by davidrobertlewis -

The Howard Feldman, News24 Mampara saga

Off the bat, I admit it, I am no fan of Howard Feldman and ChaiFM. If you’re into over-privileged Jozi Jews. Do a google search and you’ll come up with the bizarre statistic that wait for it: “Most of the (live) Jews in Johannesburg can be found in the north-eastern suburbs. Here are some: Glenhazel, Raedene, Kew, Norwood, Highlands North, Sandringham, Savoy, Waverley, Orchards, Oaklands and Fairmount. Glenhazel and its immediate neighbours are jocularly referred to as ‘The Shtetl’.

I really do cringe when one realises that you’ll find Hebrews in equal parts in working class suburbs and industrial hubs of South Africa, places such as Gqeberha’s Motherwall community. Or that what is left of the Jews of District Six and Woodstock essentially charts a map of emigration and loss due to local Anti-Semitism that included political deportation of Jewish dissidents during apartheid.

Feldman’s narrative is anything but working class. His career as a ‘useful idiot’, (his phrase not mine), writing a column for News24 needs to be seen within a context, that for the most part, South Africa’s Jews, (black and white) are invisible, bar one or two lefties.

Allowing Naspers to say, ‘we employ Jews, so we can’t possibly be anti-Semitic’, whilst refusing to apologise for the antics of former directors, persons such as DF Malan who actively supported Nazism, carrying cards emblazoned with Swastikas, needs to be seen within the context of national reconciliation. The group along with its readers apparently moved on, as making money became more important than facts. I get the Machiavellian drive.

So one can forgive a sense of Schaudenfraude, seeing Howard on the receiving end of Adriaan Basson’s Anti-Semitic venom over a series of social media posts that Basson characterised as ‘glorification of violence’. Well hang me high, because I don’t see peace activists promoting peace amongst the throng of Hamas and Hezbollah supporters.

It does seem advocating total annihilation of the Jewish state is alright by Basson, but calling booby-trapped pagers ‘a stroke of genius’ isn’t? Does this make Feldman the “Mampara of the Week” ‘ a narcissistic bigot’ according to one Ferial Haffajee?

Readers may remember Haffajee as the imbecile who banned Medialternatives, physically destroying my review of ‘A Secret Burden: Memories of the Border War by South African Soldiers Who Fought in It‘ for wait for it, exposing embedded journalism within the apartheid military.

Since I am a peace activist not a war activist I don’t support the logic of either of the parties to the conflict. Like the late Dennis Brutus I don’t follow nation-states or people as such, but rather support ideas. And the paramount idea I wish readers would take home here is secularism, not the absence of religion as misguided atheists might put it, but rather the absence of religious rule.

READ: Africa4Palestine Says Sacking Of News24 Columnist Howard Feldman Was ‘Long Overdue

by davidrobertlewis -

Yes, Adriaan Basson is automatically a racist

BOUWER van Niekerk, a Johannesburg-based attorney penned an opinion on a statement this month, written by a group of concerned advocates who “were outraged by what they viewed as racist attitudes toward black legal practitioners.” In the process he unwittingly raises a point in law, regarding the status of persons who like Basson, may not have gained amnesty for crimes under apartheid.

Niekerk states without any sense of irony: “If I utter racist views, I should be held accountable and prosecuted accordingly. But the mere fact that I may differ with the views of the concerned advocates should not automatically make me a racist. Such a conclusion is simply erroneous. (And, for the record, I am not a racist.)”

The trouble with this assertion, which of course, assumes the parties, including Basson and Dali Mpofu are ‘innocent until proven guilty’, is that when it comes to an opinionated critic of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), Basson is also an “editor-in-chief of South Africa’s largest website News24” and former editor of Die Burger, and thus a member of an organisation opposed to the ‘transitional justice process’, in other words the outcome of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Basson is essentially the pitbull for a publishing concern which, despite its case-limited apology in 2015, clings to a version of history that is anything but truthful. A case of the pot calling the kettle black, since he took Dali Mpofu to task for his unsubstantiated aspersions against Judge President Dunstan Mlambo, during a round of hearings before the JSC, but thought nothing of his company deploying the exact same tactic when it came to hearings involving the TRC?

Naspers and its subsidiary Media24, has gone to elaborate lengths to avoid history, including tarnishing and scandalising the truth and reconciliation process before the courts, in the process engaging with acts of malfeasance and state capture (documented here), all calculated to stymie the victims and survivors of the apartheid regime. The company gave the ANC R1 million last year.

In its conclusions to the special inquiry into the media, Volume 4 of the TRC report stated: “As predicted by the chairperson of the Commission at the start of the media hearing, the absence of the Afrikaans press led to its being condemned as an extension and willing propaganda organ of apartheid.” [para 103, page 186]

The report thus issued its findings, including that: “The Afrikaans media (at least until the last few months of PW Botha’s tenure as State President) chose to provide direct support for apartheid and the activities of the security forces — many of which led directly to gross human rights violations.” [para 115, page 189]

It found also that: “The racism that pervaded most of white society permeated the media industry. This is supported by ample testimony presented to the Commission concerning the failure of many white journalists to delve thoroughly enough into allegations of gross human rights violations involving black people.”

“With the notable exception of certain individuals, the mainstream newspapers […] failed to report adequately on gross human rights violations. In so doing, they helped sustain and prolong the existence of apartheid.

Persons such as Basson were thus essentially found guilty in absentia in a proceeding whose legal authority and standing has never been tested in a court of law.

SEE: TRC: No to Naspers dirty tricks

SEE: Naspers “half-apology” ignores decade-long battle for justice and contrition

SEE: Following Reconciliation Day, an open letter to the TRC Commissioners

by davidrobertlewis -

Project Coast unethical, bioweapons head, guilty

635530_321501
Apartheid operative

SOUTH AFRICA’S media have been reporting on the surprise verdict by the country’s health professions council.

The HPCSA ruled last week after a six-year hearing into the affairs of Dr Wouter Basson, the head of the apartheid regime’s Project Coast.

The secret biological weapons programme which flooded townships with methamphetamine, mandrax and MDMA has come under increasing scrutiny as the head of the programme, Dr Wouter Basson was found guilty of unethical conduct.

This is after an earlier criminal case brought by the state was thrown out due to “lack of evidence” in 2002.

Basson has admitted to producing a number of biological and chemical weapons used in the assassination of anti-apartheid activists and the murder of members of the liberation movement, however the full extant of the secret dirty tricks programme code-named Project Coast has only now become clear.

According to media reports, the project was ‘involved in the large-scale production of Mandrax, cocaine and teargas, of weaponising teargas, and of supplying it to Angola’s Unita leader Jonas Savimbi.’

The project’s research, interrogation and brainwashing methods may have inadvertently  been revealed during the course of cross-examination.

Basson is said to have acted unethically by ‘providing disorientating substances for cross-border kidnappings, and by making cyanide capsules available for distribution to operatives for use in committing suicide.’

“In the light of all the circumstances, the breaches amount to unprofessional conduct… the respondent is guilty of unprofessional conduct,” HPCSA professional conduct committee chairman Prof Jannie Hugo said in Pretoria.

According to the Sowetan, ‘Basson had presented nine arguments at an inquiry into his conduct in which he claimed he acted as a soldier and not a doctor, and that he was not aware of the ethics.’

Hugo said Basson contravened international protocols and conventions. These were the Geneva Declaration of 1948 and the UN convention on the prohibition of and stockpiling of dangerous weapons.

“The respondent confused ethics of a doctor with that of a soldier while discharging his duties. A doctor cannot rely on military orders to escape the consequences of his duties.”

Hugo said if a doctor decided to use his medical knowledge and skills and consequently contravene medical ethics, he should deregister as a medical practitioner.

The six-year-long inquiry related to Basson’s involvement in South Africa’s own MK Ultra, The dirty tricks programme which mirrored other such programmes under the Nixon administration. Project Coast was operational between the 1980s and early 1990s.

SEE: http://medialternatives.com/2013/11/27/apartheid-revisionism-breaks-new-ground/

by davidrobertlewis -

Apartheid Revisionism breaks new ground

THE ongoing revision of apartheid history by South Africa’s media has ratcheted up another notch with the publication of a hagiography of Wouter Basson in the conservative Mail and Guardian. The piece praising the man nicknamed Dr Death, and responsible for the apartheid regime’s bioweapons programme, comes as the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA)  is investigating Basson for professional malpractice and ethics violations.

On Friday 22 November, journalist Mia Malan attempted to recast Basson, the man responsible for the apartheid-era dirty tricks programme known as Project Coast, which included illegal experimentation on live subjects and the murder of anti-apartheid activists, as an ‘exceptional and talented cardiologist’.

The piece appears to be in response to a publicity drive by Basson who was also responsible for producing psychiatric drugs such as MDMA and Methamphetamine which flooded the townships during the closing stages of the civil conflict and who also worked on a race-virus targeting South Africa black population, amongst other dirty tricks. Now, a counter-suite against Basson’s detractors, pending the outcome of the medical hearing, is not out of the question as apartheid revisionism renders South African history nothing more than a fiction.

The piece purports to carry comments from Basson’s patients praising his skills as a doctor, as well as comment from members of the medical profession, in particular the South African Heart Association.

“The South African Heart Association, which represents the professional interests of cardiologists in the country, considers his skills to be “exceptional”.

“According to the organisation’s president, Adriaan Snyders, who has known him for 20 years, there is “no doubt” that Basson is “one of the top cardiologists in South Africa, – and his scientific knowledge is outstanding”.

Basson has been able to hit back at his critics, armed with a judgement from a failed Post-TRC prosecution. In 2002, Basson was acquitted by the [Gauteng North] High Court in Pretoria of criminal charges arising from his conduct during the civil conflict.

Reasons for the lack of a conviction appear to be related to the manner in which evidence was presented by the prosecution and the state’s inability to provide a moral and ethical framework for such prosecutions.

Although the activities of South Africa’s own MK Ultra programme known as Project Coast are well-documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the problem of holding officials accountable for their actions under the present government continues to be a problem. The resulting apartheid denial and revision of history as the legal system, followed by the media, enters the world of fable, is plain to see.

SEE ALSO: Tutu concedes TRC flaw

White SA’s hypocrisy over McBride