Criticize me but please let me be . . .

I have always been somewhat irritated by Katy Katapodis so this post may not be as objective as I intend it to be and for that I apologise upfront. I should also state that to her credit, she is a good journalist albeit a little all-knowing and dramatic at times. Be that as it may, Katie a good journalist that she is should be left to be - so should the ill-advised Forum for Black Journalist which I suspect may be somewhat of an irritation to Katy and those who share her views on the issue of a recent meeting between the forum and Jacob Zuma, the president of the ANC.

I do not know the details of what happened at the ill-fated meeting of the forum and Mr Zuma but I do know that Katy was present at least until she was asked to leave. She says that she was asked to leave on the basis of her skin colour and for no other reason. The other version of the same story, by a member of the forum is that she was asked to leave because she was not a member of the forum and was not invited. Apparently the meeting was a private affair.

Now, a lot has been written on this story and by much more respected social commentators than yours truly. A lot has been made of whether or not Mr Zuma may arrange a closed meeting with members of a specific race to the exclusion of all other considering that he is in pole position for the presidency of the country - all things being equal. I do not know the answer to that question. I also do not know much (if anything at all) about the forum, until this issue blew up. I do however recall that there was a similar formation made up of black editors which incidentally did not seem to annoy Katy as much as the forum under discussion. I do not even know how one qualifies to be a member of the forum - in all probability if you are black and are a journalist and of course are interested you may become a member. That of course leaves Katy out, a fact she is unhappy about, to the extent that she has approached the human rights commission to rule on it - well sort of. What the complaint (as I understand it from SAFM reports) seems to be is that Katy and other white journalists should not have been asked to leave the meeting of the forum and Mr Zuma on the basis that they are not black. It will indeed be interesting to see how the HRC rules on this matter.

Back to the forum. However it came to be and for whatever motives I wish to defend the right of the forum to be. Ill-conceived as their ideas may be and as much as I disagree with the those idea, I undertake to defend the right of the forum to express those ideas within the limitations imposed by common decency, civility, our constitution and all the good things our grandmothers taught us. When the forum throws a party, using its own funds and chooses only to invite left-handed Basotho, please let them be. Katy, you are always welcome (as you always do) to report and editorialise to your heart's content on how silly, undemocratice and whateverelse it is that the forum engages in.

What Katy and all others who were not invited to the "private briefing" are not entitled to, is to assert their right to be present at the meeting. There is another term for such behaviour, it is gate-crashing and it is generally not nice. Just because others are being racist, unfairly discrimanatory and exclusionary does not give us a right to be uncouth, to arrive uninvited and insist on being included on some constitutional ground. This is the same behaviour that has led to the present Delft or N2 Gateway housing crisis.

Of course Mr Zuma stands to be judged and evaluated on relationships such as the one he seeks to cultivate with the forum. Both he and forum stand to be judged by the company they keep. There are various forums, the HRC included where rights such as those Katy wishes to assert may be asserted. An illustrations of one such forum is the article written by Justice Malala in the Times (26 Feb 2008). The plural nature of our society requires of each one of us to let the other be, especially when we do not agree with them. This sentiment of course has its limitations but it is no less true.

Whatever the outcome of the HRC hearing, I hope it will not confirm the right of anyone to demand entry to a private function she is not invited to, whatever the basis of exclusion. I believe that the Freemasons are a bunch of strange characters with even stranger ideas. I am not about to gate-crash their party but I undertake to let them be in their strangeness.

I do however wish Katy could go and insist to have a game of golf on a Saturday, at one of those golf clubs that do not let women (because they are women) play a round of golf on a Saturday. The HRC would in my mind more readily order the golf club to change that rule than it would order the forum to invite Katy.