For Frank, yet again:
This is part two of my response to Mr Hitchens’ terrible piece on South Africa and Zuma. While it stands alone, it should really be read after part 1
A friend of mine, whose opinion I hold dearly commented about the Hitchen’s piece, the following:
“I have always held, and still believe that when it comes to the British, one needs to take into account the very deep feelings that they have about losing their empire. I mean by that, that when they wake up in the morning they seek to prove to themselves, what a mess we have made of things since they relinquished their control.”
He is a very clever man, a formidable opponent, who is well known for these kind of insights, which he is capable of defending, when the moment takes him, with astonishing eloquence and brutal realpolitik.
His words resonated with me, and they are, the intellectual capital behind this piece.
We languish here, in the colonies, us whites most of us very English, if not Dutch, for that is our inheritance. I am a Scot, and that gives me some ammunition against the English press. I am reminded of when Her Majesty’s mother, the queen mother, as she is known came to our lowly shores.
After her many photo op appearances an Afrikaans woman, a Boer, broke through the barricades and made it to her Highness’ personal space. She said then, with the kind of Afrikaner defiance that we hold dear, “ Us Boers, we hate the English !”
Her Majesty replied “ So do we Scots.”
Indeed.
For we have suffered under the English.
Not just Afrikaners, but all citizens of the rainbow here in South Africa.
Colonialism is about rape. The rape of a country, and all it’s people, but mostly about the rape of blacks. However in the aftermath, we who remain, all suffer at their hand.
Today, our greatest diamond is nothing more than her Majesty’s accoutrement . The spoils of war, part of the ugly inheritance the English have left us to repair in our beloved land.
Franz Fanon said ““What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”
And that in Africa is what we face.
Mr. Hitchens, despite his hypocrisy, which I have so amply illustrated in the first part of this response, clings to just this very last bastion of the defeated Empire. The middle class values. They may be of great value in her Majesty’s Kingdom, but they clang around with vacant and empty irrelevance here in the colonial aftermath of her Majesty’s bloodbath and terrible aftermath here in Africa.
Here in the colony that they established, with its deeply entrenched, Eurocentric racism, that would finally become the internationally hated apartheid, we sit, with this their demonic inheritance, and on top of it all, their scoffing, self important ridicule.
They, in their protected, now, newly found democratic convenience, sit in judgment, with the very same white, Eurocentric superiority they landed here with, and proceeded to enslave us with, black and white.
Mr. Hitchens, in typical English, highbrow sentiment casts Jacob Zuma in the light that these terrible, imperialist Brits have always done, the savage. What Mr. Hitchens would like to see in Africa, is well, what he would like to see in Covent Garden. The adherence to her Majesty’s, tried, tested, and ever regurgitated over the Empire, Britishness. Yuck !
Of course.
He wants kilts, and bagpipes, stiff upper lip and black pudding, egg and chips, mind you, with HP sauce.
How very dare he?
We face unimaginable poverty.
Not the kind Mr. Hitches ignores in Elephant and Castle.
Real poverty.
Poverty of wealth. Poverty of spirit. The poverty of colour. The very true consequence of his royal pompous English Majesty’s decades long, bloodthirsty rape fest in South Africa that led to her Cullinan diamond. Our Diamond that sits in her vault, for Harry and William to get hard over, while our people, starve, and work for less money in a day than Mr. Hitchens’ G&T before dinner cost.
The poverty you so gloriously gave us, with your self righteous, stiff upper lip.
And then you left, with our heritage, nothing more than a token on your corrupt majesties crown, a notch on her bloodstained belt.
Sies man.
You left us here, white, english, scott,irish, black and guess what?
We found a way.
Its called democracy.
You may not like it.
Thats a good thing though.
We love it here.
We have it here.
We have a bill of rights.
We have a constitutional court, separate judiciary,the rule of law, and one man one vote.
You remember that one ?
You never let us have that, while you stripped our country, raped our resources, imprisoned our blacks, put our Afrikaners in concentration camps.
That the vast majority of this country will exercise their vote for Jacob Zuma, is for Mr. Hitchens and his gin guzzling, ex colonial dimwits, not an example of democracy, but the proof of his deep-seated belief in the savagery of blacks in the old colonies, is an incitement upon him.
Those black savages should have voted for someone more suited to his dinner parties, no doubt.
Democracy is not about your mother’s manners, Hitchens, nor about your English high school precociousness.
NO !
Its about the will of our people.
Yes, our savage, black, people, who have their own culture, without pigskins and the BBC.
Mr. Hitchens, for all his pathetic prancing and posturing is upset about only one thing.
We did not vote for a good British wannabe.
Thank God.
We will vote.
It will be democratic.
And I hope to God, that Mr. Zuma never dons a kilt and fry’s up some egg and chips.
The one thing we need in South Africa, is to get as far away from your violent, racist, and self serving colonial history as is humanly possible.
We can elect our own president thank you very much.
We can do it without you.
Trust me.
Once again, how very dare you ?
Mr Hitchens; ” Umshini Wami”
You are a real piece of work.
You speak of the mess that the British left behind, but have you ever considered what would be here had the British not colonised Africa – absalutely nothing, bar a few mud huts and the occasional bout of ethnic cleansing.
When Africa was colonised 300+ years ago, the natives were at the same level of development that the whites in Europe were some 5000 – 10000 years earlier, so I will admit that it is to be expected that the development level and culture of the native will be very different to that of the whites. Maybe this should tell us that South Africa is not ready for democracy, or at least not ready for democracy as implemented in South Africa currently. When democracy was developed by the Greeks in Anthens only some 20% of the pupulation were allowed to vote. Apartheid South Africa was also a democracy, just a racially restricted democracy. In a recent survey by the Economist journal South Africa was rated as a dysfunctional democracy.
Natives do not vote for the party that is best for them, they vote due to ancestral loyalty or whomever they are told to vote for.
Native Africans are not able to rule countries, after all they were living in tribes until very recently, in which the leader or chief of the tribe would only lead the few settlements around him, not an entire country. I challenge you to provide one single African country which has a successfull track record of black rule, and by successfull I mean, good economic growth, development, high standard of living, low poverty. And, please don’t blame it on colonisation many African countries have by now had many years of freedom.
We are not ready for democracy ?
Thats just nonsense.
Apartheid was a democracy ?
Rubbish.
Not if Democracy is Government by the people, for the people.
As for your democratic development dogma:
Europe, only 50 years ago was mostly under tyrants, Germany, Italy, France, most of Eastern Europe and Spain too.
Native Europeans are brand new to democracy too.
Your contention is outrageous, your European democracy is barely as old as my father.
History, History, History.
Get it right please.
And, for your information, we have a democracy, you just don’t like it.
Most of us, could not care less about that.
As for the Native comment, responding to that, is beneath me.
JP
Native, White South African
You proved my point yourself, whites in Europe built up the worlds best democracy and some of the most successful countries in only 50 years; yet many of the European countries had been ravaged by war just a few years earlier. There are African countries that have been independent for the last 50 years as well, I’ll let you decide how successful they are yourself.
Gosh, if only they had historians like you at Oxford.
Come on JP I expected a better response from you on that last one.
“Me” sounds like a bit of a pommy, but I actually agree with him/her. The majority of South Africa’s population, the blacks, vote based on loyalties and race. They vote based on what the ANC did for them and not what the ANC can do for them.
South Africa will be a real democracy the day everyone’s vote is counted as equal.
Umshini wam is a song promoting violence, great theme song for our next president.(sarcasm)
Why, Mr You must SA subscribe to a higher calling?
Umshini wam and the Battle Hymn of the Republic ?
Democracy is protected by violence.
Democracy is flawed , all over the world.
But, its the best we have.
In any event, all votes are based on loyalties.
And all votes are equal.
And why not vote on whatever you want?
Thats the point.
Ps if you could see the vitriol that I am getting from people who keep playing this game on race, who funnily enough are all white.
Getting tired of double standards
JP
(not always on form)
Ps 2 – You
I know exactly who you are by the way, I recognise the style.
