Sometimes one needs to wield a large chopper in defense of good sense

I wish to take issue with the tone of Messrs. Stephenson and Van Heerden.

Firstly, Stephenson feels that LitNet is biased in favour of Krog and considers this unhealthy. One proper response might be: who died and made Stephenson King of the World? What right has he to pronounce on LitNet’s preferences? He could easily have rebutted them had they been rebuttable.

The reason why LitNet’s responses have been favourable to Krog appears to be that Watson has wrongly accused Krog of plagiarism in an article riddled with false claims, dishonest innuendoes and shabby scholarship. Complaining about this seems to be claiming that one ought to support lies, fraudulence and incompetence. Let Stephenson prove that Watson is innocent – a difficult task, I must say, since Watson appears to have condemned himself past redemption through his infamous publication.

I fail to see, either, why someone else’s anonymous denunciations of Krog, valid or invalid (in my judgement they are invalid, and the anonymity of the attack speaks for itself) has anything to do with the issue of Watson’s behaviour. Stephenson appears to be muddying the waters.

Secondly. Van Heerden is appallingly, belly-crawlingly apologetic for being obliged to be nasty to Professor Watson. George Orwell remarked that if Shakespeare were brought back to life and we discovered that he was an incurable paedophile, we should not tell him to go for it in the hope that he might otherwise produce another Hamlet. Similarly, if Watson is really responsible for writing a dishonest, inaccurate, bigoted and self-serving attack on a fellow writer in a publication in the production of which he had a personal interest (and a personal relationship with the editor thereof) then he has violated most of the unwritten laws which Humanities academics exist to uphold. There should be no apology for condemnations in such a case. Particularly one should not stagger back in horror at the probability that some people will fling accusations of ethnic solidarity around. Surely this is merely evidence of the weakness of Watson’s case; indeed, so far Watson’s supporters have pursued the intellectual level of Deputy President Zuma’s supporters in the current rape trial, albeit with less courage and energy.

Lastly, I perceive that Van Heerden is excessively courteous to Tom Eaton. I can in part understand the psychological pressures which might have led Professor Watson to lash out at his imagined enemies and tormentors, because I am myself a Head of Department, though of a junior and under-resourced one. I can’t imagine any favourable justification for Eaton’s publishing that article, instead of taking Watson gently by the arm and leading him home for a warm bath, a whisky and a severe talking-to. It was sheer knowing exploitation on Eaton’s part. Anyone who retains any respect whatsoever for Eaton should re-read Eaton’s article in last Friday’s Mail and Guardian, cravenly denying intending doing Krog any harm (by denying that she was a poet and accusing her of copying everything she has ever written) and facilely declaring that the real criminals in the piece (Afrikaners to a man, apparently) are those who defend Krog and stand up for academic integrity. I don’t think that I could deliver any greater abuse against Eaton than he routinely does against himself, so I’ll stop there, but his smug, hypocritical corruption makes me sweat with nausea.

It is true that we should be polite where politeness is due. However, sometimes one needs to wield a large chopper in defense of good sense. This strikes me plainly as one of those cases.

Regards

Mathew Blatchford
Department of English Language and Comparative Literature
University of Fort Hare



LitNet: 13 March 2006

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