The wheel of fortune, the nature of fate

THERE are injustices which fly in the face and knock breath from where breath aught to be and there are injustices that crawl beneath the surface, make you shiver, leave you wishing you could shrug them off like something irritating to the skin. Others are more subtle; like a guilty conscience, they whisper away your peace.

Some are apparent from the get go and others grow on you.

And it is such a thing which has been growing in me.

We Afrikaners are a shortlived people conceived of ageold sorrows. We are like those orphaned young but with old eyes, dull with the experience of a thousand hurts. We came as strangers to the Dark Continent carrying with us little or nothing. We came not for gold for we did not know there to be any. We did not come to make war but to escape it. We did not come for slaves or to cause malice, we came seeking a home, for we were homeless.

The sweat upon our backs turned the earth to fruit, our own hearts travelled further, scouted ahead, tamed, built, conquered. When those came from across the seas to take by force we took up arms. Many fell. Our blood stained rivers, our cries echoed off the mountains, our tears fell in streams.

But as men are, we were weak. We, as almost every nation without exception, saw in our brothers opportunity for abuse. We looked upon the treasures we had uncovered and found ourselves alive with greed. Then, when the dust had settled, we feared. We feared losing our homes, our families and as cowards do, we built walls. We separated, alienated. We made excuses, we were in denial and we were cruel. We became a people pretending all was fine in our mansions, behind our Mercedes, swinging our golf clubs, going to France for a holiday.

So we would have stayed. For men do not of their own device find themselves guilty, let alone in need of change. It is only by grace divine we saw

Where are they that spoke so loudly for justice?

what we had done. So, without quarrel, we gave. Some we gave back, some we just gave.

And we hung our heads in shame. We stepped back. When we felt wronged, we believed it was deserved. When we spoke out we were told “racist” and stilled. When history was rewritten, we pro- vided a pen and when our lives were taken, we mourned the fallen and moaned the cause.

We who had been lions, became not lambs seeking humility, but worms crawling. We became a people of one: each one for himself. We started telling our children that success is to leave. We tell ourselves to remain is to remain unnoticed. We are even more afraid now than before. We built prisons for ourselves.

Our brothers govern us. They tell us who we can work with, who we can play with, what is ours and what should be theirs. They tell us who our parents were and what we as a people have done. They tell our children. They judge us for treason, saying when we cry, we cry only wolf. They did not give us passes, but made it dangerous to go outside.

They nurture beliefs among their own that they are entitled to reap what they have not sown, take what they do not own, claim places to which they did not climb, collect what they are not owed.

And we are too scared to oppose them, too afraid to speak up because we believe we deserve to suffer. But it is not those who wronged who are wronged and it is not those who suffered who are compensated. It is their children – becoming spoilt and bitter respectively.

It makes one wonder where are they that spoke so loudly for justice for themselves now the tables have turned?

I know where they are. They are in their big mansions, behind their Mercedes, swinging their golf clubs, going to France.

Reghard Hamman

Waterkloof Glen, Pretoria