Spend an hour on MyNews24 and then answer the following multiple choice question:
Q: Is the average middle-class South African with access to the internet:
a) A racist bigot.
b) An atheist crusader.
c) A liberal fundamentalist.
d) An anonymous coward.
Though if this was a real multiple choice test I’d argue point a) and d) are the same. And b) and c) aren’t too different either; but one choice we wouldn’t get is e) All grown up.
Now, before the Pavlovian frothing at the mouth starts, consider some of these gems…
‘Anti-racist is code word for anti-white’. While I shouldn’t even give this stupid sh*t-eating sentence the light of day, I can’t resist. Whoever coined the phrase obviously typed it out, and the sat back with that air of smugness people get when they think they’ve just said something profound. I imagine it happened to Mark Twain a lot, but by applying basic logic to a totally illogical sentence like ‘Anti-racist is code word for anti-white’ are we then to draw the opposite conclusion? Let’s drop the word ‘anti-’ and we’re left with ‘Racist is code word for white’? But if that were the case, the original sentence would have no meaning. If ‘Anti-racist is code word for anti-white’ is aimed at the bleeding heart white liberals, which I suspect it is, then things get very silly. I am white but I am also anti-racist! So what does that make me? A white that is anti-white? That’s ridiculous, I mean how can I be anti-me? Like Popeye once said, ‘I yam what I yam’!
Perhaps the real worry for South Africa is that Julius has explicitly said he believes ‘whites are racist’. Worrying because Julius speaks for a lot more people than someone with an anonymous profile named ‘PaleFace’ on News24; but I’m guessing decent people know that both Julius and PaleFace (birds of a feather) are wrong.
Then I’m sure you have come across the WGT! Some of you will instantly recognize the acronym, but for the occasional user it stands for ‘White Genocide Theory’. Proponents of this theory love to use fancy-pants words like ‘social engineering’ as basis for the slow inextricable death of the ‘white race’. So I thought I might contribute to this ‘discussion’, taking great care not to lend too much credibility to a modern-day real-life version of the board game Risk. However, before wading into the muddy waters of an alleged genocide, me thought a good place to start would be www.un.org rather than rely on my own anecdotal evidence. There you’ll find a minor report ‘just thrown together’ by a bunch of PhD palookas entitled the United Nations 2010 Global Census. A quick look suggests that for every 100 people in the word:
· 30 are Asian
· 27 are Indian
· 20 are Europeans
· 13 are Hispanics
· 10 are Africans
Now considering the overwhelming evidence of human migration (google ‘Out of Africa’) - every single one of us is East African (and I for one have Hakuna Matata with that, and if you do tough, because you can’t change the past), then mzungus haven’t done that badly in resisting this genocide over the last 60,000 years. Which draws me to the conclusion: There’s a long way to go before the white man is socially engineered into oblivion – in fact so long and so unlikely I really wouldn’t worry about it, the Sun will have exploded by then. In fact as things stand, there are way more whites than there are blacks on the planet – and the only official attempt at mixing up the gene pool that I am aware of was that of the Portuguese colonizers back in the day; but they were trying to things the other way round; whiten the things up a bit! Notwithstanding, I could make a completely inappropriate comment about how good looking Brazilian girls are, but I won’t.
And as for the birth rate argument – no population is aging faster than, so by extension declining, than the Chinese - the one child policy has already resulted in a median age of 36 (and nice a demographic dividend) but they have no problem with that. In fact, China’s population in 2100 is projected to fall by 400 million from current levels (that’s 8 South Africas folks!); and what about India? India has 200 million more people living in one country than the total population of the entire African continent (that’s a whole 4 South Africas more); and nowhere globally are fertility rates dropping faster than in Africa (granted off a high base) but this is really a product of urbanization and female emancipation. So while a race-based nationalistic defense theory against the evils of ‘social engineering’ may make for delightful chit-chat around the braai, it has no basis in fact.
Another chestnut we see often is the delightfully quaint, ‘I am an African man’. Well bully for you! Can you picture a chest-thumping leopard-skin clad warrior putting his shield and spear down for a second, so that he can begin typing some boorish (not boer-ish) and backward point of view into his laptop? I think the metaphor is apt. This is the 21st Century not the Battle of Isandlwala. Being a black man from Africa doesn’t automatically give you license to be a racist, chauvinistic and homophobic bigot. I mean none of my ‘African male’ friends think ‘that black girls shouldn’t be allowed to wear mini-skirts or long pants in public’.
But I must admit I do have a chuckle when the atheists and the religious folk have a go at each other. There’s something that both sides miss. The pious defenders make no bones of their contempt for the atheist, even warning non-believers with dire consequences such as ‘You’ll burn in the fires of hell’, before ending their comments with a nice ‘God bless’! The standard response is usually along the lines of ‘I don’t believe in God, I prefer to understand Science’ followed by references to ‘The Sky Daddy’, but I can’t help but notice the most fervent (and funniest) contributor in the religious debate fails to see the irony of having a profile name in which the first three letters of his name are G-O-D; or did he carefully choose a name that rhymes with ‘God-free’? Only he knows….
So the point of my contribution today? Come on mense! I understand this little bit of escapism is fun, but let’s remember that’s all it should be…. I got my panties in a knot last week I admit, but eventually realized that we all need a voice too, cowards and nutcases too. I know I am unsure of a lot of things, but I am pretty damn sure not everyone is out to get you. I am completely sure most of us – good old fashioned South Africans from all walks of life – all just want to get along. But I swear if I wrote an article about a ‘nice slice of carrot cake’ before long it would degenerate into a race rant about ‘how the carrot cake used to be so much better when we still had working lifts at the Joburg Gen’.
Yes, we have Government. Yes, we have crime. Yes, we have each other (yikes!) but people, forget the politics sometimes and remember life is k@k at the best of best of times, but it is also great the worst of times too.
Now let’s all take a deep breath, convince ourselves that ‘everything’s going to be alright’ and do the only thing we can do…. ‘V.. maar voort’. The alternative – fear and loathing in the New South Africa – will just eat you up from the inside out, and I promise, it won't get you, me or any us anywhere.
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