So, the first batch of Afrikaners to take up the offer of the megalomaniac across the pond, and flee imaginary genocide and persecution have left South Africa for the USA.
The 49 touched down at an airport in Washington DC at 16:52, telling, isn’t it.
Former president Jacob Zuma once proclaimed in parliament that the troubles of the African on this part of the continent began in 1652 when a Dutch fellow and his crew docked in the Cape to establish a refreshment station for his company the Dutch East India Company.
This was the first land grab and general dehumanisation of the people the new arrivals encountered on what would become South Africa about two and half centuries later.
Only time will tell as to what the meaning of the clock striking 16:52 when the Amerikaners, as the so-called refugees have been termed back in the home they have abandoned and sought to smear for selfish and myopic ends, arrived in the purported land of the free and the brave.
Back home in good old Mzansi, there were tears for a group of people who have, save for a short period in history when they warred with the British, always enjoyed benefits that came with the colour of their skin.
Now, in the midst of Trump wielding his sabre against all sorts of immigrants but white, they are once again drawing benefit for their lack of melanin in their skin. Whiteness has never been a burden on anyone in South Africa.
Those who have benefited from it have been mollycoddled for so long that any attempts to bring equality and equity, as has been the intention of black economic empowerment and affirmative action, feels like oppression to them.
But it is not a justifiable feeling.
Apartheid and colonialism brought untold misery on Africans, and any attempts to correct the wrongs of the twin evils cannot be justly called out.
Afrikaans has an apt description of affirmative action “regstellende aksie”, literally corrective action.
The ravages of apartheid could never have been left to stand by any right-thinking government in the post-1994 dispensation.
The jury is still out on the success of policies implemented since 1994.
Yet, there is no ignoring that the white section of the population, as backed by research, has grown richer in the new order while the vast majority has continued to live in poverty.
Remedial action to correct the status quo can never be equalled to persecution, let alone the genocide of those who have always prospered. They have peddled their lies to gullible ears such as Trump’s.
But truth be told America has never been a friend of the African. It built its unequalled wealth and dominance off the back of enslaved Africans, and wouldn’t lift a finger against those who oppressed Africans in Africa.
They murdered African leaders such as Patrice Lumumba for daring to truly liberate their peoples. The US had Nelson Mandela listed as a terrorist years after his release.
So what Trump is doing with his tariffs war on SA and offering Amerikaners refuge should be seen in this context.
It’s high time SA was run on the dreams and aspiration of the majority rather than the fears of a privileged few. Morena boloka sechaba sa heso (God bless our nation).
