Friday, May 6, 2016

No, I Will Not Sign Your Petition...

What Oxford wants to do with a bully is their choice... Can all of you petition-crazy, money-donating-to-waitress people not see the bigger problem? And more importantly, can you not see how the bigger problem came to be? It wasn't an act of chance, an accident... It was man made. Chosen, created. If you think the legacy of white brutality and hatred and opression is over because non-whites no longer have to carry a pass book you are sorely mistaken... If you think white privilege is not a thing, you are sorely mistaken. Tell the people that live hours away from their (mostly crappy, minimum wage) jobs, in little shacks, and leaky houses, in a sandpit with crime and danger that would send shivers down your spine - tell them that the legacy is over. Tell them to pull themselves together and to put a smile on their face. Adults with no education having to get up at 4:30am to get to work - arriving back home around 5 or 6pm... Working 5 or 6 days a week - their children can just bring themselves up in the dusty sandpit - I mean who really needs quality time with their parent(s) anyway...? But it's ok, dance and rejoice apartheid is over... Right?

Yes, it's true, we need to look forward and chose the way we want things to be going forward and actions like those of Qwabe and Dlamini's are not helpful and will never bring about a South Africa that is useful for anyone - not even them - but I don't understand how it is that people cannot understand how it is that people like them came to be! We (whites) made them. A day in their shoes - try just a day I their shoes and see how you like it. A week, a month, a year, decades... See how you feel. See if you can keep your smile, your joy, your hope. See if you can look in the mirror and claim to be 100% hate-free... No, I was not personally responsible for apartheid and its effects, it doesn't matter, the legacy lives on - a little 'gift' from those who went before us. (The sins of the fathers... Because that's how it works...)

In January I read the post that I screenshot and included below... It broke my heart - I couldn't smile like the guy in the picture... We sit in our little houses in Harfield Village and Constantia and Town... Happy chappies... Can you really not wrap your brain around that fact that some folk live with a pain too deep for you to comprehend...? Those that do live of course - those who weren't tortured and killed for no reason (though black was reason enough, right?). For half a minute muster up enough imagination to imagine how you might feel should someone come and storm your home and tell you it's time to go. They have prepared a very nice place for you in a sandpit far away, and as it turns out they will now be living in your house, thank you very much. Plus they hate you and will probably beat you for good measure on your way out the door. I once asked somebody to imagine that - how it might feel to be forcibly removed and dumped in a wasteland... He laughed at me, he said that will never happen, that it was a stupid thing for me to suggest that he imagine. Lucky him - some others were not so lucky, no imagination necessary for them.

The legacy lives on. The actual people who experienced all this still live on. As do their children. Try a mile in their shoes...

Please also read this Mail and Guardian article by Rebecca Davis...

http://mg.co.za/article/2016-05-04-white-tears-the-most-valuable-currency/ 


http://bit.ly/1NKEADm

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