Tag: UCT

Pastor Michael’s apology

I’m not sure I understand what he’s saying, but it seems that Pastor Michael has finally seen the error of his ways, and is now walking with the Lord once more.

Letter of Apology addressed to the Atheist and Agnostic Society by Pastor Michael

I would like to respond directly and apologize to the UCT Atheist and Agnostic Society complaints about my letters sent sometime this year, 2010 to them and to some other individuals.

My emails accused the AAS to have hacked my e-mails when I received about 30 spam e-mails a day. The emails also accused informally the same society to have perpetrated some acts of vandalism on my car last year 2009. I thought, because of their positions that I considered that have made the blasphemy debate of 2009 fail.

It is not a threat nor intimidation, as a man of God, Servant of the most High; I cannot allow myself to find myself in the position of threatening a fellow human being created in the image of God, as I believe.

I thought I could put pressure on the Atheists society to remove my name on their websites, which ends here without having any help, speaking on the debate they did not participate in.

Therefore I apologize to them for not having a substantial proof of my accusations, as mentioned above. It was not my intention to create a hostile environment or to defame the UCT Atheists society and yet I can guarantee that I am committed to a coexisting principle putting this thing behind and the failed debate story and moving forward without any conflict.

I hope our friends, the AAS will accept my sincere apology.

Regards
Pastor Michael Nlandu
UCT Campus For Christ
28 October 2010

Burning the closet

As submitted to The Daily Maverick

The recent demonstration of homophobic intolerance at the University of Cape Town shows us – once again – that education is no obstacle to ignorance and bigotry. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the details, the story is this: Last week, the student organisation RainbowUCT (in association with UCT management) convened Pink Week, intended to celebrate and promote sexual diversity.

One of the features of Pink Week was the installation of The Closet, a bright pink closet on Jameson Hall plaza, which displayed messages related to instances of discrimination in South Africa and abroad. Students and staff were invited to graffiti the outside of this closet with their own examples, or to express their views on homophobia and discrimination more generally.

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Shock and horror as it’s revealed that students have premarital sex

So, I wasn’t on campus when the most recent edition of the student newspaper, Varsity, hit the proverbial streets. But I’ve been made aware of something that should surely be directed to the Media Tribunal – an article by Kathryn Mitchell which fails to point out to students just how dangerous it could be to have sex before marriage. Not dangerous in terms of things like STD’s, embarrassment and regret, but rather dangerous in terms of threats like having your spirit “torn up”. Yikes. That would certainly trouble me, if I believed in nonsense like spirits. Judge for yourself whether Kathryn is an agent for the forces of darkness, or just a normal, fairly sensible youth (not that sensible is necessarily the norm).

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The future of South African tertiary education?

The original text of this article in The Daily Maverick.

A Higher Education summit hosted by the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, is taking place at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology on April 22 and 23. Much of the focus at the summit will be on “transformation”, one of the more flexible words you’ll encounter while working at a South African university. This is saying a lot, especially since many departments – at my university at least – still seem completely enamoured by the liberating brew of postmodernism, which of course allows for infinite lexical flexibility.

Perhaps this is simply another example of political correctness gone awry – we all know that transformation relates primarily to race, but to explicitly say so may be impolitic, in that colour-blindness is a virtue that we’re all meant to be aspiring to, even in cases where economic inequalities premised on race persist. Instead, transformation becomes code for various social issues, and allows us to collapse concerns around equity, throughput, policies on wheelchair ramps, and whatever else does not currently have its own committee under one handy banner.

For example, the most recent message from the Transformation Officer in my Faculty related to the “Executive Secretaries and Personal Assistants International Symposium”, which I had a difficult time relating to anything obviously to do with transformation. But then, perhaps I’m not transformed myself, or perhaps I’m simply insufficiently postmodern.

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Sax Appeal 2010: on causing offense

Following the controversy caused by last year’s edition of Sax Appeal (see here and here, if you don’t know about this), the editor asked if I’d be willing to contribute a column. I was, and here it is, for those of you not in Cape Town (or those who simply ignored the pleas of those desperate students at the traffic lights).*

As of January 1 2010, blasphemy is a crime in Ireland, with offenders liable for a €25000 fine. Later in January, Kurt Westergaard – one of those responsible for the infamous “Danish cartoons” – was attacked in his home by a knife-wielding fanatic. Closer to home, some readers of Sax Appeal may still harbour memories of the outrage provoked by the “blasphemous” content of Sax Appeal 2009, and some others (well, the same ones, probably) may currently be choking on their morning tea while trying to process the harms they believe themselves to be enduring as a result of the edition you are currently reading.

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Frontline Fellowship: Lying for Jesus

So, the Frontline Fellowship (of which Peter Hammond is Director) has posted a description of the debate that was meant to happen recently. Here’s how it starts:

Atheist Abandons Argument
Just two hours before the scheduled debate the Atheist Association lecturer, Jacques Rousseau, cancelled his involvement and withdrew from the debate. The organiser was then compelled to change the venue from Jameson Hall to a different venue nearby.

Apparently, the event ended like so:

Over 100 students responded to the challenge to commit themselves to full-time Christian ministry. Many of those expressed their conviction that they were called to be missionaries to university campuses. The atmosphere at Campus Harvest was electric.

These 100 students will no doubt undergo rigorous training in hyperbole, hysteria and deception, judging from the article. All I can do is to – again – point out that if these students are at all interested in an education, and the facts, they can avail themselves of the evidence in the form of the correspondence leading up to the debate here.

Varsity – reporting on the blasphemy debate

Today’s edition of Varsity, the student newspaper at UCT, carries an article (see end of post for a scan of the article) reporting on the debate that was meant to occur last week. Contrary to my fears, it’s a balanced and sensible account of what happened in the lead-up to the non-event. There are, however, a few details from the article worth commenting on.

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The blasphemy debate debacle

As readers will know, a debate was meant to take place tonight, at UCT’s Jameson Hall. I have now withdrawn from this event, as has my co-speaker, Tauriq Moosa. I fear that those we were scheduled to debate with may try to exploit this to their political advantage, and therefore feel that it’s important to place on record the sequence of events leading to my withdrawal, as well as the reasoning behind it. First, though, apologies to any of you who looked forward to attending, and especially to those who did not receive timeous notification of the cancellation via my Twitter or Facebook messages.

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Blasphemy debate (update)

Here’s a sense of what awaits:

Some loony rambling

Part of me wonders whether I shouldn’t spend the bulk of my allotted time simply explaining the mistakes in the Michael Nlandu sentences, as quoted above. I’ll only have 15 minutes, after all. But no, as he says: “this is not vengeance”, so I’ll focus on the problems associated with burying one’s head in the sand more generally, rather than picking on poor Pastor Michael.

Blasphemy debate

Next week, Tauriq Moosa and I will be representing the UCT Atheist and Agnostic Society in a public debate with the Campus Crusade for Christ.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: Jameson Hall, UCT
Topic: “‘Is Blasphemy Freedom of Speech?” (which makes little sense, but I think we know what they mean).

If you’re a Facebooker, the event announcement is here.