I am a great lover of black people and I take a stance against white generalisations about black people with the stereotypical branding that if a person is black, therefore they must be treated with suspicion of being a potential murederer, thief or rapist. I have many friends who are black. But saying that, how can South Africans say that crimes purpotrated against blacks by whites are racially motivated but when it is the other way round it is not racially motivated? How can we say that black peoples have not been racially motivated when the whole xenophobic attacks by a section of black South African society was drawn on racial lines. It wasn’t only the indians, zimbabweans or Mozambiquans but also South African Shangaans too. It is no use pretending that racial discrimination or racially driven actions are a thing of the past. They are still alive and well in both white and black circles. Let us stop blaming apartheid or the black problem and move on.

Best wishes, as always

My father, a civil engineer was murdered in his home in 2004. We had always argued he and I about SA politics. Me trying to teach him what I learnt at Rhodes University (I was the first white chick to invite a black man as my date to a ball in 1989 – poor guy got it from the Black Student Movement for that. They trashed his car. We didn’t know he was forbidden to attend). Anyway my father was a good old Nat party supporter through and through but he’d worked on the mines and spent a lifetime working with black people in the rural areas of South Africa building townships, laying pipes etc. And he was the one who told me when I was young that ‘This white skin of yours means nothing – things are going to change’. I just wanted to say that with his murder by four young black boys (I say boys because they didn’t steal his car – probably because they couldn’t drive yet) for R3000 and a watch, I feel that my family have paid their debt to black South Africans. A portion of his estate went to the government as inheritance tax too.

I have been a victim too and I will continue to do everything I can to empower the black woman who works for me and her family. Not because of guilt but because she is my friend and the nanny to my child. She is teaching him isiXhosa. We have started a small business in iKasi together.

And I acknowledge that I have benefitted from apartheid and continue to do so, albeit because I inherited money from my murdered old man. But I’m not feeling guilty anymore because as far as I’m concerned my father paid the debt for all of us. I hold all black South Africans responsible because they condone vicious crime against whites with their deafening silence. We know that you think we deserve it as payback for the past. And many of you continue to teach this hatred to your children who then feel vindicated in their crimes. And what about the black people buying stolen goods in the townships?

So I’m looking you straight in the eye and telling you that I forgive you for the senseless murder of my father and please in return forgive me for the atrocities of apartheid.

@Brent
Yeah the blogs are kind of depressing but also very enlightening. I think this kind of dialogue is exactly what we all need though. Get it out there and hear what others have to say. Just wish we could rather do it down at the pub…

Perhaps you equate the right wing with the Boep en brandywyn brigade. Some of us are highly succesful, have good businesses and are well educated.
I even work internationally. And you?

Its the people who have to resort to name calling that are the real intellectually challenged. I have never insulted anyone. If you don’t agree with what I say, then prove me wrong. But I am proud of who I am. I am involved with the right wing all over the world: Croatia, USA, UK, Germany, Russia etc. They have one hell of a lot more brain power than these liberals spouting cliches. Try read Dr David Duke sometime, or a few other brilliant right wingers i can recommend.

Dont be trapped in your narrow mindedness.

I take your point. Absolutely. The left haven’t been covering themselves in glory whatsoever. But, somehow, I think the left is more tolerant of diverse opinion and I think it is generally accepted that no one opinion represents The Left. Patriotism, after all, is not a leftie idea.

With rightwing opinion in South Africa, it is somehow different. It has lost a lot of credibility because of past policies and absolutely idiotic positions. It is a pity.

I presume you refer to latter,if that is the case
is the left hijacked by idiot savants who in a
moment of inspired brilliance decided that in order
to get cleverer we all should go to bed earlier?

No, seriously, I’m disappointed to see that Consulting Engineer is a serious white supremacist. Sometimes before on Thoughtleader, I liked his input because we need that particular brand of conservative rasionality to have balanced debates. But I’m very disappointed to see the Nazi bullshit.

This is the problem with the right wing in South Africa. Conservative intellectuals have so much to offer, but unfortunately the right had been hijacked by jackasses for decades. What a pity.