Concrete change

MANY descendants later embraced the apartheid system, which was in their favour. I am not ignoring, but honouring those later and younger descendants, who decided to join the anti-apartheid movement and throw in their lot with the oppressed, to the point of risking imprisonment and sometimes paying the price.

Geoff Embling has no reverence for Christianity, which he uses with the purpose of implying how the colonised would be taught and convinced to go the extra mile to suit, serve and obey the invaders of their country. Were not the colonisers bound by Christ’s command? i.e. Love your neighbour as you love yourself. This gift of missionaries actually has a sad collateral.

There is strong evidence that long ago when the King of Portugal wanted to add some of South America’s land to his possessions before sending his Conquistadores on the war path, he sent Christian missionaries to convert to Christianity the original inhabitants of that coastal region, so as to soften them into accepting to be colonised. Could this have been the ploy of our colonisers?

My late husband and I are immigrants from Mauritius, who arrived in SA in 1960. Although my husband had secured employment in Port Elizabeth, we each had to present our passport with an official state letter from the Mauritius Police, as follows: I here certify that the present passport holder is of pure white European decent. I am still ashamed to think that I submitted to this requirement.

Later it made me understand the people’s shame and anger at the compulsory dompas.

Our rampant inequality begs for a definite turnaround, some concrete change in the powers that be, made up of whoever’s descendants.

It also concerns us all, as citizens with open eyes and hearts, genuine concern about this gnawing inequality, and burning wishes for justice in our attitude towards life around us. Marie Claude Souchon Diep River