Don’t blame the ‘North’
Jeremy Cronin (‘The new world walls”, November 13) takes issue with the hype surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
Of course the world did not witness a ‘new global renaissance”. Instead, organised thugs butchered their neighbours in the Balkans, Rwanda and countless other places by the hundreds of thousands while the world mostly just looked on. In Tiananmen Square Chinese students paid with their lives for demanding a little bit of freedom. Western know-it-alls helped engineer privatisation processes in parts of the East that resulted in unfettered robber capitalism. Emerging global crime syndicates had a field day trading everything from drugs to sex slaves. Nuclear disarmament never happened. Americans twice (!) elected the worst president in recent history. And now climate change is noticeably turning up the heat.
Yet history is not only about what was, but what could have been. Therein lies the opportunity of learning from mistakes and doing it better next time. Western hubris and sheer ignorance in dealing with the former Warsaw Pact countries squandered what could have been post-Cold War dividends. A Financial Times journalist recently called this a ‘failure of imagination”. And we may do it again.
There is as yet no evidence that the madness of the financial markets that has landed the world in recession will be reined in to avoid a repeat performance. Similarly, the developed world’s foot-dragging in funding climate-change adaptation in the South could scupper an agreement in Copenhagen and beyond and yet land us in what a recent documentary called ‘the Age of Stupid” — we saw it coming, but we didn’t do anything.
So there are plenty of reasons for soul-searching and Cronin is right to point that out. Where he completely loses the plot is in blaming the ‘North” and absolving the ‘South” for all that is wrong in the world. Migrants from Africa and elsewhere in search of a better life in Europe do not only drown in the Mediterranean because Europe has a restrictive migration regime, but also because their political elites are either too incompetent or too corrupt to create conditions for making a living in their own countries.
Closer to home, it is ludicrous to blame the excesses of financial globalisation for the ‘crisis of under-development” — the persistence of the bucket system, the lack of ARVs in Free State hospitals, the skills crisis — and for ‘environmental destruction”, such as the systematic (mis)management of precious resources such as water. These issues are the responsibility of the government of the day, Cronin said. Blaming global forces for what really requires home-made solutions is the wrong way to learn from history. — Jo Lorentzen, Cape Town
The uncritical embrace
I agree with some of Rapule Tabane’s sentiments, but not with his reasoning (‘Hogan must go for her own good”, November 13). Hogan hasn’t lost the confidence of colleagues. She has been undermined by certain colleagues to ensure that confidence in her is lost. Jeff Radebe’s role in the attempted promotion of Siyabonga Gama at Transnet is instructive.
Radebe not only had no business supporting Gama, he also supported someone whose unsuitability became publicly manifest. Racism was alleged, never proved. The ANC Youth League and the Black Management Forum (BMF) cried racism at Eskom, with no intention of proving it. Once again the amoral in the ANC tried to humiliate Hogan. The ANC in Parliament started messing with the SABC long before she took responsibility for it.
Hogan is partly being undermined because she’s white. Alec Erwin was in the first government, an Mbeki man, an unprincipled minister, and knew how to look after himself. Hogan is principled and has great integrity. They share only skin colour.
The media should not take the blame. Politicians become caricatured, sneered at or looked down upon when they repeatedly do and say the wrong thing. Jacob Zuma was a spent force — until a particular grouping chose to use him as their ‘candidate” against Mbeki.
John Hlophe was not treated with disdain. His bad press resulted from being supported for unconscionable behaviour. There weren’t two sides to his story. Hlophe deserved to be impeached and to fail in his bid for the Constitutional Court. His race saved him from being impeached the first time. There should not have been a ‘John Hlophe Alliance” or support from a Black Lawyers’ Association. Hlophe should have been written off much sooner. Most who opposed him did so because they were knowledgeable, principled and appalled.
We are not ‘uncritically embracing” Hogan. We are not ‘laughing off” the likes of Jacob Maroga, who appears to have been competent. But even the world’s best chief executives fail in certain circumstances. It is not shameful, but Maroga has allowed his dignity and reputation to be tarnished by the ANCYL and BMF.
We do not wave the hand of dismissal way too often. We do it far too little. — SC Weiss, Parktown North
Too many Gray areas in your argument
Had Stephen Gray (‘Too hot to handle”, Books, November 6) read my book, Representing Dissension: Riot, Rebellion and Resistance in the South African English Novel (Unisa Press, 2003), he would have been able to give at least one reply to the (unnamed) interviewer whom he met in 1994, who asked why South Africans ‘can’t do anything for themselves”.
Two novels, Pilgrim’s Rest by F Brett Young (1922) and Money’s Worth by F Bancroft (1915), focus on the 1913 Rand Strike and FE Mills Young in The Great Unrest (1915), though mainly concerned with the 1914 strike, also gives the 1913 event some attention.
Knowledge of the material dealt with in my book would also have enabled Gray to inform his interviewer that a whole range of significant political events in early 20th-century South Africa were dealt with by South African novelists: the Bambatha Rebellion (1906), the Rand Revolt (1922), the Bulhoek Massacre (1921), the Robertson clash between ANC supporters and white opponents (1929), the activities of Robey Leibbrandt and his pro-Nazi Stormjaers, and the Nazi infiltration of [the then] South West Africa. The first of these, the Bambatha Rebellion, also provided fictional material for two overseas writers, Bertam Mitford and John Buchan. —JA Kearney, Gillitts
By ‘big themes”, Gray seems to mean historical novels (JM Coetzee deals with ‘big themes”, doesn’t he? And Gordimer? And Brink? And Gray?). He also confuses commercial clout with literary achievement. Oprah Winfrey can give Cry, the Beloved Country ‘golden sales” because she has seven million viewers, seven times the biggest talk show on SABC. He also fails to mention Garden of the Plagues by Russel Brownlee or Islands by Dan Sleigh, two excellent recent South African historical novels, or other, older works by such authors as Peter Abrahams on the Great Trek and James Ambrose Brown on early Johannesburg. He also ignores many such works in Afrikaans. — H Gordon, Cape Town
The strange ‘leniency’ of Stephen Ellis
I have great respect for the work of Professor Stephen Ellis, whose book of 17 years ago, co-authored with Tsepo Sechaba, Comrades against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile, has yet to be surpassed.
I appreciate Ellis’s drawing attention to the continued significance of the issues underlying the mutiny of the overwhelming majority of the ANC’s trained troops in Angola in 1984 (‘When the ANC refuses to listen”, November 6). He makes a strong point, locating a top-down administrative ethos in the ANC as a source both for the mutiny 25 years ago and the current service delivery protests.
But Ellis is grossly wrong when he writes that the ‘leaders of the mutiny, known as the Committee of Ten, were incarcerated after they had surrendered” and that, with a single exception, ‘most were treated leniently, being eventually released”. (The single exception, whom he names, was Zaba Maledza — the exile name of Ephraim Nkondo, a younger brother of the United Democratic Front leader Curtis Nkondo — whom Ellis says ‘died in detention”).
Ellis has a strange idea of ‘leniency”.
The best and earliest first-hand, verifiable account of the mutiny and its aftermath, A Miscarriage of Democracy, by five former mutineers, was written 20 years ago and is republished in my book, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and Swapo (Jacana, 2009).
The authors narrate how two mutineers, Selby Mbele and Ben Thibane, ‘lost their lives in a very pathetic way” in detention in Luanda State Security Prison, where ‘tortures, beatings and screams” were the norm; how two female members of the Committee of Ten elected to lead the mutineers had to be hospitalised after torture (one of them, Grace Mofokeng, died earlier this year, unrecognised); and that the ANC security department, Mbokodo, ‘instilled so much fear” in inmates in Quatro prison camp that prisoners ‘behaved like frightened zombies who would nervously jump in panic just at the sight of commanders, let alone at a rebuke or a beating”.
As they write: ‘In the process of these beatings during labour time, prisoners who could not cope with the work were sometimes beaten to death.” They give details of three such deaths.
There is also reason to believe that Zaba Maledza, who was seen being dragged across Quatro camp with a rope around his neck on the day before he died, was murdered.
Strange ‘leniency”. — Paul Trewhela, Aylesbury, UK
Let’s focus on what matters
Questions from the Mail & Guardian regarding the article ‘Women’s ministry ‘drowning’” (November 13) covered many unfounded allegations made about the process of establishing the ministry of women, children and persons with disabilities.
Unfortunately, the ministry was not offered an opportunity to comment about its core projects, which became the most substantive point in the article. Statements, attributed to some public officials, that the ministry is not functional undermine the process of monitoring and evaluation that the current administration has put in place to enhance government performance.
I will certainly not allow the sideshow that is being created through the media to divert the ministry from its critical task of leading efforts to address the major challenge of violence affecting women and children in our country.
The resources for the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign were allocated to the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs. Thus we are working with them on this year’s campaign.
Leadership requires that we rise above political mud-slinging and ensure that our nation remains focused on what matters most: addressing the plight of women and children who continue to fall victim to crime and abuse. — Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, minister of women, children and persons with disabilities
A confused message
The proponents of circumcision seem to think that if they repeat their mantras often enough their views will become policy (HIV Prevention supplement, November 6). Circumcision is ‘good value for money” and ‘we will be able to prevent one HIV infection for every two circumcisions performed within the next 20 years”. Yet it is far from clear that this is the case. The message is confused: to be effective, circumcision must be coupled with other preventative measures, such as condoms, yet it is resorted to precisely because these have failed. If, on the other hand, these measures do become successful, through education and counselling, then what would be the need for circumcision? — Alex Myers, Newlands
In brief
Ray McCauley, founder of the Rhema Bible Church, is a scary man (‘The High Priest of SA”, November 13). These charismatic churches filled with congregants foaming around the mouth, rolling in aisles, clapping hands and sobbing their eyes out, are deranged. In psychological parlance these poor people suffer from chronic group hysteria bordering on deep-rooted psychosis. God bless these demented bastards. I certainly won’t. — Herman Lategan, Green Point
Although the medical establishment breathed a collective sigh of relief that the farce of HIV/Aids denial is officially over, the public health system is still festering with denialists, obstructionists, Manto-loyalists and the gibbering incompetence that inevitably follows a reign of terror. If ever there was a time for a truth commission, it is now — to account for more than 400000 deaths and more than two million children orphaned. South Africans need to understand the consequences of turning slavish political commissars loose on public policy. — Angela McIntyre, Pretoria
Thanks to the bus rapid transport system, the Goethe Institute’s perimeter wall is not the only one that has tumbled recently. Could someone make sure the Johannesburg Country Club does not rebuild its wall on Kingsway? We all enjoy the view! — MH