Look to future, not past
While Helen Zille’s posts (“Zille’s career in ruins”, Saturday Dispatch March 18) were unwise and, for some, unpalatable, she didn’t say anything false.
Every one of us encounters people whose utterances we find disagreeable or even deeply offensive. The mature response is to consider the statements and to respond intelligently, not emotionally. One option is to ignore. None of us can stop other people being idiots. All of us have the choice of whether or not we allow that idiocy to dictate our lives. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent”.
The other option is to give a considered reply. If you believe a person has their facts wrong, produce the evidence. If you believe a person has incorrectly interpreted the facts, produce and justify your own interpretation. This process is carried out every day in law, in the sciences, in the arts … in almost every human activity. This is how we learn from one another.
Schools, hospitals, sporting codes such as soccer, rugby or cricket are all part of South Africa’s colonial legacy. The very borders of the country are a colonial imposition. That is the past. What matters is how we use the present to create a better future. In the process we are going to give and to receive (real or perceived) insults. That is an inevitable part of human interaction.
23 years into post-apartheid South Africa, black people’s knee-jerk cry of “racism” is as overplayed as white people’s nostalgia for the past. We have real challenges such as government corruption, crime, unemployment and poverty. We can only overcome them if we are prepared to work together as intelligent beings and not as politicians. — Dave Rankin, Cambridge
A particular paragraph in Peter Bruce’s article just goes to show the eradication in the memories of many.
He writes: “There is absolutely nothing, apart from the heroism in the face of threat of a very few whites over the centuries we have been here, to be proud of.”
On the contrary, this uninformed writer brings to mind one man who represents thousands, and yet are totally ignored, forgotten and exorcised from the history of the struggle. That man was Phillip Wilkinson.
He said at his trial: “Your Worship, I have stated my reasons for refusing to be conscripted into the SADF clearly and honestly. If this court chooses to punish me on account of them, so be it. I have in my heart an absolute conviction that what I am doing is right. I will not sacrifice my life or lend my body to the defence of Apartheid. As I stand before you, I stand for peace and justice.” Then Defence Minister Magnus Malan berating him and thousands like him; “just as much an enemy as the African National Congress”.
President Kgalema Motlanthe in a speech on November 1 2009 said: “The lesson that these sons and daughters of our motherland have taught us is that life is but given to those who continue to win it back through struggle. We must continue to build the South Africa that Phillip Wilkinson commanded us to create”.
Every objector, every war resister, every ECC member and supporter were true heroes and heroines of the struggle. Unfortunately, that black brotherhood has forgotten us. Many were imprisoned, some spent decades in exile, some met untimely deaths. I can proudly say I am one of the thousands of Philip Wilkinsons. — Rob Prestwich