LETTER: Sean Muller lacks ability to do a simple fact check

On the one hand, I regard it as infra dignitatem to respond to Sean Muller’s malicious attack on my professional “apartheid” background (“Olivier’s opinion has no credibility given his historical actions,” April 4). On the other hand, in the interest of intellectual honesty I feel obliged to expose him as a petty unintellectual rabble-rouser and propagandist, lacking traditional professional decorum and the ability to do a simple fact check.

Proof of this is the fact that he says nothing about the contends, merits or demerits of our article in Business Day, which we would have welcomed (“SA has no idea of the consequences of siding with an autocratic war criminal”, March 31). My professional record is available on the internet for anybody to see, particularly also my numerous oped articles in Business Day, The Daily Maverick and Sunday Times, and my peer-reviewed academic publications. 

Apart from my long academic career at both the University of Pretoria and University of Johannesburg, I served under both Presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela in post-apartheid SA. In fact, the substantial period of my tenure as SA ambassador in Moscow was post-apartheid. My co-author served the ANC-led government until 1999 and was in fact involved with the drafting of both the 1993 and 1996 SA constitutions.

People of Muller’s ilk would be shoe-in propagandists for the Kremlin or Beijing. It would in fact be interesting the hear Muller’s views on how apartheid and the war crimes in Ukraine — both being crimes against humanity — are linked.

Gerrit Olivier
Somerset West

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