THE Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) is once again pushing for mechanisms to vet, license and regulate ALL religious organisations and leaders. Free...
Tag: Politics
Mendelsohn Case: A battle over academic right to dissent
THE MENDELSOHN review application against 2 UCT Council resolutions is taking place in the Western Cape High Court. It presents important challenges to a debate on rival definitions of antisemitism, academic freedom and the right to dissent under the current constitution. The basis for the challe...
“It’s all about a black magician”. The Heart 104.9 incident (part 2)
MORNING Yoga in a prison cell catapults me out of E-Section, the door literally unlocks itself as I am lead away by a large Afrikaner warden, only too pleased to see me. I am once again processed for the transport to Caledon Square, the holding cells at the Magistrates Courts, in which one is luc...
Gaza, a fragile, uncompromising peace
IN 2011 at the People's Health Assembly I asked a delegation of Palestinian doctors whether or not, a binational state solution like Belgium, in which the Flemish and Walloons coexist under a unitary constitution, could be a possible solution to the problem. Their answer, like so many answers I r...
Allegations of Genocide by UNHRC and others are not new
LAST week a weighty tome released by the controversial UN Human Rights Council arrived on my desk. The council you may recall, is controversial for its appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to chair its 2023 social forum. The report: "Legal analysis of the conduc...
Ramphele’s grand inquisition proceeds
IT was Sartre who remarked: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” The French philosopher's seminal work Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate details the manner in which Anti-Semites objectify and deprive Jews of rights ordinarily enjoyed by others. O...