Irresponsible leadership
2010-04-07 12:05
The leadership of the ANC was grossly irresponsible to allow Youth League leader Julius Malema to systematically insult and scare white South Africans over the past year.
Their initial defence of his singing of the now infamous song about shooting the Boers was even worse, but the fact that they allowed him to go and grandstand in Zimbabwe and associate himself with the land-grabbing of the Zanu-PF thugs was reckless in the extreme, especially as it happened right in the middle of the brouhaha about the song.
The implosion of Zimbabwe, the evil regime of Robert Mugabe and the treatment of white Zimbabweans is one of white South Africans’ most sensitive panic buttons.
ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe is angry that Afriforum had turned to the courts to get the song banned.
He has a point that the best way to deal with something like that would be a political decision rather than a legal action, but he does not explain why he and his comrades didn’t actually make that political decision in time to avoid legal proceedings.
President Jacob Zuma is supposed to be the Great Peacemaker and the Great Listener, but even he failed to see the inflammatory potential of singing “kill the Boere” or “pass me my machine gun” while hundreds of farmers and their workers get killed in violent attacks every year.
Overreaction
It would serve the ANC leadership, and all other South Africans for that matter, to remember that we did not get our democracy because the ANC had defeated the white regime in a war.
Every bit of our peace, stability and prosperity since 1994 is due to the fact that the two sides negotiated a settlement that ended up in a very good Constitution.
The fact remains, and someone should perhaps tell Malema and his juvenile yobbos this, that white South Africans actually gave up their power voluntarily.
It is true that if they hadn’t done that, the country, its infrastructure and its economy would have been progressively ruined and many would have died, but in other countries faced with similar choices people have more often than not chosen civil war.
Having said that, I have to add that I was astonished at the complete overreaction to Malema’s drivel and the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche by so many white South Africans and sections of the white media.
It is true that Malema with his dangerous populism and strong-arm tactics has manoeuvred himself into a powerful position in the ANC.
But if the media didn’t turn him into a type of political David Beckham and if white South Africans didn’t choose him as their favourite bogeyman, he would not nearly have been as strong a political force as he is right now.
Julius Malema is far more a symptom of something dangerous than being dangerous in himself.
But much worse was the reaction to the Terre'Blanche murder.
Suddenly newspapers had banner headlines screaming “Racial anger” and commentators and politicians warned of the “extremely high political temperature”.
Paragon of virtue
How did it happen that all these people forgot that Terre'Blanche was the national clown 16 years ago? That 99.9% of South Africans thought the AWB were disgusting fascists and racists?
Terre'Blanche was the joker with holes in his underpants lying on the doormat of an English poppie, the buffoon who fell off his horse, the crazed racist who led his thugs into Bophuthatswana to “kill some kaffirs”, the lunatic who crashed through the Codesa building’s windows with an armoured car and assaulted staff, the hooligan who served time in jail for a vicious racist assault on a defenceless man.
Nobody but a handful of dronkgat half-wits ever took Terre'Blanche seriously.
And now that two of his workers clubbed him to death, apparently because he refused to pay them, he is suddenly a paragon of virtue and a martyr for the white cause!
Most letter writers and radio callers unequivocally declare that his murderers were motivated by Malema’s song.
Do you really think the two workers would not have killed him if Malema had never sang that song? Unless strong evidence emerges, it would be very hard to believe.
Vulgar racism
I was deeply ashamed by the overwhelming, vulgar racism unleashed by whites since Terre'Blanche’s murder.
It doesn’t seem to occur to them that they are actually worse than Malema himself.
If white people feel vulnerable because they are an ethnic minority, the last thing they should do is to ferment more racism and more racial tension.
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