Where do we stand?

WHEN Jacob Zuma finally said he was resigning late that Wednesday evening, we thought we might be waking from a nine-year nightmare.

He robbed our country blind while stirring up hatred against the white community, threatening us with radical economic transformation, wrecking our careers with black empowerment and using our shrinking numbers as a convenient scapegoat when things went wrong.

In rural areas, an unofficial ethnic cleansing is still in progress. Land has always been an emotive issue for those who are aggrieved. Brutal murder and terror has achieved what officialdom could not.

Under Zuma, we whites had no future. Many of our children have left and, sadly, we let them go. In our own ways we were all reluctantly making our plan Bs, applying for ancestral rights to those countries that still might take us in or renewing the foreign passports we already had.

While part of us knew that flight was probably inevitable, another desperately hung to the dream of a Rainbow Nation, that we could finally be accepted and help in the formation of a new South Africa.

Now Zuma has gone, but we don’t quite know what will happen next. Will we be allowed and encouraged to play a meaningful role in mending the mess that Zuma has left behind and given the purpose we crave, or will the euphoria rapidly disperse and another more polished boot continue what he began?

His lieutenants are still there. Has it only been a cosmetic Zimbabwean charade or can things really change?

I suppose it will take time for us to find out. In some ways with Zuma, we knew were we stood, and now that that absurd security has gone we feel more vulnerable. We need to know where we stand and we want our new president to tell us frankly, openly and with no bull **** . We’ve had enough of that.