Cricketers Tossing

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Thu 24/09/2009 20:06, never published.

Your front-page headline today "No maidens? Try a full toss, cricketers told" confirms something I have been proposing for a while.


We need a snappy term for "starting a cricket match".  Some ignorant radio announcers refer to cricket matches "kicking off"!  Indeed, they use it for all kinds of events including hockey, which has a perfectly good term of its own, to "bully off".


"Bowling the first ball" is a long-winded and uninteresting term, and is not in fact the start.  It is preceded by something else: The Toss.


I therefore look forward to commentators, including yours, in future referring to the start of a cricket match as the cricketers "tossing off".

Christine Qunta's Racism Tarnishes The Star

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Thu 21/05/2009 08:51, never published.

One wonders why The Star continues to publish Christine Qunta, such as the leader page article in of 20 May.  Is The Star out to reduce its credibility?  Perhaps you have to have a quota of loonies?  Maybe it is a way to discredit the ANC.  Or perhaps she keeps the Readers' Letters well stocked?

Ms Qunta is unmoved by facts, ignoring inconvenient ones in favour of her fantasy.  Perhaps a world view based on merit is so anathema to one of her talents that it cannot be tolerated?

The DA policy is that of free choice: Unlike in the ANC that dictates, DA people have choice about whether they stand for the Province or Parliament.  It's not Helen Zille's fault that most DA women chose to go to Parliament.  (Note that the ANC has nothing to say about the number of women the DA has in Parliament)

Ms Qunta drones on about Helen Zille "surrounding herself with men" in the Provincial Cabinet, but did she do this as Mayor of Cape Town?  Obviously not, since Ms Qunta doesn't mention it, and inconvenient facts are to be ignored.

It must be sad to view the world, as Ms Qunta does, through a racist lens: The truth is that all races voted for the DA –its voters are probably the most racially-mixed of all the parties'– but Qunta can only see the whites.

We have the DA's "Stop Zuma" campaign painted as "Swart Gevaar".  So anyone who is anti-Zuma is anti-black?  What nonsense!  Many intelligent black people don't want a president who is an unapologetic adulterer and willing to expose his wives to AIDS.

Ms Qunta finds Helen Zille and Julius Malema's exchange as "equally offensive rantings".  Zille's comments were factual, the ANCYL's a complete fabrication (which I look forward to seeing them justify in court).  Facts from an opponent carry the same weight in Ms Qunta's mind as fantasy by a colleague.

Despite fighting against it, the DA's members are somehow responsible for Apartheid, per Ms Qunta.  She is of course silent on Martinus van Schalkwyk and the party to which he now belongs!

Ms Qunta has the DA "portraying Africans as corrupt and incompetent people with poor sexual morals".  No, Ms Qunta,  Zuma is NOT "all Africans".  Kindly remember that Helen Zille is also an African, by virtue of being a South African.

If Ms Qunta want to eliminate "crude racism", she can do no better than start with her own thoughts.  The ANC is not the sole representative of blacks.  Anti-ANC is not anti-black:  It's a concept called "democracy".

Finally though, do spare some sympathy for Ms Qunta: Judged on the quality of her logic, the only way she can get a job is through cronyism and gender quotas.

Charge Mbeki and Manto with Genocide

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Thu 09/04/2009 08:23, never published.

The leader of a country has great honour, and great responsibility.  He or she is tasked with making big decisions in the interests of the country.  To make war, to make peace.  To spend on this and neglect that. Their decisions can save or kill thousands of people.

It is time that leaders were held accountable for wilfully and deliberately making bad decisions.  South Africa can set an example.

The Star of 8 April 2009 mentions a book by Kerry Cullinan and Anso Thom detailing the course of AIDS denialism in South Africa.  Then-President Thabo Mbeki and then-Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had access to the best science available: It showed that anti-retroviarals would reduce deaths.  Mbeki and his Health Minister deliberately worked against anti-retroviarals.

According to research cited in he book, the cost has been some 330,000 lives.

Can we let this go unpunished?

Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang must be prosecuted for genocide.  If our authorities won't do it, the World Court should.

Christine Qunta's New Racist Agenda

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Wed 04/02/2009 22:02, published February 6, 2009.

Christine Qunta is entitled to her opinion, but some factual errors in her article ("Universities are Colonial Outposts", The Star, Wednesday January 28, 2009) need correcting.

She says that English and Afrikaans are used as mediums of instruction to the exclusion of African Languages.  Ms Qunta, Afrikaans IS an African Language.  If you think it isn't, on which other continent is it spoken?  After which continent is Afrikaans named?

Ms Qunta goes on to say that "every year we see only one or two Africans in the ranks of top performers".  This is wildly wrong.  Almost all the top performing students in South Africa are South Africans, and therefore Africans...  Or does she, like the Apartheid government, think that South Africa is not in Africa?

What Ms Qunta means by "Africans", of course, is "black Africans".  However, to say "black Africans" would be to admit that there might be "white Africans" or even "Arab Africans" too.  Using the term "African" as Qunta does, implies that no other races belong on this continent.

This is the New Racism, the New Apartheid.