Zuma, Markus Jooste and the quantum of suffering

Dear Messrs Zuma and Jooste,

Let me start with you, Mr President. You took over from Mr Mbeki in 2009. At that time you had the support of Mr Malema. Since then he has broken away, formed a new party and taken you to court successfully to get you to pay back money you owed the country.

As for the economy, junk status, the collapse of the mining sector, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, an education system in which 70% of all Grade 4s don’t understand what they are reading, the looting from Eskom, Transnet and national forests by your chums Atul and others . . .

Which brings me to you, Mr Jooste. Steinhoff has crashed. The pensioners who invested in your company are broke.

Mr Wiese borrowed big to invest in you. You sold him a lemon, and even one with a mouth as big as his is struggling to swallow it.

What does it say about the two of you that you lost your biggest supporters? You wanted the power. You got it. That’s when you have to look after things. Power is just a whole lot of people trusting you. You betrayed each one of them. Badly.

You’ve caused 50 million times the suffering most people cause in a lifetime.

For this, given the personal rewards you extracted for yourselves, you should probably spend the rest of your lives in jail. That would only be just. Let us hope that justice is duly administered to you both, swiftly and firmly.

The most you can do to make amends is to come clean on your fellow thieves and looters. Only that would demonstrate true remorse and insight into the wrongs you have committed.

Les Morison, Johannesburg

Questions that won’t go away

The huffing and puffing over who believes and who does not believe that “Khwezi”, actually Fezekile Kuzwayo, was raped by Jacob Zuma misses two important points.

First, the state was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Kuzwayo was raped.

That does not mean she was not raped; it only legally signifies that the accused was entitled to the benefit of the presumption of innocence.

Second, should an open, accountable and responsive constitutional democracy entrust its presidency, both head of state and leader of the national executive, to a person who admits to having unprotected sex with a young woman about half his age who is to his knowledge HIV-positive? A woman who happens to be the daughter of his late wartime friend, comrade and protector as well as his vulnerable house guest, one who calls him “uncle”?

The truth about the alleged rape is known only to Jacob Zuma and has gone to her grave with Ms Kuzwayo, may she rest in dignified peace.

The truth about the second issue is universally known.

Paul Hoffman SC

Indian slur is just not cricket

While the editorial pages of the Sunday Times reflect a commendable new vision, Telford Vice echoes old voices of the past.

In “South Africa’s complicated relationship with India” (December 10), Vice writes: “South Africans of Indian descent were both victims and, on the black side of that brutal equation, beneficiaries of apartheid. So it’s not stretching the point to wonder whether the arrival of India’s team in our midst doesn’t bring residual racism and prejudice to the surface.”

Wi still battling to free itself from apartheid’s generational mess, can it be seriously denied that any race group is devoid of “residual racism and prejudice”?

Vice’s forked-tongue rationale harks back to the culpable fence-sitting, if not downright racism, of most of the “liberal” white press leading up to and during the anti-Indian pogrom of 1949.

Against a background of unemployment and poverty, this kind of xenophobia has easy reference.

Ronnie Govender, Cape Town

Ticking the wrong boxes

Why do government forms still demand that we tick what race we belong to, when we all are simply South Africans?

Let us start embracing one another as persons and fellow South Africans. Maybe then this beautiful country of ours may have a chance of becoming the democratic, nonracial, reconciled nation we ought to be aspiring to. Let us become a nation that lives in love, peace and prosperity.

FP Simon, Cape Town

No holiday for captive dolphins

The photo of a dolphin in captivity at uShaka Marine World in Durban (December 10) refers. Dolphins in captivity never get a holiday. As Lewis Pugh says: “It’s morally unacceptable to keep a dolphin captive.”

Heather Howe, Cape Town

Unsung heroes of heart transplant

I hope that a prominent picture is displayed in the Heart Museum of our lovely Standard Bank colleague at ABC Branch Cape Town, Miss Denise Darvall [the donor for the first successful human heart transplant in 1967].

Those of the staff who are left from her time will never forget her.

We have noted how little acknowledgement has been given to her father, who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and was then faced with that traumatic decision of agreeing to donate Denise’s heart, something that had never been done before. His picture also deserves to be displayed.

Geoff Perrow, former manager Standard Bank Mowbray