LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Attacks on Christian communities escalate across Africa

At least 360 Christians were documented as having been killed across Africa during the second quarter of the year in attacks attributed by sources on the ground to Islamist extremists or armed groups accused of targeting Christian communities.

The figure marks a 292% increase from the 123 deaths recorded in the first quarter. To date, these figures remain a conservative minimum and are based only on incidents in which Christian victims were expressly identified. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Mozambique and Burkina Faso once again accounted for the principal geographic clusters of documented deaths.

The numbers have moved in precisely the wrong direction. Evidence continues to show that Christian communities in parts of Africa are being murdered, displaced and terrorised on an extraordinary scale, yet their suffering receives nowhere near the international attention it deserves.

A defining feature of this violence is the systematic abduction of Christian women and girls for sexual slavery, forced marriage and forced conversion. In Nigeria, Leah Sharibu remains in captivity eight years after her abduction by Iswap/Boko Haram because she refused to renounce her faith, symbolising thousands of similar cases. UN experts have warned of widespread killings, sexual violence, forced conversion and enforced disappearance targeting Christian women and girls in Nigeria’s northern and Middle Belt.

The ANC government should be held to account for remaining deafeningly silent on this pervasive issue. The ANC must address the escalating levels of Islamist violence as it intensifies across neighbouring countries in Africa and stand firmly against it before we begin to feel the consequences of this extremism here in South Africa.

Daniel Jacobi

South African Friends of Israel

ANC’s leadership crisis deepens as factionalism clouds prospects

Your editorial opinion refers (“ANC expects voters to support its unnamed candidates”, August 26).

The disorganised launch of the ANC’s election manifesto, sans candidates, provides easy fodder for both opposition parties and press, and why not? It’s an extractive, rent-seeking organisation of competitive factions all vying for a turn at the till.

But it’s actually far worse than that. Greed and incompetence go hand-in-hand with arrogance, but the real problem is ideological, rooted in bad ideas. From the get-go the ANC has tried to massage its worst socialist excesses, neatly penned in its “national democratic revolution” thinking, to give it a veneer of market acceptability.

That facade has mostly been stripped away, and at national level the march to a centrally controlled, racially tick-boxed society of cadres is well advanced. The most recent being the National Water Amendment Bill, which will try to restrict water access on some terrifyingly described “equitable allocation” basis. What could possibly go wrong?

What this translates to at the municipal level is elevated candidates of such limited economic capacity that even the least corrupt will simply do the wrong thing once in City Hall. Harsh, of course, but the absence really of any ANC-led municipal success stories suggests otherwise.

Martin Neethling

Via Business Day online

ANC has lost public trust amid claims of corruption and incompetence

After months of delays the ANC has failed to name its mayoral candidates for the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities in the November 4 local government elections (“ANC unveils 6-point plan for 2026 local elections”, August 23).

Instead, it named its metro shortlist, proof once again of just how desperate the party is. Casting about for mayoral candidates that may have even a small chance of winning, but not able to select just one because they are all tainted in some way or another by fraud, corruption, a criminal past or shocking form in public life.

But most of all it is because the ANC is so terrified that the remaining unsuccessful shortlisted candidates will defect to the MK party, EFF or elsewhere, causing even more chaos than is presently churning in the party.

Anyway, it’s all irrelevant because nobody believes the ANC pledges and promises anymore. It is kaput. Jesus has finally come!

Mark Lowe

Durban

Take World Rugby to court for faulty World Cup draw

The rugby unions of South Africa, New Zealand and other countries should take World Rugby to court to correct the faulty draw for the 2027 men’s World Cup.

According to the draw, number one ranked New Zealand and number two ranked South Africa will meet in the knockout stages as early as the quarterfinals. This is unheard of in professional sport, with huge consequences for sponsorships and careers, for which World Rugby might be sued.

The correct and fair draw would result in the number one and two seeds being most likely to meet only in the final. The southern hemisphere sides have won all of the World Cups except England in 2003.

The present draw seems like an amateurish attempt to enable a northern hemisphere side to play in the final. There is still enough time for South Africa Rugby and other unions to act to correct the draw, if they act now.

Jan Buurman

Cape Town

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