Have you ever heard of Alfred Dreyfuss? I doubt it. The philosophy of the ANC is to rewrite history to suit their own ideology, thus the occurrence of 5 January 1895 in the inner courtyard of the Ecole Militaire in Paris will be of no consequence to you. You won’t understand the meaning of that, because it had all to do with honour and honourable conduct.
On that fateful morning a French military officer by the name and rank of Captain Alfred Dreyfuss, was publicly humiliated and stripped of all rank and honours. His standing in society and his possessions were taken from him. He was humiliated and cursed at and blamed for everything that was wrong with France…and then he was banished. And oh, how easy it was to do that, because Captain Dreyfuss was a member of a small minority in the bigger French population, a group that became a pebble in the shoe to France – he was a Jew. The fact that he was altogether innocent of the things he was accused of, was of lesser importance that morning. Only the passing of time would make truth triumphant and would shame his accusers before the eternal memory of humankind.
I am a white man, of European ancestry (somewhere at the end of the 17th century a great-great-grandfather set foot ashore in Cape Town from Augsburg in Bavaria). I am a Christian, I believe in Western values. I am one of Africa’s white children. I do not justify my presence in this country before you, or any other person be he black, coloured or Indian. I belong here, and neither you nor any of your people have a RIGHT to drive me out. I, president Zuma, am your scapegoat. I am the one you have in mind when you sing your song about taking a machine gun to shoot the Boers. I am Afrikaner and Boer first. You and your government makes of me a Dreyfuss.
I stand by my open window in this dark hour of the night to try and catch my breath, president Zuma, because when I ponder the things that are happening in this country, my chest closes up. I accuse you of that, I accuse you because your government made of this country a place where a man cannot breathe any more. To live in South Africa lately is like stumbling through a burning city. You want to puke for the stench of corruption (that act which you regard as a Western crime which cannot be committed by an African. How convenient and typical – decriminalise the crime and you carry on freely committing it!) You stumble over the heaps of rubble of what was once functional post offices, police stations, armed force bases and train stations and government institutions. You are blinded by the smoke of racism and hate and you slip in the streams of blood of innocent victims. Of that I accuse you…
I imagine standing next to a white-haired woman with a pair of little girl’s shoes in her hands. She is a grandmother who had to remove those two little shoes from the stiff, cold feet of a little 5 year old blonde farm girl. They came in the darkness of the night and they killed her daddy with a machete before letting the wicked horror of hell loose on her mommy. Then they shot her mommy. And they shot her as well, because they wouldn’t risk leaving a witness behind.
God knows president Zuma, I believe it is for the better. She would never have recovered from what her little eyes had to witness. But a civilised person, a living human being with a conscience who does not carry a stone in his chest where his heart must be, that person shrinks away from the sheer gruesome horror of this. That woman with the two little shoes in her quivering, wrinkled old hands will never see a little girl on her first day at school – front teeth missing on her school photo! She will never know a teen, in love with her jeans and earphones and horses. She will never be part of that girl’s first love affair, there will be no gown for the senior prom, never a wedding planned…because she, who had to be a mother one day, she who was the most precious our nation had, she was destroyed like a filthy rodent. And for that happening, I accuse you tonight….
I stand by this window tonight and I struggle in myself not to hate, because I do not WANT to hate. The struggle against bitterness I have lost long ago. I pray that God forgive me for that, but I cannot help it anymore. And when I see the little specks of light in the houses scattered against Paarlberg I think about people across this vast country sitting behind their burglar bars, living by those lights, living with that bitterness.
Bitterness comes from anger. Anger, because you, president Zuma, could not even manage the most basic thing expected of a leader. You could not manage to take from the past what is good and built the future on that. On the contrary, you keep on using everything in history which is bad and evil and you throw that at the minority in this country. You punish and blame and judge and divide and you see that everything around us goes to nothingness and you refuse to understand that you sow the seeds of anger and bitterness.
The journey from anger and bitterness to hate is a short one, president, it is in fact merely one step backwards….
Why do you embarrass us before the eyes of the civilised world with statements such as “Corruption is a Western concept” and “Why can’t I have a palace at Nkandla when PW Botha had an airport?” That little 5 year old girls would have been able to tell you that PW Botha built an airport at George which still serves the entire community of the Southern Cape because the nearest airport to that is 400 km away. Nkandla is your luxurious palace where you live in splendour with your vast family. That is how basic the difference is, but no, you had to look for an excuse from apartheid South Africa first and then embarrass us before the world. I accuse you president Zuma!
Does it even help that I tell you these things? No, quite the opposite. You and your people do not take note of these words, for in your eyes I am a white man – your followers regard me as the enemy, the settler. The fact that my family has been born in this country for 9 generations, longer than what your own is even recorded, means nothing – it is just a part of that history which you conveniently re-write to suit your own purpose.
And when I come to you with those two little shoes, then you say it is right-wing racist propaganda, that there is not genocide of the white minority in this country. You deny that which the world can see with its own eyes!
President Zuma, if these things do not happen, then say to us that little girl is not dead. Tell us that there are not thousands of my people reduced to pitiless poverty by your draconian racist labour legislation. Assure us that there are not thousands of our children sitting in strange houses in foreign countries longing for the parents they HAD to leave behind – I know, I’ve been there. Say to us then that our people are not starving and hungry while you build your palaces. Tell us that our country is not bankrupted through corruption.
But no, that you cannot…for dead she is, poor and desolate they are, against the ground with longing for their mothers our children are, our people are hungry and corruption is a disease…The people of this country are sick to death of this!
If you listen carefully tonight, you will hear the voices calling on you from the earth of this land – and they are not voices of praise. President Zuma, what you hear are the voices of the innocent people buried along the road of the New South Africa – the voices accusing you and your trusted circle. They call you to answer for them who cannot speak any more….
We ask for our freedom, our right to self-determination, our right to exist in this country. That is all. That is what we bought with the blood and the voices and the two little shoes. And now we come and ask for it.
And if you cannot or will not give me that answer tonight, let it be known to you as certain as the sun will rise in the morning: You will give that answer before the justice of the Almighty God and the jury who will judge you, will be history and the common conscience of humanity. You and I are but mere fractions of a speck of dust in eternity, and that is why I call you to answer, president Zuma. To me you are not president tonight, you are not leader, not black man or white man or coloured or Indian, not politician or polygamist, Zulu or African – you have only become the symbol of everything I am bitter about. And for that I accuse you…
I accuse you, president…
(Daniel – Front National)
South Africa Today – South Africa News
