This is a slightly edited version of my comments to Politicsweb columnist Andrew Donaldson
As a rule I don't read Andrew Donaldson's column in Politicsweb but this one caught my eye because "Cape Town" was in the title: How to write about Cape Town. Like Donaldson did before he emigrated to benighted Brexit Britain (I read a New York Times article last week where the writer quoted a Scottish comedian's sketch that perfectly summarised the MPs and government's self-imposed torture and confusion), I live in Cape Town and know it well including from urban and community development aspects.I'm not sure, though, why every week he writes about South Africa rather than the drab London weather or how the House of Commons is tearing the country apart (horrors, they got a reprieve from the Europeans they claim to hate). Please do Andrew, so that we may enjoy schadenfreude about a supposedly civilised race while our allegedly backward one slowly disintegrates too.
But what offends him this week is what mainly (white) foreign reporters, ironically, which he's now one, write about the Cape Town. Some of what he says, e.g. the cliché they use, are true, some inaccurate and others false. An example of the latter is apartheid spatial planning.
That's not a thing leftist academics invented to beat the apartheid government with forever and a day. To claim "the scarcity of land may also have played a part in this planning" is a lie for that is not what they intended when they moved brown people to the periphery of the city. By the Calvinist God the NP believed in, non-whites were not meant to live in the lovely, green suburbs of the city, God's gift, under the mountain and near the sea.
It's a fact, browns who lived in the Southern Suburbs and city - District Six is perhaps the most famous but also Claremont, Newlands, Sea Point, Simonstown, etc - were forcibly moved to new dormitory townships on the Cape Flats into crowded, poor quality houses far from places of work. This disrupted settled communities and one of the historic root causes of gang activity on the Cape Flats.
While later brown and black settlements were established on the "dry and dusty" plains, that was how it started and continued with deliberate intent.
This proves Donaldson, like many whites including those who live here, doesn't know or a generation later are deliberately ignorant of an important part of the city's and country's history, and perhaps is worse informed than the people he's complaining about. And to be lenient, they don't come from here so it's almost excusable they don't know better.
The other inaccuracy Donaldson explicitly mentions is: "Under no circumstances may there be mention of any progress claimed by the [DA]. Not the fact that unemployment is lower here than elsewhere. Or that matriculation results are better."
"Unemployment is lower" and "matriculation results are better". Which unemployment statistic is he referring to? I've said before one must put it in the national macro-economic context, Andrew. On this subject the DA - Maimane, Geordin Hill-Lewis and Zille esp - are all over the place.
National and provincial unemployment rates - 19% (WC) and above, 26th highest in the world along w/ Sudan; SA 14th highest - are so high and structurally entrenched that the small percentage points difference between provinces are irrelevant, like beggars bragging who is richer. Also, since Donaldson requires an economic lesson as the equally clueless DA and ANC, provinces don't make economic policy and cannot direct and affect regional economic growth, a lie the DA are continuing with their claim they 'created' the most jobs of any province.
The claim is about matriculation results is misleading. Again, one must put it in national context. Education is a national competence with a government funds, policy and exams only managed by provinces. National passing grades are improving, largely due to low standards and low passing grade and upwardly adjusting marks to artificially make more pupils pass. Only politicians incl DA and the poor pupils and their parents, and now Donaldson, believe the results are a credible indicator. Not even the Department of Basic Education does saying, "the matric pass rate on its own is not a good measure of academic achievement in the schooling system ... [it] can serve as a measure of the opportunities open to our youths".
Donaldson might not know that after the DA took over the Western Cape (WC) from the ANC in 2009, the provincial pass rate dropped that year before rising again as the country's overall pass rates did.
It's true the city's and WC's population is growing but it has been doing that for decades. It's part of a world trend of migration to urban centre, cities of the global south especially. The corollary of internal migration to the WC is the DA's boast it's because of better services than in ANC-run provinces of origin. But StatsSA migration figures disprove that. Gauteng receives almost half of all migration and WC the second highest but almost three times below Gauteng and mainly from the EC. For all migrants the reasons are economic opportunities and a better life.
I suppose it's too much to ask contributors to do basic research rather than repeat or invent tendentious, specious and often fallacious tropes to further an agenda. In Donaldson's case, he's guilty of exactly that he accuses others of but it's more egregious because he's an experienced observer, lived here and, therefore, ought to know better. He's further undermining his credibility. Even worse, his audience uncritically accepts what he writes.
Unfortunately, once again it's the absence of critical thinking Paul mentioned yesterday.
Fellow Politicsweb contributor Jeremy Gordin responded to another critic of this article, the thwo or three who failed to see its point that Donaldson meant it as satire. Satire is the exaggeration of or turning the truth on its head for comedic effect and trenchant commentary. (More accurately it was sarcasm.)
To work, satire or sarcasm must start with a kernel of truth. Take his comment about apartheid spatial planning meant as a riposte. His remark that "scarcity of land" was the reason for apartheid spatial planning was meant as a statement of fact as he believed it and not as caricature of an apartheid-era urban planner and demographer hard at work.
Ditto his flattering remarks about the DA's alleged successes in employment and education in the WC, a falsehood they're actively promoting including against the law repeating in the national and provincial legislatures that their adulatory supporters like him lap up. Donaldson is probably a DA support so why would he satirise or critique that? He wouldn't. Leave that to a sceptic like me to 'keep [them] honest' as Jeremy told me, to 'set the record straight'.
I get the part about about "cultural critique", and even satire and sarcasm. But it must be done well and the writer must know not to cross the fine line into serious critical analysis otherwise his narrative or message becomes confused as other commentators also found. Don't write in anger, as Donaldson did. Why I don't know because while he's no longer physically here, Cape Town is an abstraction. Mostly, know his facts, which he didn't.
I know he's not, but unfortunately out of ignorance - he ought to have known better - and writing in anger he came across, all jumbled, as an apologist for apartheid and apartheid social planning and the mendacious DA. I generally don't read him, but this was a poor effort, one of his worst, that he should try and put out of his memory except that the Internet never forgets. And the editor should exercise more control over submissions. In the end it was an inadvertent apology for apartheid and DA.
Donaldson, who doesn't often, if ever, respond to commentators replied two days later:
"It is not unusual that an attempt to poke fun at the drearily doctrinaire should attract responses from the drearily doctrinaire. Responses that, as is the case here, do go on at some length. Thomas, in particular, admits to a certain garrulity, and warns in this comments thread, for example, that we shouldn’t get him started on “mindless bureaucracy” as he might never stop. Pity then the poor souls he traps in conversation at dinner parties. Ordinarily, it’s best to avoid eye contact with such people and move on.
But perhaps some response is warranted. For someone who professes not to read me “as a rule”, Thomas presents himself as an authority on my lack of “critical thinking”. Fair enough; he’s not the first to do so. But in turn I wonder about his “critical reading” ability, for nowhere do I condone or defend any aspect of the Group Areas Act or forced removals. But he clearly imagines that I have and suggests that, “out of ignorance”, I appear to be “an apologist for apartheid and apartheid social planning and the mendacious DA”. The concern is touching but, for the record, Thomas, let me state here and now that apartheid was bad and I don’t like liars.
More alarming, however, is the advice offered to humorists. Thomas is apparently an expert and understands “social critique”, “satire” and “sarcasm”. But he argues it “must be done well”: there are boundaries and “the writer must know not to cross the fine line into serious critical analysis otherwise his narrative or message becomes confused”. Above all, “don’t write in anger”, whatever that may mean.
All of which suggests a touch of the jazz police. There really was such a thing. Among other directives, the Nazis warned dance bands against trumpet solos that were foreign to the Aryan condition and sounded like “a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl”. Thomas may similarly want to compile his own “funny” rules. I’m sure the PoliticsWeb editor will give his submission some consideration.
My response:
"Well, Andrew, I must've touched your funny bone or some other sensitive spot. I think, and you will correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time I've seen on your column, albeit it the irregular times I read it, you've issued a lengthy rebuttal, or any rebuttal, to a commentator. Your response to David Bullard about his 501s doesn't count.
I don't think you were among the cheering section of the then NP's supporters and apartheid, which was the majority of whites. But how in all that's holy could you think, which you don't explain in your similarly prolix response, a prime motivation for apartheid's urban geographers moving people to the Cape Flats was because of - what did you call it - lack of space? I wonder what surviving members of the former established communities in Claremont, where my family lived from at least the 1920s, Newlands, etc would say to your thesis. Perhaps that's what was taught, or indoctrinated, in apartheid-era white schools, I don't know, and you really thought that's the way it was. Another time when I'm feeling talky I'll tell you how my father had to sell his family's rambling smallholding in the EC. From the sale he received just enough to cover the legal costs and a little extra not worth mentioning. Lack of space indeed.
Call it what you like but it does sound like you made an excuse, a specious explanation, for the Group Areas Act. Your self-justification and verbiage now doesn't erase - let's be generous - your mistake and that it ought to have been spotted during proofing.
It appears you're not stung by my comments that you swallowed the DA's marketing cant about jobs and all the goods things they're purportedly doing in the Western Cape. Well, others have been fooled too. The fact is, as I said before, while they're technocratic administrators with some skill, the baseline in SA is so low that even showing up for work gets them a pass. But about their jobs creation claim, to quote Philippine journalist Maria Ressa who is been persecuted by her government, 'repeat a lie a million times, especially on social media, and it becomes the truth'.
Donaldson:
"There you go. Boring the pants off everyone again.
Me:
"There must be a sadomasochistic streak in a person to read comments he finds long and 'boring'. But to complain about it after? There are many comments I don't read or skim through esp the boring ones. Like John Maytham used to say to listeners who complained about his show, 'Use the off switch'. Or perhaps you and others who find me irritating could present a petition to the editor to have me banned.
My Andrew, for a humourous and 'satirical' writer, you are losing (w)it. Perhaps the dour mood in the UK about Brexit is getting to you, a transplant, too. Perhaps moving wasn't such a great idea, what?"
His column received and sympathy and support including from my criticism and from one who said she left Cape Town to flee the "barbarians", i.e. presumably blacks.
Ditto his flattering remarks about the DA's alleged successes in employment and education in the WC, a falsehood they're actively promoting including against the law repeating in the national and provincial legislatures that their adulatory supporters like him lap up. Donaldson is probably a DA support so why would he satirise or critique that? He wouldn't. Leave that to a sceptic like me to 'keep [them] honest' as Jeremy told me, to 'set the record straight'.
I get the part about about "cultural critique", and even satire and sarcasm. But it must be done well and the writer must know not to cross the fine line into serious critical analysis otherwise his narrative or message becomes confused as other commentators also found. Don't write in anger, as Donaldson did. Why I don't know because while he's no longer physically here, Cape Town is an abstraction. Mostly, know his facts, which he didn't.
I know he's not, but unfortunately out of ignorance - he ought to have known better - and writing in anger he came across, all jumbled, as an apologist for apartheid and apartheid social planning and the mendacious DA. I generally don't read him, but this was a poor effort, one of his worst, that he should try and put out of his memory except that the Internet never forgets. And the editor should exercise more control over submissions. In the end it was an inadvertent apology for apartheid and DA.
Donaldson, who doesn't often, if ever, respond to commentators replied two days later:
"It is not unusual that an attempt to poke fun at the drearily doctrinaire should attract responses from the drearily doctrinaire. Responses that, as is the case here, do go on at some length. Thomas, in particular, admits to a certain garrulity, and warns in this comments thread, for example, that we shouldn’t get him started on “mindless bureaucracy” as he might never stop. Pity then the poor souls he traps in conversation at dinner parties. Ordinarily, it’s best to avoid eye contact with such people and move on.
But perhaps some response is warranted. For someone who professes not to read me “as a rule”, Thomas presents himself as an authority on my lack of “critical thinking”. Fair enough; he’s not the first to do so. But in turn I wonder about his “critical reading” ability, for nowhere do I condone or defend any aspect of the Group Areas Act or forced removals. But he clearly imagines that I have and suggests that, “out of ignorance”, I appear to be “an apologist for apartheid and apartheid social planning and the mendacious DA”. The concern is touching but, for the record, Thomas, let me state here and now that apartheid was bad and I don’t like liars.
More alarming, however, is the advice offered to humorists. Thomas is apparently an expert and understands “social critique”, “satire” and “sarcasm”. But he argues it “must be done well”: there are boundaries and “the writer must know not to cross the fine line into serious critical analysis otherwise his narrative or message becomes confused”. Above all, “don’t write in anger”, whatever that may mean.
All of which suggests a touch of the jazz police. There really was such a thing. Among other directives, the Nazis warned dance bands against trumpet solos that were foreign to the Aryan condition and sounded like “a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl”. Thomas may similarly want to compile his own “funny” rules. I’m sure the PoliticsWeb editor will give his submission some consideration.
My response:
"Well, Andrew, I must've touched your funny bone or some other sensitive spot. I think, and you will correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time I've seen on your column, albeit it the irregular times I read it, you've issued a lengthy rebuttal, or any rebuttal, to a commentator. Your response to David Bullard about his 501s doesn't count.
I don't think you were among the cheering section of the then NP's supporters and apartheid, which was the majority of whites. But how in all that's holy could you think, which you don't explain in your similarly prolix response, a prime motivation for apartheid's urban geographers moving people to the Cape Flats was because of - what did you call it - lack of space? I wonder what surviving members of the former established communities in Claremont, where my family lived from at least the 1920s, Newlands, etc would say to your thesis. Perhaps that's what was taught, or indoctrinated, in apartheid-era white schools, I don't know, and you really thought that's the way it was. Another time when I'm feeling talky I'll tell you how my father had to sell his family's rambling smallholding in the EC. From the sale he received just enough to cover the legal costs and a little extra not worth mentioning. Lack of space indeed.
Call it what you like but it does sound like you made an excuse, a specious explanation, for the Group Areas Act. Your self-justification and verbiage now doesn't erase - let's be generous - your mistake and that it ought to have been spotted during proofing.
It appears you're not stung by my comments that you swallowed the DA's marketing cant about jobs and all the goods things they're purportedly doing in the Western Cape. Well, others have been fooled too. The fact is, as I said before, while they're technocratic administrators with some skill, the baseline in SA is so low that even showing up for work gets them a pass. But about their jobs creation claim, to quote Philippine journalist Maria Ressa who is been persecuted by her government, 'repeat a lie a million times, especially on social media, and it becomes the truth'.
Donaldson:
"There you go. Boring the pants off everyone again.
Me:
"There must be a sadomasochistic streak in a person to read comments he finds long and 'boring'. But to complain about it after? There are many comments I don't read or skim through esp the boring ones. Like John Maytham used to say to listeners who complained about his show, 'Use the off switch'. Or perhaps you and others who find me irritating could present a petition to the editor to have me banned.
My Andrew, for a humourous and 'satirical' writer, you are losing (w)it. Perhaps the dour mood in the UK about Brexit is getting to you, a transplant, too. Perhaps moving wasn't such a great idea, what?"
His column received and sympathy and support including from my criticism and from one who said she left Cape Town to flee the "barbarians", i.e. presumably blacks.
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