It boggles even my mind how South Africans can be so docilely satisfied with the way things are.
It defies comprehension by correspondents in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the US and Canada. Well, except for the vast and growing network of expats in some of those countries — they are not in the least surprised that South Africans, and especially the predominantly black population, seem to meekly accept bad governance, crime, high cost of living, unfulfilled promises, lack of services and infrastructure, abysmal public service and sub-standard education as the norm with which they have to live.
What surprised me recently — no, it actually shocked me — was to read comments by a writer who called herself “Nhlanhla” in which she said, “Maybe things were really better in the days of apartheid”. Of course, the name could quite easily be a nom de plume of some disgruntled white hankering after those dark ages, but the rest of her letter sounded genuine enough.
A month ago I stepped off an oh-so-ordinary-and-uncomfortable SAA flight from Heathrow (the plane worked, the cabin crew didn’t) into the new OR Tambo international terminal and was pleasantly surprised at the smooth working of the place. Mechanically world-class, as one would expect of the host country of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Then I went outside to await my pick-up and it was like stepping through a time warp. I was back in the origins of ordinariness, the motherland of mediocrity, the cradle of corruption. I felt like I was in an episode of Stargate SG-1.
After arranging my bags so I could straddle them (just to be safe), I looked up as a gaily decorated tourist minibus stopped (right over the pedestrian crossing and fuck the people manhandling trolleys of baggage across the road). Written on its side were the words, “Welcome to South Africa” in the unmistakable colours of our flag.
Stepping through Johannesburg International Stargate into a palpably unwelcoming otherworld where aggro and hostility hang like a tangible curtain over everything is distinctly unpleasant. I felt I should be wearing some kind of mask against this “disease”. I remembered the scene from Beverley Hills Cop where Eddie Murphy walks into a redneck beer joint. It’s the one where he delivers the classic line: “I’m yo’ worst nightmare — a nigger with a badge”. Except I didn’t have a badge, this wasn’t “home” and I wasn’t feeling welcome.
I remembered overhearing a conversation as we waited in a shambolic queue courtesy of SAA at Heathrow the night before. An elderly couple struck up a jolly old chinwag with a woman in front of me. They asked if she was going to Johannesburg. “No,” she replied “just catching a connecting flight to Cape Town. And you?”
“No. We’re also connecting. We’re on our way to Ngorongoro. It’s our 50th wedding anniversary, you see. We go to Africa every year. We’ve been to most of the parks in South Africa, but we always connect. It’s just too dangerous to stop over anywhere.” Of course, that was the spark and several other Brits began talking about their only common experience of SA — violent crime — until the SAA people finally got their shit together and separated the rich from the poor and I followed the economy-class crowd.
My first reaction was to think something along the lines of “stupid Poms”. Then I remembered a presentation back in 1999 when I was with Business Against Crime. The central message of the presentation was that Johannesburg, unlike other world cities, was never seen as a destination by tourists, always as a stop-over on the way to somewhere else. If anything has changed in the past decade, I thought, it certainly wasn’t the opinions of those regular tourists.
The memory returned as I waited outside international arrivals watching taxis multiple-park and four uniformed and uniformly obese SAPS raucously while away the morning.
South Africa is a country of immeasurable talent and dreams as wide and spectacular as the Karoo sky, yet the standards its people demand of their sportsmen and women far outshine the standards they expect of everything else.
Why?
Is it because our sports stars have risen to the challenge while our authorities at every level have failed year after year, month after month?
Okay, but then what about the private sector?
Well, quite frankly, while in most democracies, developed and developing, the private and public sectors are distinct organisms, in SA they’ve become such cosy closet chums one never knows which you’re dealing with. It was that way in the dark days of apartheid and the Broederbond and it is the same today — except that the cabals and cliques and old boys clubs that have arisen don’t have a common name.
I suppose the death of accountability has quite a bit to do with it. It is as pervasive a mindset among big business in SA as it is among our notorious leaders and officials. Try getting to talk to Shameel Joosub or Pieter Uys at Vodacom, or Tom Boardman at Nedbank, or Jacko Maree at Standard Bank, or Maria Ramos at Absa, or Simon Susman at Woolworths or Adrian Gore at Discovery or any one of the unapproachable, unreachable, untouchable aristocracy of business and you’ll run headlong into an impenetrable phalanx of self-imposed isolation from us, the “unwashed and diseased masses” who keep them in glorious fat-cat luxury.
Until all of these private and public-sector elite start seeing themselves as accountable to you and me and show us that they respect us and our rights, all we have is feudalism, apartheid, classism and the very worst kind of superiority complex — of them, the Übermenschen, and us, the untermenschen — in a different garb.
And because ordinary South Africans are seen and treated as inferior underlings, numbers on a balance sheet, wedges in a demographic and not worthy of their attention, honesty, courtesy or responsiveness, ordinary South Africans have become accustomed to the filthy sackcloth of our low status. We acknowledge our worthlessness, endlessly intoning the mantra “ons mag nie kla nie” (“we can’t complain” — as in complaining is forbidden). Like lambs we accept this as just the way life is.
Until the world erupts in rioting and violence and arson and death. And the political and corporate übermensch react with shock and awe, saying “Let them eat cake”.
Oh, by the way, I just checked my email and there’s an open invitation to pop in for a chat about Obama’s health reform plans and a cup of tea or coffee with Congressman Jim Moran, representative for Alexandria VA, where I lived for five months with my son and his family in the United States. And I’m not even a voter in the US. I was just visiting.
That’s called accessibility and accountability. If Jim Moran can do it, why can’t we?
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55 Responses to “Is this SA’s silence of the lambs?”
It isn’t that we aren’t aware of the crime etc. It is simply that we don’t want to acknowledge the brute facts of the situation we live in. I remember when all the papers carried that picture of the immigrant being burned alive. Many of the responses were not of feeling for the man but were of annoyance that such an image might negatively impact the country abroad. (Indeed it was picked up in Britain and Aus etc.)
I too recently returned to this country after a long spell away and was tasked with finding a permanent house. I was confused to note the preponderance of so-called “lock up and go houses”. Every second house bore the label at the Estate Agent. And then it dawned on me how central security issues are to our lives here. One doesn’t want to have to spend 25 minutes “locking up the house” (a phrase I’ve never heard elsewhere) checking and rechecking the windows ad infinitum each time they leave for the shops. When purchasing my 4X4 I was offered bullet proofing as if it were the most natural thing in the world (apparently it would also protect me from minor explosions).
Instead these absurdities become a natural part of life and we don’t realise how abnormal our lives actually are (You left you bag on the bag seat? W hat did you expect would happen… We never stop on that street… Are you mad?).
//…— they are not in the least surprised that South Africans, and especially the predominantly black population, seem to meekly accept bad governance, crime, high cost of living, unfulfilled promises..//
Dude did you see an Indian-White person… in the service delivery protests…?
So where do you coming off making the above summation?
I think most SAs share these sentiments, the problem is we don’t know what do we do with them? Maybe we need to start an online petition regarding all these specific issues, gather a significant number of signatures and send it to the relevant officials….? We can use radio and various other media to demonstrate our gripe…How about it????
I believe the problem with South Africans is that it is easier to just go with the flow no matter the frustration rather than having to deal with the negativity that is all around us. We know that the prices are absurd, the politicians are thieves, the fuel price is a robbery and that Eskom are money grabbing filches but those of us who are truly South African will stay to the end and deal with the consequences unlike those who choose to leave and complain about it from afar.
” read comments by a writer who called herself “Nhlanhla” in which she said, “Maybe things were really better in the days of apartheid”. Of course, the name could quite easily be a nom de plume of some disgruntled white hankering after those dark ages”
I have a picture you might want to see on this. Pop me a mail.
Llewellyn, I can sum up the SA approach in 6 words:
‘do as little as possible to get by’ - understanding the problem is the easy part, what to do about it is a question for the ages…
Reading this makes me so sad; because it’s all so frikkin’ true. We’ve lost our will to object because we’re so tired of hitting our heads against brick walls.
But obviously this is not good enough. It’s not good enough that water pipes leak for months all over town; that we never know from one day to the next whether or not we’re going to have electricity to cook dinner, that petty criminals sit awaiting trial while big time crooks walk free, etc, etc.
But what to do when no one listens? What to do when service delivery is a swear word and answerability a joke. What do you suggest we do, Llewellyn? Or rather, how do we reclaim our power - and the energy to continue protesting and fighting back?
Corruption should be hunted down, and the hunt should be concluded, by the reporter, the one that hunts the news. Evidence should be brought forward, by that hunter. Why don’t you move back permanently and do the job? The local news people seem not to be ‘following through’. Once this starts happening, we may stand a chance.
Just the point made by Lewellen. The people protesting for service delivery were black because they happen to be by and large poor and living in the immediate area of the poor service delivery. You see I (in this case a white person mind you) protested against poor service delivery in the most effective fashion possible in this democracy by not voting for the ANC. Yet here you have people protesting by blockading looting and burning tyres when indeed those of them that could have voted in protest did not do so - shame.
I arrived in SA in the early eighties. I was then equally surprised by the general acceptance of something that most people knew was morally wrong.
But then…the victims of this system did do very little either. Going in exile if one had the means and connections or going underground as a “runner” (for what one might ask) or burning each other instead of the enemy. Nothing constructive to my knowledge.
A culture thing?? And today? Long letters and some protest marches where the participants fight rubbish bins and plastic road markers with such enthusiasm that - if put to constructive engagement- could change SA into a paradise for all.
Thank for the birthday greeting. I have no idea how to use Facebook to get back to you! My husband got me up on Facebook months ago, and at least once a week tries to persuade me to learn to use it - but I have developed a total mental block about it! So my friends get hold of me through his Facebook!
My last 3 posts on the Richmark Sentinel deal with how, back in 1993, we imported black racism from the USA, and lost the Rainbow Nation. Click on my name in red below to get there. It might interest you.
Everyone sees the problem. The poor protest in the street, the rest of us bitch like we are doing now. Citizens are not the problem. its the lack of leadership. ANC is in power becase there is no credible alternative. As a black African I would be a miilionaire if I had a penny for each time somone (usually poor and african) said to me ‘the ANC has disappointed us but id rather die in poverty than vote for a white person.’ COPE had hope, but its leaders fucked it up. DA is almost there, but they need a black face (just a fact of life, whether good or bad).”Without leadership, the people perish.” until we have selfless, visionary political leadership corruption, crime and poverty will remain.
From my observations S Africans whinge but effectively do nothing for various reasons. Whites don’t complain officially (or toy-toy) because we generally believe we don’t have the right to…we are privileged and must therefore shut up. This view is supported by the govt response to any criticism by so-called white opposition in parliament and the media. Criticism is labelled racism. Blacks toy-toy, riot and generally throw their toys out the cot, but it is either ignored by government or very effectively neutralised. Blacks are told that a committee or forum or lekgotla or whatever will be formed. This can take months and by then the issue is forgotten. Or, and this is even cuter, the rioters are actually IN government and at a convenient time come to an agreement with the so-called bosses and everyone believes democratic processes have occurred, which of course they haven’t. A fine example of this is the last municipal strikes.
Blacks learned from the previous regime that you shut up and put up or else. They were kept subservient. This government cynically keeps “the masses” ( a telling expression) badly educated and ignorant, making them almost unable to effectively criticise. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@feanor
I do to some extent agree with Nhlanhla, but its not just that straight forward. I mean we started out real good when Madiba was in power, right. But, where has all that ambition gone ? Why are the Fat Cats getting fatter and the poor getting poorer, even the middle class is taking the shift downwards… Speaking for White people: Mgwaza! We dont have the numbers, we dont, We are unhappy but 15 years of opinion suppression (which was supposed to cleans us from the previous paradigm) has left most whites angry, but to scared to vioce our concerns. I agree that we (all South Africans)are the only ones who can make a substantial difference, lets start with our youth taech them to respect Others and by extention Laws and rules. I am an educator and it is my opinion that we should take care of the small things and the bigger things will take care of themselfs in the coming generations.
I disagree with the notions that south african’s are docile:
The many recent & past protests we’ve seen from people are a testiment & often in what is predominately ‘black communities’ people are taking action againt crime in thier own hands….
It is not that we Blacks do not see or deplore the order of the day, the corrupt politicians, lack of leadership, poverty,the privileged minority, inferior education etc Do you see a solid platform where people can place their concerns on the table and be heard??? Opposition Politics is Dead in this country!!! We need a new breed of leadership to phase out talk shop politics. We need decisive leaders that will do more and talk less!!!
Until all South African politicians are elected DIRECTLY–AND NOT THROUGH THE ‘LIST’ SYSTEM –THINGS WILL NOT IMPROVE.
Accountability comes from direct control by the electorate of who gets elected. It’s not an infallible system (witness the eight years of fascism called the Bush Administration that gave us an unending war and global financial meltdown). However, it is the best system yet devised to get service from government.
Interestingly, it is the Opposition Parties here who assist ordinary citizens when they have a problem with the government. The Opposition could just say “Tough luck. We got the government the masses voted for” but they don’t. They know that if they are to have any credibility and any real effect on the ever-lenghtening tentacles of the ANC/Alliance, they must take all issues more seriously than the present government does.
Direct election of all politicians up to and including the President is the only way to get real change. America finally awoke from its post 9/11 nightmare and threw the Bush-ites out. The Bush-Evangelicals may never grow up but enough other Americans did and they made all the difference.
We need to grow up here in SA and insist on the right to vote directly for our government officials.
Once again, you have hit the nail on the head. I strongly urge you to read The Judgment of Paris by the American writer Gore Vidal. If you have read this rather prescient work, you’ll probably agree with me that the separation of the emergent ruling class (business, political, civic, etc) from the hoi polloi is a foregone conclusion, something that has long been planned and at this point, irreversible. We are just cogs in a relentless machine wheel.
We are moving slowly and surely towards a corporate fascism, with our pliable politicians unwittingly aiding and abetting this sinister transformation. Collectively, ignorance is our biggest problem. In between 0% deposit car purchases, townhouses and sprawling suburbia we may have forgotten who we are, too busy caught up in materialism to even bother putting the masters to task.
The new masters are Big Agri, Big Telecom, Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Mining, etc. There is a worrisome collusion between government and big business with the end goal being to screw the common man, who is like a sitting duck; ignorant and distracted by pipe dreams.
Greedy corporates - consumer boycott, worked a treat in the 80’s. But that would mean foregoing Labels from Woolies, Edgars, Truworths. Who by the way import cheap from China and screw the customer with massive mark-ups and the diminishing textile industry.
Politicians - look to previous agents of change, as role models, King Jnr, Ghandi (who broke the Brit Empire), Mandela, Govan Mbeki (his son was a sad waste of talent), Bantu Biko….
Sadly, Malusi’s right. It is for this reason that I favour any discussion that opposition parties engage in that may result in a more structured (COPE) and more representative (DA) party that would have more broad based appeal.
However, one overarching issue, to my mind, is that quite a lot of us have become, dare I say, corrupt in our own little ways. The amount of times I see people ‘on the take’ is quite incredible. And the response is generally “well, everyone else is doing it!”. To a large extent this is perpetuated by our leaders, but it is sad that we have somehow become completely comfortable with this and it now exists as a norm. See, I’m not sure a change in leadership is necessarily going to change this very much ingrained behaviour. We completely disregard the law as we perceive the law to be toothless. What I would like to see, therefore, is a ‘protect and serve’ ethos return to the SAPS. To do this, we need to pay and train our cops better. I think we need a Rudy Giuliani approach in the very first instance so we can start engendering a sense of respect for the laws and for those that are the custodians of those laws. I don’t care who instills this, provided it is recognised that this is needed as a starting point and we build from there.
@Lynne
“criticism by so-called white opposition in parliament and the media. Criticism is labelled racism. ”
It puzzles me as to why you can’t see the racism in the DA (NP-lite) opposition party? Its frequently not the criticism but the manner in which it is delivered. I’ve witnessed first hand from the gallery in parliament, the condescending attitude of the primarily white DA and the knee-jerk defensive reactions of the primarily black ANC. In the recent elections we also witnessed how Zuma was crucified by Zille and the media. Until, there is a drastic change in nature of the opposition party, I’m afraid the show will go on.
@Lyndall Beddy
“back in 1993, we imported black racism from the USA, and lost the Rainbow Nation”
I’m truly at a loss for words on how to respond to your unique brand of racism and apartheid denialism…..amazing!
‘the ANC has disappointed us but id rather die in poverty than vote for a white person.’
They don’t have to vote for a white person Mr Malusi. All they have to do is find people who won’t mug them. And then vote for those people.
To the utter disbelief of foreign journalists, this is something they cannot seem to do. Instead, they vote for people who take tax money, supposedly on its way from rich whites to poor blacks, to spend on high living and delusions of grandeur.
The classic picture of a black South African voter is a destitute woman with child begging at a traffic light. While the person she votes for sweeps by in a 10 SUV cavalcade, heading for a R95 000 lunch at Auberge Michel.
i think complaints there is enough said about the ANC but I am going to complain about the private sector they are the worst offenders, maybe its beacuse we dont elect them that why no one complains about rising food prices with no justification. In a month food goes up 3 or 4 times, the last i saw that happen it was in Zimbabwe. We get ripped off everyday and we dont say or do anythuing about we just do the typical SA thing blame ANC.
I made no argument. All I did was quote some of Llewellyn’s text as told him I have a picture on file relating to that point.
I thought the inverted commas would make that clear.
My view on this is complex. Firstly I agree that many citizens are indeed apathetic, especially the whites. This is probably due to a historical sense of guilt and the government response of “racist” to any white criticism.
Conversely, some segments of society seem to erupt into frenzied chaos, but in the end very little gets done because our political system is not great at accountability nor are our politicians fans of the concept.
Lastly, for a representative democracy to work people need to be aware of their true interests and then vote as such. This is not as common as one would think, but it certainly does not happen in South Africa.
South Africans have fallen into an abyss of non-debate in which open reasoning has given way to quiet murmuring or loud accusation.
The ANC is largely to blame for this, in its eternal obession with so-called race. The ‘liberators’ have failed the country. There is no liberation at all — not for anyone, whether purple, green, black, white, brown or striped. We can now see clearly that the anti-apartheid struggle was either a scam or it has been betrayed by our new ruling (not governing) racists.
Llewellyn is quite right in noting that ordinary citizens are now subject to the opaque will and power-madness of a corrupt, uncaring gang of self-enriching cronies in both government and the corporate magic circle.
South Africans have to go much, much further than isolated protest — we all need to get together and form a new democratic front to reclaim our mutual country and the true value of our citizenship in an open society.
After all, whose country is it? Does it really belong to a foully connected circle of party loyalists, technocrats, plutocrats, sycophants and side-kicks in power? Can’t we realise that we have all been gypped? Can’t we understand that it is we, the citizens, who own this country and its governance?
It is high time for the Second Revolution — the Citizens’ Revolution — The Third Republic. SA is ours! Woza! Let us seize her back from the Gang of Trough-Feeding Pigs.
@TheRayne: Right on brother. “If I didn’t do it then someone else would.” is the melody of our collective despair.
The whole protest against lack of service delivery is something I have to comment on. I live in the Transkei, and I see so many places that have been electrified, and had toilets, and piped water placed into the communities. (Not in all places, because of ANC-UDM factions. And we are burying a deeply loved member of our community on Friday, who (I suspect) picked up meningitis from e-coli in the river.)
But then I also take cognizance of the welfare that is doled out in the form of pensions and child grants. And yes I know that it is creating a burgeoning populace, and is unrestricted license to procreate beyond sound sustainability. But at least there is money flowing into these rural hills.
I hate what the ANC did to the Transkei (long story); and I side with all and any opposition parties and coalitions. But even I have to say that despite the perceived lack of delivery, there is a marked improvement in people from the rural areas’ lifestyles over the past 40 years.
BTW, there is something called inmigration. Move out of the cities, the cesspits of iniquity, and move to rural areas to help our communities and younger generation.
Before the land and people are stripped bare for mining, toll roads & macro economic agri developments.
@Mntu: “We can now see clearly that the anti-apartheid struggle was either a scam or it has been betrayed by our new ruling (not governing) racists.”
There has hardly been a struggle. How could 10% of the population hold the other 90% under “control” without outside help? Why did the suppressed go in exile or stayed in jail for all these years? (Just think how many break outs from jail we have seen over the last years?).
The “anti-apartheid” rhetoric of the West was a scam. The “struggle” was moderated until Russia had to give up the battle for Africa. The African liberators and struggle heroes were asked (told) to keep quiet until Russia had been dealt with. I can hear Uncle Sam: “You don’t want your country to go the same route as Congo……? Sure you want a peaceful revolution, don’t you? Just keep quiet, we will help you when the time is rife!” Says the struggle hero: “Ja Baas !, tuurlik baas, die baas is reg”. Struggle? What struggle?
The time for liberation had come when the Berlin Wall collapsed! Dankie Baas, baie dankie.
I remember when I was about sixteen and in matric. This was a long time ago by the way. The Nationalist Party government of the day had things pretty tightly sewn up, amongst the white population anyway. Newspapers that were anti NP were banned and/or editors banned/locked up. The only radio stations were SABC and of course NOTHING even vaguely critical of the ruling party could be or was aired. TV was just starting and that was equally sycophantic.
White people were brainwashed into thinking a certain way and if you did not support the NP or if you voiced critical remarks you were not simply voicing your (limited) democratic opinion.
Hell no, you were being UNPATRIOTIC!
That’s quite a leap but one that the NP managed. And the white people mostly fell for that crap.
Now we have come full circle and our ostensibly non-racial but really black government has got (black) voters to agree to being largely quiet about terrible service delivery, corruption, etc etc on the grounds that voicing such legitimate complaints is seen to be racist, antidemocratic, counter revolutionary, etc etc. Quite a leap, too!
Aahh, how the ANC must have studied the NP and learned from them!
I think our history of exclusion in ownership of SA, first the Blacks now the Whites has led to our lack of accountability. South Africa is not our collective beloved motherland. In our collective conscience it became an organism to plunder and exploit while we can. We can see it slowly drifting back into the dark ages but are fatalistic about it because we feel it is not ours.
Hola Mzantsi!
It is important that we revisit Biko’s “I Write What I Like”.This might help in mulling over he is saying. I think what we need is quickened educational and political development. Lest we forget, there were only two African MBAs in 1979 in the whole of South Africa! Severe social dislocations and less attention paid to development evidently restricted Political life, structures such as schools, trade unions and cooperative associations of rural produces need to be urgently attended to. Blaming the victims is a suave strategy. Those who have economic power, should collude with the poor masses to develop a more Greater South Africa. There’s a lot of negative Racism that has taken hold in USA. It is becoming virulent because of a Black President, and this is not good for the US and the world. South Africa has been lauded for the Truth Commission, it will not be a bad idea the we should be known as a country that worked hard developing better Race Relations; sort of, become exemplary. For these who did not live the live of being the executors of Apartheid Rule, would do well to read-up on the past; go to the Apartheid Museum and visit the Township nearest to you. One can go into the local B&B and get a more intimate look and feel of the life in these Labor backrooms called Townships. Yes, Multicorps are with Government. Who’s for the poor and downtrodden? None, yet.
Americans have been running the ANC’s marketing campaigns since 1993. That fact is in Trevor Manuel’s biography.
And, by the way, black South Africans were the most advantaged in Sub Saharan Africa because they had the most white settlers and therefore the most development - farms, hospitals, schools etc- the biggest economy in Africa. Go and have a look at the DRC which had the least white settlers and see the difference. People really are starving there, and riddled with diseases with not enough hospitals, almost no schools and hardly any roads or land developed into farms.
The Americans compared the lifestyle of black South Africans to the lifestyle of black Americans, and blamed the whites that SA blacks were worse off. See the logical flaw?
They should have compared them to black Congolese, and seen that because of the whites SA blacks were better off.
American blacks are a MINORITY, who are richer in America ,because it is a country developed by the white majority who had technical skills.
I’m with you on the ubermensch / untermensch divide. But I don’t see that as South African, nor African. We had that imposed on us by glorious, triumphant capitalism and its “free market” (free while profits reign, subsidised when losses “happen”). Imposed by western-dominated IMF and World Bank decrees. Theft of state assets and the handover to kleptocrats (and the consequent lack of customer service) is a WESTERN invention, LK.
The ANC imposed that on us not the Afrikaner, who might have been capitalist, but were also protectionist.
Now we are the country with the largest current account deficicit in the world - all imported bling, and no exports (especially since they targetted the farmers and turned us into food importers).
Bankrupted in 15 years! Sasol, Iscor, Telkom all sold. The only thing to show for it is R50 billion of RDP housing. The rest has been blown!
Hola!
When ignorance is bliss, ’tis a folly to be wise. History is a very confusing at times because it tends to be His Story. World history and Historiography need to be paid attention to. South African history is part of World History. Moreover, the Eurocentric social order, which the European Historiographic and Behavioral Science establishment legitimate and support, is essentially a ’social machine’ which manufactures a consciousness and behavioral orientation in African people designed to serve the purpose of white supremacy. The idea that we must listen to people who since the days of Apartheid kept on saying we, “darkies” in South Africa are living better-off than our brothers elsewhere in Africa is an illusion and and a downright condescending and patronizing attitude; this often results from not studying History and not recognizing that progressions and regressions occur; that integrations and disintegrations happen in History. Therefore, we need to look and study history in a light such that it advances our interests, not inflates our egos and blinds us to reality. An individual needs to recognize the connection between history, power and money; there’s a direct connection between history and economics The rewriting and distortition of our history has been going on for hundreds of years, and this served a vital economic, political and social functions for the setllers and/or Europeans; ..else, they would have never bothered to try so hard to keep our history from us, and to keep on distorting it in the African Minds
That was good rhetoric, however when people say that black south Africans were better off than most other black Africans even during the height of apartheid it is based on immigration figures.
People tend to vote with their feet. Even during apartheid there was a influx of people into the SA from other African countries. This is a pretty good indicator.
It does NOT mean that apartheid was justified. Freedom is a universal human right.
But it is a sad indictment of the leadership of many other African countries.
@Mgeve…good observation. One of my history teachers told us that “all conflicts are rooted in economics”. The given reason might be ethnic, regional, religion, liberation or tribal…these are just smoke screens.
“….else, they would have never bothered to try so hard to keep our history from us, and to keep on distorting it in the African Minds”. Nothing has stopped “darkies” (your words) to study and research the African history from sources such as credible story tellers to real artefacts to proof the facts. Are African minds that easy to brainwash?? I hope not.
Just a question: who did spend lots of money to research and proof the origins of human kind in SA?
Hola Mpentje Yam!
Rhetoric is ‘the practice of using LANGUAGE to persuade or influence others, and the language that results from this practice’. I am talking History, African History,South African History, and World History, that is not Rhetoric. Our ignorance of our history has a different out come from the ignorance of their history. We must realize that history is not only written in books but is contained in every facet of life. History is everywhere written in the streets that we walk down, in every building, Highway, yard and city; everywhere we go it’s there; it’s shaping; it’s transforming; it’s creating; it’s blocking; it’s constructing . The reason it’s been reduced in terms of history books, per se, is because it is hidden everywhere else.As long as our history is not intimately and inextricably entwined with everything we do, with every study we undertake, is not representative in our Universe, in our buildings and our walls, hoses and streets, then we need to study it more consciously. Each person shares certain common styles and action or ways of knowing. In other words,to the degree that we share history and experience, we share common styles of thinking and knowing. There is no such thing as an “individual” in the absolute sense of the word. All this is not Rhetoric. So, history is no casual thing that one picks up while passingthrough school. It becomes a part of ones total orientation toward theworld
Hola Gazi!
@Lynda ll Beddy..the Afrikaner distorted history, and so do the ANC. Also,@lyndall Beddy…if whites had not come, would you have been better off under Shaka..
Our african history has been written by Europeans since 1492 and again from 1652. The former wiped the Khoi and the San; the latter the Xhosas and the Zulus and Ndebeles. These Europeans were the victors. The ANC has had 15 years in semi-power- they only control the Politik and not the Economy. That is why it was necessary to write history that was in line with the empowerment and development of Boers/British folk. As for Shaka, that was one of the greatest and strategic military leaders and rulers in the World. Let’s talk about the early Boer Settlers who were illiterate and could not even read their own bible, They were taught agric/w Boers done without the help of Africans. You should read “the Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 by Elphick/Giliomee. This would give a clearer picture and help you understand Frontier Settlement. Anyway, I find you very ignorant and blank on African History, except what you gulped from Apartheidized History. Your question need you to do some serious basic reading about Africans in your social milieu. We should not also forget that Europeans struggled to maintain economic monopoly over land, minerals, jobs and social services, and suppress African competition and nationalism. So, in earnestness, what wouldhave whites done without African slave labor
Hola Gazi!
If I am not mistaken or mispelling his name, but his name was Dr. Damm, and as for financing it, that is debatable, that is, on whose backs was that money made? He was able to gather information on Zinjathropus Africanus with the help of the local Africans. It is an important that you are raising because it erases all false history that ‘we came from the North and Europeans came from the ships in the South” ala Boyce. It is very important that this lesson be taught to all that Africans are the original inhabitants of Mzantsi.Yes, nothing has stopped us Africans from researching scholars on our history. You assume that some of us have not. Well, we have and onto this blog to make that clear. It is only appaling and disgusting having to be told that we were ‘better off than ourcousins up north. That is a blatant lie and we all know it. We still have artefacts, oral history, cultural history and so forth. One needs to “comprehend man as a being who exists in and with the world. Since the basic condition for conscientization is that its agents must be a subject(i.e. conscious being), conscientization, like education, is specifically and exclusively a human process. It is as conscious beings that men are not only in the world, but with the world”.(Freire) Another falsification and very derogatory way of looking at African is the presumption that they are easy to brainwash.
Hola Mmenyana.
It’s easy to see that Africans in South Africa accept lack of services, crime, bad governance, high cost of living, ‘unfulfilled, and substandard education, ad infinitum It sounds like the African populace, supposedly normal society, ran themselves to the ground. Once you point a finger at someone, four fingers all point at you. It is easy to blame the victim so’s to assuage ones guilt. It is interesting that the man-made Crown mines mountains, full of chemicals, was conveniently built between Soweto and other ghettoes, windward, to hide it from Johannesburg view. The winds blows Southwards and create a dust bowl in the Townships we are still breathing today. The introduction of Bantu Education has been all but forgotten. A whole people with inadequate clinics, leaking old water pipes, crowded and small yards, poverty stricken townships, with a new government which was only a replacement of white faces in the same structures that existed during Apartheid, are blamed as being ‘meekly accepting’ depression and recession. It is now 16 years we are being abused, but the people are not meekly accepting this abuse. Some of these leaders are hearing it form the locals, and the community in which I live, local structures still function, albeit with stops and starts. The ways of the present government will eventually be solved with the unity of all societies in South Africa, working in tandem to transform Mzantsi. Old tired prejudices willnot help to make it a developed progressive society.
I have just finished reading Pallo Jordan’s mother’s autobiography.
American blacks and whites are virulantly racist. The Jordan’s had bombs thrown at their home, swaztikas burned, and Pallo was told to leave voluntarirly or be deported, a few weeks later his room mate was shot dead (his mother thinks could have been mistaken for him).
And American blacks trashed the campus because they wanted a course of “African Studies”. No-one knew what “African Studies” was supposed to mean. That is about the time the Kwanza myth started.
I have never understood American racism - why be afraid of a 10% minority?
The ANC has used American advisors since 1993. I think they brought this black racism back with them from exile.
I don’t have to read fake history by western black power writers. I have family records. My ancestors were with the tribes as missionaries even before the Afrikaner trekked in the Great Trek.
Plus another of my ancestor started the first school for the children of slaves in Cape Town.
The SA whites were probably the only colonialists that did NOT wipe out the indigenous population. The Khoisan weer protected by law from being enslaved or even imprisoned, and farmers had to shoot game to feed any Khoisan on their land. Where do you think the coloureds came from?
And none of the black tribes were wiped out. The missionaries were with them before the trekkers. Every time the trekkers moved in on an area the missionaries complained to the Brits and a tribal area was established where the boers could NOT buy land and the chiefs could NOT sell! These areas include Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana.
It was the black settlers who wiped out the Khoisan in the northern part of SA. And the black settlers arrived only about 100 years before the white settlers.
Maybe the whites should go back to Europe, the blacks to the Congo, and the coloureds be given back their country?
Africa was a brown not a black continent like American Black Power mythology presents it.
And the Egyptians were not black either - Cleopatra, the African Queen, was Greek.
Hola-Hola Ngamla!
You are an ignoramus wanna be historian who should be scrapped of the net. Oh yeah, I know that the earth was flat, as well. You should be ashamed of yourself for having been miseducated and badly dragged-up. If it was during the Apartheid era you were having these bellicose ideas, i’d understand. You need to go back to you your Primary and high school alma matter and get a refund for your miseducation, sucker! Let me put it this way, cite me the source where it is written that AFricans not black, (tweedle dee tweedle dum), who massacred the Khoi, who by the way never lived North of South Africa.. If all white folk talk like you, that motley crew can leave, Mzantsi is an African Country, and the coloured are because whites, who had no women, but were sailors, slept with the Khoi, San and Africans, thus begat the Colored. Africa is the cradle of humanity and has always been been the abode of Africans. Egyptians were African and you know that. You surely must hate African Americans, no surprise there, because it has never occurred to you that there are Africans, in Africa, under your nose, who are more knowledgeable and smarter that your sad racist rants. I respect people of any race who know other people, correctly and respect it. As for you. you need to go back to kindergarten and re-learn History and respect of other children and people. Cont.
Heitha Lekgowa(Cont.)
Cleopatra was not white, and I see you watch too much Hollywood fils. Hei wena, reading is fundamental, and let me illustrate my point. For the mere fact you have bludgeoned history.Africans are human and intelligent. You make me proud to realize that I spent all my life studying to be better than you. My point, all what you are saying above is garbage. African history, African people and the African Continent, has had for us to know and re-learn our history. You should go to the Oppenheimer Library in Jozi and start reading all those books there on African history. You think we are what you say we are. No, we are what we are telling you we are.Whites came from Europe in !492(Vasco da Gama and his thugs murdered the khoi in an uprovoked encounter) The Dutch Settlers-Jan Van riebeck and his crew, enslaved the khoi and abused them, took their life stock and eventually Trekked from the Cape to start Wars with the Xhosas and Zulus and so forth) If white people okay the idea that can live with us under the African Umbrella(Sobukwe), that to me is fine. But if you continue to prattle about discounted and debunked history, then I will give a free lesson on african History and African people in South Africa and in the Diaspora. I hope you are aware that race did not conquer us, it was overwhelming power that did, READ!. Cont.
I will agree that superior firepower conquered you, not race, but that it what every conquest in history is about.
BUT Chaka was ALSO superior and conquering and wiping out all the other tribes.
And Cleopatra and all her dynastry were Greek, descended from the same line as Alexander the Great. Before her dynasty the dynasties were brown not black. Only with the Arab Slave Trade were blacks disbursed over North Africa from the Congo.
Blacks are ONLY indigenous to the Niger Congo Delta.
Ngamla!!(Beddy)
Africans entered Europe during the Aurignacian phase of that continent, they initiated burial rituals in which the dead were sprinkled or painted with red ochre. Brunson cites Societ Union historians to show that the Africans carried this habit even into the East. Pro. Leaky makes it pssible to pose the question of the peopling of Egypt, going back as 150,000 years ago. You need to study Physical Anthropology, which providesreliable and definitive truths. The Egyptians had one term to designate themselves kmt=The Africans. The word is the etymological of the root Kamit which has proliferated in modern anthropological literature. In the Egyptian language, a word assembly is formed from an adjective or a noun by putting it in the feminine singular==km=Black The terms is a collective noun which thus described the whole people of Pharaonic Egypt as a black/African people.Need I say more , ‘tweedle-dum”? Talking about the myth that Europeans made Africans better, let’s look at the historical facts! The limited services within Aafrica were destributed in a manner that reflected athe pattern of domination and exploitation The settler class was pining for the standards of the bourgeoisie or professional classes of the Metropoles.They were determined to have these luxuries in Africa, because so many of them came from poverty in /europe, and could not hope to have these services in their homelands Colonies like Algeria, KenY and South Africa, it is well known, wites created an infrastructure to affrod . , ,,
The visciousnes of the colonial can be seen with respect to social service in the case ofeconomic activities which made huge profits, this, notably in the mining industry(read “the last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds and the World”. According to the Tubercolosis Commission of 1912 reported that “Scarcely a single family exists in which at least one member is not suffering or dying from tuberculosis. Hospital services are so inadequate that incurable tuberculosis and other cases are simply sent home to die- and spread the infection. In some areas, a single doctor has to attend to the needs of 40,000(forty thousands!!) people. The natives must pay for medical treatment. There is no provision for pauper patients. About 65% of the native children die before reaching two years…” This is 1912 South Africa when the basis of Gold and Diamond Empire was already laid. The Arusha Declaration neatly surmised this truth about Africathat, ”
we have been oppressed a great deal, we have been exploited a great deal, and we hTown imported African Agricultural produce, were formerly involved in carrying out slavery. Towns like New England in USA; Lloyds, the great insurance underwriting and banking house(Their original capital came from slavery)Barclays Bank had its beginnings with slavery; Worms et Compagnie used capital it made from slavery. Unilever exploited African labor to make its bazzillions. I think the British Tribe and the Boer tribe are proud youintimate Google and Holy wood as your historical reference!?
The ancestor of all humans came from Africa - but he/she was not black. This was the ancestor of all the 5 different skull/skin tyoes( Caucasan, Negroid, Asiatic, Capoid and Austroloid)
They have found a cave with human artifacts going back over 100,000 years here is SA, including a human hair - but it is not black, or white, or Khoisan - but most likely the ancestor of all of them.
And most definately the coloureds are Khoisan, as well as descendents of Dutch slaves from Indonesia. Recent DNA tests have proved that the coloureds of the Karroo are almost pure Khoisan - which proves the whites did not wipe them out. The black settlers did in the north, which is why there are none there.
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It isn’t that we aren’t aware of the crime etc. It is simply that we don’t want to acknowledge the brute facts of the situation we live in. I remember when all the papers carried that picture of the immigrant being burned alive. Many of the responses were not of feeling for the man but were of annoyance that such an image might negatively impact the country abroad. (Indeed it was picked up in Britain and Aus etc.)
I too recently returned to this country after a long spell away and was tasked with finding a permanent house. I was confused to note the preponderance of so-called “lock up and go houses”. Every second house bore the label at the Estate Agent. And then it dawned on me how central security issues are to our lives here. One doesn’t want to have to spend 25 minutes “locking up the house” (a phrase I’ve never heard elsewhere) checking and rechecking the windows ad infinitum each time they leave for the shops. When purchasing my 4X4 I was offered bullet proofing as if it were the most natural thing in the world (apparently it would also protect me from minor explosions).
Instead these absurdities become a natural part of life and we don’t realise how abnormal our lives actually are (You left you bag on the bag seat? W hat did you expect would happen… We never stop on that street… Are you mad?).
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