by davidrobertlewis -

Replacement theology at heart of Middle East conflict

OUR COUNTRY to its credit has enacted legislation to suppress both apartheid and racism. Proposals by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) for introduction of a bill which will ‘domesticate’ the 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, alongside the creation of ‘apartheid-free zones’ and the criminalization of Zionism, confront us with an absurdity: it is as if apartheid never happened within South Africa, since it appears no laws were adopted referencing the UN convention?

If our 1994 dispensation appears in danger of being replaced by a formidable global campaign connected to a maximalist view of Palestinian territory, associated with the former British Colony, then you may be correct. “From the River to the Sea” is the oft heard rallying cry alongside “Death to Israel and America”, as anyone with a different viewpoint is shouted down. Yet the ‘rainbow-coloured’ demonstrators have not translated into ‘rainbow ideas’ in the Middle East?

This is because replacement theology is at the heart of the conflict. A 2020 academic paper by Philip Du Toit on the question: ‘Is Replacement Theology Anti-Semitic?‘ begins by defining anti-Semitism as “normally understood as prejudice or hatred against Jewish people as a race” before concluding that since Christianity doesn’t perceive the Jews as a race, Christian theology cannot, by definition be anti-Semitic.

In ‘Revisiting the Charge of Taḥrīf: The Question of Supersessionism in Early Islam and the Qurʾān’ Sandra Keiting argues that Islam was supersessionist from its inception, advocating the view that the ‘Quranic revelations’ would “replace the corrupted scriptures possessed by other communities”.

Jonathon Feldstein observes the popular ‘Dome of the Rock’ in East Jerusalem has perhaps become “the cornerstone of Islamic replacement theology” alongside a new tradition that undermines both Judaism and Christianity. “Today, it’s commonplace to hear Palestinians and other Muslims deny any Jewish — and therefore Christian — history to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.”

Feldstein’s views are supported by a videographer who prompted Arab Palestinians to explain the plethora of Jewish archeological sites in the region — their answers invariably involve a denial of history, for them, the scientific evidence is a religious ‘falsehood’ to be discarded and ignored, replaced by another narrative, one which seeks to overcome and replace proven historical facts.

Even the Koran references the land of Israel. Al Baqara 2.47 ; Al Maida 5.21; Al Aaraf 7.137; Yunus 10.93; Al Israa 17.2-104;Ta Ha 20.80; Al Mumim 40.53; Al Dukhan 44.32; Al Jathiya 45.16, all refer to Israel as the land of the Jews.

The absurdity of importing apartheid laws to South Africa

The latest PSC dogma and its imported weltanshauung not only seeks to make Jews responsible for apartheid, it criminalises those who profess their religion on the basis of the biblical idea of Zion, in the process relocating South African history to the Middle East.

Furthermore, it provides a canon that replaces the narrative of the Hebrews with that of Arab Palestinians, many of whom were migrants from across the former British and Ottoman Empires. One has merely to examine the history of the Ottoman Railway Company to see why this statement is true. Beginning in 1900, the main line from Damascus to Haifa, allowed mass migration to the new economy surrounding the Zionist endeavor, and the claim is supported by the census data.

Replacement theology as it is constructed in recent times, may be understood as the basis for the apartheid analogy, a process whereby the history of our own country, is similarly replaced and discarded in the furtherance of a strategy which has been termed supersessionism.

It is therefore significant that the UN apartheid convention targets crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” [my bold]

Perversely, the phrase ‘one racial group over any other racial group or groups‘ is routinely omitted by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and PSC, in order to redact the convention to instances of state oppression of minorities, a lamentable situation not uncommon in our world today and certainly not unique to the state of Israel and its neighbors, all of whom should take the blame for the current escalation.

The apartheid convention was enacted in the 1970s primarily to deal with apartheid as it was then constructed within South Africa’s borders — a racist segregationist policy associated with a white Christian minority regime of PW Botha et al — absolutely nothing to do with Jews, who under apartheid were disproportionately jailed compared to their white Christian compatriots, with outspoken Rabbis deported by the regime.

The only genuine question raised by the PSC proposal, (whatever the merits), is whether or not our foreign policy should reflect our constitutional values? At the face of it, foreign policy is best served by an outlook which boldly supports our constitution —  its democratic values — it cannot be that we as a nation are compelled to support those like Hamas or Hezbollah, who are avowedly opposed to secularism, democratic centralism, women’s rights, LGBT rights, independent trade unions, and other rights.

In doing so, we risk rewriting and fabricating our own history.

READ: Debunked: Palestinians and Jews, each form a distinct race & the conflict is thus like apartheid,

by davidrobertlewis -

Gillian Schutte defends race labeling, toads

In the critically acclaimed film “BlacKkKlansman,” directed by Spike Lee, the term “toad” is ingeniously used to refer to a specific type of ‘white person’. The historical context of this term presents all sorts of problems but has been decoded by critics as a dramatic technique that ‘provides insight into the racial climate of the time and the profound impact of the civil rights movement’.

Traditionally associated with amphibians, toad is used as a code word by Lee’s ‘African American’ detective Ron Stallworth” to ‘identify racist and bigoted individuals’ within the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The tactic, essentially one of reverse psychology, sheds light on the “hateful language used by white supremacists to demean and dehumanize black individuals”

Unfortunately South Africa’s Gillian Schutte is not Hollywood’s Spike Lee — her adoption of counter-factual histories, bold language and narrative that appropriates the rhetoric of the radical black left, (without giving any credit), is merely repackaged by a ‘white person’ given some leeway to comment on the sensitive topic — with the result she is a firm favourite of today’s editors — those who may wish to see their own jaundiced views reflected back in print media.

There is thus a plethora of Schutte’s published writing in my country.

Her opinion pieces circulate online in their dozens in the aftermath of the GNU — all leading one into the arena of ersatz political analysis, of the kind delivered by feminists who may object to transexuality by misunderstanding gender. Sorry Gillian, it’s not all reducible to biology but rather a subject informed by legal definitions open to legislative scrutiny. Allowing a man to transition to a women and vice versa, is neither a denial of the suffragette movement nor would treating all humans as equals — judging a person on the basis of ones character not ones colour — be a negation of civil rights — quite the opposite.

Schutte appears oblivious to the problem presented by ‘race and gender’ from the perspective of the administration of law, and I speak here as a recipient of the idiocy of laws of my own country. Yes, she may object to non-racialism but invariably it is without bothering to examine the provenance of the term, within the Unity Movement and the racialisation of society which this movement opposes. (Read my piece here)

The same may be said of Schutte’s Hogwarts feminism.

Race slurs are the tactic of racists.

Need one remind readers that racial slurs by individuals, like the tactics of racialisation, have long been a tool of those who lack coherent arguments, or who seek to reduce the nuance and complexity of life into convenient soundbytes. Maintaining power by replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, rule by men, with rule by women, ranks as bad an idea as replacing ‘racialisation with more racialisation’, one form of hegemony with another. Hurt cannot be healed by more pain. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

I thus find myself constantly amazed, gobsmacked that Schutte is allowed inches of column space to spew her drivel, pontificating on a subject for which she provides very little context and history, save an appeal to her own authority.

While those who were on the frontlines of the anti-apartheid movement and its campaign against the racialisation policies of apartheid may be a dying breed, one should never forget the premise of the Unity Movement — there is only one stream of common humanity, not separate streams resulting in different species of human, as the apartheid doctor Piet Koornhof would have it.

Race Theories rejected by science

The assertions made by Unity won out when the multi-regionalist theory of human evolution (the idea that the races spontaneously evolved in different parts of the globe resulting in mutual claims of superiority/inferiority) was finally shot down, alongside apartheid race eugenics, by the paleoscience of the nineties.

Sadly race science has seen an upsurge, there have been many attempts in recent years to resurrect the idea of ‘separateness in lineage’, those who seek to rebrand the theory to explain the presence of ‘Neanderthal alleles‘ and thus links to sub-populations seemingly external to our common human genome. But this tinkering with interpretation of data reminds one of the rephrasing of the specific ambitions of the anti-apartheid movement by millennial radicals into a more generalist claim involving ethnicity and religion, and a tragic process whereby the NGK is allowed to escape its role merely so Christianity may triumph?

The hackneyed arguments brought by Schutte that ‘dropping race labels are somehow akin to dropping gender labels‘, or egad, promoting non-racialism is somehow a ‘ betrayal of the struggle for democracy and human rights’, since it allegedly results in ‘an embrace of colonialism” by our GNU‘, must be rejected given the particular circumstances of our democracy. A state of affairs which is anything but PW Botha’s Tricameral Parliament — a dismal political experiment which comprised separate houses for each designated ‘race group’ alongside a reform of racialisation laws to reflect a new type of racist othering.

Strip away Schutte’s radical invective and all what one gets is a ‘lesson about toads delivered by a toad’, and if that makes one an enemy of amphibians then so be it.

READ: If everyone is a racist, nobody is a racist

READ It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

READ: Yoga ‘wokeism’ misses the whole point of post-modernity.

by davidrobertlewis -

Richard Calland: In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King – Desiderius Erasmus

IN a Mail & Guardian ‘Thought Leader’ piece ‘Beware the one-eyed Middle East critic’ (a rather unfortunate title given the casualties on either side, status of critic Salman Rushdie) Richard Calland myopically opines about what he ‘observed’ during his year 2000 sojourn in Israel.

If all that was required were a sunny disposition expressed in outward liberalism, as Calland has it, in proceeding to outline what he views as a ‘progressive political stance’ on the subject, we could all simply ‘make a cup of tea’ and the problem would be solved.

It is difficult and near impossible to square Calland’s narrow-casting of contextualisation, alongside pronouns and micro-aggressions, that sit together with a somewhat effete claim that ‘international law matters’ in the absence of any sign that either Hamas or the Israelis actually support international law — whether resolution 181 (which created the State of Israel) or resolution 242 (which demands a return to the borders of June 14, 1967). Such is the enormity of the tragedy of the past month — the reality of a situation whose genesis includes two major world wars, and at least seven regional wars since the establishment of Israel.

Initial jubilation by the Pro-Palestine brigade over the October 7 massacre of over 1400+ persons including women and children, nothing less than a ‘victory for Palestinian Resistance’ has turned into dismay and outrage at the long-term humanitarian consequences for Gaza, with little or no prospects for peace for the rest of the world.

The mass gatherings in support of an Hamas theocratic “End the Occupation”, with annihilationist calls for Jihad and Global Intifada, and chanting of ‘From the River to the Sea’, have been referred to as ‘hate marches’ by UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, since according to her, this is a demand for the ‘elimination of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic State’.

Nevertheless, Calland persists in his intellectual parlour game, which from a post-October perspective, is really an anachronistic attempt to fit the Middle East into a South African playbook. We all know how apartheid turned out, it must follow that if we assign the right labels, impose politically correct contexts and virtue signal within our individual matricies of morality, (sprinkling Rainbow-coloured fairy dust on the situation), then peace will break out and we can all go home for, yes, another cup of tea?

“Substitute “Arabs” for “blacks” and you can hear a South African cop of a certain demographic say exactly the same, can’t you? And with the same level of outrageous presumption — that because of one’s own race, the level of prejudice will be the same” he writes. Callend is quick to call out “the bantustanisation of Palestine; apartheid Israel.”

The trouble with this analogy — it is only vaguely useful when discussing the dynamics of the West Bank & Gaza, which has other comparators — the San Diego-Tijuana border for instance, thousands of labour migrants cross it each day, so too the partition demographics already in place between North & South Sudan, India & Pakistan and Greek & Turkish Cyprus.

When stating our experience under apartheid is somehow an exemplar, a template for analysis (you can read my piece debunking this here) , one can only conclude the wholesale redeployment of this narrative is wholly inaccurate when it comes to historical claims, mutual land rights , security and demographics within the MENA region at large. Let us not forget some 800 000 – 1 Million Mizrahi Jews (who include Arab Jews from Morocco, Egypt, Yemen Lebanon, Syria, Iran & Iraq) who were forcibly dispossessed prior to and immediately following the creation of Israel.

The Farhud

The dropped narrative of the Farhud massacre and dispossession of Bagdad Jews in 1941 which immediately preceded the Shoah, both events where Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini was one of many Arab supporters of the Final Solution — represent an extremely long list of similar massacres and forced removals of Jews at the hands of Islamists.

Massacres like that which occurred on 7/10 last month, stretch all the way back to the 1066 Granada Massacre, in which ‘Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela was slaughtered alongside most of the local Jewish population’ and the earlier 1033 Fez Massacre in which some 6000 Jews were similarly dispatched following the ‘conquest of the Moroccan city from the Maghrawa tribe by, the forces of Abu’l Kamal Tamim, chief of the Banu Ifran’.

That today’s Pro-Palestinian activists openly call for Jihad, whilst readily reciting a religious text referring to the Khayber Pass battle in 628 CE between early Muslims, led by Muhammad, and the Arabian Jews living in Khayber, fuels ethno-religious lunacy in which ‘Bibi the Butcher of Gaza’ has been equally reciting similar passages from the old Testament referring to the ‘Tribe of Amalek’.

As many South African’s reach back into anti-apartheid theology, the eschatological distraction may appear to be of necessity rather than simple virtue. It is most certainly inappropriate and futile when it comes to apportioning blame, pressurising the belligerents, and arriving at mutual agreement and cessation of hostilities.

Nevertheless one must strive, hope and pray that a Secular Freedom Charter and TRC emerges in the Middle East?

Fanonian rhetoric

For all the Fanonian rhetoric of ‘oppressor and oppressed’, the easy resort to the apartheid libel, (which echoes the earlier blood libel of the Middle Ages, where Jews were accused of murdering Christ and worse), what has occurred over the past month, and even past decade, has been an increase in polarisation.

Painting the conflict within Manichean terms of good and evil, black and white, has merely acted to provide those who advocate terror a blank cheque to ‘do what thy will’, whilst emboldening the far right with similar ambitions within Israel.

Nations are not races. Strip away the misaligned academic hypothesis, the unproven intellectualism posited by career bureaucrats who never bother to peer review nor debate their findings, and what you have are mutually incompatible systems of justice. Religious disagreements on which law and which state should govern, over which territory — and a proxy war being fought over the Final Status of Jerusalem. It should not be possible to reduce this conflict to a moral proposition of which is the lesser of the three evils — a Jerusalem controlled by Israel, a Jerusalem partitioned by Fatah, or a Jerusualem erased by Hamas and renamed Quds?

Yet the blathering ‘progressives’ of the myopic middle, those who merely echo the lunatic left, continue to issue their ‘dime-a-dozen’, pronouncements. Statements such as: “analysis and understanding must always be contextual, because non-progressive politics is so often characterised by acontextual and ahistorical claims. Seeking to identify the underlying structural and other causes of a “wicked” problem, rather than baying at the symptoms, is what sets progressives apart“, appear callous and hollow if what occurs is precisely that — the dropping of contexts and assertion of ahistorical claims?

If Calland were actually seeking a diagnosis with a prognosis, he would immediately call-out the dropped contexts and missing narratives of the Nakba-grifters, those who forget historical Palestine was once a British Colony alongside Transjordan, accuse all and sundry of wholesale land theft, then dispute the outcome of both World Wars, before proceeding to inflate & conflate their own oppression, whilst denying the historical oppression of others in the region?

Intersectionality is neither the sole preserve of queers nor feminists but of necessity also includes Palestinians, Jews, Arabs and Israelis. Only by addressing objective historical facts, can there be hope of a justificable solution, one that is capable of being resolved under International Law. And by that I mean embracing the ‘progressiveness of realists’ instead of over-identification with any one cause.

SEE: The belief that Israel is analogous to apartheid South Africa or Jim Crow America has no basis in history.

SEE: No, Hamas is not struggling against ‘apartheid’

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by davidrobertlewis -

US historical relations with South Africa are being mischaracterised by Putin propagandists

RONALD REAGAN’S REPUBLICAN USA may have been a tough nut to deal with during the 80s, but harping on about the perceived slight caused by his party’s treatment of Nelson Mandela, whom they Republicans’ labelled a ‘terrorist’, ignores the substantial contribution of many other personalities from within the ranks of the Democrats and broader American civil rights movement.

Personages such as Dr.Martin Luther King Jr., late John F Kennedy, the late Robert F Kennedy, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and UN ambassador Andrew Young, demonstrate the enormous USA impact which ultimately boosted the anti-apartheid movement (AAM) both within and outside the country.

The first American political leader to show genuine interest in South Africa was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By the time of Senator Kennedy’s visit in 1966, Dr. King had publicly linked the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

“Our responsibility presents us with a unique opportunity. We can join in the one form of non-violent action that could bring freedom and justice to South Africa – the action which African leaders have appealed for – in a massive movement for economic sanctions.” Martin Luther King’s London address 1963

It was this democratic movement for universal rights which formed the basis for the anti-apartheid movement, a movement whose historical trajectory spans decades of progressive extra-parliamentary activism and whose aims were far broader than the narrow ideological constraints of party politics.

Robert F. Kennedy’s historic visit to South Africa in 1966, remains one of the most important visits by an American during the worst years of apartheid. As Senator Kennedy’s address at the University of Witwatersrand and meeting with Albert Luthuli, shows, he was a strong advocate for liberty, equality, human dignity, democracy, human rights and justice.

Later it was Andrew Young whose trip to SA in 1977 first raised the spectre of serious economic pressure on the apartheid government and ushered in a sanctions campaign which did more to liberate the country than any Russian-supplied weapons and Soviet-style rhetoric.

The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was thus a law enacted by the United States Congress. The law imposed sanctions against South Africa and stated ‘five preconditions for lifting the sanctions’ that would essentially end the system of apartheid.

It is an historical fact that the conclusion to apartheid and white minority rule came as the result of broad economic pressure and that the military campaign at the behest of MK and others, at the end of the day, played a rather minor role.

Partisan propagandists stuck inside Cold War rhetoric forget that Paul Robeson’s American Committee on Africa (ACOA) was the first major group devoted to the anti-apartheid movement, and predate the later boycott movement formed in 1959.

Later incarnations played an equally important part, with the result evolving into the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000, which lowered trade barriers by lowering tariffs, and providing economic opportunities and incentives.

It would be a shame to see South Africa lose its beneficial trade status in exchange for appeasement of a Russian dictator opposed to the democracy and civil rights we take for granted? It is no secret that Putin’s United Russia Party is opposed to LGBTIQ rights, and perceives the conquest of Ukraine as a colonial and imperial endeavour.

In 1984, TransAfrica became a founding member of what it termed the Free South Africa Movement resulting in demonstrations on US campuses. While supportive of UN resolutions against apartheid, and the chief supplier of weapons during the conflict, Russia played a marginal role and absolutely no part in the transition process. In fact it was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and end of the USSR in 1991 which brought a wave of democracy and freedom  across Eastern Europe, whose impact is still felt in South Africa today.

by davidrobertlewis -

DEBUNKED: Palestinians and Jews, each form a distinct race & the conflict is thus like apartheid

IT WAS South Africa’s Hendrick Verwoerd who first resorted to the apartheid analogy in 1961 when he dismissed an Israeli vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations, throwing blame and deflecting attention by saying, “Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude … they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state. (1)

The primary objection to the apartheid analogy which may be raised is that Nations are not races. The result is what philosopher Gilbert Ryle referred to as a ‘category error’. A semantic or ontological error in which ‘things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category’. While ethnicity plays a part, there is no scientific nor any legal basis for making such a claim.(2) (3).

Attributing race to Jews in order to make a false comparison with apartheid is racism and anti-Semitism, and meets definitions of anti-Semitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

A 2020 academic paper on the question Is Replacement Theology Anti-Semitic? begins by defining anti-Semitism as “normally understood as prejudice or hatred against Jewish people as a race” before concluding that since Christianity doesn’t perceive the Jews as a race, Christian theology cannot, by definition be anti-Semitic.

Advocates of the analogy often refer to the infamous 1975 UN resolution 3379 ‘equating Zionism with racism‘ which was overturned by an overwhelming majority of nations in 1991. The same assertion was voted out of the final text of the controversial 2001 Durban Conference on Racism  and the text reaffirmed at Durban II. 

A highly flawed 2017 UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) report examining the policies of Israel within the context of a UN definition of apartheid, admits the error of race, proceeds to supply “reasons for the error of comparison” and states, there is ‘no single, authoritative, global definition of any race’ at the same time that it attributes race characteristics to Jews for the purposes of analysis.

The ESCWA report was withdrawn by UN Secretary-general Guterres in 2017, while the Goldstone report was similarly retracted in part. The same category error appears in an equally flawed 2009 local HSRC report written around the time of Durban II. 

While the policies of Israel may, for many of its critics, be reprehensible and morally indefensible, the root cause is not race, (a loaded term) but rather the confluence of religion and nationality and in particular, religious schism which results in nationality on the basis of religion, a fact common to many Middle Eastern countries.

by Robert Train -

Jozi Mayor Thapelo Amad: ‘No Homos please, we’re Muslims’

WITH the colors of Pan Arabism and the words ‘Palestine’ written in bold, Johannesburg’s new major Thapelo Amad made his inaugural appearance. The politician and imam is a member of the far-right, minority Al Jama-ah (Arabic: الجماعة, lit. ’the Congregation’) party, which has found itself with a golden vote, as part of a strange coalition between the Metro’s ANC and EFF.

All three parties have diverging, and perhaps irreconcilable policies when it comes to the status of LGBT, women, secularism and the Middle East.

While the Al Jama-ah manifesto opposes “moral sexuality education for primary school children to ensure they not issued with soft porn material in violation of the sexual offences act”, it has a host of feel-good policies on poverty alleviation, economic upliftment and the like.

But it significantly also opposes events such as Gay Pride, much like its counterparts, Fatah and Hamas, and is actively positioning itself to introduce moral policing in the Metro, informed by scripture.

The ‘Palestinian Embassy’ in Johannesburg were quick to shower Amad with awards in the aftermath of his successful mayoral campaign (see photo left).

One need look no further than a press release by the party in October 2022 which takes issue with News24 and its supposed “Diabolical Headlines” where the party strangely felt the need to respond to a news-story about a potential ISIS attack.

Amad’s party proceeded to upbraid reporter Qaanitah Hunter for ‘implying that only Muslims are opposed to Gay Pride’. The party then went on to claim there are several Christian organisations also ‘vehemently opposed’ on religious grounds.

Hunter claims the News24 report referred to, “implies that only Muslims are opposed to the Gay Pride event; they are aware that there are several Christian organizations — based on religious grounds – that are also vehemently against it.”

Amad’s Party ‘vehemently opposed’ to Gay Pride

The Party according to spokesperson Shameemah Salie “does not identify with any LGTQ (sic) activities whether it be Gay Pride parades and even comedy shows, it rejects any insinuation in which Muslims are not just negatively implicated but persistently fingered for wanting to cause chaos in that city. Whether – from a religio-theological perspective – we determinedly disagree with their forms sexual orientation and their queer belief system, it should unambiguously be stated that most of our communities do not support these LGBTQ groups.”

According to Salie: “Their lifestyle is condemned and unacceptable with the practices of Islam and Muslims. “

She also accused News24 of Islamophobia and said: “The paper’s repugnant headline undoubtedly is an unambiguous expression of purposeful Islamophobia; they want communities of other faiths to view Islam and Muslims negatively.”

The statement also said the party was “aware of constitutional rights” of LGBT and would find ways to ‘deal with them’.

Ed note: Secularism, as the man who coined the term George Holyoake asserted in his principles of Secularism, is not the absence of religion, but rather the absence of religious rule.

In particular Holyoake stated “A Secularist guides himself by maxims of Positivism, seeking to discern what is in Nature—what ought to be in morals—selecting the affirmative in exposition, concerning himself with the real, the right, and the constructive. Positive principles are principles which are provable. “

UPDATE: The press statement now appears to have been taken down alongside all the party’s press material and is no longer available on their website. However the document pdf and its url is still referred to on the Net and a copy is in our possession, and available below:

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by davidrobertlewis -

Most of all I am offended as a Secularist

IN 2010 I led evidence in a South African court that ‘Judaism was not monolithic’, or to use the parlance of Amma Khalid (see link below) ‘monothetic’, i.e based on a single basic idea or principle. There were many different expressions of Judaism I told the court, in particular there were those who disputed claims made by the Orthodoxy regarding the origin of the Torah, as too were there divergences on issues of Sabbath observance.

The Torah itself was unclear and contradicted itself. Since the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) or Reform, progressives such as myself believed in a ‘separation between Synagogue and State’. Instead of upholding my right to privacy in the face of the obscene ecclesiastical charges and racist propositions put to me by Kahanovitz SC acting for apartheid media company Media24, the court decided to adopt a moral position consistent with ultra-Orthodox, Rabbinical Judaism.

AJ Cheadle found that since I was a ‘Jew in breach’ of my alleged religion, I could not claim discrimination i.e. Antisemitism on the basis of the offensive inquiries and objections made by the respondent in the matter, who not only disputed my Jewishness but had proceeded to impugn whether or not I was indeed a Jew and outrageously denied they knew I was Jewish even though they were now insisting on authoring and issuing such inquiries.

As Thomas Jefferson put it in an 1803 letter to an English politician, 26 years after establishing an Act enshrining religious freedom in 1777: “I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others”

Cheadle then claimed to reserve judgement in the doctrinal dispute, despite his open bias towards the respondent (who it turned out was not simply his client, but also a business partner) demonstrated by his adopting their position in the matter.

The company had initially objected to my attendance at a ‘mixed race’ music venue on the Sabbath, and appeared to also object to my use of a company vehicle on Shabbat, supposedly in contravention of Jewish law. My own pleadings in the matter were simply ignored and mocked, with the respondent’s version of the case along with false and misleading narrative, uplifted and handed down.

The result is an anti-Secular screed at best, the product of a kangaroo court lacking objective reality.

Thus Cheadle upheld a false claim inter alia, reiterating apartheid-era justifications for separate development, whilst proceeding to trash the findings of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, an inquiry into gross violations of human rights under apartheid in which the company had essentially been found guilty as one of the ‘handmaidens of the apartheid regime’.

The company had also attacked my byline, infringed upon journalistic privilege, sought a gagging order, and made a number of frivolous and vexatious allegations regarding several interviews conducted with jazz musicians. In turn I accused the company of censorship, race profiling of readers, de facto newsroom segregation and denial of my rights as a journalist. Restrained from calling any witnesses in the matter, I was forced to lead my evidence from the witness box, sans an attorney.

I was not given leave to appeal nor even present when the decision was handed down and a petition to the Labour Appeal Court was turned down in my absence. You can access a repository of material related to the case here.

Today I was thus surprised to find pretty much my own case regarding the racist Anti-Secular Inquisition by Media24, reiterated in support of an Art History Professor, cast out due to similar sensitivities to do with religion. It is a welcome respite from the machinations of the religious police and theocrats in my own country to read the argument in support of an Enlightenment in Islam.

Almost 17 years since the initial incident which led to my complaint being filed, I continue to condemn the anti-Secular, partisan,1994-denialist decision of the corrupted Labour Court of South Africa. I once again demand that my rights to an identity independent of the state’s religious authorities and especially religious policing, be restored alongside my rights as a journalist.

SEE: Did ‘ou krokodil’ Ton Vosloo just wake up to the fact that his company continues to mock the TRC report?

SEE: Living in the Heart of Kakness

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by davidrobertlewis -

It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

NEVER in my wildest dreams would I expect to be confronted by a ‘woke’ self-proclaimed Anti-Racist in my own home over the festive season. The young man from New York, is “studying colonialism and apartheid’, proceeds to challenge me with some academic BS, by throwing race labels around.

In particular he insists on calling me ‘white’ in front of my Rainbow household and busies himself with a George Floyd narrative about how his ‘unique black experience’ is particular to his ‘skin colour’ ‘ and how all the stats equal to non-racialism being dead, which to him is merely a ‘neo-liberal’ concept. You can read my experience of apartheid race labelling here

I explain that Steven Bantu Biko was correct in his analysis that blackness is not the result of skin pigmentation but rather a mental attitude. I don’t get very far in narrating the story of the Unity Movement as it relates to Black Consciousness and Non-racialism. Instead he takes umbrage and insists that he doesn’t know who Biko is, as if the name of a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement means absolutely nothing to him. It is clear he is being totally ignorant and throwing offensive race labels around.

The incident lead me to pen the following:

Note to self, when confronted by the next woke anti-racist nitwit issuing a confused assault against non-racialism as yes, ‘nothing more than racism’, remember to remind the aforementioned idiot that non-racialism is not ‘non-racism’ per se as in “I’m colour blind and don’t see racism” OR “I’m not a racist but”, OR ‘I’m not woke to racism, nor institutional racism, so please provide me with a woke lecture on why I should be”.

Rather non-racialism, as the late Neville Alexander would say, is ‘opposition to the racialisation policies of apartheid’, the pseudo-scientific categorisation according to now defunct categories of race, the entire racist endeavour and its opposition that the above dolt is now attempting to negate by pseudo-scientific, obsessive, wokeness. (see note below).

As I write, the death of Adriaan Vlok, apartheid-era Minister of Law and Order has been announced. Lest we forget.

When Anti-Racism manifests in true opposition to Racism, for example, Rwanda’s attempt to remove ethnic distinctions between Hutsis and Tutsis, it may be considered positive Anti-Racism.

Negative Anti-Racism of the woke variety, on the other hand, is essentially another form of Anti-Humanism. Yet another attempt to exclude persons, to otherise and ostracise individuals, on the basis of pseudo-scientific pet theories about race, this in an absurd and tragically flawed effort to forge some form of hip counter-Hegemonic Narrative, one based upon moral brinkmanship, cancel culture and ostracisation.

So let’s get this one sorted for the New Year — racism according to most contemporary definitions is ‘hostility, prejudice or discrimination towards another person on the basis of their membership or association with an ethnic or racial group’. It is also ‘the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.’

Therein lies the rub.

Racism is certainly not challenging one’s strongly held opinions and beliefs about race, and it is by no means the act of refusing to be racialised or race labelled. I am pretty much done with ‘woke’ youngsters attempting to lecture a struggle veteran, on racism whilst upholding race categories that deprive persons such as myself of a defence against the problem, this at the same time my very real lived experience of apartheid and case against an apartheid media company (see here) is trivialised.

NOTE: Wokeism is a form of virtue-signalling but often going beyond what may be required. When one offensively treats everyone else as if they were asleep, or insists on lecturing from a primer on a subject to experts in the field. Thus amateurish over-compensation. Blind scholasticism without reference to actual evidence and research. Purposeful misreading of history to score short term popular goals. A denial of individualism in favour of a hive-mind or group-think. A platformism strategy, where an individual hogs the mic or assumes the mantle of expert even in the face of real expertise. The person who claims to be awake, is more often than not, the one still asleep.

SEE: Masilo Lepuru: ‘Africa, for the Natives Only.’

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by davidrobertlewis -

EXPOSED: Did ‘ou krokodil’ Ton Vosloo just wake up to the fact that his company continues to mock the TRC report?

TON VOSLOO, the former Naspers chairman, appears to have suddenly realised that he is ‘living in a different country’. A piece published by Tammy Petersen of News24 carries details of his sudden change of heart, in which he selectively refers to events effecting the company’s standing in relation to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

In 2010 the company mocked the TRC Report during a hearing before the Labour Court of South Africa and proceeded to oppose a 2015 application before the Equality Court, brought to review the company’s opposition to the TRC Report and its continued hostility.

Vosloo makes no apology for acting in this way but appears keen to put other matters to rest. His employees think nothing of assisting the ‘Old Crocodile’ in his latest spin on events, in the process we uncover yet another fraud, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Referring to a letter published on Netwerk24 and Die Burger, Petersen relates that after attending a graduation ceremony, Vosloo suddenly became ‘ashamed of his beliefs and actions’

Why did we act “so mockingly” against those who warned about the dangers of apartheid? Vosloo appears to ask.

“These musings of an elderly Afrikaans speaker are far too late. Why did we, in our fiery youth and with our prowess as seasoned journalists, act so mockingly against those who warned us about the perils of forced racial segregation?” he wrote.

“Why did we support the government of the time when it violated the Constitution by filling the Senate with staunch Nationalists to remove the so-called coloureds from the electoral roll?“

Past tense, not so fast

The piece is remarkable for in placing emphasis on the past tense, Naspers appears to narrate a new version of the historical record, one varying the company’s previous attempts at revisionism and spin-doctoring.

A previous 2015 mea culpa issued via the company, was essentially a case-limited half-apology by Media24’s Esmerie Weideman, issued two days after I filed a review application before the Equality Court citing the company’s opposition to the TRC. The apology referenced a sole individual, one Conrad Sidego, who had experienced difficulties with separate facilities at the company.

Peterson now seems to have discovered a news report purporting to be from that time claiming:

“When apartheid was abolished, the Afrikaans press declined to make a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), News24 previously reported.

“However, more than 100 Afrikaans-speaking journalists later submitted affidavits to the TRC in their individual capacity, acknowledging the Afrikaans press had been integral in helping to keep apartheid in place and should have accepted moral responsibility for what happened.”

According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the report was published no earlier than the period surrounding 4 October 2022, when it was first recorded by the Archive’s webcrawler, and is thus fraudulently introduced as if it were published in 2015 and contemporaneous with events from that period. The archive has three snapshots of the page stemming from this later date, when it was presumably published with the fraudulent dateline.

Lying once again

Media24 manager Ishmet Davidson had at the time lied about the TRC episode on camera — the company, keen to manage its apologia and mea culpa, essentially suppressed its own history and continues to censor any negative criticism of its operations. In 2006 the company sought a gagging order in its attempt to quash criticism.

Peterson then out of the blue, and in the light of Vosloo’s regrets, now suddenly refers to hard facts first published on Medialternatives: “JBM (Barry) Hertzog formed the Nasionale Pers (National Press) in Stellenbosch in 1915, soon after founding the National Party. The party later governed the country and enforced a system of racial segregation.”

None of the statements released by the company at the time acknowledged the independent submissions made by journalists in their private capacity. Instead Ton Vosloo is recorded by his biographer as having taken a bleak view of what he perceived to be nothing less than ‘an act of betrayal’, a view-point which continued under Koos Bekker.

Vosloo’s page on Wikipedia is a self-authored hagiography (one treating its subject with undue reverence) in which the term ‘apartheid’ along with the Krokodil’s association with the regime, is simply airbrushed out of history, aided and abetted by corruption within our justice system.

A review application brought to examine the above in the public arena, has been wrecked due to lack of attorney representation following the absurd 1994-denialist outcome of Lewis vs Legal Aid SA (LASA). A scandalous decision in which AJ Bernard Martin of the High Court in 2019 proceeded to support the assertion by John van Onselen of LASA, to the effect that ‘the TRC Report would take a long time to read and may be ignored’.

For the record, the author condemns the crude High Court decision as ‘repugnant, vulgar, indefensible and contrary to our constitutional order’, one which includes a Preamble urging ‘recognition of the injustices of the past’.

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