The Alcock vs Hlophe awards

Congratulations Andile !

One of the best examples of one-sided reporting I've seen since the days of the Citizen !

Is this supposed to be a parody?

Or is it a real example of why SA's ballsed up. Most notably ignoring anything that isn't White or Black, like 80% of the World's population and all Cape Coloureds.

The JSC has spoken. Hardluck old man Kriegler and your followers. JP John Hlophe go back to work and kick some ass! Sello tried to put you in the court of bublic opinion as they all usually do. We are lucky in that we have institutions like JSC which we believe are capable of handling these issues. Some of us may not agree with their decisions but they are decisions which we have to respect. Good article Andile and unfortunately for you this is something nobody wants to hear lest they offend some people. Perhaps we need people like JP John Hlophe as they are able to get the country talking and they are able to walk on the holy ground. Sipiwo Pahlane

Good article Andile, i once met you and i won't mention where but for the first time you raise your argument i knew that the man is an itellectual. Yesterday i was watching interface and one Prof. David from Witss showed the world how strong is his hatred to Hlophe. When he speak you will quickly note that there are group of white lawyers who are there to destroy Hlophe.

@Themba, I watched the show as well. The Suresh guy was coming with some points there and the Wits man was just showing his hate of the Judge President to the world. It's a pity that JUSTICE to them is when decision go in their favour! It's aboout time SA's 'independent experts' came to the party and respect decisions that they do not like!

Best article of the decade.Thank you Mngxitama,I read your article on the hard copy of the MG and it felt so fresh and entirely unconventional.
It cut through what I'd call journalistic diversity.
Can't wait for your next article.

Andile, Even in the good cause of the fight against racism, is it wise to back someone who you describe as 'as flawed as they come'? Perhaps you're putting your eggs in the wrong basket here.

On the Interface panel last night, Adv Xulu clearly pointed out how David Untehalter was a man on a mission: to discredit Hlophe.
He, David, was so full of contradictions, it was dam easy to pick up. The other guest, Suresh, started off by giving his neutral input, but had to direction as he had to highlight the serious, flawed opinion that David Untehalter was trying to put across as fact. The gist of it was that the anti-Hlophe front is p!ssed of as hell and to hell with the democratic decision of the JSC finding. He kept on going on and on about how the majority 'bullied' the minority into submission. A person like this, who's understanding of due process and democratic principle is seriously in doubt, should be banned from ever lecturing again.

Hounarable Andile Mngxitama

I take my hat off your article. I always argue on this very paper that Racism is infact a hot potatoe and until we confront it like revolutionaries did in China or Cuba [well there will be victims but bigger picture is we would have rid our land this colonial cancer], no where had we seen strong Black people like Hlope did. They[whites liberals] will offer a stake in their firms[company] but they will be your master in terms of speeches you issue as a president/political authority in the name that markets will jitter as there are things called holly cows ie channging of economic poliies which seems to favor the haves. I am still furthering my studies and once completed my junior degree, I intend joining the like minded to fight this legacy. We need drastic change and challenge the status qou in particuler the Jurisprudance. This is africa and must act like we are in it.

Ha ha ha, how opportunistic. No-one knew the name of one Sello until he manufactured the he said,she said scenario. I would have loved for him to be in the 'dock' and I guess he would have been found guilty of perjury to the highest degree! For the record, JZ did not decree that there should be NO RACE DEBATE. For goodness sake, our constitution guarantees freedom to talk and debate(?) How can a President be so unconstitutional. What he indicated was that we do not engage in introspective debates about race but that we should grasp the obvious contradiction of espousing nonracialism while striving fiercely for the liberation of black people. No one is denying racism, how can you when you have the report from Jimmy Manyi and that govt now has to pass further laws to force corporates to the EEA. Hey, when are you people going to write some stories that have some truth in them?

O, my fellow contributors to these comments - seemingly they are black - you show your bias and presuppositions clearly! And I thought whites were more inclined towards racism! I hear paranoia everywhere - and the same blindness that struck white people in the heydays of apartheid. If you do not wake up, you will find your posterity also having to eat your (and maybe their own) words and actions.

If your hatred does not bow before the one true God in Jesus Christ, you will be perpetrating the same and worse than all the plagues you fear and ascribe to white people. Your hatred is worse than the so-called "white suppremist" vitriol. Wake up before it is too late!

Andile a most probing article. No doubt 'black consciousness' holds the key to many doors in (South) Africa. Why do you thinkiti son the wane?

Several questions I have and would be interested in you reply.

1. Why don't you/ a friend raise more questions about white judges acquisitions and compromised positions. Lets get this in the open it would be interesting reading, I am sure everyone would agree with this.
2. Please could you forward your link to the source of Haitean murders by the UN.
3. The more centralist 'reconcilatory' approach offered by Mandela, Zuma, Langa is hugely popular in SA. While alternative and progressive parallel thinking is an absolute requirement, can we afford to make it main policy?
Cheers

I tried to find New Frank Talk on the internet, but could only find Talk to Frank, which is what you need to do if you feel the urge to get whacked off your skull on pills and other class A. was there any point to this article other than to get the 'revolutionaries' squirming with delight that someone was sticking it to the whiteys again?

This was the best article ever.

whoa, that is some of the worst editorialising i've ever read. no, seriously. if this is what south african education produces these days, i might need to reconsider keeping my niece and nephews in this country. good lord.

This is race baiting of the worst kind. Even Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam doesn't come close. Malcolm X left the Nation due to this type of backwardness. Andile can claim all he wants to follow on the great legacy of Malcolm X and Steve Biko, but he represents the opposite of what they stood for. Racism against black people is a reality of this century...but Andile's narrow racial nationalism is backward and a big trap for progress in the fight against racism.

dear all thanks for kind comment and also the not so kind. there are many issues raised here which for now i shall not go into but for those people who want to follow some of my thinking on the race issue please try find copies of New Frank Talk, the latest is titled "Blacks Cant be Racist". if in Cape Town go to Clarkes Book in long street, in Joburg check Exclusives the Zone Rosebank, Xarra books in newtown or bookdealers in Melville 7th street. otherwise drop us an email at newfranktalk@gmail.com

i do think that the ANC is the biggest supporter of racist policies (that is to mean anti-black policies). white poeple are irrelevant to me. we are a majority and have political power but we are going on like slaves. furthemore, and now im talking to black people try check the blog of blackwash its an exciting initiative.

"Hlophe has fought smartly and persistently, ably assisted by his other native-full-of-beans, Paul Ngobeni, formerly vice-registrar at the University of Cape Town."

http://www.bailcobailbonds.com/fugitives/14:
"Do not try to apprehend this individual. ... Mr. Ngobeni has been disbarred in CT, MA, NY, and from the Federal Court System. He refuses to take care of his legal obligations in the United States."
No wonder he is interested in the quality and bribeability of SA's judges.

"Transformation" isn't the issue; WHAT 783-counts-of-rackateering-corruption-and-money-laundering Zuma is tranforming the courts into, is the question. Hlophe, Ngubeni, Mngxitama and some of the rabid comments above merely bring blacks into disrepute and perpetuate the negative stereotypes some bigoted whites hold.

I must admit that this has got to be one of the most naked and truthful articles i've come across recently.

I am pleasently surprised that M&G did publish this article. I have maintained for a very long time that judges are not all of them men and women of integrity as we are always encouraged to believe.

The Hlophe affair just highligts how far some white supremists would go to safeguarrd their self serving interests through our hard earned democratic institutions.

We are fested in the media with jurits commentators like De Vos, Unterhalter,Davis, Paul Hoffman and many others with sad and unwanted self serving objectives.

Interestingly, they are all jurists with impeccable legal credentials with sad and unwanted self serving objectives. They all found Hlophe with a pedigree that far out matched them.

There is war in SA about legitimacy.

Thus, even those that we respected like Chaskalson, Kriegler,Moseneke, Trengove and others, would dare also put their integrity on sale. Predictably, I expect another white friend to tell me that Andile is wrong. Shame

"1. Why don't you/ a friend raise more questions about white judges acquisitions and compromised positions [?"]. I too am very much interested in seeing this issue brought to the open and discussed in public because if indeed this is true, it would be a horrific miscarriage of justice.This in no way suggests that the rest of the article is not interesting and thought-provoking. Personally I do agree with Andile on the need to address racism in South Africa- in particular institutional racism. My major disagreement though would be Andile's implication that Mugabe is punished by the world because of racism, unless if we consider the killing and maiming of thousands of black Africans btwn 1982 and now a non-factor. Those who support Mugabe today tend to forget until recently he has been a darling of the West, collecting degrees and the knighthood. What more in the mid-1980s as he massacred his own citizens, mostly those from Matebeleland, Ronald Reagan said he thought like him.

ON accusations of atrocities by the UN peacekeepers in Haiti, Homer Simp, try these links and search for articles on the UN and killings in Haiti: https://nacla.org, www.globalpolicy.org, htt://americas.irc-online.org and news24.com (2009-06-19).

Mbenge Ziko

Interesting that Andile brings up Haiti.
Yes, the UN has been implicated in some 'massacres'. I think one 'raid' in 2006 left about 17 dead and scores injured.
In the same year local gangs went and shot 21 people dead (men, women, children)in just one incident. Didn't notice this get a mention from Andile.
What about the 15000 - 20000 Haitians killed in 1937 by the Dominican army?
Why no mention of the atrocities by the Haitian police themselves - which far outnumber those of the UN? Are these not worthy of outcry? Or as its localised it doesn't serve your purposes of vilification?

I firmly believe this is a parody. It's just not something that you'd expect to find in "a white newspaper." That said, a lot of truth is said in jest. But here I am, 21 years old and all, wondering when exactly this race paradigm will come to pass, or if it ever should do so. But this is contemporary South Africa and academic research, supposedly the one with the most merit, is still racially tinted. Therefore this article is a breath of fresh air into the matter, from the other side of the race matter. Well done Andile.

if you see "ursa negro" around, ask him about haiti. you know, since, oh, he's haitian. i've told him about this and he totally started laughing at the short-sightedness. [you can ask him about some of the scars that he got from the tontons macoutes. i've seen them. they're really nasty.]

but anyway, hlophe is just really ridiculous. he can turn just about anything into a race issue, even though discussing cases with a view to change people's opinions is normally considered, at the very least, extremly bad jurisprudence. but then again, they don't care about such things here in south africa. god, i thought belarus was bad. this place really takes the cake.

Is the M&G so desperate for articles that it's now scraping the underside of the barrel? At first I thought this was a parody, but then quickly realises that it lacked wit and wisdom. All I can say is - "you godda be kidding" - c'mon M&G, where are your journalism standards?

Brilliant article Andile. The judiciary and media in this country are remnants of colonialism, and the paternalistic Mail and Guardian is no different.

Hundered percent correct Alisdair Bull...!

This is just falacy and caricature from Andile. Andile show me any white person in the JSC?

By their actions shall you know them - remember that on Andile? Or is it just a "white" truism? I love your political project of Black Consciousness - especially if it is competing with mass consumerism that is the highest aspiration of most blacks and whites these days - but on this one, this is overplaying the race card. If you caught with your pants down, you are caught with your pants down. While judges are part of the world and not above scrutiny, there is the need for good people on the bench and the broad side attack on them is specious. If black people have the power, why are policies racist? Is it because the country is run by coconuts? Or are their more complex forces at work that you find an easy catch-all, one-size-fits-all answer racism? You are a great simplifier in an age of complexity. The issue of race is being belittled by this dumbing down analysis even though Hlope may have been fighting from a weaker position. I am not saying the liberal media was right on this - they are far too eager to pander to the corporate powers knowing how much gold is in the ground - but this shoddy analysis will not do. Just cos Hlope is a black man does not make what he did/tried to do palatable - especially in the Judiciary. Go to the land of Kenyata and the WaBenzi's there is a saying there that you must see if you can oversimply also: Why bother to hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge. May you have lots of pap, meat and gravy!

Wow - when I first read this, I thought it was a parody.
When I read some of the comments, I was reminded of the Mel Books movie - "The Producers" - the upshot being that the parody backfired as people took it literally.

Contributions like this make me believe that many black people are so hurt, wounded and resentful about the injustices of the past (and present?) that this hurt acts like a pair of tinted glasses through which they see the world - everthing they see has the same hue.
Very sad.

Andile, do you not make room for the possibility that when some powerful black people are criticised, it is their behaviour that is at issue, not their skin colour or race?

By the way, the demise of both Haiti and Zimbabwe is as a result of poor governance and disasterous economic policies.
Haiti is a good case in point, as it shares the same land mass with a much more successful neighbour , the Dominican republic - also a black country, but one that has been better managed with better ecoomic policies.
Two countries - both black - on the same island - one dirt poor the other much more prosperous. Racism or white supremacy does not even enter into the picture.
OK so you may not have a degree in Economics (I have three) but can you at least please do a bit of research before writing articles?

I do enjoy reding other people's points of view to try and understand "where they are coming from" - I am still not sure that this is a genuine article, not a parody!

To suffer from bigotry is limiting. To suffer from extreme bigotry is extremely limiting. This type of debate on race is extreme bigotry that can only take the country backwards. Perhaps our President had a point when he said “no debate”, at least until we have an understanding of what non-racialism means.

Can someone please hand Leyland a medal for his three degrees (of seperation) ?
15yrs of democracy cannot fix what happened in the hundreds of years prior to that ('94). You sit there, I assume, pretty well-off, benefitting from the fruits of apartheid and you dare say here that blacks have a chip on their shoulder.
You go and try and tell a mother, who's son has disapeared without a trace, after being taken away by the apartheid police, to forget that apartheid ever happened. You go and tell men, mere boys at the time, who saw their brothers and fathers shot right in front of them, to get over their hurt. And you dare make a mockery of it by calling this a parody ?
Go and take a look at yourself, man !
You're sick

I was disturbed by this article when I first read it, as it seemed to be surfeited with polarising language - 'The white psyche is vengeful'. ‘This is war’, ‘the race battle that has been raging for more than 500 years’. However, having reflected and re-read it with a Black Consciousness viewpoint, I am more understanding of the position, although I still find it rather extreme.
However even from a BC viewpoint I am concerned about comments like: ‘The mistake black people can make in a racist society is to believe that they have integrity’. If I understand this correctly, it is a call to black people of courage, honour, dignity and integrity, which is frankly the vast and overwhelming majority, to discard these qualities and betray their own honour because it’s inherently impossible for them to have integrity.
This is the serpent’s offer to Eve, or the devil’s to Mephastophilis. It implies that there is no difference between Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson. General Colin Powell has no more honour than the gangland rapist, or a Rwandan genocidaire. Oprah Winfrey has no more intellect or ambition than a pregnant teenage drug-addict. This seems to be an incitement to collective mediocrity and perpetual under-achievement and I have to agree with you that no messiah will ever redeem any individual (of any race) with this world view.
By contrast, the article by Mr Memela on Ms Semenya’s recent fantastic achievements and their inspiration to black people everywhere seems far more optimistic, and frankly a more encouraging vision of the future.

haha, moxster, what a surprise, you bypassed the critical parts of his argument and went straight for the emotional race card.
its not a parody i agree, its poorly written claptrap to try promote a book which is probably thinly disguised hate speech.

Mbenge-perhaps Sello is the man to investigate this-clearly a brave man. I plan to email him and request his help, please do likewise.

I think the comments about Mugabe allude to something else. I will expalin it as I see it. Mugabe committed numerious henious acts-the Matabeleland being one of the most obvious examples, numerous others exist as you state. How did the West respond- well praise from Ronnie, praise from Maggie, honororay degreees from UK universities (who knew of the Matabeleland massacres) and a knighthood from the Queen. Then later he 'reclaimed' land from, amongst others, white farmers and suddenly Mugabe became a pariah to the West and action was initiated. While I wholly support everything that you have said on this matter-the western hypocrisy is shocking, I hope this is the fact that we should be discussing.
Thanks for the Haitean links, I don't think I expressed myself clearly and was perhaps a bit too cryptic I had always attributed problems more to colonialism-but a minor fact.
Really enjoyed the article.
Homer

Mcintosh, pray tell, what are the critical parts of this argument and how do they differ from my points ?
Andile's article is a refreshing change from the one-sided right-wing jargon that gets printed in M&G on a daily basis, and now he is being touted as spreading hate speech ?
My goodness !

My 20 yr son wants to be a lawyer. So asked me about integrity and all the stuff about Hlophe and overlooked competent white judges. Any claim to racial group integrity says more about the claimant's own poor judgement and bigotry.

So I said between 1948 and 1994 white judges and magistrates willingly upheld unjust laws every day in South Africa as a matter of course.

Between 1900 and 1994 no white magistrate or judge ever sentenced a white man to death for killing a black man. The cough mixture and beer cocktail is well known.

Between 1960 and 1994 every Inquest Presiding Officer consistently blamed white or black political activists who died in detention or police custody for being responsible for their own deaths or better still found no one responsible.

Between 1986 and 1994 every commission of enquiry on third force violence was denied by every judge presiding on the commisssion until Vlakplaas came into the public eye through Dirk Coetzee's and Butana Nofomela's revelations.(It is telling that the legal white establihment tried to paint Coetzee as a liar and one who was affected by the abuse of beer and cough mixture!:-)

And he asked me whether these guys have ever been made to account for all this and I told him that every single one of them thinks their are not accountable infact they think they are the best there is to take forward this country's system of justice.

He wanted to know whether they were intimidated or just plainly loved dishing out injusitice. I said I dont know but frankly each time they speak of self-righteousness I cant help thinking the words of Jesus when He talked of straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. The cheek of it all is stupendous! Human beings are complex; what worries me in South Africa is the one-sided truth that whites people are fond of pushing forward. They are alone have the monopoly of truth. If you dont think that crime is a problem, you are vworse than a traitor! Frankly I find the atmosphere intimidating , hostile and childishly intolerant.

Net or blog gatekeepers do their best to "kill" our best retorts to issues.

Every story is de-contextualised even Mugabe must be understood within a decontextualised political history; while Ian Smith dies a peaceful comment-free death at a SOuth African hospital.

Well the same tchnicalities put foprward for "exonerating" Hlophe were ingeniuously put by white presiding officers in the trial of Dr Wouter Basson,the late Magnus Malan, and the Equitorial Guinea coup-plotters, some of the latter caught again in the very act recently in an Indian Ocean island.

The marketplace of ideas of South Africa looks bleak and blighted, it is not a monopsony or monopoly; self-righteous gladiators are on the prawl with self-made ideas and flaming swords, looking for dissidents to slaughter! It is a dangerous thing to be black and have your own opinions in the South African Calvinistic media jungle!

Andile, hatred is a destructive emotion. It may have its rewards but it leaves little room for happiness. You say: “white poeple are irrelevant to me". Just like that, you dismiss a few million people. Persona non grata. It’s a voice such as yours that persuaded the Canadian authorities to award refugee status to a white South African male on account of his race.

I find that people respond far better to positive re-enforcement and kindness. You will not find happiness along the road you’re on. I promise you that.

Mandla- so you lied to your son? Why not be slightly objective and ask him to read the Peter Harris book, 'In a different time', just so he realises that not everyone should be tarred with the same brush.

Damn, i hate it when they slot comments randomly all over the place instead of in order.

Moxster - was refering to Peter Leylands comment, not Andile's piece.
Btw - why is his piece not right wing? i'd say its extremely right wing. Also was surmising that his book was thinly veiled hate speech - basing this on his original piece, his comment and the title of the latest frank talk.

Thumbs up Andile, your article is on the spot! Thumbs up...

Mcintosh, so was I ...

Right. Sorry, ok, so you addressed the 2nd paragraph. Fair enough, hurt is still there, I don't think he was mocking that though . He has a point in what he says.
The remainder though - para 3 & 4 - fair points he brings up. Particularly 4. Such a weird thing for andile to try use to justify his argument - out of all the atrocities and crap things to happen in Haiti, he picks on one that is almost minor in comparison to everything else, and uses this to form his prejudiced opinion - and thats accepted as fact/good argument?

Andile praises Judge Hlophe as brave because he has consistently fought and "beaten the know-it-all white liberal brigade at its game". There is no doubt that Andile's world is that of wars and battles; where the downtrodden blacks are always pitched against privileged whites. Hlophe is his latest champion. The truth, in my view, is more nuanced. Not all whites were apartheid bigots, neither were all blacks marginalised. The real battle is against prejudice and injustice draped in whatever colour. By fighting prejudice with prejudice and racism with racism, Andile is fighting a lost cause. When a room is dark, to illuminate it, you don't switch off more light. Neither do you fight a raging inferno by throwing in more fiery logs. When Andile claims that the "mistake black people can make in a racist society is to believe that they have integrity", pray, what should they believe? That they too can kill, rape and murder with impunity? That it is now their turn to deny whites justice? That they must fight as dirty and as unconscionably as possible, as long as a white skin is at the receiving end? A human soul can hold only so much anger and hatred until it consumes itself. Apartheid fell, not to superior hatred or bloodlust, but to superior ideas - like freedom, optimism and non-racialism.

I would commend the author to that luminary Fanon. Who raises the importance of negritude but does not do it in a fool hardy way. Apologies but this kind of piece is no more than a rant. Perhaps it is a cry for help. How does it take the issue forward? And in addressing black people - Africans to be more precise in Fanon's terms - not worrying about the 'settler' - Fanon raises the standard for his people. I do not see that in this article. Perhaps more than a cursory reading of Fanon is needed to give this article the substance to shape future action. Negritude is being defined by black people in power (whether under siege, or suffering from brutalising oppression). You can do better - we have seen it. Race is not ANY indication of political philosophy! Needs to be said.

Most racist and unfounded article.