Academics, union leaders accused of treason

South Africa is increasingly becoming a hostile terrain for critical thinkers.

Academics now fear that paranoia and intolerance at the top are driving a state-sponsored clampdown on thinkers critical of the government.

Yesterday five well-known academics, including Wits University economics professor Chris Malikane and the University of KwaZulu- Natal's Patrick Bond, were named in an "intelligence report" as conspirators in a coup plot - of being guilty of treason.

The document, titled "Exposed - Secret Regime Change Plot to Destabilise South Africa", claims that National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) leaders Irvin Jim and Karl Kloete are the plot masterminds, along with several academics. They are said to be planning the illegal ousting from power of the ANC.

The report implicates in the "plot" several civil society leaders who have aligned themselves with Numsa's United Front.

Numsa has accused the SA Communist Party and the ANC of authoring the report.

Jim yesterday demanded that the State Security Agency investigate its origins.

His deputy, Kloete, said the union would ask the inspector-general of intelligence, Faith Radebe, to order the investigation.

According to the report, professors Noor Nieftagodien, Peter Jordi and Brian Mendez Hotz, along with Malikane and Bond, are entangled in efforts to overthrow the ANC government in collaboration with Numsa and international socialist partners.

Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils was also named in the report, which was brought to light by the SA Communist Party.

Nieftagodien and Hotz raised their concerns about the report and its implications alongside the Numsa leadership yesterday at a media briefing in Johannesburg.

"We have to understand that there is something sinister happening in South Africa. It is intolerance of different viewpoints," said Hotz.

Nieftagodien added: "[This report] is an attack on critical engagement by academics."

Bond' s offices at the University of KwaZulu-Natal were broken into recently.

Earlier this year, University of Johannesburg sociology professor Peter Alexander's research documents were stolen leading to suspicions that attempts were being made to silence him.

"We are in a big jail called South Africa," said Kloete. "I guess there is a big wish now that all 50million people in South Africa must belong to the ANC."