DA is getting stronger
In her analysis of the 2006 local election results (March 3), Vicki Robinson reached the premature conclusion that support for the Democratic Alliance had dropped and that the DA had once again failed to make inroads in the townships.
A proper post-election analysis shows that the opposite is true: in 2006, the DA improved significantly on its 2004 performance and managed to increase its black support.
The DA increased its national percentage by 4%, from 12,3% in 2004 to 16,3% in 2006. In contrast, the African National Congress’s national support dropped 4% from 69,69% in 2004 to 65,67%.
The DA also enjoyed a far bigger increase in support than any other opposition party. The United Democratic Movement and the African Christian Democratic Party lost support, while the Inkatha Freedom Party, Independent Democrats and the Freedom Front Plus made only marginal gains: 0,59%, 0,48% and 0,06% respectively.
The ID managed only 2,2% of the vote nationally, with its share of the vote decreasing in all provinces bar three. In the Western Cape, where the media-bestowed moniker of “kingmaker” has exaggerated perceptions of the ID’s strength, the ID only increased its percentage share of the vote by 2,7%. In contrast, the DA enjoyed a net percentage increase in the province of 12,17%.
The IFP remains significant only in KwaZulu-Natal, where it garnered 38,5% of the vote — 1,7% less than its share of the vote there in 2004. The FF+ showed that it is hardly an opposition at all with only 0,95% of the vote nationally.
In addition, initial evidence suggests that the DA has made inroads into the townships. The Cape Town results, for example, show that the DA increased its support significantly among black voters, from 1% in 2004 to 3,3% in 2006. If one considers that the Western Cape is traditionally an area where the DA performs worst among black voters, then this is an encouraging sign indeed.
While much work remains to be done, the DA is confident that the ANC’s dominance is not as assured as is often believed, and that talk of a racial ceiling capping the DA’s support is an insult to the intelligence of South African voters. — Ryan Coetzee, MP, CEO of the DA
In The Judgement, Henry Denker, says that “this nation … will not be put asunder by nuclear bombs … but by theories spun by over- educated, under-intelligent experts”.
Before the local elections, “over-educated, under-intelligent experts” confidently predicted a sharp decline in ANC support — as they once predicted a split in the tripartite alliance. Neither happened.
The South African public — unlike the press — remain true supporters of the ANC, and the ANC remains steadfast in ensuring the lives of all South Africans change for the better. — Sicelo Mdletshe, Nongoma
Watson deserves an answer
In a review years ago, I raised questions about Country of My Skull, which began Antjie Krog’s career as an international spokeswoman for everything transformational in South Africa. I was annoyed that Krog quoted a complete poem of one of her students without naming the student, and reformatted as verse the testimony of an unnamed truth commission witness. I was angry at how Krog reacted to the witness’s efforts to be seen as misused. She threw a few inane comments from literary theory at him.
I wasn’t alone in thinking Country of My Skull a very iffy book. But it was pre-selected to be the book about the truth commission — much as, well, other authority in the country is pre-selected. The book has many fans who, if you question them, appear not to have read it or to have reflected on what it contains. It’s not hard to see why. Fashionable, feel-good, sloppy books about the new South Africa help the powerful ignore huge problems.
That’s why I wasn’t satisfied with the comments of M&G columnists last week — that Watson and Krog merely disagree because he is a modernist and she a postmodernist.
Books aren’t theories; they’re supposed to speak to readers through style, stories and ideas. They come from real experience and real sensibility. They’re aimed at real readers who need persuading to spend time and thought and emotion on them.
Most importantly, they’re about a real world — most heartbreakingly when they are about oppressed people. When Watson writes, and produces evidence, that a book of Krog’s lacks integrity, or just isn’t good, he deserves an answer in those terms. — Sarah Ruden, Cape Town
Stephen Watson’s article reveals a habit in Antjie Krog’s writing that has, I imagine, troubled and saddened many readers. What troubled me deeply is the apparent incorporation of innovative phrases and ideas from work by Ted Hughes into Country of My Skull and her denial in the Sunday Times that she had ever read the source.
What also disturbed me is her attribution to a Professor Kondlo of a string of descriptive concepts that had appeared previously in a book by the Wits scholar Isabel Hofmeyr.
Colin Bower’s article (March 3) quotes Krog as writing, “my friend Professor Kondlo, the Xhosa intellectual from Grahamstown”. Who is Professor Kondlo? Such a person is unknown to me, to academics who have lived in Grahamstown for decades and to others in the field who live elsewhere. Perhaps there has been an error. I hope so.
Antjie, you owe it to yourself as a poet with many gifts to set the record straight. — Chris Mann, Grahamstown
Free trade plea old hat
Fredrik Erixon and RazeenSally (“Why Oxfam is wrong”, March 3) make an old case for liberalising trade and capital movements on old statistics and old fallacies. Their key source is the World Bank, which periodically admits its statistics are misleading — sadly without seriously altering policies.
It is surely now accepted that trade-to-gross domestic product figures say nothing about the effect on poor people. The same applies to per capita and growth statistics. Liberalised trade has indeed improved the income of some people — by huge amounts — but not the poor. It is old hat to make any case about poverty alleviation based on undifferentiated GDP figures.
Similarly, the tired assumption that higher productivity benefits poor people is contradicted by statistics showing that in every country increases in productivity over the past 25 years have enhanced profits, not wages. That is why increases in growth, productivity and GDP have been accompanied by a loss of income and security at the bottom of all economies.
As for the idea that protection of new enterprises militates against development, the truth is that no nation has developed except behind protection — whether of tariffs, sanctions or war. That is the only way their enterprise has been prepared for international competition. — Margaret Legum, Kalk Bay
Counsel of suicide
In your March 3 editorial, you suggest Israel and the Palestinians should emulate elements of South Africa’s political settlement. You overlook a fundamental difference.
All South Africans ultimately realised that their common interest lay in compromise and reconciliation. The Palestinians under Yasser Arafat rejected a solution at Oslo that met 98% of their demands. You say this offer must be accepted as the bottom line for a “truce” with the Palestinians, who rewarded Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from all of Gaza and parts of the West Bank by electing a terrorist organisation to form a new government that refuses to accept Israel should even exist.
I realise many people empathise with Palestinian suicide bombers who kill innocent Israelis. But are you now recommending that the State of Israel should adopt suicide as official policy? — Sharon Klaff, London
Chris McGreal’s comparison of Israel and apartheid South Africa (March 3) raised numerous issues for South African and Israeli Jews, including the role of histories of victimhood in reproducing repressive political ideologies.
Israel and apartheid South Africa share histories of victimhood and collective suffering that resulted in the former victims establishing repressive political regimes. Both the Holocaust and the British concentration camps contributed towards exclusivist ethno-nationalism, which made Palestinians and black South Africans become “victims of the victims”, to borrow from the late Edward Said.
The challenge McGreal’s article presents for South African Jews is to see that Palestinians are indeed the “victims of the victims”. Since most South African Jews have never met a Palestinian, I advise them to see Paradise Now, which brings home how the daily humiliations of Palestinians under occupation reproduce the cycle of violence. — Steven Robins, Newlands
It is outrageous to suggest Israel is like apartheid South Africa; there are several differences.
Firstly, the average yearly temperature in Israel is 19,4°C, whereas in South Africa it is 15,7°C. Secondly, Israel is in the northern hemisphere, while South Africa is in the southern. In Israel the main working language is Hebrew, whereas in South Africa it is not. And, most importantly, in South Africa, oppression has come to an end; in Israel/Palestine it is still going on. — Michael Prytz
Makgoba must stop blaming others
Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, the vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in crudely attempting to justify his actions or lack thereof, has distorted fact and presented his peculiar interpretation of the world as truth.
He has tried to scapegoate me and others when defending himself over the spate of needless controversies wracking the university.
It would be imprudent to dignify his chauvinism and arcane reasoning with a rational response.
The “ban” on Ashwin Desai was properly lifted, he was duly appointed as a lecturer, and all records/documents during my one-year term at the University of Durban-Westville reside with the current university leadership.
Makgoba should focus on the job of creating a premier university of African scholarship and not be stuck in the past or blame others for his wilful conduct. — Saths Cooper
Where will it end?
In response to David Cesarani’s comment on David Irving (March 3), I quote from Michael Shermer’s book, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?
“Austria’s treatment of Irving as a political dissident should offend the same people who defend the rights of political cartoonists to express their opinion of Islamic terrorists … Why aren’t freedom lovers everywhere offended by Irving’s conviction?”
Once the laws are in place to jail Holocaust dissidents, what’s to stop them from spreading to those who dissent against religious or political histories, or to any scepticism that deviates from the accepted canon? — Susan Gillam, Johannesburg