2000 Annual Report
Written by Keyan Tomaselli
The very successful International Research Seminar on Political Economy of the Southern African Media. 28 delegates and CMS MA students from all over the world participated.
Marlan Padayachee, Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal, was appointed as industry liaison officer. This is an honorory position, very ably executed by Padayachee, with the support of his employer. David Wightman, Editorial Coordinator at Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal and regional chair of the SA National Editors Forum, was elected as chair of $the CMS Professional Advisory Committee.
World Association for Christian CommunicationWe are also indebted to Marlan Padayachee who assisted in Seminar organisation,publicity, reporting of conference activities, and for raising additional funds.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Academic Accolades for Marlan Padayachee
2000 Annual Report
Written by Keyan Tomaselli
The very successful International Research Seminar on Political Economy of the Southern African Media. 28 delegates and CMS MA students from all over the world participated.
Marlan Padayachee, Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal, was appointed as industry liaison officer. This is an honorory position, very ably executed by Padayachee, with the support of his employer. David Wightman, Editorial Coordinator at Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal and regional chair of the SA National Editors Forum, was elected as chair of $the CMS Professional Advisory Committee.
World Association for Christian CommunicationWe are also indebted to Marlan Padayachee who assisted in Seminar organisation,publicity, reporting of conference activities, and for raising additional funds.
Written by Keyan Tomaselli
The very successful International Research Seminar on Political Economy of the Southern African Media. 28 delegates and CMS MA students from all over the world participated.
Marlan Padayachee, Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal, was appointed as industry liaison officer. This is an honorory position, very ably executed by Padayachee, with the support of his employer. David Wightman, Editorial Coordinator at Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal and regional chair of the SA National Editors Forum, was elected as chair of $the CMS Professional Advisory Committee.
World Association for Christian CommunicationWe are also indebted to Marlan Padayachee who assisted in Seminar organisation,publicity, reporting of conference activities, and for raising additional funds.
Marlan Padayachee GreenGold Africa Communications
At GreenGold Publishing, publishing editor Marlan Padayachee commissions titles, develops manuscripts, liaises with authors, manages publishing programmes, negotiates with printing houses and potential sponsors, networks with academic institutions and established and emerging publishers and booksellers, works closely with marketing and branding teams, arranges pre- and post-publicity in the print and electronic media and co-ordinate book launches.
Marlan Padayachee Media provides a full-house service of conceptualising a media and communication product to the final stages of printing and publishing, including editorial copywriting, editing, photography, imaging and design and layout. The following publications were produced: Greyville Gazette (In house newspaper for Independent Newspapers KZN), PwCpeople (In house newspaper for PricewaterhouseCoopers KZN), DDP Diary (ocassional publication for the Democracy Development Program, Durban), Alumni & Anecdotes (occasional publication for the University of KwaZulu-Natal), and corporate business profile and brochures for Dream-Plus and Firecheck.
Marlan Padayachee, media adviser and communications consultant to PricewaterhouseCoopers, created and conceptualised PwCpeople as an internal staff magazine, and contributes editorial and photographic service to this quarterly publication produced by PwC Durban's Marketing Department.
Marlan Padayachee writes a regular commentary on a changing South Africa in his column, Left of What's Right, for Juluka, an American-based Magazine Embracing South Africa and her People, edited by Charlene Avis and aimed at a readership of more than 20 000 South Africans living and working abroad.
Editorial and photographic contributors to the following publications: UKZN Indaba and UKZN In Touch alumni magazine for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa-India Independence Day supplement for Media Com published in the Sunday Tribune
Publishers of PwCPeople for PricewaterhouseCoopers, DDP Diary for the Democracy Development Programme, Alumni & Anecdotes for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, contributor to the UKZN Alumni and UKZN Indaba.
. THE INDIAN ANNUAL – Focusing on South Africans of Indian descent
SINCE the 1990s, Marlan Padayachee has contributed a series of articles, features and commentary and photography on leading personalities, high-achievers and a changing South Africa in the Indian Annual, a national publication that focuses every year on South Africa’s 1,3-million strong Indian community.
Some of the features include a series entitled Wordsmiths and Lensmen, a focus on journalists and photographs of Indian descent; The End of An Era which highlighted the careers of anti-apartheid campaigners and critics like Judge Hassan Mall, Ismail Meer, Appiah Saravan Chetty, a Pietermaritzburg activist and South Africa’s first Chief Justice of colour, Ismail Mahomed; followed by the 1946 Passive Resisters, a catalogue of the struggle by Indian and African people who were imprisoned for resisting a plethora of apartheid laws; the publication of a rare interview with President Thabo Mbeki at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1987, when Mbeki was the ANC’s Director of Foreign Affairs; and an insight into a visit to Robben Island in 2001.
Photographic coverage includes Marlan Padayachee’s foreign assignment for Independent Newspapers South Africa with President Nelson Mandela to India in 1995, including a visit to Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in India.
NOTE: Copies of the Indian Annual catalogue are available from Marlan Padayachee Media and GreenGold 083 796 7162/083 792 1762/031 266 1762/ greengold@telkomsa.net or mapmedia@telkomsa.net
Marlan Padayachee Media provides a full-house service of conceptualising a media and communication product to the final stages of printing and publishing, including editorial copywriting, editing, photography, imaging and design and layout. The following publications were produced: Greyville Gazette (In house newspaper for Independent Newspapers KZN), PwCpeople (In house newspaper for PricewaterhouseCoopers KZN), DDP Diary (ocassional publication for the Democracy Development Program, Durban), Alumni & Anecdotes (occasional publication for the University of KwaZulu-Natal), and corporate business profile and brochures for Dream-Plus and Firecheck.
Marlan Padayachee, media adviser and communications consultant to PricewaterhouseCoopers, created and conceptualised PwCpeople as an internal staff magazine, and contributes editorial and photographic service to this quarterly publication produced by PwC Durban's Marketing Department.
Marlan Padayachee writes a regular commentary on a changing South Africa in his column, Left of What's Right, for Juluka, an American-based Magazine Embracing South Africa and her People, edited by Charlene Avis and aimed at a readership of more than 20 000 South Africans living and working abroad.
Editorial and photographic contributors to the following publications: UKZN Indaba and UKZN In Touch alumni magazine for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa-India Independence Day supplement for Media Com published in the Sunday Tribune
Publishers of PwCPeople for PricewaterhouseCoopers, DDP Diary for the Democracy Development Programme, Alumni & Anecdotes for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, contributor to the UKZN Alumni and UKZN Indaba.
. THE INDIAN ANNUAL – Focusing on South Africans of Indian descent
SINCE the 1990s, Marlan Padayachee has contributed a series of articles, features and commentary and photography on leading personalities, high-achievers and a changing South Africa in the Indian Annual, a national publication that focuses every year on South Africa’s 1,3-million strong Indian community.
Some of the features include a series entitled Wordsmiths and Lensmen, a focus on journalists and photographs of Indian descent; The End of An Era which highlighted the careers of anti-apartheid campaigners and critics like Judge Hassan Mall, Ismail Meer, Appiah Saravan Chetty, a Pietermaritzburg activist and South Africa’s first Chief Justice of colour, Ismail Mahomed; followed by the 1946 Passive Resisters, a catalogue of the struggle by Indian and African people who were imprisoned for resisting a plethora of apartheid laws; the publication of a rare interview with President Thabo Mbeki at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1987, when Mbeki was the ANC’s Director of Foreign Affairs; and an insight into a visit to Robben Island in 2001.
Photographic coverage includes Marlan Padayachee’s foreign assignment for Independent Newspapers South Africa with President Nelson Mandela to India in 1995, including a visit to Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in India.
NOTE: Copies of the Indian Annual catalogue are available from Marlan Padayachee Media and GreenGold 083 796 7162/083 792 1762/031 266 1762/ greengold@telkomsa.net or mapmedia@telkomsa.net
The Story of Movers and Shaikers in South Africa
Mention the word Shaik to the average South African and an image of shadowy political operators insinuating themselves into the very fabric of South Africa's political elite emerges.
How did the Shaik brothers from middle-class Reservoir Hills, Durban, end up with massive influence in South African politics? They are well connected, are on every elite guest list and are close friends of deputy president Jacob Zuma. The family name has been splashed on newspaper front pages over the R66 billion arms deal and other political scandals.
They take centre stage in politics despite bad press which implies two of the brothers, Schabir and Shamin, known as Chippy, have hijacked the democratic process for their own ends. Of the brothers, it is Schabir who is at the heart of the scandals which are tearing the family apart.
In spite of these accusations, even the Scorpions don't have enough to nail the brothers on the arms deal.
It was claimed in a report two weeks ago that Schabir gave money to former transport minister Mac Maharaj. Zuma was also alleged to have received money from Schabir.
Questions are now being raised about this information which is in the possession of the Scorpions since they seized documentation from Schabir's office two years ago.
Second eldest brother Yunus, a lawyer and part time commissioner in the Commission for Conciliation and Mediation in Johannesburg, said: "Schabir was never questioned about this. Why is all this information being exposed now?"
He believes the claims about Schabir, chief director of Nkobi Holdings and director of African Defense Systems, one of the companies which benefited from the arms package as a sub-contractor, constitute a "firm intention to embarrass our family and never to prosecute".
The Scorpions are investigating a single charge against Schabir - contravention of the Protection of Information Act, relating to documents about the arms deal - a year after he obtained the tender.
Reeves Parsee, acting for Schabir, said: "My client faces a single charge with a maximum fine of R10 000. We challenge the constitutionality of the search warrant the Scorpions used to enter his premises. If the information links Schabir to corruption, why has he not been charged?"
Chippy, who was on the arms deal negotiating team, made no secret of the fact that his brother was involved in the arms industry. Third brother Mo, now special adviser to foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Zuma, was previously SA ambassador to Algeria. The youngest brother, Faizel, a businessman, and their sister, Rehana, are not involved in politics.
Said an ANC activist: "During the struggle days when things were hard and we had no money or nowhere to hide, you would turn to the Shaiks."
Mo, Chippy and Yunus were political activists. And it was their activism and networking in the ANC intelligence community that brought them closer to the political elite.
Schabir was streetwise, smart and a businessman who made sure the struggle gave him rewards.
"When exiles, such as Zuma, started returning, it was Schabir who integrated them," said the ageing activist.
"The Shaik brothers made their presence felt by helping ANC returnees, setting up companies for them. The rock was set and payback came after 1994."
It was their father Lambie Rasool Shaik (popularly known as Rasool), an upholsterer and shopsteward with the then Leather Worker's Union, who introduced the brothers to politics.
They formed the Mandla Judson Khuzwayo unit - and began building ANC support. Mo was the mastermind in the province's intelligence network. Frequently the brothers spent time in detention.
Maharaj and Ronnie Kasrils, minister of water affairs and forestry, were among those smuggled into the country by the Shaiks.
Now relatives are convinced the Shaiks are being used as pawns in a bigger game of political cat and mouse.
Mo claims "right-wing elements" are using state resources to embarrass the government and his family.
"They touched my family and that is OK. But now they have touched the deputy president that is not OK. Do you not think that if there was evidence after such a long investigation, they would have proceeded with the trial?
"Just as we did in the case of political detainees, we call on the Scorpions to prosecute or exonerate."
Yunus adds: "This time we are being embarrassed and money is tainting our name.
"Everything is being linked to the arms deal. Yes, there were payments Schabir made. He managed the finances of Zuma and other comrades. There is a fair explanation for everything. We are willing to co-operate for good governance. But we are being burnt at the stake.
"You will notice that every time a scandal breaks it happens just prior to an ANC congress," said Yunus.
Sipho Ngwema, the public face of the Scorpions and spokesman for the National Director of Public Prosecutions, said: "The probe continues."
With acknowledgements to Farhana Ismail, Marlan padayachee and Sunday Argus.
How did the Shaik brothers from middle-class Reservoir Hills, Durban, end up with massive influence in South African politics? They are well connected, are on every elite guest list and are close friends of deputy president Jacob Zuma. The family name has been splashed on newspaper front pages over the R66 billion arms deal and other political scandals.
They take centre stage in politics despite bad press which implies two of the brothers, Schabir and Shamin, known as Chippy, have hijacked the democratic process for their own ends. Of the brothers, it is Schabir who is at the heart of the scandals which are tearing the family apart.
In spite of these accusations, even the Scorpions don't have enough to nail the brothers on the arms deal.
It was claimed in a report two weeks ago that Schabir gave money to former transport minister Mac Maharaj. Zuma was also alleged to have received money from Schabir.
Questions are now being raised about this information which is in the possession of the Scorpions since they seized documentation from Schabir's office two years ago.
Second eldest brother Yunus, a lawyer and part time commissioner in the Commission for Conciliation and Mediation in Johannesburg, said: "Schabir was never questioned about this. Why is all this information being exposed now?"
He believes the claims about Schabir, chief director of Nkobi Holdings and director of African Defense Systems, one of the companies which benefited from the arms package as a sub-contractor, constitute a "firm intention to embarrass our family and never to prosecute".
The Scorpions are investigating a single charge against Schabir - contravention of the Protection of Information Act, relating to documents about the arms deal - a year after he obtained the tender.
Reeves Parsee, acting for Schabir, said: "My client faces a single charge with a maximum fine of R10 000. We challenge the constitutionality of the search warrant the Scorpions used to enter his premises. If the information links Schabir to corruption, why has he not been charged?"
Chippy, who was on the arms deal negotiating team, made no secret of the fact that his brother was involved in the arms industry. Third brother Mo, now special adviser to foreign affairs minister Nkosazana Zuma, was previously SA ambassador to Algeria. The youngest brother, Faizel, a businessman, and their sister, Rehana, are not involved in politics.
Said an ANC activist: "During the struggle days when things were hard and we had no money or nowhere to hide, you would turn to the Shaiks."
Mo, Chippy and Yunus were political activists. And it was their activism and networking in the ANC intelligence community that brought them closer to the political elite.
Schabir was streetwise, smart and a businessman who made sure the struggle gave him rewards.
"When exiles, such as Zuma, started returning, it was Schabir who integrated them," said the ageing activist.
"The Shaik brothers made their presence felt by helping ANC returnees, setting up companies for them. The rock was set and payback came after 1994."
It was their father Lambie Rasool Shaik (popularly known as Rasool), an upholsterer and shopsteward with the then Leather Worker's Union, who introduced the brothers to politics.
They formed the Mandla Judson Khuzwayo unit - and began building ANC support. Mo was the mastermind in the province's intelligence network. Frequently the brothers spent time in detention.
Maharaj and Ronnie Kasrils, minister of water affairs and forestry, were among those smuggled into the country by the Shaiks.
Now relatives are convinced the Shaiks are being used as pawns in a bigger game of political cat and mouse.
Mo claims "right-wing elements" are using state resources to embarrass the government and his family.
"They touched my family and that is OK. But now they have touched the deputy president that is not OK. Do you not think that if there was evidence after such a long investigation, they would have proceeded with the trial?
"Just as we did in the case of political detainees, we call on the Scorpions to prosecute or exonerate."
Yunus adds: "This time we are being embarrassed and money is tainting our name.
"Everything is being linked to the arms deal. Yes, there were payments Schabir made. He managed the finances of Zuma and other comrades. There is a fair explanation for everything. We are willing to co-operate for good governance. But we are being burnt at the stake.
"You will notice that every time a scandal breaks it happens just prior to an ANC congress," said Yunus.
Sipho Ngwema, the public face of the Scorpions and spokesman for the National Director of Public Prosecutions, said: "The probe continues."
With acknowledgements to Farhana Ismail, Marlan padayachee and Sunday Argus.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Take a Sho''t Left to Mandela's Country
Left of What's Right
By Marlan Padayachee
Take a Sho’t Left
Published in Juluka Magazine May 2008 Cover Price $4.25
A magazine embracing South Africa and her people
SOUTH Africa is still best-value-for-money holiday destination for foreign and local tourists, but they will have to take a Sho't Left to visit our revered statesman as he stands majestically in bronze overlooking the hordes of shoppers at the Sandton Square.
Sho't Left is the acronym for locals and overseas visitors to leave the motorways and take a sharp left to the beaten track to experience the sights and sounds of a fascinating landscape that criss-crosses the mountains, rolling green valleys, stretches of sun-baked beaches, flora and fauna and wild life.
Mandela in flesh is out of bounds for all and sundry. Only the high-rollers and the well-heeled icons of the world - like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Beyonce and French President Nicola s Sarkozy and his new First Lady, former supermodel Carla Bruni, enjoy visitor's rights to Houghton home of the nation's founding father of democracy.
Mandela Square situated in the heartbeat of the nation's prestige shopping mall and financial capital and this cacophony of sounds and sights is a must-see for locals and foreigners. A spectacular bronze statue of Madiba stands tall as children play around the Old Man's iron-like legs and parents take turns with tiny digital cameras to capture this awesome spectacle.
To borrow an old phrase from the apartheid country, SA is still a land of milk and honey for a diverse mix of tourists clutching high-currency dollars, pounds, Euros and yens.
From eating succulent prawns with masala rice to whetting appetites with a classic repertoire of wines to reveling in casinos, this shopper's paradise where tourists strike bargains all the way to duty-free shopping and more wine and good cuisine on the jetliners that ferry them around the land of the beauty and the beasts.
Ahead of the FIFA 2010 World Cup Soccer, the nation is gearing up for the biggest influx of tourists since Mandela took the long walk to the Tuynhuys. Residents are transforming homes into bed-and-breakfast lodges. Townships are no longer no-go areas for foreigners. Wandi's, an African-styled eatery situated in the heart of Soweto near the homes of Mandela and Tutu, is a favourite haunt that dishes out mielie pap, samp and mutton curry and ice-cold, home-brewed Castle Lager beers.
Tourism, an important revenue earner next to gold and diamonds, is on the upswing as foreign embassies from Port Louis to Paris market the holiday landmarks and sight-seeing high spots, with Table Mountain reigning supreme and Robben Island ranking as a pilgrimage among most tourists keen to take a peek at Cell Number Five at our own Alcatraz.
The major cities – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban – are all preparing for the big influx of visitors and a strong flow of foreign currency.
South Africa's best showcase to the world market is through the window of opportunity presented annually by the Indaba, rated as one of the biggest tourism marketing events on the African calendar and one of the top three 'must visit' jamborees on the global calendar.
The who's who of international tourism and hospitality marketing, from the luxury Blue Train that snakes its way across the picturesque landscape from the Highveld to the Cape, to the Golf Estates tucked away among the vineyards, orchards and mountains, hold their way for a week in Durban.
Since the beginning of the year, thousands throng the grand prix of tourism, where they sample spectacular sights ranging from Bela Bela, to Thaba Chwe, the hub of tourism. Last year, 12,523 filed past the turnstiles at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli ICC. This year, almost 15 000 attended the Indaba Travel Expo in Durban.
Whether it’s God's Window or the beat of the Zulu dancers in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, or tucking into a mutton curry bunny chow on Durban's Golden Mile, the sky's limit when you take a Sho't Left. Maybe a stopover at Nyoni's Kraal for lunch in Cape Town's Long Street.
Marlan Padayachee is an independent freelance journalist and social and political commentator in Durban, where he runs GreenGold Africa Communications: greengold@telkomsa.net
By Marlan Padayachee
Take a Sho’t Left
Published in Juluka Magazine May 2008 Cover Price $4.25
A magazine embracing South Africa and her people
SOUTH Africa is still best-value-for-money holiday destination for foreign and local tourists, but they will have to take a Sho't Left to visit our revered statesman as he stands majestically in bronze overlooking the hordes of shoppers at the Sandton Square.
Sho't Left is the acronym for locals and overseas visitors to leave the motorways and take a sharp left to the beaten track to experience the sights and sounds of a fascinating landscape that criss-crosses the mountains, rolling green valleys, stretches of sun-baked beaches, flora and fauna and wild life.
Mandela in flesh is out of bounds for all and sundry. Only the high-rollers and the well-heeled icons of the world - like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Beyonce and French President Nicola s Sarkozy and his new First Lady, former supermodel Carla Bruni, enjoy visitor's rights to Houghton home of the nation's founding father of democracy.
Mandela Square situated in the heartbeat of the nation's prestige shopping mall and financial capital and this cacophony of sounds and sights is a must-see for locals and foreigners. A spectacular bronze statue of Madiba stands tall as children play around the Old Man's iron-like legs and parents take turns with tiny digital cameras to capture this awesome spectacle.
To borrow an old phrase from the apartheid country, SA is still a land of milk and honey for a diverse mix of tourists clutching high-currency dollars, pounds, Euros and yens.
From eating succulent prawns with masala rice to whetting appetites with a classic repertoire of wines to reveling in casinos, this shopper's paradise where tourists strike bargains all the way to duty-free shopping and more wine and good cuisine on the jetliners that ferry them around the land of the beauty and the beasts.
Ahead of the FIFA 2010 World Cup Soccer, the nation is gearing up for the biggest influx of tourists since Mandela took the long walk to the Tuynhuys. Residents are transforming homes into bed-and-breakfast lodges. Townships are no longer no-go areas for foreigners. Wandi's, an African-styled eatery situated in the heart of Soweto near the homes of Mandela and Tutu, is a favourite haunt that dishes out mielie pap, samp and mutton curry and ice-cold, home-brewed Castle Lager beers.
Tourism, an important revenue earner next to gold and diamonds, is on the upswing as foreign embassies from Port Louis to Paris market the holiday landmarks and sight-seeing high spots, with Table Mountain reigning supreme and Robben Island ranking as a pilgrimage among most tourists keen to take a peek at Cell Number Five at our own Alcatraz.
The major cities – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban – are all preparing for the big influx of visitors and a strong flow of foreign currency.
South Africa's best showcase to the world market is through the window of opportunity presented annually by the Indaba, rated as one of the biggest tourism marketing events on the African calendar and one of the top three 'must visit' jamborees on the global calendar.
The who's who of international tourism and hospitality marketing, from the luxury Blue Train that snakes its way across the picturesque landscape from the Highveld to the Cape, to the Golf Estates tucked away among the vineyards, orchards and mountains, hold their way for a week in Durban.
Since the beginning of the year, thousands throng the grand prix of tourism, where they sample spectacular sights ranging from Bela Bela, to Thaba Chwe, the hub of tourism. Last year, 12,523 filed past the turnstiles at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli ICC. This year, almost 15 000 attended the Indaba Travel Expo in Durban.
Whether it’s God's Window or the beat of the Zulu dancers in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, or tucking into a mutton curry bunny chow on Durban's Golden Mile, the sky's limit when you take a Sho't Left. Maybe a stopover at Nyoni's Kraal for lunch in Cape Town's Long Street.
Marlan Padayachee is an independent freelance journalist and social and political commentator in Durban, where he runs GreenGold Africa Communications: greengold@telkomsa.net
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Day I Shook Mugabe's Hands
Left of What’s Right
By Marlan Padayachee Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
The day I shook Robert Mugabe’s hands and he acknowledged our struggle for democracy in South Africa I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel for a country divided by state-inspired racism, social injustices, economic imbalances and political crisis.I was heading back to Africa via Munich after attending the United Nations Special Conference against Sports Apartheid in London, where I met President Mugabe’s Sports Minister who facilitated a visa from the Zimbabwe’s High Commission.Mugabe had just entered the hall for the Zanu-PF Youth Rally in Harare when I met him, shook his hands in admiration of one of the region’s top guerilla leaders who led blood-stained and racist Rhodesia to uhuru in the 1980s. His charm offensive and warm tug in our hands told me he would stand by South Africa in its own quest for a post-Harare uhuru.No-one who knows and benefited from liberation history will challenge Mugabe as one of the inspirational leaders of the brutal bush war. No-one can even challenge his academic track record as one of the most educated liberation leaders with more than six degrees to his credit.But were many of us may depart from the point of dissent is that one of Africa’s most decorated leaders had overstayed his welcome. The rule of law has to kick in ahead of the June 27 president run-off with MDC candidate Morgan Tsvirangai. High level state tactics and violence had forced the MDC candidate to pull out of the race and seek refuge in the Dutch Embassy with the United Nations merely condemning the pre-poll violence and intimidation against dissidents.But South Africa has been blowing hot and cold over Mugabe’s iron-fisted rule across the Limpopo River.Beit Bridge as I knew it as a border crossing has changed dramatically in the past decade as thousands flee poverty, joblessness, lack of provisions and a diabolical currency that makes a joke of of the SADC’s fiscal system.I returned a few more times to this new African model of a breadbasket with skyscrapers reflecting a new skyline of hope after years of a horrendous bush war that resulted in many Rhodesians seeking economic and social refuge and a better lifestyle in apartheid’s land of milk and honey.But it was often difficult to put a finger on Harare-Pretoria relations as I witnessed a resentful Mugabe lose his badge of liberation status to Nelson Mandela who went on to marry the widow of another distinguished freedom fighter Samora Machel. Mugabe may have been cheesed off when our Old Man married Graca Machel. Then Mugabe gave President Thabo Mbeki a nasty diplomatic snub at an African Union assembly.In my opinion, Mugabe will never hold a candle in front of Mandela, South Africa’s symbol of care, compassion and crusader for a culture of a cosmopolitan country, and now the subject of admiration on his 90th birthday as he sets the stage for a worldwide campaign against HIV-AIDS.Before that the penny dropped when Mugabe was trumpeted into Mbeki’s presidential inauguration ceremony at the Union Buildings in 2004 when the huge crowd rose to their feet and roundly applauded the ever-green president-for-life, sending a mixed message to many despite having rigged elections since 2000 and bad-mouthing the MDC as capitalists’ stooges.Hence, the Union Buildings quiet diplomacy to Harare and since then until the political and economic meltdown began eroding local jobs. Almost two decades later, Zimbabweans have become the new refugees heading down south and until recently among the highest casualties of the shocking xenophobic attack on foreigners.The human drama continues in a country that once had as its tourist landmark the Zimbabwe Ruins.Whether we like it or not, the presidential election across Beit Bridge affects all of us. We are dealing with a stubborn dictator chasing his sixth term, largely paranoid about being unseated by Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue rather than by a tough trade unionist that refuses to give up despite the shifting of goalposts.Also envious about Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s halo in the world, Mugabe has rubbished our revered theological icon as an “irrelevant old bishop”. Tutu’s got no time for this ageing despot and has grave doubts about a free-and-fair election.For beleaguered Mbeki, his rapprochement across Beit Bridge is a diplomatic foray of too little, too late while his possible successor, ANC president Jacob Zuma has bluntly dismissed a fair vote.The June 16 celebration was followed by World Refugee’s Day with the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees stating that the world’s exiled, homeless, persecuted, banned and banished people were numbering more than 12-million, and they ranged from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali, Palestine and the Sudan.Remember the days when carrying a UN refugee status passport was prestige?It’s often dangerous to be insulated and act inwardly and think that we are only ones in the global village beset with the ordinary headaches of rising mortgage bond, fuel and electricity, food riots, racism and xenophobia.Look left or right and maybe we need to digest some of the issues that are causing grief above our radar screen. The UN says five-million Zimbabweans face the risk of starvation as grain output tumbles due to bad weather, lack of seeds and fertiliser, fuel costs and poor grain prices for farmers; the US Government condemns Zimbabwe for seizing truckloads of American food aid that are dished out to Mugabe’s supporters.So, we all have a vested interest in what’s happening across Beit Bridge, simply because the spillage, pilferage and spoils will affect our pockets.As our home fires continue to burn with dissent and discontent, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema should reading and researching Roman political history and grasp how Caesar was knifed from office; and he will also find himself in the dock at the palace of justice if he does not apologise to an already nervous nation about his call to arms and murder if the judiciary does not let Zuma off the hook.Until next week, take note of Richard Carlson’s “Remember to Acknowledge” verse: “You can acknowledge others in many ways. When someone calls you, acknowledge the call. When they send you something, remember to say thank you, or take the time to write a note. When someone does a good job, say so. When they apologise, acknowledge that too. It's especially important to acknowledge acts of kindness; doing so reinforces the act and encourages more of the same. We all benefit!”
Posted by commissar at 12:47 AM
Labels: Dateline: Durban June 2008
By Marlan Padayachee Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
The day I shook Robert Mugabe’s hands and he acknowledged our struggle for democracy in South Africa I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel for a country divided by state-inspired racism, social injustices, economic imbalances and political crisis.I was heading back to Africa via Munich after attending the United Nations Special Conference against Sports Apartheid in London, where I met President Mugabe’s Sports Minister who facilitated a visa from the Zimbabwe’s High Commission.Mugabe had just entered the hall for the Zanu-PF Youth Rally in Harare when I met him, shook his hands in admiration of one of the region’s top guerilla leaders who led blood-stained and racist Rhodesia to uhuru in the 1980s. His charm offensive and warm tug in our hands told me he would stand by South Africa in its own quest for a post-Harare uhuru.No-one who knows and benefited from liberation history will challenge Mugabe as one of the inspirational leaders of the brutal bush war. No-one can even challenge his academic track record as one of the most educated liberation leaders with more than six degrees to his credit.But were many of us may depart from the point of dissent is that one of Africa’s most decorated leaders had overstayed his welcome. The rule of law has to kick in ahead of the June 27 president run-off with MDC candidate Morgan Tsvirangai. High level state tactics and violence had forced the MDC candidate to pull out of the race and seek refuge in the Dutch Embassy with the United Nations merely condemning the pre-poll violence and intimidation against dissidents.But South Africa has been blowing hot and cold over Mugabe’s iron-fisted rule across the Limpopo River.Beit Bridge as I knew it as a border crossing has changed dramatically in the past decade as thousands flee poverty, joblessness, lack of provisions and a diabolical currency that makes a joke of of the SADC’s fiscal system.I returned a few more times to this new African model of a breadbasket with skyscrapers reflecting a new skyline of hope after years of a horrendous bush war that resulted in many Rhodesians seeking economic and social refuge and a better lifestyle in apartheid’s land of milk and honey.But it was often difficult to put a finger on Harare-Pretoria relations as I witnessed a resentful Mugabe lose his badge of liberation status to Nelson Mandela who went on to marry the widow of another distinguished freedom fighter Samora Machel. Mugabe may have been cheesed off when our Old Man married Graca Machel. Then Mugabe gave President Thabo Mbeki a nasty diplomatic snub at an African Union assembly.In my opinion, Mugabe will never hold a candle in front of Mandela, South Africa’s symbol of care, compassion and crusader for a culture of a cosmopolitan country, and now the subject of admiration on his 90th birthday as he sets the stage for a worldwide campaign against HIV-AIDS.Before that the penny dropped when Mugabe was trumpeted into Mbeki’s presidential inauguration ceremony at the Union Buildings in 2004 when the huge crowd rose to their feet and roundly applauded the ever-green president-for-life, sending a mixed message to many despite having rigged elections since 2000 and bad-mouthing the MDC as capitalists’ stooges.Hence, the Union Buildings quiet diplomacy to Harare and since then until the political and economic meltdown began eroding local jobs. Almost two decades later, Zimbabweans have become the new refugees heading down south and until recently among the highest casualties of the shocking xenophobic attack on foreigners.The human drama continues in a country that once had as its tourist landmark the Zimbabwe Ruins.Whether we like it or not, the presidential election across Beit Bridge affects all of us. We are dealing with a stubborn dictator chasing his sixth term, largely paranoid about being unseated by Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue rather than by a tough trade unionist that refuses to give up despite the shifting of goalposts.Also envious about Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s halo in the world, Mugabe has rubbished our revered theological icon as an “irrelevant old bishop”. Tutu’s got no time for this ageing despot and has grave doubts about a free-and-fair election.For beleaguered Mbeki, his rapprochement across Beit Bridge is a diplomatic foray of too little, too late while his possible successor, ANC president Jacob Zuma has bluntly dismissed a fair vote.The June 16 celebration was followed by World Refugee’s Day with the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees stating that the world’s exiled, homeless, persecuted, banned and banished people were numbering more than 12-million, and they ranged from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali, Palestine and the Sudan.Remember the days when carrying a UN refugee status passport was prestige?It’s often dangerous to be insulated and act inwardly and think that we are only ones in the global village beset with the ordinary headaches of rising mortgage bond, fuel and electricity, food riots, racism and xenophobia.Look left or right and maybe we need to digest some of the issues that are causing grief above our radar screen. The UN says five-million Zimbabweans face the risk of starvation as grain output tumbles due to bad weather, lack of seeds and fertiliser, fuel costs and poor grain prices for farmers; the US Government condemns Zimbabwe for seizing truckloads of American food aid that are dished out to Mugabe’s supporters.So, we all have a vested interest in what’s happening across Beit Bridge, simply because the spillage, pilferage and spoils will affect our pockets.As our home fires continue to burn with dissent and discontent, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema should reading and researching Roman political history and grasp how Caesar was knifed from office; and he will also find himself in the dock at the palace of justice if he does not apologise to an already nervous nation about his call to arms and murder if the judiciary does not let Zuma off the hook.Until next week, take note of Richard Carlson’s “Remember to Acknowledge” verse: “You can acknowledge others in many ways. When someone calls you, acknowledge the call. When they send you something, remember to say thank you, or take the time to write a note. When someone does a good job, say so. When they apologise, acknowledge that too. It's especially important to acknowledge acts of kindness; doing so reinforces the act and encourages more of the same. We all benefit!”
Posted by commissar at 12:47 AM
Labels: Dateline: Durban June 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Day I Shook Mugabe's Hands
Left of What’s Right
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
The day I shook Robert Mugabe’s hands and he acknowledged our struggle for democracy in South Africa I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel for a country divided by state-inspired racism, social injustices, economic imbalances and political crisis.
I was heading back to Africa via Munich after attending the United Nations Special Conference against Sports Apartheid in London, where I met President Mugabe’s Sports Minister who facilitated a visa from the Zimbabwe’s High Commission.
Mugabe had just entered the hall for the Zanu-PF Youth Rally in Harare when I met him, shook his hands in admiration of one of the region’s top guerilla leaders who led blood-stained and racist Rhodesia to uhuru in the 1980s. His charm offensive and warm tug in our hands told me he would stand by South Africa in its own quest for a post-Harare uhuru.
No-one who knows and benefited from liberation history will challenge Mugabe as one of the inspirational leaders of the brutal bush war. No-one can even challenge his academic track record as one of the most educated liberation leaders with more than six degrees to his credit.
But were many of us may depart from the point of dissent is that one of Africa’s most decorated leaders had overstayed his welcome. The rule of law has to kick in ahead of the June 27 president run-off with MDC candidate Morgan Tsvirangai. High level state tactics and violence had forced the MDC candidate to pull out of the race and seek refuge in the Dutch Embassy with the United Nations merely condemning the pre-poll violence and intimidation against dissidents.
But South Africa has been blowing hot and cold over Mugabe’s iron-fisted rule across the Limpopo River.
Beit Bridge as I knew it as a border crossing has changed dramatically in the past decade as thousands flee poverty, joblessness, lack of provisions and a diabolical currency that makes a joke of of the SADC’s fiscal system.
I returned a few more times to this new African model of a breadbasket with skyscrapers reflecting a new skyline of hope after years of a horrendous bush war that resulted in many Rhodesians seeking economic and social refuge and a better lifestyle in apartheid’s land of milk and honey.
But it was often difficult to put a finger on Harare-Pretoria relations as I witnessed a resentful Mugabe lose his badge of liberation status to Nelson Mandela who went on to marry the widow of another distinguished freedom fighter Samora Machel. Mugabe may have been cheesed off when our Old Man married Graca Machel. Then Mugabe gave President Thabo Mbeki a nasty diplomatic snub at an African Union assembly.
In my opinion, Mugabe will never hold a candle in front of Mandela, South Africa’s symbol of care, compassion and crusader for a culture of a cosmopolitan country, and now the subject of admiration on his 90th birthday as he sets the stage for a worldwide campaign against HIV-AIDS.
Before that the penny dropped when Mugabe was trumpeted into Mbeki’s presidential inauguration ceremony at the Union Buildings in 2004 when the huge crowd rose to their feet and roundly applauded the ever-green president-for-life, sending a mixed message to many despite having rigged elections since 2000 and bad-mouthing the MDC as capitalists’ stooges.
Hence, the Union Buildings quiet diplomacy to Harare and since then until the political and economic meltdown began eroding local jobs. Almost two decades later, Zimbabweans have become the new refugees heading down south and until recently among the highest casualties of the shocking xenophobic attack on foreigners.
The human drama continues in a country that once had as its tourist landmark the Zimbabwe Ruins.
Whether we like it or not, the presidential election across Beit Bridge affects all of us. We are dealing with a stubborn dictator chasing his sixth term, largely paranoid about being unseated by Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue rather than by a tough trade unionist that refuses to give up despite the shifting of goalposts.
Also envious about Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s halo in the world, Mugabe has rubbished our revered theological icon as an “irrelevant old bishop”. Tutu’s got no time for this ageing despot and has grave doubts about a free-and-fair election.
For beleaguered Mbeki, his rapprochement across Beit Bridge is a diplomatic foray of too little, too late while his possible successor, ANC president Jacob Zuma has bluntly dismissed a fair vote.
The June 16 celebration was followed by World Refugee’s Day with the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees stating that the world’s exiled, homeless, persecuted, banned and banished people were numbering more than 12-million, and they ranged from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali, Palestine and the Sudan.
Remember the days when carrying a UN refugee status passport was prestige?
It’s often dangerous to be insulated and act inwardly and think that we are only ones in the global village beset with the ordinary headaches of rising mortgage bond, fuel and electricity, food riots, racism and xenophobia.
Look left or right and maybe we need to digest some of the issues that are causing grief above our radar screen. The UN says five-million Zimbabweans face the risk of starvation as grain output tumbles due to bad weather, lack of seeds and fertiliser, fuel costs and poor grain prices for farmers; the US Government condemns Zimbabwe for seizing truckloads of American food aid that are dished out to Mugabe’s supporters.
So, we all have a vested interest in what’s happening across Beit Bridge, simply because the spillage, pilferage and spoils will affect our pockets.
As our home fires continue to burn with dissent and discontent, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema should reading and researching Roman political history and grasp how Caesar was knifed from office; and he will also find himself in the dock at the palace of justice if he does not apologise to an already nervous nation about his call to arms and murder if the judiciary does not let Zuma off the hook.
Until next week, take note of Richard Carlson’s “Remember to Acknowledge” verse: “You can acknowledge others in many ways. When someone calls you, acknowledge the call. When they send you something, remember to say thank you, or take the time to write a note. When someone does a good job, say so. When they apologise, acknowledge that too. It's especially important to acknowledge acts of kindness; doing so reinforces the act and encourages more of the same. We all benefit!”
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
The day I shook Robert Mugabe’s hands and he acknowledged our struggle for democracy in South Africa I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel for a country divided by state-inspired racism, social injustices, economic imbalances and political crisis.
I was heading back to Africa via Munich after attending the United Nations Special Conference against Sports Apartheid in London, where I met President Mugabe’s Sports Minister who facilitated a visa from the Zimbabwe’s High Commission.
Mugabe had just entered the hall for the Zanu-PF Youth Rally in Harare when I met him, shook his hands in admiration of one of the region’s top guerilla leaders who led blood-stained and racist Rhodesia to uhuru in the 1980s. His charm offensive and warm tug in our hands told me he would stand by South Africa in its own quest for a post-Harare uhuru.
No-one who knows and benefited from liberation history will challenge Mugabe as one of the inspirational leaders of the brutal bush war. No-one can even challenge his academic track record as one of the most educated liberation leaders with more than six degrees to his credit.
But were many of us may depart from the point of dissent is that one of Africa’s most decorated leaders had overstayed his welcome. The rule of law has to kick in ahead of the June 27 president run-off with MDC candidate Morgan Tsvirangai. High level state tactics and violence had forced the MDC candidate to pull out of the race and seek refuge in the Dutch Embassy with the United Nations merely condemning the pre-poll violence and intimidation against dissidents.
But South Africa has been blowing hot and cold over Mugabe’s iron-fisted rule across the Limpopo River.
Beit Bridge as I knew it as a border crossing has changed dramatically in the past decade as thousands flee poverty, joblessness, lack of provisions and a diabolical currency that makes a joke of of the SADC’s fiscal system.
I returned a few more times to this new African model of a breadbasket with skyscrapers reflecting a new skyline of hope after years of a horrendous bush war that resulted in many Rhodesians seeking economic and social refuge and a better lifestyle in apartheid’s land of milk and honey.
But it was often difficult to put a finger on Harare-Pretoria relations as I witnessed a resentful Mugabe lose his badge of liberation status to Nelson Mandela who went on to marry the widow of another distinguished freedom fighter Samora Machel. Mugabe may have been cheesed off when our Old Man married Graca Machel. Then Mugabe gave President Thabo Mbeki a nasty diplomatic snub at an African Union assembly.
In my opinion, Mugabe will never hold a candle in front of Mandela, South Africa’s symbol of care, compassion and crusader for a culture of a cosmopolitan country, and now the subject of admiration on his 90th birthday as he sets the stage for a worldwide campaign against HIV-AIDS.
Before that the penny dropped when Mugabe was trumpeted into Mbeki’s presidential inauguration ceremony at the Union Buildings in 2004 when the huge crowd rose to their feet and roundly applauded the ever-green president-for-life, sending a mixed message to many despite having rigged elections since 2000 and bad-mouthing the MDC as capitalists’ stooges.
Hence, the Union Buildings quiet diplomacy to Harare and since then until the political and economic meltdown began eroding local jobs. Almost two decades later, Zimbabweans have become the new refugees heading down south and until recently among the highest casualties of the shocking xenophobic attack on foreigners.
The human drama continues in a country that once had as its tourist landmark the Zimbabwe Ruins.
Whether we like it or not, the presidential election across Beit Bridge affects all of us. We are dealing with a stubborn dictator chasing his sixth term, largely paranoid about being unseated by Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue rather than by a tough trade unionist that refuses to give up despite the shifting of goalposts.
Also envious about Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s halo in the world, Mugabe has rubbished our revered theological icon as an “irrelevant old bishop”. Tutu’s got no time for this ageing despot and has grave doubts about a free-and-fair election.
For beleaguered Mbeki, his rapprochement across Beit Bridge is a diplomatic foray of too little, too late while his possible successor, ANC president Jacob Zuma has bluntly dismissed a fair vote.
The June 16 celebration was followed by World Refugee’s Day with the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees stating that the world’s exiled, homeless, persecuted, banned and banished people were numbering more than 12-million, and they ranged from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali, Palestine and the Sudan.
Remember the days when carrying a UN refugee status passport was prestige?
It’s often dangerous to be insulated and act inwardly and think that we are only ones in the global village beset with the ordinary headaches of rising mortgage bond, fuel and electricity, food riots, racism and xenophobia.
Look left or right and maybe we need to digest some of the issues that are causing grief above our radar screen. The UN says five-million Zimbabweans face the risk of starvation as grain output tumbles due to bad weather, lack of seeds and fertiliser, fuel costs and poor grain prices for farmers; the US Government condemns Zimbabwe for seizing truckloads of American food aid that are dished out to Mugabe’s supporters.
So, we all have a vested interest in what’s happening across Beit Bridge, simply because the spillage, pilferage and spoils will affect our pockets.
As our home fires continue to burn with dissent and discontent, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema should reading and researching Roman political history and grasp how Caesar was knifed from office; and he will also find himself in the dock at the palace of justice if he does not apologise to an already nervous nation about his call to arms and murder if the judiciary does not let Zuma off the hook.
Until next week, take note of Richard Carlson’s “Remember to Acknowledge” verse: “You can acknowledge others in many ways. When someone calls you, acknowledge the call. When they send you something, remember to say thank you, or take the time to write a note. When someone does a good job, say so. When they apologise, acknowledge that too. It's especially important to acknowledge acts of kindness; doing so reinforces the act and encourages more of the same. We all benefit!”
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Take a Sho''t Left to Mandela's Country
TAKE A SHO’T LEFT to South Africa and settle for Mandela’s bronze statue... - by Marlan PadayacheeSouth Africa is still the best-value-for-money holiday destination for foreign tourists, but they will have to take a Sho’t Left to visit our revered statesman Nelson Mandela as he stands majestically in bronze overlooking the hordes of shoppers at the Sandton Square. Sho’t Left is the acronym for locals and overseas visitors to leave the motorways and take a sharp left to the beaten track to experience the sights and sounds of a fascinating landscape that criss-crosses the mountains, rolling green valleys, stretches of sun-baked beaches, TAKE A SHO’T LEFT to South Africa and settle for Mandela’s bronze statue... - by Marlan PadayacheeSouth Africa is still the best-value-for-money holiday destination for foreign tourists, but they will have to take a Sho’t Left to visit our revered statesman Nelson Mandela as he stands majestically in bronze overlooking the hordes of shoppers at the Sandton Square. Sho’t Left is the acronym for locals and overseas visitors to leave the motorways and take a sharp left to the beaten track to experience the sights and sounds of a fascinating landscape that criss-crosses the mountains, rolling green valleys, stretches of sun-baked beaches, flora and fauna and wild life.ora and fauna and wild life.
For full story: www.julukanews.com
For full story: www.julukanews.com
Marlan Padayachee of Soccer's Glory Days
Edition 1, Wednesday 18th June
POST Sport
Deena's column in class of its own
June 18, 2008 Edition 1
FOR some time I have been wanting to write to Post to express my appreciation to Sports Editor Deena Pillay for his excellent coverage of the Glory Days and how each week he trawls around globally in search of soccer's prodigal sons.
Pillay's report on Derrick Desplace was the straw that broke the camel's back, hence this swift gratitude for a well researched article of one of the finest footballers in the world. I prefer to remember him as a "Gentleman Goalkeeper".
Growing up in a footbal family, I was exposed to Currie's Fountain early in my life, so much so that soccer gave me a passport into journalism.
In those days it was politically correct to be associated with the non-racial sports movement and Currie's was the place to be. Pillay is enriching our new society by recapturing these glory days, taking us on nostalgic trips down memory lane with his skilful pieces of profiles of yesterday's forgotten stars that enthralled fans at Winterton walk.
Daring Derrick Desplace impressed us with his athleticism and agility. He was a mentor and a classy player, who in his days could have stood toe to toe with some of the country's greatest goalkeepers.
Let Glory Days continue to glorify and honour those who walked gallantly before us and gave us milestones to fall back on as we reminisce and record those halcyon days of the difficult social, economic and political conditions that prevailed.
Marlan Padayachee
Westville
Friday, June 13, 2008
It's time to take a gratitude stroll to thank the heroes and heroines of the epic struggle against apartheid
Left of What’s RightBy Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity. (marlan.padayachee@gmail.com)As we continue with our journey into the new South Africa, now entering its 15th year, maybe it’s time to take a gratitude stroll into our past.
While the new generation of South Africans may experience discomfort in grappling with the horrendous stories of life under apartheid and before that the equally divisive rule of colonialism, those who walked on the segregation road know and understand the pangs of discrimination.
Each country has its own history and its own story to tell to the world.
Through our eyes, South Africa is unique. Our story is poignant and painful. Our liberation struggle has been a hard-fought achievement in which no particular political bloc or individual can claim sole credit. It was a people’s monopoly.
Out of this centuries-old struggle for human dignity, social justice, political emancipation and economic opportunities emerged countless heroes and heroines. They ranged from King Shaka to Mahatma Gandhi. Albert Luthuli to Reverend Sigamoney. Nelson Mandela to Oliver Reginald Tambo. Walter Sisulu to Thabo Mbeki. Veliammah to Albertina Sisulu. Kesaveloo Goonam to Amina Cachalia. Winnie Mandela to Fatima Meer. Yusuf Dadoo to Monty Naicker. Robert Sobukwe to Alan Paton. Ruth First to Ela Gandhi. Joe Slovo to Alec Erwin.
What about the brave youths of Soweto who turned the apartheid state on its head on 16 June 1976? This sheer act of heroism fuelled a nation-wide schools protests and boycotts that not only galvanized the voteless millions, but put the apartheid oligarchy on its back foot.
We need to be grateful to the Soweto landmark, landscape and its people, hence it is time to take Youth Day seriously and reinvest in our youth who are ultimately tomorrow’s leaders.
So, any such list of the who’s who of the struggle era will be seamless.
While travelling through the United States last year, I was reminded about the story of David Patrick Columbia, who arrived in New York City as a super-optimist, dreaming of a top-notch job, but did a low-level assistant job. On a grey, damp Manhattan morning, he could have stayed in bed and moaned, but instead took to the streets on his “walk of thanks”, admiring a mother walking her baby , recognizing that the toddler’s smile made him happier, and watching a jet in the sky and marveling at the science of flying. Then he navigated the hustle and bustle from the “sizzling smells of the bistros to the eye-catching window displays”. Hours later, he was feeling thankful that he had relocated to the Big Apple. Today, he’s a successful media entrepreneur and still takes his gratitude strolls to stay focused on the bright side of life in New York.
The Greeks once said: “Swift Gratitude is Sweet”.
I am taking a gratitude stroll this week, firstly to all those political, social and sports activists who stood firm in their opposition to apartheid. Then there were those who fled the country and lived under harsh exile conditions abroad. Sam Ramsamy opened my door to London.Newspaper chiefs Peter Davis, now a Democratic Party city councilor, and the late editor Ian Wyllie, were liberal about sending me to work abroad. A face-to-face interaction with the ANC in the early 1980s was unthinkable, or even a tete-a-tete with Thabo Mbeki in Harare would have been unbelievable. These rare and enriching experiences were made possible by those who walked before me on freedom road.
Govin Reddy and Tessa Colvin, Jaya Appalraju and Dr Goonum, whom racists labeled as the “Coolie Doctor” and the ANC family in exile provided these opportunities and wonderful insights about how the new nation was being hammered and shaped far away from home.
By then Lenny Naidu and Krish Rabilal and countless comrades in the making were headed for the military camps across our borders to learn about the revolutionary tactics and strategies of Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung and Das Kapital.
Chatsworth paid homage to Naidu on his 20th death anniversary; along with the eight other ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres, who were ambushed by an apartheid army while re-entering South Africa to strike a blow against an unjust system.
Inside the country, MJ Naidoo and George Sewpershad and their Natal Indian Congress were keeping the home fires burning through campaigns aimed at preventing Indians and coloureds from subscribing to the proxy parliamentary representation of the House of Delegates in the tricameral parliament.
Significantly, Naidoo’s family will preserve his legacy through the newly-launched MJ Naidoo Foundation for Social Justice which made its public appearance at an inaugural debate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s UDW Campus, once the hotbed of resistance to the old guard government.
The foundation was established on 16 June last year as a tribute to the one-time NIC president, whose ideals of non-violence, racial equality, and peace have served to inspire generations of social activists. Naidoo died ten years ago on this defining day of political watershed, aged 67.
The foundation believes that these debates on the current challenges and opportunities for democracy in South Africa and the SADC region will serve as a platform to underline the significance of Youth Day and act as a catalyst to inspire people and organisations to promote social justice and contribute to the spirit of humanity in our changing society.
In the sands of time as the country grapples with its domestic challenges, we must not forget those who walked before us and sacrificed their lives, families and careers so that our children can breathe the fresh air of freedom and democracy.
Together with his legal colleague George Sewpershad, who was awarded the Order of Luthuli, posthumously, by President Mbeki, Naidoo and the Natal Indian Congress came to the aid of thousands of schoolchildren and parents who became embroiled in the 1976 student revolution against the teaching of Afrikaans as a medium.
This daring duo who specialised in assisting marginalised communities with pro deo legal work were part of the famous Consulate Six, who turned Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street upside down when they occupied the British Consulate in Durban’s Field Street Barclays Building with four other resisters, including lawyer Archie Gumede, to highlight the socio-political conditions in South Africa and detentions without trial of anti-apartheid activists.
Naidoo, who lived in Merebank and continued, practising at his law firm in the Grey Street CBD, was born in Umkomaas. He followed his brother, Advocate MD Naidoo, into politics. MD Naidoo was also persecuted and imprisoned before fleeing to exile in London in the 1960s.
MJ Naidoo’s work epitomised moral and social justice, human dignity and fair play. In his life and career, he championed the human rights of the poor
In the final analysis of saluting heroes and heroines for their heroic and epic battles so that we can take a day off every Youth Day, lets sometimes take a gratitude stroll and remember these giants who walked on this planet.
Until next week, let me leave with these words of inspiration from Martin Luther King: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
ends
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity. (marlan.padayachee@gmail.com)As we continue with our journey into the new South Africa, now entering its 15th year, maybe it’s time to take a gratitude stroll into our past.
While the new generation of South Africans may experience discomfort in grappling with the horrendous stories of life under apartheid and before that the equally divisive rule of colonialism, those who walked on the segregation road know and understand the pangs of discrimination.
Each country has its own history and its own story to tell to the world.
Through our eyes, South Africa is unique. Our story is poignant and painful. Our liberation struggle has been a hard-fought achievement in which no particular political bloc or individual can claim sole credit. It was a people’s monopoly.
Out of this centuries-old struggle for human dignity, social justice, political emancipation and economic opportunities emerged countless heroes and heroines. They ranged from King Shaka to Mahatma Gandhi. Albert Luthuli to Reverend Sigamoney. Nelson Mandela to Oliver Reginald Tambo. Walter Sisulu to Thabo Mbeki. Veliammah to Albertina Sisulu. Kesaveloo Goonam to Amina Cachalia. Winnie Mandela to Fatima Meer. Yusuf Dadoo to Monty Naicker. Robert Sobukwe to Alan Paton. Ruth First to Ela Gandhi. Joe Slovo to Alec Erwin.
What about the brave youths of Soweto who turned the apartheid state on its head on 16 June 1976? This sheer act of heroism fuelled a nation-wide schools protests and boycotts that not only galvanized the voteless millions, but put the apartheid oligarchy on its back foot.
We need to be grateful to the Soweto landmark, landscape and its people, hence it is time to take Youth Day seriously and reinvest in our youth who are ultimately tomorrow’s leaders.
So, any such list of the who’s who of the struggle era will be seamless.
While travelling through the United States last year, I was reminded about the story of David Patrick Columbia, who arrived in New York City as a super-optimist, dreaming of a top-notch job, but did a low-level assistant job. On a grey, damp Manhattan morning, he could have stayed in bed and moaned, but instead took to the streets on his “walk of thanks”, admiring a mother walking her baby , recognizing that the toddler’s smile made him happier, and watching a jet in the sky and marveling at the science of flying. Then he navigated the hustle and bustle from the “sizzling smells of the bistros to the eye-catching window displays”. Hours later, he was feeling thankful that he had relocated to the Big Apple. Today, he’s a successful media entrepreneur and still takes his gratitude strolls to stay focused on the bright side of life in New York.
The Greeks once said: “Swift Gratitude is Sweet”.
I am taking a gratitude stroll this week, firstly to all those political, social and sports activists who stood firm in their opposition to apartheid. Then there were those who fled the country and lived under harsh exile conditions abroad. Sam Ramsamy opened my door to London.Newspaper chiefs Peter Davis, now a Democratic Party city councilor, and the late editor Ian Wyllie, were liberal about sending me to work abroad. A face-to-face interaction with the ANC in the early 1980s was unthinkable, or even a tete-a-tete with Thabo Mbeki in Harare would have been unbelievable. These rare and enriching experiences were made possible by those who walked before me on freedom road.
Govin Reddy and Tessa Colvin, Jaya Appalraju and Dr Goonum, whom racists labeled as the “Coolie Doctor” and the ANC family in exile provided these opportunities and wonderful insights about how the new nation was being hammered and shaped far away from home.
By then Lenny Naidu and Krish Rabilal and countless comrades in the making were headed for the military camps across our borders to learn about the revolutionary tactics and strategies of Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung and Das Kapital.
Chatsworth paid homage to Naidu on his 20th death anniversary; along with the eight other ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres, who were ambushed by an apartheid army while re-entering South Africa to strike a blow against an unjust system.
Inside the country, MJ Naidoo and George Sewpershad and their Natal Indian Congress were keeping the home fires burning through campaigns aimed at preventing Indians and coloureds from subscribing to the proxy parliamentary representation of the House of Delegates in the tricameral parliament.
Significantly, Naidoo’s family will preserve his legacy through the newly-launched MJ Naidoo Foundation for Social Justice which made its public appearance at an inaugural debate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s UDW Campus, once the hotbed of resistance to the old guard government.
The foundation was established on 16 June last year as a tribute to the one-time NIC president, whose ideals of non-violence, racial equality, and peace have served to inspire generations of social activists. Naidoo died ten years ago on this defining day of political watershed, aged 67.
The foundation believes that these debates on the current challenges and opportunities for democracy in South Africa and the SADC region will serve as a platform to underline the significance of Youth Day and act as a catalyst to inspire people and organisations to promote social justice and contribute to the spirit of humanity in our changing society.
In the sands of time as the country grapples with its domestic challenges, we must not forget those who walked before us and sacrificed their lives, families and careers so that our children can breathe the fresh air of freedom and democracy.
Together with his legal colleague George Sewpershad, who was awarded the Order of Luthuli, posthumously, by President Mbeki, Naidoo and the Natal Indian Congress came to the aid of thousands of schoolchildren and parents who became embroiled in the 1976 student revolution against the teaching of Afrikaans as a medium.
This daring duo who specialised in assisting marginalised communities with pro deo legal work were part of the famous Consulate Six, who turned Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street upside down when they occupied the British Consulate in Durban’s Field Street Barclays Building with four other resisters, including lawyer Archie Gumede, to highlight the socio-political conditions in South Africa and detentions without trial of anti-apartheid activists.
Naidoo, who lived in Merebank and continued, practising at his law firm in the Grey Street CBD, was born in Umkomaas. He followed his brother, Advocate MD Naidoo, into politics. MD Naidoo was also persecuted and imprisoned before fleeing to exile in London in the 1960s.
MJ Naidoo’s work epitomised moral and social justice, human dignity and fair play. In his life and career, he championed the human rights of the poor
In the final analysis of saluting heroes and heroines for their heroic and epic battles so that we can take a day off every Youth Day, lets sometimes take a gratitude stroll and remember these giants who walked on this planet.
Until next week, let me leave with these words of inspiration from Martin Luther King: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
ends
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Give Us Hope Barack Obama
Left of What’s Right
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity. (marlan.padayachee@gmail.com)
IN what has clearly been one of the most challenging six months of 2008, the ANC’s post-Polokwane tensions with President Thabo Mbeki, the Kenyan election violence, the perennial problems in Zimbabwe, the xenophobic explosion at home and food riots in some parts of the world, comes a spectre of hope. His name is Barack Obama who fascinated the world with his political savvy, elegance and style, particularly his dress sense with well cut suits and matching shirt and ties, and of course his boyish smiles.
The Africans would now start proudly proclaiming ownership of the first black President-elect (I am hedging my bets here) to serve the more than 200-million American people: “He’s one of us, he’s from home.”
The Democratic Party’s Presidential hopeful stole the world headlines this week, outflanking his closest rival Hillary Clinton, despite her 16-year experience in US politics and stunning stints at the White House as First Lady to law college sweetheart and charismatic former President Bill Clinton and her popularity as a New York senator.
Obama, backed by the powerful TV talk show queen and billionaire Oprah Winfrey, and accompanied by a stylish First Lady in waiting, and some of the finest aides on the Washington’s political and electioneering landscape, flashed past the winning past like a breath of fresh air on a global stage polluted by more wars, internal strifes and racial and ethnic conflicts in the past decades.
His roots are in a tiny village near Nairobi and as the son of Kenyan father and American mother, Obama’s winning campaign trail threw a lifeline to the struggling Third World, and South Africa in particular, last week.
How does the hurly-burly world of a greenback election affect a country that’s still trying to find its transitional bearings in the wake of the racist and ethnic cleansing of foreigners and illegal immigrants? How will Africa, still in the post-colonial throes of poverty, corruption, dictatorships, ethnic and racial politics, benefit from BO at the White House when GWB could not come to grips with our homegrown blues, let alone pouring cold water over the flaming Middle East conflicts?
Firstly, from segregation to nomination, Obama has given new hope to long struggling African-Americans and Hispanics, provided he delivers smartly to the marginalized minorities battling to make headway in a super-capitalist continent. He is locked in the history of this chequered nation and his work will be cut out when he takes the Oval Office after the big polls in November.
South Africa, ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the rest of Africa will become his biggest policy poser. His foreign policy in the Middle East and rest of the world has to be ratcheted towards world peace. What he is going to do with Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be interesting.
At least Africa will benefit not just from the HIV-AIDS dollar endowment, but relations will improve significantly from Cape to Cairo.
Maybe, he will inspire Kenyans to stop killing each other when polls go wrong or are rigged. Maybe, he will give Harare a call from his red phone and tell Robert Mugabe that he sullying the “I Am an African” vision created by our quiet-diplomat Thabo Mbeki.
At least the second half of the year will be exciting with the razzmatazz of the American elections in which change-agent Obama may pummel his Republican rival into voting for McCain’s as a profitable business in the oven- fried chips and snacks industry rather than running for President.
With SA’s leadership crisis taking its toll with the Zimbabwe refugee crisis exercabating our domestic problems of joblessness, homelessness and the shrinking Rand, the clarion call should go out to the young blood to come to the fore and replace the sleepy MPs and Cabinet Ministers ahead of the 2009 elections.
Imagine what Lenny Naidu and his ANC cadres, who were ambushed by the apartheid army, be thinking today, in the wake of how the Beloved Country has gone from darling of democracy to a controversial country beset with corruption, nepotism, inside-trading and the economic elbowing of the proletariat et al?
In a rapid-fire 24-hour consumer society, well done to the Lenny Naidu Development Institute – including Professor Kovin Naidoo of the International Centre for Eyecare Education – for pulling together the 20th death anniversary commemoration at the city hall at which SARS Big Chief Pravin Gordhan will pay homage to the fallen heroes.
A few significant breaking news events caught my attention. DStv-backed e-tv turned broadcast journalism on its head with its 24-hour e-news channel, albeit the repetitive and canned stuff, but its baptism of fire was a far cry from SABC’s black-and-white TV debut in the 1960s. The death of fashion guru Yves Saint Laurent was splashed on all the major networks, so was the fire that gutted a Hollywood’s studio, with a British tabloid taking the bun with this headline: King gone! – a reference to the giant King Kong’s fiery death.
Until next week, a print-out of an email with the breathtaking face of Bolllywood screen goddess Aishwariya Rai read: “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.”
Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica – God Bless Africa.
Footnote: Marlan Padayachee’s International Visitor’s Award from the Clinton Administration enabled him to observe the run-up to the 1996 American elections, visit the White House and interact with political, social and media communications institutions in major cities.
Durban Dateline: Published in six newspapers in the Tabloid Group (http://www.tabloidmedia.co.z/) with a readership base of 2million readers in Greater Durban Region, South Africa.
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity. (marlan.padayachee@gmail.com)
IN what has clearly been one of the most challenging six months of 2008, the ANC’s post-Polokwane tensions with President Thabo Mbeki, the Kenyan election violence, the perennial problems in Zimbabwe, the xenophobic explosion at home and food riots in some parts of the world, comes a spectre of hope. His name is Barack Obama who fascinated the world with his political savvy, elegance and style, particularly his dress sense with well cut suits and matching shirt and ties, and of course his boyish smiles.
The Africans would now start proudly proclaiming ownership of the first black President-elect (I am hedging my bets here) to serve the more than 200-million American people: “He’s one of us, he’s from home.”
The Democratic Party’s Presidential hopeful stole the world headlines this week, outflanking his closest rival Hillary Clinton, despite her 16-year experience in US politics and stunning stints at the White House as First Lady to law college sweetheart and charismatic former President Bill Clinton and her popularity as a New York senator.
Obama, backed by the powerful TV talk show queen and billionaire Oprah Winfrey, and accompanied by a stylish First Lady in waiting, and some of the finest aides on the Washington’s political and electioneering landscape, flashed past the winning past like a breath of fresh air on a global stage polluted by more wars, internal strifes and racial and ethnic conflicts in the past decades.
His roots are in a tiny village near Nairobi and as the son of Kenyan father and American mother, Obama’s winning campaign trail threw a lifeline to the struggling Third World, and South Africa in particular, last week.
How does the hurly-burly world of a greenback election affect a country that’s still trying to find its transitional bearings in the wake of the racist and ethnic cleansing of foreigners and illegal immigrants? How will Africa, still in the post-colonial throes of poverty, corruption, dictatorships, ethnic and racial politics, benefit from BO at the White House when GWB could not come to grips with our homegrown blues, let alone pouring cold water over the flaming Middle East conflicts?
Firstly, from segregation to nomination, Obama has given new hope to long struggling African-Americans and Hispanics, provided he delivers smartly to the marginalized minorities battling to make headway in a super-capitalist continent. He is locked in the history of this chequered nation and his work will be cut out when he takes the Oval Office after the big polls in November.
South Africa, ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the rest of Africa will become his biggest policy poser. His foreign policy in the Middle East and rest of the world has to be ratcheted towards world peace. What he is going to do with Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be interesting.
At least Africa will benefit not just from the HIV-AIDS dollar endowment, but relations will improve significantly from Cape to Cairo.
Maybe, he will inspire Kenyans to stop killing each other when polls go wrong or are rigged. Maybe, he will give Harare a call from his red phone and tell Robert Mugabe that he sullying the “I Am an African” vision created by our quiet-diplomat Thabo Mbeki.
At least the second half of the year will be exciting with the razzmatazz of the American elections in which change-agent Obama may pummel his Republican rival into voting for McCain’s as a profitable business in the oven- fried chips and snacks industry rather than running for President.
With SA’s leadership crisis taking its toll with the Zimbabwe refugee crisis exercabating our domestic problems of joblessness, homelessness and the shrinking Rand, the clarion call should go out to the young blood to come to the fore and replace the sleepy MPs and Cabinet Ministers ahead of the 2009 elections.
Imagine what Lenny Naidu and his ANC cadres, who were ambushed by the apartheid army, be thinking today, in the wake of how the Beloved Country has gone from darling of democracy to a controversial country beset with corruption, nepotism, inside-trading and the economic elbowing of the proletariat et al?
In a rapid-fire 24-hour consumer society, well done to the Lenny Naidu Development Institute – including Professor Kovin Naidoo of the International Centre for Eyecare Education – for pulling together the 20th death anniversary commemoration at the city hall at which SARS Big Chief Pravin Gordhan will pay homage to the fallen heroes.
A few significant breaking news events caught my attention. DStv-backed e-tv turned broadcast journalism on its head with its 24-hour e-news channel, albeit the repetitive and canned stuff, but its baptism of fire was a far cry from SABC’s black-and-white TV debut in the 1960s. The death of fashion guru Yves Saint Laurent was splashed on all the major networks, so was the fire that gutted a Hollywood’s studio, with a British tabloid taking the bun with this headline: King gone! – a reference to the giant King Kong’s fiery death.
Until next week, a print-out of an email with the breathtaking face of Bolllywood screen goddess Aishwariya Rai read: “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.”
Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica – God Bless Africa.
Footnote: Marlan Padayachee’s International Visitor’s Award from the Clinton Administration enabled him to observe the run-up to the 1996 American elections, visit the White House and interact with political, social and media communications institutions in major cities.
Durban Dateline: Published in six newspapers in the Tabloid Group (http://www.tabloidmedia.co.z/) with a readership base of 2million readers in Greater Durban Region, South Africa.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Xenophobia - South Africa's latest scourge since the epic Anti-Apartheid Struggle in South Africa
Left of What’s Right
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
Xenophobia has been on your doorstep.
It’s been living near you for a long time, just that we may have been colour-blind about it and could have been wearing blinkers to the needs, aspirations, hopes and human dignity of people who have endured a similar brand of post-colonial-apartheid racial prejudices, oppression, dictatorship and economic elbowing in the work and marketplaces.
So, finally the dreaded X-word reared its ugly head. Since South Africa galloped into a new era of democracy 14 years ago, xenophobia has been on our step, alive and kicking and hitting us in the eyes.
Maybe, our post-apartheid hangover (babalaas) may have consumed us into a perpetual sense of revelry, so much so we may have become insensitive to the influx of foreigners, first in batches of hundreds of thousands, fleeing from the ravages of poverty, unemployment, economic oppression and the one-party style oligarchy leadership.
Almost five-million foreigners from neighbouring African states, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Eastern-bloc countries have made Mandela’s Country their adopted home.
And as early as the 1990s, non-governmental organisations were discussing the rise of xenophobia and the racial profiling of “illegal immigrants” as amakwerekwere as hordes of Mozambicans, Congolese, Somalis, Nigerians and Malawians engaged in economic activity as car guards to high-rolling drug traffickers. The attack on Somali businesses was just another news sound bite.
Closer to home, the proliferation of Nigerians had turned Durban’s Point Road waterfront (now renamed in memory of peace apostle Mahatma Gandhi) into Africa’s Bogota, the Latin world’s drug capital. Prostitution and job-stealing are other negative streaks that have been irritating jobless locals.
On the positive side, almost 2 000 foreign national students and lecturers are part of the campus community at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and thousands more are sharing their skills and culture at other campuses, institutions and organizations.
What’s xenophobia?
The words that come to mind are chauvinism, racial intolerance, racism and dislike of foreigners.
But then again what about our own painful and poignant history of having been people without a country during the past 50 years before the ushering of uhuru in 1994?
While I was studying in London, home of the world’s communities, including countless exiles from SA, Sri Lanka to the Sudan, British skinheads threw xenophobic curved balls at all and sundry, and still vent anger at industrious Indians by hurling a generic “Pakis” abuse at people wishing for a better quality of life and freedom of movement.
Asians who fled Idi Amin’s xenophobic attacks still store bitter memories of how they were unceremoniously uprooted from the African Dream.
So let’s not have short memories. The foreigners, their parents and forebears had provided shelters for hundreds of thousands of exiles who fled the horrendous mechanism of the apartheid administration of voiceless people during the post-Sharpeville/Soweto massacres.
Even Gandhi was a victim of xenophobia. White racists pelted him with stones when he stepped ashore in Durban in the 1890s. And when India was being torn apart by xenophobia, resulting in partition and the birth of Pakistan and later Bangladesh, his statesmanlike trademark and peace philosophy went to work among the feuding Hindus and Muslims.
Surely, President Thabo Mbeki could have followed the Mahatma’s footsteps by leaving his comfort zone and embracing the frightened foreigners who were fighting for their lives and the elements of the onset of winter.
Like scientists who climb on the shoulders of other scientists, making exciting new discoveries, South Africa, too, stood on the pillars of African people under leaders like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Robert Mugabe, and anti-apartheid supporters of all races and political persuasions, to achieve a peaceful transition from scourge of racism to become the darling of democracy.
Maybe it’s payback time and that’s why the foreigners have flooded past our borders. We need to be reminded about the hospitality and warmth of these foreigners who fed, housed and educated penniless ANC and PAC exiles. How about setting some re-education camps and putting the commissars to work on our youth?
So, the xenophobic violence that struck into the hearts and minds of foreigners was an unfortunate and tragic blight on our history.
To this day, elderly Indians still harbour fear of the 1949 xenophobic attack on the community, ostensibly said to have been sparked by the white racism that fuelled Zulu hatred of hard-working Indians. In the 1980s, the black-on-violence turned its wrath on Indians in Phoenix.
Xenophobia cannot therefore sit comfortably in our non-racial family, where our cultural diversity is our best PR since Mandela, and bearing in mind that all race groups paid dearly for a new environment of freedom, social justice and human rights.
London Road interlinks the opulent avenues of Sandton into Alexandra, Johannesburg’s labour market and sprawling communal, where compatriots and foreigners were living cheek by jowl until the dreaded X-campaign unleashed its terror as rampaging mobs left our liberation struggle hands stained in blood.
A few months ago, I was told not use to London Road - for obvious reasons in a crime-infested SA. But recently, I travelled through London Road and I can understand why Alex was sitting on a social time-bomb and how it exploded in a rage of mob violence against the foreigners. Not even the economic myth of the 2010 World Cup will change the lifestyle or landscape of poverty-stricken Alex.
Back at home, I was greeted by street posters with the Big X branding for the 10th anniversary of the African Renaissance Celebrations, a project Premier S’bu Ndebele had nurtured to link African-American camaraderie and cooperation to Africans.
So on celebration night, musicians from Malini to Johnny Clegg sang anti-xenophobia themes from the same hymn book to ensure that the X-man never cometh again to wreak shame and disgrace on a nation founded on a bitter struggle against racism.
And at the same ICC in November 2007, Sepp Blatter told his FIFA family of football nations: “Africa is the theatre, South Africa is the stage”, with Mbeki adding: “Ke Nako, Celebrate Africa’s Humanity”.
How can we then say “come home to 2010” for an all-Africa football festivities when we have already unleashed the first salvo of our simmering resentment to anyone foreign who cannot utter the word Ubuntu in isiZulu or isiXhosa.
London Road is a long walk to racial tolerance and peaceful social, political and economic co-existence.
Xenophobia is on your doorstep, if you care to stop and say hello to the foreigners in their street-level squatter huts, tip the waiter at Mandela Square or give the French-speaking car guard a few rands for his service at the Pavilion.
Until next week, let’s remember Gandhi’s wisdom: “If we all believe in an eye for an eye, the whole world will be blind.” Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica – God Bless Africa.
LEFT OF WHAT’S RIGHT is a syndicated column written by Marlan Padayacheein South Africa and the United States and is subject to copyright.
Durban Dateline: Published in the Tabloid Newspaper Group newspapers with a readership base of almost 2-million in Greater Durban in June 2008 Marlan.padayachee@gmail.com/ mapmedia@telkomsa.net/
By Marlan Padayachee
Marlan Padayachee is a freelance journalist and a media communications strategist and he writes in his personal capacity.
Xenophobia has been on your doorstep.
It’s been living near you for a long time, just that we may have been colour-blind about it and could have been wearing blinkers to the needs, aspirations, hopes and human dignity of people who have endured a similar brand of post-colonial-apartheid racial prejudices, oppression, dictatorship and economic elbowing in the work and marketplaces.
So, finally the dreaded X-word reared its ugly head. Since South Africa galloped into a new era of democracy 14 years ago, xenophobia has been on our step, alive and kicking and hitting us in the eyes.
Maybe, our post-apartheid hangover (babalaas) may have consumed us into a perpetual sense of revelry, so much so we may have become insensitive to the influx of foreigners, first in batches of hundreds of thousands, fleeing from the ravages of poverty, unemployment, economic oppression and the one-party style oligarchy leadership.
Almost five-million foreigners from neighbouring African states, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Eastern-bloc countries have made Mandela’s Country their adopted home.
And as early as the 1990s, non-governmental organisations were discussing the rise of xenophobia and the racial profiling of “illegal immigrants” as amakwerekwere as hordes of Mozambicans, Congolese, Somalis, Nigerians and Malawians engaged in economic activity as car guards to high-rolling drug traffickers. The attack on Somali businesses was just another news sound bite.
Closer to home, the proliferation of Nigerians had turned Durban’s Point Road waterfront (now renamed in memory of peace apostle Mahatma Gandhi) into Africa’s Bogota, the Latin world’s drug capital. Prostitution and job-stealing are other negative streaks that have been irritating jobless locals.
On the positive side, almost 2 000 foreign national students and lecturers are part of the campus community at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and thousands more are sharing their skills and culture at other campuses, institutions and organizations.
What’s xenophobia?
The words that come to mind are chauvinism, racial intolerance, racism and dislike of foreigners.
But then again what about our own painful and poignant history of having been people without a country during the past 50 years before the ushering of uhuru in 1994?
While I was studying in London, home of the world’s communities, including countless exiles from SA, Sri Lanka to the Sudan, British skinheads threw xenophobic curved balls at all and sundry, and still vent anger at industrious Indians by hurling a generic “Pakis” abuse at people wishing for a better quality of life and freedom of movement.
Asians who fled Idi Amin’s xenophobic attacks still store bitter memories of how they were unceremoniously uprooted from the African Dream.
So let’s not have short memories. The foreigners, their parents and forebears had provided shelters for hundreds of thousands of exiles who fled the horrendous mechanism of the apartheid administration of voiceless people during the post-Sharpeville/Soweto massacres.
Even Gandhi was a victim of xenophobia. White racists pelted him with stones when he stepped ashore in Durban in the 1890s. And when India was being torn apart by xenophobia, resulting in partition and the birth of Pakistan and later Bangladesh, his statesmanlike trademark and peace philosophy went to work among the feuding Hindus and Muslims.
Surely, President Thabo Mbeki could have followed the Mahatma’s footsteps by leaving his comfort zone and embracing the frightened foreigners who were fighting for their lives and the elements of the onset of winter.
Like scientists who climb on the shoulders of other scientists, making exciting new discoveries, South Africa, too, stood on the pillars of African people under leaders like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Robert Mugabe, and anti-apartheid supporters of all races and political persuasions, to achieve a peaceful transition from scourge of racism to become the darling of democracy.
Maybe it’s payback time and that’s why the foreigners have flooded past our borders. We need to be reminded about the hospitality and warmth of these foreigners who fed, housed and educated penniless ANC and PAC exiles. How about setting some re-education camps and putting the commissars to work on our youth?
So, the xenophobic violence that struck into the hearts and minds of foreigners was an unfortunate and tragic blight on our history.
To this day, elderly Indians still harbour fear of the 1949 xenophobic attack on the community, ostensibly said to have been sparked by the white racism that fuelled Zulu hatred of hard-working Indians. In the 1980s, the black-on-violence turned its wrath on Indians in Phoenix.
Xenophobia cannot therefore sit comfortably in our non-racial family, where our cultural diversity is our best PR since Mandela, and bearing in mind that all race groups paid dearly for a new environment of freedom, social justice and human rights.
London Road interlinks the opulent avenues of Sandton into Alexandra, Johannesburg’s labour market and sprawling communal, where compatriots and foreigners were living cheek by jowl until the dreaded X-campaign unleashed its terror as rampaging mobs left our liberation struggle hands stained in blood.
A few months ago, I was told not use to London Road - for obvious reasons in a crime-infested SA. But recently, I travelled through London Road and I can understand why Alex was sitting on a social time-bomb and how it exploded in a rage of mob violence against the foreigners. Not even the economic myth of the 2010 World Cup will change the lifestyle or landscape of poverty-stricken Alex.
Back at home, I was greeted by street posters with the Big X branding for the 10th anniversary of the African Renaissance Celebrations, a project Premier S’bu Ndebele had nurtured to link African-American camaraderie and cooperation to Africans.
So on celebration night, musicians from Malini to Johnny Clegg sang anti-xenophobia themes from the same hymn book to ensure that the X-man never cometh again to wreak shame and disgrace on a nation founded on a bitter struggle against racism.
And at the same ICC in November 2007, Sepp Blatter told his FIFA family of football nations: “Africa is the theatre, South Africa is the stage”, with Mbeki adding: “Ke Nako, Celebrate Africa’s Humanity”.
How can we then say “come home to 2010” for an all-Africa football festivities when we have already unleashed the first salvo of our simmering resentment to anyone foreign who cannot utter the word Ubuntu in isiZulu or isiXhosa.
London Road is a long walk to racial tolerance and peaceful social, political and economic co-existence.
Xenophobia is on your doorstep, if you care to stop and say hello to the foreigners in their street-level squatter huts, tip the waiter at Mandela Square or give the French-speaking car guard a few rands for his service at the Pavilion.
Until next week, let’s remember Gandhi’s wisdom: “If we all believe in an eye for an eye, the whole world will be blind.” Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica – God Bless Africa.
LEFT OF WHAT’S RIGHT is a syndicated column written by Marlan Padayacheein South Africa and the United States and is subject to copyright.
Durban Dateline: Published in the Tabloid Newspaper Group newspapers with a readership base of almost 2-million in Greater Durban in June 2008 Marlan.padayachee@gmail.com/ mapmedia@telkomsa.net/
Anti-Apartheid Archives MJ Naidoo
Foundation To Honour MJ Naidoo - Veteran of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle
By Marlan Padayachee
FORMER veteran Natal Indian Congress leader and lawyer MJ Naidoo will be honoured at a public debate in Durban on Youth Day, Monday, June 16.
Naidoo died on a significant day ten years ago, aged 67, formerly known as Soweto Day when he and the Natal Indian Congress came to the political and community aid of thousands of schoolchildren and parents who became embroiled in the student revolution against the teaching of Afrikaans as a medium.
Therefore, the MJ Naidoo Foundation for Social Justice, launched by family members, including his son Jayendra Naidoo, former NEDLAC strategist and leading businessman at the J&J Group with former Cosatu trade union leader and former minister, Jay Naidoo, his daughter Melanie Naidoo and several social activists, felt it was appropriate to honour the brave lawyer on one of SA's most defining days in the resistance to apartheid.
A Public Debate on the "current challenges and opportunities for democracy in South Africa and the Region" takes place at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Westville Campus T Block Lecture Theatre at 10.30am and culminating in drinks and snacks.
Naidoo, who lived in Merebank and continued practicing at his law firm in the Grey Street CBD, died at a Durban hospital on 16 June 1997. He was born in Umkomaas followed his brother, Advocate MD Naidoo, into politics. MD Naidoo was also persecuted and imprisoned before fleeing to exile in London in the 1960s.
"It's important that people get involved in the foundation's vision because my father's work epitomized moral and social justice, human dignity and fairplay. In his life and career, he championed the human rights of the poor," his daughter said in an interview from Johannesburg.
The Foundation was established on16 June 2007 as a tribute to the former NIC president, whose ideals of non-violence, racial equality, and peace, have served to inspire generations of social activists. Naidoo who lived the last years of his life in Merebank, once a NIC and ANC stronghold, and his lawyer colleague and former NIC president , George Sewpershad, who died last year, were a formidable pair that resisted the government's apartheid policy and the House of Delegates as proxy representation of the Indian community.
Sewpershad was recently honoured posthumously by the Mbeki Presidency with the Order of the Luthuli Award.
The Foundation will host the first of many forums next week to encourage debate on building democracy in a country that is at the crossroads of its transformational challenge and the quest for peace and nonracialism.
Leading personalities taking part in the debate will be Roy Padayachi, Deputy Minister of Communications, Logie Naidoo, Durban's Deputy Mayor Jayendra Naidoo, and several former activists are expected to attend the inaugural event.
"We have invited individuals and organizations with a keen interest in social justice and those who demonstrate and contribute to the spirit of humanity in our society to become part of the activities of the Foundation and contribute to the debates that will be hosted each year on June 16. We are creating a Social Justice Blog, (http://www.socialjustice.org.za/) that will be launched on 16 June, Youth Day," said Melanie Naidoo.
"This event will include inputs from youth of four different schools, that will be followed by presentations from political commentators, from within and outside of government, who will respond to the issues raised by the youth. "
The organisers have asked participants and guests to respond via email to: info@socialjustice.org.za
mapmedianewsagency
ends
By Marlan Padayachee
FORMER veteran Natal Indian Congress leader and lawyer MJ Naidoo will be honoured at a public debate in Durban on Youth Day, Monday, June 16.
Naidoo died on a significant day ten years ago, aged 67, formerly known as Soweto Day when he and the Natal Indian Congress came to the political and community aid of thousands of schoolchildren and parents who became embroiled in the student revolution against the teaching of Afrikaans as a medium.
Therefore, the MJ Naidoo Foundation for Social Justice, launched by family members, including his son Jayendra Naidoo, former NEDLAC strategist and leading businessman at the J&J Group with former Cosatu trade union leader and former minister, Jay Naidoo, his daughter Melanie Naidoo and several social activists, felt it was appropriate to honour the brave lawyer on one of SA's most defining days in the resistance to apartheid.
A Public Debate on the "current challenges and opportunities for democracy in South Africa and the Region" takes place at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Westville Campus T Block Lecture Theatre at 10.30am and culminating in drinks and snacks.
Naidoo, who lived in Merebank and continued practicing at his law firm in the Grey Street CBD, died at a Durban hospital on 16 June 1997. He was born in Umkomaas followed his brother, Advocate MD Naidoo, into politics. MD Naidoo was also persecuted and imprisoned before fleeing to exile in London in the 1960s.
"It's important that people get involved in the foundation's vision because my father's work epitomized moral and social justice, human dignity and fairplay. In his life and career, he championed the human rights of the poor," his daughter said in an interview from Johannesburg.
The Foundation was established on16 June 2007 as a tribute to the former NIC president, whose ideals of non-violence, racial equality, and peace, have served to inspire generations of social activists. Naidoo who lived the last years of his life in Merebank, once a NIC and ANC stronghold, and his lawyer colleague and former NIC president , George Sewpershad, who died last year, were a formidable pair that resisted the government's apartheid policy and the House of Delegates as proxy representation of the Indian community.
Sewpershad was recently honoured posthumously by the Mbeki Presidency with the Order of the Luthuli Award.
The Foundation will host the first of many forums next week to encourage debate on building democracy in a country that is at the crossroads of its transformational challenge and the quest for peace and nonracialism.
Leading personalities taking part in the debate will be Roy Padayachi, Deputy Minister of Communications, Logie Naidoo, Durban's Deputy Mayor Jayendra Naidoo, and several former activists are expected to attend the inaugural event.
"We have invited individuals and organizations with a keen interest in social justice and those who demonstrate and contribute to the spirit of humanity in our society to become part of the activities of the Foundation and contribute to the debates that will be hosted each year on June 16. We are creating a Social Justice Blog, (http://www.socialjustice.org.za/) that will be launched on 16 June, Youth Day," said Melanie Naidoo.
"This event will include inputs from youth of four different schools, that will be followed by presentations from political commentators, from within and outside of government, who will respond to the issues raised by the youth. "
The organisers have asked participants and guests to respond via email to: info@socialjustice.org.za
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