South African academic under fire over Hitler comments
Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) – A South African university lecturer is in hot water over remarks he made about Adolf Hitler.
University of Cape Town (UCT) lecturer Lwazi Lushaba was recorded saying “Hitler committed no crime. All Hitler did was to do to white people what white people had normally reserved for black people,” he said.
The official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) says the Holocaust was unequivocally a crime against humanity orchestrated by Hitler and it has reported the matter to the South African Human Rights Commission.
It said his comments were not only racist, offensive and vile, but also completely insensitive to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and the Jewish community as a whole.
Lushaba has a long history of controversial actions. In 2019, he allegedly took exception to one of the contender’s in the university’s election of its Dean of Humanities being Tanzanian and not South African.
Lushaba was also suspended by the University of the Witwatersrand in 2015 for “participating in activities which were not conducive to free and fair elections and were intolerant to a democratic society”.
The DA has urged UCT’s Vice Chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng to place him on suspension pending the investigation.
South Africa’s Jewish community on Friday observed Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
-0- PANA CU/AR 9April2021
