DEAR Editor,-
I guess that there has rarely been so much hot air and obfuscation expressed in your columns as that surrounding the issue of the possible nudist beach at Mpenjati.
Aside from the subject of its illegality or otherwise, if a few people want to get their kit off on a designated beach then is it really an issue of such abiding importance? There would doubtlessly only be a dedicated few in any case, hardly likely to descend into a Bacchanalian orgy of thousands with a devastating effect on coastal morals or the end of life as we know it.
In any case, what is the long-accepted topless bathing on Llandudno and other Atlantic coast beaches in the Cape, with a bit of string on the nether regions, if not virtual nudity? Maybe it’s only the male appendage that causes such excitement?
Of course there are those who would tell us that the glimpse of an exposed female midriff is only a short step away from eternal damnation and herein lies my point. Who is the Rev Mike Effanga? And who does he think he represents along with the other so-called ‘community leaders’?
None of them are my religious or community leader – I don’t have one, nor do I need one. Nor do I need someone to purport to act on my behalf on a subject I am, at best, indifferent to. The days when the majority of people needed self-appointed religious ‘leaders’ to tell them how to think and define their morals for them are, or should be, long gone. I can think for myself thank you very much.
The claim in his letter that the opposition to a nudist beach is shared ‘by the majority of locals of HCM’ is, I would bet, a specious claim. It’s hardly a hot topic with people of my acquaintance, who are a pretty wide cross-section, and if it is ever raised at all, a subject for a mere shrug of the shoulders.
If a proper poll were conducted, I suggest it would find that most people are quite tolerant, as long as the issue is not thrust in their face – and significantly, this proposal is not a blanket sanction, but only applies to one section of one particular place.
Be that as it may, and setting aside the issues of legality, my message to the Rev Effanga and his ilk is this: Do not dress yourself up as something you are not. Rather admit that you are a minority pressure group trying to impose its own particular morals on the majority of citizens. And don’t have the arrogance to claim to represent that majority.
For the record I am not a nudist, nor an advocate of nudism. A glimpse of the majority of bodies bereft of all clothing would probably put most people off anyway, but each to his own.
BARCLAY JAMES
Umtentweni
