I nearly lived all my life under apartheid. The 1994 political dispensation served as a reprieve granted to a prisoner on death row, sparing his life. Phew! Close shave.
As a result, I’ve always sought out apartheid supporters and apologists but it has been hard-going because in the new South Africa, the Rainbow Nation of Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, may his dear soul continue in eternal rest, no one supported apartheid. Everyone, including their talking parrots, was an activist against apartheid.
But my lifelong search for this breed of Seffricans seems to have borne fruit. I have found them. They live on social media, especially Facebook.
It is easy to get them out of the closet and gain their wrath. Just say anything about Israel, however remotely unvarnished and the genocide she has unleashed on Palestine. You are sure to get even the last Auschwitz survivor apoplectic!
I know where I stand with the Afrikaner. He still insists on flying the Vierkleur at Springbok games. He’s always nailed his colours to the mast.
It is the liberal who gives me ulcers and keeps me awake at night. The fence-sitter. I never know with this lot but thankfully, Facebook is giving me a better sense of what sort of homo sapien this is.
One minute they will parade their Struggle credentials and tell how they reported on Donald Woods and his special rapport with Steve Biko, and the next they will be extolling the virtues of colonialism, a wretched political system that is characterised by heartless rulers kicking natives off their land and robbing them of their humanity.
It is not the Afrikaner electorate alone that kept returning the Nationalists to power, election after parochial election. At least, to his credit, Van der Merwe still has pictures of himself with Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd at a polling station in Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, which occupies pride of place in his room divider. The other Nat voter has no such overt proof of political allegiance. But he is easy to find. Just go to Facebook.
Read what they say, oops, what they do, not say, about the malnourished children of Gaza. Those of my generation will remember images of the children of Ethiopia lying limp from kwashiorkor in the arms of their mothers, and artists from the US clubbing together to raise funds in aid of the fight against the 1983 to 1985 famine.
We remember the groundswell of humanitarianism the world displayed at the time.
You’d think that people who lost kith and kin to Nazism would be more circumspect around manufactured hunger. But, no, they are now using the same tactics of starving children that Hitler perpetrated.
Go to Facebook to see how the modern-day Pik Bothas defend the indefensible, citing this barbarism as heroism.
When it suits these QWERTY revolutionaries, they will quote Nelson Mandela at the drop of a hat. They are not shy to arrogate to themselves a superior and deeper understanding of the concept of ubuntu. But never will you find them uttering the Mandela quote “… But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
It is heartening to note that SA has adopted the theme “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability” for her G20 presidency. If it is indeed true that we intend “ensuring that no one is left behind”, let us embrace the long-suffering people of Palestine when we resolve, through solidarity, that “in our interconnected world, the challenges faced by one nation impact all nations”.
I suffer a culture shock whenever I go consulting on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform to discover what sort of “friends” I keep. They are the kind of people who pretend to be woke but, from time to time, inadvertently let slip their guard and show their … slip, especially when it comes to the murder of innocent women and children.
These “friends”, who are foes, really, wield “unfriending” as a weapon. I will not lose sleep, really, to lose such connections.
I remember that many of my “friends” punt their patriotism whenever the Springboks and the Proteas conquer the world.
I, too had occasion to be a proud South African this past weekend when the ANC hosted fellow combatants, members of former liberation movements in southern Africa.
As he closed, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We reaffirm our support for the people of Pales-tine, Western Sahara and Cuba. We condemn, in the strongest terms, the crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.” He had words for my Facebook contacts: “We call on the world to stop the murder of children and babies through starvation… Our position remains very clear: liberation is indivisible. We are not free until all are free.”
In 1994, we were busy forging a new path from the ruins of the old order, and we took our eyes off the ball. Rwanda burned. It is 2025, and we have no excuse for indifference. Let us not fail the people of Palestine.
- Makatile is weekend editor
