LETTER: A civil debate
A call to ban an event expected to be perceived as Afro-pessimistic was the wrong response
The most challenging topics — race, and South Africans’ anxiety about the future, among them — were, unremarkably enough, vigorously and civilly debated at a packed Institute of Race Relations (IRR) event in Stellenbosch this week which correspondent Charl Linde ("Axe Bullard Event" March 12) feared would be so dangerous he appealed to Stellenbosch University to ban it in advance. Linde was vexed that the presence of columnist David Bullard on the platform meant the university would be “playing host to a convention of white afro-pessimism on a grand scale”, which would “give credence to white-fear tropes of a dystopian SA future”. What Bullard said, to applause, was that he was “largely optimistic” about the country and its “fabulous human capital” … but only “if we get it right”. SA, he warned, “will never thrive while the mass of people are living in poverty”. This points to Linde’s embarrassing assumption that black South Africans have no anxieties about their and their children’...
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