Being published

I submitted this opinion piece to the East Cape News editor. I had hoped that he would send it on to the Daily Dispatch or another suitably serious publication, instead he chose to publish it in his magazine, the Makana Moon. (The Makana Moon is a small Grahamstown magazine. It is presently only 12 pages long. I haven't seen it before as it is fairly new.)

I'm disappointed. As an editor in charge of a news agency I thought he would take a moment to consider where it would be most appropriate to try and have the article published. To be fair though I did not stipulate where I wanted the piece published. Had I known of the Makana Moon I would most likely have been more specific in my request.

So this is not the start I'm looking for, but it is a publication.

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Mpshe's Plagiarism

Plagiarism has long been a topic of concern at South African universities. Recent events have however catapulted the topic of plagiarism to a subject of national interest. Mokotedi Mpshe plagiarised when explaining his decision to drop corruption charges against Jacob Zuma.

Many South Africans are still reeling from Mpshe’s decision, and it is certainly hard to internalise how quickly the will to pursue charges against Zuma evaporated over several short weeks. The legal aspects of this decision have come under serious criticism, but less energy has been devoted to exploring the nature of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a simple concept. The Oxford dictionary describes it in one line: to “take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as one’s own.” Plagiarism is then, in all but a very few cases, an act of dishonesty. In academic circles it is so detested that it is regarded as theft. Mpshe did not acknowledge the source of his words, but this is not to say that he did not agree with them, and perhaps he felt that the passages he plagiarised expressed his thoughts better than he could.

This seems unlikely though. People in positions of power that struggle over difficult decisions, as Mpshe claimed to have done, have a lot to say. Former presidents often make millions on the lecture circuit, while many others also go on to lecture and publish accounts of their decisions, and how they reached them. These people do not plagiarise.

A small portion of people who plagiarise do so out of naivety or inexperience. Mpshe, who rose to the high office of Director of Public Prosecutions, does not fall within this category.

Others plagiarise knowingly, and with every intention of passing off another person’s work as their own. They do this for one of two reasons: either they are incapable of producing their own work, or they plagiarise in attempt to avoid having to produce their own work.

Was Mpshe incapable of making a decision in the Zuma matter? If so, how is it that he came to be the Director of Public Prosecutions? Did Mpshe wish to avoid weighing up the competing arguments and making a decision? Perhaps he did, but he made a decision and dropped the charges. Why didn’t he rely solely on his own reasoning and instead plagiarise passages? Did he feel that his own reasoning was inadequate and did not justify dropping the charges?

Mpshe did not plagiarise out of naivety or inexperience, his was the dishonest and ugly kind. Given that he was dishonest, perhaps we should contemplate whether the plagiarism was motivated by a desire to conceal his true reasoning.

If Mpshe’s decision to drop the charges was influenced by factors that he ought not to have considered, he would have had a strong motivation not to reveal his true reasoning to the South African public. Mphse would have had reason to engage in an act of deceit. Plagiarism, when not of the naive or inexperienced variety, is an act of deceit.

Mpshe’s decision to drop charges against Jacob Zuma has done little to resolve serious questions about Zuma’s integrity. Moreover it raised serious questions about his own integrity.