Below is an open letter to President Jacob Zuma asking him to consider apologising for atrocities committed by his ancestors, as a freedom fighter for the attack on civilians and as president for bankrupting and destroying South Africa.
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT
To:
President Jacob Zuma
Parliament
Cape Town
30 May 2016
Dear mr Prez,
You haven’t yet responded to any of my previous letters, but don’t mind – I understand that you are a very busy man. All those transport arrangements to get the wives where they need to be, figuring out who’s conspiring against you, maths and governing – it is exhausting I suppose.
But hey, with the job title and the paycheque comes the responsibility, not so?
No doubt you’ll have time to read through my letters pretty soon, if I judge the tide correctly. I mean, how much does a former president have to keep him occupied with if, by own confession, he doesn’t really read a lot? You can’t swim in your fire pool all year, not even in Natal. So maybe you’ll have time to respond to my letters in a while– I can’t help to think about that profound statement John Q Adams made about Martin van Buren: “Sadly, there is nothing as forlorn as a former president.” (I’ll tell you who these guys were in my next letter.)
You’ve got problems, mr Prez. And the worst of it, you caused them for yourself. Honestly, from where I’m standing I don’t pretty much see the shelves of bookstores full of “Jacob Zuma” biographies. I don’t really think there will be a monument or a statue for you. South Africa would much rather try to forget as soon as we humanly can. But there is one suggestion I would like to make, and maybe you would like to consider this as an option to save a little bit of your dignity.
For 25 years now Afrikaners have been apologizing for apartheid. It started with the Dutch Reformed Church who apologised four times before I lost count. Then followed cultural organisations and business enterprises and eventually the former leaders of the Afrikaner as well. Look, the way guys like Adriaan Vlok keeps apologising with his basin, cloth and bar of soap, means that we might not be a wealthy nation or even a happy nation, but we are certainly the nation with the most hygienic feet in the world!
Why don’t you apologise as well?
Why don’t you apologise as a Black South African for the numerous occasions when your ancestors crossed the negotiated borders of the Eastern Cape to steal cattle and in the process massacre frontier farmers and their families?
Why don’t you as a Zulu apologise for the unprovoked murder of Piet Retief at Umgungundlovu in February of 1838 and the equally unprovoked attack and massacre of defenceless families of white and coloured people later that month along the Bloukrans River? Why don’t you apologise for the raping of white and coloured women that night and for smashing little children’s heads against wagon wheels while swinging them by their legs?
Why don’t you apologise as a freedom fighter for the attack on the St James Church when devout Christian civilians were brutally shot with machine guns while praying? Why don’t you offer an apology for the bomb attack on 20 May 1983 in Pretoria when innocent civilians were killed in the bloodstained excuse of your freedom?
Why don’t you apologise as president for destroying our lovely country? For corrupting and bankrupting our country? For creating racism and mistrust and hatred? For teaching your people to demand and accept and exist in a conviction of entitlement, always demanding more and more and never once even bothering to say a word of gratitude?
I suggest to you: Why don’t YOU apologize for a change, mr President?
Daniel Lötter
Front Nasionaal Suid-Afrika
South Africa Today – South Africa News
