An open letter to Ferial Haffajee: A response to The Spear's virtual death by Eusebius McKaiser

Dear Ferial,

You are obviously one of the country's most respected editors and perhaps even, as Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, rather perceptively observed in his column today, possibly the country's first truly celebrity editor. Your heart is in the right place, and it is little wonder that, filled with compassion for the hurt many have felt at the sight of The Spear (the art work, not the real thing of course!), and fear that some might burn more of your newspapers, hunt you down or kill your vendors even, you decided it is best to take down the image from your website. And you have now done so.

I must admit, however, that I think you made a GIGANTIC mistake. You did the wrong thing. Political bullying, and disrespect for the Bill of Rights, won this morning. Media freedom, I'm afraid, is the loser, and our democracy is worse off for the decision you have taken. Of course, your article explains the relentless pressure you have felt. It reads like a Sylvia Plath poem and seems like a pretty good self-preserving reason for bowing to pressure. No one likes an existential crisis. And Koos Bekker, your big boss, doesn't like a dent in profit. But you're meant to be our principledcelebrity editor, Ferial. Dammit!

Let me make my points bluntly for why I think you wrongly dropped The Spear's balls. This should make for ease of (dis)agreement, I hope.

First, it is not true, as Peter Bruce claims, that taking down the image is in the "national interest". It is (narrowly) in the interest of Jacob Zuma, his family, his supporters, some in the African National Congress who feel insulted, and members of the public who feel the same. But deciding on national interest is not an exercise in simply determining how the majority feels and endorsing those feeling willy-nilly. By that logic, it is "in the national interest" to chuck out the rights of gay people, to bring back the death penalty, and to allow teachers to smack kids in our schools.

That's not responding to the "context" in which your paper exists, Ferial. That is affirming, uncritically, what a vocally dominant bunch says. We should now be mature enough to have critical dialogue.

This means asking yourself whether the "national interest" is really about satisfying the whim of an angry segment of your readership, or even an angry majority in society-at-large. Worse than this, Ferial, consider whether the national interest should be politically decided, depending on what Gwede Mantashe (the ANC's secretary-general) had for breakfast, or how cool headed their spokesperson, Jackson Mthembu, happens to be when he reaches a press briefing?

Second, I think your decision to take down the image undermines your own front page story in yesterday's City Press. You ran an accurate, and very important, cover story that tells us that not all blacks think the same and that not all ANC or alliance politicians think the same. This is why you chose the headline, "Spear divides ANC". And you're right.

For example on The Justice Factor Paul Mashatile (our minister of arts and culture) had a very different take on this issue to Mantashe's and to that of minister of higher education, Blade Nzimande - who has called the painting an assault on the black body. (Let's leave aside the fact that Jacob Zuma's body is his. It is not every black man's.)

Mashatile's tone was more measured. He showed no anger, and he said that there was no ANC "debate" on whether to boycott your paper. His own preference, he said, was for "dialogue" even though he, too, regards the painting as offensive. Similarly, that brilliant old timer, and ANC intellectual heavyweight, Pallo Jordan, also defended the artist's right to artistic freedom on last night's episode of Interface on SABC3, even while explaining that sensitivity is important on the part of artists. And, in an interview in your own paper one of our best writers, Zakes Mda, was scathingly brilliant about Zuma's inability to live with being offended. Mda also denuded silly suggestions that, uhm, nudity is something only white artists dream up. (Mda's article was particularly lekka for showing up the basic ignorance in many critics' viewpoints, borne out of little or no familiarity with art.)

Here's my point. By climbing down on this issue - and following the sentiments of editors like Peter Bruce - you actually do all of us, including black South Africans, a huge disservice. You make it seem - yes, yes, it wasn't your intention Ferial! - as if you woke up this morning and thought, "My good God, they are sooo angry, I had better not hold them to the high constitutional standards I preached last week, if I want to still be alive next week!" I know these are not your literal words. But, alas, Brett Murray is not the only one who produces works open to interpretation, filled with ‘sub-texts'.

As editors, journalists, writers and columnists, our speech acts - our words -are also subject to interpretation. And so I am sorry to add to your headaches by saying that just as Mantashe, Zuma, Nzimande and Jackson - The Big Men Of Politics - were offended by your decision to keep the image on your website, it is my turn to play the "I'm offended!'-card. I am offended - cough - that you have such low expectations of angry readers, and angry politicians. I am offended that you did not take seriously your paper's own recognition that not all blacks think the same, and many of us have your back covered, including many ANC politicians even. Hence my examples of black men who have either clearly supported you (like Mda) or politicians who showed that they can explain being offended by the art work but live with being offended (Mashatile and Jordan).

The right to dignity, as you know, does not include the right to not be offended. This is why Zuma's case is legally impotent. They should have mounted (as it were) a defamation case or a hate speech one under the Equality Act. But of course their legal advisers are not the sharpest tools in the legal shed. (Those legal strategies would not have worked either, but had marginally better prospects.)

Constitutionally, we have to set a precedent which makes it clear that being ridiculed by an artist is legally allowed. Mashatile gets this. Jordan gets this. And no doubt many other politicians not yet interviewed on this issue, get it too. Your decision robs us of an opportunity to entrench, legally, the meaning and implications of artistic freedom. The aesthetic merits of the work are beside the point.

Bad art, like bad politicians, are allowed to exist. That's the point of democracy. One can only hope there isn't a retreat by Murray or the Goodman gallery.

Oh, and by the way, many people think Murray's art feeds into a white supremacist history of reducing black men to their rampant sexuality. I actually think your self-censorship feeds into a white supremacist history of lowering expectations of what black people can handle. The modern version of "Don't teach them maths because they won't get it" seems to be "Don't demand of them what you would demand  of a cosmopolitan, progressive, educated white person - tolerance of artistic freedom - because ‘they' won't get it!"

And yes I KNOW you "did not intent" to say this. I know! But we have seen from the artistic rebukes of Murray from critics like Gillian Schutte that it is ok to ignore intention and simply dump an art work into the annals of racist art's history because, you know, an exposed penis is sufficient to justify the racism card making a not-so-rare appearance in public debate.  

So pardon me, therefore, if I am being equally ungenerous in placing your reasoning in the "context" of white supremacist editorials and columns from years ago that you might not have had in mind this morning when you took your decision. I am just being "historical" in ignoring your intention, and saying you're playing into an ‘anthropology of low expectations'.

Don't condescend black South Africans - hold us to a high standard, and don't take us seriously when we bully you. We're trying our luck, and in this case you caved in. Next week, Gwede will be back, and then what? You must be "brave'', Ferial, as many say you are, and let go of the  prospects of being liked by everyone. Rather be respected for consistency and principled editorial decisions; its way cooler. Seriously dude.

As we say on twitter, a platform you love too, #JustSaying.   

Yours in "robust debate"

The president who became a joke

Mr President, take the advice Nelson Mandela gave to Bill Clinton and focus on the job at hand - not the distractions, writes Khaya Dlanga

From every turn, he has been judged on how he lives his life and little on how he does his job. The papers are forever littered with one scandal or another.

One can almost understand and sympathise with his reaction to the painting. He feels affronted on all levels and all the time. We talk about his sexuality, the number of children he has and the number of wives. Having unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman who was not his wife even though he had more than one wife at the time; and then fathering a child out of wedlock with a friend’s daughter. Every single one of these has been covered by the news on numerous occasions.

It is in this context that the painting by Brett Murray famously known as The Spear came to be. Some say that a great wrong has been perpetrated upon the person of the president, while others say that it is a reflection of facts about how he has lived his life.

He is a man with children, wives and a president. His own children have to see how he is portrayed: his fly open before the world. He is conflicted between being a father and being a public figure and being made a laughing stock. He is a president, not a laughing stock. Laughter is good.

Yet some humour can be a weapon that can wound and kill the soul. Yet what humour can do is bring out the unpleasant truth. As Andre Comte-Sponville once put it, “What it rules out is self-deception and self-satisfaction in the conduct of our lives and our relationships with others.”

One by one, article by article, scandal by scandal, a picture of Zuma was being painted on the minds of the people as a man who can’t be taken too seriously, who just likes to have a good time. The indignation he feels goes beyond just the painting. He wants to be taken seriously as president. It also explains how he has taken Zapiro to court for his cartoons. He wants to show us that he is a serious man. He also wants to be treated with dignity.

Perhaps he sees his presidency as something that is under siege from the press and that the courts are not on his side. His frustrations are understandable. The press seems to celebrate his failures and sweep his successes under a dirty rug.

In the 1990s, then American president Bill Clinton was followed by a sexual scandal involving Monica Lewinsky. The story was covered by every paper and news outlet 24/7. Even Chris Rock made a rather crude joke inferring that then first lady Hillary Clinton hadn’t done what she was supposed to do, which is how Bill strayed. The joke was of course very shocking. Yet Chris Rock was not sued nor threatened for making such a joke.

Clinton became a butt of jokes. Later, he would say that the way he survived the scandal was listening to Nelson Mandela’s advice, who told him to focus on the work he was elected to do, not on the scandal.
Today, president Bill Clinton is remembered as one of America’s really good modern presidents because he focused on what needed to be done for the American people. He presided over one of America’s most prosperous times, he even left the country in surplus. He focused on the work at hand, not personal affronts.

Earlier this year, a painting of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper by Margaret Sutherland shows him reclining on a chair, completely naked. A dog rests at his feet. The prime minister’s office simply responded, “On the Sutherland painting: we’re not impressed. Everyone knows the PM is a cat person.” They responded with humour. And please nobody start with the “unAfrican” argument because it is has no leg to stand on.

There are some who want to reduce the painting to race and call it racist. Of course it is not. It is just distasteful. Despite its distasteful nature, I will defend the artist’s right to paint it and the gallery’s right to display it. Personal feelings on the matter aside. The great thing about the country though is that the president, like anybody else, has the right to approach the courts about the painting.

The race card argument says that the president has been reduced to nothing but a sexual being, which is how white people see black men. Sometimes I dread the race card because it’s often brought up situations where people are too lazy to think of a proper argument. They gravitate towards what is easy and fail to apply their minds in order to win a harder argument based on real factors for they know that no one will try to debate the race card. There is nothing racist about that painting.
What of the atrocious 2010 painting by Ayanda Mabulu which portrays Desmond Tutu naked, with the Pope’s hand resting on his thigh? The same painting exhibits Jacob Zuma’s penis as well. Is it racist too? There has been no outrage about it, of course. The only thing that I find outrageous about that painting is that it is so outrageously bad, it shouldn’t even be called art.

In the US, the presidential communications department is trained on how to dominate the message of the day, how not to let a story run away. They learn to control the message quickly. A story runs away when you don’t own it. If you don’t own it, you can’t control it. The president became a victim instead of owning the story.

He has been painted as a victim. People don’t believe that a powerful man like him is a victim or can be. Just because ordinary people on the street are angered by the painting doesn’t mean that they think he is a victim. In their minds, he is too powerful to be one. When he was running for the presidency of the ANC, it was easy to see how he could be a victim.

Personally, I don’t want my president to become a joke, but I do want my president to take a joke. I don’t want my president to be treated as a man without dignity, but I do want him to be dignified when he is treated without dignity. I don’t want my president to be overly sensitive, but I do want him to navigate around difficult issues with sensitivity and wisdom.

Mr President, take the advice Nelson Mandela gave to Bill Clinton. Focus on the job at hand and ignore the distraction and create a legacy so great we can’t ignore.

Follow Khaya Dlanga just like I do on twitter, @KhayaDlanga

Traditional leaders and the fuel that fires homophobia, for the Daily Maverick

As the National House of Traditional Leaders lobbies for gay rights to be excised from the Constitution, and the chair of the Constitutional Review Committee sprouts anti-gay statements, lesbians and gays continue to be subject to violent attacks. MANDY DE WAAL speaks to constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos about human rights and irresponsible politicians who fuel homophobic hate in South Africa.

Noxolo Nogwaza was 24 when her body was found last year in an alley behind a store in KwaThema. The young mother of two was raped, stoned and stabbed in the East Rand Township that is notoriously linked to corrective rape and murder.

KwaThema is the same township where the body of celebrated female soccer star and Banana  player, Eudy Simelane, was found in April 2008. Simelane was gang-raped, beaten and stabbed 25 times before being disposed of in a ditch.

Nogwaza and Simelane were champions for gay rights. Simelane was one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in KwaThema, while Nogwaza led a local gay rights group – the Ekurhuleni Pride Organising Committee.

The Star reports that a year after Nogwaza’s murder no progress has been made in her case.
Pierre de Vos, the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town, says it is not uncommon for gay people’s rights to be ignored by those who execute the letter of the law.
“When I go to workshops I am shocked to hear from lesbian women and gay men that when they go to the police they are told to ‘voetsek’ because they are just lesbians or ‘moffies’ and don’t have any rights,” says De Vos, who adds that the government hasn’t educated the very people who are supposed to enforce human rights or secure a respect for diversity and difference.
De Vos believes the government is neglecting to do “a very important job” in service departments. “There should be far more diversity training to educate people in the police force not to be homophobic. It is troubling that 18 years into our democracy we haven’t actually transformed those people who are supposed to protect human rights. We speak so much of transformation, but our government hasn’t taken the steps to enable a respect for diversity.”
The result is a gap between the human rights enshrined in the Constitution and the lived reality. People are protected by the Constitution and have an awareness of their rights, De Vos says, but the problem is that it is difficult to enforce these rights in a personal sphere because of the prejudices and hatred that surround South Africans.
De Vos believes this prejudice and hatred is intensified by the irresponsible, homophobic statements made by traditional leaders in recent times, notably the National House of Traditional Leaders, which recently appealed to Parliament to have a clause removed from the Constitution that protects gay rights.
A Parliamentary report by the Constitutional Review Committee this April shows a submission by the leaders that proposed the “exclusion of ‘sexual orientation’ from Chapter 2 of the Constitution, which deals with the Bill of Rights.”  
This particular section of the Constitution reads: “The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”
In its response, the review committee said the submission was under consideration, while City Press reported that an ANC caucus would decide whether this proposal for a constitutional amendment will be debated in Parliament.
The chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee is Patekile Holomisa, who is also president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA, which has earned a degree of infamy because of its wont to rubbish gay rights. Speaking to City Press, Holomisa said most South Africans didn’t want gay rights protected, and that the ANC caucus was opposed to gay marriage in any event.
“The last time this issue was discussed was about same-sex marriages. Most of the people in the caucus were opposed to it, but then Luthuli House and the leadership instructed us to vote for it,” Holomisa told the newspaper, adding that the ANC knew the “great majority does not want to give promotion and protection to these things”.
De Vos says Holomisa’s statements come as no surprise. “Holomisa is a traditional leader and this is part of a far wider fight-back by patriarchal forces in South Africa, which we also see with the tabling of the Traditional Courts Bill and the like. These are people who, during the negotiating process (of the Constitution), were marginalised and their views were rejected in favour of more progressive views because the ANC saw itself as a progressive institution. But they are now trying to claw back some of the space that was ceded to the progressives inside the ANC. That is the context.”
“It is worrying that someone with so much influence inside the governing party would make these deeply humiliating statements,” says De Vos, who doubts that the traditional leaders’ bid to amend the Constitution will be successful. “There seem to be enough sane people in the ANC to not to want to go down that route of discrimination against a vulnerable group in society.”
Although South Africa protects discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation in the Constitution, the lived reality is very different, as evidenced by the deaths of Nogwaza and Simelane.
De Vos points out that wealth, class and location can buy protection from this prejudice. The impact of the homophobic leaders has little impact on the “chattering classes” or those living in cities.
“It is very worrying if you live in a community where you are not protected from the hatred of people around you by your money, class or a geographic position. Often where there is a latent prejudice or simmering hatred the pronouncement of leaders can spark action on the part of ordinary people to give effect to their hatred,” says De Vos.
“This can lead to assault and even murder, which we have seen in many cases in South Africa, especially for lesbian women who have been raped and murdered because of prejudice. It is very irresponsible for a leader to make that kind of statement because it can send a signal to other people that it is actually okay to violently attack individuals.”
A study a few years ago by gay rights group The Triangle Project showed that in the Western Cape 44% of white lesbians lived in fear of sexual assault, and that 86% of black women in the province felt the same.
“Every day you feel like it’s a time-bomb waiting to go off. You don’t have freedom of movement, you don’t have your space to do as you please, you are always scared and your life always feels restricted. As women and as lesbians we need to be very aware that it is a fact of life that we are in danger, all women are in danger,” a lesbian from Soweto, Johannesburg told ActionAid, which compiled a survey called Hate crimes: The rise of ‘corrective’ rape in South Africa.
“They tell me that they will kill me, they will rape me and after raping me I will become a girl. I will become a straight girl,” says another young woman from Soweto.
In that same document a quote from South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority: “Whilst we are mindful of the fact that hate crimes – especially of a sexual nature – are rife, it is not something that the South African government has prioritised as a specific project.”
Righting homophobia in South Africa will take thinking about education and the human rights regime in a much more structured and coherent manner, says De Vos, adding: “We need to think more carefully about how we can create active citizens who can demand their rights and actively participate in the enforcement of their rights, but also respect the rights of other people who don’t agree with them.”
“There should be policies in place that say: ‘what are the values we want to convey when we teach our children?’ It is not only about teaching people to read and write or to add up and subtract. There are always values involved when we educate people, so we need to think about our value system, and the starting point of that system should surely be the constitutional values – respect for human dignity, for equality, for freedom, and the notion of respect for diversity,” he says.
De Vos says that South Africa has been “transformed on paper” but hasn’t been transformed in practice. He says teachers, police officers and people who work in Home Affairs and other branches of government need to be trained to embrace diversity.
But as traditional leaders volley to reclaim the power they’ve lost and to exert their influence, the lack of sanctions against politicians who openly threaten gay rights – or call for the Constitution to limit or ignore gay rights – is telling.
“Political leadership is important, and this isn’t something that’s always present in this country from various political parties,” say De Vos, talking about what it will take to change homophobic attitudes in South Africa.
“By the very nature of politicians they want easy popularity, and exploit situations and prejudices. But real leadership means that one has to sometimes take unpopular stances in the protection of one’s principles. Our politicians are not prepared to do this and are more shameless than politicians in some other parts of the world.”
Back in KwaThema, The Star tells how township residents gathered to honour Nogwaza and other people whose lives were lost to homophobic violence. During the ritual of remembrance people wore T-shirts bearing the names of those who lost their lives to hate.
“They sang and swayed, sporting matching purple shirts that read ‘Struggle continues’ and ‘In memory of Noxolo Nogwaza, Eudy Simelane, Girly Nkosi, Xolani Dlomo’,” the report reads. Nkosi was murdered in 2009 and Dlomo is said to be a gay man murdered in KwaThema in 2004.
The gay rights organisation Nogwaza belonged to is planning to protest at the local police station because there is no progress on her murder case, but has yet to receive approval for the demonstration. “We have to do something,” the chair of the rights group told The Star.

Undeserving Nobel laureatte:FW de Klerk

FW de Klerk still defends apartheid, yet he is a winner of the Nobel peace Prize

Hey Chiief, listen

Chief Holomisa, it took me a while before I could figure out what I want to say to you. But in all my years as a traditional healer I have never suffered any form of prejudice because I'm gay. When people walk into my Ndumba (consultation room) they do not inquire about my sexual orientation. And from that I have concluded that my being homosexual has nothing to do with my calling to be a sangoma. 


Just like it does not hinder a gay or lesbian medical practitioner to do their job. Homosexuality is not a choice or a disease that anyone can cure. I am part of new generation of African traditional healers who are seen as a community builder, counsellor and a custodian of our customs and traditions. That has nothing to do with my sexuality. I practise ubungoma (my duties as a sangoma) the same way that my great-grandmother Mambele did. I do it with pride in the challenging modern days. 


Being a sangoma is a very spiritual thing. We cannot practise it with broken spirits because we have the likes of Contralesa questioning our existence. The African tradition and religion also believe in a Higher power or God and I have enjoyed and still enjoy blessings from God of my ancestors as gay as I am. Between you and me chief, I don't like talking about my sexuality over and over again. I'm not hiding it but I just hate having to prove and validate my existence to people who don't understand. 

We gave Contralesa the right to abuse us

When Mbeki said HIV didn't cause Aids and refused to roll out ARVs, I thought we would be unforgiving citizens and get rid of him. But we just spoke among ourselves and moved on. Some of us even pledged support for for him and gave him a second term ion office. We did nothing!

When it became clear that a man who escaped corruption charges and acquitted of rape charges would become president of this country, I imagined South Africans would be up in arms and dictate their terms with their votes. No such luck.

We embraced the unfortunate situation and gave power to the party that still fails millions of our people. So many of our rights have been trampled on and because we are such a forgiving or illiterate nation, we continue as if nothing is happening. And so I was not surprised when Contralesa had a dream of changing the constitution, to remove a clause that protects the rights of homosexuals. They know we are submissive and may not object to their suggestions. We need to mobilise the same spirit and attitude used by our parents to get rid of apartheid. We are instead living in a different kind of apartheid.

Clinics run out of critical medication like ARVs, even though we have the capacity to curb such discrepancies. People are still without clean water and electricity. But people are obsessed with infringing on the rights of sexual minorities. We are part of the problem. We do not speak loud enough to be heard. Where are the academics, where are community leaders?

Mr Sinclair, now we know your mom and dad

Ken you won't need to take your girlfriend home to meet your mom and dad. We already know the kind of people they are. You are simple reflection of where you come from. I doubt that you just became a racist and a biggot just out of the blue. You must have been sat down and taught that "blacks" are just subhumans who need to just disappear. It seems you also formed your opinion of black people using your underpaid maid at home. She seems to represent the rest of us. I really hope you are one of the very few footprints of apartheid left. South Africans have a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. I speak on my behalf that people of your kind do not deserve the forgiveness nor the spirit of reconciliation that has led us into the 18 years of democracy.

Your comments suggest that we should have stayed in the white minority rule. Just so me and many black people do not invade your space. Sorry for you SINclair. We are here to stay. Not going anywhere. We appreciate you introducing us to how you were raised, but we are not interested.

Spiritual renewal

After Mparulo.

At the river for Mundau

Ihlelo (Intwaso ritual)

Treasured moments

Mahlasela and Thambo on our way back from Faraday 

Minutes after their graduation. Proud moment. 

Breathing a sigh of relief.