Nurturing social cohesion, creating jobs two sides of same coin to uplift SA

Just over a week since we voted in our sixth democratic elections and South Africans once again demonstrated to the world the power of tolerance and patience, there are already signs that, in the minds of some people at least, it is going to be more of the same over the next few years.

An incident which has caused me some disturbance involved a Stellenbosch emeritus professor sexually assaulting a woman waiter and calling another woman the K-word, in Observatory last week.

Retired professor Leon de Kock has since been arrested and charged with crimen injuria.

An incident such as this is probably understandable in an environment where the Freedom Front Plus with its racist policies has increased its share of the national vote, emboldening many who long for the days of apartheid. 

Another incident that has provoked anger inside me is the complaint by “a single resident” over the call to prayer (athaan) at the Zeenatul Masjid in District Six - the Muir Street Mosque - an institution that has been standing for more than 100 years. The city will now investigate this complaint after the holy month of Ramadaan.

Why anyone would move into the area and then complain about one of Islam’s sacred traditions, is beyond me. I suppose this is one of the dangers of gentrification, when people of a particular hue and class move into previously black working-class areas and then try to change everything to suit their needs.

A few years ago, at the Cape Town Festival hosted in the Company’s Gardens, a young man came to me five minutes after we started performances, demanding to know when we were going to stop. It was just after 10am and we were going to continue until 6pm, was the bad news I had for him.

He then told me that he moved into the area recently and nobody told him that he was going to have to deal with noise from concerts in the gardens. Throughout that day, the police came about five times to check our noise exemption permit after they had received complaints from residents, probably the same resident.

I was so angry that a complaint by one person (or even a few) had the potential to spoil the day for everyone else who came out because of their belief in tolerance and wanting to learn from different cultures and religions.

One of the priorities for the new government should be to promote social cohesion and integration in an active way, not just through a few events every year.

But my biggest concern this week, as the president contemplates how he is going to deliver on a cleaner and leaner cabinet, was the release of the latest employment figures by Statistics South Africa. It is an indication that the so-called new dawn will not be as easy to implement, even after a vote of confidence by the electorate.

The small amount by which the unemployment figure went up to 27.6% shows that, despite the good work done by the president to attract investments into South Africa, he has still not been able to make a difference where it matters - providing jobs to the most vulnerable in our society.

The president seems to talk a good economic story and his previous involvement in business makes one want to believe him, but it is difficult when one has rising unemployment as well as rising inflation, built on the back of steep petrol and diesel prices.

To some it might seem that building tolerance and creating jobs are at opposite ends of the needs list, but they are not. They are both important if we want to take our country forward.

Jobs are important, but so is the need to understand the complexities of our vibrant and diverse country. One cannot be achieved without the other.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 18 May 2019)

A public servant who is worth his weight in gold

Politicians have a habit of trying to discredit politics, often giving a bad name and reputation to anybody who might be involved in public service. This is not a South African phenomenon, it happens the world over.

One of the people who has consistently, over the past 25 years of democracy, brought integrity and earned the respect of many from different political parties, is the Reverend Courtney Sampson, Western Cape provincial head of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

It appears that Sampson, who has presided over elections in the Western Cape since 1999, might have overseen his last election. He has indicated that he wants to step down.

His wisdom will be sorely missed.

I have known Courtney for years, since the days he was a parish priest at the local Anglican Church in Hanover Park where I lived. He was always supportive of the work we were doing as young people trying to conscientise other youngsters about the Struggle against apartheid.

He would not hesitate to make the church available for meetings, even though at a risk: there might be a backlash from conservative congregants and he might have attracted the attention of the security police, that infamous police branch that dealt with political troublemakers (basically those fighting apartheid and injustice).

Over the years, I have been privileged to call him my friend, but he has always been much more than that. He has also been a mentor and someone I can call on when I have complex matters that I am struggling to understand.

Courtney has always been able to make sense of what appears to be complicated issues, doing so by remaining calm while everyone around him were losing their heads. When I was doing the research for my book, Race, which deals with race and racism in post-apartheid South Africa, I was worried that I was unhealthily obsessed with race and questioned whether that meant that I was racist. Courtney pointed out to me the difference between being racist and thinking of race. It made a huge difference to what I eventually wrote.

One of the examples of how he has managed to remain calm amid potential storms was this week when someone shared on social media pictures of what appeared to be separate queues for black and white voters in Wellington, immediately crying racism.

Courtney, I suppose after years of working with politicians, did not rush to buy into the racism claims but investigated it first. It appeared to have been a simple logistical arrangement. Most of the black voters made to queue separately were students who wanted to vote outside of their voting district but had to fill in a special form to do so. To speed up the process, they were asked to queue separately. They happened to be black, while most of the other voters happened to be white.

Now in his sixties and after more than 20 years of working for the IEC, it is not unusual or unexpected for Courtney to want to move on. Good leaders know when to step up, but also when to step down. I wish him well in whatever he decides to do and know that he will make a success.

Over the years I have interacted with many public servants who have given me confidence that, despite the best (or worst) attempts by some politicians, our public service is in good hands. Courtney is one of those, but not the only one. It's a pity that the actions of a few corrupt politicians often overshadow the good work of many honest public servants.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 11 May 2019)

There’s more to democracy than just voting

There’s a piece of graffiti on a new apartment block of plush student housing on the border between Mowbray and Observatory in Cape Town, two suburbs where many University of Cape Town students live. The graffiti, painted with a brush and not the usual spray-can, simply says: “Don’t just vote. Organise.” 

The words and the style of graffiti brought back many memories of similar-style protests in the 1980s, but we would probably have written then: “Don’t vote. Organise.”

We did not have the vote in the 1980s. We only got that privilege in 1994.

One of the key tenets of any democracy is the right to vote, which South Africans will exercise for the sixth time in national and provincial elections on Wednesday – in fact, some people have already exercised this right through special votes, locally and abroad – but the graffiti slogan reminds one of the responsibility not to restrict one’s involvement in democracy to a vote every five years, with a local government vote thrown in between.

In an environment where many people with moderate leadership skills have identified “public service”, whether it is in national or provincial government, as an easy way of securing employment at the taxpayers’ expense, it becomes more incumbent on those of us who might be classified as “ordinary” to make sure that those entrusted with our vote delivers. If they do not deliver, they should be pressured so much that their time in office becomes unbearable.

In many ways, those of us who were involved in the struggle inside the country, especially during the 1980s, are to blame for where we find ourselves today. We organised people throughout the country to oppose apartheid until the once-mighty Nationalist Party regime had no option but to release Nelson Mandela and other political leaders and to unban the African National Congress and other organisations. They had no option but to sit down and negotiate the future of our country with the ANC and others. The result of those negotiations is found in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa which, 23 years after its adoption, is still considered to be one of the most progressive in the world.

But when we reached the early 1990s, and change was beginning to happen, many of those who had been involved internally, including myself, stepped aside in order to let our returning leaders take over. They even convinced us to close down the United Democratic Front which had been the main organising front inside the country.

Grassroots organisation, which had been the backbone of the UDF, took a backseat and our focus turned to how many votes we could generate for the parties that we supported so that we could have as many representatives in Parliament as possible.

We realise now that closing the UDF was a major mistake, but it is too late to go back in history and to try and revive the organisation. The situation is different now and the UDF has been replaced by a plethora of civil society organisations, each with a focus area aimed at improving the lives of those who call South Africa their home – and that includes people who have come here from other African countries in search of a better life after we became a democracy.

One of the good things to come out of the Jacob Zuma era as President of the country and the ANC was that, in many quarters, we saw a return to the activism and organisation of the 1980s, especially during his second term. Many people realised that the only way to counter parliamentary democracy is via people’s power, depending on a show of force outside of the parliamentary-focused political parties which have become the new establishment, even though the Economic Freedom Fighters will probably fight this notion.

This organisation and activism were not only restricted to those who I used to call until recently, and not in a derogatory way, “expired activists”. But it also involved a new generation who suddenly realised that we had left the freedom project incomplete. In our eagerness to overcome apartheid and racism, we had overlooked the impact of colonialism, which probably had a greater impact on our country than the 50 or so years of formalised apartheid.

At some point we probably have to start challenging the impact of capitalism on our country, but that is probably something to leave for the next generation.

The good thing is that we now have a generation of questioning young people who are eagerly looking for answers to the many problems in our society, including the incessant and seemingly invincible triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Clearly, we have not found the answers in the past 25 years since we became a democracy and we might have to look for some radical solutions in the next few years.

This week’s election is probably going to be the most significant of the six elections we’ve had in our democracy up until now, barring the first election in 1994 which will probably remain the most significant ever, for obvious reasons.

This election will come at a time when the ANC has faced one of its biggest crises since its unbanning, and maybe even before. It is struggling to shrug off the image of a corrupted party, despite all the best attempts of the party’s current president Cyril Ramaphosa. After Wednesday, probably sometime on Saturday when all the votes are expected to have been counted, we will know how much confidence South Africans still have in a wounded and divided ANC, or whether they have started to explore other alternatives.

This election might also be the last opportunity for those with a grounding in the struggle to be able to have a major impact. By the next general election, 30 years into our democracy, those who were involved in struggle will probably be far outnumbered at the polls by younger voters with no loyalty to the struggle or to the country's history. That could be a good and a bad thing. 

It could be bad because every struggle needs a history, but it could be good because we tend to make too much of our struggle history in South Africa. Yes, it is true that many have sacrificed to get us to this point, but many of those who were involved in struggle have moved on, some have become rich and, sadly, some have become corrupted, which, one might argue, negates any contribution they might have made during the struggle.

What should count mainly is the ability of political parties – if they are still going to be the major vehicles of our democracy – to deliver to those who entrusted them with their votes.

But while the political parties battle it out in Parliament, they should know that the people outside Parliament remain a formidable force, and this can only happen if we have strong civil society organisations – including community organisations and trade unions – who keep the elected on the straight and narrow.

I hope that the graffiti on the new student accommodation does not suffer the same plight as graffiti throughout Cape Town and gets painted over. The message, that democracy is more than a vote, is a strong one and should stay there as a reminder, especially to those in Parliament, that “ordinary” people voted them into power and “ordinary” people can remove them.

(First published in the Daily Dispatch on Wednesday, 8 May 2019)

Coalitions can lead to party members, supporters feeling betrayed

When the dust settles on next Wednesday’s election and the final votes have been counted, irrespective of who wins or loses, there will be fervent looks around at who would be possible alliance partners, whether it is at national or provincial level.

The nature of politics is that alliances may differ from national to provincial level and even from province to province.

One of the most interesting alliances of recent years has been the one between the EFF and the DA.

But before that, there had been a coalition of sorts between the ANC and the National Party, the two biggest opponents during the apartheid years: one trying to ensure the continuation of our race-based society and the other one opposing it with all its might. At the height of the Struggle against apartheid, no one could have foreseen the future co-operation between the two parties, which finally led to the demise of the NP.

Before the last local government elections, nobody would have bet on an alliance between the DA and the EFF, two very different political parties - one representing what is seen in many areas as an old and white constituency, while desperately wanting to be relevant to black voters, and the other representing young and black voters frustrated by what they believe to be empty promises by established political parties, but mainly the ANC.

After dissecting the utterings from politicians in the last few weeks, it looks highly unlikely that anyone would want to be in alliance with anyone else. There has been a lot of hatred and intolerance spewed out by politicians.

But come a few days after the elections, when all the votes have been counted and the calculations of power have been made, some of these politicians who have been fighting with each other will become each other’s best friends.

Politics, after all, is all about numbers. It is about making sure that, firstly, enough people vote for you so that you can rule by yourself and, if that does not work, looking at who you need to get into bed with in order to make sure you keep your worst enemies out.

Many DA members felt betrayed by the alliances the party made with the EFF in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay after the last local government elections, but they were prepared to grin and bear it because it meant that, for the first time, the DA got the mayorship of major metros outside of the Western Cape.

The unfortunate thing is that this spirit of toenadering and camaraderie does not often go down to the ordinary members and supporters of political parties who, before the elections, took their line from their leaders who will now appear to be deserting them in pursuit of political alliances.

The bitterness and hatred that has been spread during the election campaign will take longer to erase from poor communities who have been told to hate people with a bit more privilege than them. In many cases, political electioneering promotes hatred and sometimes even violence. Yet, the same people who promoted intolerance might soon find themselves in alliance with others against whom they campaigned not too long ago.

It is probably a tall order to think that politicians will be more deliberate in their utterances and will think about the long-term consequences of what they say. But, again, I suppose politics is not about the long term, it is about how many votes they can get in the short term so that they and some of their supporters can also get on board the political gravy train.

All of us should have the interests of South Africa at heart and we need to show this in our words and our actions.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 4 May 2019)

#FreedomDay: We sacrificed for right to vote

In less than two weeks, South Africans will be able to vote for a new government or will continue to support the old one. The ANC’s promise of a “new dawn” has been met with scepticism in some parts, but to be honest, none of the opposition parties have put up their hand to attract people who might not want to put their fate in the ANC’s hands again.

Most people know the story of the ANC, the once-glorious liberation movement that became mired in corruption, mainly because it made some seriously bad leadership choices. But I want to look at the opposition parties, those in Parliament and those who are hoping to be there after May 8.

The DA is increasingly showing that they are a party struggling to deal with political realities in democratic South Africa. Quite often the actions of the party betray the “D” in their name.

The DA can rightly feel that their dominance in the Western Cape is under threat after the shoddy way they treated former mayor Patricia de Lille, whose own Good movement is hoping to put in a decent enough showing in the Western Cape, taking away some support from the DA, which could see them ending up as kingmakers in the province.

If this happens, don’t be surprised to see De Lille assuming the premiership as part of an alliance of “anyone but the DA”.

De Lille is the closest thing to a political celebrity in the Western Cape. At the recent Cape Town International Jazz Festival, she struggled to see any of the acts because she would be confronted every couple of minutes by people who wanted to take selfies with her. Whether that is an indication of her electoral support remains to be seen.

The EFF has some appeal to post-apartheid youth who feel that the state should provide them with everything, including free education, housing, wi-fi and land, among many others. The EFF manifesto is unrealistic and dangerous, because they do not seem to consider where the state is supposed to get the money to pay for giving everything away for free to its citizens. But while the EFF seems to be the popular party for the Twitter generation, they do not appear to have the support where it matters among the electorate because many young people have not bothered to register to vote.

The ACDP has been very active in areas such as Mitchells Plain, where I have seen their campaign workers trudging the streets on Saturday mornings. They have also had a strong push to gain support from church leaders, especially in the “coloured” areas. It remains to be seen whether the ACDP will become more than a party that wins a reasonably insignificant amount of the vote at election time.

One of the proverbial dark horses, in the Western Cape at least, is the Land Party, which was started by former disgruntled members of the ANC and the EFF which, incidentally, is also a party of former disgruntled ANC members.

Another party of former disgruntled ANC members is Cope who seemed to have run out of people to support them. Bantu Holomisa’s UDM could also be seen as disgruntled former ANC members, but the former homeland general appears to have retained a decent relationship with the party that expelled him.

It is difficult to see single-issue parties such as the Land Party or the Green Party making significant inroads among the electorate. Our society is complex and parties with solutions to more than one of our serious issues are more likely to be taken seriously by the voters.

I am finding it difficult to decide on a party deserving of my vote in the Western Cape, but come May 8, I will be at my local polling station to cast my vote. We fought too hard not to exercise our right to vote.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 27 April 2019)

Remembering two dear friends who took on apartheid

We said our goodbyes to two special people this week - from two different cities and two separate parts of my life.

I awoke early on Tuesday to the news that Achmat Semaar, an old friend and comrade from Mitchells Plain, died in hospital the night before, after experiencing a heart attack. He was 72.

There was a message on my phone about the death of veteran journalist Zuby Mayet, who had passed away at her home in Lenasia, Gauteng, over the weekend. She was 80.

Semaar and Mayet influenced my life in different ways - in community activism and journalism.

Semaar was one of the elders whom we respected in Mitchells Plain in the 1980s when we were involved in the Struggle. He became involved after the detention of several young people in the area and which brought together parents who feared for the safety of their children.

He later became involved in the Mitchells Plain Advice Office, which led to him serving a stint as a paralegal. Later, he would work in the ANC parliamentary constituency offices of Trevor Manuel and then Derek Hanekom. Until his death, he was a board member of the Mitchells Plain Skills Centre established by Manuel.

Manuel was abroad when Semaar was buried on Tuesday afternoon but sent a message of condolences to the family. Semaar’s funeral attracted prominent people, among them judges and members of the ANC’s leadership in the province, but also many activists from years gone by.

Ebrahim Rasool, who is spearheading the ANC’s election campaign in the province, said the party suspended its campaign for a few hours out of respect for Semaar, who had remained loyal to the ANC until his death.

A memorial service for Semaar has been planned at Glendale High School in Rocklands, Mitchells Plain, from 2pm today.

Mayet’s influence on me was probably more at a distance than Semaar’s because we were from two cities almost 1500km apart and from different generations of journalists.

I became involved in the Writers’ Association of South Africa in 1980, at a time when Mayet and others were stepping aside after having been at the forefront for years.

Mayet was part of the executive of Wasa and its forerunner, the Union of Black Journalists (UBJ), which had been banned during the government’s crackdown on political and media organisations on October 19, 1977, which is commemorated annually as Media Freedom Day.

Her involvement in journalism included being part of the Drum Writers of the 1950s - with people such as Can Themba and Nat Nakasa - and being part of the journalist union leadership.

In 2017, on the 40th anniversary of Black Wednesday, the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards, which I chair, honoured Mtimkulu who recalled the story of how he and Mayet (who was the UBJ treasurer) had withdrawn all the UBJ’s money from its bank account minutes after the organisation was banned. Technically, the money then belonged to the state. They were charged with theft. The charges were later withdrawn.

South Africans forget easily, but we should never allow ourselves to forget the contributions hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of South Africans made in the fight against apartheid. Without their contribution, we might never have achieved our freedom, imperfect as it is.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 20 April 2019)

Let's move beyond placing our faith blindly in politicians

We are now only a few weeks away from the national and provincial elections on May 8 and, at times like this, I wish I could be a party hack - one of those people who follow their political parties and leaders blindly and without questioning.

For party hacks, the decision about where to put their cross on election day is easy. They don’t need persuading; they don’t need to think. They’ll just put their cross next to the party they will follow to the end of the world, if need be. Of course, in most cases it is more about the leader than the party and that is probably more dangerous.

Others, like me and most others, I assume, do not have it that easy. We will try to assess the track record and history of each party in an attempt to make sure that they are worthy of our vote. The unfortunate thing is that even those who analyse parties before we decide whether we should vote for them, often base our assessment on political leaders as opposed to political parties.

This is, I suppose, a natural thing to do. People tend to make many of their decisions based on personalities rather than policies.

There are some people in the ANC who will want us to believe that the governing party can self-correct after almost 10 years of going wayward. They blame their loss of direction on one Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, who appeared to be more interested in his, his family’s and some other family’s well-being as opposed to the country’s well-being.

Since Cyril Ramaphosa became president of the ANC in December 2017 and president of the country on Valentine’s Day last year, his disciples in the ANC have been talking about a new dawn which will purportedly put our country back on the path to economic and social recovery.

He has made nice noises and some of the right moves and has been trying to promote a collective responsibility mindset among South Africans, something that has not been accepted universally. Many people feel the ANC is responsible for the mess that we are in and the ANC must clean it up.

Ramaphosa’s new dawn does not appear to be universally accepted within the ANC, which appears to be more faction-ridden than ever.

Many people are asking: if we vote for the ANC on May 8, are we voting for the “new dawn” of Ramaphosa or are we voting for a continuation of the corruption of the past 10 years at least?

The violent response to a book about the ANC secretary-general’s reportedly corrupt past has made it clear that there are people in the ANC who want to hold on to the past. As secretary-general, Ace Magashule is effectively the chief executive of ANC Inc, while Ramaphosa is chairperson. A stand-off between the two will have to come sooner rather than later. Who will win will determine the future of this country and not only of the ANC.

South Africans often naively believe in giving politicians the benefit of the doubt. They did it for years with Jacob Zuma and, before democracy, white South Africans blindly followed the National Party for almost 50 years of apartheid rule.

But we need to move beyond the notion of placing our faith blindly in politicians just because they are supposed to be leaders. I intend to think very carefully about where I am placing my cross on May 8. Over the next few weeks, I will look at some of the other parties and why one should or should not vote for them.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 13 April 2019)

Ubuntu? No, SA has a penchant for intolerance

South Africa is known throughout the world for Ubuntu – which roughly means a shared humanity – but our beloved country sure has a lot of intolerance, and even more so in an election year.

One can expect heightened intolerance when political parties are competing for your vote, but there is a part of me that worries about whether, amid the crazy tensions, political parties do not expose their true selves.

ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte showed intolerance towards the media through her verbal attack on eNCA’s Samkelo Maseko at an ANC media briefing this week. It was not so much what she said but the sub-text that she has very little respect for journalists.

I am a journalist and one who, unlike Maseko as Duarte rightly pointed out, fought in the Struggle for the media freedom that we enjoy today. But it was never about media freedom.

It was always about a package of rights that form part of being a democratic society. Neither Duarte nor any other politician can take away this hardwon right, unless they take away our democracy too, which, it seems, quite a few politicians would like to do when the heat is turned on them, which is the work of journalists.

These politicians are not confined to the ruling party. There are many in the opposition ranks who have exposed similar intolerant streaks.

Journalists are not meant to be lapdogs of any politician or political party, but they are meant to interrogate the words and actions of public representatives on behalf of the people politicians and the media are meant to serve. In a perfect democracy, I suppose, there will always be tensions between journalists and politicians.

If there is no tension, it probably means that one is not doing her job properly. I was one of those who foolishly believed that the end of apartheid and the beginning of democracy in South Africa meant the end of intolerance towards the media.

No doubt, things were worse under apartheid. I worked for several publications that were banned. When I worked for Grassroots community newspaper our offices were placed under 24-hour police guard – in case we tried to enter our place of work – and I have had my share of detention and arrest.

For those who might not know, detention was when the police could lock you up without any reason and without having to tell your family or friends where they were holding you.

When they arrested you, it meant that they intended to charge you with a crime such as promoting the aims of the banned ANC or possessing banned publications.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists sacrificed during the Struggle, either working for publications that were banned or being arrested or detained. I suspect that, if Maseko had the misfortune to be born earlier, he would probably have been one of them.

But intolerance in South Africa is not restricted to fights between politicians and the media. It can be found everywhere in our society. Many South Africans are known to be intolerant towards people who look and sound different to them, people who might be from a different race, class, age, sex, African country, or have a different sexual preference.

We are also often intolerant towards people who do not necessarily peddle what we believe to be the truth or display different opinions. We often see things as purely black and white – which is ironic for a country with South Africa’s history – and we struggle to accept that most issues in society are grey.

But all of this is probably good for our democracy. It means that, at some level, people are feeling challenged, even if they do not want to admit it. Expect to see more intolerance in the run-up to the May 8 elections. But do not expect it to end soon afterwards. This is all part of being a democracy.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday 6 April 2019)

Arts and culture are as important to our society as education or housing

Something happened at the free concert of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival on Wednesday night, something that I have seen at some other events, but I have always found it fascinating yet understandable in our digital age.

As soon as the South African singer Shekhinah arrived on stage just before 10pm, the audience lit up, with the light coming from hundreds, if not thousands, of cellphones wanting to record the moment - for Instagram, for prosperity or maybe just for the heck of it.

Shekhinah, from Durban, became popular through South African Idols, in which she participated twice, the second time making the top six in 2012.

But much has happened since then and, clearly, many of the people who were gathered on Greenmarket Square - some from as early as 4pm - were there to see her perform.

Yes, there were other performances, but she appeared to be the main attraction, as could be seen by the number of people who left after she performed even though there was still one act to come.

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Earlier, she had performed as the opening act for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran, who was performing down the road at the Cape Town stadium.

I was not privileged to attend Sheeran’s show - the tickets were a bit pricey but clearly there are many Capetonians who do not worry about such trivial matters such as spending a small fortune on an overseas artist.

But I always enjoy the free concert because it is one of the rare opportunities for what many call “ordinary people” to enjoy the inner city at night and to be treated to a free concert by some of the best local artists with a sprinkling of international acts.

Earlier in the day, there was a conversation with some government officials about how to grow audiences for arts and culture in general - for theatre, music, dance and other art forms - but also how to develop a reading culture in our country.

I have been thinking about this issue the whole week, especially after attending a concert last Saturday at the Baxter Theatre featuring the masterful guitarist Selaelo Selota, where I was disappointed at the poor attendance.

Yes, it is the Baxter and even R150 for a ticket can be expensive, especially in the week before pay day, but I expected more than the handful of people who came to experience one of the best concerts I have been to in a while.

In a country such as South Africa, where inequality, unemployment and poverty continue to remind us of how far we still have to go as a democracy, there are people who argue - and probably with some merit - that there are more important things to worry about than developing audiences for arts and culture events.

But arts and culture are as important as many of the other pressing issues facing our society. They should not be competing against decent education, housing, health care and job creation. They should be complementing the other needs in our society.

A nation without proper arts and culture is a poor nation. Music, especially, feeds the soul and sometimes helps to make the burden of live a little easier. Arts and culture help us to see the world differently and could also help us to think differently about the problems we face.

I try to support local music and events as much as possible and that is why I am attending the CTIJF for its 20th birthday this weekend - even though it was reasonably expensive to pay for the entrance fee and the Rosies tickets for my wife and me. But those of us who can afford to pay should pay so that the organisers can arrange free concerts so that those who cannot afford can also have their Instagram moment with Shekhinah and other stars. Some people call it audience development.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 30 March 2019)

#Loadshedding leaving us blind to the tragedies unfolding around us

When we were small and complained to my mother about how bad things were, she always reminded us that no matter how bad our situation might seem, there is also someone else somewhere else whose situation was probably worse.

My mother was not an educated woman, in the formal sense of the word, but she was one of the wisest people I was fortunate to know and I learnt a lot of lessons from her, which would benefit me greatly later in life.

This week was one of those weeks when faced with load shedding after load shedding after load shedding - no, scrap that, we were faced with rolling blackouts - as South Africans we could still look elsewhere and think about how lucky we are.

I am not saying we are not in trouble. The rolling blackouts have played havoc with most people’s lives, no matter where you find yourself. You can be rich or poor, black or white, but the blackouts would have affected you. Eskom, it seems, is an equal opportunity offender.

While I am offended as everyone else by what has happened to our nation’s power supply - and one can easily blame corruption if the revelations at the Zondo Commission into state capture can be believed - I am not prepared to take joint responsibility, as we were encouraged by the president this week.

Those who should take responsibility are the thousands who work at Eskom and the small group who looted this state-owned entity at the behest of an even smaller group who belonged to, it seems, mainly two families and their extended base of hangers-on. The responsibility should also rest with those people who turned a blind eye even when they knew that wrongdoing was going on.

But while Eskom was playing havoc with production and people’s schedules generally, elsewhere in the world there were worse things going on, which could have made some of us say: "I’m glad to be in South Africa."

There have been gross displays of violent intolerance, the worst being in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a right-wing terrorist gunned down innocent worshippers in two mosques during the holy Jummah prayers last Friday - while live-streaming his actions.

But the worst tragedy happened not far from us, across our borders, literally. Cyclone Idai, one of the biggest cyclones in recent history, hit parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, killing and injuring thousands and displacing millions.

More than 90% of Mozambique’s fourth-largest city, Beira, has been destroyed. According to reports, Beira has been reduced to a small island. One report said this was possibly the worst disaster to strike the southern hemisphere.

Our thoughts and sympathies should have been with the people of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi immediately and we should have been finding ways in which we could help. But South Africans don’t naturally jump to the assistance of people in neighbouring countries, unless we are directly affected.

In this case, we are, because a large part of South Africa’s electricity supply comes from Mozambique and the cyclone destroyed many pylons in its path, effectively cutting off the power supply to South Africa.

Several South African-based civil society organisations, such as Gift of the Givers and Doctors Without Borders, have been working in all three affected countries and President Cyril Ramaphosa has sent troops to help with rescuing people and restoring some semblance of normality - even though this will probably take years.

As South Africans commemorated Human Rights Day this week, we should have been thinking not only about how to secure our own human rights, but also how we can play a role in making the world a better and a safer place.

Ignoring intolerance anywhere in the world can impact on our human rights, as can ignoring climate change which can result in more tragedies such as that brought on by Cyclone Idai.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 23 March 2019)

Struggling to survive in gangland after being abandoned by Struggle comrades

You think you know somebody - until they die. I have often found myself in the position where, at a funeral or memorial of someone I considered a close comrade or friend, I found out things I did not know.

It was the same this week as I sat at the memorial for Roland Jethro, an old comrade from Hanover Park, who passed away last Sunday.

At the memorial on Wednesday, and in my interactions with family and friends, I realised that there was a lot that I did not know about him.

But I was also reminded of a lot of things that I had forgotten about him. That happens if you have known someone for more than 35 years.

I have always known Rolie, as we have always called him, as a complex person, but I suppose most of us are.

Rolie was a member of the Hanover Park Youth Movement in the early 1980s and we were close friends for a period, even dating two sisters in the area at some point.

But he was much more than a youth or community activist, as many of the people who delivered tributes on Wednesday confirmed.

He was a teacher, an “eco-socialist”, as Zelda Holtzman described him, a member of the progressive Western Province Mountain Club, an avid fisherman, and he loved spending time in nature, especially in the company of young people.

His cousin, Michelene Fortuin, reminded us of a tragedy that had befallen Rolie when he was 20 years old. His brother had been stabbed by gangsters in Hanover Park and subsequently died of his injuries.

This impacted on Rolie tremendously, and I remember walking with him from one end of Hanover Park to the other to visit the two sisters in question, and he would be armed with knives and small axes in his haversack, to use if we were attacked.

He offered me one of his weapons, but I politely declined because I have never been prone to any kind of violence.

Rolie was not a violent person, but living in gang-ridden Hanover Park and with the loss of his brother to violence, meant he considered violence a way of dealing with the problems in the area. Through his community activism, Rolie, like many of us at the time, got drawn into underground activities of the then-banned ANC and its military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe.

After a life of service to the community, he died disappointed with the organisation that he had admired and served for most of his life, which seemingly turned its back on him.

I watched ANC provincial secretary Faiez Jacobs sit through several comments of criticism about the ANC at the memorial.

It must have been difficult to be surrounded by comrades, knowing that many of them had given up on the organisation that brought us liberation but then went off the rails.

If the ANC wants to have a realistic chance of regaining the Western Cape, it will have to think about the way it has neglected people such as Rolie, and by extension, the communities they represent.

All of us have changed over the years, but it was clear to me on Wednesday night that there are many people who still treasure the values that we grew up with in the Struggle.

Many of those people have lost faith in the ANC, as speaker after speaker related at the memorial.

It is difficult to know everything about anyone, because people share different parts of their lives and personalities with different people. I don’t know anybody who shares everything with all their friends.

I hope that Rolie’s death will help all of us to reflect on where we come from and where we were hoping to go as a nation.

It might help us get back on the path that we are supposed to be on.

May his soul rest in peace.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 16 March 2019)

Crime and corruption have spiralled out of control despite our Constitution

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a conversation among some low-level public servants in one of the Western Cape provincial departments. The conversation was about crime and what needs to be done to combat it.

Two of the comments have stuck with me, and I paraphrase: “Prisoners have more rights and privileges inside prison than people on the outside. They get three meals a day and free health care, which people on the outside don’t.” And: “As soon as you murder someone, you should hang. No discussion.”

I was not eavesdropping because the people having this discussion knew that I was there and could hear them, yet they felt comfortable having this conversation loudly in my presence. 

I realised that while the government is meant to be guided by one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, this does not necessarily mean that those lower down the pecking order understand the Constitution or, frankly, give a damn.

There is probably a huge need for public servants, at junior and senior levels, to be educated in what the Constitution says about basic human rights and how this should impact on government policy and service delivery.

The Constitution is quite clear on the unlawfulness of the death penalty and, barring a miracle, there is no way that South Africa will go back to implementing one of the most barbaric mechanisms to combat crime and one which has never been scientifically proven to be effective.

The fact that civil servants - and they were all, I suppose, speaking in their personal capacities - could harbour such thoughts on the death penalty and have such a negative attitude towards prisoners, worried me and I tried very hard to understand what drives these kinds of attitudes.

I suppose I am one of those naive people who thought that, once we became a democracy, the government would begin to put the interests of the majority at the centre of its programmes and that public servants would be guided by the Constitution and, in fact, be loyal to the Constitution.

But none of us could have anticipated that crime and corruption would spiral out of control and that personal greed among those who were supposed to be custodians of the public purse would threaten to derail our democracy.

I suppose many people are looking at how criminals are getting away with crime - and, lest we forget, corruption is a crime - and throwing up their hands in anguish. In their desperation to free our society of crime, they express the kind of negative attitudes that I witnessed first hand.

Public servants, and here I include government ministers, have more of a responsibility than the rest of us to live by example and to, for instance, raise their voices and take action when they see things going wrong. After all, they get paid to serve the public.

Too many people who are supposed to serve the public have turned a blind eye to corruption, meaning that those who have always been vocal about it have been isolated and threatened. In one case that I know of, Vernie Petersen, the former national commissioner of prison, died mysteriously after being put under pressure for opposing and wanting to expose corruption. In another case, Lennox Garane decided to take his life in protest against corruption and inaction in Parliament.

Both these cases were under the spotlight at a rally at St George’s Cathedral last Saturday called by a group known as #justice4vernie, consisting of family and friends of Petersen who are demanding that the circumstances around his death be properly investigated and that he be accorded proper acknowledgement for his anti-corruption stance.

Maybe Petersen and Garane are the kind of public servants who should be held up as role models for others who work in the government. Their stories should be shared and studied and could help to develop a better cadre of true public servants, not only in word but in deed.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 9 March 2019)

Don’t judge by racial identity

I was thinking of white privilege a lot this week, especially after seeing Jervis Pennington’s intriguing one-person play, An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life, at the Alexander Bar and Theatre, my favourite small theatre venue in Cape Town.

For those who can remember back to the early 1980s, Pennington was the frontman for a boy band called The Soft Shoes, who won a competition called Follow That Star, an earlier version of Idols.

They sold quite a few records but disappeared completely after a few years of popularity. Pennington subsequently did some other things in the entertainment industry but later found himself destitute and living on the streets of Cape Town.

The play should have had a bigger audience and here’s hoping that a bigger venue will give him an opportunity to tell his amusing stories and sing his specially-written songs about love and societal problems.

As someone who grew up poor on the Cape Flats, I could relate to many of the things he shared about growing up as a poor white in Johannesburg, especially having the same stuff on your school sandwiches day after day - when you were lucky to have sandwiches.

He grew up during the years of apartheid, but clearly, he did not take much advantage of his “white privilege” in those days. Please don’t get me wrong: white privilege is a reality and many whites, including those who were poor, benefited and took advantage of it.

But there were probably a few whose lives were so terrible that they did not even realise that they were entitled to this privilege. And then there were those who shunned their privilege.

In the apartheid days, we assumed that blacks were the good guys, because of apartheid oppression and exploitation. We assumed that whites were the bad guys, for the same reasons. But there were more than a handful of whites who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, despite coming from privileged backgrounds.

Many years ago, when I was head of the journalism department at Peninsula Technikon, a leader of the SRC came to see me about enrolling a young woman into our programme. I explained to him that there was a very lengthy application process, including an interview after shortlisting, which she clearly did not do.

He eventually told me I should accept the young woman as a student - I have no idea what their relationship was - because he did not want to have to accuse me of being racist. Both him and the young woman were African. I asked him to leave my office. Later, my staff said that I was either brave or foolish to act so harshly against an SRC leader.

What I saw, however, was not a leader, but someone who was using his race to get others to bend rules for people like the young woman who did not even bother to apply to study in the department, but who would then insist on being accepted.

I was not going to allow myself to be bullied by a racist. We need to guard against treating everyone in the same way, based on their race. And this applies to blacks as well as whites.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 2 March 2019)

We should have gone for counselling after we became a democracy

On Tuesday night, I co-facilitated an interactive dialogue discussion at the District Six Homecoming Centre. A couple of things made it interesting.

The topic was “The South Africa we all want to live in” and it took the form of what I can only call an “inverted panel discussion”. We invited panellists, but they did not sit upfront. They sat in the audience and were allowed to respond only after we had heard a significant number of contributions from the floor.

In this way, we ensured that people who attended could set the agenda for the discussion without having to listen to a panel of speakers and then have only a few minutes at the end for questions and comments.

What was really interesting was that the event - organised by the Community Chest of the Western Cape, District Six Museum and the One City, Many Cultures Project - attracted more than 100 people without advertising the names of speakers.

My experience, until now, is that many people decide to attend certain events based on who is speaking.

The fact that so many people came to this discussion is probably an indication that ordinary South Africans want spaces free from political-party interference where they can talk about the problems facing our country and help to search for solutions.

If anything, Tuesday night’s discussion showed me that there is still a lot of hurt in our society and some of this hurt stretches back to the days of apartheid.

Issues raised including the “forgotten” people of the Western Cape, those who live on the Cape Flats or are homeless; the lack of restitution for the people who were forcibly removed from District Six, some of them 50 years ago; the need for the repatriation of human remains of our ancestors from foreign countries; gangsterism on the Cape Flats; food security; land; racism and violence, including the slapping of people in Parliament and schools; and the responsibility of the rich towards poor people.

The overall tone of the evening was not to complain, but rather to look for solutions to our many problems.

One of the invited respondents was Gabeba Gaidien, an impressive young woman who has been working in Manenberg and who spoke about how trauma was passed on from one generation to another in South Africa. One way of dealing with trauma was through education, she said.

I have always felt that, in South Africa, we moved too quickly from a situation of serious oppression to one of ubuntu and rainbow nationism. We never dealt with the trauma most of us suffered under apartheid but tried to forget it in the interest of building a new nation. All of us should probably have gone for counselling after we became a democracy.

Stanley Henkeman, the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, another of the invited respondents, summed up the evening by saying that there was a need for a new narrative in South Africa, but no one could write that narrative on their own.

The government needed to work with civil society and others in order to get to that narrative, he said.

One of the most poignant moments of the evening came towards the end when Pamela Court, whom I have known for many years, spoke about white privilege and how she still struggles with it, despite trying to live with a non-racialism credo for more than 30 years.

What this dialogue - and there will be a few more all over the Western Cape in the next two months - showed is that South Africans are prepared to talk to each other to look for solutions. As we head into the elections, political parties will try to exploit the divisions in our society.

I have hope that we have enough people who are prepared to rise above those divisions to work together for the South Africa we all want to live in.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 23 February 2019)

Eskom renders people powerless in the darkness that they subject SA to

Before I sat down to write this column, I had to check the load shedding schedule. I had to make sure there was enough time before the next Eskom-inspired electricity blackout for me to write and whether we would still be connected to Wi-fi by the time I would be ready to email it.

They say a week is a long time in politics. In South Africa, it becomes even longer if one has to deal with what is euphemistically called “rolling blackouts” or “stage four load shedding”. It should rather be called what it is: a complete and utter mess-up (I can’t believe that I can be so polite despite my anger).

Like most South Africans, I had to quickly adjust to load shedding terminology this week. I had to find out whether we would be without electricity only once a day or, in the case of stage four, three times a day. I had to download an app with load-shedding schedules.

It is difficult to plan around Eskom time, as opposed to African time, because quite often they don’t stick to their own schedules. The other night, they said we would get load shedding at 6.30pm, but it started at 6.10pm. But they also once said that we would get load shedding in the morning, and nothing happened.

I know there are many South Africans who live in informal housing and do not have access to electricity. But electricity, like water, is a basic human right in modern society and one which has become an integral part of our lives.

Having to schedule our lives around the availability of electricity is not easy, and it creates great discomfort in many households. You have to check that all your emergency devices are fully charged, that your gas tanks are loaded, that you have enough power on your laptop, and that you have enough candles.

You have to put hot water in a flask so that you can make a cup of tea or coffee when the lights are out. You have to make sure that you cook while there is still electricity and that you cook something that can be eaten cold because you might not be able to warm it up at supper time.

People whose businesses need to run without interruption have had to buy generators to make sure that they do not lose productivity or profits.

I am fortunate because I possess the means to travel from an area without electricity to one without load shedding. So, if we have to, we can just go and have dinner or to see a show in an area which is not affected, according to the load-shedding schedule.

Most people do not have this luxury and just have to deal with their circumstances.

About 10 years ago, I was working with a Ghanaian media company and was based in the capital, Accra. Part of my deal was a house with a water tank and a generator, which I found quite funny at the time. It looks like we are heading that way in South Africa, unless we can stop the damage that has already been done to Eskom.

There have been all kinds of speculation about the latest bout of load shedding, coming as it does a few days after President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a reasonable and workman-like, if not mind-blowing, State of the Nation speech in which he announced that elections will held on May 8 this year.

I would love to buy into the conspiracy theories about possible sabotage but I think it is probably more simple and sadder than that. Eskom is messed up, it is bloated, inefficient and lacks leadership. And that is probably more dangerous than any conspiracy.

Phew! I made it. I have a few more minutes to email my column before the lights go out once again.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 16 February 2019)

This Valentine's Day, mute your scepticism and celebrate all the loved ones in your life

On Thursday millions of people around the world will be clamouring to buy roses and make dinner reservations so that they can entertain someone special in their lives. It is, of course, Valentine’s Day, known as the day of love in many countries.

Irrespective of its origins, dating back many centuries, Valentine’s Day has become popular with people who are looking for love or who believe they have found love.

When we were young people growing up in the Struggle, we were sceptical about days like Valentine’s Day, seeing it only as a commercial opportunity introduced by the capitalists to exploit the vulnerable working class even more. The scepticism is still there, but it is muted somewhat. We all know that it is more about making money for people who sell roses, chocolates and other stuff associated with love, but we don’t mind playing along, within reason.

I almost always buy flowers for my wife on Valentine’s Day, but it might not be roses, because who decided that the best way to show your love is by buying roses? There is a demand for roses on this day which, of course, means that people who sell roses can increase their prices and make a lot of money in the process.

Most Valentine’s Days are filled with sadness for me, because I inevitably think about people who are no longer with us, people who might have played a role, directly or indirectly, in my life over the years. One such person is Vernie Petersen, the former national commissioner of prisons and director-general of sport who, it was revealed at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry in State Capture recently, resisted many attempts to corrupt him while he was the head of prisons.

It was through Vernie that I met the love of my life, my wife, who has been my life partner for almost 35 years. I was organising young people in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, and Vernie, who was from Westridge, came around to check up how we were doing one Thursday night. In his brown VW Beetle were a few members of the youth group in Westridge. I only had eyes for one of them and she later became my wife.

This Valentine’s Day, I will be thinking especially about Vernie’s loved ones who were deprived of him way too soon.

It was difficult during the Struggle years. As activists, we were taught to be sceptical about everything, including love. It was not easy to admit to anyone that you had fallen in love. The many commitments we had, meetings almost every night after work, meant that love life often had to take a distant second place in terms of importance.

Over the years I have realised that love can be overrated but developing a good partnership with the person you have chosen to spend your life with, can never be. You need to learn to laugh together and not only love together.

Love can take different forms. There is the love that I felt for my mother who was the disciplinarian in our family, but I understood it because she had to raise five children, mostly with minimal support from my father, under very difficult circumstances.

Then there is the love that I felt for my three daughters from the minute I witnessed each of their births. This love, like the one that ends up in marriage, has to survive through thick and thin, through sickness and health, etc.

More recently, I have discovered another kind of love, for my grandson, who, in the space of eight short months, has stolen the hearts of everyone in our family. He has become the centre of our universe and we follow every step in his development with great interest.

It is good to love and be loved. You don’t need a special day for this and you should not have to prove it with roses, chocolates or special dinners. That does not mean you should not spoil your loved ones from time to time and not only on Valentine’s Day.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 9 February 2019)

Agrizzi should be held accountable for his racism

Apart from corruption - which would be obvious at a commission of inquiry into state capture - two of the remarkable themes to come from the marathon testimony of Angelo Agrizzi to the Zondo Commission this week and last week dealt with racism and the role of journalists.

There are some people who argue that, because Agrizzi is a confessed racist, his testimony should be taken with a pinch of salt or dismissed outright.

But just because he is racist, he should not forfeit his right to take the nation into his confidence about the many instances of corruption he witnessed at Bosasa, the company he served as chief operations officer not too long ago.

There are even people who argue that Agrizzi’s testimony at the Zondo Commission was driven by his hatred of black people, because he wanted to show how corrupt black political leaders were.

But what Agrizzi’s testimony showed is that it is not only black people who are corrupt. And it is not only politicians who are corrupt. As is the case in any corrupt relationship, the corruption involving Bosasa had the corrupted (in most cases politicians and public servants, black and white) and the corrupters (the mainly white bosses of Bosasa).

My feeling is that Agrizzi should be made to pay for his racism in the same way as people such as Penny Sparrow have been made to pay. He should be taken to court and held accountable. In the same way, he should account for the role he played in promoting a culture of corruption within government and the public service.

Those whom he mentioned as having benefited from the corruption, as well as those who aided and abetted the corruption, should also face criminal charges.

While it is relatively easy to deal with Agrizzi’s confessed racism, it is more difficult to deal with his claims that the company paid journalists for information and to write sympathetically about the company.

It is a pity that he claimed not to be able to remember the names of journalists who had been paid in this way.

Pinky Khoabane is not a journalist. At most, she is someone with an opinion. And Stephen Laufer stopped being a journalist many years ago. He is now a spin-doctor and has been for many years. And there are many journalists in the Eastern Cape who could go by the name of “Bongs”.

I am a strong believer in people having to account for things that they did wrong, but it is difficult for anyone to take any action with regard to the supposed journalists named by Agrizzi.

Journalists who accept money in return for writing positive stories on companies or individuals only serve to put more pressure on an industry that is already struggling with credibility issues.

But it is important to remember that, while the allegations of journalists being paid by Bosasa is probably true, it is highly likely that it is only a small group of journalists who allowed themselves to be manipulated in this manner. Most journalists I know are committed to their craft and do their work diligently despite and not because of the money they are being paid by their employers.

While Agrizzi’s testimony should not be dismissed completely because of his racism, one should also not believe every word he said. He should be subjected to proper court procedures where his motives could be exposed and the truth of his statements could be fully tested.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 2 February 2019)

People age, memories fade but their contributions to society never should

I was young once, not too long ago. Now I’m attending 60-, 70- and 80-year-old birthday parties and don’t feel out of place. And I have suddenly realised that it will be my turn to celebrate my 60th in about 18 months.

Where has the time gone?

Last Sunday, we celebrated the 70th birthday of veteran (that’s such an old-sounding word) entertainer Terry Fortune. It is strange to compare the energy of someone like Fortune with what we experienced from 70-year-olds when we were growing up.

Tomorrow an old friend and comrade, Marcus Solomon, turns 80. Both Solomon and Fortune defy stereotypes of old people.

Solomon has always been, in the eyes of us young Mitchells Plain activists in the 1980s, someone who came close to being the complete activist. He spent 10 years on Robben Island after being convicted as a 24-year-old of “conspiracy to overthrow the state”.

Solomon and his then-wife, Theresa, were one of the most influential activist couples in Mitchells Plain and initiated several progressive community projects in Woodlands, where they lived, and in other areas.

One of the projects they started was an alternative crèche where activists could comfortably send their children. For the past 36 years Solomon has been working with the Children’s Resource Centre and has decided that, instead of having a party to celebrate his 80th birthday, he would rather use the occasion to raise much-needed funds for the CRC.

“I am appealing to you to make a once-off or a regular monetary donation to the organisation. You are also free to make any form of support you think will benefit it. The work the organisation has done over the years is still very much needed and your support can help us continue it,” he wrote in an email to people in his network.

The selflessness of people such as Marcus Solomon contrasts starkly with what we have come to expect from people who are supposed to be in political leadership positions today.

I saw another one of Solomon’s contemporaries this week at an event at the District Six Homecoming Centre. Willie Simmers has been working at the Mitchells Plain Advice Office for almost 40 years and, at the age of 78, he still takes the train from Crawford station to Mitchells Plain most days to serve the community. Sometimes they get paid, most times they don’t.

A few years ago, we arranged a surprise 70th birthday party for Simmers because we felt it was important to honour his contribution. I was looking at the documents of the event this week and saw that one of the people who donated funds was Vernie Petersen, another former Mitchells Plain activist whose name came up at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry this week, but in a positive way.

Petersen, as the national commissioner of prisons in 2007, had resisted all attempts at corruption by Bosasa, whose former chief operating officer Angelo Agrizzi has been revealing details at the commission of politicians they bribed. Many friends and family members of Petersen believe his death, at a relatively young age in February 2011, could be blamed on the pressure he was put under by Bosasa and complicit political figures.

I remember after Albert Fritz left the ANC to join the DA in 2008. He told me that his decision was based mainly on the way Petersen had been treated by people who were supposed to be his comrades. Fritz, who grew up with me in Hanover Park, had been in the office of the inspecting judge for prisons. I did not support his decision, but I understood.

It is important to remember the contribution of people like Solomon, Simmers, Petersen and many others. Fortune contributed towards the entertainment field, destroying racist and gender stereotypes at a difficult time. It is one thing to get old. It is another when people forget your history and contribution to society.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 26 January 2019)

Criminals need to be held acountable for their deeds

How many times have we been victims of crime?

This is not a strange question to ask in a violent country such as South Africa where many, if not most, people have been victims of crime, many in their own homes.

I thought about this after we were woken on Sunday morning with the news that my brother-in-law’s house in Mitchells Plain had been broken into and he had been shot in a scuffle with the intruder.

He is fine now, having been discharged from hospital after spending a few days in the trauma unit surrounded by others who had also suffered gunshot or knife wounds, mainly in gang fights.

Two days before that, the house in which my parents-in-law live, also in Mitchells Plain, was burgled while everyone was in the house.

Fortunately, no one was injured, but my young niece will probably be traumatised for a long time after being threatened by the intruder, who escaped with a few small items.

My sisters, who also live in the area, have had their fair share of crime, from my nephew being shot dead in gang crossfire many years ago, to another nephew being stabbed through the lung by gangsters while he was in a taxi at Mitchells Plain Town Centre a few months ago.

We experienced our first burglary while we lived in Rocklands, Mitchells Plain, more than 30 years ago.

Fortunately, we were not at home, but I still remember vividly how violated I felt when we came home and realised someone had been inside our house, scratched through all our stuff and took whatever he could carry, which included our small black-and-white television and my camera kit, which included a camera, a couple of lenses and a flash.

He also took my daughter’s favourite blanket, which he probably used to wrap his loot in. My wife and I were most devastated by the loss of the blanket, which was an important companion to my then one-year-old daughter.

But we have also been burgled in Rondebosch, where we have lived for more than 20 years. This time, my three teenage daughters were alone at home and were confronted by young men who took our big screen television, some jewellery and a range of other stuff. I was more concerned about my daughters’ well-being than about the stuff we lost.

You can easily replace material possessions; it is a bit more difficult to replace a person or heal someone who has gone through a traumatic experience.

The Rondebosch burglary was the culmination of a series of incidents at our house, including the theft of my daughters’ bicycles and my golf equipment (which might have been a blessing in disguise because I have always been a lousy golfer).

But now we had to beef up security, install an electric fence and get a dog. All the time I thought to myself: why must we be held to ransom by unscrupulous thieves? Why must we sacrifice our free-living lifestyle like this, to make sure we are able to keep out people who want to steal from us or, worse, hurt us?

Of course, in all the incidents of crime we have experienced, no one has been arrested. And this is probably what explains the situation the best.

One of the reasons for the high crime rate in South Africa - poverty and inequality aside - is the fact that criminals know they can get away with their crimes for various reasons: an overstretched police force, an inefficient justice system, plus, of course, the knowledge that you can possibly bribe yourself out of trouble.

Criminals need to know that, if they commit a crime, they will be caught; if they are caught, they will be convicted; if they are convicted, they will serve all their time in prison. They need to be held accountable for their deeds.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 19 January 2019)

Quotas are necessary until everyone has opportunities to show their worth

Cape Town - One of the highlights for me about watching cricket at Newlands last Saturday, day 3 of the Test match between South Africa and Pakistan, had nothing to do with what was happening on the field of play.

It involved injured Proteas fast bowler Lungi Ngidi, who was mobbed by young boys, probably between 10 and 12 years old, as he walked past the north stand, where we were sitting. He patiently signed their cricket bats, books and T-shirts, and took selfies with them, while a burly security guard was desperately trying to get him to move on.

I am not sure who the security guard was more concerned about, Ngidi or the boys, because they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I thought about this as I read the articles this week about Springbok rugby captain Siya Kolisi’s reported comments about transformation.

Replying to a question from a Japanese journalist, Kolisi is reported to have said that Nelson Mandela would not have supported transformation quotas in sport.

Kolisi said that he would not want to be picked for the Springbok team because of his skin colour. “Surely, that would not be good for the team.”

He reportedly said that transformation should start at grass-roots level in township schools.

“Imagine if I did not go to an English school. I wouldn’t have been eating properly, I wouldn’t have grown properly, and I wouldn’t have had the preparation that the other boys did.”

While Kolisi should never have presumed to have an insight into the mind of the late Nelson Mandela, his comments about transformation are important and reflect what black sports people in South Africa have to deal with on a daily basis.

I doubt whether the media would have asked Proteas captain Faf du Plessis, or any other prominent white sportsman, what Mandela thought about transformation quotas.

But often, when many white sports lovers see black players who excel, they only see quota appointees. Black players often have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good as their white counterparts.

This is why the scene that played out in front of me, involving Ngidi and the little boys, was so special. Ngidi is black. Most of the boys were white. They were not idolising a quota player. They were idolising a good player, one of South Africa’s cricketers of the year for 2018.

But the reality is that Ngidi and many other talented individuals like him might not have received the opportunities to excel if the cricket bosses had not imposed quotas on the Proteas selectors.

I thought about the Ngidi scene also when I saw the pictures on social media of white and black children being separated at a primary school in Schweizer-Reneke.

The teachers of those children are probably among the people who oppose quotas in sport, but they don’t realise that their actions are perpetuating the need for quotas.

No one can dispute the need to transform South African society - at all levels and in all areas - from one in which whites had access to opportunities denied to blacks. Transforming society requires us to create opportunities for blacks, sometimes to the detriment of whites who are used to having such opportunities.

The denial of opportunities starts when children are young. It starts off with seating children in the same class at different tables.

As we celebrate 25 years of democracy this year, we need to remember that we come from a divided past. It is in the interests of all South Africans for more people in our society to have access to opportunities, whether this is in sport, business or arts and culture.

Those who oppose quotas talk about choosing teams on merit, but before you can do this you must create an environment in which everyone will have opportunities to show their worth. This is the role of quotas, nothing more, nothing less.

(First published as a Thinking Allowed column in the Weekend Argus on Saturday, 12 January 2019)