genocide – Bulletproof Truth

Questions abound over Teeger’s removal as captain

“It wasn’t anyone else’s decision or influence, but CSA’s decision based on the updated risk report.” – Pholetsi Moseki on David Teeger being axed as captain.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

ON the face of it, the threat of mob violence has led to David Teeger being stripped of the South Africa captaincy for the men’s under-19 World Cup, which starts next Friday. Questions abound.

Should spectators be worried about their safety if that of a supposedly well-protected player could be at risk? How is Teeger less of a lightning rod for potential tumult as a player than as the captain? Did CSA feel they had no choice considering the charges of genocide that South Africa have laid against Israel at the UN’s International Court of Justice? What if the mob who have got their way are CSA?

A CSA release on Friday didn’t provide many answers. It said Teeger had been “relieved of the captaincy for the tournament” in the “best interests of all the players, the … team and David himself”.

Why? “We have been advised that protests related to the war in Gaza can be anticipated at the venues for the tournament,” the release said. “We have also been advised that they are likely to focus on the position of the … captain, … Teeger, and that there is a risk that they could result in conflict or even violence, including between rival groups of protestors.”

That happened in Cape Town on November 12, when police used stun grenades and water cannons to quell rival sections of the crowd; some supporting Israel, others Palestine. Four people were arrested.

How did we get here? On October 22, when the Israeli Defence Force had killed 4,651 Palestinians in their asymmetrical war on Gaza waged in retribution for Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack that cost 1,139 Israelis their lives and saw more than 200 taken hostage, Teeger dedicated an award he won to “the state of Israel and to every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora”.

Unsurprisingly, outrage followed — enough to prompt CSA to ask Wim Trengove, a respected senior counsel, to conduct an independent investigation to decide whether Teeger had breached the organisation’s code of conduct. In a report that ran to 20 pages, comprised 5,482 words, and was released by CSA on December 7, Trengove cleared Teeger. The next day, CSA named South Africa’s under-19 World Cup squad with Teeger as captain. If there was a moment for Teeger to rescue the situation by apologising and making clear he knew he represented all South Africans, not only those who agreed with him, and would endeavour to do so better in future, that was it. He hasn’t.

Maybe that failure prompted a pro-Palestine protest outside Newlands on January 3, the start of the second men’s Test between South Africa and India at the ground, where the slogans shouted included, “Teeger, how many doctors did your friends kill today?”

Doubtless more of the same will follow at the under-19 World Cup, regardless of whether Teeger is in the XI. Will he play? His return of 47 runs in four innings in the triangular series against India’s and Afghanistan’s under-19 teams in Johannesburg in the past two weeks should call into question his place in the side.

The way the saga has been dealt with differs markedly from that involving Usman Khawaja, who has been blocked at every turn by the ICC and their regulations from conveying messages on his playing kit during matches for Australia to highlight his concern over the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza. He was even charged for wearing a black armband — which he said was for a personal bereavement — without obtaining the requisite permission. Good thing Khawaja hadn’t voiced his support for an invading army. He has since worn a depiction of a dove and an olive branch — symbols of peace — on his boots during the BBL, which as a domestic tournament is not under ICC jurisdiction.

On Friday, Cricbuzz asked Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s chief executive, when the decision to take the captaincy from Teeger was made, whether it was a board decision or another authority’s, whether spectators should concerned about their safety, and how Teeger would be less at risk of sparking controversy as a player compared to as captain?

“We won’t be commenting further than the statement,” Moseki said. “We explained in the statement why it was necessary to make this call. But I can assure you it wasn’t anyone else’s decision or influence, but CSA’s decision based on the updated risk report.”

Already the theory has taken flight that CSA’s board, unhappy at Trengove’s decision, looked for another way to sack Teeger. The board has been overhauled and restructured in the wake of Chris Nenzani’s disastrous leadership, which ended amid a governance crisis in August 2020. But they have had to retain some of the freeloaders and incompetents of that unhappy era. Non-independent directors elected from the dubious ranks of the presidents of the provincial affiliates are among them. They tend to try and ingratiate themselves with every avenue of power and influence on offer — including that emanating from government types, who have sent a pack of lawyers to the Hague to take on Israel’s rampant aggression. Cricbuzz has learnt that it was indeed CSA’s board who axed Teeger as captain.

The relevant parties were informed on Friday morning. At least that decision wasn’t made known on Thursday. Because, at the centre of this mess, albeit self-created, is a human being who has made mistakes, will make more, and would do well to learn from them. His name is David Teeger, and he turned 19 on Thursday.

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Teeger cleared for Israel military comments, but the saga goes on

“The right to freedom of expression requires them to respect his right to express his opinion however offensive they might think it to be.” – Wim Trengove

Telford Vice / Cape Town

EXPECT to see David Teeger’s name at the top of the list when South Africa’s men’s under-19 World Cup squad is announced on Friday. That prediction, as banal as it is, will fuel competing fires that have leapt cricket’s boundaries.

Some will celebrate the continuation of Teeger’s tenure as captain, should it be confirmed. Others will be disgusted that he remains in the squad. Both sides of the argument will be driven by South Africans who have been fighting this fight for weeks. The ongoing altercation could spill over into contending demonstrations and protests at or near matches in the under-19 World Cup, which will be played in South Africa from January 13 to February 4.

On Thursday an independent investigation cleared Teeger of breaching CSA’s and Gauteng’s codes of conduct — which are identical — for making this statement: “But more importantly, yes, I’ve been awarded this award, and yes, I am now the rising star, but the true rising stars are the young soldiers in Israel … So I’d like to dedicate this award to the South African family that married off one son whilst the other is still missing. And I’d like to dedicate it to the state of Israel and to every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora.”

Teeger said this in Johannesburg on October 22 after being presented with the Rising Star Award at the Jewish Achiever Awards function. His comments were published by Jewish Report four days later. Three weeks after Teeger spoke, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) lodged a complaint with CSA. The PSA called Teeger’s views — which alluded to Israel’s sustained bombardment of Gaza in the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas — “a provocative and inflammatory political statement”.

Many were aghast at Hamas’ vicious assault on Israeli civilians, which robbed 1,200 of their lives and facilitated the taking of more than 200 hostages. Many others have voiced alarm at Israel’s response, which has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 44,000. Gaza’s infrastructure has been crippled in the process, and more than 1-million people have sought shelter in United Nations facilities.

Rarely are those who cast Hamas’ actions as terrorism able to recognise Israel’s reaction as disproportionate, brutal and inhumane. Neither do most who hold up Hamas as heroes of a struggle that started in 1948, when the creation of the Israeli state forced Palestinians off their land, acknowledge that Israel should even exist.

It is an intractable struggle that the world’s best diplomatic and political minds have been unable to resolve. What chance did an 18-year-old schoolboy have of not getting it wrong, thereby angering much of South Africa’s muslim community of around 1-million? What chance did he have of his words not being seized upon and amplified by the ethno-nationalists firmly in Israel’s corner among the 52,000, or so, jews in this country? A far smaller chance, on both counts, than if he hadn’t made his impromptu but also unprompted remarks.

But, you will hear it said, freedom of speech is protected in South Africa, along with freedom of religion. That the first of those freedoms comes with responsibilities and consequences — including for 18-year-old schoolboys — is less often noted, and still less that freedom from religion — rather than of religion — in the public realm is a right every democracy should pursue.

On the face of it, Teeger is a worthy recipient of the prize he won. From July he has scored three half-centuries in seven one-day innings for South Africa’s under-19 side and a South Africa Emerging players side. He is head boy at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg, an elite institution that has produced Quinton de Kock, Graeme Smith and Ali Bacher. But none of that has mattered since October 22. How could it when this has become about so much more than mere cricket?

On December 3, Business Day, South Africa’s last remaining serious English-language daily newspaper, published a letter from Mandy Yachad, a rebel-era cricketer and religiously observant jew. “As much as I was looking forward to attending the upcoming Test between South Africa and India at Newlands, and some of the T20s and ODIs, and while I will continue to support the Proteas (including those players who have shown support to Palestine and the Palestinian people), I will not be there (nor at any other match that falls under the auspices of the CSA),” Yachad wrote. Note that he expressed his displeasure not at what Teeger had said nor the furore that had been sparked — but at CSA’s decision to investigate.

Two days later in the same newspaper, another letter, from Nezaam Luddy, a muslim former Western Province and South African Schools player, pushed back: “What Yachad fails to understand is that Teeger supported oppression by the apartheid state of Israel. If I was expected to play under Teeger’s leadership, I would have refused to do so, as he symbolises apartheid ideologies. It could be a matter of not being properly educated regarding what is occurring in Palestine, and has been occurring for more than 75 years. The reality, though, is that Teeger is a role model for our current and future children who also aspire to represent the Proteas. He is young and talented, and my hope for the outcome of the investigation is for him to be properly educated, rehabilitated and afforded the opportunity to issue an apology to all concerned.” Luddy signed off tartly with: “No-one will miss Yachad at Proteas matches.”

Teeger’s statement quoted above amounts to 78 words. Wim Trengove, the respected silk appointed to analyse it, its fallout and decide what to do about it, spent 5,462 words in the cause. Here’s a pertinent chunk: “[Teeger] spoke to the Jewish community and not to the members of other cricket teams. He spoke of matters entirely unrelated to them. They might find his statements offensive because they fundamentally disagree with him. That is entirely understandable. But it is again an occasion on which the right to freedom of expression requires them to respect his right to express his opinion however offensive they might think it to be.”

Cricbuzz asked Wendy Kahn, the national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, whether demonstrations of support for Teeger would be seen during the under-19 World Cup. “We love to support all our sports stars and wish him and the team the best of luck for the World Cup,” Kahn responded.

Asked whether there would be protests at Teeger’s presence, Nazim Adam, a PSA coordinator, said that was a “distinct possibility”. He told Cricbuzz: “Legally Trengove is correct but morally there is a challenge.” Like Yachad, he disapproved of CSA’s handling of the issue: “They didn’t want to deal with the division it has caused and the hurt and pain.”

It’s not much, but at least a muslim and a jew agree on something in this saga.

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Baklava, bridges and brutality: inside Erdoğan’s Turkey

The hand of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the closet islamist – some accuse him of practising neo-Ottomanism – trying to subvert Turkey’s decades of secularism is plain to all who want to see it.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

“ARE you a christian?” The question was trapped in the amber of the muslim call to prayer ringing out all around. It was asked by an old man as we stood across the street from the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate and in front of St George Church in the Fatih area of Istanbul upon a golden Sunday evening a few weeks ago.

I said I was free of faith. He looked bemused.

“Free of faith? Free of faith! Hmph! But without faith you cannot live.”

I did not argue the obvious: here I was, alive, well and happy. Probably, in significant part, because I was free of faith.

He didn’t pursue the issue, no doubt considering me a lost cause. Instead he unfurled priest’s vestments, all but disappeared into their billowing blackness as he donned them with a flourish, bade us farewell, and marched theatrically into the church to solemnise a wedding. Father Elvis, not his real name, had entered the building.

In a restaurant in thoroughly hipsterised Karaköy, a young woman sat among friends who had gathered to mark one of their birthdays. Only she wore hijab. But, like everyone else at the table, she smoked and swigged beer from the bottle.

Was she rebelling against her culture? Was she a subversive in disguise trying to undermine the faith that signals that culture? What would the Istanbullus who are adamant that the nation is divided strictly into those who drink alcohol and those who do not make of her? She had faith, it appeared. Would Father Elvis have approved?

Like baklava, Turkey has many layers. It is more probable than possible, in only a few of Istanbul’s teeming streets, to find cafés serving muddy Turkish coffee alongside those offering the jet fuel that is Antipodeans’ gift to espresso.

Or classy bars and restaurants showcasing some of the 61.5-million litres of wine the country producers annually — much of it of high quality, but only 5% of it exported — to a nation of more than 82-million, 99.8% of whom call themselves muslim.

Or nostalgic shrines to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — the modernising secularist who was galvanised by leading an army to victory over the Allies, commanded by Winston Churchill, at Gallipoli in 1916 into the founding father of modern Turkey in 1923 — within sight of staunchly sacrosanct places of worship.

Or luridly pink-mouthed, wigged, tight-topped transsexual sex workers leaning out of first-floor windows and trying, loudly, to fish customers from the streaming pavements leading to a market frequented by conservative Kurdish women, identifiable by their penchant for snowy, delicately tassled, almost gossamer hijab.

Or 3.6-million Syrians, having fled the war at home, transposing their lives — complete with cardamom-laced coffee, a type of dried spinach called molokhiya, and restaurants using the same names, offering the same menu, staffed by the same chefs and waiters, serving the same customers as they did in Damascus and Aleppo — onto a city that has shape-shifted through the ages from being called Lygos, Augusta Antonina, Byzantium, Stanbulin, Constantinople, Islambol, Polin, Bolis, al-Qustantiniyya, the New Rome, the New Jerusalem, to Throne of the Romans.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has mastered separating the layers of the baklava just far enough — while also keeping the whole in one piece — to stay in power.

Born, on February 26, 1954 in Kasımpaşa, an ancient section of Beyoğlu on Istanbul’s European side whose hills tumble into the Golden Horn, Erdoğan grew up selling lemonade and simit, a kind of crisp, sesame-seeded bagel that is the breakfast of choice for almost every Turk, in the streets — where he also played football.

Rather than a prolific scorer he was blessed with the foresight to create goals, and played professionally for Kasımpaşa. These days the club’s stadium, immaculately appointed but small with a capacity of only 14 000, bears his name.

That doesn’t fit with rest of the Erdoğan story, because what he does he does big. Bridges swoop and gleam, one, across the Golden Horn, comes replete with a metro stop, another is the third suspension bridge across the Bosphorus. A mosque in the grand imperial manner, big enough to hold 63 000, looms lumpily in the distance. A vast new international airport is slickly efficient and almost an enjoyable place to be. A tunnel has been burrowed under the Bosphorus, all the better to apply a laxative to Istanbul’s chronically car-clogged colon.

Erdoğan holds a Trumpian perspective laced with Putinesque overtones, which never fails to quicken the patriotic pulse, particularly of Turks outside the main centres. At the Bosphorus bridge’s opening in August 2016, he presented a Turkish proverb as his own profundity: “When a donkey dies it leaves behind its saddle. When a man dies he leaves behind his works. We will be remembered for this.”

But, as with Donald Trump, there is dodginess in the details. The running track that hugs the shore under the bridge over the Golden Horn looks like something out of user-friendly Brisbane. Alas, it peters out in less than a kilometre.

Similarly, kiosks flutter with all manner of newspapers, 45 of them national dailies, and another 15 exclusive to Istanbul. And few will say less than a glowing word about Erdoğan, not least because 231 journalists have been jailed in the wake of a failed coup on July 15, 2016.

The hand of Erdoğan the closet islamist — some accuse him of practising neo-Ottomanism — trying to subvert Turkey’s decades of secularism is plain to all who want to see it.

Mosques are built in spaces previously dominated by churches, and like all the others in the country they are funded by the regime, which pays everything from the salaries of clerics to the cleaning bills — and controls what is preached. Every Thursday evening the sermon for the next day’s juma service, the week’s most important and best attended prayer for muslims the world over, flutters into the inbox of every imam in Turkey. That’s not to say the men of the cloth don’t have a choice: either they relay the message as is, or follow the themes outlined, helpfully, in the same document.

Lessons on evolution and Atatürk and his successor, Ismet Inönü, have been removed from the school curriculum amid promises to teach “from the perspective of a national and moral education” to “protect national values” — code for a more conservative, religious approach.

And it’s working. Turkish flags displayed prominently in the streets, and there are many, have been put there either by overt nationalists or immigrants desperate to proclaim their affection for the country.

If you want to research why that has happened if you are in Turkey don’t bother with Wikipedia: since April 2017 the site has been banned there in the wake of articles that said the country was a state sponsor of terrorism.

“My motherland, my beautiful but bruised motherland, is not a democracy,” Turkish author Elif Shafak wrote in an article for Politico last year. For views like that she is routinely rubbished in Erdoğan’s press, and never given the right of reply.

Yet erudite, impassioned opposition to the president and his government’s policies is as easy to find in Istanbul’s streets as crisp baklava and muddy coffee.

People speak openly about their fear of where Turkey might be after Erdoğan, who has ruled since 2003, is no longer in office; when his powerful allies in the construction industry finally run out of money. But some of those same people decline to accept the fact of the genocide, perpetrated by the Ottomans, that claimed the lives of 1.5-million Armenians between 1914 and 1923. On that score they are one with Erdoğan’s regime, which protested petulantly in April when France and Portugal officially recognised this systematic mass murder for what it was.

The Kurds will know how the Armenians felt. Erdoğan has long labelled their organised structures as terrorist, and there is evidence that in their attempts to raise funds they operate more like the mafia than political groups. But Turkey’s army didn’t ask who was a member of what when they began driving the Kurds out of northern Syria on October 9 — which they were free to do after Trump withdrew a small force of strategically situated American troops. Erdoğan wanted a buffer 30 kilometres deep and 480 kilometres long on Turkey’s southern border with Syria, and by October 28 his troops had displaced an estimated 130 000 and left 400 000 without access to clean water. How many have been killed in the cause is unclear.

On October 29 the anti-Trump US congress decided, by 405 votes to 11, that the Armenians had indeed been victims of genocide. As a position of principle it came a century too late. As a backlash against their own president it was clear, and derided by the Turks.

“Circles believing that they will take revenge this way are mistaken,” foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu posted on social media. “This shameful decision of those exploiting history in politics is null and void for our government and people.”

The brutality and bloodletting has ceased, at least until Erdoğan makes good on his threat to chase the legions of Syrian refugees back from whence they came. But the damage has been done. It didn’t help the Kurds that most of them are, like Erdoğan, Sunni muslims. Not that they would have been spared had they been something else.

Because Erdoğan is, at his core, once all his artifice is stripped away and his ambition exposed, that thoroughly human thing: free of faith.

First published by New Frame.