‘Angels’ are volunteers
I am the leader of the Guardian Angels in South Africa and I must clarify some issues in the article ”Angels’ take on sex workers” (January 22).
Your front page says: ‘Cape Town hires freelance US crime-fighters”. The Guardian Angels are volunteers. We cannot be hired or paid. Cape Town has certainly not ‘hired” any American Angels.
The member pictured on the front page is not an American. Guardian Angels started in the United States, but each country stands independently, united by common training and a common mission — to safeguard their communities.
The article calls us ‘controversial”. Yet we are accepted in virtually all of the 144 cities in the 14 countries where we are active. If we were considered controversial in the US, we would not have received a $200 000 (R1,5-million) grant from the city of New York last year.
The article says we are ‘trying to clear the streets of prostitutes” — a lie. We are not an anti-prostitution organisation. In some countries it is perfectly legal and we do not try to stop it there. We are a law-abiding organisation.
The article says the 20 Angel volunteers will be fed out of city coffers. There will be more than 600 volunteers from all areas of society. All of them will be paid, except for the 20 Guardian Angels; these volunteers will also be fed, so there is no extra expense for the city in this regard.
People Opposing Woman Abuse (Powa) and the Sex-Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat) worry that we see prostitutes through a moral lens. Not true, either. We see them through a criminal lens. For as long as prostitution is illegal in South Africa, prostitutes will unfortunately be criminals.
The fear of vigilantism is unfounded. In the 30 years that Guardian Angels have been in existence, never has a single Angel, anywhere in the world, been convicted of any crime relating to his patrol work.
Another lie is the statement that the council sent me to New York for training. My plane ticket was paid for by the International Alliance of Guardian Angels and I went for a conference. The training we received was here in Cape Town, by an American Angel who stayed in our homes.
There is no official partnership between Cape Town and the International Alliance of Guardian Angels.
The last distortion is that the founder of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa, is a high-school dropout. He graduated from Canarsie High School in Brooklyn in New York. — Charl Viljoen, International Alliance of Guardian Angels
M&G responds: The front-page caption and headlines, not the responsibility of the reporter, were an inaccurate reflection of the story, and for that we apologise unreservedly. Glynnis Underhill, in her story, said the Guardian Angels are volunteers. Charl Viljoen is a City of Cape Town employee and spokesperson for the Angels’ local chapter and the city’s neighbourhood-watch groups.
The Angels are controversial: in the early 1980s, New York mayor Ed Koch denounced them as ‘paramilitaries” and only later decided to work with them, as stated in the article. Current Toronto mayor Michael Bloomberg and police chief David Miller publicly oppose the group.
In South Africa, concerns have been raised by Powa, Sweat and now the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC). The M&G has seen a manual, released and jointly signed by the Guardian Angels and the city, which calls for authorities to ‘wage a war on prostitutes”. The manual bears the logos of the Guardian Angels and the City of Cape Town. Under the heading ‘Stopping prostitution”, it claims the Angels have reduced prostitution in Parow by 80%.
The WLC says the pamphlet could encourage ‘people to take the law into their own hands, and opens the door to vigilantism”; it also believes the manual undermines confidence in legitimate law enforcement agencies, said attorney Stacey-Leigh Manoek.
Underhill stated in the story that 20 Guardian Angels would fly in from across the world to patrol the city ‘in a bid to prevent crime during the World Cup”; she did not say they would do anti-prostitution work. Viljoen told the M&G the Angels flying in for the World Cup would be housed at the academy and would be fed meals by the city.
Viljoen says the city did not send him to New York for training, but Anton Visser, Cape Town’s security manager, told Underhill the city had sent Viljoen to New York to train with the Guardian Angels in 2005, when Mark Sangster was its police chief.
A 1992 article in the Washington Post, headed ‘Guardian Angels’ chief clouds his reputation; Sliwa admits he lied to gain his wings”, stated: ‘A high school dropout working as night manager at a McDonald’s in the Bronx, Sliwa and some buddies 14 years ago formed a crime-fighting group they called ‘The Magnificent 13’. They picked up garbage and escorted elderly ladies up subway stairs, but in a city reeling from a wave of blackouts, lawlessness, looting and arson, they could not get the press to pay attention. That, of course, was before Sliwa donned a red beret and called himself a Guardian Angel —”
Reparations: law should fill gaps
In ‘Kader Asmal joins fight to hear case in SA” (January 15), Professor Asmal states: ‘There is no customary law extending corporate liability because nations believe that human rights violations result from conscious moral choice, something that cannot be attributed to a corporate entity.” In effect, his view is that customary international law regulates states and in certain circumstances individuals, but does not apply to corporations. Professor John Dugard takes the opposite view, which in principle recognises corporate criminal responsibility.
I must respectfully disagree with Asmal. I believe that Dugard is correct. International law is not static and is capable of developing. Whether it applies to corporations depends on how it is interpreted. Asmal has adopted a primitive, literal method of interpretation.
A teleological method of interpretation, which is purposive and value-based, would indeed render corporations liable to be sued in international law. There is cogent precedent in international case law for such a method of interpretation.
Consider two decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on South Africa’s mandate to govern Namibia, then South West Africa (SWA), conferred by the League of Nations after World War I. A comparison of these two cases illustrates the difference between a literal and a teleological interpretation, the latter motivated by a natural-law jurisprudence in regard to an omission or gap in the law — a casus omissus.
In 1966 the ICJ decided that Ethiopia and Liberia, as former members of the erstwhile League of Nations, did not have standing in law to bring an action against South Africa that claimed it had not fulfilled its mandatory duties.
Its judgment noted the view that the court ‘is entitled to engage in a process of ‘filling in the gaps’ [in the provisions of the mandate] in the application of a teleological principle of interpretation”, but the majority of the court rejected this approach and its underlying philosophy: ‘[I]t has been suggested — that humanitarian considerations are sufficient in themselves to generate general legal rights and obligations and that the court can and should proceed accordingly. The court does not think so.”
In sharp contrast, in a 1971 advisory opinion, the ICJ adopted a teleological approach. It held, by a process of unashamedly filling in gaps, that the United Nations had the power to not only supervise the SWA mandate but also to unilaterally revoke it: ‘[M]indful as it is of the primary necessity of interpreting an instrument in accordance with the intentions of the parties at the time of its conclusion — the court must take into consideration the changes which have occurred in the supervening half-century [since the League Covenant was drafted], and its interpretation cannot remain unaffected by the subsequent development of law, through the Charter of the United Nations, and by way of customary law. Moreover, an international instrument has to be interpreted and applied within the framework of the entire legal system prevailing at the time of its interpretation.”
This majority opinion reflects a wide teleological approach that is value-coherent with the ethos of international law and is based on a natural-law jurisprudence that has played a formative role in the development of international law. I submit that a teleological interpretation does render corporations liable and the progressive ICJ advisory opinion provides cogent case-law support for such a method of interpretation. — Professor George Devenish, Durban
Why diplomat was expelled
In the article ‘Emissary for diversity” (January 15), Tony Leon, ambassador to Argentina, is quoted as saying: ‘In 1987 — the occupant of this flat, a man called Wolfaardt, was expelled. They — wanted nothing to do with apartheid —”
As head of mission in Buenos Aires, I was asked to leave Argentina on May 20 1986. The day before, South Africa had attacked ‘ANC targets” in Zimbab-we, Botswana and Lusaka.
Yet the reasons for the expulsion were diverse, as I conveyed to the department of foreign affairs in Pretoria in a secret telegram on May 26. They included the deteriorating political situation in South Africa and our inability to move forward on the Nelson Mandela issue. The non-aligned group of nations was to meet in Harare later that year. Argentina, the only member with formal relations with South Africa, was in the process of opening an embassy in Harare while Zimbabwe was being militarily attacked by South Africa. Argentina was also trying to erase its ‘dirty war” image by being more active at the United Nations, and was currying favour in its dispute with Britain about the Falklands.
I can’t recall an ‘old Nationalist pub with — sports paraphernalia” during my time in the residence. What I can recall is the wonderful view from the balcony of the penthouse Leon now occupies. It was bought in the early 1970s by Dr RA ‘Doc” du Plooy, a career diplomat who was never, to my knowledge, a National Party supporter. — Pieter Wolvaardt, Grahamstown
Hayibo’s rubbish
The replacement of your often interesting and enlightening Verbatim with a new puerile and idiotic Hayibo.com column beats me.
I am particularly angry about the reference to shark attacks — ‘Eat a Tourist” (January 22).
This is journalism at its basest and most trivial, with no regard to the distraught family who have had to deal with this tragedy.
Shame on you, Mail & Guardian, for publishing this pathetic rubbish. I wish that you could be thrown to the sharks.
I will probably cease to buy the M&G if your articles continue to reflect such crude ‘humour”, which makes me want to vomit. — ‘Umbrage”
In brief
About 32 years ago, I stood on the banks of the Dusi river, awaiting the start of the three-day kayak race to Durban. All around was nervous chatter and banter. Suddenly there was a silence as a lone, immaculate figure, carrying his kayak in one hand, approached. Canoeists opened a path for him, and a low buzz proclaimed the arrival of Graeme Pope-Ellis (‘Our greatest- ever”, January 15). That was the closest I have ever been to royalty. — Stuart Buxbaum, Johannesburg
On Jon Qwelane being a homophobe (January 22), it stands to reason that all who wag their fingers at God should be squalling for human rights. Sin is sin and we should all be ashamed to show off what we do behind closed doors if it’s not with one’s spouse (man and wife, that is).
The times have changed, but the Bible has not. — Thando Kondile, Port Elizabeth
What’s happening in the ANC confirms what the late Steve Tshwete warned: that the ANC would be sold to the highest bidders sometime in its history. How can the ANC have shares in a company dealing with Eskom?
Thanks to the media for being a reliable watchdog. — Portia Zulu, Ixopo