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Letter to Makgoba from Costa Gazi
by imc-ct
Friday, Jan. 06, 2006 at 2:42 AM
Letter to Vice Chancellor Makgoba from Costa Gazi
Professor Malegapuru W. Makgoba
Vice-Chancellor
University of KwaZulu-Natal
King George V Avenue
Glenwood
DURBAN
4041
05 January 2006
FAX: 031-2621873
Dear Professor Makgoba
THE BAN ON ASHWIN DESAI
I wish to add my voice to the much louder academic voices which have
criticised your decision to exclude Ashwin Desai from your campus by quoting
an outdated resolution. I have read his book "We are the Poors" and have
admired his courage and insight into the way the country is going.
I heard you at the 2000 AIDS conference in Durban where you valiantly tried
to defend the denialism of Thabo Mbeki by not throwing your scientific book
at him. Your friendship wore thin after that, and you felt you had to leave
the Medical Research Council which you headed, despite the fact that you are
one of the world's top immunological scientists.
That itself was a great loss to the country. Now it seems that your
reticence on that occasion has been compounded into a defence of authority
in whatever direction it points and needs. If you find yourself unable to
reverse your decision, then it would appear that you have given up the
scientific approach in favour of an uncritical defence of the government.
That would set a precedence for ending academic freedom in favour of
government control of academe. You may not remember that the apartheid
regime did the same thing in order to control academic output.
(Dr) Costa Gazi
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