Thomas Johnson - The Blog

This is an edited reprint of a blog I published on 11 April 2015. It remains pertinent in light of UCT's Taliban censorship of art and threats to academic freedom .  The origina l was sent as a letter to UCT's council before their proforma decision in April 2015 to remove the Rhodes statue. I grew up during apartheid.  My family experienced racism.  In the early 1960s when I was a year old we moved from Claremont to the Cape Flats because of the Group Areas Act.  Some years before my father sold his family's small holding in Alice, Eastern Cape for next to nothing. My mother said he was robbed of his land. We were working class but I was fortunate to attend the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the mid-1980s to study mechanical engineering .  During this period opposition to apartheid had reached its peak.  The regime’s response was brutal, including states of emergencies.   Student opposition on campuses around the country formed a s...

This is an edited reprint of a blog I published on 24 April 2015.  Years ago, after returning home from living abroad, an acquaintance wondered why South Africans are so aggressive.  These past few weeks have seen more war-mongering rhetoric, aggression and violence around the country – UCT, Khayelitsha, townships and xenophobic attacks. At a media conference recently about the xenophobic (racist) violence, minister in the presidency Jeff Radebe said “ South Africa is not a violent country ”. He can’t really believe that. Saying so discredits government's response to the attacks, along with their futile mantra that everything is under control. South Africa has among the highest violent crime rates in the world .  Sociologists explain it to our apartheid history, poverty and inequality.  But other countries experienced both - often worse - without citizens resorting to the levels and frequency of violence that occurs here.  The forms of violence...

If it's UCT's intention to reboot - refresh, revise, renew - its art collection by "covering" and "removing" (sic) pieces arbitrarily deemed offensive to the racial and sexual sensibilities of the millennials, why do so only after the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) movement - most of whom have no sense of history, and probably wouldn't know a Monet from a Caravaggio - set the terms and conditions of the university's custodianship of its art?  Why remove art only after UCT stated its was instituting an accelerated racial transformation process?  This is in the context of a senior lecturer telling me the debate and environment around race and transformation had become bitter, personal and unpleasant. If it's UCT's intention to "provisionally" remove art, i.e. return them later, why has it not relocated the Rhodes statue elsewhere on campus for display, which at the time vice-chancellor Max Price said was the intention?  He s...

The IMF has cut South Africa's economic growth forecast to 0.6% from 0.7%. South Africa's unemployment at 26%, or 34% real, is one of the highest in the world.  This is because of the entrenched structural and political reasons that analysts, investors and ratings agencies have repeatedly warned about over the years.  While there are contributing external and cyclical factors, the most important ones suppressing national growth and employment are outmoded socialist and nationalist ideology, patronage and corruption, mismanagement, a rigid and expensive labour market, low productivity, the ANC's adversarial attitude to the free market and policy paralyses.  (I exclude skills because SA has adequate skills for the size of its economy.)  These are internal issues that are within the country's power to change, if it wishes.   To quote Dr Greg Mills who has researched political economic systems around the world, "(South) Africa is poor because its...

The ANC and President Jacob Zuma's praise singers in the ANC insist he should be forgiven for violating the constitution.  By doing so they have brought division and the country to the brink of a constitutional crises. But the ANC are adamant Chris Hani's killer, Januz Walus, will never be forgiven.  If he is granted parole, which was done in terms of a high court ruling, MK veterans say they will take the law into their own hands . Of course, as far as the ANC is concerned, the law and constitution applies to everyone else except them.  Alternatively, they are happy to use it when it serves their own ends. Can one compare the murder of a husband and comrade to that of the president wiping his arse on the constitution?  That's a constitutional value judgement.  I'm not being insensitive, either.  A family friend, a Catholic priest, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in his Ennerdale, Johannesburg rectory.  The incompetent poli...

The University of Cape Town has acceded to the Rhodes Must Fall movement's demands to rename university buildings.  They are calling for suggestions. However, only struggle-era names - Biko, Mandela, Tambo and the like - will probably be approved. Why only buildings?  Why not take this social media process that started with the Rhodes statue's hasty removal to its logical conclusion and rename the university?  Other South African universities were renamed after 1994, so there is precedent.  And as we have seen with UCT, nothing is sacred - not even history - so its present name should not be too. Using the arguments of the RMF and their mentors/supporters in administration and council who are championing erasing vestiges of UCT's historical, colonial and apartheid past, UCT was founded by and sits on land bequeathed to it by colonial powers and individuals, including Rhodes.  So whatever connection, however tenuous, exists between UCT today and t...

South African civil society are unanimous President Jacob Zuma must resign or be recalled following the Constitutional Court’s damning ruling he failed to “uphold, defend and respect the constitution” when he did not adhere to the Public Protector’s remedial actions on Nkandla.      Even the “amorphous market”, the rand, had a positive flutter before his self-serving and dishonest “apology” to the nation Friday night, when he denied doing anything wrong in the expectation he would announce his resignation.   Afterward, it reversed its gains.  As to be expected, neither Zuma nor ANC understand the significance of a president who fails to uphold his oath and the constitution and who committed an illegal act in failing to defend a constitutional body.   Despite the grave damage to the country and the crises it has created, they defend him and put their interests first.       During this extraordinary tumult, the party that has ...