April 3 to 9 2009

Own goal

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the reason for the refusal of a visa for the Dalai Lama is because ”sports and politics can’t mix”. Are we to understand that our government is incapable of thinking about two things at the same time? Bravo Barbara Hogan. Many of us applaud a person who is able to multitask. — Heather McKenzie

We can’t be held at gunpoint by the Dalai Lama. I fail to understand the irrational outcry. After Mao Zedong took over China in 1949 he transformed it into a communist state. The Dalai Lama refused to accept Mao’s administration and opted for exile.

This delinquent leader wanted to divide China by advocating an apartheid bantustan system. He wanted to address the peace conference in South Africa to render China unpopular.

South Africa has serious diplomatic relations with China and our government is obliged to protect our relationship with them. As a country we support a single-China policy. — Lufhuno Marima, Pretoria

The government should concentrate on encouraging political dialogue between the Chinese authorities and the Tibetan government in exile led by the Dalai Lama to resolve the thorny question of the autonomy of Tibet. Even trade with China should not be allowed to extinguish South Africa’s quest for the universality and indivisibility of human rights. — MB Skosana, IFP; chair: foreign relations committee

The government did the right thing not granting a visa to the Dalai Lama. He is supposed to be a Buddhist monk who should engage in spiritual practice and not in politics. He is being brought before the Indian High Court in New Delhi for violating human rights; the court case is still running.

What our society needs is a good example of pure spirituality to lead us to peace and harmony. The Dalai Lama has shown that he is not such a person. Wherever he goes he causes distress, division, anger, fighting and confusion. He disguises his desire for political power with monk’s robes. Our Western view of the Dalai Lama is completely hazed by the Hollywood hype. — F Wind

By its action against the Dalai Lama South Africa has scored an own goal. It has gone directly against the spirit of the World Cup as an event that brings the world together in shared humanity, above all differences and disputes. — Feizel Mamdoo, Johannesburg

As far as I know, the South African government was aware of the invitation to the Dalai Lama issued in November 2008. Why are the Chinese, one of the world’s superpowers, so frightened of a Buddhist monk who has no army and lives in exile? — Chris Kudla, Tibet Society of SA

Foreign policy is a tool to further the interests of the state, not to make judgments on human rights issues. If refusing a visa to the Dalai Llama serves those interests, it is the correct thing to do.

But then the state should be consistent. It should support the West, its source of business, cash and expertise, instead of the ragbag of rogues who provide no benefits to South Africa such as Myanmar, Libya, half of Africa and particularly Zimbabwe and Sudan. It should also support Israel, an export market and source of agricultural and water-management expertise for South Africa, rather than Palestine, which contributes nothing to South Africa’s wellbeing.

As for the Dalai Llama, it is comical to hear this product of a religio-fascist feudal system being called ”His Holiness”. The practised far-off look on his face and meaningless simplistic ”peace” quotes disguise the fact that the system he wants to reintroduce in a ”free” Tibet is one where there was no advancement or education for a country of serfs and no employment except to serve as slaves for a self-elevated priest class. China for all its faults has brought millions more people out of poverty than any other state has ever done in history. — Sydney Kaye, Cape Town

Voting as a wake-up call

Like Zackie Achmat (‘Time to take democracy seriously”, February 20) and William Gumede (‘Ruined by liberation aristocrats”, March 6) I take democracy seriously. I have been asking myself: what is the purpose of my vote? How will I make my vote count strategically? Who should I vote for? While many of us, loyal ANC voters, struggle with such questions, one thing is certain: not voting at all or spoiling the ballot paper is not the most strategic way of using the power of one’s vote. There is a more effective way of altering the balance of power and censuring unacceptable political leadership, substandard governance and inadequate service delivery, while also defending our threatened constitutional democracy.

The purpose of my vote and the outcome I desire from this election is this: a party in power committed to fulfilling the promises made during the struggle years, demonstrably capable of creating conditions for all people in South Africa to participate in building happy, healthy, prosperous lives and to competently achieve these high aspirations in peace, with honour, integrity and the inclusion of all South Africans and all legal foreign residents.

Unfortunately, no political party has demonstrated the capacity to achieve this in the next 10 years. They all make similar promises and badmouth one another, but none has revealed what new approaches they will use to revitalise moribund government institutions, arrest declining service quality and maximise government’s performance effectiveness and service-delivery capacity.

The ANC is the only party with the national breadth, depth, history and international recognition required to bring us all to ‘the promised land”. But it will not achieve this unless it cleans out its house, cleans up its act, learns from its mistakes, opens itself to new thinking and wins back the prestige and moral high ground it once commanded.

Therefore, I believe, a strategic vote is one that compels the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) to clean up the party’s act and government, and impels the ANC and in Parliament and government to act harshly against corruption and nepotism, stamp out the arrogance that promotes influence-peddling and ignores what is in the best interest of good, moral, delivery-oriented governance. Above all, it must promote a culture of accountability to the electorate.

I still have faith in the ANC and want it to be the honourable party we all once respected, so I will vote against the ANC in the April 2009 election. By giving my vote to an opposition party (I am considering the UDM or Cope) instead of spoiling my ballot, I will double my power to effect change by giving the opposition added strength to hold the ANC to account. My vote for another party is a protest vote against cronyism, tender-rigging and mediocre performance.

An ANC that sees its majority reduced will get a wake-up call and realise its government is on five-year probation. I, and I am certain countless others, still believe that the ANC (and its government) can re-invent itself and turn itself around and become, once more, the honoured and honourable servants of the people. — MF (Mac) Carim, Gauteng
A confected labyrinth of distortion

Ronnie Kasrils, a one-time Zionist youth leader, in his article ‘International solidarity can stop apartheid Israel” (March 27) disgorges an exemplary tirade of communist-style stock accusations and clichés against his self-defining Other, the State of Israel, alias the Jewish people.

In one gigantic emotional convulsion of misinformation, exaggerations, half-truths and plain balderdash, he leads the reader through a confected labyrinth of distortion and disanalogies.

Kasrils is an ex-communist and as such has already succumbed once to the ‘totalitarian temptation” in his support for a system that holds an Olympic gold for the production of misery and death. Ordinary people generally learn from their mistakes, but Kasrils is no ordinary person. He spits fire at the very mention of Israel but thinks nothing of consorting with anti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic and anti-rational terrorist groups such as Hamas.

While human rights is his game, he utters ne’er a word about the ­frailties of these holy misogynists. Does he approve? Or is it that, in respect of Israel, his rage and the object of his rage are linked not by principle but by the psychological need to flee from his ‘Jewishness?”

His Jewish parents were forced to flee Czarist pogroms in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Now, in the 21st century, the son too escapes, not through geographical space, but by the psychological device of self-excluding himself from the community by the ‘confession” of imaginary sins. This ‘penitential narcissism”, which makes him feel special and provides him with indemnity, power and status, is bought at the expense of the group.

Ronnie! Koomt aheim; der tsimmis brendt. — C Volpe

Kasrils seems unaware of the significance of his penultimate sentence: as long as much of the world’s population can be divided into Muslim, Christian and Jew, issues like Palestine and Pakistan will not go away. Politics has killed its thousands but religion has killed its tens of thousands. When are we going to stop trying to run this world on the basis of destructive, archaic, irrelevant ‘holy writ”? — AT Forbes

Go to www.mg.co.za/letters for more

De Lille’s dodgy addition

Even if some political leaders tend to be over-optimistic on their expected election results, surely it is not too much to expect Patricia de Lille not to misrepresent previous election results? De Lille is peddling an untruthful line that the ID ‘doubled” its vote from 2004 to 2006 and expects it to ‘double again” in 2009. She argues in M&G of March 27 that the ID polled 267 000 votes in 2004 (actually 269 765, so basically true) and then 503 000 votes in 2006 (worse than untrue). The ID actually polled 217 761 votes in 2006, according to the IEC’s PR ballot). What De Lille appears to have done is taken the national ballot only in 2004 and compared that with all the 2006 ballots (ward, PR, DMA and district council) votes added together, which adds up to 530 912 votes. In other words, she counts your votes once in 2004 and three times in 2006 in a rather disengenous attempt to ‘prove” that the ID has ‘doubled”. Come on Patricia, if you treat voters as if we were stupid, are you surprised your party is going backwards? — Greg Krumbock, Boughton

Filling the gap

In ‘So many books, not enough care” (March 27) ­Darryl Accone writes: ‘— it does seem generally that more editing, rewriting and the creative to-and-fro between author and editor would be a boon”.

This touches a chord dear to the hearts of the Professional Editors’ Group (PEG), an association of hundreds of copy-editors, proofreaders and other language ­practitioners.

We still encounter far too many published works crying out for a good copy editor. It is not as though there’s a shortage: PEG’s membership alone has grown by 25% in the past year.

PEG will be running sessions at the Cape Town International Book Fair in June. — John Linnegar, chair: Professional Editors’ Group

In brief

The M&G has been worrying about the quality of the election posters. But their boringness makes even more important the smiles on the faces of the candidates. Perhaps try analysing them? For instance, the Women’s Forum candidate would certainly get my vote, unlike the sinister leer of the man expected to be president. — Peta A Jones, Tshitandani/Makhado

It seems that in Australia the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) will open only the High Commission in Canberra on April 15. It was asked to open more foreign missions in Australia but refused. This means that thousands of South Africans in Perth and other Australian cities — a whole continent away — will have difficulty voting. Likewise, South Africans in the US have to travel to Washington DC or New York to vote. — Ingela Richardson, Gonubie

Nikiwe Bikitsha (March 27) glosses over the disadvantages of polygamy. It discriminates against women (they are not allowed several husbands) and also against certain population groups. Thus, it is against the principles of the Constitution. Bikitsha also mentions ‘consenting adults”. Is the consent of the first wife sought by the husband before he takes a second wife? What if she does not consent? — J Matthews, Durban