faced up to the truth. A crime against humanity is a crime against humanity even if it’s not linked to racism. The inaction of the South African government is now becoming a crime in itself. It does not take a Jack Straw or a John Howard to realise that. Any victim of District Six, Crossroads or Sophiatown knows. — Philip Machanick, Australia
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Leave Mlambo-Ngcuka alone
The media have wasted no time in undermining new Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s credibility around the so-called ”Oilgate” scandal.
The question is whether we are to see another five-year case drag out, this time against Mlambo-Ngcuka.
It is evident that there are people who uphold certain purified theories about reality, who only hope angels will govern our country.
We live in a capitalist environment, which itself is inherently ”morally corrupt” if considered against these extreme ideals of equality and justice, as capitalism itself is premised on class stratification.
People must leave Mlambo-Ngcuka alone and focus on the real challenges of transformation. They must stop making a mockery of our democracy with their extremist theoretical abstractions, as this agenda may, in contrast to their esteemed ideals, lead to chaos and anarchy.
The agenda is clear: nail our leaders so as to defend the status quo of racial inequality, irrespective of whether or not there is a ”winnable” case. — Phillip Musekwa, Germiston
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The truth lies in the grey area
Thanks for an introduction to grey and its matters (Artwit, June 24). For South Africans, grey is the antithesis of our programming, and yet, the logical destination. So, 10 years on we are still dipping our toes into new waters.
Duality has always been an easy tool — but not to find the middle ground — rather to stretch the signal between the poles … the blackest black, the whitest white, either anti-retrovirals or African potato, and nothing in between.
And now there’s Mercedes Sayagues’s comment on U-Carmen eKhayelitsha being a sign of our newest epidemic, obesity (”Carmen, koeksisters and the president”, June 24).
How wonderful to be in a film space called home, with bodies like those who pass me by in the streets every day. These women are elegant and graceful. They move through the mud and dust with power and beauty.
The polarity Sayagues implies is that of groot-gat-godin-obesity-health issue versus skinny-fat-free-looks-good-in-the-West. She misses the point, trying to be too clever.
In the grey area then, we have to ask, is obesity a bigger killer than stress? Are anti-retrovirals the only medicine? Do fat-free stars only qualify for celluloid?
Perhaps the answers lie in the grey area, our common ground, with fatties and thinnies; the Treatment Action Campaign and Matthias Rath finding common ground solutions, not wasting money fighting in court; and not dismissing a creative accomplishment, like U-Carmen, with judgemental body-issue speak. — Natasha, Cape Town
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Blurring the boundaries
I don’t recall accusing the African National Congress of using the Freedom Charter to revive ”struggle mythology”, as Camaren Peter claims (Letters, June 24). My words were: ”The ANC is … resuscitat[ing] the symbolism of the struggle for its own political purposes.”
I am aware the charter is historically significant, that it served as a powerful documentary indictment of the apartheid state, and that the Congress of the People, where it was adopted, was an important gathering.
But the fact is the government is spending state resources on promoting the charter for the ruling party’s own political purposes. The ANC’s January 8 statement makes it clear the party plans to fight the local government elections on the basis of the charter. This blurs the boundaries between party and state.
It is inappropriate that the ruling party should spend in excess of R5-million on a ”People’s Assembly” in Kliptown to commemorate the Freedom Charter at a time when demonstrators around the country are protesting against its poor record of service delivery and its failure to honour the very promises of the charter itself. — Helen Zille, MP, Democratic -Alliance national spokesperson
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What about the white youth?
It is now an expectation for whites to be excluded from many key aspects of ”the new” South African life. In an advert in last week’s Mail & Guardian, the (racist) Stellenbosch University re-affirmed this trend by inviting applications for master’s and doctoral scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships for 2006 under the Andrew W Mellon Foundation postgraduate programme ”for black students”.
When you read the fine print, it is confirmed that only ”Asian, black African and coloured” students are invited. No matter what academic background whites may have, they are excluded. Note the deliberate usage of the term ”black African” to exclude white Africans in no uncertain terms.
As far as I am aware, non-whites receive disproportionate and preferential monetary assistance, are admitted to tertiary institutions with lower academic merit than whites and are not discriminated against in any manner. This has been the official case for the past 10 years already.
We have all noticed the shocking lowering of academic standards at South African universities, to comply with racial government quotas, policies and to ”level the playing fields” (or if you look at it objectively, revenge apartheid). Mr Rector, I dare you to an open debate on that.
The white minority will have to protect itself — at least by exposing these blatant racist outrages as widely as possible, especially internationally. Otherwise, the African National Congress regime will continue with its indefensible racist (it has nothing to do with academic merit in this case) policies.
I am sure whites expect no special treatment or favours, but they should demand the equality purportedly guaranteed by the Constitution.
Well, Mr (racist) Rector, as we do not expect your establishment or our government to cease its racist discrimination against whites soon, will you at least allow us to exclude other races from programmes we now will have to implement to protect and give the white youth in South Africa a fair chance in life?
Publish your policy concerning this matter openly, if — and I fear that you may not — you have the courage of your convictions. Your expected silence will be accepted as an answer. — Willem van den Berg, Pretoria
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Overpopulation is the threat
Population is not mentioned in ”March to save the planet”, (June 17). It is true that irrespective of how many billions of people there are on Earth, if they miraculously contrived that no more greenhouse gasses were to enlarge the hole in the ozone layer, it is perhaps possible that global warming with excessive weather change might be avoided.
However, global warming is not our only major threat. What is certainly a threat is overpopulation, which is expected to increase by a third in about 50 years.
Our numbers are already excessive — about two billion of our six billion people lead miserable lives owing to joblessness, homelessness, lacking benefits of health care and education. Many are forced out of desperation into prostitution and crime. Even rich countries have street children and millions -unemployed.
Rivers, seas and vast tracts of land are polluted, and forests disappear for housing and farms. As the decades roll on, nations will become more daring in the fight for diminishing natural resources.
Without our modern defence mechanisms — contraception and abortion — we would already be fighting over crumbs or violently reduced in numbers by plagues or more wars.
Because religions make us look to an afterlife rather than the cold facts of evolution, we delay in teaching couples to have no more than two children — or risk their fellows’ displeasure. — Dolly Maister, Woodstock
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Striking out
If the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) wants the government to take it seriously it will have to stop striking and start thinking (”Market braced for mass protest”, June 24).
Striking reduces productivity and investor confidence. It may even result in more job losses, the very thing the union is protesting against.
It is sad that after more than a decade of democracy unemployment has almost doubled from 2,4-million in 1994/95 to -4,4-million this year.
If Cosatu is serious about getting the government’s attention, it should call on its members to abandon strike action and vote against the African National Congress in the upcoming local government elections. — Lance Coetzee, councillor, Tshwane Metro
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