I have recently noticed an interesting thing: The moment you get involved in a political debate with a black fellow South African (and oddly enough, most of them in their early twenties) at one point or the other a statement such as: “You would love to return to apartheid” pops up.
I wish for the life of me I knew why. Apartheid was a very short historical period of time in the long history of this country. But it does not define South Africa. It does not define the white South African and it certainly does not define the black South African.
In fact, the black man in this country has a choice whether he wants to remain a victim of his own demons, for the fear of a return to apartheid is nothing more than a self created demon which haunts him. It fascinates me that so many young black people have such a profound obsession about apartheid! Could it be that the inconvenient truth of having to realise that post-apartheid South Africa only benefitted a handful of ANC’s and their best buddies and by default therefore being an even bigger flop than what was expected, means also to admit that apartheid isn’t the only political sin in this country. Post-apartheid South Africa looks little, if in fact at all, better….
Apartheid is dead and gone. It happened. We cannot change it, not the black man and not the white man. You might change street names and town’s names and you might push over statues of Hendrik Verwoerd and erect museums and blame apartheid for every misdemeanour committed by the ANC regime, but it will change nothing. It happened. It is a fact.
Apartheid does not define this country. A political system of 42 years is but a chapter in a history of hundreds of years. Because Italy had a Fascist regime for 2 or 3 decades, it does not mean that the greatness of Rome or the achievements of Italian unification under Garibaldi and Cavour should be shifted aside. Apartheid was a chapter, nothing more.
The choice you as black South Africans has is now to accept that apartheid was voluntarily ended by white South Africans in a referendum on 17 March 1992 in which 68,7% of the population voted in favour of the end of apartheid. The remaining 31,2%, despite the threat of civil war, were quite prepared to use the South African Defense Force, at that stage one of the best equipped military machines in the world, to maintain apartheid. The blatant lie that apartheid was ended by Mandela and the ANC is exactly that – a blatant, political lie.
And because apartheid was voluntarily ended by white South Africa, white South Africa will never allow its return. Nor will the world, be it the Western hemisphere or the countries of the East.
Apartheid is now history. White South Africa buried it a long time ago and has been standing, ready to move on for two decades now. The only reason why we have not yet started moving, is because such a large number of black South Africans wishes to waste more time feeding this demon which they created: the fear of the resurrection of apartheid.
They so pre-occupy themselves in struggling against this demon that their entire existence revolves around contemplating the past, bottling and cuddling the anger and hate, that no minute is ever spent on concerning themselves with the future. What a dangerous gamble that is, because it only means that, while the rest of civilisation is moving on, black South Africans are not moving along and are once again becoming “disadvantaged” and ‘left behind” – but it is even worse, because this time it is of their own free choice.
By Daniel Lötter (Front National)
South Africa Today – South Africa News
