Slipping: Readers say the way the story on Mmusi Maimane and FW de Klerk was reported has damaged the M&G’s credibility.
M&G versus Maimane?
With regard to the Mail & Guardian story on Mmusi Maimane’s so-called lessons from FW de Klerk (Educating Mmusi: Is FW tutoring him?), you should hang your heads in shame. That you would give these allegations any credibility is risible. Maimane may secretly admire De Klerk – who knows? – but he’s far from stupid and neither is the “brains trust”. To take “lessons” from him would be political suicide.
And, to top it all, journalist Nelly Shamase is apparently a disgruntled former Democratic Alliance media manager. How is it possible for you to allow her to write a highly damaging front-page story on the DA with no proof, just anonymous allegations, and brazenly rush to print without any substantiation?
Shamase should not be allowed to write any stories on the DA, period. It involves a conflict of interest and is, quite simply, unethical. She’s far from being objective. – Jane Sussens, Pretoria
? Mmusi Maimane has been rightly criticised of being in bed with white conservatives and his recent utterances have proved critics right.
The recent so-called march for jobs by the DA was to assure its voters that the party has their best interests at heart – or so they thought. Recently, the DA has been accused of harbouring racists after one of its members referred to black people as “monkeys”.
Maimane was expected to provide leadership by taking a stand against racism. He confidently came out and said that racist individuals are not welcome in the DA. But his statement was contradictory because the DA reinstated Dianne Kohler Barnard, who shared a Facebook post suggesting that South Africa was better off under PW Botha. Maimane should expel her to assure black South Africans that the DA is serious about dealing with racism.
To shift the attention of black South Africans away from the racist comments made by some DA members and to retain the support of black South Africans in the upcoming local government elections, the DA organised a march “for jobs” and made black people its target audience, because they are vulnerable and are the worst affected group when it comes to unemployment.
Nobody has seen Maimane marching against racism, because he would anger some of his superiors and would lack support from white senior members in the party.
Although unemployment is the most contentious issue in South Africa, a march will never create employment, nor will it provide much-needed skills for South Africans. South Africa witnessed a similar march organised by the ANC Youth League under Julius Malema’s leadership, and it made little if any difference. The same march by the DA will not bear fruit for struggling black people.
Racism is still a reality for many black South Africans. One cannot therefore divert the attention of black South Africans by using their own struggle to assure them that unemployment is more serious than racism, and that they must channel their emotions, hopes and dreams towards fighting unemployment.
South Africans should be honest with each other and start a dialogue that will last for generations to come. – Itumeleng Ntsoelengoe Aphane, Johannesburg
? I have been reading the M&G for many years because I found it informative and I thought the journalism was of a high standard.
Your article on the leader of the DA taking lessons from FW de Klerk, however, has changed my opinion of your paper. I thought that it was opportunistic, unworthy and did not justify the space allocated to it. It definitely did not add value to your standards. This happened in a week when there were more pressing matters that you could have reported on.
I will think twice before purchasing the M&G in future. – Ex-reader
• Editor’s note: The Mail & Guardian is engaged in a formal process with the DA over their complaints with our lead story last week and can only comment once that process is complete. – Editor
Give us back our land
Twenty-two years into democracy, South Africa remains a country of two halves. Racism is rife in our so-called rainbow nation and the cracks of the 1994 negotiated settlement are beginning to show ( Penny Sparrow: Racism’s sacrificial lamb).
“Nation-building” cannot succeed as long as the economy is still in the hands of the white minority, and when land reform is yet to happen. The rainbow nation never existed in the first place, which is why nation-building failed dismally.
Creating forums to help educate people and hosting debates about racism are very necessary, but on their own will not work until true, radical economic transformation has taken place in our country.
How can we have social cohesion when there’s nothing coherent about the current one-sided ownership of our land and the economy?
The 1994 settlement, to an extent, perpetuated some of the racism we face today, because it didn’t deal with land dispossession or do away with institutionalised racism, and forced forgiveness down black South Africans’ throats.
We can never deal with the challenges facing South Africa if we do not understand that the biggest crime committed against the black community, over centuries of colonisation and decades of apartheid, was the dispossession of our land. This is at the core of all the problems, racism included, we face today.
The only way we can start dealing with racism and other problems facing our beloved country is by transferring the land and the economy into black hands. – Modibe Modiba, Pretoria
Please revoke Kevin Davie’s poetic licence
Kevin Davie may be great at cycling himself into a trance, and writing about it, but he has clearly not read the poem he quotes in his piece ( Ghosts find us on a solitary path). To say that The Waste Land by TS Eliot is “based on” the Ernest Shackleton expedition is like saying that War and Peace is “based on” a party in St Petersburg.
Eliot is not “confusing the numbers involved” when he speaks of the mysterious third person flickering on the edge of the minds of the travellers in the poem. In the passage quoted by Davie, Eliot is alluding to the biblical story of the appearance of Jesus, after his death, to two of his disciples on the road of Emmaus ( Luke 24:13-35 – this is mentioned in Eliot’s own footnotes).
Eliot blurs the two stories, as one does in poetry. – Miles Seward, Cape Town