SORRY, AZAPO KIDS, YOU MISSED THE BOAT
The time to rehabilitate Uncle Toms came and went 18 years ago, wites MADALA THEPA
WHAT the Azapo youth league is asking from the revered former president of the country – that he must apologise for “selling out” black people – is not totally offensive.
The problem is the timing and course of action
– what comes next after the apology? Trial, drama and firing squad?
The young men of a lapsed BC are also calling for Nelson Mandela’s co-conspirators to account for letting down the poor – basically that everyone who worked on the Robben Island and Codesa project be tarred and feathered, driven out of town and removed from society.
But it’s Mandela whose blood they need the most. Azapo youth league is bowing down to the cult here – pointing at Madiba as the Uncle Tom father figure, the “piece of South African memorabilia”. They re asking the old man to
’ apologise for letting down black people on “political, social and economic emancipation” ideals.
At the Snorting Grunter we already know this, or rather are acquainted with the facts and the factoids, the sins and the blind side of the struggle
– the ANC’s full illustrious history of compromise.
We chuckle when people flop around arguing and advocating like Mormons, the “Confucian Mandela” vs “the traitorous Mandela” – one a corrosive social force in black peoples’ lives, the other a guiding force on humility and virtue.
This is not news, or rather the news of “selling out” has travelled the world stomping far and wide.
Uncle Tommery doesn’t start with Mandela. The old man alone has no biological kinship to this “selling out” project.
There were Uncle Toms in the organisation before him, from Sol Plaatje to the current cult personalities, the sickening fawning of the alliance and its pampered socialists.
The call may be belated. The young Black Consciousness commies might as well break the mirror in which they admire their luxurious moral superiority and get on with their programme of life.
Apologies aren’t sincere and Karma doesn’t always come back to bite. The TRC has taught us that villains are not always crucified – they just walk off with apologies.
However noble and radical Azapo youth league’s call is, time has smacked them right in the butt to push for such an idea this late into democracy.
A wife who was a chattel for a long time makes the mistake of killing her hubby when he’s old.
The point here is that Uncle Toms need to be rehabilitated at the onset of liberation.
Samora Machel did the same thing shortly after Mozambique’s independence in 1975. He rehabilitated Uncle Toms and the collaborators of a colonial era before the programme of reconstruction could start in that country.
Chairman Mao did his own brand of rehabilitation in China – he dealt with traitors at the onset. He didn’t wait for 18 years to pass before he could accuse them.
So we might as well rest our inflamed anti-Uncle Tommery diatribe and get on with our lives.
We can’t charge traitors when they re old for selling out the dream
’ of a black Utopia. And if this is a publicity stunt, it’s a sick one.