Colonists didn’t do Africa a favour

The Helen Zille fan club’s justification of Madame Zille’s comments on how we have colonialism to thank for infrastructure, medical advances, modern transport and the like, proves that some South Africans are unconsciously unaware that they’re perpetuating racism by harbouring such justifications.

By praising colonialism, do you realise that you are, in effect, saying that the country’s early inhabitants, black people, were incapable of thinking for themselves, so as to build a modern society? “Well, some blacks may have been killed by the colonialists, so what?” is what you’re actually saying.

FYI, Zille fan club, the Aztecs built a thriving city long before the discovery of the United States; the Egyptians were among the first engineers thou- sands of years before Christ; and by the time Europeans discovered the Chinese crossbow, the Chinese had invented better weaponry. Need I go on?

The colonialists were not some Mother Theresa types and they certainly didn’t do Africans a favour by colonising the socalled “dark continent”.

Cecil John Rhodes made this crystal clear when he said: “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies”. Just saying.

Sandile Ntuli

Johannesburg

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