Councillor's Corner
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Lifetime Bluff resident serving his third term in office as representative
of the area. Member of the Democratic Alliance.
of the area. Member of the Democratic Alliance.
This weeks Councillor comments
| Duncan Du Bois |
Phone:467-0343 or mobile:083 291-4913
Municipal Manager - Dr Sutcliffe: Tel 311-2130 ;
SutcliffeM@durban.gov.za
SutcliffeM@durban.gov.za
Report dumping or unauthorised use of verges; Phone 311-7448
Metro All-Call / All hours Tel No.: 361-0000
Metro Police: Tel 402-0680
Brighton Beach SAPS: Tel 451 8060 / 8059
Brighton Beach Community Policing Forum Chairman: Carl Knauff : 082 449-6503
Metro All-Call / All hours Tel No.: 361-0000
Metro Police: Tel 402-0680
Brighton Beach SAPS: Tel 451 8060 / 8059
Brighton Beach Community Policing Forum Chairman: Carl Knauff : 082 449-6503
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| Bluff Ward 66 Sub Pages |
Atrocities record best left to the bar of history
•Fri, 3 Aug 2007
Despite its imperfections, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) facilitated the birth
of the new South Africa by minimising the extent to which communities were subjected to
recrimination and polarisation. The prospect now of selective prosecutions concerning
human rights abuses prior to 1994, therefore, threatens to undo what the TRC achieved.
The worst chapter in United States history is the one known as Reconstruction. It was
anything but that as in the wake of the civil war the defeated Confederate States were turned
upside down by a regime that prioritised recrimination and exploitation over reconciliation.
Millions of white southerners were disenfranchised and dispossessed of their property in
their own country. In time, some of them struck back through the Ku Klux Klan and further
retarded race relations until the Kennedy and Johnson administrations enforced legislative
equality through the Civil Rights Act in 1964. For nearly a century, the very people northern
liberals had sought to uplift were marginalised and denied the benefits the 14th and 15th
constitutional amendments were supposed to provide. Emancipation from slavery instead led
to oppression.
It is, therefore, to South Africa’s credit that it has avoided the experience of the confederate
states. Whereas the death of Abraham Lincoln robbed the U.S. of the statesmanship that
was sorely needed to “bind up the nation’s wounds”, as Lincoln put it, South Africa had the
benefit of the statesmanship of Nelson Mandela to oversee the passage from white minority
to black majority rule. Without his hand on the helm things could have gone horribly wrong.
Examples abound north of the Limpopo of what happened to minorities at the hands of new
rulers. Civil wars, the flight of skills and the loss of foreign investment were common. South
Africa has been spared that debilitating experience. And while the flight of skills has been a
feature of the past 13 years, what is not needed now is a witch-hunt that serves to
accelerate that loss.
The key factor that needs to be held in view at this time when the National Prosecuting
Authority is set to prosecute former apartheid minister Adriaan Vlok for the attempted murder
of ANC activist Frank Chikane is where this leads and what impact it has on society. After all,
what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Should the call to charge F. W. de Klerk
by former PAC activist and Robben Island detainee, Sigqibo Mpendulo, whose children were
killed in a botched Defence Force raid in 1993, be heeded? The bigger historical picture
needs to be contemplated. Must the whole country be taken back, polarised and resensitised
because one person seeks legal redress?
Whatever one’s views on De Klerk, he initiated the key steps that terminated one
dispensation and gave birth to another. He did so at a time of unprecedented internal strife
and external isolation. He took a gamble that the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled the collapse
of communism. As it turned out, communism collapsed in the Soviet Union only some 18
months after his February 2, 1990, declaration that unbanned revolutionary organisations
and offered the olive branch. Just as U.S. President Richard Nixon authorised air strikes on
North Vietnam even when negotiations for a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam were at an
advanced stage late in 1972, De Klerk no doubt had good reasons to order the strike on
what was believed to be a PAC safehouse in Umtata in 1993. He was, after all, the president
of South Africa at the time and if he felt the need to apply military pressure on those whose
commitment to the peace process was suspect, then that was his prerogative. The events of
post April 27, 1994, were not a given at the time.
It follows, then, that the piece penned by Cosatu fellow traveller, Terry Bell, in the Mercury on
July 31 is very unfortunate. Bell denounced De Klerk for authorising the wholesale
destruction of material relating to covert military and security operations. Terming it “an act
of vandalism”, Bell’s view is that such information would have proved crucial in establishing
guilt with regard to apartheid atrocities. But Bell needs to join the real world. In the high
stakes of power and in the light of the uncertainty of what might have transpired after April
27, 1994, De Klerk would have been a fool to leave such sensitive and potentially
incriminating material lying around. Its existence might have given rise to a one-sided series
of recriminatory trials. For the sake of future national stability De Klerk did the right thing by
ordering the destruction of those records.
Significantly, Bell is silent on the record of atrocities perpetrated by the ANC in South Africa
and in their torture camps in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. The report of the Douglas
Commission of 1993, reviewed in Newsweek magazine on January 25, 1993, provides
damning insights which, for the sake of balancing the record, Bell should examine so that he
could produce a counter study to his book Unfinished business — Apartheid and the Truth.
And that’s the point: the pursuit of the unsavoury aspects of both sides of the struggle is
best left to the bar of history to adjudicate.
• Duncan Du Bois is a Durban Metro DA ward councillor. He writes in his private capacity.
Published: 3 August 2007
The Witness, Pietermaritzburg
Learn more TRAFFIC CALMING: ITEM BY CLLR DU BOIS: INFRASTRUCTURE
COMMITTEE AGENDA : AUGUST 6, 2007 Click Here
•Fri, 3 Aug 2007
Despite its imperfections, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) facilitated the birth
of the new South Africa by minimising the extent to which communities were subjected to
recrimination and polarisation. The prospect now of selective prosecutions concerning
human rights abuses prior to 1994, therefore, threatens to undo what the TRC achieved.
The worst chapter in United States history is the one known as Reconstruction. It was
anything but that as in the wake of the civil war the defeated Confederate States were turned
upside down by a regime that prioritised recrimination and exploitation over reconciliation.
Millions of white southerners were disenfranchised and dispossessed of their property in
their own country. In time, some of them struck back through the Ku Klux Klan and further
retarded race relations until the Kennedy and Johnson administrations enforced legislative
equality through the Civil Rights Act in 1964. For nearly a century, the very people northern
liberals had sought to uplift were marginalised and denied the benefits the 14th and 15th
constitutional amendments were supposed to provide. Emancipation from slavery instead led
to oppression.
It is, therefore, to South Africa’s credit that it has avoided the experience of the confederate
states. Whereas the death of Abraham Lincoln robbed the U.S. of the statesmanship that
was sorely needed to “bind up the nation’s wounds”, as Lincoln put it, South Africa had the
benefit of the statesmanship of Nelson Mandela to oversee the passage from white minority
to black majority rule. Without his hand on the helm things could have gone horribly wrong.
Examples abound north of the Limpopo of what happened to minorities at the hands of new
rulers. Civil wars, the flight of skills and the loss of foreign investment were common. South
Africa has been spared that debilitating experience. And while the flight of skills has been a
feature of the past 13 years, what is not needed now is a witch-hunt that serves to
accelerate that loss.
The key factor that needs to be held in view at this time when the National Prosecuting
Authority is set to prosecute former apartheid minister Adriaan Vlok for the attempted murder
of ANC activist Frank Chikane is where this leads and what impact it has on society. After all,
what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Should the call to charge F. W. de Klerk
by former PAC activist and Robben Island detainee, Sigqibo Mpendulo, whose children were
killed in a botched Defence Force raid in 1993, be heeded? The bigger historical picture
needs to be contemplated. Must the whole country be taken back, polarised and resensitised
because one person seeks legal redress?
Whatever one’s views on De Klerk, he initiated the key steps that terminated one
dispensation and gave birth to another. He did so at a time of unprecedented internal strife
and external isolation. He took a gamble that the fall of the Berlin Wall signalled the collapse
of communism. As it turned out, communism collapsed in the Soviet Union only some 18
months after his February 2, 1990, declaration that unbanned revolutionary organisations
and offered the olive branch. Just as U.S. President Richard Nixon authorised air strikes on
North Vietnam even when negotiations for a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam were at an
advanced stage late in 1972, De Klerk no doubt had good reasons to order the strike on
what was believed to be a PAC safehouse in Umtata in 1993. He was, after all, the president
of South Africa at the time and if he felt the need to apply military pressure on those whose
commitment to the peace process was suspect, then that was his prerogative. The events of
post April 27, 1994, were not a given at the time.
It follows, then, that the piece penned by Cosatu fellow traveller, Terry Bell, in the Mercury on
July 31 is very unfortunate. Bell denounced De Klerk for authorising the wholesale
destruction of material relating to covert military and security operations. Terming it “an act
of vandalism”, Bell’s view is that such information would have proved crucial in establishing
guilt with regard to apartheid atrocities. But Bell needs to join the real world. In the high
stakes of power and in the light of the uncertainty of what might have transpired after April
27, 1994, De Klerk would have been a fool to leave such sensitive and potentially
incriminating material lying around. Its existence might have given rise to a one-sided series
of recriminatory trials. For the sake of future national stability De Klerk did the right thing by
ordering the destruction of those records.
Significantly, Bell is silent on the record of atrocities perpetrated by the ANC in South Africa
and in their torture camps in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. The report of the Douglas
Commission of 1993, reviewed in Newsweek magazine on January 25, 1993, provides
damning insights which, for the sake of balancing the record, Bell should examine so that he
could produce a counter study to his book Unfinished business — Apartheid and the Truth.
And that’s the point: the pursuit of the unsavoury aspects of both sides of the struggle is
best left to the bar of history to adjudicate.
• Duncan Du Bois is a Durban Metro DA ward councillor. He writes in his private capacity.
Published: 3 August 2007
The Witness, Pietermaritzburg
Learn more TRAFFIC CALMING: ITEM BY CLLR DU BOIS: INFRASTRUCTURE
COMMITTEE AGENDA : AUGUST 6, 2007 Click Here
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You can contact Councillor D Du Bois by e-mail @ dubois@axxess.co.za