PO BOX 4398
Cape Town
8000
17 October 2018
Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng
The Vice-Chancellor
Vice Chancellor’s Office
University of Cape Town
Dear Madam,
CHEADLE’S FOLLEY: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins
Since this correspondence predates your ascendancy as the new Vice-Chancellor, let me congratulate you, apparently the first ‘black womxn’ VC.
I place the above in parenthesis since I am certain that linguists and social scientists will find cause to question any descriptive words attributed to the phenomena of the facts.
Last week I attended a packed Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) seminar in the Beattie Building entitled: “Let’s Talk About the History of Racism in Science: Darwin’s Hunch and the Search for Human Origins by Christa Kuljian”.
In which Kuljan made a good show at answering various questions inter alia, “What impact did colonial thinking and the concept of ‘race typology’ have on the views of scientists, including Raymond Dart, in their search for human origins? How did the concept of ‘race typology’ influence Phillip Tobias and his colleagues under apartheid? How have the changing scientific views about race – and racism – shaped efforts to understand human evolution? “
Kuljian’s special focus on the fields of palaeo-anthropology and genetics over the past century has ‘lead her to review more recent research in human genetics and mitochondrial DNA that confirms that all living humans have common origins in Africa.’
I understand from previous correspondence with former Vice-Chancellor Max Price, that H Cheadle, (now law professor emeritus) has been retired from his post at UCT Law School since 31 December 2014, and this was confirmed by Pat Lucas on 20 May 2016. Needless to say, it appears that UCT Law Dept failed to receive the memo, and are still under the impression that Cheadle is lecturing part-time, and/or is a member of Senate by virtue of his professorship at your institution.
I therefore once again bring to your attention Cheadle’s directorship of a labour brokerage firm whilst adjudicating a matter involving his client and business partner, and whilst also holding various posts at your institution (NPA, 9/2/12-386/2014).
In particular, and in the light of the growing consensus on the subject, I now bring to your attention Cheadle’s pathetic condonation of a racist inquiry at the behest of an apartheid media firm. A repugnant inquiry into my alleged race identity on the basis of blood quantum, in particular Adv Kahanovitz’ Anti-Enlightenment and Anti-Secular assertions that I am inter alia, ‘black whenever I feel like it and white when I want to be’, ‘wanted to help the respondent because I am coloured’, ‘ have become one of them, the oppressed’, ‘am not Jewish and/or am a Jew in breach of my religion.’
I also wish to draw attention to the racist and irregularly gained 2010 decision of the labour court of South Africa in which Cheadle openly attacks my credibility on the basis of my opposition to apartheid and reduces my identity to nothing more than an absurdity in the eyes of the law. (SUBMISSIONS: “manifest bias in Lewis v Media24′ and also extracts from my complaint to the Cape Bar Council and Judicial Service Commission are available upon request).
For the record, I am a graduate of the UCT Centre for African Studies, was banned en masse during 1987 whilst a member of the UCT Swapo Solidarity Committee, and End Conscription Campaigns, both registered as societies with the SRC, and also the Congress of South African Writers.
Further, I struggled to gain access to my degree, whilst Peter Horn, my lecturer in English Literary Theory was banned in name, and never attended graduation.
As a person formerly classified as white by the regime and subsequently dis-enrolled from the ‘white race’ via a series of excisions, beginning with my being placed as a young scholar on a list for wanting to check out a book by N R Mandela from the Jagger library, and culminating in the repeal of the Population Registration Act during 1991, I take exception to your institution’s continued support for Mr Cheadle, and thus apartheid race science and the multiracialist school.
The lecture given by Kuljian may as well be titled: CHEADLE’S FOLLEY: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins, since it traverses many of the aspects of evidence lead by myself during the labour court proceeding in which I quoted the late Dr Neville Alexander and hence the views of the Unity Movement and its contention that the human species represented one common stream of evolution, and thus an idea very far removed from the multiregionalist and multiracialist approach taken by Cheadle.
Cheadle tragically and painfully accepted the respondent’s pleadings in the matter, arriving at the bizarre conclusion that race profiling and de facto race segregation at the People’s Post, was merely the result of a ‘coincidence of homogeneity” (and/or an accident of nature and/or a miracle of sameness). Ditto separate development.
As I write this letter I am forced to consider the fact that I will be representing myself come 23 October 2018 in the High Court of South Africa in a matter distantly related to the labour court ruling (Lewis v Legal Aid SA). It pains me to have to place my head in an academic vice as it were, in order to alert you to the travesty which is occurring in our country in the aftermath of the TRC and the failure of the Minister of Justice to afford legal representation to the victims and survivors of the apartheid system.
I am therefore demanding restitution of my rights as a human being and the removal of Mr Cheadle from Senate, failing which I will have no recourse other than to renew the call for an academic boycott of UCT on the basis of its continued support for apartheid race science.
It is disingenuous to suggest as Max Price has previously, that Cheadle’s academic position and persona at UCT is somehow separate to his involvement with our legal system. Any reasonable person would arrive at the conclusion that Cheadle acted as an officer of the labour court because he had previously received academic credentials and status conferred upon him by the institution, and was a member of Senate in good standing, not to mention a staff member.
A full inquiry and examination of the apartheid ‘skeleton collection’ at UCT and thus the legalistic bones in the Kramer Building which continue to cast a long shadow — repugnant but important apartheid memorabilia illustrated in the many books and periodicals printed by your institution over decades — is long overdue.
Sincerely yours
D R Lewis
021 788 3119
082 425 1454