My recent post about forgiveness elicited quite a response from one particular person, who chose to compare apartheid to the millions of people murdered during WW2... not quite in the same league, factually speaking I'd say, but it did raise an interesting point.
That point is that even though I was born during the apartheid era, I don't really remember much about it at all.
I was, afterall, a preteen at the official end of apartheid, and barely in high school when Madiba was elected president.
The question raised by all of that is whether I should feel responsible for something I did not do - or in fact even understand at the time?
Should I hold the children of the current ANC leadership responsible when their parents steal or fail? Should we hold the children of, say, a robber, responsible for their parent's crimes?
The simple fact, that many people seem to be missing entirely is that no one who is not directly responsible for ANY crime is going to assume responsibility for it. If your colleague steals office supplies, you're not going to get fired for it, are you?
Then there's the question of how many people on the other side of the fence so to speak actually remember apartheid? If you're a twenty year old member of the YL, can you really be mouthing off about apartheid, when you don't actually know anything but propaganda about it?
I suppose that I am more objective these days - if the country implodes because of racist policies in government, and the attitude of entitlement that's become a cancer among certain segments of the population, I watch from afar - and offer my family refugee sponsorship. I don't see this as an emotive issue anymore, because for me, it doesn't matter either way.
I just think that it's stupid and pathetic to be blaming today's failures on the past, and on people who had nothing to do with it.
I don't remember apartheid. I was not involved. I will not be blamed.
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