* Umsebenzi Online
We must protect the privacy of children of public persona*** * **Phumelele Nzimande, SACP member in Esther Barsel Branch, Umsebenzi Online, Johannesburg, 4 October 2012*
I had never read Redi Thlabi's column until a friend drew my attention to the fact that, in her 23 September one, and in an angry tantrum and diatribe against Blade Nzimande's politics, she refers to my family - specifically my children, whom she disparagingly calls Nzimande's "offspring" - and bemoans their having attended good schools and universities, which she implies communist Nzimande's children should not have attended. I make no apologies for my choice of schools and universities for my children, but I take exception when a columnist is so hell-bent on politically destroying their parent that she even tells half-truths and conveniently omits the fact that all my children studied at public schools, including Amanzimtoti and Greenside High Schools, where some achieved straight A's, and suggests that public higher education institutions like the Universities of South Africa, KwaZulu Natal, Pretoria, the Witwatersrand, and Cape Town are less public where Nzimande's children are concerned.
Instead of effectively dragging black kids - whatever their parentage - down for performing exceptionally at school and opting for historically advantaged universities in the country, we should be encouraging them to prove that no institution should be so academically exclusive that black children cannot perform well enough to be admitted by it, and likewise no formerly disadvantaged institution should be considered so academically and infrastructurally inferior by white South Africans that they may not send their children to it. Incidentally, but not accidentally, hypocrites like Redi never challenge their white bosses and colleagues for not sending their children to township schools and former black universities! The last time I checked Nzimande as a Minister has put monies for the upliftment - both in terms of human resources and facilities - of historically disadvantaged institutions and the reinforcement of all that is good in historically advantaged institutions.
Redi Thlabi must not make my four children feel guilty for, respectively, being a social scientist with a Masters degree, an Accountant, an Actuary, and a Commercial Pilot. Her anger at whatever Nzimande said about middle classes can never justify her view, however obliquely couched, that my daughter has sinned by obtaining her Actuarial Science degree through UCT. I am particularly disappointed at Redi's insensitivity as, a few years ago, she interviewed my daughter on radio when she passed her Matric with A's only, and now she mischievously makes her studies in a major university a political crime on her father's part. Even as the Bible says the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children let us, as a nation, desist from involving public figures' children in our political fights with their parents.
Our young people must go to public institutions of their and their parents' choice, especially if such institutions recognise excellence and consciously strive to attract top performers, including through funding incentives. It can only be out of feigned ignorance at best and political malice at worst that Redi can insinuate any wrongness on my daughter's attendance of UCT "before (Nzimande) was even appointed to the cabinet."
Nzimande's children are like all others. They are not vicarious forms of their parents. They have their own lives and may not be dragged into their parents' political lives. Redi has a right to comment about Nzimande as a public figure but she must leave my children out of it, period! I am weary of public commentators who think they have a God-given licence to involve private people's lives in their analysis of public figures and their public positions while they jealously guard their own privacy. Is Redi willing that her own private life be subjected to public scrutiny? What happens if she does not pass the test? If not, what qualifies her private life to remain private whilst that of my children is not? My children can't be collateral victims of Redi's political and ideological beef with Nzimande. If everyone associated with Nzimande is fair game in her war with him she must say so, provided of course that is the rule of the game for her as well. If it means anything to Redi I am extremely annoyed by the innuendos which take away my children's high earned efforts. My children and other public figures' children are not for sale and they should be spared from opportunistic analyses by people who consider their access to spaces in newspapers as a weapon to declare war against innocent children whose rights to their privacy and anything else in the country are equal to everyone else's.
Perhaps Redi and her ilk have something to learn from a recent uproar in the UK when some information about ex-Prime Minister Brown's child was needlessly made public simply because of her parentage. That country, thankfully, has strict regulations to protect children of public persona. Because of the Redis of this neck of the woods we may also have to think hard about how to protect our own children of public figures.
* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * ** *Nzimande strikes a raw nerve and tells the truth about the middle class* ** ** *By Goitsemang Molapo*Redi Thlabi's article "Blade insults black people..." made me wonder if she did read his speech which I found very informative. If Redi is annoyed by such a speech, then perhaps the guilty are afraid. Nzimande seems to have struck a raw nerve and spoke the truth about some of the Middle Class like Redi.
Her diatribe about Nzimande and restating the tired story of the Ministerial handbook in respect of cars is a smoke screen. It is a defensive reaction to hide the fact that some reactionary middle class people like her do not have the conviction to throw in their lot behind the poor. Even more serious is the fact that Nzimande seems to have exposed people like her who have become useful idiots in defence of liberals. In fact they are no different from apartheid informers who were prepared to sell their souls for a penny.
Interestingly, Redi admits that "some of us cannot march in the streets because we will lose our jobs". Who said only marching is all we can do to support the struggles of working class. It is sad when columnists who enjoy support in liberal media are willing to sell their souls to that extent.
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