LETTERS | What happened to Cape Town's dream?

Between 2011 and 2014, Cape Town pursued a bold and visionary goal: to become the events capital of Africa. This was not a slogan or seasonal campaign. It was a serious, co-ordinated strategy led by then mayoral committee member for tourism, events and marketing, Grant Pascoe. Under his leadership, a dedicated team brought the vision to life with purpose and clarity.

Executive director Anton Groenewald provided overall co-ordination. Teral Cullen oversaw events, film and permits. Rory Viljoen led the City’s marketing efforts. Zayd Minty advanced arts and culture. Nombulelo Mkefa drove tourism integration. Freddie Prince managed strategic assets. Lesley de Reuck ran the Cape Town Stadium. Together, they turned events into a powerful economic driver, stimulating tourism, supporting local creatives, and connecting communities through culture and celebration.

For a time, Cape Town was setting the pace for the continent. International festivals found a home here. Local talent was nurtured and promoted. Community-based events were no longer seen as informal, but as part of a growing creative economy.

Then it stopped.

After Pascoe’s departure from the city administration in 2014, the strategy was allowed to collapse. There was no handover. No attempt to consolidate gains. No continuity plan. The leadership team was quietly dismantled, budgets shrank, and the once-vibrant energy around events faded into bureaucracy. What had been a strategic engine of growth became a mechanical exercise in compliance.

Cape Town lost more than a plan. It lost momentum, credibility and the chance to lead on the African stage. Communities lost access to platforms that once created jobs and expression. Creative professionals lost opportunities that had begun to grow into industries.

There has been no official explanation. No formal review. No honest engagement with the public or the sectors affected. The silence is telling.

It is time the City acknowledges this failure. The public deserves to know why such a promising model was abandoned. Cape Town still has the talent, the infrastructure and the global appeal to lead again, but only if it is willing to revisit what once worked and rebuild with intent.

A great city does not discard success. It builds on it.

— Carlo Peters, Kuils River

Trump derangement syndrome?

South African social and mainstream media have completely lost perspective. There is such an obsessive frenzy over Donald Trump that the media explodes and vilifies a small group of Afrikaners.

Even though some South Africans have returned to our shores, tens of thousands from all races are living and thriving all over the world, contrary to [Sunday Times editor-in-chief Makhudu] Sefara’s views. How well have we done in rebuilding and transforming on our own? We have done a much better job of destroying and breaking down.

Even usually sensible [columnist Barney] Mthombothi seems like he is smoking something. Maybe we do need a foreign scumbag to help us as we are certainly doing a useless job of sorting out our mess.

During the horror years of apartheid, people of all races went all over the world to raise awareness and ask for help against the government.

More people suffer and die in South Africa now than in many war-torn countries. Our media should be begging other countries to intervene and help the people suffering all over our beloved country.

— Sue Koen, via e-mail

US apes Putin's playbook

Trump is going after American universities and this reminds me of our own FW de Klerk going after our universities: In exchange for your state subsidies, you will become our “impimpi” and co-operate with our security forces in order to stabilise our campuses. Then even more protests erupted. A court ruling ended this venture of de Klerk's. And apartheid was fast running out of oxygen.

There is a mutual determining relationship between the scientific and the democratic — human rights. The preserve and development of the one ensures the other thrives too.

But not so in the case of authoritarian regimes, where scientific practice is subjected to ideological control. A case in point is the former USSR. Here, Marxist-Leninist materialism infested and constricted all knowledge practices. The notion of an individuating democracy, with its adjunct of equally individuating human rights, was nowhere to be seen. The collapse of the USSR was guaranteed.

In “Western” social orders, premised on notions of democracy and human rights, knowledge production in both the natural and social sciences thrived and is still thriving. A country at the forefront of knowledge production — the US — is now facing King Trump’s ideological will and whims as he insists universities bow down before him. Is he perhaps following the playbook of former security guard, Putin, or that of centralist, Xi? Perhaps he read too much Mao?

If he is not careful, his rule by executive orders may just end up training university students to salute well instead of learning to critically read books.

— Glenville Wyngaard, Bredasdorp

Politicians created our crime problem

The brutal killing of a journalist and his partner demonstrates the demonic desire for material wealth in this country and its often-fatal consequences.

The people who created this problem are politicians, through their overt engagement in the looting of public resources. Brutal crime grew in tandem with political corruption, where state resources supposed to uplift communities are plundered, often with impunity. To a large extent the entire community is implicated in producing a generation of very angry men who are willing to kill and inflict so much fear in the communities that reared them.

With a police force under a very capable spokesperson, we are made to forget that the main mandate of the police is to prevent crime. The preventive aspect of policing has been jettisoned in favour of making after-the-fact statements about how resources will be ploughed into dealing with crime. In my community of Jukulyn in Soshanguve, gangs have turned it into a killing field where hardly anyone is arrested for the brutal crimes.

Unless communities correctly identify those who are responsible for the crime in our country we are likely to prescribe wrong solutions.

— Mishack Junior Nthane, Soshanguve 

BEE must shoulder the blame

Your article on the Afrikaners' refugee status and President Cyril Ramaphosa's response attracted my attention. President Trump has put the matter on the radar.

We as a nation are also pondering the plight of our fellow Afrikaners as we all feel the yoke of a B-BBEE that favours very few people. Does this not weigh heavily on our political conscience as a nation — that the Afrikaners who answered to President Trump's invitation are indeed refugees from ill-conceived B-BBEE policies?

To what extent does B-BBEE make our fellow Afrikaners outcasts in their country, to the extent that the US overreacted by labelling them “refugees” from their economic hardships in their fatherland? To what extent is B-BBEE reverse racism instead of using forgiveness and reconciliation as a better approach to economic recovery and development? 

From our sad history as a country, the revolution can draw lessons from the reconciliation after the Anglo-Boer War and build bridges between races today with a view to addressing the collapsed economy and infrastructure — which should now be our major focus as a post-apartheid nation. 

We can remake our country by recognising the true virtue of reconciliation and its economically rewarding effects.

The media can play a significant role by putting much-needed conciliatory views in the public domain to generate national discussion.

— Moikwatlhai Seitisho, Phuthaditjhaba

For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za