October 24 to 30 2008

Storm in a teacup

In ”Copy rites and wrongs” (September 26) Stephen Gray takes it upon himself to ”pass judgement” on ”a local literary icon”, Zakes Mda, who is found guilty of ”the most spectacular instance of the fine line between creativity and cribbing in South African literature”.

The 1 375 word article is an irresponsible hatchet job with many factual inaccuracies as well as some low-grade petty bitchiness about incorrect tense changes and split infinitives — the kind of tetchy criticism one would expect from a provincial school­master in the colonial period.

Why did the Mail & Guardian publish this vitriol? The Weekender broke the story in July. Ben Williams’s excellent Book.co.za website took the story further; on July 22 he published both Mda’s response to the allegations and, importantly, Jeff Peires’s dismayed reaction to the charges levelled against his friend and colleague. A reading of both of these documents puts the allegations into perspective. Storm in a teacup. Andrew Offenburger, upon whose work Gray’s piece was based, was clearly hoping to build an academic reputation on the back of a globally respected man of letters (not merely a ”locally” respected icon).

Gray’s article puts forward not one shred of new evidence. It’s simply a cut, paste and slice job of what readers of The Weekender and Book.co.za already know. With one grievous distinction: Gray entirely disregards Peires’s rejection of the charges.

Gray has revealed himself to be an odiously mean-spirited literary mudslinger. By publishing ”Copy rites and wrongs” the M&G has done Mda a great wrong. Apologies are in order. — Aryan Kaganof

Offenburger’s attempt to lynch Mda on charges of plagiarism needs some contextualisation. Offenburger is an American from the Midwest who served as online campaign director for Republican Senator Lamar Alexander in 2002. Alexander is an advocate of the war on Iraq, is anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage and anti-multiculturalist.

His attack on Mda smacks of racism — he is hellbent on demonstrating that post-colonial black writers are thieves. In his article, published in Research in African Literatures, the only examples he chooses for his plagiarism argument are black African authors: Mda, Yambo Ouologuem, Calixthe Beyala. There is no foregrounding, for instance, of the scandal surrounding Antjie Krog’s (unacknowledged) borrowings from Ted Hughes in Country of My Skull, even though this also concerns a South African author and came to light while Offenburger was writing his article. — LV Graham, English department, Stellenbosch University
Let’s open up the debate

Seeraj Mohammed’s response to our critique of Cosatu’s economic proposals (October 10) misses the point. We don’t believe that international capital flows should be equated to trade flows and never advocated abolition of exchange controls. His opening paragraph reveals his intention — to cynically ”box” us as libertarian ideologues who can subsequently be dismissed as fringe lunatics.

As the Indonesian case in the Asian financial crisis decisively demonstrated, the keys to managing capital inflows are: effective domestic banking regulation, an independent central bank with the mandate to take the tough decisions to restore confidence in the banking sector and flexible exchange rates to enable adjustment to take place. Exchange controls in crisis conditions may have a role, as the Malaysian case demonstrated, but the prerequisites are essential to ensuring financial stress does not become a crisis in the first place.

In South Africa those preconditions are in place, thanks to prudent macroeconomic management. We also have a strong, stable financial sector, despite exchange controls. Hence we have been able to ride out the storm — thus far.

Mohammed also obfuscates our point about the sustainability of South Africa’s current account deficit. Of course all bets are off when the worst financial crisis since the 1930s strikes. But assuming Western banks are reasonably quickly recapitalised and a ”normal” lending pattern resumes, the status quo ante in South Africa (that is, high current account deficits) is also very likely to resume. South Africa stands to benefit from accessing international capital markets owing to low domestic savings and, in the absence of anomalous global conditions, could sustain high domestic growth rates financed by foreign capital inflows for decades. The fact that we are relatively unscathed so far clinches the point. Yet Cosatu wants to dismantle this!

Mohammed’s reply contains some strange statements. ”The relatively high economic growth between 2003 and 2007 is not sustainable and has been harmful for the future health of the economy.” How so? ”Today all states provide huge levels of support to their businesses to promote competitiveness and exports.” What examples can he proffer that demonstrate clear evidence of success as opposed to successful lobbying?

This lack of substantiation is prevalent in the Cosatu panel’s prescriptions. Rather than make sweeping assertions and attempt to ideologically ”box” detractors, they should put forward their evidence so that a reasonable debate on the issues can take place. — Peter Draper, Tsidiso Disenyana and Andreas Freytag

Bring on the red ink

I noted your article ”The infantilisation of politics” (October 17) and the attendant correction by Jo Tyler (your revise sub-editor) of our statement of October 8 reacting to Terror Lekota and company. Your article and the correction of the usage of English in our statement are condescending, snobbish and a poor attempt at humour.

I wonder if either you or your revise sub-editor would have corrected Castro Ngobese if the statement was issued in isiZulu. My advice to the baases and madams of the Mail & Guardian is this: Before you laugh at our English, please try to learn sePedi, XiVenda or any of the African languages. I promise you that we will not laugh at you as you twist your tongues or misspell our names, but we will help you to learn these better. In the process, you will also learn not to laugh at our efforts to try to accommodate you by communicating in your language.

It is nonsense to suggest that those who speak or write better in English are therefore knowledgeable and can be regarded as public intellectuals, and thus should be taken seriously. We will continue to express our views and opinions until the red ink runs dry, in the language of our choice, because those who we seek to communicate with perfectly understand our message. — Buti Manamela, national secretary, Young Communist League

In ”The infantilisation of politics”, Ferial Haffajee could not have been more accurate when referring to the actions of Julius Malema, prior to the axing of Thabo Mbeki from government, as nation-bullying. Malema has not only been allowed to disrespect our former president but also the intelligence and the integrity of ordinary South Africans like myself. South Africa does not have time and space for the politics of intimidation. — Tsokolo Mofokeng, Welkom

It’s called teamwork

I wasn’t going to respond to Drew Forrest’s rather grubby review of the late Bob Woolmer’s book (October 3) until I remembered that our publishers were at the Frankfurt Book Fair and co-author Tim Noakes was in the Okavango Swamps. And Bob obviously can’t defend himself against Forrest’s imputation that he was not the principal author of his own book.

I realise that a book review doesn’t require the same level of fact-checking as a news story. However, no journalist should speculate without doing a shred of homework.

Regarding your ”suspicion” that Bob wrote a ”narrow coaching book” that I padded out ”to cash in on public rubbernecking” after his death, this could have been allayed simply by logging on. Googling either Bob’s name or mine would have taken you straight to the book’s website, which tells the story behind the writing of the book, or to dozens of hits detailing our long journey in creating this magnum opus.

Bob wanted it to be ”comprehensive”, like Noakes’s magisterial Lore of Running, and we have his drafts, computer disks and taped interviews to prove it, as well as the near-complete galleys he signed off six weeks before his death. If Forrest had qualms about relying on the internet, one phone call would have confirmed this.

Next, Forrest missed that all three authors (not just Bob) are referred to in the third person. Sorry that this makes him ”uneasy”, but if the chief writer of a jointly authored work dies before publication, it makes using ”we” as the authorial voice tricky. Er, what tense should follow? Using the third person also reflects the different experiences we brought to the table. Tim and I didn¹t play Test cricket or coach Test teams; Bob and I didn’t do top-flight scientific research on players; Tim and Bob didn’t accompany me as I interviewed experts and giants of the game.

What really illustrates Forrest’s zero-research approach is his repeating the ancient sledging chestnut about Glenn McGrath’s wife. Every cricket journalist in the world knows that Jane McGrath has been off-limits ever since she began losing her brave struggle against breast cancer. The Mail & Guardian (Online) covered her death only months ago — do you not read your own newspaper? Tacky and sloppy, Mr Forrest.

I’m glad Forrest enjoyed the scientific accounts of the mysteries of cricket, such as how Shane Warne’s ”ball from hell” bamboozled Mike Gatting. I was privileged to be present as Bob and Tim thrashed these out together. The ”lucid writing” here? That was me, assisted by our brilliant editor, Tom Eaton. It’s called teamwork, and eliciting it was one of Bob’s greatest gifts. It was an honour to work with him during the last decade of his life, and I will always be grateful. — Helen Moffett

There will be no rabbit stew

There will be no rabbit stew
declares a voice orthodox
in its South African logic
never mind that hunger
and malnutrition stalk us

There will be no rabbit stew
notwithstanding the highest
protein content of all meat
so it is said, face-on-straight

There will be no rabbit stew
from the Robben Island cull
of the said 4-legged beasts
a-breeding like rabbits

There will be no rabbit stew
they’re not fat and luscious
like our public representatives
who might have less protein

There will be no rabbit stew
to offend our sensibilities
when it is called for
humane as we all are

There will be no rabbit stew
just the usual pot-pourri
of the 2-legged beasts
around election time

Who can resist stirring the pot on this?
— David Kapp

Sobukwe legacy will outlive Jordan

Pallo Jordan says Terror Lekota should have looked carefully at those who left the ANC, such as Robert Sobukwe in 1958 and Bantu Holomisa in the 1990s.

But Sobukwe cannot be reduced to the level of Lekota and Holomisa. Jordan is one of the authors of a booklet written about 11 years ago describing the Pan Africanist Congress as ”a broken wheel or a flat spare tyre”. What does he want to do with a broken wheel or flat tyre that he and the ANC broke and/or deflated more than 10 years ago?

The legacy of Sobukwe will outlive Jordan because, as Jon Qwelane once wrote, Sobukwe was smarter than the rest of you put together. — Sam Ditshego, Kagiso

In brief

Alongside crime, one of most stressful things about living in South Africa is the political uncertainty. It’s fantastic news that we now have Evita Bezuidenhout in the presidential race (October 17). At last, a sensible candidate! — Carlos Liltved

I note that in the upcoming US elections Americans residing abroad are allowed to vote. In our elections South Africans living abroad are excluded from participating. Might the result be too embarrassing for the ANC? — Edward Mitchell, Gillitts

I listened with horror to ANC Women’s League president Angie Motshekga on a radio station last week. She said those leaving the ANC are ”dogs”. How can you use an idiom like that as a leader and expect people to respect you? How are you going to discipline your son, Julius Malema, if you do not control what you say? — Thobile Ndungane, Khayelitsha

Page 2 of the M&G of October 17 makes an interesting read. You coin the term ”Shikota” and find space to quote Saki Macozoma quoting Malcolm Muggeridge. Are the leanings of the media beginning to show? We are beginning to see how ”the Shikota party” lets you further your hobby of trivialising Jacob Zuma. — Maupi Monyemangene, Botlokwa, Limpopo