Twitter’s lethal limitations fuelling Zille imbroglio

It is quite hard to reconcile Helen Zille’s very detailed, honest and self-critical autobiography with her tendency to write unwise Twitter messages.

It is true that colonialism brought various material advantages, but for people who suffered cruel injustices, deprivations and cold-blooded laws that tore their societies and their lives apart, these hardly level the playing field or eliminate centuries of being

The ANC is to blame for Sassa debacle

THE letter by Barlow Govender refers to CPS being nationalised so as not to be able to hold SA to ransom over South Africa Social Security Agency (Sassa) payments in future.

Why blame CPS, when Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini had from April 2014 to get a service provider? Dlamini ignored a court judgement, as most government departments do, hoping it would disappear. No, sir, it’s not CPS who are guilty but the ANC government. The SA Post Office can pay out grants and could, if given the goahead, expand its pay points so all grants could be paid. Blame President Jacob Zuma, who appointed Dlamini to head up a service when she has not the foggiest idea of how it should be run. JAC WILLEMSE Uvongo

On that tweet: here’s a challenge

AT THE outset the holocaust against Gypsies, homosexuals and adherents of the Jewish faith was horrific and no explanation can be given for the massacre of innocent people, be they Jews, Christians, Arabs, Africans or Asians, regardless of cause or perpetrators.

Given the recent tweet by Helen Zille, here is a challenge: Do you know that Hitler’s Nazis produced many inventions that we use today. Hitler was the first to warn and implement anti-smoking measures and checks for drunk driving. Tony Yengeni can blame Hitler.

Now will Zille issue a tweet like this. Given her German ancestry, this may fit in with her history. For those thinking Nazism was only negative, think of Sasol (the Fishcher Tropsch), think Volkswagen, think autobahn (freeways without intersections), think removing unemployment and zero inflation (given the mess he inherited), think Adi Dasller founder of Adidas, Puma and Hugo Boss (who supplied the Nazi army). Can you do this?

As for railways, judiciary and roads, lots of countries that were not British colonies ended up with their own systems – Russia, China and Japan.

India, now with one of the highest per capita GDPs, was impoverished when the Union Jack was lowered and the Tricolor raised in New Delhi.

As for Singapore’s system of criminal punishment, this is more Islamic Sharia than British law. Singapore has the highest rate of judicial executions per capita, mainly for drugs. And among the suspects are Dutch women with Nigerian boyfriends.

No one can justify the massacre of the Nazi era nor can anyone justify the use of the Gatling gun (which is how the British subjugated its colonies, according to Dr Mahathir Mohammed) and, by the way, it was used in the Anglo-Zulu war to subjugate the Zulus.

So is there any difference between the Gatling gun and the Nazi gas chamber? MUHAMMAD OMAR

Durban North

Let’s concentrate on building the future

IT IS SO important to recognise colonisation and colonialism at the point of a gun or spear as evil.

Almost all human groups, tribes and nations are guilty, including the Zulu people. There is ample stone age evidence in art and tools in the Valley of the Kings around Ulundi to indicate that the Zulus displaced the San centuries ago. The remaining San had to settle for the cold and comparatively inhospitable Drakensberg to continue their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Whites then colonised and within 50 years these San became extinct.

We should also recognise the good that colonising humans bring with the evil of colonisation. If the Romans had not colonised Britain 2 000 years ago my English ancestors would have remained clothed in rough animal hides, living in grass huts, illiterate and innumerate for much longer than they did. The Romans brought benefits – improved agriculture and food security, clean piped water, Roman law, good roads and transport and so forth,

While white people should not boast about the benefits of coloni- regarded as inferior on the basis of prejudiced attitudes that lacked common sense and humanity.

If anything, the material advances made deprivation even harder to bear. Colonialism had ruthless, rapacious, appallingly selfish and often blatantly cruel consequences. We all know that. It is not a subject we can defend, despite the indisputable material advantages it brought (to some).

There is abundant evidence that alism and should recognise its evil, all of us need to move on creatively with that which is good in the science, engineering, agriculture, transport, democratic governance, trade, shipping and other benefits that came to South Africa from elsewhere over the past few centuries.

It is significant that in the understandable criticism of the way in which Helen Zille tweeted her opinion nobody has suggested that we retreat from these benefits to a simpler and rougher life.

Surely we can leave this divisive and destructive discourse and get on with building our future. PETER ARDINGTON

Mandeni

Country’s a joke, a scandal-ridden mess

AS I watched President Jacob Zuma rabbiting on in Parliament last Thursday, trying to justify and protect the incompetent minister, Bathabile Dlamini, I was filled with incandescent rage.

There he was bleating that we were a “funny democracy, law of the jungle” because millions of concerned citizens wanted to see her gone. He seems to be deliberately misreading the situation.

He is showing a lack of intelligent reasoning in this serious matter and is trying to cover up her dereliction of duty.

What a shocking mess this scandal-ridden country has become.

What is the matter with the ANC hierarchy that it allows the destruction of what is left of South Africa’s credibility by not acting against its members who are showing the middle finger to the highest law of the land, the Constitutional Court?

The country has become a sick joke. God help us. M Mitchell Westville Helen Zille is a brave woman who has done much courageous workabout which most people, including many who now defame her, know nothing. She is certainly not a racist and has, in fact, placed herself in dangerous rescue situations, often risking her life to do so. These are documented and can be checked.

It is therefore all the more disappointing that she herself has offered the ammunition which some are only too happy to use to gun her

Action on UN report showed courage

MEL Frykberg gleefully elucidates on the report published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, “Israeli practices towards the Palestinian People and the question of Apartheid”, but omits salient points.

The UN ESCWA has as its membership 18 Arab countries – Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the State of Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Its headquarters is in Beirut. The report was authored by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley, both notorious for anti-Israel rhetoric.

However, as I write, the report has become history, relegated to the garbage heap where it belongs. Immediately on its release, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres distanced himself from it, and in three days he ordered it be removed from the ESCWA website.

In so doing, Guterres displayed the courage and integrity one would expect from a body as prestigious as the UN. MONESSA SHAPIRO Glenhazel

School bullying is a reflection of society

THE high number of bullying and abusive videos of pupils surfacing on social media is worrying.

Bullying is not acceptable and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The effects can be devastating. But from where exactly does bullying stem?

Children are like mirrors; they reflect the reality of our society’s down. Twitter does not allow for an adequately broad context, and a subject so important should not be “twittered” about, since it requires serious contemplation.

We live in a recovering society and can be deeply grateful for the generosity of spirit of most of our countrymen, but we need to be sensitive to the continuing consequences of earlier injustices and to some understandable lingering anger. We need to take the whole behaviour – vulgar language, intolerance and cruelty towards each other, violence and discriminatory statements are some of the daily messages our children are receiving.

The misuse and unsupervised use of the internet, social media and television adds to this multi-layered menace called bullying.

Children do not have the ability to filter what they should accept or practise or leave out.

To begin the rehabilitation process we all need to self-reflect.

We need to examine our habits, biases and lifestyle. MOHAMED SAEED

Pietermaritzburg

DA hypocrisy over ‘colonialism’ tweet

THE TWITTERSTORM that has resulted from Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s remarks on colonialism (The Mercury, March 17), has brought to the fore the fact that the DA prioritises political correctness and hypocrisy ahead of factual honesty and historical context.

Zille was quite correct in rejecting the assertion that the legacy of colonialism was only negative. As she attempted to argue, the manifold positive legacies of the colonial era cannot simply be wished away. But the fact that she rapidly reversed her stance and apologised for the perception that she was defending colonialism shows the extent to which free and diverse thinking within the DA has become marginalised.

The words of DA leader Mmusi Maimane leave no doubt about that: colonialism, he said, can never be justified. One wonders how he feels about the line in the preamble of the constitution which exhorts us to “respect those who have worked to build and develop our country”. socio-political context into account when we make public comments and not cherry-pick the advantages without admitting to the unfairness inflicted on people who lacked the political power to object.

This is why Twitter is a totally unsuitable option for any kind of serious comment. It operates like a brief burst of machine gun fire – and can be just as lethal. SHIRLEY BELL

Durban

All periods of history contain stains of tragedy and injustice. The colonial period was no exception. But it is disingenuous to condemn an entire era based only on its negative effects and legacies. Thus it is the height of hypocrisy for DA MPL Mbali Ntuli to label as “trash” any link between colonialism and development. Having received her education at institutions which are the products of the colonial era, she has no room to talk.

Similarly, the comment by DA KZN leader Zwakele Mncwango that colonialism was purely about oppression and left a legacy of people “living below the poverty line” again shows a very poor grasp on history. Colonial oppression cannot be equated with the bloody oppression of Shaka and Dingaan.

Besides, the Western economic term “poverty line” is alien in terms of its application to the homestead subsistence economy that prevailed. Of course, the basis of the discord within the DA concerns its precept of “one nation, one future”.

South Africa is a highly diverse country. To impose “one-sizefits-all” thinking is to impose a new oppression. Unity can only be achieved by recognising diversity and respecting the history and heritage of the different components.

As long as labels like “racist” are attached to anyone who attempts to be objective about the past, there can never be unity and harmony. DUNCAN DU BOIS

Bluff

It’s what you do with colour that counts

ATLAS Shrugged by Ayn Rand is the rags to riches story of American industrialists, inventors, farmers and railroad tycoons in the early 1920s-30s.

Later, people lobby the government to make the industrialists share their riches with the ordinary people – to the extent where they are forced to hand over much of their wealth, factories, steel mills and rail roads.

Most of these industrialists leave the country at the end of the book, forced out of their homes and factories by the all powerful masses – needless to say, the people did not have the expertise or drive to make a success of any of the ventures. The country then sinks to the depths of internal strife, poverty and anarchy.

The book is over 50 years old – Rand was a Russian immigrant to America when she wrote the book. See any similarities to today?

This paper is a daily shrine to the eThekwini mayor and the ANC – more recently to Nkosasana Dlamini Zuma. (The ANC needn’t worry about their gag on who they support as their next president.)

Every article is spiked with what the “whites” have done since the early 1800s – no good stuff, all bad. The people in the Ayn Rand book were all white – makes you think, doesn’t it?

It’s not the colour that counts – it’s what and how you do it. Look at the past atrocities committed across Africa by black Africans to their own people. Do we call them “blacks” at every opportunity? No – it’s not the colour that counts. Racism is alive and well and living in your newspaper. You have the ability – as we all do – to stop promoting this “white” thing all the time.

MARK HILL Durban North