July 10 to 16 2009

Vuvuzela a (t)horny issue

It’s not that Zola Maseko’s take on the alarming noise generated by the vuvuzela (‘Vuvuzelas will doom us to failure”, July 3) is not valid, but the timing gives his voice a European identity. Attacking the vuvuzela immediately after South Africa’s successful hosting of the Confederations Cup, while the vuvuzela has been around for years in local football, insinuates that the artificial horn was fine until Europeans complained about it.

The flares used during European soccer matches seem to me barbaric. They don’t add any value to the beautiful game. They cause unnecessary smog and don’t contribute to the competitiveness of what happens on the field. But as long as Europeans do it in their own backyard, who am I to whinge? In some Arabic countries carnival-like weddings are celebrated with the firing of rifles into the air. As long as they are not firing at my wedding in Sandton or Nelspruit, it’s fine by me.

I find Maseko’s argument against vuvuzelas as hollow as a badly blown vuvuzela. If noise is our way of supporting soccer, so be it — Europe must learn that there are dynamic cultures outside its own.

Maseko is right when he matter-of-factly pleads ‘elitism” — sure, broer, you are dangerously out of touch with the South African reality. Here we celebrate noise. We still sing Shosholoza, remember.

The banning of anything is censorship, which is an attempt to filter creativity.

Instead of calling for the banning of vuvuzelas, Maseko should capitalise on the annoyance and sell soundproof earpieces during the 2010 Fifa World Cup. He could make millions. – Goodenough Mashego, Shatale, Mpumalanga

Bravo, Zola Maseko, for the courage to take on the plague of vuvuzelas. We happened to be abroad during the Confederations Cup and watched some matches with people who, like us, are active soccer followers. The incessant cacophony of the vuvuzelas left us embarrassed. Our co-watchers included a number of people who were thinking of coming to the World Cup, but no more — the vuvuzelas chased them away.

Worse still, contrary to our national desperation for recognition, the vuvuzelas are not even a South African invention. Other than their name, the only thing that makes them South African is that we’re the only country to celebrate their discordant bellow and give them cultural status.

What is probably uniquely South African is the beauty of our ensemble singing. But rather than move the world with the unrivalled harmony and rhythm of our voices, we give them — vuvuzelas! – Sue and Jeff Rudin, Cape Town

As a true South African I was highly impressed by the way both our team and spectators carried themselves throughout this tournament. If Maseko is yearning for his life in exile, he can simply pack his bags and go and leave us in peace. – Lunga Ngqengelele, Centurion

Maseko’s article is filled with half-truths (suggesting, as it does, that South African fans no longer shout the names of their favourite players since the use of vuvuzelas — what about ‘Booooth”?) and misrepresentations (in its failure to recognise the fact that South Africa played exceptional football to lose in extra time to the top-ranked team in the world). I am indifferent to both the vuvuzela and football, but my indifference does not extend to poorly argued comment pieces. – Duncan Pieterse

The vuvuzela should not be banned. It is a symbol of football culture in South Africa. Experts trace the development of the vuvuzela back to blowing a kudu horn — something uniquely African. I feel that for the likes of Xabi Alonso to cast disdain on the vuvuzela casts disdain on the hospitality and culture of our beloved country. I wouldn’t go to Spain as a guest and publicly slam its culture. For a citizen of South Africa to slam our culture leaves me feeling sad. — Michael Shackleton

M&G‘s ‘sinister campaign’

Advocate Ngoako Ramatlhodi is the chair of the Judicial Service Commission. Your blatant and malicious campaign against him has a sense of déjà vu.
In 2004 when your newspaper suspected that he might be ‘tipped” to be the ‘director of special operations” (head of the Scorpions), you mounted a similar campaign and dropped it only when in fact he was not the person appointed.

Advocate Ramatlhodi is a member of the bar and has no pending legal or criminal charges against him. There is no court of law that at present is looking at a matter which involves him and yet the Mail & Guardian, through selectively cutting and pasting together snippets from court matters where no evidence of sanction against advocate Ramatlhodi is to be found, has elected to embark on a malicious campaign against him.

An article written by Mandy Rossouw after she interviewed advocate Ramatlhodi bears a headline which reads ‘Judges must know their place”. There is no place in the actual article which suggests that advocate Ramatlhodi made or implied such a statement or has any intention ever in the future to do so. But the headline, which has no relevance to the article, is displayed in an attempt to create an impression that he may have said this somewhere. Clearly, this is a dishonest attempt at creating an impression about his attitude towards the judiciary, despite the fact that the content of the article quotes him twice indicating his wish to work with the judiciary in compliance with the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

This blatant misrepresentation goes contrary to the press code of conduct.

The representation you make of a property transaction, in which you accuse advocate Ramatlhodi of prior knowledge of a mining licence, omits to mention that provincial governments do not have the competence to grant mining licences and are unable to influence the process at a national level.

Your article of June 26 also omits to mention that the gambling licence you speak of was in fact granted to a Mr Enos Banda, who was not interviewed and asked what actually happened after he won the licence as a result of a thorough, fair and transparent process. You may wish to speak to him and perhaps your journalists will get some factual clarity, not the innuendos with which they are maliciously accusing advocate Ramatlhodi.

Your suspicion that advocate Ramatlhodi ‘is tipped for the position of national director of public prosecutions” has led you to embark on a sinister campaign. You are blatantly choosing to character-assassinate a person without due regard for his rights under our Constitution and his rights in law. Your actions amount to malicious persecution. — Jessie Duarte, ANC spokesperson

Jaundiced utopian dreams …

In response to the letter by Dr Indira Govender (July 3), most certainly we are dreaming. As a ‘public health registrar”, Dr Govender, I ask: which utopian First World public sector are you working in?

I, too, am a public servant who sees daily what transpires in our hospitals. I am a committed doctor who lives by the oath I have sworn, as do the majority of my colleagues. We doctors are grossly underpaid compared with other professionals in public service with less training. There are many young, dedicated doctors out there who give their hearts and souls to our calling but have to work in appalling conditions.

Are you aware, Dr Govender, that in some state hospitals interns are sleeping four to a room? Are you aware that the vast majority of your colleagues work well beyond their allocated work hours? All this so that we don’t turn away the old gogo, who has travelled 150km with her five-year-old grandchild on her back to the nearest hospital with the last of her pension money, knowing that she is number 103 in the queue, and has been waiting since 7am.

What about the doctor working his 36th hour without sleep who can’t leave because there is a terminally ill patient who needs to be seen by the only doctor available? Is that not living up to the code of our calling? Is that not ubuntu? Is that not being noble?

You speak of bigger issues such as ‘war, torture, ethics and truth”. The truth is that we are fighting a war that tortures us daily as both patients and healthcare providers –HIV. You should direct your ire at the fact that people are dying without medication that could prolong their lives.

We doctors are also protesting about appalling conditions that include the lack of ‘ambulances, hospitals, beds, medicines, equipment, staffing”. We are an idealistic generation; we want to be treated like all other public servants. We want to give our patients the care they deserve. By the way, maybe you should have your LFT [liver function test] levels checked — your sclera appear jaundiced. – Name withheld

The government fears what will happen once we doctors are organised. This is why it goes to great lengths to avoid finalising a minimum service-level agreement for doctors, which would allow us to strike legally. It also uses intimidation, much like the apartheid regime. An organised national doctors’ strike will occur swiftly and will hit hard. The government’s best move is to address our concerns so that we can go back to work. We do not want to strike. We want to go back to our patients. – Dr B, Tygerberg Academic Hospital

Moeletsi Mbeki, right and wrong

Your interview with Moeletsi Mbeki (June 26) made me feel hopeful for a change. To see that we have such profound thinkers gives confidence that our country will not go down the route of the rest of the African continent. Mbeki should be encouraged to play a more active role, either in government or the Congress of the People (Cope), where his talents can be put to effective use. — Ben Mokoena, Middelburg

Moeletsi Mbeki laments the fact that the Zimbabwean government did not build any hospitals in Harare after independence in 1980. By limiting the observation to Harare, Mbeki exaggerates the absence of post-independence health infrastructure development in Zimbabwe.

The government directed its efforts at creating new health infrastructure in areas beyond Harare, the very areas the white minority regime had neglected. By 2000 the government had built 25 district hospitals and one provincial hospital in each province. By 1987 it had built 224 rural health centres. Its healthcare policies tripled the rate of child immunisation between 1980 and 1988. Infant mortality fell by 80% in the same period.

Between 1980 and 1987 government expenditure on health increased by 80% and stood at 2.3% of gross domestic product, almost three times higher than the sub-Saharan African average of 0.8%. The fact that things have gone disastrously wrong in Zimbabwe should not be used to deny the tremendous investment made in health after independence. — Elijah Munyuki, Gaborone, Botswana

All human

The headlines and many insinuations in your article ‘Iran shows its human face” (July 3) are offensive. Regardless of George W Bush, how could anyone believe that the people of Iran were any less human than the people in Britain or the people in South Africa?

Do we really have to rely on Twitter and the Comedy Central’s Daily Show to learn that Iranians are ‘real people”?

Iran has a very cultured society and we all share many similar hopes and aspirations with them.

I expect your correspondents to recognise the oneness of all humanity regardless of their nationality. – David Mayes, Somerset West

In brief

The African Union (AU) shields monsters such as Omar al-Bashir and Robert Mugabe, proving that it operates not from principle but out of support for an ‘old boy” network. The blood of innocents spilled in conflict and corruption cries out from African soil against it. May the AU rot in hell. — WL Mason, Johannesburg

I will never again purchase South African wines or other South African products and I will encourage my friends and family to do the same. This boycott also applies to any South African travel plans. I have taken this position because of the senseless and barbaric slaughter of 50 stranded whales by the Marine and Coastal Management of South Africa, which, in an absurd, Orwellian twist, is tasked with the protection of these intelligent creatures.–Roger Martinez, Alaska

Noting, both with interest and keen anticipation, that Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is intent on cleaning up the mess that is home affairs, will she, mindful of the imperatives of the day, undertake publicly to ensure that those best qualified for any post that may become available will be appointed, irrespective of their political affiliation? — Mark Nettelton, Grahamstown