Desai is our Sartre
I read with horror the bile spewed by Malegapuru Makgoba against Ashwin Desai in your last edition (”Truth is often less sexy than sensation”).
Makgoba uses innuendo to name the alleged unaccountable ”mafia” that abused public resources and kept no records. He names Saths Cooper, under whose management records weren’t kept. Then, under the cloak of condemning the racialisation of the Desai matter by the media, he promotes his own dangerous, narrow and reactionary Africanist chauvinism.
He points to a pro-Desai campaign by unnamed Indian journalists, with the implied corollary that African journalists would be on his side if only they had the same access to information, which they’ve been denied.
In the same vein, he mentions the names Cooper, Desai, Govender and Habib next to a throwaway comment about an Indian cabal. Very little is left to the imagination. This is intellectual gangsterism of the highest order.
It’s a sad day that UKZN, which helped birth one of the most potent liberation philosophies — Black Consciousness — is now turning into a den of tribalism promoted from the top.
It’s sad indeed that an intellectual and academic of Desai’s calibre, who has inspired a whole generation of young thinkers to side with the poor and speak truth to power, has to be subjected to such slander and victimisation.
Desai is our Sartre. Instead of persecuting him, Makgoba should say, like Charles de Gaulle when it was suggested that Sartre be jailed for his pro-Algerian independence activities against French colonialism: ”You do not arrest Voltaire.” The French are richer for it. — Andile Mngxitama, Johannesburg
In your last edition, I believe Makgoba presented the facts of the Desai case, as opposed to the selectively processed garbage we have been fed through obscure internet petitions and partisan media coverage.
I was alarmed by his account of ethnic cabals who perpetuate corruption and abuse the integrity of the university’s leadership.
Cooper’s leadership and legacy will be recorded in the annals of university history as disgraceful. For him to have used his position and university resources to cut deals for sidekicks is nauseating.
Cleaning up the mess will require nerves of steel. I believe Makgoba is our man! — Nombeko Mbava, Cape Town
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After his verbatim reply the week before, the Mail & Guardian gave further extensive space to Makgoba to put his case last week.
During the same period, UKZN was crippled by a massive strike that brought out thousands of disaffected workers over two weeks in defiance of management. Student registration was disrupted and the lecture programme halted. The M&G’s silence on these events was deafening.
Though management has now climbed down from its initial intransigence, many staff believe this was merely a first battle in a long war. Perhaps that will provide the M&G with the opportunity to redeem its reputation! — Tony Moodie, Pinetown
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Please can the M&G assure readers that no more than 5% of the paper will be devoted to Makgoba’s self-promotion campaigns this year? — Michael Brett, Hartebeeshoek
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Makgoba suggests that reporting on the Desai case has been racialised. But the only writer, white or black, in print or on radio, to conjure the spectre of ”anti-African Indians” or ”anti-Indian Africans” is Makgoba himself.
Perhaps he wants to tell us something, but finds it more expedient to lay his prejudices at the door of journalists. — Raj Patel, Centre for Civil Society, UKZN
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Why drag in the Jews?
Why is it that the attempted genocide of the Jews is dredged up by Muslims in response to the Muhammad cartoons? From the Iranian president sponsoring a ”Holocaust cartoon-fest” to your correspondents Jeenah, Amjad-Ali and Valley, who write: ”What would the Jewish reaction be to a cartoon of a Jew in the 1930s dreaming up a scheme to relocate European Jews to Palestine imagining the Holocaust as the way to do it?” (February 10.)
There is a disconnect here: the cartoons did not call for the mass slaughter of Muslims — they called for a cessation of murder, however crudely. And, more significantly, the Danish newspaper that printed the cartoons is not a Jewish publication; it is staunchly Christian, with a devoutly Christian readership, in a fervently Christian country. So, what’s this with the Jews?
Please leave the Holocaust to the Israelis, who never miss an opportunity to raise the Nazi spectre in maudlin attempts to justify their actions (especially against the Palestinians) whenever they are criticised, and in so doing commit a sacrilege against Holocaust victims.
By gratuitously dragging in the Holocaust, Muslims entrench the stereotypical caricature of themselves as homicidal ”infidel” hunters. — Laurence Berman, Pretoria
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At a time when cartoons have convulsed the world, I remember with affection a ”nightcap session” with some of the world’s best cartoonists. It took place at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was a treat to listen to Cappatte (Switzerland), Gado (Kenya), Heng Kim-Song (Singapore), Michel Kichka (Israel), Salih Mememcan (Turkey), Patrick Oliphant (United States), No-rio Yamanoi (Japan) and Zapiro (South Africa) reflect on their work.
They discussed just how far a cartoonist can go in pushing social critique through the cartoon’s power to unmask. I saw deeply sensitive people, despite the apparent harshness of some of their images.
Far from seeking to hurt or denigrate, cartoonists are no more than messengers of the ”hurtful insight”, with its capacity to deliver the deepest learning. These remarkable people take daily risks with enormous courage. They made me grateful for their presence in the world. — Njabulo S Ndebele, Cape Town
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High power, low organisation
Adam Welz raises valid concerns about fuel crop farming (Letters, February 17). However, his description of ethanol fuels as ”much less efficient” is misleading. The ethanol molecule carries an oxygen atom, meaning that, during combustion, some of each litre of ethanol does not combine with atmospheric oxygen, but simply recombines with itself.
Some 40% of each kilogram of ethanol cannot, therefore, strictly be regarded as a fuel. That one gets considerably more than 60% of the kilometres per litre on ethanol as on petrol points to higher rather than lower efficiency.
It is indeed better to improve petrol by adding ethanol, thereby producing E85, than by adding carcinogens like benzene and toluene. But one is still left with very much a fossil fuel. Far better are petrol-free ethanol blends with a small admixture of water. Engines so optimised produce much more power than petrol engines at comparable rates of consumption, using essentially 1960s racing technology.
But ethanol’s greatest advantage is that, while it makes for high-powered engines, it can be made by low-powered organisations — as petrol cannot.
The ecological benefit of ethanol may be debatable if it is seen simply as a replacement for petrol. But its potential for allowing fundamentally better patterns of production and use makes its introduction urgent. — DG Coetzee, Claremont
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Aim is to stifle debate
Rabbi David Hoffman’s response to Ronnie Kasrils (February 3) is a telling example of many Zionists’ gut resistance to democratic debate.
Firstly, the rabbi does not restrict himself to rejecting Kasrils’s ideas or debating their merits. He says they contain ”objectionable sentiments” and that the Mail & Guardian should not have used them on a poster. In effect, he is saying that Kasrils’s views should not be published prominently (or not at all?).
To say that an opponent is wrong or misguided is to say that they are expressing an opinion with which one disagrees. To say that they are ”objectionable” is to deny them legitimacy and imply that they should be silenced. Hoffman clearly believes not only that Kasrils is wrong but that he should not be heard. Democrats, of course, will have a different view.
Secondly, Hoffman’s reason for labelling Kasrils’s sentiments ”objectionable” is that they portray Jews as deceitful. Really? People who cling to myths are not necessarily deceitful.
But more importantly, Kasrils was not criticising Jews, but Zionists. Like Kasrils, I am Jewish but not Zionist. Like him, I believe Zionism is based on myth. But neither of us believe that we and our fellow Jews should be labelled deceitful because peddlers of an ideology choose to put myths into the world.
More is at stake here than accuracy. By insisting that to criticise Zionism is to defame Jews, Hoffman seeks to silence criticism of Zionism by portraying it as anti-Semitism. Labelling opposition to an ideology as defamation of a people is clearly an attempt to prevent free debate by shielding the ideology from the criticism of people of good will.
As those of us who have tried to question Zionism from within the Jewish community know only too well, Zionist leadership here does not want to rebut or debate criticism of Zionism, it wants to prevent it from being expressed. Democrats will hopefully ignore the distorted logic which is used to buttress the attempt and will insist on keeping the debate open. — Steven Friedman, Johannesburg
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Having shared his ideas on Zionist mythology with us, Ronnie Kasrils should perhaps share some of his intimate views on communist mythology and how it resulted in so many being ”subjected to severe repression, human rights abuses, and the … confiscation of land and natural resources” — despite claiming to be an inclusive, non-racist, ”positive binding force”. — Clive Sindelman, Johannesburg
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Taboos vital to instil morals
Colin Bower’s claim (”Kissing cousins and dogs”, February 3) that taboos are ”based on irrational fears” is false. Taboos are based on a society’s accepted value system. They are essential in shaping conscience and instilling morality.
Bower cites the ban on cannibalism as an irrational taboo. In African custom, I am expected to mourn and bury my dead relatives as a sign of respect. In the process, they become izinyanya zam (ancestors).
How can I cannibalise my soon to-be-protectors? Even in the animal kingdom, only hyenas eat dead members of their own species. The victim’s agreement to be devoured, as alleged in the German case, is no defence.
On incest, in African culture I pay lobola to the family of my intended wife to show I can take care of her. In this process, we establish ukuzalana (a new family relationship). How do I pay lobola for my own sister? Who do I pay it to? My father!
Incest has nothing to do with a loving relationship and consenting adults. In most cases, it has its roots in the abuse of a younger girl by a deranged older brother or sick father.
The left is wrong to think that our freedom is under attack from conventional morality. It is under attack from pseudo-liberals who think rights should be about fulfilling one’s sadistic appetites. — Tando Bonga, Johannesburg
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Euro-Africans
South Africa’s ”Euro-Africans” seem not to have understood the explanation given by our president about the so-called ”gravy plane”.
As an African, I see nothing wrong with our Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, travelling like that as a way of guaranteeing her safety.
I ask myself if we are ever going to be free in this country. It disgusts me that whites constantly perceive us as corrupt and as not knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Stop comparing us with your brothers and cousins in Europe. This is Africa, and we are proud of it. — Mulaudzi Mpho, Greytown