May 16 to 22 2008

Think of the suffering

After all the good things we achieved as South Africans with the help of countries such as Zimbabwe during our apartheid struggle, is this the way we thank our fellow brothers and sisters? By burning them and attacking them while we know that they are suffering in their countries? I am sending out this message to all South Africans who are behind these xenophobic attacks.

Please be human and think of the suffering you are causing to our fellow brothers and sisters. Please stop blaming other people for things that are not of importance at the moment. We must help them fight dictatorship in their countries — if it weren’t for that, I do not think that they would be here.

Remember we are all Africans who need to share this continent as one big family. Let’s help each other in times of difficulty and not fight each other. If we South Africans treat others badly, then it means that we do not want to see the continent developing — do we want to live in poverty forever, killing each other forever? Wake up, South Africans. — Goitsemang Lerato Mabotja

The ongoing xenophobic attacks are a wake-up call for the African National Congress government. There are failures in services delivery, and a lack of foresight is partly to blame. These attacks amount to a failure on the part of the National Intelligence Agency to warn the police in advance. South Africa is no longer the rainbow nation of Africa. — Joe Sikasula, Zambia

Scapegoating is as old as man himself. Today the rioters around Johannesburg may blame the refugees for their poverty, but after the refugees are long gone, they will realise that they are still no better off. Then the cycle will start over again with new scapegoats … those who do not speak the same language as them, those who do not look like them, those who come from other parts of the country, women who are progressing faster than men.

Very soon our society will cannibalise itself until all sense of nationhood is destroyed and the last of the cannibals, destitute from lack of victims, dies from poverty. What needs to be done now is for those who claim to represent the poor to go into the strife-torn areas, condemn the criminal behaviour, provide positive leadership and take it away from the street mobs.

This time, the theme song — if anyone feels like singing — should be ”Leave Umshini Wami behind ”. — Wongaletu Vanda

Stadiums and infrastructure aside, there must now be serious doubts whether the South African population is ready to host the World Cup in two years’ time. — Roland Luethi, Bulach, Switzerland

I never thought I would live to witness tribal war. I see people being assaulted and discriminated against by virtue of not being South African citizens or because they are not Zulus. I ask President Thabo Mbeki which Africa he referred to as belonging to all who live in it. During apartheid South Africans sought refuge and were welcomed by these African countries that we today consider too black to be in our country.

Mr President, why would your people contradict your intellect by proving to the world that indeed South Africa does not belong to all who live in it? How can we help others if we can’t even help ourselves? ”African renaissance” — is this how you planned to achieve this goal, is it this goal that made you ignorant to your country’s needs? Your policies have deprived people of economic independency rather than empowering them.

It is time that you come out of your comfort zone. People talk, but you don’t listen. Revisit your policies and remember that a wise man always changes his mind. Strengthen the people’s security and all will be well. Root out nepotism and deal severely with corruption. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. — Sello Godfrey Mahlatsane, Welkom

It seems somehow ironic and sad that extreme racism is at the heart of the brother-versus-brother violence in Johannesburg. Our northern neighbours have more self-respect and ambition than the majority of South Africa’s local disadvantaged.

Why is it that Somali citizens (or choose any other northern country ) can walk to South Africa and, with nothing, start a small business or corner shop and after a few years enjoy the profits of their hard work and motivation? I was taught that one gets nothing for nothing, that honest resourcefulness and hard work will put food on your table.

Violent protest, killing and destruction may have been the solution of the past, but it is surely not a solution for the present. Sadly, greed and corruption among our new leaders have done nothing to uplift the people of our country. It seems that only a slanted history is being taught in our schools and not pride, ingenuity and ambition.

When there is nothing left to take, steal or kill, what will we do then? Who will we blame? It’s time for all South Africans to take responsibility for their own lives and future, to create an honest and fair environment for our nation. — Craig Parker, Cape Town

According to the African National Congress (ANC), the uprisings in Alexandra are caused by ‘criminal acts” — Firoz Cachalia on Tuesday May 13. He is quick to inform us that these are criminal acts, but as the provincial minister of safety and security in Gauteng, what provisions or plans are in place to curb these? What is his department doing about this whole mess?

One can easily conclude that the ANC has lost the battle against crime. The question now is whether the ANC is unable to deal with its members who are committing these ‘criminal acts”, in case they vote against it next year. If not, why is it pampering these criminals instead of taking drastic measures to address the situation? How many lives must be lost before something is done? — Thandi Nontenja, Pretoria

SABC has failed us
For a long time the SABC has overlooked the needs of the people of the Western Cape. 5fm has a white station manager, because the manager knows and understands her (white) audience. Metro FM has a black station manager for the same reason. But at Good Hope FM, with a majority of coloured listeners, the station manager is white and was brought in from Gauteng.

I know a number of highly qualified people who could have taken over the management without headhunting in Jo’burg or elsewhere. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture. How much Afrikaans is spoken on Good Hope FM? Has anyone bothered to research the percentage of coloured people who speak Afrikaans in Cape Town? This has become irrelevant, because the advertisers want English on the station.

Good Hope FM has constantly been neglected by senior managers at Auckland Park and treated as a stepchild. When the SABC sold off the old Radio Kontrei (Kfm) and a number of other stations, I lobbied to keep Good Hope FM within the public broadcaster, because I felt strongly that the coloured community would have no voice if the station was sold.

However, today Good Hope FM is a fully fledged commercial radio station with limited community involvement — against the very reason the station was kept within the SABC. It’s time Ismail Vadi, chairperson of Parliament’s communications committee and his team, the SABC board and the ministry of communitions, considered selling off Good Hope FM to a private concern.

Finally, I would like to see Charlotte Mampane, the longest-serving member of the SABC group executive and acting chief operating officer, considered for the position of group CEO.

She has served the SABC in many capacities and worked her way to the top. Does the fact that she is a woman stand in her way? — Rozario Brown, Mitchells Plain

The chickens are coming home to roost at the SABC. Neither Dali Mpofu nor Snuki Zikalala are friends of the poor and the working class — they are enemies of our revolution.

As early as 2003, the SACP called for the SABC to ‘belong to the South African public and … reflect the identity and diverse nature of South Africa”.

The SACP was expressing the majority view that the SABC reflects the morality and logic of the private market and that its developmental mandate is being undermined.

Mpofu, Zikalala and others are products of Thabo Mbeki’s ‘1996 class project” that, among other things, sought control of the media.

As the ANC’s Polokwane conference approached, Zikalala banned certain political commentators and journalists because they were perceived as being too critical of Mbeki.

They dishonestly hid behind the editorial independence of the SABC, while failing in their mandate to serve the people in a humble, fair and democratic way.

Jacob Zuma received virtually no airtime, while Mbeki was interviewed for two hours.

They must no longer be allowed to make the SABC their tool to undermine our democracy. We also need a board that represents our people.– Kaizer Mohau, Potchefstroom

We are gatvol
Right. That’s it. Enough! We are collectively gatvol. Black, white, rich, poor … we are in revolt! Mr Mbeki, you are an intelligent man — well deserving of your pipe — but you are not useful. Mr Zuma, you are a colourful man — you hold a good rally — but you are not trustworthy. Madiba, where are you?

Where is our leadership? Savouring single malts and fine cigars as they ponder the reasons behind the horrific images in their crisp evening paper.

Apartheid taught us that not all people are human, that there are superior species and sub-humans. Post-apartheid South Africa has entrenched those vile beliefs, only class is the new racism. If I drive a BMW and wear Fabiani shoes, I am a superior human being, but if I am a labourer and cannot afford to buy my wife and kids the labels they require to be socially accepted, I am sub-human. If my neighbour (who is Zimbabwean) achieves those things, I am insanely jealous and resentful.

We live in a pressure cooker of aspiration and unmet basic needs, and the lid has been lifted. As leaders you are our role models. You set the key for the national anthem. When you look the part, but don’t deliver, you do not deserve our respect.

This is a call to action to all sane South Africans to revolt peacefully against fat-cat inefficiency. Pop the bubble. Sell your BMW and buy a Tata. Call your councillor demanding to know what he or she has done today. Offer to help build the next Reconstruction and Development Programme house. Make humility and compassion the new status and opulence a farce. — Wendy Cochrane, Cape Town

Zim: AU must mediate
Zimbabweans are being asked to go back to the polls for a presidential run-off — but this poses a number of serious problems.

Can peaceful conditions be secured in time so that the vote is widely accepted as the will of the electorate? Can the vote counting and reporting guarantee a free and fair result? If Mugabe loses, will he and his security forces accept the vote?

Based on conditions on the ground, the answer must be an unqualified ‘no”. Another contested election result will perpetuate the Zimbabwe crisis, which is seriously sapping regional and continental goodwill and confidence.

Consensus is emerging that a further election can only produce a contested result. A mediated solution is therefore preferable.

Because Thabo Mbeki’s neutrality as mediator has been questioned both in Zimbabwe and in the SADC, a new mediator is required.

The AU would seem to be the ideal body. It has credibility among the key players and sufficient distance to maintain neutrality. — Owen, Harare

Our president sees himself as a regional power player lining up with China and Russia — while the Zimbabwean reality is that of a woman and her baby crawling on hands and knees through a border fence, desperately fleeing the wreckage of a once proud and self-­supporting nation. — Neil Parker, Florida

Before the Zimbabwe elections, dictator Robert Mugabe began handing out freebies such as tractors and fuel to village elders and other rural leaders in an attempt to woo voters.

Almost simultaneously, Limpopo Premier Sello Moloto began distributing 82 4x4s, each worth about R250 000, to village chiefs, conscious of the 2009 national elections. This, too, was bribery. And, as in Zim’s case, the cost of this vote-buying exercise was borne by taxpayers.

Bribing village chiefs, some of whom lost their traditional titles last week following a government commission delisting their royal status, has traditionally helped to nudge the vassals to vote for the ANC in Limpopo.

After 28 years in power Mugabe and Zanu-PF were concerned about voter fatigue. After 14 years in power the Limpopo ANC has similar worries.

The more voters get fed up, the more state resources will be deployed to deflect their disillusionment. With the BEE-geoisie constantly pouring cronied moollah into ANC coffers, the organisation’s R1-billion-plus war-chest nullifies prospects of a fair election or even a level playing field.

The same Polokwane posse that howled at Mbeki for ‘deploying” state resources to deflect the ‘JZ tsunami” finds nothing anomalous in the state employing public resources to advance the ANC’s electoral prospects. —Themba Sono, president, Alliance of Free Democrats

Lies to keep us down
To blame the salary gap between whites and blacks on the legacy of apartheid education is just more selective ‘research” to keep blacks in their place.

Many blacks excelled under the permit system at so-called world-class universities such as the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

But there is nothing special about them — I found it more difficult to study at UWC than Stellenbosch.

Our schools were great; Latin was taught in working-class Athlone, the cauldron of politics and riots in the 1970s and 1980s. We got the job done politically on the streets and in education because this was the only way to some form of economic freedom.

Many black students from the schools I attended went on to Harvard, Columbia, Syracuse MIT and Stanford and did well in the field of literature, journalism, science, engineering and mathematics.

Now researchers report that our education was inferior and this is why we earn up to five times less than whites.

To government and business I say: stop lying. Give our people the chance to maximise their potential and place this country on the trajectory it deserves. — Clement R du Plessis

BEE is for Africans
If the stories in the media are anything to go by, Vodacom’s R7,5-billion BEE deal has all the features to induce optimism about similar transactions in the future.

The profiles of the three groupings that won the deal are convincing. They were Vodacom South Africa’s staff (25%); black South Africans and Vodacom’s business partners (30%); and the Royal Bafokeng Holdings and the Thebe Investment Corporation.

The 45% for Royal Bafokeng Holdings and the Thebe Investment Corporation promises to have a significant socio-economic impact on the 300 000 members of the Bafokeng nation.

The intended long-term business investment in the community by Thebe is another plus. If more empowerment deals can be structured this way, the number of South Africans who live below the poverty line, estimated at 13-million, would be reduced.

However, the optimism is restricted until the interpretation of BEE in the deal is put to the test. In most cases the interpretation of black as derived from the Constitution is not in favour of blacks who are ­indigenous Africans, unless you are part of the group often referred to as the ‘usual suspects”.

The Constitution makes Africans, coloureds and Indians all black. It shies away from depicting shades of blackness in terms of numbers and scales of poverty. Consequently, the appropriate care that African businesses are supposed to get does not differ from their relatively better equipped coloured and Indian counterparts.

Noting the limitation in the Constitution, there is a need to refine the interpretation of the term ‘black”, as it is subject to manipulation to the exclusion of Africans.

The few Africans involved in significant empowerment deals constitute a negligible percentage and are not visible in the ownership, management and control of the economy.

Similar considerations should be made when it comes to cases of permissible exclusions in the law to cater for the previously disadvantaged people, especially women.

Hopefully, Royal Bafokeng Holdings’ involvement in the Vodacom deal will influence the future interpretation of the term ‘black” to ensure that it is Africans who derive the maxi­mum benefit from big empowerment deals. — Ntokozo G Zungu, Iswelihle Development Consultants, Durban

And Hamas’s racist vitriol?
Alan Holton (Letters, March 28) provides a scorecard showing the relative statistics of deaths, imprisonments and so on for Israelis and Palestinians to justify the hostility of 300-million Arabs to Israel.

He ignores the historical, political and other aspects of the tragic Middle Eastern conflict.

For Islamists the struggle is not for a Palestinian national state alongside and respectful of Israel, but the complete elimination of Israel and Jews.

Liberals who find this difficult to believe should read the Hamas charter at www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html, which preaches an ‘eliminative” anti-Semitism.

In addition to holding Jews responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and World War I and II, they also believe that the United Nations, the Freemasons and Rotary clubs are controlled by Jews as part of their plans for world domination. To support these accusations, they cite the most notorious of all anti-Semitic forgeries, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

If the ANC’s Freedom Charter had contained a fraction of the vitriolic hatred found in the Hamas Charter, the chances of a transition here would have been zero.

This delusional and crude racism is spewed out daily in the mainstream press throughout the Arab world. That may have something to do with the hostility of 300-million Arabs to Israel. — Chuck Volpe, Port Elizabeth

Licence scam
When you renew your vehicle licence you pay for 12 months — but eNatis has been programmed to renew for 11 months only.

My licence expired on April 30 and I renewed it on that date, but when I got home I noticed that the new licence expired on 31 March 2009.

I phoned the Sandton licensing office but, as usual, the phones just ring. You have more chance of seeing pigs fly then getting an answer from a government department.

The Transport Department is making millions from unsuspecting motorists. Jeff Radebe and his spin doctors have some explaining to do. — Mohamed Vawda, Kew

In brief
In the SABC coverage of violence against immigrants in Alexandra, the perpetrators are described as carrying out ‘xenophobic attacks”. Would the SABC define the difference between xenophobia and racism? They seem identical to me. — Eric Hodgson, Durban

Helen Zille’s latest outburst calling for the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki is puzzling in its lack of balance.

Mbeki’s economic successes are largely to blame for over-extending the power capacity of Eskom. Blaming him for Mugabe stealing the Zimbabwe elections is also a ruse. Is she afraid that if the president stays in office long enough his diplomatic efforts in Zimbabwe may pay off? — Wongaletu Vanda

Any idea when Zapiro is coming back? Is he coming back? We’ve been getting reruns for a long while now. — Sello Molekwa, Pretoria

We buy the paper for fresh news, not stale cartoons. The M&G is prestigious and we pay a lot of money for it. Zapiro hogs every paper in the country and he does the same everywhere. Surely there are other cartoonists! — Yunus Shaik

Israel has pledged assistance for victims of Myanmar’s natural disaster while denying electricity, fuel and clean water to Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. It is a tragedy that a terrorist state is flaunting its successes and that people around the world are joining in the celebrations. — Muhammad Ally