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.”
*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’.
It is saddening that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has declined to prosecute Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in the sexual assault case against him.
Thuli Madonsela’s recent utterances on the sexual assault allegations against finance minister Enoch Godongwana, are it seems, both disingenuous and dangerous to the movement for justice for victims of gender-based-violence. Madonsela is the former public protector and current law trust chairperson in social justice at Stellenbosch University.
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.
Oscar Mabuyane’s Eastern Cape election victory and his self-serving support for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s second term is not a triumph for the Native South African majority that is still colonised and economically subjugated more than 28 years into a ‘so-called’ Constitutional Democracy.
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.
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?
Tokyo Sexwale has long been fingered in his own corruption scandal regarding the millions in international funds raised for the benefit of ex Robben Island political prisoners and their dependants, which many of them have never received, says an ex Robben island prisoner. Instead Sexwale has enriched himself and his cronies through these funds – living the high life and even buying a R650 million island.
