Hating the quality of whiteness

I wrote this for another site I belong to earlier this month. I’m adding it here for Jaycee.


Eugene Terre’Blanche, the murdered leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweing, was buried earlier this month amidst much Nazi-style gesturing and gnashing of teeth. Once again a tale of two nations seems to be unfolding, with the local black community looking on in an understandable mood of apprehension. But the baton has been passed on. The racist is dead; long live the racist. And the new racist is not white; he’s black – he’s Julius Malema.

I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs on South Africa that this man is the leader of the African National Congress’ youth wing, and one of the main political props of President Zuma. There was an interesting account of his background and outlook in The Daily Telegraph recently by Rian Malan, drawing attention, once again, to Malema’s trip to Mugabeland, where he sang Kill the Boer, that old ANC favourite from days gone by, feasting with his friend and picking up tips on how to run a successful decolonialisation programme.

Malema, as the report details, though relatively young and poorly educated, rose to prominence as a supporter of Jacob Zuma’s bid for power, intimidating and threatening violence against any opponents. A socialist and champion of the poor, very much in the model of Mugabe, his efforts were rewarded, as well-appointed houses, a fleet of cars and a Breitling watch fell into his hands, seemingly like manna from heaven.

Alas, it’s the old, old story, the story that has seen the Wabenzi, the big shots, advance across the rest of Africa in their limos; it’s a story of socialism for the many and wealth for the few, wealth for people like Mugabe and Malema. Their socialism is also accompanied by forms of racism, racism born of the need to create scapegoats, covers for their own venality and incompetence.

But Malema denies being a racist, denies hating white people. It’s just the quality of “whiteness” he hates, to use his own bizarre words. He was even more bizarre when he was in Harare, saying “They are so bright, so colourful, we refer to them as white people. Maybe their colour came as a result of exploiting our minerals and perhaps if some of us get opportunities in these minerals we can develop a nice colour like them.” I hope you can make sense of this gibberish, because I most certainly can’t!

He certainly has his eyes on those minerals, on the wealth of South Africa, having the support of a powerful faction within the ANC- perhaps even the President himself- for the same kind of ‘indigenisation’ that ruined Zimbabwe. This man is a dangerous, muddle-headed, greedy and unprincipled demagogue. If South Africa is to be destroyed, if the goose that lays the golden eggs is to be killed, he and his kind will be the cause, not Terre’Blanche and the ghosts of the past.

Kill the Boer

There is something rotten in the state of South Africa, something I hinted at in a previous blog (What have the Romans ever done for us?)Now Eugene Terre’Blanche, a white farmer and the leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), has been murdered. I confess I had never heard of this man, or his movement, until I read the reports following his death. I find it difficult to believe that the majority of Afrikaners, no matter how unhappy with the government of the African National Congress, could have in any way have identified with his clonish and clownish Nazi-style party; even the flag it uses is derivative.

The death of this man is just part of the wider fragmentation of the so-called Rainbow Nation, which shows every sign of degenerating still further under the mismanagement of the ANC. If the white racist fringe had Terre’Blanche then the black racist fringe (is it a fringe?) has Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC’s youth wing, a friend of President Zuma and a great admirer of Robert Mugabe, that inspiration to all progressive Africans.

Terre’Blanche is just another statistic, one of more than three thousand white farmers who have been murdered since 1994. This would, at least on the face of it, appear to be something pleasing to Malema, as he resurrected Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer, a favoured ANC song from apartheid days. He sang it on his recent visit to Zimbabwe, though he has been banned from doing so in South Africa itself by court order. But still he is indulged by Jacob Zuma. Now this is where the rottenness goes really deep.

Here is part of what I wrote in my previous piece;

…look beyond the villas of the ANC cadres, look beyond the houses and the cars, and one might easily conclude that there is no need for a new apartheid, for the simple reason that the old apartheid is still very much in place; that the new bosses look very much like the old bosses, except for the colour of their skin; that oppression and poverty feel like oppression and poverty no matter if the ruler is white or black. In many places people still live in squalid townships where the government fails to deliver on the most basic services, including clean water, sanitation and power.

It’s actually getting worse; for in preparation for the football world cup many people are being forcibly moved from their homes and dumped elsewhere, treated very much as they were by the old apartheid state; treated very much in the same fashion as the aliens in the movie District 9. One woman said that “They took people from the streets because they don't want them in the city for the World Cup. Now we are living in a concentration camp.”

Yes, the old resentments are building up again. The obvious target should be the corrupt cadres of the ANC, who are more than content to leave their brothers and sisters in the dust. But there are other ways to release the tensions. Why not raise some old specters, why not sing Kill the Boer? I’m not suggesting that this incitement to racial hatred is a strategy actively adopted by the ANC – I simply don’t have enough evidence- , though there are those in South Africa who are prepared to claim that the party is using race to divert attention from its own failings. And as long as Zuma refuses to reign in Malema, so long as he fails to condemn songs like Kill the Boer who can blame them. Not I.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

A few weeks ago I saw Mrs Mandela, a TV biopic about the wife of the former president of South Africa, an altogether impressive performance by Sophie Okonedo in the title role.

In some ways Winnie Mandela was the greater victim of the old apartheid state than Nelson, her husband. Although she was only imprisoned for a relatively brief period, she was subject to systematic persecution by the authorities, even being dumped in an area where local people were warned to boycott her, and under constant police surveillance. She had to rise above this, to fight off her persecutors, who did not stop short of attempted murder. She did, but not in the same way as her husband; he might be said to have been ennobled by his experience; she was brutalised and corrupted by hers.

There is one tremendously effective scene in the movie where she is shown interrogating Stompie Moeketsi, the boy who was eventually murdered by her thuggish bodyguard, intercut with scenes of her own earlier brutal interrogation by Major Theunis Swanepoel, played by David Morrissey. We look from one angry face to the other and all difference disappears; sex, race, circumstances; only hatred and anger remain, only venality.

Winnie Mandela is still a major figure in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and I rather think more typical of the political class of the ‘rainbow nation’ than her husband, the closest thing South Africa comes to possessing a secular saint. But the new South Africa is not a country of saints; it’s a country of sinners; the country of people like Winnie Mandela, and the country of people like President Jacob Zuma, who came to England on a state visit last week. The new South Africa is a country where, as Archbishop Tutu once said, the gravy train only stopped long enough for the ANC to get on.

Mr Zuma, the face of the new nation, came to town, not at all flattered by the depiction of him in the British press; not at all flattered by references to his polygamy, his adultery and his talent for fathering children, lots of children. Our attitude, he retorted, is born of cultural imperialism and our colonial past. I do begin to detect slight traces here of a condition that might be termed Mugabeitis. Is South Africa itself, I have to ask, in danger of infection, in danger of the condition spreading south from Harare? Well, let’s have a look.


There is the ANC, to begin with, now far more Winnie than Nelson, and beginning, ever so slightly, to take on the appearance of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. The youth wing is headed by Julius Malema, a firebrand impatient with Zuma’s pragmatic capitalism, urging a more inclusive ‘African socialist model’. One only has to look to the north to see how that pans out.

Socialism or capitalism, it really makes no difference, because the principal beneficiaries will always be the ANC nomenklatura. Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, has accused Zuma and the ANC of corruption and the abuse of power. It’s easy to see why when some seventy million rand has been spent on perks; on grace-and-favour homes for cabinet ministers wives and families, and of course cars and more cars, the kind of gas-guzzling toys African leaders love.

Zille, the conscience of the nation, has faced death threats, been called a “filthy whore” and “an exponent of a new apartheid” for here outspokenness. But look beyond the villas of the ANC cadres, look beyond the houses and the cars, and one might easily conclude that there is no need for a new apartheid, for the simple reason that the old apartheid is still very much in place; that the new bosses look very much like the old bosses, except for the colour of their skin; that oppression and poverty feel like oppression and poverty no matter if the ruler is white or black. In many places people still live in squalid townships where the government fails to deliver on the most basic services, including clean water, sanitation and power. Protesters have been dispersed by riot squads using rubber bullets.

Symptoms of Mugabeitis can also be seen in the countryside. According to official estimates some 2000 white farmers have been murdered in the more remote parts of the country, though unofficially the figure has been estimated as high as 3000. People are talking about a white exodus, easy to see why when some 750,000 out of a total population of four million have left since 1994 and settled abroad. With them have gone many skills essential to a developing country, and here is now a shortage of engineers and medical practitioners.

In his report in The Telegraph commenting on Zuma’s visit, Graham Boynton says that he met one African aid official who told him that “We could well look back on British colonialism as the golden age of Africa.” This reminded him, on hearing Zuma’s complaints, of the Monty Python sketch that begins with “What have the Romans ever done for us?” I had a look on You Tube and it seems to be the most apt – and comic- observation ever on the benefits of imperialism. Yes, the Africans may have cause to regret the passing of the Pax Britannica as Mugabeitis enters into the terminal stage.