M&G readers share their thoughts on Jimmy Manyi, Patricia de Lille, Japan’s nuclear crisis and more.
Manyi off colour on Indians
I am an Indian, so I want to deal with Jimmy Manyi’s utterances (“DA will not exploit Manyi’s ‘nonsense’“, March 18) from the standpoint of being Indian, while realising that I do not talk on behalf of all Indians. I cannot speak from the standpoint of being white, because I have not had that experience.
Manyi spoke of an “oversupply” or disproportionate representation of certain population groups and said that Indians had “bargained” their way to the top. In the most recent grade 12 exam, of the 51 top candidates in Gauteng, 19 were Indian. This is clearly an example of disproportionate representation. KwaZulu-Natal shows similar disproportionate representation: in their top 10, four were Indian. The Proteas cricket team has two Indians, which is another example.
It would make interesting reading and I am sure that the statistics are out there somewhere regarding disproportionality in terms of Indian doctors, lawyers, professors, PhDs, chartered accountants, accountants, quantity surveyors, chief executives, chief finance officers, and so on. Over 150 years Indians have risen from being indentured labourers to the positions that they occupy now.
In all government departments you will find a disproportionate number of Indians and whites. The solution is simple. Terminate their services and establish proportional representation. At present, every government department is in crisis. Watch them deteriorate into hopeless chaos.
Africa produces 2% of the world’s economy. Of this 2%, South Africa contributes 1%. This means that the rest of Africa together produces what South Africa produces on its own. South Africa has adopted and accepted the capitalist mode of production for its economy. Capitalism, I believe, brings out the crasser characteristics of human nature, such as greed. Greed has a biological and genetic basis, being a survival imperative. If people resort to unsavoury means to survive in an unsavoury economic environment, why criticise them? Praise them for showing the ingenuity that is required to survive in a dog-eat-dog world.
Remember, Indians did not have the advantages bestowed on whites by apartheid. We made it to the top in spite of all the obstacles placed in our way. For the few in a position to bargain their way to the top, it is exemplary that they escaped their poverty-stricken roots. We are successful at what we do and this success comes through hard work.
Surely the bargaining that Indians purportedly resort to is more acceptable than stealing taxpayers’ money to enrich oneself or awarding tenders to one’s own company as a government official, or stealing money from the mouths of the poor. These are unquestionably more despicable acts than bargaining.
It is estimated that 20% of South Africa’s gross domestic product is lost through corruption or mismanagement of state funds (that is, taxpayers’ money). Surely this is a more pressing concern than the success of a minority group. We come from a horrible past, based upon a single point of discrimination: race. Do we want to perpetuate such thinking or erase it altogether? I think the latter is the more desirable option. — Professor LS Jeevanantham, Glenanda North
Nuclear is ‘safest’
Over more than 50 years, nuclear power has proved itself to be by far the safest source of energy. The accident at Fukushima in Japan simply confirms this. Yet the Mail & Guardian carries headlines such as “Avoid disaster on our shores” and “Masking the high risk of nuclear energy” (March 18).
The Fukushima station, consisting of six old-fashioned boiling-water reactors, was struck by an earthquake and a tsunami of monstrous violence, far beyond its design, and yet the human casualties of the accident have been few.
So far, five workers have died, all victims of the tsunami it seems, and the radiation release has been too small to harm the public. By contrast, accidents in coal, gas, oil and hydro installations kill thousands every year. Between 1969 and 2000, the number of deaths, over the full energy cycle, were 20 276 for coal, 20 218 for oil, 2 043 for natural gas, 29 938 for hydro and 58 for nuclear (figures from the Paul Scherrer Institute). Last week, during the Fukushima accident, 21 people died in an accident at a Pakistani coal mine.
And this does not include the long-term harmful consequences of these other energy sources. In the United States alone, air pollution from coal stations kills an estimated 10 000 people a year. Wind turbines have killed at least 72 people since large-scale wind power began in the 1970s. Nuclear power has killed 62 people since it began in the 1950s.
Nuclear has produced more than 10 times more electricity than wind, but wind has killed more than 10 times as many people per unit of electricity as nuclear. Again, this does not include casualties from the appalling long-term mining pollution for neodymium, used in wind generators. Every other source of energy kills more people than nuclear, so if you stop a nuclear plant and turn to some other energy, you are condemning people to death. — Andrew Kenny, Noordhoek
Hatred in media leaves one ‘Shaiky’
It has been shocking to read the bile-filled vomit and mouth-foaming hatred directed against Schabir Shaik by the media and some holier-than-thous who just evolved from their proverbial trees (“Cracks appear in the Shaik family edifice“, March 18).
It made me wonder: why this hatred? Is it possibly because he is Indian or, worst of sins, an Indian Muslim? If this was a Van der Merwe, you and your coterie of assassins would not have batted an eyelid.
I hope one day Shaik gives his side of the story and all of you in the media end up with faces like Nugget polish. Thank God, in a decade you will be obsolete and will have to go and look for a proper job. — Disgusted, Durban
CAS a victim of white hegemony
I am an honours student at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for African Studies (CAS). It is good that we have African content in courses at UCT and that there is inquiry into issues African in all the disciplines (“No threat to African centre“, March 18).
In my undergraduate degree, my majors, linguistics and archaeology, contained 50% to 100% “African” content in that the digging or the recording (the fieldwork) for the articles in our readings took place on this continent. But this is not enough. Because of the history of power and discourse in the world, the findings from all this work on Africa, as well as the shaping and designing of projects on Africa must pass through a framework of critique that is antiracist, anticolonial and antihegemonic.
The hegemony I am referring to here is white scholarship. It should not be that all the papers we read and the vast majority of our lecturers are white academics. We are an African university. Most of the papers we read should be written by Africans and most of our lecturers should be Africans.
I find it distasteful that I should have to make such a racist statement, but this is South Africa, and again and again I have encountered prejudice in white South African, particularly male, lecturers that is out of place in “the best African university”.
I believe that white people as a group cannot talk about Africa without their own assumptions coming through. These are damaging to students and to unbiased academic inquiry. There may be exceptions, but they are rare enough that a group of 20 white South African lecturers will contain a preponderance of those who patronise and minimise African achievement, even if from a kindly liberal standpoint.
That is why we need more black staff. They need to be there to critique the assumptions of their colleagues, to produce points of view that don’t evolve from the perspective of the white power hegemony (no matter how liberal).
This is one of my wishes for this university — that it will become truly African. The wannabe-Ivy League and old-school-tie pretensions of liberality and the absence of an energetic pro-African ethos at UCT have irked me to the point of open criticism — and I am a white female student. How much more may black students feel this lack? The closing of CAS comes across to me as a conspiracy of white hegemony, even though there are a few token black academics in the discussion groups on the new school. They need to go back to the drawing board and the recruiting line. — Name withheld
De Lille a hypocrite
I do not like the ANC much, but I must agree with former Western Cape premier Lynne Brown when she says Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille had a hand in Patricia de Lille becoming the DA’s mayoral candidate “Mother of a battle for CT“, March 18).
Tony Leon, Mike Ellis and others tried to recruit De Lille in 2001 or 2002, but she would join only if offered the Western Cape premiership or Cape Town mayoral post. Because De Lille was not prepared to join the DA as an ordinary member, it is safe to assume that part of the talks between the Independent Democrats and the DA included executive positions for De Lille. She became an MEC immediately.
Now can we remember that De Lille was once in the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC)? Can we also remember that Apla, the PAC’s military wing, set out to kill whites and did so on occasions such as the St James Church massacre.
De Lille, being a member of the PAC, supported the killing of innocent people. The same De Lille has gone on record as saying: “One settler, one air ticket.” Has she made plans to buy Zille’s air ticket from her MEC salary? This racist woman will now serve the party she claimed did not care about the poor. Now she sings its praises.
Here is a lovely description of the DA by its very own mayoral candidate: “The DA have exposed themselves as hypocrites, politically cynical and completely insensitive to our democracy and our fantastic nation. They are stuck in the past and they will remain there. They continue to lose credibility. “If anyone doubted that we needed a new official opposition, this is real proof.” That was De Lille in 2004. Now she is one of the hypocrites. — Bulelani Cornelius Mfaco-kaMsimango, Khayelitsha