THIS POST MAY BE CONSIDERED BY SOME TO CONTAIN PREJUDICE.
This post is going to upset some individuals. Too Bad!
Apartheid was a crime against white South Africans. You ask, how can I make a statement like this? Read on and decide for yourself.
Apartheid DID NOT deny black South Africans shelter from the weather. It gave black people places to dwell. Black people, by your own decision you decided to leave your homes and congregate in your millions in the cities where 7 million or more of you live without work in abject squalor and filth.
Apartheid gave all of us the best transport network in Africa to use. You yourselves in 16 years have turned the roads to rubble, the rails to a mangled mess.
Apartheid gave everyone an electricity grid that was efficient and well maintained. You yourselves have seen fit to destroy it through lack of maintenance and theft.
Apartheid built black people schools, which you systematically burned or turned into broken hovels. It gave you functioning hospitals which you have turned into cesspits of disease.
Apartheid DID NOT give black people the highest rate of HIV / AIDS in the world. Your own stupidity, adherence to ‘archaic traditional ways’ and sick sexual practices did that to yourselves
Apartheid DID NOT create the crime wave that has swept our nation. You did that yourselves.
Apartheid DID NOT give black people unemployment, if anything a higher percentage of you had jobs back then. You yourselves went out of your way to destroy commercial activity in South Africa
Apartheid did not create the slums black people live in. You have always turned wherever you live into squalor, just look at places like Hillbrow and the central areas of every city you have chosen to flood with your overcrowding.
Apartheid DID NOT pollute your water supply with cholera and other diseases. You did that with your desire to shit in any place that is pleasant, like river banks.
Every other group of so called oppressed people prospered under apartheid; The Indians built an untold number of schools to educate themselves. Today there are more Indian Doctors than Black, even though they are the smallest minority group. They created an uncountable number of businesses that continue to contribute to the economy (and employ you). Even white people, and yes, under apartheid English speaking white people were also oppressed and discriminated against, yet they prospered.
Apartheid gave black people your greatest leaders. Without apartheid those visionary leaders like Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko, Walter Sisulu and others, would still be unknown names.
And remember this; black people did NOT overthrow apartheid. White people had to do that for you as well. Frankly, a vast majority of white South Africans had become so sick and tired of looking after you, providing your every need. We decided it was well time you looked after yourselves; Guess what? You have proven absolutely incapable of doing so.
For white people, apartheid limited our freedom of movement as much as it did black people. It prevented us from forming relationships of friendship and even family as much as it did to black people.
Apartheid placed a financial burden on white people we still bear to this day.
Apartheid denied white people freedom of thought and expression.
Apartheid forced white people to live in their own areas, which white people maintained and improved, and kept free of crime.
Apartheid forced white people to attend their own schools, where they somehow managed to become educated in spite of often incompetent teachers.
Apartheid meant that for many years we lived with the potential of being killed or injured in a bomb blast. Yet we managed to get on with our lives.
Apartheid forced our young people to be conscripted to defend itself, and caused irrevocable damage to many of those children.
Apartheid caused disruption and division within white family units and friendships, as much as it united black people.
Yet we survived.
Yes, apartheid was a crime against white people.
IN FACT APARTHEID WAS A CRIME AGAINST ALL SOUTH AFRICANS!
Young white teenagers and men who were conscientious objectors were incarcerated without trial, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for months- and some lie in the same coffin-on coffin rows of unmarked graves that black men killed in incarceration lie in.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin was one of them. After 9 months in DB, 6 in solitary confinement he was skin and bone, sick and the only reason he hadn't committed suicide while in DB was because most of his time in solitary he had been naked.
The South African Council of Churches and other predominantly white, mainly Christian groups helped the ANC to form itself and supported it from the 1950's onwards. REcognition of their contribution, if noted at all, has been brief in passing.
Black nationalism is a terrible thing. Ask citizens of Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, Cote D' Ivoire, Benin, Angola and many other African countries who benefits - Politicians, the military, the police. The citizens get poorer, get harassed and terrorised by the police and the army, and the gap between rich and poor is wide, with a small or nonexistant middle class.
Many white people did voice their disapproval of the Apartheid system. Many of their voices were silenced permanently, or family members were killed, or they were simply arrested and badly beaten up so many times, refused employment and ignored by their neighbours and family who were afraid of similar treatment by the SAPS that they either emigrated or committed suicide.
Arroganc and apathy have replaced the group areas act. Reverse racism has replaced the division of families and neighbourhoods, forced relocation and jail terms for mixed couples.
I who was raised by a black woman while my mother was working two jobs, who slept next to her warm body,was cared for her when I was sick, cannot consider ANY person to be less than I am.
We who were born and grew up towards the end of Apartheid were treated with suspicion if we spoke to people from other race groups as eqals. We had black maids. We bought fabric and other goods from Indian shops. We lived in seperate areas already entrenched by the time we were born. We bear no blame for it, and I do have any guilt for I was not a part of it.
South Africa is not doing well...
As 'one of them' your cousin has my regards....
ReplyDeleteNothing on this earth would have forced me to support the 'Pretoria Regime'.
The treatment objectors received at the hands of the 'regime' was as despicanle and severe as that handed out to those citizens of darker skin colouration.
Yet today, the new 'regime' has no regard for those who Actively or Passively stood up for justice and human rights for all, regardless of race, colour or creed.
Especially disregarded are those who remained here in SA under the oppressors, while a large number of these new 'racists' were skulking in exile in foreign lands.
Instad they discriminate against those of lighter complexion with new legislated racism, e.g. 'employment equity'.
Mike Otgaar (Author: APARTHEID, A CRIME AGAINST WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS)