Our government has openly admitted to doing a lot of things wrong, and for this I commend them. It takes a big man to own up to a mistake. But the one mistake they have made that in my opinion is their biggest, they have not yet owned up to.
The ANC claims to be a non-racial party, but their policies do not show this. It's almost at every juncture they can, they have to label the problems in our society with either the words Apartheid, or White. In the previous week the president himself said that one of the problems is that the controlling shares in the economy are in the hands of white males. This is only a problem because of our skin colour. Whether or not this was intentional, it brings about more division between the races because it singles one out and calls them a problem.
This is but only one little example of something that has been characteristic of the ruling party since they came into power. Every election, the ANC comes out and tells people how they brought down the evil white government of Apartheid. This furthermore hammers the differences home and widens the gaps. Is it then so strange that we have a society so vastly polarized that people are now calling for civil war, for blood to be shed.
For force to be used to take away from the evil whites and give to the deserving black people. And I am not saying that black people aren't deserving, far from it, there is definitely a need to make all previously disadvantaged races a large part of this economy, but the moment you take by force, it becomes theft.
Now what should they have done? Well, a feeling of unity should have been promoted from day one, healing the rift. If we could have begun 18 years ago to try and heal the rift between all races, then today we would have a very different South Africa.
Imagine if instead of wanting to take away from the white business men and women, there was active dialogue, learning sessions planned to work together to begin and grow new enterprises which would build the economy so large, the only way to sustain it was to include everyone.
Imagine if we had social structures that showed all South Africans who fought against Apartheid, white and black, Indian, Chinese and everyone else.
Yes there were black heroes, but there were also whites and Indians and Chinese and all other races in our cosmopolitan nation who fought and suffered for fighting. All of them should have honoured equally.
Imagine if policies were implemented that brought us together to work for this nation, than policies that divided even further and kept that divide almost unbreachable. Imagine what South Africa would be like today, after 18 years of nation building, instead of nation dividing, which after all is an Apartheid ideal.
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