Survival and Revival of Muizenberg After Covid-19.
Office space in the Cape Town CBD became vacant as Covid-19 forced people to work from home. And many offices will stay empty long after the Covid-19 pandemic itself fades away.
This is because people who were initially compelled to work from home are likely to continue to work from home – if not fully then part-time.
Working from home is already seen by many as having increased productivity. Not having to travel will give them far more time for leisure, or to actually make a living.
Several businesses based in the CBD are now assessing output not on the basis of ‘time at the office’ but measured in ‘completion of tasks’ instead.
Working from home won’t be free — IT services, furniture, cleaning etc. cost money — but the overall savings, especially for small businesses and freelancers, will be significant.
The IT revolution has made this possible. And the pandemic has made us realize the importance of changing our social and economic ways much more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.
The impact and benefit of ‘virtual’ meetings is that people can be included who were previously excluded because of distance and travel costs – also into the CBD.
Projections of road traffic and the desire for better and faster private transport — the building of roads — will need to be re-thought and re-assessed.
As the City becomes ‘de-concentrated’ a new mix of residential and commercial will shape those suburbs especially suited to such development.
South African cities could become more like, for example, European cities because our residential areas are generally far from commercial areas (as in the CBD).
Thus the changes forced by the pandemic will have a profound effect on suburbs. The sense of ‘neighborhood’ will get new meaning.
Fewer cars will head in and out the City each day. Peak hour congestion will shift as ‘office hours’ are replaced with ‘productivity output’.
How big this ‘revolution’ will be is unknown. But planning and anticipating its problems, requires our attention now!
It has enormous potential for a re-imagined Muizenberg which has vast under-utilized potential .
What if, in the short and medium term, only 25% of people in the area no longer commute every day? What if they head to the City twice a week instead of five days a week?
Two-car families might sell one car. Homes will be redesigned to provide dedicated working space — and perhaps enough space to hire staff with specialist skills.
Whatever the impact, the ‘footprint’ of office-style presence will increase in residential areas – in Muizenberg with its ever-increasing surfer enthusiasts.
How can Muizenberg benefit from this and how might it plan for this?
If Muizenberg is to take full advantage of its good weather, its beautiful beach, mountains, fine restaurants and bars, we should plan now.
Muizenberg needs a new and progressive vision, clearly and positively articulated. Let’s have a citizens debate about it.
Horst Kleinschmidt
Former director, International Defence and Aid Fund, Kagiso and Mvula Trusts,
Former head, Fisheries Department
Office space in the Cape Town CBD became vacant as Covid-19 forced people to work from home. And many offices will stay empty long after the Covid-19 pandemic itself fades away.
This is because people who were initially compelled to work from home are likely to continue to work from home – if not fully then part-time.
Working from home is already seen by many as having increased productivity. Not having to travel will give them far more time for leisure, or to actually make a living.
Several businesses based in the CBD are now assessing output not on the basis of ‘time at the office’ but measured in ‘completion of tasks’ instead.
Working from home won’t be free — IT services, furniture, cleaning etc. cost money — but the overall savings, especially for small businesses and freelancers, will be significant.
The IT revolution has made this possible. And the pandemic has made us realize the importance of changing our social and economic ways much more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.
The impact and benefit of ‘virtual’ meetings is that people can be included who were previously excluded because of distance and travel costs – also into the CBD.
Projections of road traffic and the desire for better and faster private transport — the building of roads — will need to be re-thought and re-assessed.
As the City becomes ‘de-concentrated’ a new mix of residential and commercial will shape those suburbs especially suited to such development.
South African cities could become more like, for example, European cities because our residential areas are generally far from commercial areas (as in the CBD).
Thus the changes forced by the pandemic will have a profound effect on suburbs. The sense of ‘neighborhood’ will get new meaning.
Fewer cars will head in and out the City each day. Peak hour congestion will shift as ‘office hours’ are replaced with ‘productivity output’.
How big this ‘revolution’ will be is unknown. But planning and anticipating its problems, requires our attention now!
It has enormous potential for a re-imagined Muizenberg which has vast under-utilized potential .
What if, in the short and medium term, only 25% of people in the area no longer commute every day? What if they head to the City twice a week instead of five days a week?
Two-car families might sell one car. Homes will be redesigned to provide dedicated working space — and perhaps enough space to hire staff with specialist skills.
Whatever the impact, the ‘footprint’ of office-style presence will increase in residential areas – in Muizenberg with its ever-increasing surfer enthusiasts.
How can Muizenberg benefit from this and how might it plan for this?
- Gradually the demand for restaurants, coffee shops and bars will pick up (to the detriment of similar facilities in the CBD.)
- To handle this increase, Muizenberg needs to design and brand itself around Surfers Corner as a preferred entertainment hub. Tourists need put Muizenberg at the top of their lists.
- York Road, Beach Road, Palmer Road and the elevated walkway along the beach can be re-thought and re-designed to cater better for the work-from-home locals and for tourists alike.
- Muizenberg has partly adapted to surfers – a largely young white group. But the surfer composition is increasingly mixed in age and colour.
- Muizenberg is already a growing destination for people from the former racially designated areas. The shift is away from Monwabisi and Strandfontein. The public facilities and open spaces of Muizenberg need expanding and upgrading.
- The pavilion must, of course, be re-thought!
- The Railway station, the Police Museum and the VOC Posthuis need to be engaged to help re-focus Muizenberg’s identity.
- Pedestrian zones are at the heart of cities in many parts of the world. People flock there to meet, eat, drink, flirt, play boulle and chess and generally have a good time. Business deals are done. Musicians play music. Jugglers juggle. Magicians perform miracles.
If Muizenberg is to take full advantage of its good weather, its beautiful beach, mountains, fine restaurants and bars, we should plan now.
Muizenberg needs a new and progressive vision, clearly and positively articulated. Let’s have a citizens debate about it.
Horst Kleinschmidt
Former director, International Defence and Aid Fund, Kagiso and Mvula Trusts,
Former head, Fisheries Department
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Nurse Kleinschmidt from D6 worked at Peninsula Maternity Hospital. Can anyone help and provide more information about her? There is no date but the photo must have been taken prior to the apartheid eviction of the 1960's.
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Review: Women in Solitary – Inside the female resistance to apartheid.
By Shantini Naidoo. Tafelberg publishers 2020.
Review by Horst Kleinschmidt, September 2020.
‘An eloquent salute to the women whose shoulders we walk on. A vital reminder’, is how respected journalist Ferial Haffajee describes this book. The book is about four women whose lives remind us of the bad times when detention and torture including solitary isolation was common in our country; when bestial cops had the job to keep people like these four women locked up, so that a white elite was able to live in infinite comfort and amass untold wealth. Theirs’ is the recall of trauma, defiance and loyalty. They also remind us that the quest for equality and justice continues. Rightly, their families are proud of them. So should we. The unbelievable injustice done to them happened 50 years ago. It culminated in the trial known as The State versus (Samson) Ndou and 21 others. Conveniently they were accused of terrorism. Despite the odds against them none were ever found guilty.
One night when reading the book, I had a rare but frightening nightmare: I was arrested, detained, humiliated, manhandled by the same policemen who held me in solitary in Pretoria Central prison 45 years ago, five years after these women were in the same prison this book is about. In my case I was in the white section of the prison. In my dream I wanted to know why they were all the same white SB’s who interrogated me all those years ago. They laughed at me. I’m not clear how my dream ended.
Like these women describe, I faced the same aperture, known as the Judas-hole in my cell door. A small window in the opposite wall was too high for me to reach. One night the Black prisoners somewhere in this red-brick prison, sang – all night. From Hugh Lewin’s book Bandiet, which was banned but I’d read it secretly long before my arrest, I knew that the singing was for a condemned person. Someone would be hung in the morning – just like the women describe in the book. I was terrified when at day-break the singing stopped. All I heard was a commotion and the clanking of keys. Worse, the commotion seemed to stop outside my prison door. Had they been singing for me? More commotion. Then silence. The lid on the Judas hole opened and a voice said “wat is djay hie voor?” I said Terrorism Act. The aperture shut. Then it opened again and through it came a piece of newspaper with Tabaco wrapped in it. The Judas hole opened again and this time the side of a match box and matches were squeezed through. It opened once more and the voice said: good luck! More commotion, screams. I constituted that those outside my prison door where prisoners, taken along to collect the dead body of the person hanging from the noose, here, right in the vicinity of my cell. They had wheelbarrow to do their job. Then the shrill screech of the wheel disappeared into bowels of the building. I wanted to scream. The six cells next to the gallows were used to try and break us. Scrawls on the walls told of desperate thoughts. I knew some of the names of who wrote on the walls. They, I knew, had not gone to the gallows, not been tortured to death, but were taken here to be broken. I added my name and left the tobacco and matches in a crevasse between the bricks, hoping it would comfort someone who in time would be here after me.
The book takes you into the excruciating agony these women went through. Their ordeal was worse than mine: they spent far longer in solitary, and when they eventually were tried and acquitted the Special Branch re-detained them for more torture and solitary confinement; their suffering made even worse because of their gender and the colour of their skin.
These women deserve our salute, our gratitude and we need them to continue to inspire us. Do them the honour by reading about them. I was lucky to have known some of those whose story is told. I am drawn to the story because I have a connection. But anyone who treasures the freedoms we enjoy today is duty-bound to pay homage to them by knowing who they are. We show our respect by knowing of the trauma that never left them. They acted selflessly and sought no reward. You and the next generation can show your indebtedness by not forgetting that we walk on the shoulders of these women.
One of the women in the book is Shanthi Naidoo. Her heroism stands higher even, I aver, because she additionally served imprisonment for refusing to testify against the others. One step beyond being treated as the enemy, was the attempt to make you an impimpi against your own people and comrades. Shanthie refused. I first met Shanthie at her mother’s home in Rocky Street, shortly after her release. With me, as guest of the student organization, was Denis Healey, British Labour MP and later Chancellor of the Exchequer. She made no big deal of her experience as she implored him to take steps abroad that would complement our freedom struggle. I was again with the Naidoo family at the airport when Shanthie was obliged to leave South Africa on a one-way ticket into exile. The image of the agony of her parting from her mother will never leave me. When I was exiled years later, Shanthie and I worked together in London at the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF).
The author makes frequent reference to IDAF. It was the vision of an outstanding man, Canon John Collins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London who responded to the call of Chief Albert Luthuli when he and others were charged with treason in 1956. It motivated Collins to collect funds so that the accused, and later those in the Rivonia trial could be afforded a legal defence. In 1966 IDAF was banned in South Africa but Canon Collins did not give up. Through secret means he kept sending money so that those detained and charged in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and South West Africa had what legal protection it was possible to give. The trial of Ndou and the 21 others was equally funded by IDAF. Those imprisoned were helped by IDAF in another way. Canon Collins got money to the spouses of those incarcerated by arranging that citizens the world over would send the suffering families money by International Postal Orders. In the 1980’s 2000 families scattered across the globe wrote and sent Collins’ postal orders to sustain families of political prisoners, also to pay for an annual visit to Robben Island or other prisons. The security police never cracked the system. But they tried, as the TRC was told many years later. IDAF also recorded and published about the discrimination and repression. IDAF books were sold globally and appeared in a dozen different languages. It served to keep the conscience of the world alive. Shanthini Naidoo (no relation to Shantie) draws on all three of the IDAF assistances to tell the four women’s stories.
I am sorry that the author does not pay adequate attention to historic detail and instead dwells overly on emotion to elevate the women. The neglect of historic accuracy, of nuance and context detracts from an otherwise worthy book.
In a time when the image of the ruling party is ever more tarnished, the history of what it stood for and aimed to do in the years we call the struggle, is questioned, even dismissed, by those of the next generations. Yes, fault lines there were but nothing diminishes what these women are about. They represent the honourable attributes that guide any generation, past and future! If you can find a way, let them know that you will not forget what they did for us.
HK
By Shantini Naidoo. Tafelberg publishers 2020.
Review by Horst Kleinschmidt, September 2020.
‘An eloquent salute to the women whose shoulders we walk on. A vital reminder’, is how respected journalist Ferial Haffajee describes this book. The book is about four women whose lives remind us of the bad times when detention and torture including solitary isolation was common in our country; when bestial cops had the job to keep people like these four women locked up, so that a white elite was able to live in infinite comfort and amass untold wealth. Theirs’ is the recall of trauma, defiance and loyalty. They also remind us that the quest for equality and justice continues. Rightly, their families are proud of them. So should we. The unbelievable injustice done to them happened 50 years ago. It culminated in the trial known as The State versus (Samson) Ndou and 21 others. Conveniently they were accused of terrorism. Despite the odds against them none were ever found guilty.
One night when reading the book, I had a rare but frightening nightmare: I was arrested, detained, humiliated, manhandled by the same policemen who held me in solitary in Pretoria Central prison 45 years ago, five years after these women were in the same prison this book is about. In my case I was in the white section of the prison. In my dream I wanted to know why they were all the same white SB’s who interrogated me all those years ago. They laughed at me. I’m not clear how my dream ended.
Like these women describe, I faced the same aperture, known as the Judas-hole in my cell door. A small window in the opposite wall was too high for me to reach. One night the Black prisoners somewhere in this red-brick prison, sang – all night. From Hugh Lewin’s book Bandiet, which was banned but I’d read it secretly long before my arrest, I knew that the singing was for a condemned person. Someone would be hung in the morning – just like the women describe in the book. I was terrified when at day-break the singing stopped. All I heard was a commotion and the clanking of keys. Worse, the commotion seemed to stop outside my prison door. Had they been singing for me? More commotion. Then silence. The lid on the Judas hole opened and a voice said “wat is djay hie voor?” I said Terrorism Act. The aperture shut. Then it opened again and through it came a piece of newspaper with Tabaco wrapped in it. The Judas hole opened again and this time the side of a match box and matches were squeezed through. It opened once more and the voice said: good luck! More commotion, screams. I constituted that those outside my prison door where prisoners, taken along to collect the dead body of the person hanging from the noose, here, right in the vicinity of my cell. They had wheelbarrow to do their job. Then the shrill screech of the wheel disappeared into bowels of the building. I wanted to scream. The six cells next to the gallows were used to try and break us. Scrawls on the walls told of desperate thoughts. I knew some of the names of who wrote on the walls. They, I knew, had not gone to the gallows, not been tortured to death, but were taken here to be broken. I added my name and left the tobacco and matches in a crevasse between the bricks, hoping it would comfort someone who in time would be here after me.
The book takes you into the excruciating agony these women went through. Their ordeal was worse than mine: they spent far longer in solitary, and when they eventually were tried and acquitted the Special Branch re-detained them for more torture and solitary confinement; their suffering made even worse because of their gender and the colour of their skin.
These women deserve our salute, our gratitude and we need them to continue to inspire us. Do them the honour by reading about them. I was lucky to have known some of those whose story is told. I am drawn to the story because I have a connection. But anyone who treasures the freedoms we enjoy today is duty-bound to pay homage to them by knowing who they are. We show our respect by knowing of the trauma that never left them. They acted selflessly and sought no reward. You and the next generation can show your indebtedness by not forgetting that we walk on the shoulders of these women.
One of the women in the book is Shanthi Naidoo. Her heroism stands higher even, I aver, because she additionally served imprisonment for refusing to testify against the others. One step beyond being treated as the enemy, was the attempt to make you an impimpi against your own people and comrades. Shanthie refused. I first met Shanthie at her mother’s home in Rocky Street, shortly after her release. With me, as guest of the student organization, was Denis Healey, British Labour MP and later Chancellor of the Exchequer. She made no big deal of her experience as she implored him to take steps abroad that would complement our freedom struggle. I was again with the Naidoo family at the airport when Shanthie was obliged to leave South Africa on a one-way ticket into exile. The image of the agony of her parting from her mother will never leave me. When I was exiled years later, Shanthie and I worked together in London at the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF).
The author makes frequent reference to IDAF. It was the vision of an outstanding man, Canon John Collins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London who responded to the call of Chief Albert Luthuli when he and others were charged with treason in 1956. It motivated Collins to collect funds so that the accused, and later those in the Rivonia trial could be afforded a legal defence. In 1966 IDAF was banned in South Africa but Canon Collins did not give up. Through secret means he kept sending money so that those detained and charged in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and South West Africa had what legal protection it was possible to give. The trial of Ndou and the 21 others was equally funded by IDAF. Those imprisoned were helped by IDAF in another way. Canon Collins got money to the spouses of those incarcerated by arranging that citizens the world over would send the suffering families money by International Postal Orders. In the 1980’s 2000 families scattered across the globe wrote and sent Collins’ postal orders to sustain families of political prisoners, also to pay for an annual visit to Robben Island or other prisons. The security police never cracked the system. But they tried, as the TRC was told many years later. IDAF also recorded and published about the discrimination and repression. IDAF books were sold globally and appeared in a dozen different languages. It served to keep the conscience of the world alive. Shanthini Naidoo (no relation to Shantie) draws on all three of the IDAF assistances to tell the four women’s stories.
I am sorry that the author does not pay adequate attention to historic detail and instead dwells overly on emotion to elevate the women. The neglect of historic accuracy, of nuance and context detracts from an otherwise worthy book.
In a time when the image of the ruling party is ever more tarnished, the history of what it stood for and aimed to do in the years we call the struggle, is questioned, even dismissed, by those of the next generations. Yes, fault lines there were but nothing diminishes what these women are about. They represent the honourable attributes that guide any generation, past and future! If you can find a way, let them know that you will not forget what they did for us.
HK
Newsletter 43:
8 July 2020:
It’s my pleasure to send you my new Newsletter - number 43. Write back and engage me if you like. I cover the following:
1. Soup kitchens in the time of Covid.
2. Unemployment in the context of Covid.
3. Measures to shape post-covid South Africa:
- Building the National Health System now
- Inheritance tax - and wealth tax.
- Toward a permanent Basic Income Grant
4. Violence against South African Women - we need more than slogans.
5. My Neighbours, my Ubumelwane - Masiphumelele.
6. Tribute to Cor Groenendijk, Dutch anti-apartheid activist.
7. Reflections on Sweden closing the investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister, Olof Palme.
8. Revelations from my SB file.
9. Palestine-Israel: my vote 50 years ago and my signature now.
10. The extraordinary Naidoo’s of Rocky Street - view the video.
11. Defining race, racism and colour, new thoughts about Germany's constitution.
12. Escape from Pretoria - a film with Daniel Radcliffe.
Yours,
Horst
8 July 2020:
It’s my pleasure to send you my new Newsletter - number 43. Write back and engage me if you like. I cover the following:
1. Soup kitchens in the time of Covid.
2. Unemployment in the context of Covid.
3. Measures to shape post-covid South Africa:
- Building the National Health System now
- Inheritance tax - and wealth tax.
- Toward a permanent Basic Income Grant
4. Violence against South African Women - we need more than slogans.
5. My Neighbours, my Ubumelwane - Masiphumelele.
6. Tribute to Cor Groenendijk, Dutch anti-apartheid activist.
7. Reflections on Sweden closing the investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister, Olof Palme.
8. Revelations from my SB file.
9. Palestine-Israel: my vote 50 years ago and my signature now.
10. The extraordinary Naidoo’s of Rocky Street - view the video.
11. Defining race, racism and colour, new thoughts about Germany's constitution.
12. Escape from Pretoria - a film with Daniel Radcliffe.
Yours,
Horst
| Horst's Newsletter 43 |
The need in my hood - Masiphumelele. Kindly help if you can.
4 May 2020.
Dear friends,
You will be pressed to support one or more causes at this time. If you cannot respond to this request please see below as information. This is a good example of supporting an elected community civic association to help rather than going via the many charities - seldom based in the communities they serve. I have also gone to the wider neighbourhood in the Fish Hoek Valley, Kommetjie, Noordhoek area as the first point of call - and they have responded. I know the people of the MCO for many years - we have always worked well together.
I very much hope you might assist, however little it is.
Sincerely yours,
Horst
From: Horst Kleinschmidt <kleinschmidt.horst@gmail.com>
Subject: Reporting and thanks from Masiphumele Civic Organisation
Date: 04 May 2020 at 11:00:49 SAST
To: Horst Kleinschmidt <kleinschmidt.horst@gmail.com>, Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
4 May 2020
Dear local and overseas supporters of Masiphumelele,
Your response to our call for solidarity and support since the lockdown has been fantastic. We are grateful that you placed your trust in the Masiphumelele Civic Organisation. To date we have received R40,021.90. At R250 per food parcel this resulted in 149 homes being supported by the end of Saturday 2 May, 2020. On the assumption that each parcel assisted a family of around 5 we reached some 750 people. Expenditure is R37,250.00 plus R800.00 for transport expenses and we are left with a small balance.
Masi Civic Organisation purchased the food parcels from Pick n Pay, Longbeach Mall and collectively the 11 committee members assessed which homes were most in need. ‘We ensured that each parcel got to the homes we identified. We have had immense co-operation from the entire community’.
‘We know that 149 parcels helps families for about one week, maybe a little longer. But the need is much larger and every day new families come and ask for help. Worst of all we face the reality that we should provide a second round of help. With your contribution we hope we can provide another round of help in May. While we had a committee meeting on Saturday evening we were disrupted by a group of people demanding food as well. We adjourned our meeting to address them. So far we have managed to clarify everything to the people and they are happy with our explanation on the process we have followed to distribute the food parcels to the most needy people’.
‘We, the civic, are grateful that Masi is helped by other initiatives too. The soup kitchen initiative operating from Ukhanyo Primary School feeds many. The numbers increase each day. We from MCO work closely with them – some of our committee members volunteer at the kitchen.There is also the initiative operated by Living Hope and CAN. We are confident that there is no overlap or misuse of the food provided by the different groups. We will keep a close eye on matters as we go forward to ensure that fair and equal distribution is maintained and goes to the most needy.’
We keep all purchase vouchers and our account of income and expenditure is open for inspection if needed.
If you are unable to make another grant to us in May, please will you consider sending this request to a friend who might help.
Sincerely yours,
Tshepo and Horst
Payment can be made to account: Masiphumele Civic Organisation, FNB Bank Gold Business Account, Branch: Long Beach 260300, account: 62749945971. The reference person to be informed is Mr
Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
Dear friends,
You will be pressed to support one or more causes at this time. If you cannot respond to this request please see below as information. This is a good example of supporting an elected community civic association to help rather than going via the many charities - seldom based in the communities they serve. I have also gone to the wider neighbourhood in the Fish Hoek Valley, Kommetjie, Noordhoek area as the first point of call - and they have responded. I know the people of the MCO for many years - we have always worked well together.
I very much hope you might assist, however little it is.
Sincerely yours,
Horst
From: Horst Kleinschmidt <kleinschmidt.horst@gmail.com>
Subject: Reporting and thanks from Masiphumele Civic Organisation
Date: 04 May 2020 at 11:00:49 SAST
To: Horst Kleinschmidt <kleinschmidt.horst@gmail.com>, Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
4 May 2020
Dear local and overseas supporters of Masiphumelele,
Your response to our call for solidarity and support since the lockdown has been fantastic. We are grateful that you placed your trust in the Masiphumelele Civic Organisation. To date we have received R40,021.90. At R250 per food parcel this resulted in 149 homes being supported by the end of Saturday 2 May, 2020. On the assumption that each parcel assisted a family of around 5 we reached some 750 people. Expenditure is R37,250.00 plus R800.00 for transport expenses and we are left with a small balance.
Masi Civic Organisation purchased the food parcels from Pick n Pay, Longbeach Mall and collectively the 11 committee members assessed which homes were most in need. ‘We ensured that each parcel got to the homes we identified. We have had immense co-operation from the entire community’.
‘We know that 149 parcels helps families for about one week, maybe a little longer. But the need is much larger and every day new families come and ask for help. Worst of all we face the reality that we should provide a second round of help. With your contribution we hope we can provide another round of help in May. While we had a committee meeting on Saturday evening we were disrupted by a group of people demanding food as well. We adjourned our meeting to address them. So far we have managed to clarify everything to the people and they are happy with our explanation on the process we have followed to distribute the food parcels to the most needy people’.
‘We, the civic, are grateful that Masi is helped by other initiatives too. The soup kitchen initiative operating from Ukhanyo Primary School feeds many. The numbers increase each day. We from MCO work closely with them – some of our committee members volunteer at the kitchen.There is also the initiative operated by Living Hope and CAN. We are confident that there is no overlap or misuse of the food provided by the different groups. We will keep a close eye on matters as we go forward to ensure that fair and equal distribution is maintained and goes to the most needy.’
We keep all purchase vouchers and our account of income and expenditure is open for inspection if needed.
If you are unable to make another grant to us in May, please will you consider sending this request to a friend who might help.
Sincerely yours,
Tshepo and Horst
Payment can be made to account: Masiphumele Civic Organisation, FNB Bank Gold Business Account, Branch: Long Beach 260300, account: 62749945971. The reference person to be informed is Mr
Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
17 April 2020
Dear friends,
In my neighbourhood we have what may politely be called a massive labour camp. It is racially defined and its boundaries are enforced mostly, by invisible walls - making life extremely tough at the best of times. The place is called Masiphumelele and its 40,000 inhabitants are loosing out. At the end of week three of the lockdown hunger is now the biggest issue facing, especially those living in shacks adjacent to four open sewers or as back-yarders behind and in front of more formal housing. Many men depended an income by sitting next to a main road from early morning, hoping someone might use their labour for a day’s cash wages - this source of income is gone. Others have lost their jobs, also women doing domestic work in the surrounding suburbs. Yes, many employers continue to pay wages, but with the collapse of small businesses, the people who suffer most live here. A soup kitchen and food-parcel scheme has been organised but they need supplies.
My response to this urgent request is premised on:
- My appeal must go (and is going) firstly to the well-to-do folk in my own neighbourhood where our solidarity and humanness is called upon. After that is not enough, I appeal to you who live further away, in Europe and the USA.
- Government must, and in part is doing its part, but for all three tiers of government, municipal, provincial and national, this task is far beyond their capacities.
- I want to avoid the paternalism that springs into action at this time where well-meaning ‘whites’ arrange and distribute food or other relief on behalf of ‘for the people’ in Masi.
To not repeat this mode we must work with Masi’s own initiatives. We must respond to their calls and trust their judgements.
Here are the building blocks that are best placed to help as I see it:
1. The Masiphumelele Civic organisation (registered as a NPO) comprises 11 wards each with an elected representative. The chairperson is Tshepo Moletsane, a seasoned and trusted leader - and long-time friend of mine.
2. A feeding scheme launched from within Masi called Precious Lives Matter, led by Life Ndlovu. With the support of Michael Tyhali headmaster of Ukhanyo Primary School, the school kitchen has been made available to prepare meals. Children receive the required sanitary attention, are made to stand 1.5m apart and bring their own food containers. The response is overwhelming. Two of the civic leaders are involved here. Civic leaders play their role to see that food parcels are equitably allocated.
3. Pick n Pay supermarket at Longbeach Mall have agreed, for payment, to supply food and/or prepare food parcels to the school on a daily basis.
Tshepo Moletsane adds: “All community leaders will be involved; foreign nationals will be supported; records of expenditure will be kept and accounted for; those most at risk will be given priority; team volunteers will be added when and where necessary."
The need is growing by the day. (There are at least two other initiatives providing food in the area but this is the initiative I recommend)
There are no recorded cases of Covid 19 at the time of writing.
I want to encourage you to make donations to help this initiative. Payment can be made to account: Masiphumele Civic Organisation, FNB Bank Gold Business Account, Branch: Long Beach 260300, account: 62749945971. The reference person to be informed is Mr
Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
You might also engage Mr. Moletsane directly at above email.
This is a time like no other to show solidarity across borders and across divides. This is not about big donations, but a willingness that shows empathy.
For further reading: https://theconversation.com/lockdowns-threaten-childrens-nutrition-why-extra-care-is-needed-135837
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-09-lockdown-in-the-kasi-a-matter-of-interpretation/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-10-sandf-and-polices-violent-easter-gift-to-masiphumelele/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-13-easter-is-also-about-not-giving-up-life-in-masiphumelele-beyond-desperation-and-police-violence/
Yours sincerely,
Horst
Dear friends,
In my neighbourhood we have what may politely be called a massive labour camp. It is racially defined and its boundaries are enforced mostly, by invisible walls - making life extremely tough at the best of times. The place is called Masiphumelele and its 40,000 inhabitants are loosing out. At the end of week three of the lockdown hunger is now the biggest issue facing, especially those living in shacks adjacent to four open sewers or as back-yarders behind and in front of more formal housing. Many men depended an income by sitting next to a main road from early morning, hoping someone might use their labour for a day’s cash wages - this source of income is gone. Others have lost their jobs, also women doing domestic work in the surrounding suburbs. Yes, many employers continue to pay wages, but with the collapse of small businesses, the people who suffer most live here. A soup kitchen and food-parcel scheme has been organised but they need supplies.
My response to this urgent request is premised on:
- My appeal must go (and is going) firstly to the well-to-do folk in my own neighbourhood where our solidarity and humanness is called upon. After that is not enough, I appeal to you who live further away, in Europe and the USA.
- Government must, and in part is doing its part, but for all three tiers of government, municipal, provincial and national, this task is far beyond their capacities.
- I want to avoid the paternalism that springs into action at this time where well-meaning ‘whites’ arrange and distribute food or other relief on behalf of ‘for the people’ in Masi.
To not repeat this mode we must work with Masi’s own initiatives. We must respond to their calls and trust their judgements.
Here are the building blocks that are best placed to help as I see it:
1. The Masiphumelele Civic organisation (registered as a NPO) comprises 11 wards each with an elected representative. The chairperson is Tshepo Moletsane, a seasoned and trusted leader - and long-time friend of mine.
2. A feeding scheme launched from within Masi called Precious Lives Matter, led by Life Ndlovu. With the support of Michael Tyhali headmaster of Ukhanyo Primary School, the school kitchen has been made available to prepare meals. Children receive the required sanitary attention, are made to stand 1.5m apart and bring their own food containers. The response is overwhelming. Two of the civic leaders are involved here. Civic leaders play their role to see that food parcels are equitably allocated.
3. Pick n Pay supermarket at Longbeach Mall have agreed, for payment, to supply food and/or prepare food parcels to the school on a daily basis.
Tshepo Moletsane adds: “All community leaders will be involved; foreign nationals will be supported; records of expenditure will be kept and accounted for; those most at risk will be given priority; team volunteers will be added when and where necessary."
The need is growing by the day. (There are at least two other initiatives providing food in the area but this is the initiative I recommend)
There are no recorded cases of Covid 19 at the time of writing.
I want to encourage you to make donations to help this initiative. Payment can be made to account: Masiphumele Civic Organisation, FNB Bank Gold Business Account, Branch: Long Beach 260300, account: 62749945971. The reference person to be informed is Mr
Tshepo Richard Moletsane <moletsanetshepo5@gmail.com>
You might also engage Mr. Moletsane directly at above email.
This is a time like no other to show solidarity across borders and across divides. This is not about big donations, but a willingness that shows empathy.
For further reading: https://theconversation.com/lockdowns-threaten-childrens-nutrition-why-extra-care-is-needed-135837
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-09-lockdown-in-the-kasi-a-matter-of-interpretation/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-10-sandf-and-polices-violent-easter-gift-to-masiphumelele/
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-13-easter-is-also-about-not-giving-up-life-in-masiphumelele-beyond-desperation-and-police-violence/
Yours sincerely,
Horst
Newsletter 42 - March 2020
Dear friends and relations,
Here is my Newsletter 42. Regrettably I have not had time to pay attention to family research or new initiatives to continue our family endeavour. But I intend to return to this when my current research and writing engagements are fulfilled.
The contents of Newsletter 42 covers the following:
1. Those the police killed in apartheid jails, reflexions and a tribute.
2. Calling on Ramaphosa and the National Prosecuting Agency to act against the state capture proponents.
3. FW de Klerk, unrepentant, unreconstructed – calling him to account.
4. The Enablers - banks, audit firms and big business in the corruption chain.
5. Jobless in SA.
6. My impressions on attending the recent International Bonhoeffer Congress in Stellenbosch.
7. A visit to Pelican Park Primary - I saw a ray of light
8. Two intriguing extracts from my Security Police file. (Translating from Afrikaans)
9. A call to turn Golfing greens into affordable housing estates.
10. Cyril Ramaphosa on National Health minimum standards for SA.
11. Prof Heribert Adam reviews two recent books on Winnie Mandela.
12. Namibia: notice of new book edited by Wolfram Hartmann
New on the subject pages:
Here is my Newsletter 42. Regrettably I have not had time to pay attention to family research or new initiatives to continue our family endeavour. But I intend to return to this when my current research and writing engagements are fulfilled.
The contents of Newsletter 42 covers the following:
1. Those the police killed in apartheid jails, reflexions and a tribute.
2. Calling on Ramaphosa and the National Prosecuting Agency to act against the state capture proponents.
3. FW de Klerk, unrepentant, unreconstructed – calling him to account.
4. The Enablers - banks, audit firms and big business in the corruption chain.
5. Jobless in SA.
6. My impressions on attending the recent International Bonhoeffer Congress in Stellenbosch.
7. A visit to Pelican Park Primary - I saw a ray of light
8. Two intriguing extracts from my Security Police file. (Translating from Afrikaans)
9. A call to turn Golfing greens into affordable housing estates.
10. Cyril Ramaphosa on National Health minimum standards for SA.
11. Prof Heribert Adam reviews two recent books on Winnie Mandela.
12. Namibia: notice of new book edited by Wolfram Hartmann
New on the subject pages:
- Simonstown-Ocean View-Gugulethu: An idea comes to life, a pamphlet on the Wag ‘n Bietjie project.
- Christian Institute: notice of a new book on Anne Hope by Stephanie Kilroe.
1. About those the police killed in apartheid jails
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Looksmart Ngudle, Achmet Timol and Neil Aggett were amongst the 67 persons who paid with their lives to build the South Africa we dreamed of. They, others and ultimately we agreed to forsake a normal life and career to bring an end to apartheid. Nothing is or was more important in South African history. We built incredible social as well as strategic alliances in the quest for the egalité we wanted for all the people of our land. Tribute. I speak for many when I say let us pay tribute, at this difficult time to South Africans who paid with their lives for fighting apartheid. And we must pay tribute to their spouses, children and friends who have to re-live the trauma of this past now, when at last the inquests into these deaths in jails have been re-opened. However painful, may this bring some peace to all who have asked for truth to come out and perpetrators be called to account. Tribute belongs to those detained but not killed. And tribute equally belongs to the spouses and children of all of them. This is to recognise Dr Liz Floyd (spouse of Neil Aggett), Kagiso Chikane (wife of Frank), Penelope Mayson (wife of Cedric) and countless others. Have we gone to them? Have we tried finding them? To express solidarity and empathy when they re-live the horrors of the past? Thanks and warm embraces must go to each one who testified in the recent Timol and Aggett inquest hearings. Civil society should express this support and recognition also when further inquests are re-opened. – Show that you care that they stood up and fought the racist and authoritarian evil that was apartheid! Those detained with Neil, who testified in the re-opened inquest were jailed in the cells next to him. They at that time lived the fear of being murdered also. I think of Jabu Ngwenya, Momo Momoniat, Maurice Smithers, Auret van Heerden, Cedric Mayson (Cedric is deceased but his wife and children all are deeply affected by the re-opened inquest) Read: https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/inquests-another-way-to-truth-and-reconciliation-43292550 The re-opening of these inquests is important. There are hundreds of families who want the truth, no matter how long the delay. The Ahmed Timol and Neil Aggett trials open the way for many others to come. In 1963 Looksmart Ngudle was the first-ever apartheid detainee to be killed by the police. I never met him but someone I helped re-vive the ANC underground in 1976, shortly after my own release from detention, was Magalies Martin Ramokgadi. He told me how after one day’s interrogation and beating (in 1963) he was thrown into a cell. He was pleased it was Friday afternoon and he would re-gather his strength over the weekend. It was 5 September 1963. However, in his cell, he found the body of a friend, Looksmart, who had been thrown into the cell earlier. After some hours Magalies realised that Looksmart would not wake up. He was killed by the SB’s and thrown into his cell. Magalies lived the rest of the weekend next to the dead man, believing his turn to be killed would await him come Monday morning. Martin survived. He was sentenced to 10 years on Robben Island. When he was released he was in his late 60’s. When I met him at the Naidoo home shortly after his release he was ready to continue the battle against apartheid. He sought my support and help. I was working at the Christian Institute and had recently been released from three months of solitary confinement. We regularly met at donga-hideouts near Alexandra township. John Nkadimeng, his comrade, came to check me out – we met on the undulating lawns near the old Civic Centre in Braamfontein. I assisted them without asking questions. One day Magalies told me there was a leak in Swaziland and I should leave the country immediately. Magalies was caught months later – he served another seven years on Robben Island. Ahmed Timol. His family have done sterling work to have the deaths in detention during apartheid re-opened. See http://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/prosecuting-apartheid-atrocities-why-an-indictment-for-a-single-murder-in-the-ahmed-timol-case-is-not-enough. I never met Ahmed Timol but amongst the things he did, he distributed underground or forbidden literature. I was the recipient of such. The SB’s had gained access to his mailing list. In late October 1971 people all over SA had their homes raided. We had our early-dawn knock on the door in our tiny Milnerton flat. They found what they were looking for. I was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. My defence was that I could not stop what people sent to me, and that I had not read the mail yet, so was unaware of its ‘dangerous’ content. The judge gave me the benefit of the doubt and let me go. I was very lucky. The third person, Neil Aggett, I also never met. But detained with him was my comrade in struggle, Cedric Mayson. When we heard of Neil’s killing on 5 February 1982, his family thought that this might next happen to Cedric too. In fact within days of his arrest the SB’s brought him back and re-raided his home for “things he had hidden”. Penelope, his wife saw a tuft of hair ripped out of his skull. He whispered that he had been handcuffed, made to stand naked for the days and nights since his arrest. His feet were swollen and he looked ‘grey’. The beatings impaired his hearing. It is to the survivors and their families who nearly always carried on despite the odds, that we pay our respect and admiration at this time. |
“We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person.” ~ Hermann Hesse 
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2. Calling on Ramaphosa and the NPA to act. Under the auspices of St Georges Cathedral, Cape Town and organised by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation - endorsed by 29 Civil Society organisations
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3. FW DE KLERK
FW de Klerk. Unrepentant and unreconstructed
Callous and self-justifying remarks by FW de Klerk rightly found indignation with all but a band of white supremacists that continue to make themselves heard and felt in our country. If you have not read about the indignation De Klerk’s denialism led to, I urge you to read a fine piece by Fr Michael Lapsley, himself a survivor of a parcel bomb the SB had detonated in his face. He lost his hands, part of his arms, and an eye. Read: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-02-17-apartheid-was-fundamentally-evil-and-fw-de-klerk-must-face-that-fact/
In a significant move Ds Riaan de Villiers, of the Groote Kerk, here in Cape Town has, as a response to de Klerk, on Human Rights Day, 21st March this year, invited to his church “especially those who in no way were touched adversely during apartheid, so that for a moment they can can fit on the shoes of their fellow citizens whose freedom, human dignity and violence was denied them because of the evil system. On this day we will tell the stories of those humiliated”.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission or Nuremberg trials? – Reflexions in 2020 by Oscar van Heerden. Read:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-03-04-the-past-never-ended-its-time-for-trc-justice-to-be-realised/
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The article on the left appeared in the Cape Times on 9 March 2020. Donen is listed as council for the International Criminal Court | ||
4. THE ENABLERS
OPEN SECRETS AND SWI (SHADOW WORLD INVESTIGATIONS) SHINES MUCH-NEEDED LIGHT ON:
THE ENABLERS, THE CORRUPT BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENT WHO SELDOM GET THE KIND OF ATTENTION OUR CORRUPT GOVERNMENT GETS.
'The Enablers takes a forensic and detailed look at the manner in which private sector actors have enabled the process of State Capture in South Africa. The services provided by banks, audit firms, lawyers and the offshore world of company formation, agents and tax havens have been central to State Capture and the looting of scarce public resources. Many of these enablers have links to or are based in the UK. This highligts the UK’s deeply problematic role in facilitating grand corruption around the world.
'Read the analysis of the theft of funds from the Estina/Vrede Dairy Project, which complements Amabunganes first submission to the Zondo Commission in December 2019: Our research shows, for the first time, how the financial aspect of the scam operated, and show that only 7% of the nearly R300m paid to Estina (a Gupta front) was actually spent delivering a dairy project. The rest was laundered, washed and recycled to the benefit of the Gupta criminal enterprise, which relied heavily on the failure of local and international banks to intervene and stop the process.
'SWI has also highlighted the role of a UK-based company formation agent – Stephen MS Lai – in setting up the Hong Kong companies used by Gupta lieutenants to received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes flowing from Transnet’s calamitous and controversial multi-billion dollar purchase of locomotives from China South Rail.
'Together, Open Secrets and SWI call on the Zondo Commission to fully investigate the role of enablers, including a full public accounting of what local and international banks did or did not do to stop the swindling of the South African purse.
'You can read the full report through our website at https://shadowworldinvestigations.org/projects-and-publications/the-state-capture-project/, and click below to watch a short video introduction.'
THE ENABLERS, THE CORRUPT BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENT WHO SELDOM GET THE KIND OF ATTENTION OUR CORRUPT GOVERNMENT GETS.
'The Enablers takes a forensic and detailed look at the manner in which private sector actors have enabled the process of State Capture in South Africa. The services provided by banks, audit firms, lawyers and the offshore world of company formation, agents and tax havens have been central to State Capture and the looting of scarce public resources. Many of these enablers have links to or are based in the UK. This highligts the UK’s deeply problematic role in facilitating grand corruption around the world.
'Read the analysis of the theft of funds from the Estina/Vrede Dairy Project, which complements Amabunganes first submission to the Zondo Commission in December 2019: Our research shows, for the first time, how the financial aspect of the scam operated, and show that only 7% of the nearly R300m paid to Estina (a Gupta front) was actually spent delivering a dairy project. The rest was laundered, washed and recycled to the benefit of the Gupta criminal enterprise, which relied heavily on the failure of local and international banks to intervene and stop the process.
'SWI has also highlighted the role of a UK-based company formation agent – Stephen MS Lai – in setting up the Hong Kong companies used by Gupta lieutenants to received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes flowing from Transnet’s calamitous and controversial multi-billion dollar purchase of locomotives from China South Rail.
'Together, Open Secrets and SWI call on the Zondo Commission to fully investigate the role of enablers, including a full public accounting of what local and international banks did or did not do to stop the swindling of the South African purse.
'You can read the full report through our website at https://shadowworldinvestigations.org/projects-and-publications/the-state-capture-project/, and click below to watch a short video introduction.'
5. Jobless in SA
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Ten, more likely eleven million are unemployed in South Africa! That is close to 1:5. Only 42% of adults work. Since 2008, the number of working age adults has increased by nearly 7m but those who found employment increased by 2m only. Youth unemployment is well over 50%. We have amongst the highest unemployment in world. Add this stat to being one of the most unequal countries in the world. Read: The potentially explosive reality of joblessness by Terry Bell.
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6. International Bonhoeffer Congress
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Impressions from the 13th International Bonhoeffer Congress held in Stellenbosch,
19-23 January 2020. Horst Kleinschmidt, 5.2.2020. The sub-title to the conference read: ‘How the coming generation is to go on living? Bonhoeffer and the response to our crises and hope’. ‘And hope’ seemed nearly, an obligatory add-on. In his opening remarks Prof Reggie Nel (Dean Theology Faculty) welcomed us but also reminded the 200 delegates from many parts of the world that we were meeting in a town that was “becoming one of the most unequal towns in South Africa”. This in a country that ranks as one of the most unequal in the world! My expectations were high. My identification with Bonhoeffer is about the man whose beliefs led him to action – for this Nazi Germany executed him in April 1945. The words ‘speak truth’ echoed in all the presentations. However important that connection is, I kept seeking more evidence of truth that made people act; act out of their conscience against whatever the odds. Having worked with courageous Christians like Ds Beyers Naudé and others, I wanted to hear about truth - action, whether in Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa – that of defiance and resistance as exemplified by Bonhoeffer in truth-speaking and truth-acting. I first became aware of Bonhoeffer in the 1970’s when I heard the pastors Martin Niemöller and Horst Symanofski speak on Wits campus. I later adapted Niemöllers famous words to apply to South Africa - see below. The Christian Institute printed it as a poster. In 1973, in the company of Ds Beyers Naudé I met Dierich Bonhoeffers biographer, Eberhard Bethge who himself was imprisoned by the Nazi’s. I recall that during an intense conversation Eberhard said to Beyers: I don’t think South Africa is ready for a ‘confessing church’ or secret and underground church. After Beyers was banned in late 1977 he pondered this question once more. This is not the place to expand on this. There is a further nexus for me in Bonhoeffer: He came from the perpetrator group. He was not the classified object or victim. What ethics cause people from the safety and comfort of truth-telling to get to truth-acting? I attended the Stellenbosch congress to learn. ‘Are we still of any use?’ Bonhoeffer asked. What I learnt from the conference is that Bonhoeffer's legacy should not be appropriated solely for civil action when injustice prevails but that his theological reflections provide incisive thought for new and revolutionary ethical thinking. His theological writings right up to the moment when he is to be executed provide rich reflection to this day. There was some high-level thinking about our unequal-ness in the world (and indeed in South Africa), but if there are practitioners of Bonhoeffer in South Africa today, they were in short supply or had not been invited. We need an equal just society more than ever before, said Wolfgang Huber. Our ‘empathy’ with other people remains our centre that no digital invention can ever replace and he said, current times are leading us to the biggest divide ever between those with riches and privilege and those with none. Raplh Wüstenberg addressed ‘past guilt’ and how German ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung‘ (on dealing with the past to overcome it) provided a basis for Jewish-German dialogue. He carried this further: without justice and truth-acknowledgement the basis for reconciliation does not exist. Nico Koopman’s call to arms was the cry of the 80’s in South Africa: conscientise (make aware), organise and mobilise. But Koopman’s words, as were the wise and challenging words of Mark Braverman, did not come from the ‘perpetrator’ communities. My interest is in those from the other side of the great divide – those who persecuted and if they might say: I am sorry. And if I was not the perpetrator myself, to say: I acknowledge and am ashamed of what was done in my name, I seek to repair. And those humble enough to say this can then ask: how do we educate against nationalism, elitism, inequality, religious intolerance etc? Bonhoeffer spoke of the ‘vulnerable’ in his short and war-based life. In my mind, had he lived, he would have equated ‘vulnerable’ with egalité, with class difference, with socio-economic rights – and redistribution. I cannot conceive of a Bonhoeffer handing out alms to the poor only. If Bonhoeffer thinking has something to offer to South Africa it must be in the arena of responding in action to the deep and growing social conflict that is going to envelope us here in time to come. Already the many daily ‘delivery’ protests constitute a low-level civil war. It is urgent to discuss the justice that results from re-distribution of power, land and wealth. Empirical evidence shows that rights don’t equate to justice and have become hollow words for the poor in the SA context. There is urgency and a great need for White South Africa to do its own Vergangenheitsbewältigung. All evidence at the moment points toward a different narrative. Where are the courageous Christians – from the (former) perpetrator side? Alan Boesak implored us to do. He was a theological activist in the 1980’s who showed the way. But he too does not come from those who should show ‘Sühne’ (reflecting on the damage caused by my past) – in word and in deed! The task of theological academia in SA should be to seek and test evidence of those motivated by their Christian belief and how their truth-telling became truth-action. There is evidence that Bonhoeffer inspired many in the struggle against apartheid. Surely it cannot be that those with knowledge of the holocaust did not see a revival of race persecution in South Africa and that no-one acted? Surely we must search for those who spoke truth and then acted truth? For it is they who in the SA apartheid-tragedy would have something to say to the questioning youth of SA today. I know Christians who, once they decided to act, turned to socialism and away from their churches. But there are those who acted in the struggle and suffered for it like Fr Michael Lapsley, Fr John Osmers, Fr Cosmas Desmond, Ds Beyers Naudé, Rev Cedric Mayson, Fr Bernie Wrankmore, Ds Frikkie Conradie, Rev Theo Kotze and others – all from the perpetrator community. Their names, through thesis and substantiation should have engaged us when Bonhoeffers name was brought to SA. I detract nothing from the quality of the debate or the papers that were delivered. But I wanted to see at least some focus to be put on truth-action motivated by the faith and theology Bonhoeffer offered. Some statements from the ‘youth’-speakers were pertinent: Bonhoeffers questions are not a white man’s questions in a white context – they speak to humanity as such; to be a Bonhoeffer disciple does not require being a Christian; because life always is full of questions Bonhoeffer is one person who helps us look at old yet universal and timeless questions. One person asked: Are you prepared to go to jail? Another said: Engage always, evaluate and only then act. No person deserves more thanks for making Bonhoeffer real in South Africa than Prof John de Gruchy. He saw and connected the dots of struggle against Nazi Germany and those in Apartheid South Africa and he wrote about it at a time when it was most unpopular to do so. It is his light that brought this congress to us. In my humble view this excellently organised event did academically, not aim high enough. |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German: 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German evangelical pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship has been described as a modern classic.[1]
Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews.[2] He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison for one and a half years. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp. After being accused of being associated with the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried, along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office), and then hanged on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing. 21 days later Adolf Hitler committed suicide. |
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After listening to Pastor Martin Niemöller speaking to students at Wits in 1973, I adapted his famous text: First they came for the communists … the Jews … it did not concern me … when they came for the Christians … there was no-one left to support me. The poster on the right, adapted to SA was published by the White Consciousness, Programme for Social Change, a subsidiary structure of the Christian Institute.
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Ernesto Cardinal, Nicaraguan liberation theologian died. Read: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/06/ernesto-cardenal-obituary?CMP=share_btn_link
7. Revealed from my SB (Security Police) file, released in terms of the Freedom of Information Act
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Above paragraphs are from my SB (Security Police) file, obtained under the Access to Information Act.
It reads: "During a meeting on 21.7.1974 at the house of Kleinschmidt, where the possibility of a formal foundation of a Social Democratic Party was discussed, a Mrs Josie Fanon, wife of the well-known black consciousness anarchist and writer of 'The Wretched of the Earth" - Franz Fanon, turned up. She said that a radical and quick change in RSA [Republic of ...] was inevitable after the events in the Portuguese territories in Africa. It was clear that she was thoroughly influenced by the radical thinking of her husband. Kleinschmidt, according to the source who attended the meeting, voiced his clear support for her views". [Today I do not recall who attended the meeting. We certainly did not know of an informer amongst us - even though we always suspected such. Visiting students Frank Hirtz and Renate Pollvogt, from Germany, had been gone from Johannesburg to Maputo to join in the independence celebrations in Mozambique. There they met Josie Fanon and brought her back to meet folk at the Christian Institute and at Wits University.
The second paragraph reads: "According to information that became available in October 1974 it appears that Kleinschmidt made use of a courier, one Böhning to take materials to Lenelotte von Bothmer. It also seems Kleinschmidt is a contact person for the anti-RSA groups in West Germany. It has also emerged that the wife of Kleinschmidt, Illona [sic] visited West Germany where she obtained financial help for local anti-government purposes. It is also known that Kleinschmidt and his groep sent a telex to the UNO which purpose was to discredit the image of the RSA overseas."
It reads: "During a meeting on 21.7.1974 at the house of Kleinschmidt, where the possibility of a formal foundation of a Social Democratic Party was discussed, a Mrs Josie Fanon, wife of the well-known black consciousness anarchist and writer of 'The Wretched of the Earth" - Franz Fanon, turned up. She said that a radical and quick change in RSA [Republic of ...] was inevitable after the events in the Portuguese territories in Africa. It was clear that she was thoroughly influenced by the radical thinking of her husband. Kleinschmidt, according to the source who attended the meeting, voiced his clear support for her views". [Today I do not recall who attended the meeting. We certainly did not know of an informer amongst us - even though we always suspected such. Visiting students Frank Hirtz and Renate Pollvogt, from Germany, had been gone from Johannesburg to Maputo to join in the independence celebrations in Mozambique. There they met Josie Fanon and brought her back to meet folk at the Christian Institute and at Wits University.
The second paragraph reads: "According to information that became available in October 1974 it appears that Kleinschmidt made use of a courier, one Böhning to take materials to Lenelotte von Bothmer. It also seems Kleinschmidt is a contact person for the anti-RSA groups in West Germany. It has also emerged that the wife of Kleinschmidt, Illona [sic] visited West Germany where she obtained financial help for local anti-government purposes. It is also known that Kleinschmidt and his groep sent a telex to the UNO which purpose was to discredit the image of the RSA overseas."
8. The joy of Pelican Park Primary School
The essence of humanity: To Build when all around you seems unbearable.
The case of Pelican Park Primary.
HK 6.3.2020.
On the wind and sand-swept Cape Flats, a cohort of good teachers act beyond the call of duty. I had the privilege to listen to them and why their primary school turns out capable children, adults and families more likely to be freed from the poverty trap they arise from.
This is not a project that takes a slice from within the problem and applies a remedy that informs the donor that the right outcome-boxes have been ticked. Nor does it attempt to solve the problem with visions imposed from outside.
Here a collaboration of teachers (from the surrounding area), led by a capable principal, supported by a ground-level NGO, mobilise parents and community to improve the child environment in three key aspects: the home the child comes from, the classroom and in the extra-murals. The school is in the fifth year of a long-term, whole school community development programme. They have a broad but compelling strategy:
‘Schooling needs to be augmented with real parent and community involvement and support providing skills absent from conventional teacher training. For this to happen we work closely with an NGO (PBO, public benefit organisation), whose task is to generate local agency, optimise existing school and community resources, and test, demonstrate and support new, appropriate, democratic practices to achieve that’.
Here is a powerful example of an all-embracing or holistic approach that responds to the impoverished, marginalised and under-resourced South Africa left behind by apartheid and not yet given a chance.
The origins of the school go back to an apartheid ‘group area’ designated for people of Indian descent. What they had to face and solve since the school’s inception in 1995 is formidable indeed. The school has grown from serving 300 young learners to 900 today. The state did provide extra prefabricated class rooms but those are temporary and already overcrowded. They have none of the amenities found in the affluent and private schools of Cape Town. Here, there are sand-blown wastes where sports fields should be. Despite this no litter is found inside the perimeter fence. Volunteer parents, working on a roster basis, patrol the school through the day to stop gangs, drug dealers and other consequences of social dysfunction from affecting conventional school routines. Gang fights, also fatal shootings have happened in the streets abutting the school.
Maybe the most innovative but also bravest task befalls the parents who each morning arrange what is termed ‘walking buses’. Organised groups of parents gather at appointed places in the far-flung catchment area of the school to gather their charges and then walk them safely to the school. As poverty and state dysfunction deepens, their protective role on the streets to the school is critical. Commitment and drive, emanating from the school principal down to the very often unemployed mothers and fathers is visibly evident. The State plays a limited supportive role through the Expanded Public Works Programme, affording the unemployed parent volunteers a monthly stipend.
Of the 900 pupils, 600 of their parents are too poor to pay the R3300 annual school fee needed to supplement Government’s limited input to the school. Ultimately there are only 200 parents who pay, knowing that their effort subsidises those with less than they have. Link this to the challenge that a large proportion of children come to school hungry or undernourished. The mothers of those who can provide, cook meals and feed the hungry at school. Great effort is invested in ensuring that poverty is not stigmatised. Besides hunger, those from difficult housing and home situations often display behaviour disruptive to normal classes. With empathy and sensitivity the school (with external and NGO help) attend to such cases by engaging both pupils and parents.
The challenges to the school run deep. Large-scale social (RDP) housing as well as shack settlements during the past decade have changed the social structure, composition and culture of the school and its community. From being on the city’s outskirts, it is now an urban setting but without the basic the amenities you’d expect in suburban Cape Town. From being an English language school it now caters for children and families from English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa backgrounds – and it does so determinedly! School events embrace all religious and cultural backgrounds on an equal basis – Hindi, Muslim and Christian. It may also be noted that a small minority of children come from what used to be considered white homes.
What underlies this purpose and shift from the norm? In order to build and sustain such a massive social effort, outside help is indispensable. This includes the Metro South Education District who selected them, since 2013, for a pilot ‘whole school community development programme’, facilitated by the Extra-Mural Education Project (EMEP), a Cape Town based NGO. An extract from a recent report by the school’s principal and development team states:
‘The first step of the pilot was to improve parent involvement, development and support (PIDS), the second step was to improve governance, and the third step was to expand extra-mural opportunities for the learners and local community…We know that we cannot reach and support the child and have a well functioning, well governed school with high academic standards without active parent engagement and “learning-rich” homes. Moreover we recognised that we had to build a cohesive connection between New Horizons (the newly resident community), the c informal housing community and the established community on all the priorities addressed by the pilot program.
We applied for and were accepted into the PIDS program and have through trial and error enthusiastically been executing and benefitting from its activities since term 3 of 2013’.
EMEP is a grass-roots development and support organisation working with a selection of primary schools at the heart of the crossover of the huge social change that is enveloping our society. Their programme is a three-phase approach to whole school community development. The first phase, involved testing and demonstrating with the staff and general parent body the value of teacher-parent cooperation and successfully building a parent- and teacher-friendly school. Phase two, the current phase, is a 3-year pilot project with a volunteer group of teachers from Grade R to 4 to bring parent involvement and personalised child support into the class – this is the inspirational group of teachers I met with. Out of this pilot phase will come the third phase, to scale-up this approach (rather than sectoral/piecemeal interventions) within the school and its parent body as a whole.
Placing development focus on the collaboration of teachers and parents to serve the interests of the whole child both at home and school is critical, ground-breaking work. It deserves wide attention, not least by the largely failed education departments. When the Pelican Park Primary project is done the lessons need to be taken to the authorities to persuade them to replace this as government departmental policy and approach – if we desire real different outcomes.
There is widespread doubt about development/humanitarian aid and the outcomes once hoped for. International donors rightly are re-assessing whether their interventions have changed anything. This is justified and good. What we have at Pelican Park Primary and its partnership interventions is not the ‘sliced’ sectoral support but a broad social support plan. It may not tick all the boxes of quick fixes that donor bosses are keen on. It might not yield the results that can be measured within the traditional funding cycles, but it shows us something far more basic and useful: how to facilitate community participation, and accountability in a highly vulnerable, hugely damaged and rapidly changing poor society. The big lesson to be learnt here for Government and its agencies is: silo-based approaches in general do not help. If we want capacitated urban communities then there is much here to learn from.
The case of Pelican Park Primary.
HK 6.3.2020.
On the wind and sand-swept Cape Flats, a cohort of good teachers act beyond the call of duty. I had the privilege to listen to them and why their primary school turns out capable children, adults and families more likely to be freed from the poverty trap they arise from.
This is not a project that takes a slice from within the problem and applies a remedy that informs the donor that the right outcome-boxes have been ticked. Nor does it attempt to solve the problem with visions imposed from outside.
Here a collaboration of teachers (from the surrounding area), led by a capable principal, supported by a ground-level NGO, mobilise parents and community to improve the child environment in three key aspects: the home the child comes from, the classroom and in the extra-murals. The school is in the fifth year of a long-term, whole school community development programme. They have a broad but compelling strategy:
‘Schooling needs to be augmented with real parent and community involvement and support providing skills absent from conventional teacher training. For this to happen we work closely with an NGO (PBO, public benefit organisation), whose task is to generate local agency, optimise existing school and community resources, and test, demonstrate and support new, appropriate, democratic practices to achieve that’.
Here is a powerful example of an all-embracing or holistic approach that responds to the impoverished, marginalised and under-resourced South Africa left behind by apartheid and not yet given a chance.
The origins of the school go back to an apartheid ‘group area’ designated for people of Indian descent. What they had to face and solve since the school’s inception in 1995 is formidable indeed. The school has grown from serving 300 young learners to 900 today. The state did provide extra prefabricated class rooms but those are temporary and already overcrowded. They have none of the amenities found in the affluent and private schools of Cape Town. Here, there are sand-blown wastes where sports fields should be. Despite this no litter is found inside the perimeter fence. Volunteer parents, working on a roster basis, patrol the school through the day to stop gangs, drug dealers and other consequences of social dysfunction from affecting conventional school routines. Gang fights, also fatal shootings have happened in the streets abutting the school.
Maybe the most innovative but also bravest task befalls the parents who each morning arrange what is termed ‘walking buses’. Organised groups of parents gather at appointed places in the far-flung catchment area of the school to gather their charges and then walk them safely to the school. As poverty and state dysfunction deepens, their protective role on the streets to the school is critical. Commitment and drive, emanating from the school principal down to the very often unemployed mothers and fathers is visibly evident. The State plays a limited supportive role through the Expanded Public Works Programme, affording the unemployed parent volunteers a monthly stipend.
Of the 900 pupils, 600 of their parents are too poor to pay the R3300 annual school fee needed to supplement Government’s limited input to the school. Ultimately there are only 200 parents who pay, knowing that their effort subsidises those with less than they have. Link this to the challenge that a large proportion of children come to school hungry or undernourished. The mothers of those who can provide, cook meals and feed the hungry at school. Great effort is invested in ensuring that poverty is not stigmatised. Besides hunger, those from difficult housing and home situations often display behaviour disruptive to normal classes. With empathy and sensitivity the school (with external and NGO help) attend to such cases by engaging both pupils and parents.
The challenges to the school run deep. Large-scale social (RDP) housing as well as shack settlements during the past decade have changed the social structure, composition and culture of the school and its community. From being on the city’s outskirts, it is now an urban setting but without the basic the amenities you’d expect in suburban Cape Town. From being an English language school it now caters for children and families from English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa backgrounds – and it does so determinedly! School events embrace all religious and cultural backgrounds on an equal basis – Hindi, Muslim and Christian. It may also be noted that a small minority of children come from what used to be considered white homes.
What underlies this purpose and shift from the norm? In order to build and sustain such a massive social effort, outside help is indispensable. This includes the Metro South Education District who selected them, since 2013, for a pilot ‘whole school community development programme’, facilitated by the Extra-Mural Education Project (EMEP), a Cape Town based NGO. An extract from a recent report by the school’s principal and development team states:
‘The first step of the pilot was to improve parent involvement, development and support (PIDS), the second step was to improve governance, and the third step was to expand extra-mural opportunities for the learners and local community…We know that we cannot reach and support the child and have a well functioning, well governed school with high academic standards without active parent engagement and “learning-rich” homes. Moreover we recognised that we had to build a cohesive connection between New Horizons (the newly resident community), the c informal housing community and the established community on all the priorities addressed by the pilot program.
We applied for and were accepted into the PIDS program and have through trial and error enthusiastically been executing and benefitting from its activities since term 3 of 2013’.
EMEP is a grass-roots development and support organisation working with a selection of primary schools at the heart of the crossover of the huge social change that is enveloping our society. Their programme is a three-phase approach to whole school community development. The first phase, involved testing and demonstrating with the staff and general parent body the value of teacher-parent cooperation and successfully building a parent- and teacher-friendly school. Phase two, the current phase, is a 3-year pilot project with a volunteer group of teachers from Grade R to 4 to bring parent involvement and personalised child support into the class – this is the inspirational group of teachers I met with. Out of this pilot phase will come the third phase, to scale-up this approach (rather than sectoral/piecemeal interventions) within the school and its parent body as a whole.
Placing development focus on the collaboration of teachers and parents to serve the interests of the whole child both at home and school is critical, ground-breaking work. It deserves wide attention, not least by the largely failed education departments. When the Pelican Park Primary project is done the lessons need to be taken to the authorities to persuade them to replace this as government departmental policy and approach – if we desire real different outcomes.
There is widespread doubt about development/humanitarian aid and the outcomes once hoped for. International donors rightly are re-assessing whether their interventions have changed anything. This is justified and good. What we have at Pelican Park Primary and its partnership interventions is not the ‘sliced’ sectoral support but a broad social support plan. It may not tick all the boxes of quick fixes that donor bosses are keen on. It might not yield the results that can be measured within the traditional funding cycles, but it shows us something far more basic and useful: how to facilitate community participation, and accountability in a highly vulnerable, hugely damaged and rapidly changing poor society. The big lesson to be learnt here for Government and its agencies is: silo-based approaches in general do not help. If we want capacitated urban communities then there is much here to learn from.
9. Housing on Rondebosch Golf greens
To: The City of Cape Town Property Manager: Magda MurrayCheap rent for the rich? Object to the Rondebosch Golf Course lease. Read NU
Campaign created by
Ndifuna Ukwazi You have the power to stop the City of Cape Town’s unsustainable and exclusive use of public land. But we have to act now, we only have until Monday 9 March 2020 to make our voices heard. Make a submission to object to the lease renewal of 45,99 hectares of prime public land that should be used for affordable housing.
In the face of the worst housing affordability crisis in the country, the City of Cape Town continues to subsidise the rich by renting out prime state land at massively discounted amounts for private use – land that could better be used to reverse the City’s apartheid legacy.
On 29 January 2020, the City of Cape Town asked the public to submit comments or objections to their plans to renew the lease of 45,99 hectares of City-owned land (the equivalent of 45 rugby fields or a small suburb) to the Rondebosch Golf Club for a period of ten years at a nominal rental of R1 058 per year – or just R88,17 per month [1]. This prime land is close to the best hospitals, top-performing schools in the province, a police station and two train stations – making it perfect for the development of affordable housing. Yet the City plans to lease this land to a golf club for the exclusive use of its wealthy members, members that can afford to pay membership fees of R17 000 per year [2].
Why is this important?Cape Town is the most spatially divided city in the country - it is still separated along race and class lines. The City has consistently blamed this spatial injustice on the lack of well-located land that could be used for affordable housing. But the City often misses the most obvious solution: It already owns massive pieces of land in well-located areas. Land that is unused or not being used to its full potential, that could provide ample space for affordable housing and reverse the City’s apartheid legacy.
Last year, Ndifuna Ukwazi released a research report exposing how the City is disposing of the public land it owns by leasing it to private organisations at massively discounted rentals [3]. This land includes parking lots that are empty for up to 18 hours a day, bowling greens with very few members, and massive golf courses that provide enjoyment to only a few wealthy residents on the weekends. This is an inefficient, exclusive and unsustainable way to deal with well-located public land. Surely this land should be put to better use?
If we are serious about addressing Cape Town’s apartheid legacy, we need to make our voices heard. Object to the lease renewal of 45,99 hectares of prime public land that should be used for affordable housing before 9 March 2020.
The experts at Ndifuna Ukwazi have put together this progressive submission you can use when sending in your own objection. If enough of us send in our objections we can stop the City of Cape Town from renewing the Rondebosch Golf Club lease.
[1] Cape Town’s course of injustice: Subsidising the rich to exclude the poor, Michael Clark for the Daily Maverick January 28 2020
[2] https://rondeboschgolfclub.com/membership
[3] Ndifuna Ukwazi: Cape Town’s failure to redistribute land https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pxly1G47qbC79l58Oss4vKvvK4AO71M-/view
An example of civic action in Observatory: A petition was circulated by Change.org: "Voice your opposition to the River Club Development - preserve environment and heritage".
Read the update "The anniversary of the defeat of Admiral d’Almeida in 1510: History of the River Club land" below, and join me in supporting this campaign by signing the petition! http://chng.it/7QGJNt8L72
Campaign created by
Ndifuna Ukwazi You have the power to stop the City of Cape Town’s unsustainable and exclusive use of public land. But we have to act now, we only have until Monday 9 March 2020 to make our voices heard. Make a submission to object to the lease renewal of 45,99 hectares of prime public land that should be used for affordable housing.
In the face of the worst housing affordability crisis in the country, the City of Cape Town continues to subsidise the rich by renting out prime state land at massively discounted amounts for private use – land that could better be used to reverse the City’s apartheid legacy.
On 29 January 2020, the City of Cape Town asked the public to submit comments or objections to their plans to renew the lease of 45,99 hectares of City-owned land (the equivalent of 45 rugby fields or a small suburb) to the Rondebosch Golf Club for a period of ten years at a nominal rental of R1 058 per year – or just R88,17 per month [1]. This prime land is close to the best hospitals, top-performing schools in the province, a police station and two train stations – making it perfect for the development of affordable housing. Yet the City plans to lease this land to a golf club for the exclusive use of its wealthy members, members that can afford to pay membership fees of R17 000 per year [2].
Why is this important?Cape Town is the most spatially divided city in the country - it is still separated along race and class lines. The City has consistently blamed this spatial injustice on the lack of well-located land that could be used for affordable housing. But the City often misses the most obvious solution: It already owns massive pieces of land in well-located areas. Land that is unused or not being used to its full potential, that could provide ample space for affordable housing and reverse the City’s apartheid legacy.
Last year, Ndifuna Ukwazi released a research report exposing how the City is disposing of the public land it owns by leasing it to private organisations at massively discounted rentals [3]. This land includes parking lots that are empty for up to 18 hours a day, bowling greens with very few members, and massive golf courses that provide enjoyment to only a few wealthy residents on the weekends. This is an inefficient, exclusive and unsustainable way to deal with well-located public land. Surely this land should be put to better use?
If we are serious about addressing Cape Town’s apartheid legacy, we need to make our voices heard. Object to the lease renewal of 45,99 hectares of prime public land that should be used for affordable housing before 9 March 2020.
The experts at Ndifuna Ukwazi have put together this progressive submission you can use when sending in your own objection. If enough of us send in our objections we can stop the City of Cape Town from renewing the Rondebosch Golf Club lease.
[1] Cape Town’s course of injustice: Subsidising the rich to exclude the poor, Michael Clark for the Daily Maverick January 28 2020
[2] https://rondeboschgolfclub.com/membership
[3] Ndifuna Ukwazi: Cape Town’s failure to redistribute land https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pxly1G47qbC79l58Oss4vKvvK4AO71M-/view
An example of civic action in Observatory: A petition was circulated by Change.org: "Voice your opposition to the River Club Development - preserve environment and heritage".
Read the update "The anniversary of the defeat of Admiral d’Almeida in 1510: History of the River Club land" below, and join me in supporting this campaign by signing the petition! http://chng.it/7QGJNt8L72
10. Cyril Ramaphosa on health care for all citizens - from his weekly Newsletter.
CR: It is one of the greatest travesties of our time that access to decent and quality health care services is determined by one’s ability to pay.
South Africa has two parallel health care systems. Around R250 billion is spent annually on less than 20% of the population. This is the section of our population that has access to private medical insurance. On the other hand our country spendsR220 billion on rest of the population.
This flies in the face of the Constitutional right of access to health care for all citizens regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. It is a situation that cannot continue. It is inefficient and unsustainable. It is unfair and unjust.
The introduction of National Health Insurance will be among the most far-reaching acts of social transformation this country has experienced since 1994. We have enough resources in this country to enable every man, woman and child to receive appropriate standardised quality health care.
Our past has taught us that we must never be a country that promotes the interests of the few at the expense of the majority. In 1713 the Dutch colonialists who had brought a smallpox epidemic to our shores imported medicines from Batavia to treat those affected. They used the medicine to treat their own, leaving the indigenous Khoisan to be decimated by the outbreak.
The segregation of health services brings back bitter memories. Back in the 18th Century it was on the basis of colonial settler status. Under apartheid it was on the basis of skin colour. Today it is on the basis of who can afford to pay.
The key fundamental principles underpinning NHI are equity, solidarity, the acceptance and recognition of the equal worth of every individual, as well as the right of everyone to receive the medical care they need cost effectively. This is something for which we must all fight.
South Africa has two parallel health care systems. Around R250 billion is spent annually on less than 20% of the population. This is the section of our population that has access to private medical insurance. On the other hand our country spendsR220 billion on rest of the population.
This flies in the face of the Constitutional right of access to health care for all citizens regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. It is a situation that cannot continue. It is inefficient and unsustainable. It is unfair and unjust.
The introduction of National Health Insurance will be among the most far-reaching acts of social transformation this country has experienced since 1994. We have enough resources in this country to enable every man, woman and child to receive appropriate standardised quality health care.
Our past has taught us that we must never be a country that promotes the interests of the few at the expense of the majority. In 1713 the Dutch colonialists who had brought a smallpox epidemic to our shores imported medicines from Batavia to treat those affected. They used the medicine to treat their own, leaving the indigenous Khoisan to be decimated by the outbreak.
The segregation of health services brings back bitter memories. Back in the 18th Century it was on the basis of colonial settler status. Under apartheid it was on the basis of skin colour. Today it is on the basis of who can afford to pay.
The key fundamental principles underpinning NHI are equity, solidarity, the acceptance and recognition of the equal worth of every individual, as well as the right of everyone to receive the medical care they need cost effectively. This is something for which we must all fight.
11. Prof Heribert Adam reviews two very different recent books on Winnie Mandela
Review of two books on Winnie Mandela:
https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/heribert-adam/i-will-make-you-pay
London Review of Books
Vol. 42 No. 5 · 5 March 2020
I will make you pay
Heribert Adam
2379 words
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela
by Sisonke Msimang.
Jonathan Ball, 173 pp., £20, September 2018, 978 1 86842 955 4
Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story
by Fred Bridgland.
Tafelberg, 311 pp., £25, October 2018, 978 0 624 08425 9
https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/heribert-adam/i-will-make-you-pay
London Review of Books
Vol. 42 No. 5 · 5 March 2020
I will make you pay
Heribert Adam
2379 words
The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela
by Sisonke Msimang.
Jonathan Ball, 173 pp., £20, September 2018, 978 1 86842 955 4
Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story
by Fred Bridgland.
Tafelberg, 311 pp., £25, October 2018, 978 0 624 08425 9
12. New or important Texts on Namibia
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Sunrise over False Bay, September 2019.
Horst's Newsletter 41. October 2019Below text and images expand on this Newsletter |
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Above right: In Germany they call them Stolpersteine - a stone that stands out so you stumble each time you leave home or return. This is to remind you that an atrocity was once committed at this place when people, mostly Jewish people, were evicted from hundreds of thousands of homes to be taken to their death in concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of South Africans were also once forcibly evicted from their homes because of their race or the colour of their skin. They were not killed but they lost home and income, and designated second class citizens. In Simon's Town, South Africa, we have started something we call wag 'n bietjie, after a thorn bush makes you move backward before you can be freed to move forward again. The intention is to remind those that pass that race discrimination once took place wherever a wag 'n bietjie memorial sign is erected. Read more in the PDF file above. |
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Above: Former Simon's Town residents at this years reminder of their forced removal 50 years ago. Top right: holding up the names of the streets from where they were evicted. The other images are of the benches with mosaic inlays that require City approval before they are located on the streets they once lived in.
Above: Carlos Amorales was born and lives in Mexico. He created this Art Wall in the entrance to the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum.
2. Robben Island and the call for recognition of David Stuurman. The issue at stake is contained in the body of my Newsletter above.
My early morning walk while at a conference on Robben Island, April 2019, remembering 400 years of pain inflicted.
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Re-imagining Robben Island: A prison experience; Rev Ivan Abrahams 'shackled' at the wrist to myself; marched in a 'span' from the harbour, past the prison to the lime quarry.
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Above is the only reference I found on Robben Island to the International Defence and Aid Fund. IDAF provided the defence costs for the majority of those imprisoned here from the 1960's to 1990. Had they not been defended many more would have been sentenced to death.
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3. |
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For further context go to my Newsletters and see Newsletter 21, A foot-soldier remembers the Mandela family, written in December 2013, shortly after Nelson Mandela passed away.
Disturbing as this book may be, it cannot be ignored. Truth, Lies and Alibi’s by Fred Bridgland is published by Tafelberg, Cape Town. ISBN: 978-0-624-0-8425-9 Epub: 978-o-624-0-8426-6 Mobi: 978-0-624-0-8427-3 |
4. International Mandela Day in Vienna, 18 July 2019
TOPNEWS, SÜDAFRIKA IN ÖSTERREICH
18. Juli 2019, reprinted on the SA Embassy Website, Austria.
NELSON MANDELA DAY, VIENNA, NELSON MANDELA PLATZ, 18 JULY 2019
[Ansprache war in Deutsch gehalten - siehe Text unten]
18. Juli 2019, reprinted on the SA Embassy Website, Austria.
NELSON MANDELA DAY, VIENNA, NELSON MANDELA PLATZ, 18 JULY 2019
[Ansprache war in Deutsch gehalten - siehe Text unten]
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Wien, Mandela Tag, 18.7.2019. Horst Kleinschmidt. (See English version below)
Nelson Mandela hätte sich gefreut zu wissen, daß es 2019 in Österreich Menschen wie Euch gibt, die immer noch wissen, was Solidarität heißt und ist. Er hätte sich gefreut zu wissen, daß es Menschen gibt, die sich für die Verteidigung von Demokratie, Freiheit, Menschenwürde und Gleichheit engagieren – und das auch international. Weltweit sind viele Demokratien heute wieder in Gefahr. Um offene und gerechte Gesellschaften zu verteidigen, müssen wir für soziale und wirtschaftliche Gleichheit aufstehen und gegen Rassismus und alle Formen von Vorurteilen. Wir müssen viel besser die Verbindung zur Rüstungsindustrie verstehen, die Kriege – und heute noch mehr, nämlich Stellvertreterkriege – schürt. Zum Beispiel, wenn die deutsche Rheinmetall in Südafrika – nicht weit von dort, wo ich in Kapstadt wohne – jene Bomben baut, die dann nach Saudi-Arabien exportiert werden, um den Jemen zu bombardieren. Abgesehen davon, daß dieser und andere Kriege Menschen töten, sind sie auch eine Ursache für die anhaltenden Flüchtlingsströme. Nelson Mandela würde uns heute daran erinnern, daß auch unsere junge südafrikanische Demokratie von innen her bedroht ist, daß korrupte Politiker und Geschäftsleute die Demokratie, derer wir uns seit 25 Jahren erfreuen, ausgehöhlt haben. Unsere Demokratie wurde untergraben, die Stabilität unseres Landes bedroht. Etliche Jahre von diesen 25 haben wir verloren und sind wir zurückgefallen, weil der damalige Präsident Zuma und Co. mit in- wie ausländischen Verbündeten, mit weißen wie schwarzen Landsleuten den Spielraum für Transparenz, Fairness und angemessenes Verhalten eingeengt und dadurch unsere offene demokratische Gesellschaft untergraben haben. Wir hoffen und glauben, daß diesem Versuch jetzt ein Ende gemacht wird. Die drei Untersuchungsausschüsse, Präsident Cyril Ramaphosa selbst und die bemerkenswert unabhängige Gerichtsbarkeit haben die Bremse gezogen, damit Südafrika nicht in die Kategorie eines „failed state“ fällt. Wir sind voller Hoffnung, daß eine neue Basis geschaffen worden ist, um gegen die vielen Widersprüchlichkeiten in unserem Land zu arbeiten. Unsere Aufgabe ist groß: Wir können nicht das Land mit der größten sozialen Ungleichheit der Welt bleiben. Wir können nicht mit einem verfehlten Erziehungssystems weitermachen, das wir unseren jungen Menschen aufgezwungen haben. Wir müssen und können Grund und Boden nach offenen und demokratischen Prinzipien umverteilen. Wir müssen unsere Städte erneuern, die noch immer nach Schwarz/Arm und Weiß/Reich getrennt bzw. durch Rasse und Klasse strukturiert sind. Wir begrüßen die Ankündigung unserer Staatsanwaltschaft, die fast 300 Verfahren, die ihr vor fast zwanzig Jahren von der Wahrheits- und Versöhnungskommission übergeben wurden, wiederaufzurollen. Das ist wichtig. Das Leid und die Gebrochenheit, die von der Apartheid erzeugt wurden, können nicht aufgearbeitet werden, wenn es hier nicht zu Anklagen kommt – wenn Verbrechen nicht bestraft und öffentlich gemacht werden. Daher fordere ich Euch am heutigen Tag auf, bei all Eurem Eintreten gegen ungünstige Tendenzen in Eurem eigenen Land uns nicht zu vergessen. Fahrt fort, uns in Solidarität, auch mit Kritik wenn erforderlich, zu begleiten. Unsere Tage des Aufschwungs und des Erfolgs werden wiederkehren. Bleibt dran! Das ist ein nobles Unterfangen: Bildung, um Aufmerksamkeit hervorzubringen. Ihr macht genau das Richtige. Die Welt, in der wir leben, braucht internationale Solidarität. Wir brauchen Euch – und ich bin sicher, daß Ihr uns in gleicher Weise braucht! uns in gleicher Weise braucht! |
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5. Fires in Masiphumelele, 2019
Fires ravage Masi several times each year. The only way to prevent these from happening is to allocate City owned land to the exceptionally overcrowded conditions.
6. Kritisches Christentum. On smuggling copies into SA during the 1980's
| Kritisches Christentum (Austria).pdf |
Below: Perspektiven is a Windhoek religious-based publication. This edition speaks to white inhabitants and deals with colonial history.
My article appears in English
7. |
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| One family's quest to confront its own past in a racially divided society. In Perspektiven, Windhoek, mid 2019.pdf |
8. Ghaub, game lodge with Kleinschmidt family history
| Welcome to Ghaub1.pdf |
9. Below: A study-series on colonialism and racism, appeared in Berlin recently. This edition deals extensively with our family - the Schmelens, Baumanns, Kleinschmidts and Hegners. Ursula Trüper is the author of piece on our family. (full text to be uploaded later)
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11. Franco worked closely with us at the CI. His art and wit helped us make strong and challenging points. Here is an extract of his memoire with images he created for us. |
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| Franco Frescuras greatest hits 2.jpeg.pdf |
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MEMORIES OF RAIN. This DVD is also available in English. It is about two former MK members and their reflections post the struggle years. I can arrange for you to purchase a copy.
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| Security Police (SB) file on myself from 1968-1975. |
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My Filofax organiser that the story opposite talks about.
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| In Newsletter 37 I dealt with Restitution and that the 2018 Conference on the subject would lead to a Charter that is open to discussion. Here it is, titled 'A complex Hope'. |
See new entry under Social Commentary dealing with national Reconciliation Day on 16 December 2018
| Newsletter 38 Remembering Cedric Mayson at the Fort Prison, recalling my own jailers and more |
Newsletter 38, December 2018.
Dear friends,
Herewith my latest offering. I hope it adds depth and dimension to the quest for egalité and real democracy.
This Newsletter can be viewed on my website (no charges or passwords required). www.horstkleinschmidt.co.za. Images too large to include here, can also be viewed on the website.
My best wishes for the festive season and the coming year!
Yours,
Horst
The contents:
1. New noon-gun to be heard over Johannesburg, unfinished business and recalling my jailers.
2. Where we live: St James, Simonstown, Ocean View and Masiphumelele.
3. Bombs on Yemen manufactured near us.
4. Autumn leaves falling; the passing of Rev Chris Wessels, Paddy Kearney, Mendi Msimang and Alex Boraine.
5. ‘The making of a dissident Afrikaner’, Ruhan Fourie on Beyers Naudé (Huffington Post).
6. Fake News and the supposed slaying of white farmers.
Dear friends,
Herewith my latest offering. I hope it adds depth and dimension to the quest for egalité and real democracy.
This Newsletter can be viewed on my website (no charges or passwords required). www.horstkleinschmidt.co.za. Images too large to include here, can also be viewed on the website.
My best wishes for the festive season and the coming year!
Yours,
Horst
The contents:
1. New noon-gun to be heard over Johannesburg, unfinished business and recalling my jailers.
2. Where we live: St James, Simonstown, Ocean View and Masiphumelele.
3. Bombs on Yemen manufactured near us.
4. Autumn leaves falling; the passing of Rev Chris Wessels, Paddy Kearney, Mendi Msimang and Alex Boraine.
5. ‘The making of a dissident Afrikaner’, Ruhan Fourie on Beyers Naudé (Huffington Post).
6. Fake News and the supposed slaying of white farmers.
The Fort Prison - memories, reminders, never again.
Installation of new exhibition includes Cedric Mayson
Prison cells at The Fort Prison, Hospital Hill, Johannesburg. At different times Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Joe Slovo, Baruch Hirson, and in the early 1980's Cedric Mayson, Rob Adam, Alan Fine and others were held here. The cells are now part of the museum.
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The noon gun that will sound over Johannesburg each day to remind all that the struggle for democracy was hard won.
Penelope, wife of Cedric Mayson at the cells on 5 Dec 2018. After Cedric's detention he was an awaiting trial prisoner and she visited him here with her children
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Once Cedric was an awaiting trial prisoner he was allowed to conduct services that other prisoners were allowed to attend.
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Heritage Day, Simonstown - 24 September 2018
With other speakers and musical contributions I addressed the 50 year remembrance in St Francis Church. My appeal was to the current Simonstown residents to mark the forced evictions in a way that is akin to Stolpersteine in Germany.
| HK appeal in 2018 to the residents of Simonstown. |
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Newsletter 37 - Restitution - September 2018
My Newsletter 37 (September 2018 pdf file below) looks at the delay or resistance to restitution in post apartheid South Africa. Matters promised in the Constitution (Bill of Rights) or raised but not resolved by the TRC remain outstanding. The ruling ANC is to blame for the shrill expropriation without compensation debate that now engulfs us. It is the ANC Government who failed to act despite having the tools it was given in terms of the Constitution. The ANC's mega failure will haunt us for a long time. It now promises to do more. But will it? Has it the capacity to do the job? Will it retain the confidence of its supporters? The ANC's failure has provided the facist-leaning EFF with a platform which in turn, has spawned new far right white racism represented by AfriForum. Both use racial and racist language instead of class as the basis for analyses. The ANC once espoused non-racialism but has mostly forgotten this base of its policy.
The hopeless and disastrous Zuma years are coming home to roost. The judge Zondo enquiry into 'state capture' provide us with shock and disbelief each day a new witness testifies. Zuma, his son Duduzane, the Gupta brothers and a league of crooked politicians and civil servants are not in the dock. Will they eventually be charged? The treasury and State Owned Enterprises coffers they looted will impede getting out of the recession we are now in once more. Real unemployment is probably at around 40%, sixteen million monthly grant recipients cannot expect a reliant or competent service to receive their monthly payments, our financial barons consider it their right to withhold billions in accumulated profits before they invest again (on their terms), our education system is failing terribly (reading with comprehension and math rank us bottom in the world) and the gulf between rich and poor keeps growing without a plan to arrest, let alone reverse our fall into the abyss. Add to this the low-level civil war that erupts each day throughout the country in the form of tyre burning and demonstrations at any number of places.
Defeated? No. We need cool heads to talk. The shift of the debate toward the real meaning of restitution must be taken seriously.
My Newsletter looks at restitution. I also focus on restorative justice in Namibia, with lessons for us. I provide a number of internet links to quality debates and analyses. In the attached Newsletter I deal with:
1. Restitution discussed between Lukhanyo Calata (son of slain anti-apartheid fighter Fort Calata) and Wilhelm Verwoerd (grandson of apartheid’s architect, HF Verwoerd)
2. The current Namibia and Germany debate and the failure of, but also pressure on, Germany to say ’sorry’ to the Nama and Herero genocide descendants.
3. The Achmed Timol initiative and their quest to bring to justice those who perpetrated human rights crimes.
4. The debate on expropriation of land without compensation - a collection of pieces that helps one to navigate understanding of what is being said.
5. Masiphumele and the continued spacial apartheid in our cities. The focus is on urban land and services.
Please visit my website for more entries and images, not possible to add in an email.
As always I look forward to hearing from you, in agreement or in opposition.
The hopeless and disastrous Zuma years are coming home to roost. The judge Zondo enquiry into 'state capture' provide us with shock and disbelief each day a new witness testifies. Zuma, his son Duduzane, the Gupta brothers and a league of crooked politicians and civil servants are not in the dock. Will they eventually be charged? The treasury and State Owned Enterprises coffers they looted will impede getting out of the recession we are now in once more. Real unemployment is probably at around 40%, sixteen million monthly grant recipients cannot expect a reliant or competent service to receive their monthly payments, our financial barons consider it their right to withhold billions in accumulated profits before they invest again (on their terms), our education system is failing terribly (reading with comprehension and math rank us bottom in the world) and the gulf between rich and poor keeps growing without a plan to arrest, let alone reverse our fall into the abyss. Add to this the low-level civil war that erupts each day throughout the country in the form of tyre burning and demonstrations at any number of places.
Defeated? No. We need cool heads to talk. The shift of the debate toward the real meaning of restitution must be taken seriously.
My Newsletter looks at restitution. I also focus on restorative justice in Namibia, with lessons for us. I provide a number of internet links to quality debates and analyses. In the attached Newsletter I deal with:
1. Restitution discussed between Lukhanyo Calata (son of slain anti-apartheid fighter Fort Calata) and Wilhelm Verwoerd (grandson of apartheid’s architect, HF Verwoerd)
2. The current Namibia and Germany debate and the failure of, but also pressure on, Germany to say ’sorry’ to the Nama and Herero genocide descendants.
3. The Achmed Timol initiative and their quest to bring to justice those who perpetrated human rights crimes.
4. The debate on expropriation of land without compensation - a collection of pieces that helps one to navigate understanding of what is being said.
5. Masiphumele and the continued spacial apartheid in our cities. The focus is on urban land and services.
Please visit my website for more entries and images, not possible to add in an email.
As always I look forward to hearing from you, in agreement or in opposition.
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50 years ago 600 families were forcibly evicted from Simonstown because of their 'race'. We shall remember with them this Heritage Day (24 September 2018) their immense loss. The loss of material and social being impacts to this very day those apartheid victimised. The white community is still ignoring the history they came from. Restitution demands that they stop looking the other way.
Family wedding in Namibia. Can anyone help putting names to those below, from left to right?
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Tshepo Moletsane flanked by Rose Milbank and Horst Kleinschmidt outside the City of Cape Town Sub-Council offices with the poster Where is the Masi Plan? Holding two such posters in silence in silence during the Sub-Council meeting was deemed a demonstration and Rose and Horst were evicted by Law Enforcement officers. Read the full story in Newsletter 37. |
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1972: A whites only election in South Africa. We, members of the Christian Institute put up one candidate in the white working-class constituency of Von Brandis in Johannesburg. Our objective: challenge white attitudes. Election rules meant we could state openly what otherwise attracted the attention of the Security Police. We retained our deposit! Many of the pensioners, living here were retired miners, former members of the SA Labour Party.
On 12 July 2018, Christine hosted a launch at her studio and gallery of Omar Badsha's acclaimed photographic memory of South Africa
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Below:
Heady days in 1990, outside the offices of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF). Nelson Mandela was released and with his wife Winnie visited London. Winnie wanted to visit IDAF because of long-standing support we had provided her through our programme that sent postal orders to those persecuted and those whose spouses were in jail. She also wanted to see me who was the legal guardian of her children in 1974 before being exiled in 1976. She had named our daughter Zindzi, born in December 1974, shortly after Winnie was released from serving imprisonment for breaking her banning order. A short while later we decided we could not provide funds for the legal costs when Winnie was charged in relation to the 'Stompie' trial.
On the far right, Sister Bernard Ncube, prominent resistance fighter. I the middle Winnie Mandela outside the IDAF offices at 64 Essex Road, Islington. To her left, Horst Kleinschmidt, Director of IDAF from 1982 - 1991.
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IDAF staff outside IDAF offices in 1990. From left to right are George Tobias, behind him Thembe Luxomo, Harlene Jassat, Ramni Dinat, Winnie Mandela on her first visit abroad visiting IDAF, and Horst Kleinschmidt, right. In front Barry Feinberg
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From left to right: Themba Luxomo, IDAF Treasurer, then Harlene Jassat, from the prisoner support section, then Winnie, Horst and Eleanor Khanyile.
Our history: In June 1990 people of the Black Consciousness Movement met in Harare, Zimbabwe. The event was organised by the
Programme to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches
“An attempt at producing an analytical, reflective understanding of an important part in the history of South Africa. Steve Biko and the black consciousness movement have a major bearing on the subsequent events in South Africa up to today” – The words of Barney Pityana, in June 1990 then a director of the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism. Above delegates attended at the Sheraton Hotel in Harare.
Amongst those present: Back row, 2nd from left: Lindelwe Mabandla, 3rd Cedric mayson, 5th Wally Serote, 7th Cosmas Desmond, 8th Barney Pityana, 10th David Russell.
Standing in front of them: In red striped shirt: Sipho Pityana, in beige jersey Saki Macozoma and in yellow shirt Neville Curtis.
Front row: 5th Mampela Ramphele and far right Francis Wilson. Who can identify the others?
Amongst those present: Back row, 2nd from left: Lindelwe Mabandla, 3rd Cedric mayson, 5th Wally Serote, 7th Cosmas Desmond, 8th Barney Pityana, 10th David Russell.
Standing in front of them: In red striped shirt: Sipho Pityana, in beige jersey Saki Macozoma and in yellow shirt Neville Curtis.
Front row: 5th Mampela Ramphele and far right Francis Wilson. Who can identify the others?
Institute for Healing of Memories
On 16 April 2018 Christine and I hosted Fr Michael Lapsley and his colleague Fatima Swartz at our home. A group of us wanted to know more about the work of the Institute for Healing of Memories. There are many remedies our country is need of and one of them is the trauma discrimination and hatred our past left us with.
Please visit their website www.healing-memories.org. We encourage you to consider funding the Institute with individual monthly donations, as we now do. Their work must go on! |
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| Newsletter 36: After Zuma; the rise of Ramaphosa and the passing of Winnie Mandela. |
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On 21 December 1979, our daughter Zindzi was five years old. A week earlier, on 13 December, her mother Ilona started a two month prison sentence for refusing to make a statement to the Special Branch about Winnie. Ilona's closest friend, Jackie Bosman served three months for the same act of defiance. I, as Zindzi's father was in exile since April 1976 and by 1979 deeply involved in ANC work. If I were to return to South Africa, I would stand trial, charged with complicity in the Tokyo Sexwale and 11 others trial, and in the impending trial against Cedric Mayson. I pay tribute to Janie Aronson, Ilona's mother and to Karel Tip, the man Ilona had married, for standing in for the parents my daughter did not have - then and at other times. And I thank Zindzi, named by Winnie Mandela after her own youngest daughter, for her love and forgiveness of her parents, who chose the struggle over the warmth and protection of a home she desired and deserved. |
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Christine's new Studio and Gallery in bohemian Kalk Bay
Translating the Bible into Namaqua in 1831. Events and consequences that haunted the Schmelen-Kleinschmidt family for the ensuing century. Two talks delivered in March 2018, to audiences in Windhoek and Swakopmund, one in English the other in German (see both talks below).
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Listen to and watch this beautiful lullaby in Khoekhoegowab, language of the Nama and Damara speaking communities in Namibia.
https://www.facebook.com/daveguy061/videos/g.1501101606840495/1854389761239310/?type=2&ifg=1
https://www.facebook.com/daveguy061/videos/g.1501101606840495/1854389761239310/?type=2&ifg=1
The extraordinary story of Hendrik Witbooi, told by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee
https://martinplaut.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-extraordinary-story-of-hendrik-witbooi-told-by-nobel-prize-winner-j-m-coetzee/
https://martinplaut.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-extraordinary-story-of-hendrik-witbooi-told-by-nobel-prize-winner-j-m-coetzee/
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Berlin-Postkolonial is a public initiative in Germany. They have at last been able to get Street Names from the colonial era replaced Africans who fought for freedom. One person to have a street named after him is Cornelius Frederick - an ancestor of Chief David Frederick. See, in German:
Web: http://www.berlin-postkolonial.de/cms/index.php/9-news/kurzmeldungen/131-12-4-pressemitteilung
Web: http://www.berlin-postkolonial.de/cms/index.php/9-news/kurzmeldungen/131-12-4-pressemitteilung
Christine's portrayal of South Africa's poet laureate Keorapetse
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Chief David Frederick of the !Aman has died (1933-2018)
KEETMANSHOOP, 12 JAN (NAMPA) – Chief David Frederick of the !Aman Traditional Authority of Bethanie has died.
The Nama clan chief, widely respected by many in the south of Namibia and beyond for his firm leadership and humility, died at the Keetmanshoop State Hospital Friday afternoon.
Governor of the //Kharas Region, Lucia Basson, confirmed the passing of Frederick, telling Nampa Friday evening that the chief died at 16h50.
Basson, who spent the afternoon at the hospital before and after Frederick’s death, said he was surrounded by many of his family members.
“I was with his family at the hospital, his room was full,” she said.
Frederick died after a long illness.
“He has been sickly since 2014, but he was a strong man, his heart and mind was strong and many times, we forgot that he was unwell,” Basson said.
She described Frederick as a unifier and peacemaker.
“He just wanted the whole Nama clans to be united and to live in peace. From what I was told, he called all his children and sat with them on Sunday, telling them to remain together and to live in peace with one another,” the governor said.
Frederick’s death is a huge loss in many ways, she said, more so as he was a great historian.
“Oupab [Grandpa] was good for us all and he knew everything about Nama history and our country’s history.”
Frederick often highlighted the plight of the southern people and was vocal about land matters and the genocide.
Chief Frederick, alongside OvaHerero Chief Vekuii Rukoro, was a plaintiff in a matter filed in a U.S. court seeking reparations from Germany and demanding the inclusion of the affected communities in official genocide talks.
He was 85 years old and leaves behind 17 children and his wife, Anna.
(NAMPA)
The Nama clan chief, widely respected by many in the south of Namibia and beyond for his firm leadership and humility, died at the Keetmanshoop State Hospital Friday afternoon.
Governor of the //Kharas Region, Lucia Basson, confirmed the passing of Frederick, telling Nampa Friday evening that the chief died at 16h50.
Basson, who spent the afternoon at the hospital before and after Frederick’s death, said he was surrounded by many of his family members.
“I was with his family at the hospital, his room was full,” she said.
Frederick died after a long illness.
“He has been sickly since 2014, but he was a strong man, his heart and mind was strong and many times, we forgot that he was unwell,” Basson said.
She described Frederick as a unifier and peacemaker.
“He just wanted the whole Nama clans to be united and to live in peace. From what I was told, he called all his children and sat with them on Sunday, telling them to remain together and to live in peace with one another,” the governor said.
Frederick’s death is a huge loss in many ways, she said, more so as he was a great historian.
“Oupab [Grandpa] was good for us all and he knew everything about Nama history and our country’s history.”
Frederick often highlighted the plight of the southern people and was vocal about land matters and the genocide.
Chief Frederick, alongside OvaHerero Chief Vekuii Rukoro, was a plaintiff in a matter filed in a U.S. court seeking reparations from Germany and demanding the inclusion of the affected communities in official genocide talks.
He was 85 years old and leaves behind 17 children and his wife, Anna.
(NAMPA)
I met Chief David Frederick every time I passed Bathanie on my way to Windhoek or Swakopmund. I first visited him some 15 years ago. His Traditional Authority office, a five minute walk from the Schmelen house was where he first sat me down and said: let me give you a history lesson about what happened to my people. I was taken aback by the detail of what I heard and by his incredible recall. It was one of the most impressive encounters I ever had. He told the story of the oppressed and vanquished from the side of those it German might was done to. This was not book knowledge or an outsiders interpretation. He was not angry or emotional. His call for an apology and reparations crisply clear.
I asked where I could read about it - from his perspective. He told me a book was in the making. Because, he said, the young generation will not remember everything the way it was. I later read the diaries of members of the Geman Schutztruppe, partly to see if they verified dates, places and battles Chief David mentioned. And yes, his recall was amazingly accurate. The letters by one von Schauroth particularly interested me. He wrote to his father in Berlin, complaining that he never got th promotion he was after. It affords an insight of someone who is unhappy with his officers. In his letters to his father he refers to the Nama opponent as "honourable" on several occasions. Why? He says, because they properly declared war on us. They came by horse with a white flag and a letter to state they were now at war with Germany. And elsewhere he repeats this respect for the Nama. German troops suffered a succession of defeats by the nimble Nama guerilla fighters, von Schauroth expresses great respect ofr their treatment of the German troops they killed. He says, they returned to the place of battle after a victory to bury the fallen Germans. And he adds: And they always ensured the man with the highest rank got the best grave.
Chief David Frederick is the direct descendent from these freedom fighters. They are still not afforded the recognition they deserve. And Germany is still dragging its heals, refusing to do what is right. To make this point, read below recent article:
https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697
https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697
May he be remembered as a proud man whose quest for justice has yet to be fulfilled.
I asked where I could read about it - from his perspective. He told me a book was in the making. Because, he said, the young generation will not remember everything the way it was. I later read the diaries of members of the Geman Schutztruppe, partly to see if they verified dates, places and battles Chief David mentioned. And yes, his recall was amazingly accurate. The letters by one von Schauroth particularly interested me. He wrote to his father in Berlin, complaining that he never got th promotion he was after. It affords an insight of someone who is unhappy with his officers. In his letters to his father he refers to the Nama opponent as "honourable" on several occasions. Why? He says, because they properly declared war on us. They came by horse with a white flag and a letter to state they were now at war with Germany. And elsewhere he repeats this respect for the Nama. German troops suffered a succession of defeats by the nimble Nama guerilla fighters, von Schauroth expresses great respect ofr their treatment of the German troops they killed. He says, they returned to the place of battle after a victory to bury the fallen Germans. And he adds: And they always ensured the man with the highest rank got the best grave.
Chief David Frederick is the direct descendent from these freedom fighters. They are still not afforded the recognition they deserve. And Germany is still dragging its heals, refusing to do what is right. To make this point, read below recent article:
https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697
https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697
May he be remembered as a proud man whose quest for justice has yet to be fulfilled.
Harvesting water from our roof in 4x1000 litre drums
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The 2018 Water rises in Cape Town. We now have four of these 1000 litre tanks around the house, to harvest every drop of rain from our roof. Each down-pipe from the roof is connected to a tank. We manage all our domestic needs and watering the garden from here. The only time we use municipal water is to shower (2 minutes max) and for cooking purposes. To wash dishes we heat water collected from outside, as can be seen on this picture.
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Newsletter 35, January 2018
Dear friends and relations,
It gives me pleasure to send you my latest Newsletter, number 35. This is also available on my website www.horstkleinschmidt.co.za. There are several items on the cover page of the website not included in the below attachment, the reason being, to keep below attachment to a manageable size.
Newsletter 35 covers:
- Views on the newly elected ANC leader.
- My contact with Jacob Zuma in exile and thereafter.
- The identification of the father of our Khoi ancestor Zara Schmelen on a colonial drawing.
- An small effort to improve the access conditions at the Schmelen House in Bethanie.
- Bringing closure to a family rift concerning over the sale of the diary of Missionary Kleinschmidt.
- Eberhard Kleinschmidt in a poem says: The wrong committed against the Nama and Herero people, is a wrong committed against our family. His woe is to the German government.
Additionally on the website:
- After 124 years another family bridges the racial divide in Namibia.
- ‘Der Stimme der Genade Gehör schenken - Zur Rolle der Rheinischen Missiongesellschaft bei der Errichtung von Konzentrationslagern in Namibia 1905 -1907'. - Hans-Martin Milk. Announcement of a new book.
- ‘Between the Worlds. German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa’ - Linda Chisholm. Announcement of a new book.
- Photos when scattering the ashes of my sister Heidi in the Namib in November 2017.
- Photos of a toast to my mother - she is now commemorated on a gravestone in Swakopmund - November 2017.
- Photo’s of the trip and visit by cousin Otto and Manda Uirab to Cape Town.
As always, please write and engage me in conversation.
Best wishes for the year ahead!
Yours,
Horst.
It gives me pleasure to send you my latest Newsletter, number 35. This is also available on my website www.horstkleinschmidt.co.za. There are several items on the cover page of the website not included in the below attachment, the reason being, to keep below attachment to a manageable size.
Newsletter 35 covers:
- Views on the newly elected ANC leader.
- My contact with Jacob Zuma in exile and thereafter.
- The identification of the father of our Khoi ancestor Zara Schmelen on a colonial drawing.
- An small effort to improve the access conditions at the Schmelen House in Bethanie.
- Bringing closure to a family rift concerning over the sale of the diary of Missionary Kleinschmidt.
- Eberhard Kleinschmidt in a poem says: The wrong committed against the Nama and Herero people, is a wrong committed against our family. His woe is to the German government.
Additionally on the website:
- After 124 years another family bridges the racial divide in Namibia.
- ‘Der Stimme der Genade Gehör schenken - Zur Rolle der Rheinischen Missiongesellschaft bei der Errichtung von Konzentrationslagern in Namibia 1905 -1907'. - Hans-Martin Milk. Announcement of a new book.
- ‘Between the Worlds. German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa’ - Linda Chisholm. Announcement of a new book.
- Photos when scattering the ashes of my sister Heidi in the Namib in November 2017.
- Photos of a toast to my mother - she is now commemorated on a gravestone in Swakopmund - November 2017.
- Photo’s of the trip and visit by cousin Otto and Manda Uirab to Cape Town.
As always, please write and engage me in conversation.
Best wishes for the year ahead!
Yours,
Horst.
Errata: I state in my Newsletter that Jacob Zuma entered South Africa as part of the underground operation Vula. I have been corrected. He did not enter South Africa. I am told that otherwise my analyses of that time is correct.
Errata: My presentation to Cabinet at Tuinhuis was not in 1995, but in 2005. Above post and the one under Newsletters has been corrected.
Errata: My presentation to Cabinet at Tuinhuis was not in 1995, but in 2005. Above post and the one under Newsletters has been corrected.
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Another Namibian family celebrate unity across the racial divide
Hans-Martin Milk:
Der Stimme der Gnade Gehör schenken
Zur Rolle der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft
bei der Errichtung von Konzentrationslagern
in Namibia – 1905 bis 1907
[Berliner Beiträge zur Missionsgeschichte 20. Berlin: Wichern-Verlag 2016. ISBN 978-3-88981-430-2
(36 Seiten)]
>> zur Besprechung
Friend and fellow activist Ben Khumalo-Seegelken brought this to my attention.
Der Stimme der Gnade Gehör schenken
Zur Rolle der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft
bei der Errichtung von Konzentrationslagern
in Namibia – 1905 bis 1907
[Berliner Beiträge zur Missionsgeschichte 20. Berlin: Wichern-Verlag 2016. ISBN 978-3-88981-430-2
(36 Seiten)]
>> zur Besprechung
Friend and fellow activist Ben Khumalo-Seegelken brought this to my attention.
Linda Chisholm: BETWEEN THE WORLDS. German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa
South Africa’s educational history is to this day informed by networks of people and ideas, crossing geographic and racial boundaries.
The colonial legacy has inevitably involved cultural mixing and hybridization – with, paradoxically, parallel pleas for purity. Chisholm explores how these ideas found expression in colliding and coalescing worlds, one African, the other European, caught between mission and apartheid-education.… continue here / qhubeka lapha
Kind regards
Ben Khumalo-Seegelken
http://www.benkhumalo-seegelken.de/
Christine thriving, at the Blue Planet studio
We had a re-launch of Anita Marshall's book at our home in late 2017. It is self published. Its title is Soul Rebel, a moving story of her childhood as a victim of forced removals leading to political engagement and military training. Honesty and courage are one hallmark of her writing. From left to right: Christine Crowley, Nkosi Maswati, Melanie Steyn, HK, Di Oliver, Ruth Gerhard, Anita Marshall (in white top), Pete Smith (his wife Jane was taking the photo, Rachel Williams, Dieter Gerhard and Tshepo Moletsane.
René Lescoute reported on in Newsletter 34. A follow-up article.
The story of René Lescoute was covered in my Newsletter 33 (below). Since then an article on his life appeared and can be read on
https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/courageous-capetonian-stood-up-to-nazis-11493802
https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/courageous-capetonian-stood-up-to-nazis-11493802
Newsletter 34. October 2017
| They said my g-g-g grandmother did not exist. |
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List of Enemies of the apartheid state.
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Auf Deutsch zu lesen: Unter der Spalte 'Zarah and Hinrich Schmelen 200th Anniversary', gibt es jetzt drei Deutsche Beiträge zu dem Familientreffen im September 2014. Einer erscheint in dem Österreichischen Magazin INDABA, in der 85/15 Ausgabe (http://www.sadocc.at), die zwei anderen erscheinen in 'In die Welt - Für die Welt', in der 1/2015 und 2/2015 Ausgabe (http://www.vemission.org)
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