Essop Pahad says:

“He rejected statements that the government’s sluggish service delivery was partly to blame for the situation.

“A lack of service delivery can never be an excuse … no one else has done what we have done in 14 years. Let’s not forget where we came from,” Pahad said.”

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2326270,00.html

So the gist of it is we should be grateful , don’t we realise how great things are at the moment, and some ‘right wing’ elements have caused this all. Must be the local AWB branch office situated in Alex then!!!

Is it me, or are we even starting to sound like Zimbabwe?

He is right of course, few other could have achieved what the ANC have achieved in 14 years…

It is you that has it all wrong, but before i start please note that i draw a very distinct difference between black african people and black african culture. I do not believe white people are in any way superior to black people, but i do recognise that white culture is significantly more advanced than that of black african culture, and i think the evidence bears this out to the extent that no fair minded commentator could really disagree.

Black culture does not go back 300 years, it goes back thousands of years, why do you only go back 300? That is a rhetoric question, i know the answer, because before that you have no-one left to blame but each other, so you would have to take responsibility yourself!

Ask yourself the question did slavery and apartheid cause primitive black culture, or did primitive black culture cause slavery and apartheid? You of course know the answer (since one pre-dated the other).

If black culture had not been so much less advanced that white culture, you would never have been taken into slavery (or to be correct sold each other into slavery). Likewise the British, pre-apartheid, kept black South Africans apart from the Boers because when they arrived the difference in your ‘levels of civilisation’ was so great that they believed you had to be kept separate until you could catch up.

The British, like I, believed that you were perfectly capable of this, but needed time.

Why your culture was, and remains, so much behind the rest of the world is open to debate, but ironically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it is black commentators that usually shed the most light on this subject.

Go read this blog by the sumo

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/thesumo/2008/03/17/shamefully-homebound-the-neighbours-are-having-a-field-day/

Read also the comments, exclusively by blacks.

That is is behind, can be demonstrated it so many ways. I could list all the african disasters, but how about a positive one. The success black africans achieve when you take them out of african culture and place them in a western one. This is the ‘coup de grace’ for me. Proving your personal equality, with the ineptitude of your culture (in creating the society that you claim to want, as opposed to the primitive society for which your culture was developed).

There is much that is very admirable in traditional african culture, and if you want to lead that life fine, just don’t then expect a 3 bed semi and a BMW! (or financial equality).

There is a very good comment on the Readers Blog “Where are we Heading” by “Deveolpment Economist” of Allan Greenspan’s analysis – “economic popularism as a response by an impoverished populance to a failing society”

Can someone link it – I don’t know how to. I think it is relevant.

You suffer from a very severe case of David Bullardism – a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among black and white South Africans determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that Whites are superior and have the right to rule blacks. This is found in your continued attempts manufacture self-serving labels for black people such as “a group of ‘animals’ laughing as they burn a man to death for no other reason than he is not from the right tribe”. Check your newspaper sources, they seem to have changed their story about the laughing group of animals!

Again, you are in high speeds to call us names; “as i read about who was raped, or murdered in cold blood each day, knowing that, yet again, it is Black Africans that have cheapened the value of life so much” and “black barbarity is a daily, no hourly, occurance”, you have really outdone yourself this time, and you sound very bitter. Amused as you are, foolishly so, you should not be surprised of these “barbaric” behaviours. Slavery, oppression and other white and racist cultures are known to produce exactly that. And you think 14 years of “Arrogant, greedy, corrupt politicians, who believe themselves above the law, not accountable to the people, who close ranks to protect each others dirty little habits” is enough to create a culture?

This black culture – the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another – that you so badly talk about could only have been created by the unending oppression and David Bullardism that has been perpetuated by white people on black people (Particularly in SA), the 300 years of slavery could only achieve the bitter black man that you seeing today. And this white culture is being transmitted from one generation – suppose 14 years is adequate to create generation – to another. Continue to treat black people as a problem, a barbaric race that needs some form of cleansing, and trust you me, we will all suffer.
I pity you, the amused and confused one, but I do not blame you, with role model like Eugine and David, you were bound to turn out this way. Try this, and I pray it works:

“We seldom study the condition of the Negro to-day honestly and carefully. It is so much easier to assume that we know it all. Or perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts. And yet how little we really know of these millions,–of their daily lives and longings, of their homely joys and sorrows, of their real shortcomings and the meaning of their crimes! All this we can only learn by intimate contact with the masses, and not by wholesale arguments covering millions separate in time and space, and differing widely in training and culture. To-day, then, my reader, let us turn our faces to the Black … and seek simply to know the condition of the blacks…of one county there.” From The Souls of Black Folks (W.E.B. DuBois)

Sharp Sharp!

Osbert
“no third force”?
“spontaneous” outbreaks in the townships in totally different provinces on 8/1/2008, 8/2/2008, 8/3/2008, 8/4/2008 – and now in May?

You can believe in “no third force”. I prefer to believe in Father Christmas, The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Conclusions drawn by you of this argument as being worthy of a falacy are biased and unproductive as they do partly distort one of the many root causes of this unfortunate state of affairs.

Just like Arpartheid, whites hated blacks but everyone knows that this hate was not as simplistic as colour, however, in the same breadth, colour was contributory.

The fact of the matter is this:
We have overrated the concept of a rainbow nation and this needs to be re – visited. A case in point is the Carte Blanch piece which brought to our attention that some South Afrcan’s were also displaced from their homes on the basis of their ethnic identity. Some call it Trabalism, I call it black on black hate. Does this mean that the veracity of the problem has been toned down by my argument, I do not think so…

I beleive that the first step to fixing this problem is by admiting that indeed xenophobia, just like racism, is a part of our society. In other words, South Africans (some) hate each other and this needs to be dealt with.

The need for a moral regeneration of our society has rised again…(though it has never left us). This is a long term project. The short term project is to however make an example of the fact that our STATE (Government, Excutive, Judiciary, Civil Society and the general public at large) do not condone these thuggery actions worthy of a Genocidal dscription (though not state sponsored).

This example entails bringing all those responsible to book. We need to remove the sense of entitlement that runs within the fabrick of society by making it public through the course of Justice that people will always be held accountable for their actions.

“Your democratic right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins!”

Check your history books for white oppression, but your newspapers for black barbarity.

Are my comments about black culture foolish, untrue, or just unpalatable and unpopular?

Also APOLOGY ON HERALD ARTICLE – It is a letter written to the Herald NOT Govt or Herald opinion.