It is understandable that when one of South Africa’s best-known racist is murdered on his farm, that there are some people who will read racism into his murder. It even suits the political agenda of some people who campaign against the murder of white farmers by black people.
But no matter how racist AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche was, and even if his alleged killers were black, that does not necessarily make it a racist killing. This is of course the easy route to take and, unfortunately, most of our political leadership in South Africa, across political parties, is so poor at the moment that they will unfortunately take this route more often than not.
From the evidence at the time of writing this blog, it appeared that Terre’Blance was killed by two of his workers in an argument over unpaid wages. This would then rather make his killing an economic issue, as opposed to a race issue.
Yes, we understand that many white farmers have been killed, and most of the time black people were responsible. But this still does not mean that farmers are targeted because they are white. And it does not mean that the people who attack them are doing it because they are blacks who hate whites.
It could simply be a matter of farmers being attacked because, rightly or wrongly, they are seen to represent privilege and wealth in areas where there is not a lot of privilege and wealth. And the people who attack them could merely be trying to get their hands on some of this perceived privilege and wealth.
Of course, there are political parties who are licking their lips at the opportunity presented by Terre’Blanche’s death to take a swipe at the ANC and their perceived stance against white people, fuelled by stupid utterances by people such as Julius Malema.
But these people also look for racism where it does not exist, because it suits their purposes. The more divided our society is, the better it suits their political agenda.
Real political leaders will use opportunities like this to unite our people, as opposed to dividing them. But I don’t know how real our political leaders are.
Our political leaders should be talking about how important it is for us to mourn yet another senseless killing in our already violent society. They should be talking about how all of us should be fighting crime and how one murder is one too many.
They should be talking about how important it is for all of us, irrespective of race, to sympathise with Terre’Blanche’s family. They should be talking about how, at times of crisis like this, we need to reach out to our fellow South Africans of all races even more.
They should be reminding us of how far we have come as a nation and not to let stupid acts like this destroy our hard-won democracy.
Of course, there are people who will accuse me of not living in the real world and not being in touch with reality.
They are entitled to their opinions but I sincerely believe that, like Chris Hani’s death, we need to turn this negative situation into a positive. If we are able to do this, imagine the irony that, in his death, Eugene Terre’Blance would have done more to unite South Africans than in all the time he was alive.
@The Praetor
The opposite of White is Black. We own the identity so stop calling us non-Whites because i am not a non-entity.
To all the white farmers outhere! My advice to you is stop treating your workers like one of your farm implements instead of people. If you genuinly care about your workers and you genuinly adress their needs, this kind of babaric murders wouldnt happen.
Most of these farm murders are carried out by farm workers, not by thugs from the cities. I have worked on a farm, and I can tell you that most farmers do not respect their workers. Grown men (matter of fact old men) are being called boys by people 20 years younger than them. Just because your workers smile at you when you insult them doest mean they are stupid.
Its all about respect and treating people fairly and rewarding good perfomance. I tell you if you do that your workers will do everthing in their power to make sure no harm comes to you!
Welcome to the Republic of South Africa. I’m glad to mention that the love for sports and football in particular will unite us all. I’m however saddened to hear that Julius Malema might face a possible charge of genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hauge. This is disturbing news indeed and I would like all the patriotic white community of my country to urge the farmer who does this to stop . I’m saying this because whe have a long way to go and we can’t afford to be interrupted on our way to peace. We come a long way and we really can’t afford to go back. Please help to stop what might be the Bosnia Herzogovinia .I’m aware that this might sound politically strange coming from me but that is how the love for my country and its people black and white go.Of course not forgetting the so called Coloureds and Indians and my fellow black Chinese. What an interesting country we live in.!! So why would we allow some unhappy people to destroy us.? Capital took our land and we are quiete, we forgave without being asked for forgiveness and now someone would like to turn our counrty into a Bosnia Herzogovonia. No, we can’t allow that. We are better than Israel, we do better! So, FF, DA AFRIFORUM arrest this fire before it spreads. All in the name of peace loving South Africans.