Move home affairs office

A FORMER councillor was attacked and stabbed opposite Pinetown Home Affairs.

I do not understand why the Pinetown Home Affairs is still in such a high crime area. It is unfortunately a government department that everybody, in all stages of life, has to go to at some point. I personally have had a mugging outside this Home Affairs office, as has my mom – they attacked my 87-year-old grandmother who was there to pick up an ID document.

I absolutely refuse to go to this office ... in fact, we went all the way to Park Rynie to do my daughter’s birth certification and passport as there is no way I was risking taking my baby to Pinetown Home Affairs.

Every time you go there you risk your life. The last time I went I was told I needed to be there from 4am to queue in order to get a ticket to go inside. I know of people who have been attacked or mugged while waiting in that queue, never mind putting your life at risk on the drive out of Pinetown from the Home Affairs office. I think it is about time this office was moved to a more suitable, safe and accessible location.

DR KARLA MINNITT

Hillcrest

Progress – but don’t be complacent

AN INTERVIEWER asked me on Monday night, ahead of Women’s Day: “How far have we come vis-avis the rights of women in South Africa from a human rights perspective?”

He didn’t want to hear the stock phrases that politicians make about South Africa having one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. That we are striving for a 50/50 parity representation in all spheres etc.

How far have we really advanced in advancing and protecting their rights? Yesterday morning’s Mercury front page headline, in context, is instructive.

It reads “SA makes strides for women”. It made great reading but served as a warning against luxuriating in the strides we’ve made thus far.

My response was that we must ask ordinary women themselves how they feel 22 years down the line. I told him I was present when the seeds for human dignity, freedom and equality in the Bill of Rights were planted and since I have watched the flowers grow and begin to bloom, and though I’ve yet to taste the full fruits of our efforts, we still have to tend that garden and guard against weeds and invasion by alien species. We must as a collective continue to fertilise the ground. We must also try cross-pollination of ideas and ideals.

My parting comments were that as we mark the 60th anniversary of that march by women to the Union Buildings to protest against being forced to carry the ignoble and derided “dompas”, I’m fortified that it’s judicial and civil society activism that is leading the charge against erosion of rights.

We must never forget the stand that Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Helen Joseph and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn took on August 9, 1956.

P14&16 SABER AHMED JAZBHAY Durban

ANC must save and live up to its legacy

IN CELEBRATION of Women’s Day, allow me to thank Independent Newspapers for publishing the most dramatic, revealing true story in the large picture titled “To bring down the pass laws, 20 000 women gave it the thumbs-up”.

This picture calls on the ruling party and government to awaken from their arrogant self-imposed amnesia and remember that all the peoples of South Africa fought for the liberation of our country to usher in the democracy we now enjoy. Don’t delete some groups from the true history of our country. The ANC and the EFF must remember this fact as historically undeniable.

The ANC can’t lash Zuma for all its faults, says Eusebius McKaiser.

How true! Zuma’s fellow travellers who cling to No 1’s patronage are equally guilty.

“The years of corruption and mismanagement of the Jacob Zuma government have taken a toll on the once proud organisation that was the ANC”, Anglican Archbishop Ndungane said recently. And I add that the ANC was the once proud home of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu Monty Naicker, and other great leaders.

Present leaders must have the courage to cherish their legacy. Please save the ANC from defeat in the 2019 general elections!

R MUNISAMY

Isipingo Hills

Basic premise of evolution is flawed

IN HIS letter “Evolutionary science is everywhere” (The Mercury, August 5), David Lawson has a grossly overrated opinion of scientists. The examples he gives, and his idea that we “live a life surrounded by and probably dependent on scientific discoveries”, is greatly exaggerated, as many of these discoveries were made despite scientists.

Edison never went to university, and neither did Henry Ford. The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, and Bill Gates was a drop-out.

Also, “evolutionary science” and the use of “evolutionary methods and analysis in the human health literature” have not the slightest bit to do with Darwin and his theory.

But I am glad Lawson still calls Darwin’s great work a theory. After a century and a half, it is still just a theory, and there are a growing number of scientists who increasingly believe parts of it will not ever be more than a great story.

There is nothing simple about a theory that believes all life originated by natural selection from a single cell that had its genesis in a primordial soup. Even the most ardent atheist scientists now believe it is impossible for something as complex as a living cell to self-assemble from incredibly complex molecules.

If there is someone out there who can show how all this hap- pened, I will gladly rejoin the ranks of the neo-Darwinists.

CB ROGERS Durban

Would he like to teach religion?

DAVID Lawson’s comments regarding “Evolution teaching shaped by teacher beliefs” (The Mercury, August 5) refers.

Mr Lawson appears to believe that because science has helped us with technology, medicine and other amenities of modern living, scientists belong to a special group of people who can never make mistakes, particularly regarding evolution. He may claim Darwin’s theory of evolution has not successfully been challenged in 150 years, but using that reasoning I could say the existence of God hasn’t been successfully challenged either, for thousands of years.

He is correct that it was Darwin’s “theory”, his “idea”. It is not a fact, even if many seem to think it is. It is an alternative theory used to express how we got here and where we’ll go. Sounds like religion to me, not science.

Few of the technologies Lawson mentioned attribute their existence to belief in evolution and many inventions come from theists.

Teachers ought to have time for theories and ideas, alternatives which stimulate critical thinking skills. However, although called the theory of evolution, it is seen as the fact of evolution. This is where religious people encounter both moral and ethical problems, having to teach as fact something contrary to their fundamental beliefs. Lawson would be in the same dilemma if he had to teach religion.

JEREMY PIATER

Howick