95 800 cheated voters
We all remember the long queues during our first democratic elections in 1994. Queues in the rural areas wrapping themselves along winding footpaths, queues in cities snaking along sidewalks. People of all races, all ages, rich and poor mingled together; their voices about to be heard, a truly democratic country for the first time.
It’s 2005, floor-crossing time again. Imagine the queues — each consisting of 39 032 people casting their votes, 25 such queues. This time, however, these people have queued for nothing, their votes have meant nothing.
During this past floor-crossing period, every politician who obtained a seat in Parliament (remember each seat represents 39 032 voters) and who crossed the floor has, in effect, nullified the wishes of that number of voters. Twenty-five politicians who have sommer changed their minds!
We gave the political parties our support, but we wasted our time. Our votes are tossed aside. Our votes are that cheap. Government for the politicians, by the politicians, appears to be the order of the day.
Politicians, ignore the wishes of the electorate at your peril. People never forget when they have been betrayed. — Marilyn Lilley, Bergfliet
I find it interesting that the only interest the Mail & Guardian shows in the Democratic Alliance’s black public representatives is when they defect to another party (”DA: Five blacks out, four whites in”, September 23). I do not recall ever reading an article about the valuable contribution the likes of Richard Ntuli or Dan Maluleke, not to mention Craig Morkel, were making to the DA.
And the implication in your headline — which suggests the DA aims to deliberately replace those ”black” defectors with ”white” public representatives is disingenuous.
First, the reason the majority of those five MPs who defected were elected to Parliament is because they were promoted up their respective lists in an attempt to diversify the DA’s caucus. If anyone has done damage to the composition of the DA’s caucus, it is the five who defected. Second, their replacements are simply the next people on the list.
As for Dr Enyinna Nkem-Abonta, in announcing his defection to the African National Congress he stated: ”I could never, in good conscience, look my children in the eye and say I was against transformation.” This from the man who has described the ANC as ”a tiny, but politically well-connected, rapacious black elite” that ”engages in legal plunder, carting away millions by the day, while millions of hapless black people, still unemployed and destitute, watch bemused”.
Even Marthinus van Schalkwyk would be hard-pressed to come up with a more comprehensive flip-flop! — Motlatjo Thetjeng MP, deputy national spokesperson, DA
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Biblical history records that the Israelites, after years of slavery in Egypt, were freed by a divine act of God. Apparently they crossed the Red Sea, which miraculously parted, and so they went to the Promised Land. This is the miracle the DA five hope the courts will perform when their disputed defection goes to court.
If the court adopts a literal and narrow approach, the DA argument may see the light of the day. In that case the five MPs may have to return to ”Egypt” and resume slave conditions.
But if the court finds in their favour they may have crossed to the Promised Land for good, leaving the Pharaoh fuming. — Adv Mighty Madasa, MP ANC (in his personal capacity)
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Darwin vs Adam and Eve
Modern medical technologies such as ultra-sound, scans and so on, bring to light the transmission of human life from conception on. They reveal two separate entities: the mother and the newly conceived, each with their own DNA, their genetic code, which contains the blueprint of their hereditary characteristics as individuals.
The two are united by the umbilical cord. At birth, the living proof of our ancestral lineage can be found in our bodies through the umbilical cord. Cut at birth it leaves an indelible imprint, called the navel or belly button.
The umbilical chord unites us in an unbroken link from mother to child, child to grandchild, grandchild to great-grandchild, and so on into the future in ever-increasing numbers. In reverse, it proves ancestry from one generation to another, over time, centuries and millennia, to eventually our ancestral parents Adam and Eve, as described in the book of Genesis.
The navel imprint is the seal of God’s creation of our personal humanity as a child of God. There are those who scoff at this and cling to theories despite the evidence; for others it is the reality of Genesis; God handling the workings of creation.
Scientists may unravel the mysteries of creation, but that does not make them their author. — Anonymous
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Isn’t it ironic that Zuma is portrayed a victim?
I wonder how much President Thabo Mbeki’s recent statement on the dangers of corruption has to do with heading off supporters of Jacob Zuma.
Whatever the cause, it’s a statement long overdue. Corruption has pervasive effects. South Africa’s massive road death toll is a direct consequence of corruption of traffic policing. How can so many unroadworthy vehicles and obviously incompetent drivers be on the roads unless officials and traffic cops are being paid off on a systematic basis?
Three people I know have been killed in recent years in car crashes. How much worse can it be for those who have no option but to travel in unsafe taxis?
In another example, the high levels of crime we are told are ”improving” have to be related to police corruption. How many of us have heard of case files that have disappeared? Of culprits caught red-handed escaping from police cells?
As long as the culture of personal benefit pervades the system from the Cabinet down, it will be very hard to turn around the attitude that allows police to neglect their duties to trawl for bribes before a long weekend. It will be hard to change the mindset of taxi operators, who maximise profit at the expense of safety, by paying bribes rather than maintaining their vehicles or training their drivers.
It is the core constituency of the African National Congress — the poor, the dispossessed — who will suffer the most if this scourge is left unchecked. How ironic, therefore, can it be that there is a populist movement to paint Zuma as a victim? — Philip Machanick, Australia
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Another day, another conference on corruption. Never in the history of this country has there been so much talk about how to fight corruption by so many to such little avail.
All too often blatant corruption is staring us in the face, and we need no strategies, frameworks, conferences or committees to deal with it. What we need are 45-million voices shouting out against it. Only then we’ll free the country of this scourge. — Robert de Neef, Howick
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‘Conventional wisdom’ for loonies
I was disappointed to see such a poor example of journalistic bias in your article ”The Goddess of the Israelites” (September 16). Although other journals and -publications do carry personal comment, the editor will always clearly state that it is based on -personal opinion. You made no such distinction.
The article was in fact so biased and contrived it’s just nonsense: post-modernism combined with revisionism based purely on preconceived notions about the subject at hand.
The idea that any of this should ”thoroughly subvert conventional Christian and Judaic beliefs” is ridiculous when this stuff is, as this Colin Bower admits in his confused polemic, a basic and repeated central part of the Bible.
Take this little bit: ”Monotheism was a late development, possibly as late as the Persian or Hellenistic periods, well after the Babylonian exile, and, therefore, a back–projection of the writers and redactors of the Bible.
”This contradicts the conventional understanding of biblical texts as describing the universal story of the founding of mankind by a male god, Yahweh, of his exclusive guidance of a promised people to nationhood, and of the common destiny of the people who became known as Israelites.”
What ”conventional understanding” is this? Only the loony Young Earth Creationists consider that ”conventional”. What is this -”exclusive guidance”? Why is the Asherah pole mentioned so often in the Bible if that was what it claimed?
Mainstream Christianity has never claimed that there was a continuous and exclusive guidance of Yahweh to the Hebrews. What is 2 Kings 23 about if that was the case then, for example?
And the idea that monotheism was a later development than the Babylonian exile is not something that can be stated with any kind of scholarly authority as a certainty — maybe by someone with personal issues with Judeo-Christianity, but certainly not by anyone with any journalistic credibility.
This fact was highlighted by the polemical conclusion: ”Monotheistic, patriarchal narratives have largely enslaved the human consciousness for 3 000 years or more. Dever’s work helps us understand that the Old Testament is one of these, and that it rightfully belongs in the mythical realm of the Gilgamesh epic and the Odyssey.”
Yours, concerned at the state of journalism in South Africa, if this article is in any way typical. — Simon Adams
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SABC is part of Zim problem
I find it disturbing that the SABC continues to use Zimbabwe’s Mighty Movies as its news production partner in that country.
Mighty Movies is owned by the Zimbabwean authorities and run by an apologetic and hopeless Zanu-PF journalist called Supa Mandiwanzira.
Mandiwanzira is a board member of the Financial Gazette, which is owned by Zimbabwe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation. Your newspaper has published that claim and other newspapers in Zimbabwe have done so without the Financial Gazette or the other named paper, Daily Mirror, suing.
Mighty Movies is the only licensed and operating production house allowed to produce news in Zimbabwe. Everyone else has been denied a licence as a way to control the flow of news out of the country.
The SABC’s original Zimbabwean correspondent, Brian Hungwe, has been sidelined in recent years.
One would have thought South Africa would lead by example — the South African people should know that their government and the agencies it controls, such as the SABC, are actually part of the Zimbabwean problem.
What the SABC is doing is the equivalent of a state broadcaster in the 1940s getting news from Germany via a Nazi-controlled broadcasting organisation. It is appalling. — Clara Masuku, Rhodes University
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Obfuscation
It was timely for the Mail & Guardian (September 16) to refer to the watered-down and highly structured question-and-answer -sessions in Parliament. I have come to believe that the few times that President Thabo Mbeki appears in Parliament to answer questions serve little purpose. There are just too many ”sweetheart” questions from loyal supporters.
The obfuscation by ministers is reminiscent of days gone by. As a former civil servant who occasionally had to prepare answers for min-i-sters, it seems to me that the way answers are given in Parliament is not much different from years ago, and sometimes as oblique. — Pieter Wolvaardt, Grahamstown
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