Ringing your bell
Raymond Suttner has described as sophistry the use of the term criminal, to replace xenophobic, to describe killings and looting directed at immigrants in Gauteng in the past two weeks.
“Those who are not born South Africans are entitled to freedom, which is universal and indivisible in character,” Suttner says in his piece published on polity.org.za this week.
“There are obviously some rights available only to citizens, but certainly the right to protection from violence is applicable to “all who live in” South Africa...”
The memory of what happened here in Grahamstown at the end of 2015 is not far off. It’s good leadership that directs people frustrations in constructive ways, and good leadership that works to serve communities’ needs so that they don’t take out their frustrations on others. That’s just one of the reasons it’s so important. Controversially, Paul Notyawa was last Sunday the first speaker in a series of dialogues about leadership. Open to anyone wanting to engage in the subject, organiser Xolile Madinda has explained the initiative as an attempt to intellectualise the debate – to take people beyond unthinking party tropes and into the realm of imaginative possibility.
Madinda speaks of his uncle’s generation – and a culture of reading to discover new ideas – and then sharing those ideas.
“There’s no space for your young people to engage in robust discussion,” he said. “How do we begin asking those questions?”
Asked by Grocott’s Mail to comment in general on processes happening within and between the DA and the ANC, lecturer in South African politics at Rhodes University Wesley Seale said there would be many talks on leadership this year.
Suggesting that the leadership dialogues are no coincidence, Seale puts it that Notyawa represents a third way – “not Ramphosa and not Dlamini-Zuma” and that this – having more than two candidates in the ANC succession battle – might be good for the ANC “because it encourages democracy and does not allow a certain block to determine the outcome”.
Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Gugile Nkwinti is likely to be next up in the series, as part of Madinda’s quest to headhunt people from this region who have had an impact in our society.
Whatever the politics of these discussions, they are going to be extremely interesting.
Grahamstown’s cultural life has been rich and busy in the past week, with the arrival of 10 people to ring the Cathedral bells and an extraordinary concert to benefit Grahamstown school children.
Next week is the 75th edition of what we are almost certain is the only properly South African cryptic crossword, and this week we celebrate the contribution of mothertongue languages pioneer Russell Kaschula, whose contribution to multilingualism is the kind of leadership South Africa could use more of.