[DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

Wed Feb 13 12:43:36 GMT 2008

Excellent post, Devan - 'over-racialising' issues on all sides has become
such a prevalent and lazy way out of thinking practically and deeply about
them.
Could you - off list - point me in the direction of more info re the
Plettenberg Bay pony field thing you mention? I may want to pursue the
story, but for some reason it's not appeared on my radar screen.
Mandi
mandiwrite at icon.co.za

----- Original Message -----
From: "Devan Pillay" <Devan.Pillay at wits.ac.za>
To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at debate.kabissa.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11:08 AM
Subject: FW: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

Azwell

You are in danger of over-racialising issues to a rather unfortunate
level, without any evidence for your assertions.  This cuts against our
desperate need for real public discourse based on listening carefully to
other's opinions, and forming counter-arguments if you disagree based on
what is said, or practiced - rather constructions on one's own head.
For example:

1.  How do you know what "left-liberal" or "white Marxists" think inside
their heads; or "amongst themselves " (presumably by definition you are
not privy to these ["discussions")?  If by some process of osmosis you
have divined what they think and say - just how many people are you
talking about?  Or are you just debating with your own ghosts?

2.  Why do you lump Helen Zille and Pieter Dirk-Uys (of all people!)
together?  They do not belong to the same party, as far as I know (PD-U
I think belonged to the ANC at one point).  In any case the one is a
politician and the other a satirist who has strong views on HIV-AIDS.
Are they lumped together because of their lack of pigmentation?  If so,
are you not being a bit racist here?

2.  You obviously do not know Helen Zille and based on no or very little
information you are letting your imagination run wild (e.g "all whites
are racists, Zille is white, so she must be a racist and anything I
thumb-suck about her cannot be far off the mark" - am I getting you
right here?).  Well, I knew Zille from back in the 1980s (when she was a
socialist of sorts - she is still married to one) and she is a person of
great integrity, who has worked a lot in the townships and has earned
great respect amongst people of all shades and hues.  She is doing a
decent job as mayor (compared to previous mayoral disaster Nomaindia
anything looks good - even some ANC MECs in Cape Town prefer Zille)
which is why people across the spectrum are paying attention to her.  Of
course, she is leader of a party that is not very palatable - it
contains many rightwing elements, including racists (which I'm sure
makes her uncomfortable), and the party is beholden to a 'free market'
ideology (but even this is shifting - see the DA (and ID) defence of
workers kicked off their land to make way for a pony field in
Plettenberg Bay, while the ANC is silent - BEE shareholders perhaps?) -
so from a Left perspective she is not our cup of tea - but deserving of
serious engagement, not slurs.

Azwell, if we want serious debate, please play the ball, not the man (or
woman in this case).  Our country desperately needs less over-racialised
discourse and more focus on the issues.  Expose rascism, sexism etc,
absolutely - but base it on hard facts, not wild imaginations, because
otherwise you're just creating heat, not light.

all the best,

Devan

-----Original Message-----
From: Azwell Banda [mailto:azwell at ecsecc.org]
Sent: Sat 2/9/2008 8:05 PM
To: 'debate: SA discussion list '
Subject: RE: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

Devan,

Actually yes - I miss Biko as, in fact, an African variant of the same
thing
- liberal democracy!

I have no doubt of the fact that Biko would easily have understood, and
proceeded to warn Africans in this country, of the dangers associated
with
letting the likes of Zilles and Pieter-Dyk Uys become the spokespersons
on
their moral and political frustrations with the ANC.

I am sure I am not the only one who has begun to notice the obvious fact
that some Left liberals (and some White "Marxists"!) in South Africa
today,
who, although publicly dismiss the DA, inside themselves and among their
own
kind, actually have come to begin to pay attention to what Zille is
saying!

Obviously Zille and her DA are thriving on very cheaply given away
ammunition by the ANC - their inability to quickly restore some of their
lost moral ground, and the many obvious blunders the Mbeki reign has
made.

The danger, however, of letting the Zille's and Pieter-Dyk Uys of this
world
speak on behalf of all those who have legitimate grievances against the
ANC
is that suddenly, we find ourselves in the morally irreprehensible
situation
in which the foremost defenders of White capitalist privileges become
the
spokespersons of all of us, for, no matter how well concealed this may
be,
Zille's outbursts after Polokwane do not succeed to conceal the fact
that
she is essentially saying these Africans (read "savages") are messing
up,
like their kind all over the African Continent (She has actually spoken
almost like this, in one of her statements, when she warned that South
Africa should not go the Kenya way). There is, implicit in the vitriol
with
which she has spoken since Polokwane, the constant reminder to her
"audience" that unless they do something to make the DA grow and become
a
defender of the "Constitutional democracy" of South Africa, the country
is
on the slippery slope, like the rest of the Continent.

Should the line she has adopted continue, it just might add a new
dimension
to the ongoing hot political situation in South Africa - the new
leadership
of the ANC being forced to adopt a narrow racial defence of its actions.
We
do not want to go this way, do we?

Azwell.

    -----Original Message-----fri
From: debate-bounces at debate.kabissa.org
[mailto:debate-bounces at debate.kabissa.org] On Behalf Of Devan Pillay
Sent: 09 February 2008 02:11
To: debate: SA discussion list ; debate: SA discussion list
Subject: RE: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

Azwell

Do you miss Biko as yet another variant of liberal democracy?  That
would
make sense (a black liberal is in essence the same as a white liberal -
except that they demand the inclusion of black people into the liberal
project).  Biko certainly did not go much beyond that and rejected
Marxism
for example quite vehemently (esp in his early days).  I remember all
the
debates I had with my BC friends in the 1970s - the best they would go
for
was a vague 'African socialism' - but most were great admirers of the
American capitalist model of individual achievement.

Still, if I read you correctly, there is much in the liberal project
worth
preserving, and democratic socialist revolutionaries (including Marx
himself) would not disagree (freedom of speech, association etc - the
cornerstone of our democracy).  Of the course the challenge is to
combine
that with the Equality part of the trinity (Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity)

Devan

-----Original Message-----
From: Azwell Banda [mailto:azwell at ecsecc.org]
Sent: Fri 2/8/2008 10:29 PM
To: 'debate: SA discussion list '
Subject: RE: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

Perhaps we are all here just different variants of liberal democracy?
Hell,
how I miss Biko!

-----Original Message-----
From: debate-bounces at debate.kabissa.org
[mailto:debate-bounces at debate.kabissa.org] On Behalf Of Devan Pillay
Sent: 08 February 2008 08:47 PM
To: debate: SA discussion list ; debate at debate.kabissa.org
Subject: RE: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

mmmm, why not?  We have the ANC on debate - or they all that different
nowadays?  (well, at least Zille deals more effectively with
corruption.....)

OK, I'm being naughty but.....

Devan

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Jacobs [mailto:tintinyana at gmail.com]
Sent: Fri 2/8/2008 8:07 PM
To: debate at debate.kabissa.org
Subject: [DEBATE] : Zille on debate?

What's going on?!

--------------------------------------------
Sean Jacobs
http://theleoafricanus.com

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