Comments on: The FBJ & Freedom of Association

By: Abram Mphaphuli

Abram Mphaphuli — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:02:23 +0000

What Laurence is advocating is the law of the jungle – “dog eat dog” – a taboo. Citizens (702) who feel agrieved should be able to find redress from regulators and not be shunned or themselves shun the rule the rule of law. Similarly lobbists (like the FBJ) must be given space and opportunity to advance their cause if that is within the Constitution. True democrats let a thousand flowers to bloom.

By: Laurence

Laurence — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:39:17 +0000

No, the “negative commentary” regarding the FBJ stems from the fact that it’s behaviour, by any normal definition of racism, is racist. If you disagree, by all means say so, but please do your opponents the courtesy of arguing against what they are actually saying, rather than some weird strawman of your own invention.

By: Abram Mphaphuli

Abram Mphaphuli — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:07:22 +0000

The negative commentary regarding the FBJ from white compatriots is nothing but a hang-over from the 80’s that black people like Buthelezi are liberals therefore their groupings and their thoughts / writings should be tolerated whilst name-calling the ANC a terrorist organisation. Ditto the 21st centuary people like Haffeje, Makhanya, Seepe, et al. are held at “high esteem”.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:06:33 +0000

Quite frankly I am appaled that they allowed something like this to take place. I wonder what the reaction would have been had the meeting ejected the black jouralists and kept the white ones?

Racism and all its manifestations,such as this incident,should be avoided and the future president, of all people, should have had the intelligence and political maturity to have seen this for what it was and distanced himself immediately from it.

However,this form of reverse apartheid racism seems to be acceptable and encouraged of late. This does not bode well for the future of race relations in South Africa.In my opinion, it polarises people even further.I can understand why people would choose to emigrate when you have situations like this taking place.

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:54:59 +0000

To be honest, I’m in two minds about this. While I agree with you completely on the right to freedom of association and the role society should play in regulating racially-exclusive groups, I think this goes a bit further than just that and ventures into the area of property rights. In essence, the basic question is whether the owners (or renters) of private property should be allowed to enforce a right of admission reserved policy on the basis of race.

On the one hand, my libertarian side wants to come down on the side of stronger property rights, because the government really should not have the right to determine who private property owners may let in and why. If I want to only let hot Swedish girls in and ban everybody else, I should be able to. It’s my property after all.

But that said, I fear the consequences of such a policy. Anecdotally, it seems like the kind of attitude displayed by the Forum of Black Journalists is on the increase, with stories of white friends being made to feel unwelcome at so-called ‘black’ events and a cousin of mine having been kicked out of a nightclub for being white. Of course, these are isolated incidents and it’s difficult to extrapolate it into a wider trend. But I think this is symptomatic of the rise of a particular strain of African nationalism which is evidently on the rise, so I’d expect more FBJ-type confrontations, not less.

Moreover, if we permit private social venues (such as nightclubs and convention centres) to exclude entry based on race, we run the risk of reinforcing the creation and maintenance of racial enclaves in which whites and blacks socialise separately and in which the necessary social mixing doesn’t take place. This will have disastrous consequences for social stability in SA and will only promote racial alienation.

So it might be better for our society in the long term to refuse property owners the right to exclude entry based on race alone, and to make events like the blacks-only FBJ address illegal. If only for the sake of protecting more important liberties.

By: jp

jp — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:45:30 +0000

i thought the problem was, that it is fine to be a black only meeting, if it was just FBJ members present, it stops being ok once they invite people who do not belong to the FBJ… Then once you are inviting outsiders, to differentiate those outsiders based on racial classifications is wrong.