A UCU activist and former National Executive Committee member was concerned about her Union inviting Bongani Masuku. She wrote to the Activists List:

Sent: 08 December 2009 18:50
To: UCU activists e-group
Subject: [activists] speakers at UCU meetings

I believe that UCU does genuinely try to put equality at the heart of everything it does, which does not mean that mistakes do not occasionally happen. In general, everyone to whom we provide a platform as part of a UCU event should have a positive record on equality issues or at least not be guilty of making prejudiced or otherwise hate-motivated public statements. I am not suggesting that we vet speakers. However, when information about speakers becomes available we should evaluate it to determine both its reliability and seriousness. With regards to the reliability of the information its source is particularly important.

In this case of Mr Masuku, an invitation to the international secretary of a Congress of Trade Unions should not have been problematical. However, when further information became available from the South African Human Rights Commission we should have acted on this, unless we felt that there had been a miscarriage of justice or that the SAHRC is not a reputable body. I am assuming it is, though willing to be corrected on this. When a speaker who had made homophobic comments was invited to a stop the war conference that we were involved with, we and other trade unions very rightly made representations to stop the war and the speaker was withdrawn.

Her queries are well-made. We would answer some of her comments:

• Mr Masuku’s remarks were publicly available all over the Internet and reported in the South African media. In a Google-search for “Bongani Masuku”, the first result is a report of these remarks, dated March.
• Mr Masuku was proactively invited by UCU to attend the private boycott conference. This was not a situation where UCU simply failed to do its research; it must have done some research on Mr Masuku, otherwise why invite him in the first place?
• Mr Masuku has not denied making the comments in question. He can’t, as some of them are in writing and some of them were recorded at the time.
• The South African Human Rights Commission is a respected body in South Africa, run by veteran anti-apartheid campaigners and human rights lawyers. It is a key part of the post-apartheid settlement in South Africa.

Gavin Reid is a pro-boycott campaigner and UCU activist who chaired the BRICUP event in Leeds last night. Mr Masuku was originally supposed to speak at the event but he didn’t turn up. Gavin Reid answered the UCU Activist above as follows:

Gavin Reid
To: UCU activists e-group
Subject: RE: [activists] speakers at UCU meetings

I chaired a meeting tonight in Leeds ‘Israel, the Palestinians and Apartheid’. Around 200 people attended from the Yorkshire region to listen to speakers from ANC, Cosatu, War on Want and the Palestinian campaign for BDS. I can assure the list that everybody at the meeting contributed with respect for each other’s positions, indeed I made it a requirement of their continuing presence at the meeting. In case the question arises, Leeds UCU did not contribute any funds to the meeting and a collection was taken to cover costs.

Mr Masuku was not present as he has since returned to South Africa via Botswana at the weekend. I understand that he categorically denies any accusations of racism and that Cosatu has issued a statement relating to this in SA today. It goes without saying, I hope, that UCU would not share any platform with any known racist. I certainly would not do so either.

I further understand that the position adopted by the SA Human Rights Commission was apparently taken without Mr Masuku being allowed to refute the ‘charges’ and is, therefore, likely to be subject to legal action in SA. Certainly there will need to be a more careful analysis than that currently being presented as fact by others.

The Pro-Israel lobby tried unsuccessfully to have the meeting banned on the basis of the reports of Mr Masuku’s position. The University of Leeds has a protocol on Freedom of Expression that has provided a strong framework for ‘controversial’ meetings to take place, despite making an almost prohibitively expensive charge for the use of the room!

Mr Reid’s response gives a misleading impression. He says (above):

“I further understand that the position adopted by the SA Human Rights Commission was apparently taken without Mr Masuku being allowed to refute the ‘charges’”

Note the scare-quotes around the word ‘charges’. But the SAHRC Ruling, available online since Friday and in the possession of UCU, speaks clearly in paragraphs 23 and 25 about:

“[Masuku's] response to the allegations put to him by the South African Human Rights Commission”

He also says (above)

“I understand that he categorically denies any accusations of racism”

Mr Masuku does not deny making the comments, comments found by the SAHRC to be Hate Speech. Does UCU believe that someone accused of racist Hate Speech has to actually admit that his comments were racist before it will take action?

Bongani Masuku, the International Secretary of COSATU (the South African TUC), is touring the UK in the next few days. He, together with Ronnie Kasrils and Omar Barghouti, is speaking at SOAS, Leeds and Manchester Universities, and the Scottish TUC in Glasgow. The tour, to promote a boycott of Israel, is organised by BRICUP.

Bongani Masuku has made inflammatory and threatening statements against the South African Jewish community because of their support for Israel. Alana Pugh-Jones of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies says:

Specifically, Masuku had openly and repeatedly stated that COSATU would target Jewish supporters of Israel and “make their lives hell” and urged that “every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine”.

Ami on Harry’s Place highlighted more examples of Masuku’s threats, and ENGAGE reported that South African Human Rights Commission ruled that Masuku’s comments are Hate Speech. If Masuku does not apologise within 15 days, the Human Rights Commission will take him to court. The commission found:

The comments and statements made are of an extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned, ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation.  A prima facie case of hate speech is clearly established as the statements and comments by Mr. Masuku are offensive and unpalatable to society.

Fair Play can now reveal that Bongani Masuku is actually coming to Britain as a guest of UCU.

UCU is hosting a conference on Saturday to strategise on how best to boycott Israel. The agenda of the conference is a secret. The venue is a secret, as are the speakers and attendees. UCU has not told its own membership about the conference and has refused requests for further information – perhaps the conference itself was supposed to be a secret too.

However, we have learnt that Bongani Masuku is one of the invited speakers, along with Kasrils and Barghouti. The BRICUP tour is only an “spin-off” event. UCU has indicated that is paying for international visitors to the conference; this would mean that it is paying for Masuku’s visit to Britain.

We are shocked that UCU would host someone like Masuku, who incites violence against Jews in his home country, as an honoured guest. However, we are not surprised. At its annual conference this year, UCU voted not to investigate why so many of its Jewish members had resigned. One of the arguments against this proposed investigation was that it would undermine the Union’s ability to campaign for the Palestinians.

So UCU members’ subscription money is being used, we believe, to pay for Bongani Masuku to spread his incitement in the UK. UCU is trying to keep this a secret from its own members. UCU is running closed-door strategy meetings on a boycott of Israel, despite its own repeated legal advice that “making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation“ and therefore “an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented“. And Bongani Masuku is a key guest at this conference.

UCU no longer has any credibility as an anti-racist organisation.

Last night, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg delivered the second annual lecture of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. In a good speech, he specifically condemned moves to boycott Israeli academics. He said:

“..we need to be much more active, more vocal, in our condemnation of antisemitism.

One issue where that is especially true is academic boycotts of Israeli academics. Totally unacceptable. Whether boycotters realise it or not these modern-day exclusions, based on nationality and tied to religion, carry enormous historical baggage. My party has made it clear we find them morally objectionable, and also counterproductive: the only route to peace will only ever be through dialogue.”

Dear Mr Wallis,

Thank you for clarifying the meaning of your remarks about lawyers backed by those with “bank balances from Lehman Brothers that can’t be tracked down”. We will be reproducing that part of your email that clarifies these remarks on our website, as promised.

We will not be reproducing your whole email, because some of the specific accusations you make against us in the rest of the message are simply untrue. It is unfortunate that you chose to forward these accusations to UCU’s General Secretary and UCL UCU Branch committee.

Similarly, we were upset to hear that a trade union meeting of 60 people debated a motion that claimed we were deliberately trying to “smear [your] name”. This is a serious and false charge made by the original author of the motion.

We have considered your comments:

In our original article, we claim you made remarks linking anti-boycott legal action to untraceable Lehman Brother accounts. We note that you accept making these remarks in your response.

We also state that it was not entirely clear what you meant by those remarks. You have now explained that you were referring to “wealthy individuals” who would no longer have the wherewithal to take action against UCU.

As someone who was present for the BRICUP fringe event, I do not find this explanation particularly convincing, especially as you were speaking specifically at that point about the threats the Union faced from legal action. Obviously, I have no way of knowing what you were thinking when you spoke, but we are comfortable with our original claim – that it was not, at the time, entirely obvious what you meant.

These are the only assertions about you in our report. We stand by our original report and are not inclined to withdraw it. We do not accept your claim that a failure to remove a true and accurate report would indicate complicity in a smear campaign.
Yours sincerely,

Arieh Kovler
Fair Play Campaign Group

In response to our request for clarification, Sean Wallis sent us a longer message. He explains his remarks in the excerpt below.

Your report suggests anti-semitic intent on my part in referring to the words “Lehmann Brothers”. I categorically deny this intent.

But this is simply not a plausible neutral interpretation of my remarks.

As you are aware, one of the biggest political events last year, and an issue that is occupying most of our minds as trade unionists was/is the “credit crunch”. In the case of the USA the collapse of the Lehmann Brothers loomed large in all reporting.

An unbiased observer would have clearly understood that my comments were made precisely in the context of the abilities of wealthy individuals having the means to pursue UCU for damages in the courts, and that any democrat worth the name should come to the aid of those who wished to see an unfettered debate in the union.