Youth league must fight graft, elitism
The African National Crisis under Jacob Zuma and Gwede Mantashe continues (Mummy’s cross with her baby). We were told that our elective conference will now be a policy conference just because their horse is 20:1 in betting in all provinces. Jeremy Cronin should call this national executive committee decision a “Stalinism” or a “Zanufication”.
Things fall apart, whatever Zuma wants to do with “puppets” everywhere. We have a crisis at the SABC, Petronet, in Parliament, Cosatu and now the ANC Youth League. It pours heavily because the agenda is the next ANC elective conference and Zuma has a desire to have Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma or Bathabile Dlamini to head the ANC. Others want Cyril Ramaphosa or Kgalema Motlanthe at the helm of our party. Baleka Mbete, a new mining guru, is ambitious to succeed Zuma. When ANC MPs defy Ramaphosa, they protest that “Mr Fix” is undermining Mbete to profile himself.
Panyaza Lesufi was correct to call for the readmission of Julius Malema to the tent, so he could piss out of the tent. In Parliament, he is now the voice of young people.
How can our mother body unite Cosatu when it fails to unite its own children? Fikile Mbalula was older than 35 but he continued to be president of the league because he was an important spear to “gouge” enemies of Zuma on our bumpy road to Polokwane. When the league abused more than R400-million of Lembede Business Trust money, there was no investigation by our mother body.
Bheki Cele was prevented from challenging Zandile Gumede in eThekwini, the biggest region in KwaZulu-Natal. Clandestinely, Luthuli House is pushing for Gumede, despite her uncomradely behaviour. In the Musa Dladla region (Empangeni), the Zuma diehards scored a victory when Thulani Mashaba defeated the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa renegade, Cedric Gcina.
As young people we are duty-bound to expose these sharp contradictions: with or without Malema, let’s have a youth league that fights corruption and the Zuma elite class that is dividing Cosatu. – Fabian Maluleka, Rustenburg
No racial agenda at UCT
Seán Muller uses a very broad and inaccurate brush to paint a picture of academic transformation at the University of Cape Town (Transformation is not UCT’s priority). Without producing any supporting evidence, he asserts that UCT – rated among the top 150 institutions in the world, has the highest ranking of all universities in Africa and employs the highest number of National Research Foundation-rated researchers in South Africa – prefers to hire and promote mediocre white academics over more talented and experienced black peers.
This assertion is illogical, and insulting to his former colleagues at UCT, who contribute to the university’s global reputation for academic excellence and superlative research.
To set the record straight: no academic hiring or promotion process at UCT is launched on the basis of racial classification, or on any sort of hidden agenda. The promotion process is self-determined and self-regulated by faculty members: they decide what they will demand of themselves.
Objective criteria for appointment and advancement are spelt out explicitly. In the case of academic promotion, faculties engage in a consultative process to develop common agreement on the standards for promotion they wish to use and apply to themselves. The criteria are discussed freely in faculty board meetings.
Transformation should be achieved alongside academic excellence. The urgency is not just for the sake of the university; the high quality of research in South Africa is one of the country’s economic drivers for creating new business sectors and jobs. The excellence of the education students receive contributes to national transformation.
A rigorous promotion process challenges each academic to perform at the highest standards. In turn, a strong university that confers a professorship augments the academic qualifications of the individual who has been promoted. For this reason, UCT also has programmes in place to help young academics to climb the promotion ladder. – Professor Crain Soudien, deputy vice-chancellor, UCT
Oppose the culture of lawlessness
I read Losing the battle to win the war with disbelief and desperation. We supposedly live in a constitutional democracy where the rule of law is supposedly entrenched. Yet again we have court orders flouted and evidence withheld to derail the course of justice.
We had it during the challenges to the arms deal and Nkandla and now Marikana and the Eskom tender awards, where those charged with the protection of the Constitution ride roughshod over attempts to investigate “serious misdeeds”.
That orders of court can be ignored to interfere with justice is unacceptable. Such manipulative practices do nothing for this country’s reputation or individuals’ confidence in the law.
This dereliction in the timely pursuit of justice is contributing to the collapse of order, the ramifications of which are now self-evident. A culture of lawlessness has been created, which will take a long time to rectify – and then only if the political and social will can be found to support it.
The time is overdue for those people of good moral value to stand up and elect honest representatives committed to reinstating a system of government that will project the ideals of the rainbow nation we were so looking forward to creating. – JF Payne, Johannesburg