A couple of things to get through with this post.
First there was the front page apology by the Independent Group after juju was incorrectly quoted. It appears a change in policy at the newspaper chain run by the Irish devil now allows for corrections. Getting a correction out of the Independent Group is like drawing blood from a stone, (take this bloggers own battle as an example) but the ongoing debate surrounding the Media Appeals Tribunal must have weighed heavily on the decision. Not that it makes any difference. Malema penchant for making incoherent statements that need extensive spin doctoring by his political minders are well-known. The latest media story about the man who would be ANC king mouthing off about BRICS and China is a good example. After making headlines over the weekend as an act of jingoistic theatre, in which juju slammed anybody with an Asian connection, Malema’s political minders were seen scurrying around attempting to squeeze some insight into the affair, was it all about Palestine? Is this a newsroom oversight, a bad redaction or simply a case of the media failing to note some interesting Israel anecdotes at the SAUJS dinner in the hunt for the headlines?
Nevertheless, in the pit of despair about the implications of dissing our nation’s new allies, I penned the following letter:
Dear Ed,
I wish to apologise to South Africa’s Chinese community for the recent statements made by the ANCYL leader Julius Malema.
Jews and Judaism in China have had a long history. Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century CE but history books show they may have arrived during the mid Han Dynasty or even as early as 231 BCE. Relatively isolated communities developed through the Tang and Song Dynasties (7-12th century CE) all the way through the Quing Dynasty (19th century.), most notably. the Kaifeng Jews.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from around the world arrived with Western commercial influences, particularly in the commercial centers of Hong Kong, In the first half of the 20th century, thousands of Jewish refugees escaping Stalinist Russia and the Holocaust in Europe arrived in China.
Jews, along with the Macanese and Sherpas are now considered one of 27 “unrecognised ethnic groups” still fighting for recognition in China.
As a former SAUJS member during the eighties student revolts against apartheid I feel it is my duty to remind South Africa that race discrimination knows no boundaries. It is found wherever there is ignorance and prejudice. Malema’s jingoistic utterances therefore deserve our condemnation since his words has done nothing less than fan the flames of race hatred while serving a narrow and chauvinistic race agenda.
Race like culture is not immutable. This is the abject lesson of apartheid. As long as the ANCYL fails to distinguish between our regional concerns as a nation and the concerns of larger economic trading partners, there will be xenophobic attempts to enshrine race and class privilege. Such attempts must be avoided if we are to stand as equals amongst nations.
Yours sincerely,
David Robert Lewis
Just to make things a bit difficult for anybody wishing to publish my letter, yes I am on the Irish devil’s list of controversial Semitic people, and inspired by juju’s earlier luck in gaining a correction I launched an ISPA application last week.