Madiba’s SA is what we should aspire to, no one else’s

THE expected barrage of letters in papers hell-bent on dislodging the ANC from power has gained momentum and fury in its run-up to the make-or-break 2024 general election.

The latest appeared in the paper of March 23, claiming that the ANC cannot govern. Whereas this is the writer’s “truth"”, we need to take a step back to 1994.

It is unheard of that someone as our own father of the nation, after what was done to him and other anti-apartheid activists, many who paid the ultimate price, would emerge from notorious apartheid jails, not full of hatred or vengeance, but of forgiveness.

Writers such as this one are either disingenuous, dishonest, mischievous, untruthful or refuse to realise what their venomous instigation will do to our country.

Instead of accepting Madiba's hand of reconciliation, at great cost not only to himself, the ANC and the country as a whole, to establish a Government of National Unity (GNU) as the only way forward out of our bloody past, both colonial and apartheid, stretching over almost four centuries, our white compatriots chose to follow their own Judas goat, Tony Leon, then DP/DA leader, with his “Fight B(l)ack!” strategy.

The National Party, Inkatha Freedom Party, Azapo and even the Freedom Front Plus’ Pieter Mulder, became part of that government at certain stages. The NP was awarded one of the deputy president posts and six ministerial posts, IFP four.

At the heart of these folks' racist letters lies their hatred for so-called black people. Nothing that our black and so-called coloured brothers and sisters can do will ever find favour with them. He might as well reveal his support for the death penalty where again members of these two groups, even political activists, will be hanged by the dozen in Pretoria.

It should be remembered that only the UK was prepared to help train the ANC to govern since the DA refused point-blank to make even some of their “experienced” politicians available to ascertain a successful and prosperous future for all, black and white.

Must our country also experience a “scorched, flattened earth” Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and today a Mariupol, all “too ghastly to contemplate”, before these folks will come to their senses and start to accept that working together is our best option for future co-existence? Madiba’s South Africa is what we should aspire to, no one else’s.

Or will they settle for nothing other than secessionist ethnic little states as was tried by the unscrupulous National Party, as some are mooting for the Western Cape?