UCT lecturer’s Hitler comment causes outrage

The fact that a high-level University of Cape Town (UCT) lecturer told his students that “Hitler committed no crime” seems too unbelievable to be true, but it happened on 7 April 2021, on the eve of Yom Hashoah.

The phrase was uttered in a pre-recorded “introduction to political science” lecture by Dr Lwazi Lushaba, a lecturer in the political studies department at UCT, for first-year students. His only response to questions by the SA Jewish Report about his comment was, “please watch and be educated”, attaching the lecture and signing off as “Commandante Lushaba”.

During the talk, he claimed that politics hadn’t been informed by the lived experiences of black people, and that it took “what Hitler did to white people” to have massacres recognised in political science. “All Hitler did was to do to white people what white people had reserved for us – black people,” Lushaba said. “And so his crime, if he had a crime, was to do unto white people what white people have thought was right to do only to black people.” He went on to say that the Holocaust mustn’t be prioritised over other massacres.

The comments have sown deep division, and have been hijacked by some wanting to criticise Israel and the Jewish community. However, leading educator Professor Jonathan Jansen tweeted, “From the Wits student, Dlamini, to the UCT lecturer, Lushaba, the positive referencing of Hitler is more than attention-seeking behaviour by the intellectually vacuous. They reveal the utter depravity of the public discourse on university campuses today.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is to lodge a complaint against Lushaba with the South African Human Rights Commission. “The Holocaust was unequivocally a crime against humanity orchestrated by Hitler. The DA therefore strongly condemns the comments made by Lushaba,” said DA MP Natasha Mazzone.

“His comments weren’t only racist, offensive, and vile, but also completely insensitive to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and the Jewish community as a whole. In remembering the victims of the Holocaust, we must place a renewed sense of responsibility on those in positions of power and influence to defend the truth and defend our democracy against any racist or antisemitic sentiments.”

“Lushaba has a long history of offensive and controversial actions,” Mazzone said. “In 2019, he allegedly took exception to one of the contenders in UCT’s election of its dean of humanities being Tanzanian and not South African. In an interview with Power FM, Lushaba stated that “reason and rationality are white”. Lushaba was also suspended by Wits [the University of the Witwatersrand] in 2015 for “participating in activities which weren’t conducive to free and fair elections, and were intolerant to a democratic society”.

The DA urged the institution’s vice-chancellor, Mamokgethi Phakeng, to place Lushaba on suspension pending the investigation. But UCT’s students’ representative council (SRC) has defended the lecturer. SRC chairperson Declan Dyer said it noted the public reaction, but the comments had been taken out of context, and were part of a larger critique of political science.

Student responses have varied. Jewish student Sam McNally, who is studying for a Bachelor of Arts in English and politics, told the SA Jewish Report, “As someone who has watched the lecture in its entirety, I believe Dr Lushaba’s point about the hypocrisy of ‘Western’ or ‘white’ political science holds up, but only in a very general sense. But his argument neglects to mention that Jews at the time weren’t exactly considered white and certainly weren’t considered such by eugenics, the prevailing racial ‘science’ of the time that formed a large part of Hitler’s justification for his actions.

“My main issue regarding the statement that ‘Hitler committed no crime’ is that it bears little to no relation to the point [Lushaba was trying to make],” continues McNally. “White people being hypocritical about genocide has nothing to do with Hitler’s criminality. As to whether Dr Lushaba meant something different by his comment – which is a theory I have heard postulated, particularly in the form, ‘He didn’t mean to say that Hitler committed no crime, but that he committed no more of a crime than colonial architects of genocide’, my view is that if he meant that, then he should have said it.”

Another Jewish student, speaking on condition of anonymity, says, “I believe Dr Lushaba is very critical of white people. I believe he was very negligent in his use of words. However, I don’t believe his statements were hate speech or antisemitic. I believe he was trying to illustrate the point that the world took notice of atrocities only when they were done to white people.”

Professor Adam Mendelsohn, the director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at UCT, says, “On the face of it, Dr Lushaba’s comments appear to justify the Holocaust and absolve Hitler of responsibility for mass murder. Hearing his comments in the context of the broader lecture, Dr Lushaba seems to be claiming that Hitler acted within the legal and institutional system of the German state, and was therefore – according to the prevailing terms of German law – guilty of no explicit crime. This interpretation may make sense given Dr Lushaba’s larger argument about the shift of thinking within political studies as well as his repeated recognition that Nazism was responsible for genocide.

“All that being said, the historical claims that Dr Lushaba makes – about Hitler’s rise to power, the role of law within the Nazi state, the nature of Nazi antisemitism, and the ‘whiteness’ of Jews, the timing of the Final Solution – betray significant historical blind spots and errors,” Mendelsohn says. “At many points in his lecture, dubious historical claims are yoked to polemical claims. He could do with reading much more about Nazism and the Holocaust.”

Mathilde Myburgh, communications officer at the Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies, says the board has given videos of Lushaba’s lecture and supporting information to its antisemitism and legal subcommittee, which is investigating the matter.

“Academic freedom and freedom of expression mustn’t undermine the central aim of our Constitution, which is to build a united and democratic South Africa based on mutual respect, understanding, and human dignity. Universities help shape the minds of the future leaders of our country. The personal views shared by this UCT lecturer were received as hateful and deeply offensive, and should have no part in the academic syllabus of a public university,” she says.

“To our knowledge, Dr Lushaba hasn’t yet apologised for or retracted his remarks. We await his further engagement on the matter, and would be willing to meet him. We have reached out to Vice-Chancellor Phakeng, and the university has launched an investigation. We believe the matter is for UCT to investigate and respond before any further measures are considered.”

Tali Nates and Mary Kluk of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation say, “The Holocaust is one of the most horrific periods in the history of mankind. It’s deeply disturbing to hear reference to this painful history in a manner so laden with irony and cynicism without consideration of the damage and hurt that this flippant reference can cause.”

Says UCT spokesperson Elijah Moholola, “The University of Cape Town has been alerted to and notes with grave concern comments allegedly made by a staff member during an online class. We are verifying all the facts. In the meantime, UCT is clear that all brutalities of genocide constitute both formal crimes against humanity and ongoing sources of pain. We distance ourselves strongly from any other view. The matter is receiving attention through all appropriate channels.”