/ 26 August 2016

Letters to the editor: August 26 to September 1 2016

The ANC Youth League still has its supporters but its leaders are failing them and the party.
The ANC Youth League still has its supporters but its leaders are failing them and the party.

Youth league has lost its way

When an organisation has reached an advanced stage it must work towards sustaining its peak rather than regressing. Such is the state of the ANC Youth League today.

The organisation is rich in history and was once a site of progression, but it has lost its former shine and glory.

The youth league was the mirror of the future of the ANC. It worked energetically to move the mother body from narrow nationalism and the domestication of politics towards a multiracial and working-class consciousness.

But now the league that used to be the agenda setter is relegated to the politics of being blind defenders of individuals.

It has reduced itself by defending patronage and careerism in the ANC instead of advancing the interests of young people.

When one reads the history books, they say that the inception of the league began with a call for the ANC to shift its sights away from the viewpoint of South Africa in isolation from the rest of Africa to a holistic pan-Africa view – that we are of Africa, and our struggles domestically are not unique, but rather that the continent was fighting a war against colonialism, oppression and exploitation.

AP Mda and Anton Lembede were among the giants who formed the youth league’s ideological framework.

This league shook its mother body with a militant programme of action – this was when the title of “kingmaker” was first given to the league. During those times, an analytical youth league pointed out that the time was ripe to challenge the norm of passiveness in the ANC.

The youth league ensured that society played a larger role to shake the oppressive apartheid government out of its comfort zone.

It cannot be doubted that, when the youth league viewed its elders, it saw an elite group of professionals completely oblivious to the masses and their daily struggles. Youth league leader David Bopape, a teacher and organiser of workers, put the plight of workers on to the programme of the ANC.

Connecting the dots, the youth league moved away from racial identity and linked themselves to the politics of the working class.

This tendency helped to further merge the liberation movement with the South African Communist Party. From that stage onwards, the league was moving from one milestone to the next in terms of political achievement.

This very organisation produced leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo, who are among the greatest contributors to the liberation of South Africa and, ultimately, to the democratic dispensation.

Today, listening to the youth league, it is as though these pages have been ripped out of the history of the organisation. – Hlengiwe Nkonyane, Vosloorus


Haupt fails to identify the real villain

I trust your readers did not miss the funny (both comic and pathetic) side to the University of Cape Town’s invitation to Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, to deliver the TB Davie Memorial Lecture, which is invariably delivered on the subject of academic freedom.

As Professor Adam Haupt correctly argues (UCT was right about racist speaker), this was less than an inspired choice, given that in 2005 Jyllands-Posten published the very controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Haupt explores the rise of new forms of racism, following a number of cultural theorists, under the headings “cultural racism” and “liquid racism”, a rather invidious subspecies of what is termed “liquid modernity”.

I am unfamiliar with these arguments, but I am sympathetic to his argument and his rather depressing conclusions.

Yet it strikes me that Haupt does not comment on two things that stand out for me – and are perhaps not unconnected. First, UCT seems here to have really lost the plot.

I write this not only as an alumnus of the university but also as one who is conscious of the cultural and intellectual debt I owe this institution in shaping my thinking.

Thus, it strikes me (issues of sensitivity aside) as completely underwhelming that the editor of a publication whose claim to fame rests on controversial cartoons should have been asked to give this lecture.

The list of better choices seems very large indeed. Haupt and I could no doubt come up with 50 or so, just chatting over coffee.

This brings me to my second thought about Haupt’s piece.

Would his list have included anyone who, in delivering this lecture, would be likely to challenge the elephant in the room?

In his piece he speaks about racism but not about neoliberalism or corporate capitalism, which are the true enemies of academic freedom. They have already taken most of it – and I am tempted to believe that the management of UCT would prefer that Rose ruffled religious and cultural feathers rather than their own complicity (for that is certainly what it is) in neoliberalism being put under a spotlight.

It is unkind to think this, but might not the choice of Rose be in itself a revelation of lack in those who made it? Sadly, the things lacking seem to be all the positive intellectual and cultural values and ideas that, through my years as a student there, have always led me to believe that UCT was a natural home for them. – Damian Garside


Right wing’s ‘enemy’ is within

Richard Calland’s opinion piece Age of uncertainty and paradox reveals his bias.

The article is laced with a broad spectrum of villains. His criticisms lack substance and for the most part consist of ad hominem attacks on the individuals of whom he disapproves. Aspirant United States president Donald Trump, former United Kingdom Independent Party leader Nigel Farage and the Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema are anti-Establishment weirdos.

Calland makes his bias clear when he smears Trump as a grotesque example of crass Anglo-capitalism and a crude nationalist. This is compared with the internationalism, whatever that is, of Hillary Clinton, clearly his preferred choice.

Calland asserts that Western leadership is no longer trusted by its electorate. Why the surprise, considering the wars we have been led into after being fed a catalogue of lies about the threat of imminent nuclear attack, at the time, from Iraq, followed by the disasters in Libya and Syria?

Far from our lives being made safe from terrorism, we are now infinitely more vulnerable than before former US president George W Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair worked their intrigues into world affairs. Yes, most certainly our trust in politicians is at its lowest ebb, the root of our uncertainty.

He further laments that “the left is in crisis” and “all new ideas come from the right”. Oh, is that so? It’s the right that frogmarched us into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The right has given us Syria, Islamic State and the refugees flooding into Europe. It’s the right that is moving Nato ever closer to the Russian border and conducting military exercises there.

It’s the right that conducts trade talks in secret, then expects the electorates to blindly accept the outcomes. So, what’s new about this?

Right-wing policies masquerade under the paradoxical banner of neoliberalism. Well, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, its ideas are neither new nor are they liberal. So, when commentators such as Calland refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a raving lunatic, what agenda is he trying to foist on us? Is he perhaps an “embedded” journalist, one that punts the right message? For the right wing to justify itself, it needs an enemy, then it needs to spread its message. Is this where Calland fits in?

Our age of uncertainty and paradox is brought about by the failed policies of the right. Examine the record. Economic deregulation leading to massive casino-style speculation by the banks, quantitative easing, spiralling debt, wars on terror, wars on drugs, total upheaval in the Middle East that’s bequeathed us a refugee crisis and the Islamic State, the invention of Russian and Chinese security threats, secret trade deals, plutocracy in the US, where money power calls the tune.

Calland calls for one, just one new idea from the left. Well, how about breaking the bipartisan political system in the US? – CJA Meares


ANC ‘young lions’ are kittens

I could not resist a hoot of laughter when I read that ANC young lions smell blood and that Fikile Mbalula and Malusi Gigaba are waiting in the wings to take over. If there are two people who are less impressive than the current ageing lot at the top of the ANC, it might well be these two.

Mbalula is regarded by most adults as a joke. His recent tweet in response to the local government elections was a classic: “DA is a white Racist, Facist, Minority party. The narrative that they are growing is hogwash at best.”

He presides over a ministry that is big on spending money on gala occasions, celebrations and “bashes” and paying huge fees to celebrities but has failed to provide reasonable opportunities for our young people to acquire the sporting skills needed for representative sport. While being loud-mouthed about the necessity for transformation, he does little to advance it.

As for Gigaba, one has only to mention his two portfolios to date, public enterprises and home affairs, to know that this is not the man who is going to get the South African economy moving again.

He failed to do anything discernible to sort out our public enterprises. His pig-headedness about the visa regulations cost thousands of jobs in the tourist industry and millions in badly needed revenue.

My advice to the ANC: if you want to reverse the disastrous fall-off in support, you need to become a modern political party serving the real needs, aspirations and interests of South Africans. Accept that this is 2016, not 1966, and tailor your policies accordingly.

And if you want to have new leaders attractive to the voters, then try to counter Mmusi Maimane with a candidate who is even vaguely a match for him in terms of competence, brains, integrity and commitment. – Douglas Gibson

Fikile Mbalula
The ministry of sport that Fikile Mbalula presides over has failed to provide opportunities for youngsters to acquire skills needed for representative sport, says the writer. (Delwyn Verasamy, M&G)