Broadside for the Navy - racialism or the usual bungle?

Dear Johannes Mudimu, Chief of the South African Navy,

          We all know your kids, if you’ve got any, could float a more impressive array of boats in their bath than our Navy can do at sea. You have the dubious distinction of being in charge of a joke.

          I accept it’s not your fault that the African National Congress Government has wasted billions on useless ships and submarines. But some of the bungles that followed were under your command.

          How embarrassing it must have been for you when one of the three new, Type 209 German submarines that we got at a paltry 285 -million dollars each was put out of action by a Navy Incompetent. That’s one of the ranks in our tin pot Navy isn’t it?

          He put a plug in the wrong socket during a switch over from the shore to ship electrical supply. The sub’s been out of action now for three years. But as luck would have it your Navy has only managed to train enough submariners for two subs so we didn’t need this other one anyway.

          As you know one of the subs was bashed because the entrance to the sub base in Simon’s Town is too small for this kind of sub. And in keeping with our Government’s proud, naval tradition there are no plans to widen the entrance.

          These are just some of the examples of the screw-ups that you no doubt have had to try and deal with during your tenure.   

       But just because we might lose a few submarines or ships here and there because your guys are technologically backward there’s absolutely no excuse for not paying people who have worked faithfully for the Navy for years..

          Michael Fielding has lectured on Warfare Communications at the Naval Staff College in the Muizenberg suburb of Cape Town for more than 30 years. You might have heard of him. He even developed some of the courses.

          In spite of the fact that he had not been paid for a year and was owed 50 grand he still turned up to give one of his lectures. You can imagine how surprised and upset he was by what happened as he was just about to start. He was told in no uncertain terms that he could not carry on. He had to hand over his notes to one of the officers there.

          Not surprisingly he immediately thought that racialism had raised its ugly head. You see he is White and as you know members of your Black ANC Government have been making loud, anti-white noises lately. So much so that Professor Ben Turok, an MP and long time ANC stalwart stated openly that these "crude reference to race reinforce the perception that we are moving away from a non-racial society towards a Black republic."                                       

      
Needless to say Turok is also White.  

          So which is it Vice Admiral Mudimu, racialism or one of those bungles that your Navy has become famous for?

          "Nobody tells me what's going on," Fielding told me. " It's very worrying." He added that he had written to the Admiral and I assume that means you.

          Fielding is such a loyal Navy supporter that even after the way he had been treated he offered to mark projects at no fee.

          However Commander Keith Abrahams, who is in charge of the Staff College, tells me that everything is hunky-dory. 
         It was all caused by an administrative glitch while they were waiting for the latest approved guest lecturer's list to be finalised.

          Fielding, he assured me, was on the new list and would be getting his money. The key question Vice Admiral sir is…. WHEN?

            The ability to communicate clearly, I would say, is essential to any well run force and more especially a navy as you have the sea to contend with as well as any enemy that you might be facing.

          So imagine what could happen without the likes of Fielding to train your officers. You could get a communication like this:

          'Sir we’ve just lost another one of our submarines. A dive order was given and due to a communication glitch somebody left the hatch open. I’m afraid that we have to put it down to the fact that communication lectures had to be abandoned because we couldn’t get anybody who was prepared to work for nothing.'

          Yours sincerely,

          Jon, who once paddled a  dugout canoe down the Congo River.

P.S. Admiral I was wondering whether you’ve every captained a ship or commanded a sub. I see on the Navy’s website that you joined the ANC in 1975 and served in its army in exile set up to topple the White, apartheid Government that was in power at the time. And you received your military training in central Africa, East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Racial insults pass sleeping editors

Dear Mondli Makhanya, Big Shot Editor and Sunday Times Columinist,

          Don’t you ever learn at the Avusa Group of newspapers (Sunday Times, The Times, Sowetan, Sunday World etc)? Columnists are by nature controversial so editors shouldn’t blindly trust them to do the right thing.

          Before columns are printed the editor or one of his deputies should read them to make sure that they have not over stepped the mark. But this doesn’t seem to be the norm at Avusa and as a result you keep putting your foot in racial quicksand and ending up floundering around with pathetic excuses.

          Three years ago that whitey, David Bullard got his marching orders from the Sunday Times. His crime was that he insulted Blacks in his Out to Lunch column.

          Mondli you were the Black editor of the paper at the time and you apologised saying, We were complicit in disseminating his Stone Age philosophies.  

        As you know your paper is big on investigations so how come he was writing for you for 14 years before you found that out?

          Well if you don’t mind me saying so Mondli you still have Stone Age editing on the papers in your group

          Nothing has changed since that 2008 boo boo even though you have moved up the ranks to become the Big Chief Editor of your entire Group.

          This time it was Kuli Roberts, a Black columnist, on the Sunday World who let her prejudices get the better of her without her Editor, Wally Mbhele, noticing until the Twitter hit the fan.

          She accused our Coloured population of all manner of diabolical behaviour. From being nuts; very violent as if Blacks are not; breeding like rabbits and having girls who are more obsessed with naai majiene than any other race. In other words sure bet, shaggers.

          If the African National Congress controlled Government is hoping to regain the Western Cape which is essentially Coloured, in the coming Municipal Elections, the oppositon Democratic Alliance must only wish that Kuli was still an ANC spokesman there?

          According to The Times, Wally awoke at the Sunday World with this inane gem, Though I recognise the right of columnists to express their opinions without fear or favour, these should not amount to prejudice.

          Have you ever read a column that hasn’t got an element of prejudice in it?

          Her’s, appropriately called Bitch’s Brew, was promptly axed.

       So much for those well worn, press clichés without fear or favour or publish and be damned.

          The aptly named Wally apologised and you added, Avusa Media will not allow any of its titles to disseminate prejudicial commentary that reinforces divisions and entrenches racial stereotypes.

          You’re a fine one to talk. Only a few weeks earlier your regular column in the Sunday Times was headed Healing its racial scars remains the Western Cape’s biggest problem.

          It was all about how Blacks felt out of place in Cape Town and that the racial discord in that part of the country requires action before it becomes a destructive wave. You didn’t say what action, but how about sending some Zulu Impis down to teach the Coloured Capies how to behave.

          The fact that you got the wrong end of the stick completely is something I will deal with at another time.

          The Western Cape, you said, remains out of step with South Africa’s march towards a non-racial society. What March? The Government for a start is making sure it doesn't go anywhere.

          Not half as out of step as your newspapers where the editors are snoozing while columnists have a field day with their racial prejudices.

          Did Kuli perhaps get the idea of knocking the Coloureds from that column of yours?  Could it have been a case of follow my leader with Kuli trying to impress by making it a lot more vicious this time?

          I see the statement your Group issued admitted that Kuli’s attack on the Coloureds was a clear violation of the South African Press Code and Avusa’s Media’s internal codes.

          I don’t know about the Press Code, but as I have often pointed out on my blog, newspapers in your Group don’t take much notice of your own internal codes and this is just another much more disturbing example of that.

          Can you tell me this? Will Kuli get fired by all the papers in your Group in the same way that Bullard got dismissed or will her Blackness save her?

          She has quite a media pedigree. She is or was Deputy Editor of the Sunday World; presents SABC’s TV reality show What not to wear and she also writes a social column in The Times. Could this also make her too big to boot?

          I suggest you warn Kuli, as she doesn’t seem to know much about these things, that if she ever writes another column she should never refer to an Indian as Kuli. It’s too close for comfort.

          Yours respectfully,

          Jon, former Sunday Times columnist in the days when Editors were not asleep at their desks.

PS. Watch out for Morals of Newspaper Columnists on my Blog.