Recently, University of Cape Town political analyst Anthony Butler wrote a vituperative In a strange twist, Butler has a way of accusing white South Africans, both English and Afrikaans, from suffering a certain historical amnesia when it comes to South Africa’s past. The fact that the current political reality affects people more than a few dry references to their history is not mentioned in his plea. The irony of it all is that the blacks suffered the most under the waves of ANC-based terror during the previous regime, with the white government brought to its knees by desperately trying to stomp out the fires. In Butler’s view, all positive aspects during white rule, such as low crime, low unemployment, higher levels of prosperity for blacks, higher black literacy rate and low infant mortality rates, are simply overlooked, with whites being reduced to nothing more than evil, psychopathic oppressors.
One does somehow wonder what his comment would be on COSATU’s secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi who recently stated that blacks were better off under apartheid than now.
Butler states further: “Whites’ political interventions nowadays tend to veer towards self-parody, their focus being on emotive distractions such as deteriorating public services in the white suburbs, the evils of employment equity and the threat that aspirant black school pupils supposedly pose to the “language rights” of Afrikaners.”
Since the ANC took over, the number of Afrikaans schools have been dramatically reduced. Instances have been noted where Africans who have no command of neither Afrikaans nor English were placed in Afrikaans medium schools as a pretext for Anglicising those particular institutions. Where there used to be 2000 Afrikaans schools, no more than 300 still remain. Afrikaans universities by all means belong to the past and postgraduate courses are now seldom taught in Afrikaans. Even though globalisation accounts for the rise of English at universities worldwide, Afrikaans universities are somehow compelled to swallow the bait hook, line and sinker.
In a letter to the former Minister of Education Kader Asmal in 2001, liberal historian Hermann Giliomee argued that historically Afrikaans universities have increased their intake of black students by more than 1000 percent, to the point that there are at present more Africans studying at former Afrikaans universities than former black universities. African students are in fact voting with their feet to access universities with an Afrikaans background. In Giliomee’s experience, Afrikaans universities are better in face-to-face contact, discipline is better, more time is spent on teaching and the administration is more effective than at the historically liberal universities. Indeed, to the chagrin of the current ruling class, many blacks are still bent upon learning Afrikaans at schools.
From these apparent conflicting tendencies, with blacks wanting to learn Afrikaans yet Afrikaans being eroded nationwide from public life, one could easily conclude that the government is not speaking on behalf of its people, but on behalf of the plans they themselves have stipulated to fulfil, using “the people” as a means of conveying party ideology – a trick originally expounded by Marxist-Leninist teaching.
Butler’s notion that whites are absolutely shielded off from South African life, and therefore unconcerned about public facilities, is absurd. In the country with the world’s highest crime rate outside a war-zone, survival motivates people to erect security premises more than any other factor or ideology. Not to mention the most important state institutions have already been given to blacks during De Klerk’s and Meyer’s surrender without defeat. Guarded areas are no more than a last sanctuary that whites have to put up with to protect themselves.
Once again the whites are bestowed a double role in “transforming” South Africa. On the one hand they are indispensable due to their expertise, and as Butler himself stated, South Africa cannot succeed without them. At the same time the histrionic contrition that they have to display at the feet of their ANC leaders has not been enough. Where blacks are free to chant “Kill a Boer, Kill a Farmer”, whites have to find a way to help uplift them, apologize to Africans for preventing them from making South Africa ungovernable, and apparently thank the government for implementing affirmative action which bars whites from fully exploiting their true skills, effectively forcing them to leave for other shores.
Butler’s frustration that black political leaders cannot motivate whites to participate more in national political life has something insidious and cruel about it. With his constant attempts at demonising whites, a sentiment which is shared by the nation’s rulers, should he really be surprised that white South Africans are not eagerly participating in “nation building”? In any event, “transformation” or “nation building” has in the past thirteen years produced nothing but excessive government corruption, a top layer of black fat cats who consume lots but produce little, deteriorating public services and over a million skilled South Africans leaving a once beautiful and prosperous country. Black politicians with Charles Nquakula at the helm has openly expressed his impotence to curb severe crimes by telling people to leave the country if they don’t like it. According to a previous report issued by COSATU, South Africa is in the grip of famine unseen in 150 years…long before apartheid (or whites in most parts of the country) entered the stage.
The eagerness with which Butler blames whites for all South Africa’s ills (AFTER black takeover), followed by his statement that it is an exaggeration when Dan Roodt compares whites being at the receiving end of racial persecution comparable to Nazi-Germany, reveals him as a sadistic party ideologue cloaked underneath Canterbridgian rhetoric. Where he could find no rational explanation why whites would pay large sums of money to lock themselves up in their homes, claiming that they are somehow delusional, he bases his own argument purely on the sentimental. No other nation in modern history has sacrificed as much as white South Africans did but their true forgiveness is still a long way off. A never-ending cycle of defeat that could easily render whites into states of pure apathy becomes a reality if his Jacobinism is taken seriously.
A similar incident caused an approximate 9 million deaths in Soviet Russia after the assassination of Leningrad Communist Party member Sergei Kirov in 1934. The Great Terror that followed not only caused a murderous rampage of untold proportions, but many ordinary people stepped up to their executioners claiming guilt for acts not committed, knowing very well there is no exit from their ill-fate. In other Communist states, such as Romania, Party leader Ana Pauker welcomed the deportation and execution of her own husband for the sake of ideological purity…and never shed a tear.
South Africa’s crime wave is even notorious overseas, with many foreigners witnessing incidents of savage crimes in the cities and rural areas. This however does not seem to impact on Butler’s weltanschauung. “Nation building” should be completed at all cost, yet the blueprints of this Brave New South Africa is never openly revealed to those who must beg for atonement.
The insincerity of Butler’s plea needs no pointing out. Yet one can only speculate on who’s behalf he really speaks. The ANC or the British Empire? Either which way, outside interference and this level of odious imperialism is not new to South Africa.
To quote Afrikaans poet N.P. van Wyk Louw:
Miskien sal niemand later
Mooi dinge van ons weet,
En nêrens sin te kry wees
In al ons stryd en leed,
Sal elkeen as hy magtloos
Naby die sterwe lê
Net hierdie eensaam wete
Uiteindelik nog hê:
Dat ons nie kon gebuig word
soos hul geweld dit wou,
en dat ons hoog kon lewe
net aan ons bloed getrou.