ETHICS
Who wins if racial solidarity trumps the impulse for justice?
The inclination of most student rebels now to trash buildings rather than take on Zuma seems to involve an ominous element of discomfort over denouncing a black leader
It is a recurrent riddle why decent people often fail to speak out against injustice that occurs right under their noses; not something, in other words, that involves an intangible ideology but rather an act that they have personally witnessed — racial abuse, say, or sexual harassment. It is all the more astonishing when the echoing silence emanates from public figures whose entire careers and rationale are based upon opposition to exactly that which they have chosen to overlook. At Oxford University in October, during the annual lecture in memory of Bram Fischer, Sipho Pityana gave a pithy summary of the fallout from President Jacob Zuma. "That he remains the president of the country today — despite the growing catalogue of crimes of which he stands accused — is a stain on our nation’s history. "That the ANC — the party of Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela — has not only not moved decisively to recall him but has unscrupulously defended him is a disgrace from which it...
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