November 21 to 27 2008

No, I can’t Cope

A little over a week ago, I got an email from a guy called Loyiso, wanting to know if I was prepared to sell my web domain, www.cope.co.za. I got the domain in the mid-1990s, when simple names were still available, and over the years I have grown quite fond of it.

The site has had millions of hits in that time, and I’m keeping it. So I returned a brief note to the effect that, no, I do not wish to sell the domain, and briefly wondered who might want it. A distant family member? Someone running motivation courses, or offering help to people floundering in the workplace or at school?

Then I saw the first headline with my surname in it. ”Will you join Cope?” it asked. They were still capitalising it, like a true acronym. I emailed the link to my son Jason, who has served time as a stand-up comedian, with the subject ”You can’t make this shit up”, and received a one-line response: ”This is disturbing.”

At about the time he was writing this, the penny dropped — the Loyiso guy was probably interested in my web domain on behalf of Shikota!

I have lived with the name Cope for well over half a century. I have often had strangers ask me whether I can cope, then break up with laughter at their wit, as though they were the first to make the connection. I feel a bit like those very tall guys who get asked what the weather is like up there, har har.

But ”cope” has many meanings beyond ”managing and adapting to circumstances” — a cope is a gorgeous semicircular cape of embroidered silk worn by bishops since there have been bishops. (Does the new party have some connection with Tutu, I wonder? I hope so.) A cope is the top half of a mould used for casting iron, the name of a woodworking technique, and a term used by organic chemists.

It is also a rule in evolution theory, Cope’s Rule, which states that body size tends to increase over generations because the bigger guys tend to survive better. But there’s a caveat: groups of larger individuals are more prone to extinction because they are less adaptable. If you get to big, you and your whole species goes extinct. Is there a lesson for the African National Congress (ANC) here?

The surname Cope derives from a Dutch root meaning trade, or trader. Twenty-five people with the surname are sufficiently prominent to merit a Wikipedia page, and there are two organisations, the Coalition of Progressive Electors and the Canadian Office and Professional Employees’ Union who use the acronym. There are three towns called Cope in the United States.

But there is one obscure meaning of the word — ”to stitch up the mouth of a ferret” — which draws my attention. It seems that rat-catchers used ferrets, which were subjected to body-piercing about the lips. Before being sent into a rat’s nest, the ferret was coped so that it wouldn’t gorge itself on rats and stop chasing them out to where the terriers were waiting.

And it is this meaning that makes me think that the name would perhaps be more suitable for Jacob Zuma and his merry crew, given their treatment of the Scorpions, who ferreted out what they ought not to, and have had their mouths thoroughly stitched shut.

All of which is to say that when you create words, you enter a tangled web of meanings. The coiners of ”Cope” as a party name have other things on their minds than the subtleties of the English language, but I do wish they would leave my overburdened surname alone. (They probably won’t unless the ANC can force them to.)

Soon Jason was getting into swing with Cope gag-lines. Cope won’t sell cope to COPE!

Maybe other white surnames could be a fertile ground for splinter-party acronym names: Socialist Marxist International Total Hegemony? Front Of United Revolutionary International Extremists? Congress of Empowered Traditionalist Zulu Ex-exile Extremists?

I wish the new party well. I am hopeful that they will become an opposition with some real clout among the electorate, and will keep an eye on our rulers. They must know all sorts of things about their former comrades. If I ever find their website, I’ll be able to find out whether I agree with their policies. Maybe I’ll contact Loyiso and offer to put a redirect link on my home page. But maybe I won’t find their website, because I already have it. — Michael Cope, Muizenberg

No more no-go zones

I am a proud member of the ANC. When hooligans heckled Comrade Thabo Mbeki at the burial of Comrade Moses Mabhida, myself and others testified that the action was well planned not only to embarrass Mbeki, but even the ANC, SACP, Cosatu and Mabhida himself. No one was charged.

A hooligan burned a T-shirt with the face of Mbeki but, despite TV footage, no one was charged. At Utrecht former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was politically abused, but no person was summoned to the disciplinary committee. Bottles with urine were thrown at Premier Sibusiso Ndebele; again, no one was charged.

Some of our leaders call those who join the Congress of the People snakes, dogs, dying horses, worms, and all sorts of derogatory names. Recently Julius Malema said: ”Every youth must be at the gate of the branch and anyone who sees a Shikota must make it run.” During the height of apartheid, younger than 27 (Malema’s age), I was a member of the Azanian Students’ Organisation and the South African Youth Congress, but never used such violent and intimidating statements as those Malema uses in a free, democratic South Africa.

All of us in the ANC who believe in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution must publicly condemn the disruption of meetings of any party, including Cope. Such an act is primitive, barbaric, backward and against the values Dr JL Dube, Josiah Gumede, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Mbeki stood for. Any ANC leader who encourages such activities should face an ANC disciplinary committee.

As a genuine member of this glorious movement I refuse to be manipulated by any ANC leader or member to disrupt any political meeting. Never again shall KwaZulu-Natal be a ”no-go zone”. Provincial and national executive committees must expel the hooligans who disrupted the Verulam meeting. The midwives of the Constitution cannot be its abortionists. — Siyanda Mhlongo, KwaDukuza

The lack of a common message from the ANC confuses even the staunchest supporters. Those in the ANC leadership today accused Mbeki of micromanagement and centralising all power, but now I can’t help think that perhaps Mbeki was correct. A lot of contradictory statements have come from the ANC leadership.

The ANC, including its president, calls the breakaway faction snakes, dogs, sell-outs, bigamists and all sorts of nasty names. Yet President Kgalema Motlanthe says the ANC would like to engage the group with a view to healing the rift. And Zuma — who was hurling insults at the Cope leadership — now says the door will always be open for those who want to come back to the ANC.

Zuma says they have reined in ANC Youth League president Malema, but on November 13 Malema insulted Northern Cape Premier Dipuo Peters, calling her names, saying she has been bribed by business and Cope. This in the presence of Zuma, who again failed to call the nincompoop to order.

Zuma says criminals, particularly those accused of rape and murder, do not deserve any of the rights in our Constitution, such as the presumption that the accused is innocent until found guilty in a court of law. The same Zuma exercised all his constitutional rights during his rape trial; does he mean he should have been locked up because he was a rape suspect?

Zuma says the ANC is committed to the education of our children — to the point that he will build special camps to force pregnant girls and loitering boys to study. Yet his lieutenant Angie ”The Dog” Motshekga says education is not important (she happens to be the Gauteng minister for education).

Zuma, Gwede Mantashe and Jessie Duarte say ANC supporters will not disrupt gatherings of another party unless provoked, yet the trio kept quiet after it was reported that ANC thugs, unprovoked, disrupted the Cope meeting in Verulam.

The ANC has been hijacked. Every time this ANC leadership mentions the name of its headquarters I am sure Chief Albert Luthuli turns in his grave, because this is not the ANC he led. — Sindiso Malaku, Pretoria

Bigger than the game

M Jackson is wrong to claim Cape Town mayor Helen Zille promised Green Point Stadium costs would not exceed R2,5-billion (Letters, November 7).

Zille’s only undertaking was not to commit more than R500-million (R400-million plus R100-million in contingency funds) of ratepayers’ money to the stadium. She made no guarantees about the final cost of the stadium, which is mostly being funded by national government. In fact she was the first to warn, in 2006, that the initial budget proposed was not enough. We are in talks with the national treasury over the remaining funding gaps and we are looking at other sources of funding, which include selling the naming and operator rights.

Jackson misses the main point about the 2010 Soccer World Cup. By building the stadium for big 2010 matches, we have ensured that residents will benefit from a R2-billion upgrade to the airport, a R1,3-billion upgrade to public transport, more than R1-billion in upgrades to major roads, about R1-billion in upgrades to electricity infrastructure, a R400-million upgrade to the central station, R1,2-billion for new trains and hundreds of millions of rands’ worth of upgrades to public spaces and facilities such as the Philippi Stadium, the Athlone Stadium, Green Point Common and the Grand Parade in the CBD. These, as well as the stadium, will benefit residents after the event. So will the marketing opportunity of hosting the event, which will bring in extra tourism and investment and boost job creation.

Newlands Stadium would not have been able to accommodate such big matches and Cape Town would therefore not have received as much national and provincial government investment.

For the record, Jackson is also wrong about where Zille lives — she stays on the border of Mowbray and Rosebank, several kilometres away from the Newlands Stadium. — Robert Macdonald, spokesperson for the mayor of Cape Town

Obama a false prophet

Many seem enamoured by the election of the first black United States president. Few seem cognisant of the danger in Barack Obama’s opposition to the fundamental ”right to life” of every human being.

Obama’s core beliefs and record fundamentally disagree with his nation’s founding principles, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Obama is governed by the Marxist belief that ”the end justifies the means”. As a result he vigorously supports the systematic murdering of innocent children through abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. In 2002, as an Illinois legislator, he supported infanticide by vetoing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which would have protected babies who were accidentally born alive during attempts to abort them. An estimated 1,5-million innocent children are murdered each year in the US through the Obama-adopted policy of abortion. Without the right to life no other human right makes sense.

Obama also supports contraceptives and homosexuality that thwart the natural generation of life and which are the antithesis of the family. Rather than favouring prayer in schools, he advocates the distribution of condoms. He will bring to the US Constitution same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples.

Obama is a false prophet who preaches ”change” and ”hope” while pursuing a culture of death. — Paul Kokoski

Evolve

Leonie Joubert (November 14) is right to point out that meat-eating bunny-huggers are in serious behavioural contradiction. But even more so are pacifist do-gooders who profess compassion as an ethical imperative, yet fail to observe that eating meat involves the violent infliction of suffering and death on other animals.

This behavioural contradiction is so persistent that one is almost forced to conclude that in such people the capacity for enlightened compassion is only partially evolved, and that at the functional level of acquiring food they are no different to other predatory animals and have not evolved at all. — Oliver Price, Cape Town

In brief

I wake up in a world that says: Africans, you can achieve everything you want if you embrace the truth that the word ”African” ends up with ”I can”. Be the change you want to see in South Africa, Africa and the world. — Lefu Richard ”Constructive Tsunami” Mokoena

It is high time we young Africans get off our laurels and out of our comfort zones and get involved in the mainstream economy. Let us get out there and take the necessary risks required to be economically emancipated, because we are not there yet. — Lucky Khoza, Ivory Park

Dear Dr Freud, We have a national political leader who is always talking about ”snakes” in his speeches. Now his followers are also talking about ”killing snakes” when disrupting political meetings. Is this possibly a sign of sexual repression? — Roland Darroll

The Robert Mugabe letter to Barack Obama (November 21) was hilarious! You’ve summed up the Zimbabwe and African crisis with so much humour it would be funny if the real situation wasn’t so dire. I’ll be waiting for Barack’s reply. — Michelle Lame on M&G Online