Truth to Power

Response to Pallo Jordan article

2011-09-19T02:02:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, September 18, 2011, the lead on the letters page of the Sunday Times was a good one. It dealt with two articles the previous week on the Review pages of the newspaper, one of them by Pallo Jordan, the ANC cabinet minister. I submitted a letter in response to the same article, but it was not published. It is carried below.

I was pleased to note that Pallo Jordan adopted a far less virulently anti-colonial stance than usual in his article on Tiyo Soga, “The first African modernists” (September 11, 2011).

Normally, all we hear from him and other African commentators is how the European settlers “stole the people’s land” and suppressed them.

But the case of the Rev Soga tells a different tale. This was a 19th century Cape colony where the British, for all their early faults, later, through strong missionary and other humanitarian movements, promoted the advancement and integration of the Xhosa people.

That was how Soga came to be taken over to Scotland, where he trained to be a Presbyterian minister and married a local teacher, Janet Burnside, before returning to the Eastern Cape to help uplift his people.

Consider these words from Jordan: “The secular cultural impact of the movement initiated by the Christian converts [like Soga] led to the spread of literacy, modern education, technical training and the acquisition of modern skills among Africans.”

One of the reasons I have a keen interest in Soga is that, in the early 1980s, I played a small part in helping ensure that the historic hamlet of Mgwali, where Soga established a Christian mission, was not destroyed and its people forcibly removed to the Ciskei at the height of grand apartheid.

As an organiser for the Progressive Federal Party in East London at the time, I helped publicise the issue. But my role was minor compared with that of PFP MPs like Helen Suzman, Andrew Savage and Errol Moorcroft, not to mention the Legal Resources Centre under Geoff Budlender, who finally helped ensure that Mgwali, near Stutterheim, survived.

I invite readers to google my name and the word Mgwali, which will take you to a section of my blog where you can read a bit more about this fascinating place and the trauma it was subjected to under apartheid.

Putting Pinky in her place

2011-08-29T00:51:00.000-07:00

The tendency of black South African columnists, with a few treasured rare exceptions, to paint our entire history - and hence white people's role therein - in as negative a light as possible, prompted me to again submit a letter for publication n the Sunday Times. Alas, last Sunday it was not used. Indeed, no letters critical of Ms Pinky Khoabane were used. Anyway, for the record, this is what I submitted:

Pinky Khoabane simply bristles with a Mugabe-like desire for revenge and retribution in “Sorry arch, but now it’s too little and too late” (August 21). And of course it is her white South African compatriots who are again in her sights.

I am always alarmed at the knee-jerk response of black South African commentators to the realities of a modern economic system in which they still do not feature as prominently as they should. Certainly, since 1994, the ANC has ensured that the bulk of state jobs have gone to people of colour – even if this has often been at the cost of efficiency as underqualified people have been promoted.

But it is the private sector that worries Khoabane most, as she again cites with disdain the fact that whites are still in the vast majority of managerial positions, while it is also still white farmers doing most of the commercial agriculture.

The way she writes, you would think that when whites first started arriving in this country over 350 years ago, there was already a thriving, modern economy which they then stole. The reality is that way back in history, Europeans explored and often colonised vast tracts of the earth. The British empire was immense, and South Africa was part of it for about 150 years. Before that, it was the Dutch who impacted on the Cape. The end result of this long, often ugly and discriminatory, association between settlers and natives was the development of modern towns and cities; the establishment of a first-world economy. Apartheid, from 1948, undermined what should have been a gradual deracialising of the economy – and drove a wedge between black and white.

Instead of blaming the ANC for failing, over the past 17 years, to institute a working education system which would have helped economically empower black people, Khoabane falls back on the old trick of blaming whites themselves. Whose fault is it that, despite throwing billions of rands at the problem, our schools are still not providing the vast majority of black children with essential skills?

The new South African propaganda

2011-08-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Was the wealth of South African whites acquired by "bloodshed and robbery"? Too often, today, black commentators in our media are expressing such views as "historical fact", when in reality our history was far more complex and ambiguous. I recently wrote the following piece based on the row over an editor being called a "black snake in the grass deployed by white capital", and that she would have been necklaced in the 1980s.

Truth or Propaganda?

The nature of propaganda is such that the more you repeat a lie, the more people begin to accept it as the truth.

A classic example was Nazi Germany before the Second World War, where the Jewish community was demonised by the fascist leaders under Adolf Hitler to such an extent that eventually they used this “truth” as justification for a policy of genocide.

So I write with a sense of growing concern at the direction in which the national dialogue has been moving of late. And something Veli Mbele said in his “In my view” column in the Port Elizabeth newspaper, The Herald, of August 22 encapsulates the way in which African South Africans have become so steeped in the “black is right, white is wrong” perception of our history that they refuse to see the many uncomfortable nuances, the vast expanses of grey.

Mbele wrote a largely commendable analysis of the row between City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Sowetan columnist Eric Myeni, who was fired after writing a racially charged diatribe attacking Haffajee. We all know the most jarring aspects of what was written – things like calling her a “black snake in the grass deployed by white capital to sow discord amongst blacks” and that in the 1980s she would “probably have had a burning tyre around her neck”. Scurrilous stuff.

Mbele explored further Myeni’s argument about how the use of state tenders to enrich black people could be justified. Mbele commendably says the point is whether “when they get rich through state tenders ... they do so legally and ... use their wealth to materially improve the living conditions of African people in general”. On this point, of course, one has to ask: how many of the many state tenders awarded to BEE companies since 1994 have been above board? How many of the companies were equipped to do the job, and indeed completed it properly? One only has to look at the RDP housing fiasco – with houses crumbling – to realise that far too many of these companies were ill-equipped to tackle the projects for which they tendered. Often they simply sub-contracted the work to established (read white) firms, thereby increasing the cost of the project.

But that is an argument for another day. More worrying for me are Mbele’s comments with regard to our history. He notes that Myeni had stated that the DA “receives money largely from white business, which is the main economic beneficiary of the government tender system”. Firstly, that is a dubious claim, since white firms are by and large only given the contracts when, as noted above, black firms find themselves unable to do the work. In terms of the BEE loading formulae, contracts will go to black firms first. Indeed, the whole BEE concept was almost custom made to facilitate corruption. As soon as you put race above things like competence, price and track record in the awarding of tenders, you’re asking for trouble. So we are stuck with a system literally designed to promote just the sort of moral malaise which Mbele correctly identifies in Myeni’s argument.

However, what really concerns me is this sentence by Mbele: “It is common knowledge the DA is a historically white party and that our national wealth, which now resides in white hands, was acquired through bloodshed and robbery.”

He goes on to talk about “these historical facts”, as if his biased view – which is widely held thanks to decades of indoctrination – is holy writ. The historical reality is far more nuanced. There are indeed vast grey areas where Mbele sees only black and white, good and bad.

A brief resume of the counter-argument would go like this. Bantu-speaking people came down from central Africa and “colonised” what is now South Africa and was occupied by the Khoisan. European whites started “colonising” the same area, starting in what would become Cape Town, from 1652. That’s over 350 years ago. The world was a very different place. The great powers of Europe were taking to their sailing ships and exploring a world they had only recently discovered was indeed round, not flat. They were motivated by both a desire to find wealth through trade, and indeed colonisation, and among their scientists and intellectuals, by a fascination with the complexity of this planet. Charles Darwin is a fine example.

It was as much an age of discovery as one of imperialism. Yet imperialism did occur, and Britain was the key imperialist for a century and a half. Of course “weaker”, less advanced indigenous people were conquered and governed by settler rulers. (Just as the Romans did to Britain for nearly 400 years until 410 AD, the Normans did after 1066 and in a sense the Roman Catholic Church did to much of Europe for 1000 years up till the 16th century.)

The local populations of colonised countries were exploited and marginalised. But Britain did abolish slavery in 1833, and by the mid-20th century gradually loosened its grip and eventually handed over the reins to the locals in countries around the globe. A fine example is India, which is now a thriving democracy, though still beset by widespread poverty.

Most important of all, the European settlers brought with them – especially in the 19th and 20th centuries – all the benefits of the scientific, intellectual, industrial, agricultural and economic advances that had made their home countries the powerful states they were. These were introduced into South Africa as a direct result of colonialism, leaving us with an advanced, industrial economy that is the envy of the rest of Africa.

Certainly black people often suffered grievously, particularly under apartheid post-1948. But the broader picture is one of a country provided with the building blocks to succeed by the ingenuity of its white settler community in partnership with the indigenous population.

Mbele and Myeni can distort this history as they please, but each time they make use of anything that has its origins in the West – the products of centuries of rigorous intellectual endeavour – they should pause to reflect on whether they shouldn’t be just a little grateful for that legacy.

I suggest the Internet – a western invention – might be a place to start looking. Or computers themselves. Or cars, trains, internal combustion engines, cellphones, telephones, radio, television, CDs, DVDs, fridges, stoves, electricity. Look at the history of science and ask yourselves, should we not be grateful for these gifts, the atom bomb notwithstanding? Think too of things like freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, human rights, modern medicine, formal schooling, universities, police forces, democracy. All were, by and large, a product of this western European age of enlightenment.

We have a choice. We can accept this broader, more balanced, picture of our history. Or we can just swallow the “white is wrong, black is right” propaganda hook, line and sinker, until in the end all manner of cruelty is justified in addressing this supposed “truth” – as Hitler did in Germany and Poland.

Nationalising South Africa's mines

2011-08-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

Julius Malema and the ANC Youth League have been calling for the nationalisation of South Africa's mines. What sort of impact is this having? This is how a Reuters correspondent reported on the issue on August 10, 2011. Consider what effect such a report might have on potential investors overseas. This is the report:

By Jon Herskovitz

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa’s ruling

African National Congress is at war with itself over calls to

nationalise a mining sector that has been the backbone of

Africa’s largest economy.

Nationalisation could bankrupt the country and destroy its

credibility among investors. But the idea resonates with the

country’s poor black majority who see it as a way to spread the

wealth from a sector that grew powerful along with

white-minority apartheid rule.

Here are a few questions and answers as to what may result

of the nationalisation debate.

WILL SOUTH AFRICA NATIONALISE ITS MINES?

Not unless the ANC wants to ruin the economy by trying to

take over a sector that accounts for about half a million jobs

and 6 percent of GDP.

The country cannot afford to buy out listed mining firms

which have a market capitalisation of about 270 billion, equal

to about two-thirds of GDP or twice the annual state budget.

Running the mining firms would cost tens of billions more a

year and given the loss-making track record of state-owned

enterprises, nationalised mines in South Africa would place a

huge drag on the economy.

Threats to tweak laws in order to expropriate shares for a

fraction of their value would run up against international

investment guarantees that would almost certainly a trigger

severe backlash from South Africa’s trading partners.

The debate is largely kept alive to settle political scores

in the ANC and will stay on the agenda at least through the end

of next year when it holds a conference to elect its leaders.

IF NOT NATIONALISATION, WHAT DOES THE GOVERNMENT WANT?

The government has been clear on what it expects from mining

companies: more black ownership, more jobs and social justice

for the black poor who have been marginalised for decades by

mining barons.

Nationalisation will not happen but keeping the debate alive

provides leverage.

The government has created a state mining company which will

focus on strategic minerals including coal and uranium, although

it has yet to be decided how the firm would operate. Analysts

said this may be the extent of state ownership in the industry.

WHAT MIGHT MINING FIRMS BE PRESSURED TO DO?

The government will likely apply more pressure on mining

firms to achieve a government mandate for them to have 26

percent black ownership and 40 percent black management by 2014.

Mining firms could be pressed into joint ventures with the

public sector in the downstream processing of minerals. The

government’s national growth strategy sees mineral processing as

a pillar of growth and job creation. It has laid out 10 mineral

commodities and five value chains it wants to develop, saying

mining firms will be called on to help.

WILL MINING FIRMS FACE INCREASING TAX AND ROYALTY BILLS?

Changes may come at the margins but there will probably be

nothing major. South Africa’s royalty system is considered one

of the more advanced among mining giants.

WILL MINING FIRMS AVOID EXTRA COSTS?

Probably not. Mining firms may face greater pressure to

increase shareholdings to local communities where mines are

located and pay a larger bill for infrastructure development.

The energy-intensive sector may see higher tariffs from state

utility Eskom, which is scrambling for funds to build much

needed power stations.

Mark Cutifani, chief executive of mining power AngloGold

Ashanti, said in an opinion article last month the mining sector

is willing to help end “inequality and the demons of its past".

Separate from nationalisation, mining firms could face a

huge bill from legal cases from miners seeking compensation for

deadly lung diseases, especially in the gold mining sector.

WHAT ARE THE DANGERS?

High-minded ideals of social justice could easily fall prey

to crass corruption.

Foreign investors, South Africans and the ANC's governing

partners have grown increasingly worried about the

implementation of a black economic empowerment policy introduced

by the ANC after apartheid ended 17 years ago.

BEE is aimed at righting the economic wrongs of apartheid

but critics say it has only enriched a few politically connected

businessmen in a country where millions live in poverty and over

a quarter of the work force is jobless.

An increased push for more black ownership could deepen the

pockets of a few while the impoverished majority see no gains.

Nationalisation could be used to bail out BEE firms that

made bad investments in the sector or to revisit mining rights,

which would deal a blow to regulators already being probed by

police over a sweetheart rights deal that benefited President

Jacob Zuma’s son and his backers.

Joint venture firms could end up as money pits that create

few jobs while piling costs on mining firms.

The biggest risk is that South Africa will place too high a

burden on mining companies, hurting the competitiveness and long term prospects for Africa’s largest economy.

Sadtu's baleful influence

2011-07-29T00:51:00.000-07:00

This short letter was published in the Sunday Times on July 24, 2011. I wrote it in response to several examples of people in power demonstrating that when it comes to acting morally, they are prepared to fudge issues at random. Anyway, the national newspaper chose to edit my letter quite severely, so I am including my original below. However, the letter may have spurred ST journalist Chris Barron to grill a senior Education official along similar lines.

My published letter is above. Click on it to read it in larger format. Below is my original, which cited two further instances of moral torpidity.

A reading of the Review section of the Sunday Times last week (July 17) provided a disturbing insight into the moral malaise afflicting this country. Three points stood out:

- In his article on education, the DA's Wilmot James referred to the Education International congress in Cape Town from July 22 to 26. While many of Wilmot's suggestions for resolving the education crisis hit the mark, it did not seem to occur to him that the fact that Sadtu was hosting the gathering during a school term was symptomatic of the very union-induced failure besetting education. Three of the days earmarked for the conference are school days. How many teachers will sacrifice time they should be spending with their pupils to attend this conference? This just a week after their three-week midyear holidays.

- President Jacob Zuma's new (old) spin doctor, Mac Maharaj, confesses to S'thembiso Msomi in an interview that in cases like Cooperative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka – who is accused of using R160 000 in public funds to fly family members around the country – Zuma will not fire him because “we don't like to drop a person. And that is a good quality.” In other words, when it comes to the ANC, every cadre is untouchable.

- Business Unity SA executive member Sandile Zungu uses similar logic to justify having chief government spokesman Jimmy Manyi as head of the Black Management Forum. Chris Barron asked him if black business was likely to speak “without fear or favour” against nationalisation when “one of its most influential leaders is the government's chief spokesman”. Zungu said there was “a school of thought which says it enhances that because of access and reach”. Asked if it doesn't “compromise its independence”, he said: “Independence is not enhanced by dissociation, necessarily.” So he's saying it is possible to be critical of government while being its chief spokesman. What dangerous nonsense.

This is a section of an interview which Chris Barron conducted for his So Many Questions column in the Sunday Times of July 24, 2011. He was speaking to the director general of Basic Education, Bobby Soobrayan in the light of the Sadtu conference I referred to, and to two reports which spoke of Sadtu's baleful influence on education. As usual, Barron was brilliant in pinning his subject down. I often wonder how he does these interviews. It is in person or over the phone. What they constitute, however, is an object lesson in how to speak truth to power. Now if only we could see our politicians - including Malema - put under similar pressure on national TV, preferably by someone as informed and fearless as Chris Barron seems to be.

Prof Jonathan Jansen on education

2011-07-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

I submitted this piece in response to an article in the Sunday Times of July 10. Needless to say, it wasn't published. Instead, the paper led the July 17 letters page with another response to the same article written by someone who regurgitated the very turgid rubbish which got education in this country into the sorry state it is to begin with. Anyway, for what it's worth, here is my response to Prof Jansen's article:

Professor Jonathan Jansen hits the nail on the head with his analysis of what is wrong with education in SA (Fixing a class-based calamity, July 10). However, what he did not mention was the imposition of outcomes-based education soon after the ANC came to power.

In their arrogant rush to remove all structures in place before 1994, the ANC decided to impose a curriculum that many warned would fail. And so it has.

Jansen notes that it is the former Model C schools which “continue to provide the camouflage of an apparently functional education system”, and the reason they do is not entirely financial. What most of them did was apply OBE very reluctantly, at all times ensuring that tried and tested methods – what Jansen calls “routines and rituals” – were retained. Clearly, with Sadtu undermining all attempts at achieving excellence, these rituals have not been allowed to take hold in township schools.

The ANC has repeatedly refused to acknowledge that it needs the expertise and experience of the white people of this country, and as long as it continues to do so it will reap the bitter rewards of such short-sightedness. Meanwhile, the ANC elite send their children to those very schools which still apply the successful methodologies of the apartheid era. How tragically ironic, since it means that the people who vote them into power again and again – the impoverished township masses – will continue to bear the brunt of this new form of class-based apartheid.

Meanwhile, the ANC goes on appointing under-skilled, inexperienced cadres to key positions in local, provincial and national government as part of its race-based affirmative action programme. And so the vicious cycle of failure built on failure will continue.

King George VI

2011-05-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

I had a piece published in The Herald, Port Elizabeth, back in about 2001 protesting at the planned change of the name of the King George VI Art Gallery to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum. My concern was that the move amounted to destroying history. It came as the ANC has sought to change various colonial names. A tentative compromise has been reached in this area, with Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Despatch incorporated in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro. Then I saw the film, The King's Speech, and thought I'd have another bite at this apple. This was the result.

My article, published in the Weekend Post, on March 3, 2011. Click on it to read it full-size.

Then came some follow-up letters and SMS, which are always interesting to see. Often, sadly, my "supporters" add a racist dimension I never intended. Will black Africans ever accept that, for all its failings, colonialism was a necessary step in this country's development?

Some more SMS responses from the following week (not the bottom one, which is about another issue).

Two more, from March 26, which means the issue kept going for three weeks.

The fight to save Mgwali

2011-03-18T01:20:00.001-07:00

Today, 17 years since the advent of non-racial democracy in South Africa, many younger people will have no real concept of what apartheid was like. Working for the liberal opposition, the Progressive Federal Party, in the early 1980s, I got to grips with some of the policy's most sinister aspects. There was a so-called "white corridor" between the nominally independent Ciskei and Transkei. The purpose of Vervoerdian "grand apartheid" was to make black people a minority in South Africa, as people supposedly returned to their "homelands". But of course nobody wants to move from where they have lived for generations, so the state started its policy of forced removals of "black spots". One such area was Mgwali, near Stutterheim. The son of one of Mgwali's oldest residents, Kidwell Giga, visited us in our Eat London office and told us something about this historic place - and of how the Nat government was colluding with Ciskei officials to have the area "voluntarily" agree to be removed so some or other dumping ground in the Ciskei. The PFP made it its business to try to halt this removal and many others, including that of Duncan Village, a long-established black settlement in East London. Here the aim was to dump these people in Mdantsane, a sprawling township some 20km outside East London - and happily (for the Nats) in the "independent" Ciskei. They would lose their citizenship just like that.

I wrote this piece at the time (the last leg of copy is below). It was published in the Daily Dispatch in November, 1982. I was 26 years old. Please click on the images to see them at a readable size.

I am happy to record that thanks to widespread opposition, Mgwali and Duncan Village were not obliterated. A few small battles against apartheid were starting to be won in the early- to mid-1980s. I believe those of us who had the guts to speak out against injustice at the time helped bring down the apartheid government monolith in the early 1990s.

Fighting apartheid in the 1970s

2011-03-09T00:49:00.001-08:00

Since the ANC came to power in 1994, but especially since Nelson Mandela stepped down as president in 1999, I have found myself compelled to become increasingly critical of the ruling party's mismanagement of our country. Corruption, cronyism, nepotism, the race-based black economic empowerment laws, and so on, have all come in for a battering. My detractors have often accused me of racism, but this is arrant nonsense. I just despise hypocrisy. Anyway, as proof of my nonracial credentials, here are some of my earliest writings.

Somewhat badly edited, this appeared in the East London Daily Dispatch of my childhood hero, Donald Woods, on June 27, 1974. I was 17 years old and in matric. My father had died a few months earlier of a coronary thrombosis. On April 24 of that year, the Progressive Party won six seats in parliament. Among those joining Helen Suzman was future leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert. Alex Boraine would join them after winning a by-election later that year. These were the first major chinks in the National Party's armour. Increasingly, whites in urban areas would turn against the party of apartheid. My siblings and I worked for many years for the Progs and their successors, the Progressive Federal Party, in pursuit of a peaceful transition to a nonracial democracy.

But of course youngsters do have other things on their minds, and this little letter, published in the Dispatch on August 22, 1974, when I was still 17, shows the impact of the hippie era.

National service, or military conscription, to put it less euphemistically, loomed. I was meant to go in July, 1975, but for some reason the call-up was postponed a year. I worked for the first five months of that year on the Dispatch as a cub reporter, under Woods. During that time I penned this piece, which was run on the leader page on March 4, 1975. Again, it's quite naive and poorly written, but then I was just 19 years old.

The impact of apartheid really hit home when one visited the beach, which in my case was a stone's throw from our humble home in Bonza Bay. I probably wrote this before the June 16, Soweto uprising, but it was published in the Dispatch on June 20, 1976. There was always a delay of about a week before letters were run due to the lag caused by the postal service and, no doubt, a huge queue of letters at the newspaper. I had started studying fine art at the East London Technical College under Jack Lugg, so happily was able to delay the military until July, 1979. I used that time to fight apartheid.

Still essentially a child myself, in 1977, not quite 21, I wrote this piece, which was run on September 6.

I latched onto many issues. This one appeared on September 16, 1977.

The year 1977, with SA still simmering in the wake of the June 1976 uprising, was a traumatic one. Black consciousness leader Steve Biko was murdered in security police detention on September 12, 1977, two days before my 21st birthday. His death saw an outpouring of letters to the editor. These appeared on September 20 - again delayed due to the time lag. By the way, I never kept copies of these letters. My sister-in-law Hazel and I took turns examinig a myriad microfiche files of the Dispatch to track them down.

It was always a great thrill to get the lead letter on the page. This one appeared on October 10, 1977.

This was probably written the day news arrived of Biko's death, but was only published on October 6, 1977.

The evils of beach apartheid came under my cudgel again on October 17, 1977. It is interesting to read the adjacent letters on these pages as they give one an insight into what was happening at the time.

The next white general election was scheduled for November 30, 1977, so the country was not only dealing with issues like Biko's murder, but was also on an election footing. And at election time the Nats could be ruthless.

Here again, on October 20, I got the lead letter.

Another stab at the Nats appeared on October 21, 1977.

I must have been writing almost a letter a day at this point. This was written in the wake of the banning of Donald Woods and was used on October 25, 1977. For a short biography on this remarkable man, visit the Donald Woods Foundation site http://www.donaldwoodsfoundation.org/donald-woods-profile-details.cfm

The anti-apartheid campaign continued with this from October 27.

Here I talk about a protest we planned for the City Hall which was banned. It was run on October 28. My sister Jen was held briefly by the police during this incident.

The banning of various organisations, newspapers and individuals was the subject of this, from October 29.

Justice Minister Jimmy Kruger symbolised the unfeeling nature of a ruthless regime. These letters appeared on October 31, 1977. During this election campaign, I heckled Defence Minister PW Botha single-handedly in the East London City Hall at a massive public meeting. I was nearly beaten up. A few weeks later, we again protested inside the Orient Theatre and I did get kicked around by Nat thugs after we quit the meeting before the singing of Die Stem. The Nats won 134 seats in the election, but the PFP boosted its tally from 7 to 17, while the New Republic Party, successor to the United Party, only mustered 10. So to those who label me racist, I ask: have you ever stood up against tyranny? Have you ever spoken truth to power. I think, in my small way, I made a contribution in the struggle against apartheid which today qualifies me to be equally critical of the ANC when, as it so often does, it puts itself ahead of the interests of the people.

Name-changes

2011-03-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

As noted in the blurb on the right, I have written articles and letters to the editors of newspapers attacking injustice and hypocrisy for decades. After being barred from doing so in the local Port Elizabeth media for a couple of years, with a change of leadership a window again opened and I put through this piece, which was used in the Weekend Post of March 3, 2011. Please click on the article to get the bigger picture.

Though cut somewhat, this retains the thrust of my argument. I have, as you'll see in subsequent blog postings, been one of very few writers sticking up for the positive impact which colonialism had on Africa. It will be interesting to see if this article has any response in the letters column this Saturday. If so, I'll update the blog with them.

On a united opposition and direct representation

2010-04-19T01:41:00.001-07:00

Cope parliamentary leader Mvume Dandala.

IT is time for all non-racial opposition parties to unite against the ANC ahead of the next municipal elections in 2011. Doing away with the party-dominated proportional representation system would be a bonus.

I submitted this letter to the Sunday Times on the issue. What are the chances of it being used? Very slim, I’d guess, if Winnie Mandela submits another tome like the one they ran on Sunday, which took up nearly half the available space.

Anyway, here is the piece I’ve submitted (and it was in fact used):

THE problems raised by Eusebius McKaiser can be partially ascribed to our political system of proportional representation (“National debate? More like the clash of ignorant armies”, Sunday Times, April 18).

If there is one thing the “old South Africa” was good at it was debates in parliament. Who will ever forget the courageous one-woman stand of Helen Suzman against apartheid? And when the Progressive Federal Party was formed, people like Van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine joined her in exposing the worst excesses of that system.

The bottom line was that each MP first had to win election by a specific constituency. This meant a personal election campaign against one or more opponents from other parties. If elected, he or she was accountable to a specific geographical constituency, and also, of course, to the party they stood for.

There are drawbacks to this “first past the post” system of direct representation, including the marginalisation of smaller parties, but the positives are huge.

Instead of MPs being entirely beholden to the party whip, each has his or her own powerbase, the constituency which they represent. They can even resign and stand for election as independents should the party not be happy with them.

But in the current system each party, and the massive ANC majority makes this pivotal, chooses a list of candidates, and the less independent-minded you are, the higher up on the list your party bosses are likely to place you. Blind loyalty to the party, irrespective of morality, is the requirement. Which is why, especially in the ANC, there is a dearth of leadership figures. No-one is willing to risk his or her political future by, for instance, challenging the party line – under Mbeki’s reign – on Zimbabwe and Aids. Today, no-one in the ANC will challenge the Zuma regime on the widespread corruption and nepotism we see around us.

Indeed, such corruption seems to be reaching epidemic proportions. While service delivery fails and town and city infrastructure crumbles, the incidents of ANC politicians and their friends using their positions to fill their purses is steadily on the increase. The latest example, following Armsgate, is what one could call Eskomgate, in which the ANC investment arm, Chancellor House, stands to siphon off billions to the ANC’s coffers through a form of insider trading in the construction of a new power station.

Imagine an election based entirely on constituencies? You might even get people interested in politics again, with meetings held in halls in each constituency as candidates try to woo voters. You may even see your candidate walking the streets and knocking on doors, canvassing for support. Today all we have are those stage-managed tours of the country before each election by the party leadership.

I’m not hankering for the past, having personally worked with the PFP in my youth in a bid to rid this country of apartheid. But I do think that the old system of direct representation gave our politics more character and meaning. The debates in parliament today are pretty much charades, as the ANC, with its huge majority, steamrollers legislation through while, at best ignoring, if not openly disparaging the opposition. How else does one interpret Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s treatment of Cope leader Mvume Dandala, when he tabled a motion of no-confidence?

While McKaiser says her attitude shows “either a basic lack of understanding about the rules of parliament, or a pernicious attempt to ignore them”, I believe at heart our proportional representation political system is to blame. There is something reassuringly humbling about the old way in which MPs were identified as “the member for Durban North”, or whatever. It gave the debates a sense of context. Sisulu may be a minister, but she should also have a constituency, where voters can actually vote her out of office if they are dissatisfied with how she performs. And, given her treatment of the Reverend Dandala, a gracious, caring man, I believe most people, even in the heart of Soweto, are downright unhappy with how she has used her position to disparage him and his party.

It is surely high time that Cope, for all its unpleasant links with the Mbeki past, joined forces with the DA to give the ANC a real run for its money. With the help of the IFP and the Independent Democrats, this grouping could surely win several ANC-held municipalities in next year’s municipal election.

And at least in local government elections there is greater accountability, with candidates standing in actual geographical wards, although some councillors are still appointed on a PR list.

Can Democratic Alliance stop the slide?

2010-04-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille. Does her party hold the key to a successful future for South Africa?

IN speaking truth to power, it is not just to the very powerful that we must look.

In reality, more power is often wielded by politicians at a local level. Consider, for instance, how during the Nazi occupation of Europe it was mean, evil apparatchiks at town, even village level, who were responsible for some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Similarly, during the Rwanda genocide, it took only one evil madman with political clout to turn an entire village into a gang of marauding murderers.

I’m not suggesting we in South Africa have reached that point yet, although the attacks on exiles a few years back suggests there is a thin veneer of respectability that can very easily be stripped away.

How to keep things together? How to ensure that the centre holds, and things don’t fall apart? That is the key issue, and it is ironic that in 2010 we have probably seen, at a seemingly trivial level, just ahead of the World Cup, very real signs of the ANC-run municipality in Port Elizabeth allowing things to simply run down.

It is as if they don’t have the will to do the basics right anymore. With a drought threatening the very existence of the city, there are regular reports of people informing the authorities about massively wasteful water leaks, and nothing gets done about it. For days, millions of litres of water are squandered.

We have had ongoing examples of our traffic officers failing to do their work. They are rarely seen – except when barricading freeways in protest over some or other pay dispute. Minibus taxis, whose drivers are rarely brought to book, have become a law unto themselves, breaking every rule of the road with impunity.

Streets with a story

Just some of the gutters in Port Elizabeth where leaves are accumulating. In many, weeds and grass have taken a foothold, as the municipality seems to have stopped caring about maintenance of our infrastructure.

Alfred Terrace in Central, Port Elizabeth, back in the days when gutters were kept clean and some of our key heritage buildings hadn't been allowed to fall into disrepair by cynical, uncaring property speculators.

Okay I know there’s a drought on, so the beautification plans in terms of public gardens are pretty much on hold. But there can be no excuse for the neglect of such basic services as sweeping gutters and weeding sidewalks. It is not only about beautifying the city ahead of the Cup. The city’s gutters are filled with leaves and twigs, in which weeds and grass are establishing major footholds. In time, the infestation will be such that weeds and grass start to crack up both gutters and tarred roads.

Then, of course, when the heavy rains finally come, flooding will ensue as all that detritus in the gutters is finally washed down into the storm water drains, blocking them.

The new regime seems to be largely oblivious of the need to perform ongoing maintenance of the generally fine infrastructure bequeathed to it after 1994. But the rot has only really set in this year in terms of this city’s gutters. In the past, the municipality employed street sweepers, hundreds of them, apparently on a fairly informal basis. Then some bigwigs in Cosatu decided the fact that such people were employed through labour brokers was wrong. These, Cosatu argued, aren’t “proper” jobs, so let’s do away with them. So hundreds lost their jobs, and we no longer see men sweeping those gutters and preventing the growth of weeds. The result: general decay. Okay, sure, a few weeks ago a big yellow machine came past our house and suctioned up some of the matter lying in the gutters. But this is no substitute for manual labour; for a person physically cleaning gutters and removing weeds.

So, at a time when we are supposed to be labour-intensive, a Cosatu demand has seen a machine or two take over the work of hundreds – and of course fail to do the job properly.

A week’s light, but steady rain in the city has now also left a legacy of grass verges and traffic islands that are starting to resemble small jungles. One wonders where the municipal employees all are.

Oh yes, I’ve just remembered. They’re all on strike – though often it’s hard to tell these days. Except, of course, that the black bags pile up and are split open by dogs and vagrants, waiting for the next cold front to bring a gale which will spread the waste matter far and wide. Which makes you wonder why people are so foolish as to put out their rubbish for collection when they know – if they read their newspaper or watch telly – that a strike is on.

There is a national local government election next year. Most of the people who pay rates in our towns and cities probably support the opposition Democratic Alliance. The majority who don’t pay, or pay very little, vote ANC, which then takes those rates and either wastes them on parties and perks, or uses them to subsidise the free electricity and water which “indigent” township dwellers receive.

One would not wish to see poor people deprived of these handouts because, like pensions and grants, they provide the livelihoods on which so many depend.

However, I believe – as Cape Town and the Western Cape have shown – it would be wise to vote into power people who represent those who actually pay the rates that keep cities running. At the moment the ANC operates in a vacuum where they do as they please with money largely provided by people who did not vote for them. If all Cope and other opposition supporters simply voted DA, we might see other cities again start being run properly.

Just a thought.

Putting Pinky in her place

2010-04-12T02:33:00.000-07:00

The Chapman, one of the ships which brought the 1820 Settlers to South Africa from Britain. About 5000 settlers arrived in Algoa Bay that year. Now, 190 years later, their impact and that of their descendants on the development of South Africa, is evident across the country.

Speaking truth to power

IN speaking truth to power, it is not only politicians one must consider as having a major influence on the affairs of state. Consider the impact which a misguided columnist in a newspaper with a readership of over four million has.

I have submitted the first seven paragraphs of this article to the Sunday Times for publication. What are the chances they will use the piece? Anyway, herewith my entire argument in response to what I consider a decidedly slanted bit of journalism.

Putting Pinky in her place

EVEN as she seeks to condemn racism, Sunday Times columnist Pinky Khoabane actively endorses anti-white racism. In “Mr President, don’t condone the racists” (April 11), she quotes from a report in The Economist which apparently said “only a quarter of black people accounted for the 4% richest people in this country”.

She adds that whites “still account for three-quarters of senior positions in the work place. Of the 295 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, only 4% have black chief executive officers”. “In short, Mr President” she concludes in her open letter to Jacob Zuma, “it is business as usual for whites in this country.”

Isn’t it time black people started thanking their lucky stars there are still skilled white people willing to invest their lives and futures in a country where they are continually disparaged? I would suggest Khoabane should be grateful that white people are still around to make this economy work. Does she not realise what would happen if four million white people got up and left? This place would fall apart. If things look a little threadbare now, after 16 years of ANC rule, imagine how bad they’d be had the racists got their way completely and all whites had emigrated.

Colonialism was a global reality. It happened over hundreds of years around the world. And it wasn’t all bad.

Where would this country have been without the skills and expertise the European immigrants brought with them? Where would this country be without the first-world trade and business links (think mining, medicine, industry, agriculture) the settlers brought with them? A simple “tour” of South Africa via Google Earth shows you the template of some 350 years of partnership between white and black in this country. It is an awesome achievement.

European settlers may have, as they did around the world, subjugated the local population, but they also ensured that today we have a relatively advanced economy on the tip of a continent which generally is desperately poor.

So instead of ranting against the role of whites, Khoabane should be counting her blessings they are still here, keeping businesses afloat and competitive in a tough global economy. Indeed, she should actively campaign for the scrapping of BEE, affirmative action and the Employment Equity Act, which openly discriminate against white people and, I am sure, are contrary to the UN’s human rights clauses.

Khoabane should be less concerned about the colour of those at the top of the business pile than about what is becoming of those areas now run predominantly by black South Africans – namely the public sector. It is no secret that service delivery has been atrocious over the past decade, with many municipalities crumbling under a sea of leaking sewage, pot-holed roads, failing water purification plants, weed-riddled pavements and gutters and widespread corruption and ineptitude. If the former white suburbs are looking bad, I hate to think how the townships are faring.

Black people should embrace their white compatriates and get the ANC to scrap immediately the clause in the bill of rights of the Constitution which allows for so-called “fair discrimination” in favour of the “previously disadvantaged”. I kid you not, there is such a clause which is used to justify all those racist, anti-white laws which everyone so blithely accepts in the name of “redressing” the inequities of the past.

This is Africa. Three quarters of the continent live in poverty. If the ANC want this country to join the likes of Zimbabwe as a failed state, then carry on complaining like Khoabane is doing about whites who successfully run profitable businesses. Where are the great new enterprises started by skilled black people during one of the longest periods of economic growth in our modern history just prior to the current recession? I’m not talking about all the suits in boardrooms who got there on the strength of their colour and BEE/AA/EEA. I’m talking about real entrepreneurship.

Creating wealth is not easy. Like Khoabane, I am a mere journalist. We are in second-tier jobs, arising from the establishment of cities by the original generators of wealth in commerce, industry and agriculture. I suggest she, and ANC cadres generally, humble themselves and look at what it takes to run a successful farm or factory, hospital or airport, you name it, before they condemn those who do so because they happen to be white.

They might discover that it is easier to criticise than it is to put in the long hours of hard work which are a prerequisite for such enterprises to succeed.

A trip for Malema

2010-04-08T00:59:00.000-07:00

A section of the many citrus orchards at Kirkwood in the Eastern Cape.

THERE is a very humbling experience which every South African politician, but especially those from the ANC, needs to go through. But before I divulge what it is, a bit of background.

It is all too easy for those in power to become isolated from “the people” – to ignore the role played by that august body of humanity who constitute our nation.

These are the folk whose everyday lives ensure that the economy keeps on rolling, and it is with their taxes that the politicians and their vast hordes of hangers-on are paid.

I think, in particular, of the likes of Julius Malema, president of the ANC Youth League, who loves to sing a “struggle song” which exhorts his followers to “shoot the boer”. Of course this is not far removed from President Jacob Zuma’s song in which he calls for his machine gun.

Before divulging the full nature of the “humbling experience” I believe the likes of Malema and Zuma should be subjected to, let’s for a moment consider Malema’s credentials as a struggle veteran. You cannot tell me that a man aged 29 was part of “the struggle”. He would have been about nine when Madiba was freed, and 13 when democracy arrived.

But judging from his recent outbursts in Zimbabwe it is clear Malema believes “aluta continua”, and that the struggle aims will only have been achieved once everything owned by white South Africans has been nationalised. He wants to “take” white-owned farms and “give” them to black people. The same applies to mines and, no doubt, all businesses and, eventually all private property. Makes you wonder why he isn’t the Communist Party’s biggest hero, since this surely will be a socialist utopia.

Or will it?

Malema obviously has not followed the course of events in Zimbabwe over the past 10 years. The former Rhodesia was once a prosperous nation, with a strong agriculture sector built around its commercial farmers, making it the envy of many and the breadbasket of the region.

Once the white-owned farms were seized and ceased to be productive, the economy simply imploded.

But let’s return to that vision Malema has, whereby white farms are, to use a Zanu-PF term, “indiginised” – which of course ignores the fact that many whites in that country had roots going back several generations to those who established the then Rhodesia in the late 19th century. In this country most of the “boers” – Afrikaners – can trace their African heritage back to not long after Van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape in 1652. That’s over 350 years.

For many English-speaking whites, me included, our African presence dates back to the 19th century, with 5000 settlers having arrived from Britain in 1820.

But, of course, for the likes of Malema this attachment to South Africa is irrelevant – except in so far as it “proves” that this influx of settlers, which over the centuries has seen over four million people of European extraction come to live in South Africa, only did obnoxious things: like exploit and pillage the locals.

As someone who grew up opposing apartheid, I am the last to defend the way black South Africans were treated, especially under apartheid after 1948, when our leaders should have known better. But the colonisation of this country was part of a global phenomenon. It may not have been moral, but it happened in various ways around the world as European nations flexed their muscles. We have now to decide whether our joint futures should forever be determined by which “side” of the colonial divide we are perceived to be a part, or whether we can look beyond our differences to a joint nationhood.

Surely, with a black government having now been in power for 16 years, we need to work together to build this country and create masses of new jobs to reduce unemployment and tackle poverty, thereby hopefully reducing crime.

Which brings me back to that humbling experience. It is a simple process – in my case thanks to having finally acquired unlimited home-based internet access.

I challenge Malema, Zuma and all the other ANC leaders to get onto Google Earth and simply explore this great land of ours.

I started by trying to find the dams built before the advent of democracy to supply Port Elizabeth’s water needs. I found the Kouga dam amid spectacular mountains in the Baviaanskloof area. I also noticed that along the river were incredible irrigated farmlands, a delicate patchwork of rectangles and perfect circles – which look so impressive from the air.

Then I moved to the Kirkwood area, and was flabbergasted at just how many separate orchards full of citrus trees there are along the Sundays River valley.

I traced the canal which was built to supply irrigation water to these farms, and then travelled inland up the river into the Karoo. I was startled by just how many perfectly laid out farms, all meticulously surveyed, flank this river. In fact, virtually every river, every small tributary, that I looked at showed evidence of how enterprising farmers have used their expertise, and determination, to grow food on a commercial basis. Elsewhere, larger farms are home to livestock – dairy, beef, wool, mohair, mutton ...

The landmark Teebus and Koffiebus koppies near Steynsburg in the Karoo, with irrigated lands nearby.

I “travelled” north, to the Gariep dam, built in 1971 at the height of apartheid. It is an impressive expanse of water, and some of it is tapped, via the 82.8km Orange-Fish River Tunnel (opened in 1975) under the Suurberg mountain plateau to a place called Teebus near Steynsburg. According to Wikipedia, it is the longest continuous enclosed aqueduct in the southern hemisphere and the third-longest water supply tunnel in the world. It has a diameter of 5.3 metres and ranges in depth from 80 metres to 380 metres. Construction started in 1966 and the tunnel opened in 1975. Wikipedia says when the tunnel was completed “it was the longest continuous enclosed aqueduct in the southern hemisphere and the second-longest water supply tunnel in the world”.

Anyway, from Teebus, the Orange River water travels along various rivers till it reaches the Sundays River valley canal system. And we in Port Elizabeth, in turn, draw water from there to supplement our dwindling supplies from the dams to our west.

I also took myself into the Western Cape winelands and wheatlands, to the sprawling maize fields of the Free State ...

It is in the rural heartland of this country that you discover why it is so great. Destroy this, and like Zimbabwe you cut off its lifeblood.

Now I am not citing all this as a form of white boasting. Throughout our history, things have been built jointly between white and black. The partnership may not always have been equal, just or fair, but in the end this country was developed to be the relative African powerhouse it is today.

What I hope such a virtual tour of this country might give our ANC leaders is a sense of perspective. The message it sends me, who can stake no claim to have contributed to such marvels, is that there is so much to aspire to if our young people acquire an education and the skills needed to participate in our economy.

I remember watching a schools rugby match last year on SuperSport between two agricultural colleges, Marlow from Cradock, and the other from Riviersonderend. What saddened me was there was hardly a black face to be seen – either on the stands or in the teams.

If black people are to become fully integrated into this country’s economy, they need to acquire the relevant skills to do so – not simply hope to get there on the back of BEE, affirmative action and employment equity laws. These artificial bits of social engineering have inculcated an instant-riches syndrome which is bedevelling our future.

Had the ANC adopted the view at the outset that people should be given a sound education, instead of experimenting for 15 years with unworkable outcomes-based education, the process of broad-based black upliftment would by now have been firmly established.

Tragically, a handful of connected cadres have got filthy rich, often only thanks to widespread corruption and nepotism, while millions still wallow in poverty. The hoped-for broad black middle class has not become the force many had hoped for.

A first-world economy, as this Google Earth tour of South Africa’s agricultural heartland shows, is a hugely complex thing. And there is no easy entree to its fruits – you need to acquire the relevant skills and then commit yourself to a lifetime of hard work in order to achieve your dreams.

But instant, race-based gratification of the Robert Mugabe and Julius Malema variety is a recipe for disaster.