The horrifying fallout of weaponised wokeness and cancel culture. From Fees Must Fall to KOP.

By Gillian Schutte

Cancel Culture proliferated on campuses across South Africa around 2016 – when the Fees Must Fall campaign was in its second year. It developed out of intersectional feminism premised on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s salient work in the late 1980’s. Hers was a call for an intersectional legal approach, that “recognised multiple and overlapping points of oppression.” In a nutshell a google search describes intersectionality as the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Crenshaw’s work offered the space for “radical and complex analysis of power and limitations.”

KOP, Cancel Culture & the Suicide of Kai Singiswa

By Gillian Schutte

*Some names have been changed to protect people’s identities.*

In the last few years we have witnessed many youths taking their lives after finding themselves on the receiving end of a cancel campaign.  My own son, Kai Singiswa, was one of them, when after a fight with a male friend he was shunned and profiled as an abuser of women, an accusation which culminated in him being banned from KOP – @KopJhb. I have spent the last three years investigating the events that led to Kai’ suicide and found myself in an entanglement of outright lies, half-truths, protectionism, rampant individualism and power mongering amongst his wide circle of ‘friends’.

THE FARMGATE SCANDAL, RAMAPHOSA AND CORPORATE MEDIA – A HOUSE OF CARDS.

Borderline Satire

By: Gillian Schutte

The past few weeks have been more than arduous for President Cyril Ramaphosa, as a volley of tribulations have come flying at him in quick succession. Though his usual strategy is to fob problems off with a charismatic smile and “I am innocent” platitudes, the public, it seems, is finally waking up to the possibility that Ramaphosa may not be their ‘Mr Clean – an image that corporate media has so ardently pushed to the chattering class over the years.

Shame on Ramaphosa and his Boys’ Club for their ongoing vilification of Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane.

By: Sipho Singiswa

The relentless legal battles waged against our current South African Public Protector, Prosecutor and Ombudsman, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, are more about the concealment of the involvement of ANC Tripartite Alliance leadership in corruption in which White corporate bosses and certain members of the inner circle of the ANC Boys Club, including President Ramaphosa, are implicated.

PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA SHOULD STEP ASIDE, NOT LINDIWE SISULU.

By Gillian Schutte

A  copy of the Report on the ANC Integrity Commission’s (IC) engagement with Minister Lindiwe Sisulu reads like a petty and contradictory missive written by those with a vindictive agenda to excise a senior member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) for apparently ‘going rogue’ on them. In it the IC recommends that the NEC should: “publicly reprimand Cde Sisulu and instruct her to write a public apology to the judiciary. It goes on to say: “If this instruction is ignored, appropriate action should be taken and the NEC should publicly distance the ANC from her harmful utterances, and apologise to the general public.”

The absurdist theatre of Afriforum vs Malema.

By Gillian Schutte

EFF leader, Julius Malema, has this past week, faced off Afriforum’s Advocate, Mark Oppenheimer, in what has to be the most ludicrous court case of the post 94 South Africa. Essentially, the singing of the apartheid freedom song, Kill the Boer, a chant that is deeply symbolic of Black resistance to White oppression, is on trial in the equality court of South Africa in the continuation of the Afriforum vs Malema hate speech case that has been ongoing since 2010. Oppenhiemer has come off as a pompous bumbling fool with his woefully inadequate understanding of the historical crime against humanity that was colonialism and apartheid. He cuts an unimpressive legal figure as he shoots limp and misplaced anachronisms at Malema’s quick witted responses. The court proceedings have unfolded like absurdist theatre, where white hegemony pits itself against Black resistance and exposes the sham of a so-called post-liberation democracy that boasts ‘the most progressive constitution in the world.’

Ex Political Prisoners say that Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo should withdraw his bid for the position of Chief Justice.

PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY: THE ROBBEN ISLAND EX POLITICAL PRISONERS INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAM.

03 FEBRUARY 2022.

We, as a collective of Ex Political Prisoners, are disturbed to note that Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo was one of the first to jump into the boxing ring in response to Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulus’s long overdue article, Hi Mzansi, have we seen justice?  After some reflection we are prompted to ask where Zondo fits into the scheme of things regarding the CR presidential campaign?  Why would the Acting-Chief Justice risk engaging himself in a political fray when this can easily be construed as his involvement in a potential ‘conflict of interest’ on the eve of interviews and nominations for the position of the Chief Justice?