'Your words don't hurt me'

2005-07-25 11:05

Oh wow, what a week!

This has been a week like not many others and, frankly, I am of the considered opinion that many white South Africans are still as racist and ultra-bigoted as they have always been, their unconvincing "reconciliation" claims notwithstanding.

And before you know it, it is I who will be pilloried for allegedly being racist - just because I point this out!

The sick logic that one automatically becomes a racist just because one talks about it, always baffles me.

I mean to say, one does not become a racist by speaking about it, any more than one becomes a rapist or murderer and hijacker just because one speaks about these things regularly.

Otherwise, with their faulty logic, South Africans are a bunch of criminals, every one of them, because they talk about crime all the time!

Last week's column

I did expect some response - very heated, some of it was - to my column last week in which I expressed sadness at the tragic events in London two weeks ago and, in which I also stated quite openly my deep sympathy, also, for the victims of the cluster bombs and guided missiles by the "civilised" west, which rained down on them.

As I pointed out, the west and its leaders (Tony Blair, for one) described the perpetrators of the London outrage as barbarians; in the west, casualties of the so-called "war on terror" are casually lumped together and dismissed as "collateral damage".

These are views I think many other people hold, views for which I was crucified on News24, but views for which I will never apologise.

I do not say this out of any bravado, but rather out of a deep conviction.

Some of the letters are frankly so puerile, lack any logic and do not attest to the simple tenets of debate, but drip with undisguised racist venom and hatred that I simply pressed the "delete" button because I did not want my trash bin to hold such nonsense.

Childish arguments

I never shy away from debate, but I would rather "debate" in the true sense of the word, rather than waste my time and energy with very silly and pathetic bits of childish arguments, such as the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper, somehow giving rise to a stupid and very racist analogy about Africans and whites!

As if whites do not normally see themselves as Africans; but the racism is deeply intended in this particular letter and, as I say, I would not even bother to respond to such nonsense.

One letter which I did respond to, was, typically, very empty of logic and full of arrogance and invective.

It demanded that the editor force me to apologise for my views, and to stop writing this column.

My response, copied to the editor, was:

"Leon, as a rule I never respond to uncouth and insulting people, but for once I will bend that rule.

"You insultingly call me 'the idiot', a 'disgrace' and you also say I 'sound like a terrorist' with what you call my 'lamest, stupidest articles'.

"Those are your opinions and you have a right to hold them; but you do not have the right to abuse me.

"Not once in your missive of personalised attack, insults and crudity do you attempt to use logic. Had you done that, I would probably have been inclined to revise my views and, as a consequence, probably abandon them altogether to give place to your better ones. That, after all, is the essence of debate.

"But your rudeness and arrogance, coupled with a dismal sense of debate and a good deal of bad manners, may have been an opportunity lost.

"You tell the editor to stop running this column. That is his prerogative, of course, but I doubt if he would be cowed by the likes of you. In this country we have a constitution which allows, among other things, freedom of speech (extending, by implication, to the freedom to differ). "For your gratuitous insults, I will leave you with this thought: You are a miserable, bombastic, vulgar little man who suffers from self-deceit, but is very empty upstairs.

"Clearly crudity appears to be your chief quality."

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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