WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-06-28 Time: 19:00:06 Posted By: Jan
Julius Malema and Zwelinzima Vavi are not “defending the South African revolution”. Rather, they are undermining the concepts of sanctity of life, of democracy, of tolerance and of African progress.
I remember being told as a young reporter about the chart that was put up in the newsroom of a news institution in Britain advising the reporters of how to judge the importance of events.
It read something like this: 1 British life = 2 American lives = 4 Russian lives = 8 Egyptian lives = 16 African lives.
Nothing as crude as that would ever appear on a wall these days, yet the underlying prejudice is still exactly the same. A large number of Africans have to die in one incident to make the front pages or news bulletins of newspapers and television stations outside the continent. People from other continents have always viewed Africa as the “dark” continent: the continent of war, famine and disease.
| ‘An African life is just not worth the same as the life of a European or American’ |
An African life is just not worth the same as the life of a European or American. This has not changed.
If Africa delivers a magnificent son like Nelson Mandela, it is seen as an exception. If a dark-skinned man like Barack Obama rises above the rest and talks about his African father, Americans say, what a fine man, thank goodness for his white mother’s genes.
When a Silvio Berlusconi, Dick Cheney or Ariel Sharon is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, it becomes a matter of gossip and political arm-wrestling. When a Jacob Zuma is accused of asking money for a political favour, it is proof of how inherently corrupt and morally inferior African politicians are. When an African leader has two wives, he is primitive; when a Western head of state keeps a mistress on the side, he is a ladies’ man.
Yes, it is disgusting, unfair and bigoted. But what is worse is that we Africans, too, often share this prejudice. We protest, perform and attack, but in our behaviour and the deep recesses of our minds we also wonder if an African life is not worth slightly less than a Western one.
We also sometimes have our doubts about African countries’ ability to run clean administrations and vibrant economies. We loudly proclaim our Africanness and privately we yearn after things American and European.
| ‘the president of democratic South Africa stood holding hands with Robert Mugabe’ |
We are so ashamed of our inferiority complex and angry with Western bigotry that we blindly defend everything African. That was why the then Organisation for African Unity cheered Ugandan dictator Idi Amin when he spoke to their assembly at the height of his lunacy. That is why we treat despots who kill and torture their citizens and steal their money as esteemed leaders. That is why we blame civil wars on our continent on foreign forces and on colonialism.
In fact, that is why the president of democratic South Africa stood holding hands with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe just a few weeks ago proclaiming there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. (If the image of Nelson Mandela with a Springbok jersey on the podium after the 1995 World Cup is his iconic image which is now being immortalised in a Clint Eastwood film, would this holding hands with Mugabe become the iconic moment we would remember Mbeki by?)
We can continue to wallow in our self-loathing as Africans, blaming history, colonialism and Western racism for our plight. That will ensure that this self-perpetuating cycle continues. Then our grandchildren will one day also be angry about the world’s negative perceptions of Africa – and their own insecurities about it.
With our magnificent negotiated settlement in 1994 and our achievements immediately after, South Africa made major strides to counter world prejudice against Africa and to boost African people’s confidence in themselves. We have lost some of that momentum during the past few years, but we are still a symbol of hope and progression in Africa.
Africa has also made major strides in recent years with more and more functioning democracies and growing economies. Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia and a few other countries are unfortunately bucking this trend. Africa’s – and especially South Africa’s – condoning of these nasty regimes does more damage.
Back to Malema and Vavi. When they threaten to kill fellow Africans – in fact, fellow ANC members – to keep their leader out of jail, they send the message to their followers, to the rest of Africa and the world, that African lives are cheap; that Africans are unable to sustain a pluralistic democracy; that Africans are intolerant, brutal and violent.
This is not revolutionary, as Malema had been saying; this is reactionary, counter-revolutionary and backward.
These are the kind of attitudes and proclamations that undermine Africans’ belief in their own ability to manage modern democracies and constitutional states; and that perpetuate the ugly stereotypes of Africa outside the continent.
It is time for the rest of us to be intolerant – intolerant of this kind of recklessness that does our cause and our future so much harm.