The wave of racist comments around Eskom and its — and by extension the government’s — incapacity to manage things has abated a little in my life.
I liked the timing of one person’s comment — with the news of the blackouts, and Kenya’s troubles, someone turned to me and exclaimed about Africa’s inability to manage itself. I said that no one said that about Asians, because of Burma and Sri Lanka. At that point the news switched to coverage of a 10-day power outage in some parts of China, blamed on some particularly vicious weather. I have to say I was pleased, about which I am rather sorry now. I’m sure that was bad for my karma.
But that sort of timing is rare. Mostly people get to say horrible things about Africans, and then there is some dire report, Africans being shot, or starved, or shot and starved, and people get to look at each other, and nod, yes, yes, we are right, these Africans can’t organise a piss-up in the proverbial. And the Eskom crisis has brought them all out of the woodwork, all right. The most annoying are saintly about it, as in, shame, these poor blacks, we must be tolerant of their failures.
How do you deal with this wave of racist vomit? It is absolutely no use in my experience to point to any individual high fliers — the average person will happily discount the individual success as a lawyer or astrophysicist as exceptional, and of no application to society at large. George Bush can fail, and be stupid with it, but no one says, “Well, those whites, you know.” (Not in my circles anyway — they say, “Well, those Americans, you know.”)
Pointing out that Buyelwa Sonjica was just repeating the old English saying “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” is also not useful — just not the right thing to say, even if it is a bit more resonant than the “get up clever” version her speechwriter came up with. (Who are these people? Are they paid?)
There is also, annoyingly, probably some truth to the fact that clumsy and badly considered affirmative action may have led to a skills erosion in Eskom — not that I know anything about affirmative action in Eskom, but I have heard enough really daft interpretations of affirmative action to be suspicious. My favourite was a senior employee in home affairs, since departed, who suggested that affirmative action should be applied to immigrants. What?!
I could, you may say, just change the circles in which I move. I could, I guess. But I am probably not going to do that — I am most likely just going to continue to point out haplessly that government officials are also white, and some Indian, and everyone gets it wrong sometimes. The minute that criticism of Eskom loses its racist overtones, I’ll be in there, boots and all. I’m as mad as anyone at the lack of planning. But until then, count me out.
Eskom won some award in 2006 for being “the most transformed” corporation. A year later the lights went out. Let’s all pretend there’s no connection, shall we?
I applaud you for having the depth and true-sight to actually see through the bullshit-fog thats been suffocating everyone. Yesterday i did my best at thrusting and parrying such comments on Lazola Ndamase’s blog and alas my sword-arm has tired.
the sad thing i stated is that people don’t realise that a spear by nature has to be sharp on both sides, or you can no longer to refer to it as a spear. likewise in life, the individual is accountable for their own actions/inactions; their ethnic group, people who share shades of their skin colour/eyes/nose-shape/bodily shape/hair has NOTHING to do with the choices they make.
@Mandrake — Unfortunately it — skin colour — has everything to do with why they have been appointed to those decision-making jobs. That’s how “transformation” is measured.
Reading Mandrake’s response, I am without doubt joining the ‘count me out’ wagon.
The simple trouble is that if one critises the Government one is seen as being racist or a coconut and one is attacked. Race is the excuse as some people cannot bear the thought that they are actually making mistakes. (ie they shout racism to hide their incompetance just as apartheid was blamed.) At least now we are getting some apologies but still no one has been fired. Perhaps there is hope.
It’s easy to defeat us “racist”. Just use the truth, wipe the froth from the mouth and refrain from the insults.
Oh you can’t, you say, because the truth proves that the “racists” are actually right.
What a shame. Is it not amazing how quickly political correctness can change to bigotry, when one realizes that one’s anti-white racist rants have no foundation.
Taxman, you’re thus implying that all decision-makers are black and therefore underqualified.
Treat each board member and CEO by their own merits. Give me names and i’ll concede that Mr X and Mr Y failed.
when they got those jobs they knew that the advantage they had won’t do the job, they have to put in some input. if they failed persecute them, not BLACKS/COLOUREDS/INDIANS/BLACKANESE.
if you don’t get my point now, come on over to my watering-hole…i buy you a keg and we can swig to meaningless banter.
It is a shame that most of the analysis is crude and racist. It completely misses the point, and prevents us from getting to the real problems — be they incompetent individuals, failed execution of government plans, mistaken policy decisions, or misguided economic principles. As long as all the noise is about race, this disaster will never be solved.
Face the facts – the recent pronouncement by Eskom CEO, Jacob Moroga and our ANC political masters that we should be forward looking and solutions driven, rather than examining the reasons for the catastrophe and identifying the culprits wring completely hollow. It’s rather pathetic that they simply cannot take it on the chin, admit their culpability and resign. But rather than whinge and complain further, I would rather outline a proposal.
Government and Eskom tell us, the consumers, to reduce consumption, and threaten to ration use under threat of severe penalties. Naturally, households and businesses can do their bit. But what qualifies the people who caused this catastrophe in the first place to now pronounce on solutions? How can the problem become the solution? And how can consumers possibly have any confidence in such an approach? The answer is multi-faceted and requires the following ten steps:
1. Launch an immediate public judicial enquiry, headed by a panel of current and retired senior judges, with powers of sub poena against individual directors, ministers and cabinet minutes, and thereby identify and prosecute the people responsible. Charges of criminal negligence, economic sabotage, corporate manslaughter and perjury will follow. Following due process, jail and fine those found guilty, regardless of race.
2. Launch civil proceedings against current and past directors, both executive and non-executive, regardless of race, for damages caused to consumers. Some of the current (white female) non executive directors have rather fat bank accounts.
3. All damages to be paid into a fund to assist those who are most severely and negatively affected by the power blackouts and to finance capital expenditure.
4. Publish an open letter in the popular press, identifying the past and present directors of Eskom since 27th April 1994 and the bonuses and share allocations they received. Ask them politely to repay these amounts to the fund.
5. Insist that the current ministers for trade and industry, energy and the entire Eskom board resign with immediate effect. If they wish to reapply for their jobs let them do so on the Eskom website and let the consumers vote when they pay their next bill.
6. Immediate cancellation of any parts of the arms deal still outstanding. Sell all of the aircraft, corvettes, submarines and armaments back to the original sellers at cost, or on the open market or Ebay for that matter. This should generate a few billion Rands.
7. Launch an international talent search to identify, and hire the best 1000 engineers and technicians available at whatever it costs for five years and appoint them into Eskom.
8. Encourage innovative power saving solutions by household consumers via incentives such as free electricity for life for the best 10 ideas.
9. Cut off electricity to habitual non-payers, whoever and wherever they may be.
10. Allow and encourage private enterprise to build electricity generation and let people sell or trade electricity amongst themselves.
I think that the government should be criticised and taken to task over this failure and every other failure since they were elected. That is not racist, that is requirement of a functional democracy, to hold govt accountable. This government has failed significantly in a number of key areas such as education, healthcare and now energy. If examination of such failures lead to a debate on the merits of affirmative action as it is currently applied then the country is the better for it. Race is as much a part of policy now as it was prior to 1994, pretending it isn’t is not helpful to anyone.
Sites like ‘newnation’ and ‘southafricathetruth’ show how much white people organise and invest their minds on hate.
So I conclude, Racism has people and resources invested in it by some white(who seem to be in the majority by reading Thought Leader)
To Ivo Vegter:
Could you substantiate your allegations of “crude and racist analysis” please?
These “crude and racist analysis” should be easy to refute with factual evidence, right?
But what to do about those people, Sabelo? Trying to talk to a racist of any race is liking trying to talk to a drunk. You’ll never change their bloody minds (and, if you’re me, you sadly can’t afford to give them all plane tickets to Australia/New Zealand/the UK/whichever ‘first world’ country they’d prefer).
@Sabelo – And singing songs about “one farmer, one bullet” is not hate?
I am not into blanket blame either.
It is easy to avoid, just serve up the individuals actually responsible for this disaster.
Then there will no more race generalities, and the accountable individuals should rightly take it on the chin.
Whether these individuals be black or as white as Erwin’s lies.
This hasn’t happened yet, why not?
Who exactly is playing the race card here?
Which individuals benefit from blurring the lines of individual accountability for individual decisions.
Who actually benefits from being able to discount individual criticism as general racism?
Methinks they, like you dost protest too much.
Of course one of the biggest culprits is Alec “sabotage” Erwin, but he is a red.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the majority of the new occupants of state corner offices would not have got there if they were white. Yes, this is a superficial generalisation, but then, who intensified the racial dialogue in SA but Mbeki, to compensate for his lack of an internal constituency in the ANC. It is now also known that govt delayed Eskom’s expansion in order to give contracts to BEEs, cronies, and the usual suspects.
The real lessons to be learned from Eskom, I suggest are:
1 Central planning is worse than the market economy (which the collapse of the Berlin Wall showed the rest of the world)
2 Command economies are a road to disaster
3 You gotta pay your dues. This piece of (black) folk wisdom means that shooing out “apartheid” staff with requisite skills has had the obvious unintended consequences.
4 Big ain’t beautiful. Despite politicians love of grandiose schemes (mega-reactors), Big Electricity, like Big Business, Big Labour and Big Government are less efficient that lean and mean operations.
5 The less diversity, the greater risk. Allowing the “market” to experiment with different solutions, allows one to work. With the ANC’s (and Nats’) all-the-eggs-in-one-basket mentality, failure is always on a massive scale.
BTW: Unless there is some natural selection process eliminating racists from sports crowds, how is it that white supporters never fail to cheer blacks when they excel, just as much as they do for whites. Ditto blacks in the crowds cheer with equal colour blindness.
@Sabelo : and BEE isn’t a racist policy either, is it? It’s all about where you’re sitting.
@Sabelo … have a look at Azapo as well.
I quote: “everyone gets it wrong sometimes.” This is not sometimes – it is the result of a sustained cock-up by both Government and Eskom over about a decade. Its not about race – it is about lack of planning and stupidity and arrogance. A leader of the pack is Alec Erwin who, the last time I looked,was a rather pasty white.
Why do you want to pussy foot around race and dodge the issue? You can say ESKOM failure is about lack of coal. Why? Coal haulage was given to BEE contractors who took the money and didnt deliver. The fault is racial BEE policy of the ANC and incompetent BEE contractors, who wouldnt get tghe contracts if they were not Black. Racial problem.
Poor management at ESKOM and replacement of engineers who are white with non-engineers who are Black. The fault is transformation policy, which is racial.
The decision not to build new capacity? The ANC took it due to incompetence. This is due to over promotion of incompetent people. Again based on race.
Race factors into everything, so why the moral cowardice on discussing it?
I keep hearing it is not race; Blacks can run a country. OK pick 1 of nearly 50 in Africa and show where the have managed to run one efficiently without Whites backing them up. Lets see proof not words.
Dear Alison
You have missed the plot because you are blind to the obvious. Racist policies – BEE and AA – by the ANC and Eskom are a large part of our electricity supply debacle. Eskom has openly declared that people are being hired primarily to jobs (or contracts given) simply because the people are black. Eskom does not seem to regard skills and qualifications as important, if at all. Of course there are other significant problems with Eskom, like the obvious, pervasive greed.
It is well known that the ANC has used BEE and its funding organisation, Chancellor House, to secure contracts worth billions (about R20 billion!) to supply Eskom’s capital expenditure programme, even though they have not demonstrated any management and technical expertise in that area. That alone will guarantee that the problem we are experiencing now will persist.
Or do you define a racist as any white person who criticises blacks (fairly or unfairly)? Cannot blacks be racists too, according to your definition?
If you mean what you say: that you are waiting for the racial overtones to disappear before you add your voice to the chorus against Eskom’s ineptitude, then you are going to wait a long time. The problem is Eskom’s racial discrimination policies; before the policies were implemented Eskom was a well-run and respected company!
Nice cop out!
@Mac
Do you think they have missed the plot because they are blind or because they don’t want to admit it and risk being seen as ‘racist’? As a journalist it can be career killing.
Are liberals the way they are because they really believe the liberal version, because they feel guilty about racist thoughts, they are dreamers and wish it could be that way, or because that is what they must say?
How many secretly approve of ones that speak out and call a spade a spade? After all, most people voted for the Nats and 35% voted NO. Where are they all hiding? Eagle and I can’t be the only ones?
Not only will we wait a lifetime for racial overtones to disappear in what is clearly a product of racial policies, but we will wait forever for them to show us a country successfully managed by Blacks alone. They can’t. Even liberals can’t conjure up what doesnt exist. We just get ‘if only’, ‘they can but..’,
If only what? If only the ANC were such a bunch of incompetent thieves and thugs? Well they are, and people voted for and continue to vote for them. Hence the utopia of a Black managed system cannot be.
Alison, are you proposing that we shut up about Eskom, just because the lights also go out in China. As the cliché goes: Two wrongs don’t make a right. And because America has a clown called Bush, we should keep quiet about the sorry bunch clowns we have here. That is such bizarre reasoning.
Wow. The Eskom issue brings out the angry white men in their droves. Not that I am not cringing with anger when the lights go off in the middle of something important but, hey…what’s this race thing all about?
Let’s debunk some popular myths here:
Myth No 1: Eskom is today run by black top management but underneath there are a hell of a lot of white managers. In some departments Afrikaans is the lingua franca.
As all parastatals Eskom was stuffed with white people under the ancien regimes “Jobs for the boys” policies. You were white, you had to be given a job. So a lot of the post 1994 transformation was simply a “rightsizing” exercise.
Myth 2: Black people can’t run a country. Well, a lot of Americans tend to disagree and are about to vote Barack Obama in… as for the main peddlers of arguments like these… this really is racist crap.
Myth 3: BEE/ AA is a racist policy: Who in their right mind, given the history of this country would voluntarily share the accumulated wealth (a fair share of it having been ill-gotten gains which were based on the exploitation of cheap black labour!) with the majority population? Where in the world did this ever happen? In Germany, after re-unification the government introduced a solidarity tax in the West which was used to pump infrastructure investment into the new federal states in the East. Did the people in the West moan and complain? Of course they did! But it had to happen. BEE and AA are not always administered correctly. Tenders are being awarded under spurious circumstances. There may be individual injustice in AA based selection processes. But hey? What’s the alternative? Black poverty? Yeah. Would mean less cars on the road. None of that irksome BBE sister in her Range Rover sport overtaking the “Herrenmensch” in his ten year old Nissan bakkie. Agreed. But is poverty really what should be vested on 90% of the population just because the 5% don’t want to share? Sorry, but I, for one, don’t think so.
Myth 4: Nobody saw this coming. This is just government spin doctoring at its worst. They saw it coming, they didn’t want to see it. They did not want to re-direct ressources towards building the power plants at R60bn each and they messed it up. And I agree that there is a lack of accountability on the part of government. Seeing some heads roll would indeed be cathartic but given the utterly pathetic state of the opposition in this country: Why should the ANC not try and get away with it. Wouldn’t you?
“Well, a lot of Americans tend to disagree and are about to vote Barack Obama in…”
Yeah, as if they have a lot of experience of Black Presidents and as if Obama will be able to to get rid of most whites in government. One should expect them to know better, however, considering the pathetic performance of New Orleans’ black mayor during Hurricane Katrina.
“In Germany, after re-unification the government introduced a solidarity tax in the West which was used to pump infrastructure investment into the new federal states in the East.”
Nobody complained, because everybody were overjoyed to be united again. The complaints only started when the Ossi’s realized that the billions pumped into development didn’t miraculously transfer them into wealthy capitalists. Nonetheless, the West didn’t have much to complain about as the population they were expected to carry were only about a quarter the size of their own. In South Africa whites are expected to carry a population 10 times their own size.
“a fair share of it having been ill-gotten gains which were based on the exploitation of cheap black labour!”
If the black population grew in the same proportion to the white population there wouldn’t have been an oversupply of labour to begin with and wages would have been correspondingly higher, in keeping with the laws of supply and demand. Besides, white taxpa yers were expected even under apartheid to cough up for social services to blacks, which admittedly in turn encouraged black irresponsibility and the population explosion.
“But hey? What’s the alternative? Black poverty? Yeah.”
If BEE and AA was dumped that would mean more efficient and profitable business, meaning more job opportunities for people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale.
” keep hearing it is not race; Blacks can run a country. OK pick 1 of nearly 50 in Africa and show where the have managed to run one efficiently without Whites backing them up. Lets see proof not words.”
@Consulting Engineer: Please tell us where in Africa have whites run one country effeciently in Africa ?
I remember way back, in 1976 when school children tried to tell the national party government, that they are creating too many garden boys and not enough engineers, they got shot for doing so.
Now now everyone, let’s all just calm down a little, shall we?
It is no longer politically correct to refer to power outages as ‘blackouts’. Please in future refer to them as ‘previously lit areas’.
Well said Nkosana.
Dear Allison
You are damn right. We have hordes of racists in our midst. As I have always said to the racists, if blacks or Africans can’t manage a thing so what?, what I you gonna do about it? Bloody f**k all. Need I repeat the obvious, we rule this land. It is ours to mess up or do what ever we want with it. Just please close you stinking beeks!
They call themselves Africans when it suits them, and want to be counted as such by us the real Africans, but when there are problems, they turn around, “oh well, that is Africa for you, that is how things are done in Africa”, as if to exclude themselves.
Europeans remain Europeans in times of trouble and happiness, same with Asians and same with Americans, NOT this bunch of racists we have on our continent. Simple advise, if you can’t stand the heat please get out of the kitchen, ship out or shape up!
Leave the Africans alone, in our poverty, ignorance or foolishness, you are not our creator -get that! You like it or not this remains our continent, with all its trials and tribulations. Its all very well we booted you out. The Indians did very well, they got rid of your lot hence today no pig skins claim citizenship in that land. Maybe its time we Africans did the same. Robert Mugabe has done it anyway. Its about time Mzansi did it!
Nkosana.
Your posting is the very epitome of the African Stereotype as described by Mbeki: Greedy, racist, constantly demanding handouts, unable to do it for himself.
Well done man, you and the others like you, are now faced with two choices
a) a much more corrupt version of Mbeki’s reign, where you might be lucky to be one of the few privileged ones with your snout in the trough, or you might be one of the millions on the outside looking in whereupon you can just go on blaming the white racists or
b) you will be under a communist regime where, for a short time, there will be unbelievable utopia as a few select seize the comparatively small amount of goods for which the white man has worked, followed by Chinese or Soviet rule shortly thereafter, where a few white communists get everything and you will probably get shot in the street if you complain. Chinese and Soviets are also white, don’t you know? But at least then you still get to blame white racists.
Well, as the saying goes, people get the governments that they deserve.
To Will…
“If the black population grew in the same proportion to the white population there wouldn’t have been an oversupply of labour to begin with and wages would have been correspondingly higher, in keeping with the laws of supply and demand. Besides, white taxpa yers were expected even under apartheid to cough up for social services to blacks, which admittedly in turn encouraged black irresponsibility and the population explosion. ”
Are you retarded…did you ever sit through a history lesson??
Let’s see if we i can recap this for you!
1: SOUTH AFRICA WAS COLONISED, you idiot!! therefore it would be impossible for us blacks to grow in the same proportion as whites! Your ancestors found us here, took the land from us!!! And no matter what bull you come up with that’s a fact!!
2) “white taxpa yers were expected even under apartheid to cough up for social services to blacks” — lets see here, not only did the former government supress, kill and virtually destroy the black people. They made sure that they could never have enough money to elevate themselves from poverty! So while your father’s were getting a steady salary, our grandmother’s where playing mammie to you at the expense of their own families!!
Frankly you should feel real lucky that South Africa didn’t become Zimbabwe. The Africans in this country didn’t return the favour that your fore-fathers had imposed against our fore-fathers. “The wrongs of the father’s shall be visted upon the sons”—thinks about it!!!!!!
Race will always be an issue and as long as WHITE South Africans don’t ever allow themsleves to understand the implications of the past,things like BEE/AA will be in place until change occurs. White South Africans complain about BEE while the Ivory Towers of this country are still filled chok-a-block with whities who only see blacks as workers nothing more nothing less!!
The governemnt had to come up with plans to WRITE the wrongs done by your FORE-FATHERS!! So come off your high horses.
[To all those white people who understand the ramifications of the past--Welcome to Ubuntu]
@ABW…
“SOUTH AFRICA WAS COLONISED, you idiot!! therefore it would be impossible for us blacks to grow in the same proportion as whites!”
I don’t understand what you mean to say. Are you denying that black population growth far outstripped white growth?
“Your ancestors found us here, took the land from us!!! And no matter what bull you come up with that’s a fact!!”
Blacks never effectively occupied the whole country. For one, they were too few, for another, there wasn’t one single political entity, but numerous warring tribes. When my ancestors landed there wasn’t an immigration office, border control, central authority nor even a country called South Africa. The tribes didn’t even recognize territorial rights amongst themselves. In legal terms, it was terra nulius, giving the first comer the legal right under international law to lay claim to the land and organize a standing army to defend that claim. This principle still stands today, as Norway recently annexed a Canadian island which the Canadians didn’t deem worth to defend.
“lets see here, not only did the former government supress, kill and virtually destroy the black people. They made sure that they could never have enough money to elevate themselves from poverty!”
You are totally confused. At the end of Apartheid there were 40 million blacks in the country, compared to 8 million at the beginning. If it was to have been the other way around as you are claiming, that would actually have had the salutary effect of reducing the supply of labour which would have ensured higher wages for the rest. As it is the low wages and general poverty is the direct consequence of unchecked population growth and oversupply of labour.
“So while your father’s were getting a steady salary, our grandmother’s where playing mammie to you at the expense of their own families!!”
Nobody forced them. They did it because it was an easier way of earning a living than the traditional one of breaking their backs tending to their meagre subsistence crops and chickens.
“The wrongs of the father’s shall be visted upon the sons”—thinks about it!!!!!!”
White rule was actually more beneficial to blacks than anything else. Far less people were violently killed during 40 years of apartheid than during 12 years of so-called democracy. Under apartheid blacks enjoyed a higher standard of living, lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancy than anywhere else on the continent.
You said ‘I said that no one said that about Asians, because of Burma and Sri Lanka.’ Yes, because in Asia, the most powerful economies are Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China. Those two trouble spots are exceptions, not the rule. In Africa the most powerful economy is South Africa, and that cannot sustain it’s own electricity power grid. We have Kenya, Darfur, the Congo, Somaliland, Eritrea, Zimababwe and the list goes on.
Your ludicrous idea that huge, unforseeable snowfalls knocking out power in China can be compared to a crisis in planning that the South African government saw coming, and had repeated warnings about for ten years does not warrant discussion.
It has nothing to do with race, but there are certain inhibiting factors in Africa’s wider culture to democracy and good governance. Unfortunately, it is the Africans themselves that label any and all criticism as ‘Racist’ as a panacea and anesthetic to very real issues that other people point out. Asia has incorporated Western ideals into their own culture as the symbiosis between Bushido and Capitalism has shown in Japan. Look at how America’s interventions in post WWII Japan have totally reversed a formerly oppressive and empire hungry culture. Africa on the whole categorically rejects all things ‘un-African’ and tries to expunge influences that it sees as ‘Eurocentric’ or patronising to the Black man. This is their very own terminology and stated goal of ‘reclaiming’ some mythical, uncodified heritage that existed before the Evil Asian and European Empires brought slavery to the continent. (As if the traditional model of chiefdoms were paragons of modern concepts of human rights that the west has taken thousands of years to develop.) If all else fails, flat and repeated denial of the issues such as AIDS, the energy crisis, or crime is the last ring of defence. Anything rather than listening to other people.
What I have said is undeniable, but to Afrocentrists I am probably the biggest racist under the sun, only because I have cut them to the quick and exposed the shameful lies they have repeates so often, they have begun to believe themselves. The world today exists because of the free flow of ideas and cultural interchange, and no continent is an island.
Excellent post Mark and Will.
Do not expect a response though. Whatever incovenient truth they do not like they either delete or ignore. From the many responses that I have posted they have deleted quite a few but never answered a single one.
If we are such raving racists then it should be easy to show us up for the lying scum we are just by using the truth, right? So what is stopping them?
Eagle, Mark, Will
Well done Manne! You left nothing for me to add except my respect and best wishes.
You replied to the uncalled for insults with tact, logic and facts, as befitting of white men. As Kipling said, if you can keep your head while others are losing theirs….
@ ‘Africa For Africans’ You said: ‘Need I repeat the obvious, we rule this land. It is ours to mess up or do what ever we want with it. Just please close you stinking beeks!’
I’m so glad you have taken upon yourself to speak for all the peoples of Africa. I am sure that the Black people suffering under Mugabe or the Black people dying in Darfur share your most wonderful sentiments. Do you really think that either group cares who is opressing them? Do you think they lie down and the last thought that crosses their minds is ‘At least I died under Black rule?’ There are no words that can discribe to what extent your blind devotion to Black entitlement is unadulterated evil.
You are a true racist, and you epouse the same ideology as Hitler. It does not matter what happens; as long as you stay in charge, the ‘chosen people’ ‘der Volk’ all other people that are not ‘African’ (Aryan in Hitler’s case) must feed off the table scraps of what little mercy you provide. This is an Evil, Evil paradigm.
When any people, Black or White demand better governance they are demanding better individuals, not individuals exclusively from one race. You see a white person in power as automatically un-democratic and un-African without even considering the surrounding context or circumstances, so quick to condemn are you that you fail to see that ironically, you are behaving in exactly the same way you accuse whites as behaving under apartheid.
On a personal note you seem like the kind of person who, as a child, would rather smash a toy to pieces than let your friend play with it.
@Angry Black Woman
When you stop being angry, please check some historical facts, even from international literature if you want. Here is what you said:
“1: SOUTH AFRICA WAS COLONISED, you idiot!!. ”
Please delete the you idiot, I didn’t believe insulting anyone serves a purpose except showing your own lack of manners.
Blacks, the first colonisers, migrated to southern africa from the Cameroun Basin, reaching south africa around 1000 AD and moving southwards encountered whites near the Great Fish in the late 1700s. Your ancestors found the Capoid peoples and slaughtered them and took their land. So it is sort of the pot calling the kettle black.
“2) lets see here, not only did the former government supress, kill and virtually destroy the black people. ”
The SAP killed 518 people in 45 years. Hardly, ‘virtually destroy’. That is according to the TRC and the UN. Since 1994 193 000 whites have been raped or murdered and our population has declined 20%. Who is being destroyed?
“Frankly you should feel real lucky that South Africa didn’t become Zimbabwe. The Africans in this country didn’t return the favour that your fore-fathers had imposed against our fore-fathers.”
Do you wish SA to become like Zim???
“To all those white people who understand the ramifications of the past–Welcome to Ubuntu”
Is the current crime spree, government fraud and corruption and degradation of infrastructure Ubuntu?
It’s really quite disgusting how a thoughtful and fair blog post has attracted such a racist hate-fest. Alison, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
To Jocelyn Newmarch.
Please read my post higher up. It covers everything that you posted.
Mark
You whites are patronising. You are only Africans when it suits you eeh?
We the true Africans will not have that nonsense. You do not belong here. Why did the Indians kick you out after 1947? Why did you seem to accept you did not belong to India? you packed your backs and left the indians in peace. However with Africans you continuously hang on our necks like an elbatross.
Each day that passes we have to endure racist remarks and maltreatment from your lot – the uninvited guests, or should I say invaders?
You think you are the chosen race – I say please leave us alone in our poverty, you are not our CREATOR!
Look at your lot. You believe you are the best thing that ever happened on mother earth. In Europe, white people take up any jobs. You have nannies, tea ladies, construction workers, farm workers etc. But here in Africa you think all these jobs are below you, they are for blacks, because you are too high up there, you the chosen race.
Many among you would rather beg, steal, or prostitute themselves than to be seen taking up these jobs – because you cannot be equated to blacks. At least black people can be seen selling all manner of things by our road sides, including newspapers, just to make a leaving instead of simply begging or prostitution, like some of your so called superior race poor whites.
You are born and bred in Africa and have never been outside the continent’s borders but you can hardly say a word in an indegenous African language, neither can you explain any African traditions or cultures to a Western vistor or tourist.
I for one will not even waste my time debating intelligent subjects like the Eskom electricity black outs with many of your lot because your responses or reactions are predictable, OUTRIGHT, PURE GUTTER RACISM!
If you hate black people so much whay don’t you just buzz off! The African continent is a black man’s continent so if you choose to live here, you do as the Romans do.
“It’s really quite disgusting how a thoughtful and fair blog post has attracted such a racist hate-fest.”
I have to agree, Jocelyn. Especially the following threat in the context of the orgy of violent crime against whites, makes my stomach churn:
“The wrongs of the father’s shall be visted upon the sons”—thinks about it!!!!!!”
I applied for a technical vacancy in Eskom in the late 90′s. They telephoned me and asked me if I was Black. I didn’t get the job. I’m a white techie who is staying in South Africa because I believe in giving back to the country, but if Eskom don’t want me then I guess it’s their loss.
@Khoza
Thank you for you reply, since it affirms everything that I have claimed. Not once did you deal with any specific issue or point that I raised, instead you decided to launch in to a diatribe against whites in general, and an unjustified ad-hominem attack on me, in blatant attempt to disguise the fact that you have not one valid counterpoint to offer up on your behalf.
Some of the baseless claims you made were:
‘You are born and bred in Africa and have never been outside the continent’s borders.’
Actually, I live in Korea.
‘but you can hardly say a word in an indegenous African language’
I speak Afrikaans quite well, actually. Unless of course a language that is peculiar to Southern Africa and was created in Paarl does not meet your criteria for an ‘indigenous African Language’ even though it’s very name literally means ‘of Africa’.
‘neither can you explain any African traditions or cultures to a Western vistor or tourist.’ I find it very hard to explain African culture to Asian people as well. Besides which, who am I to explain anyone’s culture? Do you really want ‘patronising Whites’ to be ambassadors and translators for your culture? I find this to be a glaring contradiction.
Why do you want me to feel bad about some white trash prostituting themselves, as if another person in my race doing something bad is supposed to make me ashamed of sharing race with them? It’s the same logic that these white racists use when they are attacked by some black scum and then project this negative image on to all black people. Do you accept this? I don’t think so – and so I categorically reject your feeble attempts to do the same.
Please, go and research the colonisation and de-colonisation of India and how this differs from the same processes in Africa, before you make baseless claims regarding either. I don’t mean wikipedia or re-watching Ben Kingsley’s ‘Ghandi’.
It is so sad feeling the anger (i.e. pain) so many people show on this topic. The point on which I hope we agree is that SA is not the country today we – of all sides – wanted when apartheid ended and democracy began. Looking at this blog, I wish we would remove “black” (or colour) as a way of explaining events. Culture matters yes, but colour doesn’t, unless as a lead-in to culture. I easily believe / hope that Obama makes a better President than Bush, because colour doesn’t matter and cultural values and personal virtues do. On the subject of culture, I’d like to offer a different approach – where the unintended consequences of traditional values and virtues has a greater impact than deliberate wrongfulness in SA. The Black (because declining in the West) virtues of “respect for elders” can become obedience to the corrupt, the virtue of humility can become submissiveness to the brutal, and the virtue of solidarity can become tolerance of failure. These are virtues, yes, but all too often they let evil flourish. Attacking people for what turns out to be their virtues causes offence, not self-reflection. Rather than attack Black people as if flawed (which is racist full stop) I think the real story is how traditional virtues are exploited by a corupt elite. Eskom is not a story where Black people were bad, even when AA and BEE policies were stupidly implemented and engineers were replaced by technicians or not at all. The ANC crafted a policy that redistributed wealth and income on a racial basis to maintain power. We have seen that before in SA. Racist policies do not show how people behave, they show how elites misbehave. The Fidentia whistle was blown by a Coloured guy who fingered “white” abuse. Again, colour played no part, personal values did. Our ruling party has used racial / racist policies to promote a self-enrichment agenda. Their individual failure takes place in a cultural context that all too easily tolerates the abuse of power. The story of Africa is how elites abuse “Black” virtues. So I wish we would not focus on flaws (God doesn’t make bad people, you know) but instead see how “traditional values and virtues” of a good people are abused by a greedy and corrupt elite. Pointing fingers at “Blacks” is racist, full stop. (Blaming whites for “apartheid” is also racist, full stop). This blaming a whole people simply helps the baddies hide their terrible policies and decisions behind the mass of goodies who close ranks in justifiable offence. if the aim of the Eskom blame-game is to change the future not rehash the past, the angry blogs should not help Black people close ranks – that protects the individuals who hurt them too. This discussion should instead help communities and cultures understand how each acted to either promote or condone our self-destruction as a nation. Sorry for the long mail.
@Khosa
“you continuously hang on our necks like an elbatross (sic)?” We were born here, as were our fathers and grandfathers. Ask England, France, Spain, Germany etc with their waves of illegal African immigrants about their perception of “elbatrosses) hanging around necks.
Secondly, the white men bartered for the land they took and developed. Has anybody heard of the Bantus who chased their predecessors out ever paying anything for their land?
Just curious…
History books in this country have never told the truth, how many people actually died in this country during apartheid. The numbers are far more than what any book or internet source can tell you.
My sources are the people who were actually there MY PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, AUNTS, UNCLES…people who had first hand experience!!!!
Black people died in this country for freedom–when i say black i mean NON-WHITE!!
I was raised by parents who lived through the struggle, who saw family members being taken away by police, and who never came back. I’m not a racist, just a realist who understands that a majority of whites are still racist!! And guess what my balck brothers and sisters they always will be!
The level of crime in this country only represents the ramifications of a history of hatred, oppresssion and pure greed!
“White rule was actually more beneficial to blacks than anything else. Far less people were violently killed during 40 years of apartheid than during 12 years of so-called democracy. Under apartheid blacks enjoyed a higher standard of living, lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancy than anywhere else on the continent.”
There is no way that Apartheid had a good effect on the way black people lived, if that’s what you think then obviously you were reading the wrong books. Go and have a conversation with any BLACK person that lived through apartheid, you obviously have no idea what CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY your great grandfathers commited against the people of this country.
Unfortunately for the rest of us we still have to deal with COAL hearted people like you. Because if you truely understood what Apartheid did to the people of this country, you wouldn’t be qouting rubbish like this.
Gavin
Yes you were born here but that does not change the fact that you are not indegenous to Africa. That is why you identify more with Europe or the West than you do with Africa.
As for the African immigrants into Europe, Europe deserves them as an albatross on their necks because it was them the Europeans who first interfered with the African’s way of life. The African lived his own way of, call it primitive or whatever, but never left Africa to interfer with the European in his own land, so now that he does it’s all because of the initial invaders/colonialists . So let the European pay the price!
“History books in this country have never told the truth, how many people actually died in this country during apartheid.”
So, your parents would know better since they knew all those people who died? Do they also know that most of the killings were perpetrated by the comrades? Do they know that the police only killed radicals, in order to prevent them from killing other blacks, those whom the comrades called collaborators?
“The level of crime in this country only represents the ramifications of a history of hatred, oppresssion and pure greed!”
The apartheid government wanted to hand you self government and the most fertile parts of the country on a platter, but you insisted on having it all. So much for hatred, oppression and greed.
“Go and have a conversation with any BLACK person that lived through apartheid,”
Many a time I have come across old men and women, waiting in various bureacratic hellholes of the NSA, who would come up to me and tell me with a knowing look that life was much better under apartheid.
“you obviously have no idea what CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY your great grandfathers commited against the people of this country.”
It is telling that the motion that was adopted by the UN was almost exclusively supported by the communist block of countries. We know that the communists have killed in excess of 100 mil people in the 20th century. The apartheid state killed less than a thousand insurgents, all of them inspired by communism or pan-africanist racism. This is worse than the pot calling the kettle, uhm, black.
“Because if you truely understood what Apartheid did to the people of this country, you wouldn’t be qouting rubbish like this.”
The violence and unrest that occurred was despite apartheid, not because of it. The idea of separating the races was to prevent conflict, which worked insofar as they were separated. The homelands were far more peaceful than the urban centres where the people rubbed up against each other.
To the Moderators:
You let people like “angry black women” and “Khoza” vent their hate speech against whites on this thread but you delete posts from people like myself and, I suspect, consulting engineer, when we defend these allegations.
You are aware we are whites and your actions are racist and discriminary.
If this blog was created for purposes of leftist, anti-white propaganda, which is what you “Thought Leaders” focus on, then bring it out in the open and say so in the header of this blog.
It is already said amongst many posters, who purposely shun this blog, that it has a communist agenda. If this is the case say so and do not let me waste my time by posting on here.
@Khoza
Ummmm – according to what is known about the origins of man, we all came from Africa. Some of us left and prospered.
You didn’t answer my earlier question and I’d be very surprised if you ever do. Did any of your ancestors EVER pay anything to the people they disposessed of the land when they arrived here, and do you intend returning the land to their descendents?