There are too many high horses in South Africa. Too many haughty opinions. And not enough people admitting to their faults. We need to all climb down and roll around in the muck for a bit. Act like pigs and love it. Admit that we are shit and get on with it.

I will not single out anyone for being a bigger dick than the next, for fear of falling into my own trap. So I will focus on me.

I went to a white school. I didn’t have a maid, but I caught a white bus. I benefited from apartheid. I owe apartheid my education, my bus, and the sunny carefree days of my youth. I never voted for the NP but that is because I was too young. But maybe I would have. I can’t tell you for sure. I wouldn’t do it today because I have learnt better. I would like to think I have grown as a person.

But before I start bigging myself up, let’s get back to the muck. I have had bad thoughts about black people who I have perceived to slight me. I’ll admit it. I have made generalisations, not just about black people, but women, gays, whites, liberals, conservatives, and a whole slew of other groups. I have never really acted on these, or really discriminated against any one. Maybe if I had been built like the Rock, it would have been different. But thankfully I am not, so I have limited myself to bad thoughts. Angry thoughts, bored banter, un-PC jokes, I will own up to them.

I have even been convicted of theft in our sunny country. Got sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for five years. Yes, I am part of the criminal element. The magistrate cursed my name and all that, but was kind enough not to send me to the big house. If he can forgive me, I would like to think you can too.

I do realise there are people in our country who have said far more heinous things, committed far more injurious crimes than me. But most of you will be just like me. Just ambling along, doing his or her thing, making the occasional mistake, saying the odd bad thing, but when all is weighed up, doing and saying far more good things than bad.

Well, that is what I would like to believe. That we are not bad okes, just a little bit human.

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  • David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon missionary they call the Sweet Singer of Israel. He is a British historian and a bishop. David Smith is the biographer of HG Wells, a professor of physics, a composer and a music teacher at Yale. He played rugby for Samoa, England and New Zealand. He created the Melissa worm, a deadly computer virus. He is the Guardian's man in Africa, he starred in a reality TV show and shot his way to silver in the 600m military rifle prone position at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. But this isn't that David Smith. This is the blog of the other David Smith. David J Smith. The one from Durban by the Sea. The one who lives in Amsterdam. Yes, him. The David Smith who likes to write about himself in the third person. To learn about all the other David Smiths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Smith To contact this David Smith: [email protected]

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David J Smith

David Smith is a world famous artist and a British Olympic hammer thrower. He is a curler for Scotland and Manitoba. A pro wrestler fondly known as the British Bulldog. A Canadian economist and a Mormon...

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