We must forgive, but forgetting is a mistake
RECENTLY social media has been abuzz with racist and anti-Semitic comments that evoked hurtful emotions to both the victims of apartheid and the Holocaust.
It is my observation that those who have been disfigured physically and mentally by war will not call for war.
Those whose body parts were torn apart and who endured severe torture, inflicted on them by the proNazi apartheid regime, like I did during the liberation war of this country, will not wish that anyone should experience what I, and many other South Africans of all races, have experienced.
In my exile years, I spent almost a year in the erstwhile German Democratic Republic. I visited one of the Nazi concentration camps where Jewish people were gassed to death in masses by the Nazis – simply because they were Jews.
Progressive German historians of the time painted a vivid picture for us of what really happened in that concentration camp. Imagine people – some of them already disfigured by beatings – queueing for their death. It was on that day that my resolve to get rid of the pro-Nazi apartheid regime was strengthened.
Yet I understood that it was not the German people as a whole who were involved in the slaughter of the Jewish people. It is well documented by the survivors of the holocaust that many German families were involved in hiding Jewish people.
I understand the pain of racial injustices perpetrated on the African majority in particular; the killings, torture, and incarcerations of political activists.
I also understand the revulsion of some African people against racial utterances and behaviour of some white people.
But to say all white people are racists cannot be true.
Worst of all, it is insensitive and hurtful to the extreme to say that black people must do what the Nazis did to Jewish people.
Such insensitivity should not be condoned under the pretext of the freedom of speech and all the ideals of our democracy. The Holocaust was a crime, of immeasurable proportions, against humanity.
Even before that, Jews were treated as unwelcome and undesirable strangers in some parts of Europe. They were made to live in special areas of cities, apart from other people, so that they might not pollute others. Sometimes they were made to wear a special dress. They were humiliated, reviled, tortured, and massacred.
The very word “Jew” became a word of abuse, a synonym for a miser and a grasping money-lender.
Yet these amazing people not only survived all this, but managed to keep their ethnic and cultural characteristics, and prospered.
Today they hold leading positions as scientists, literary geniuses and business people.
Most of them, of course, were far from prosperous at the time of the massacre.
Since then, however, the story of Palestine and Israel has been of untold conflict between Arabs and Jews, with the British government and other Western countries siding generally with what became to be known as Israel.
Not all Jewish people support the conflict in Palestine; but again, it is the average citizen who is caught in the crossfire of war and the authorities that continue to perpetrate this war.
The war that has ravaged the Middle East has no winners at the end of the day and South Africans need to heed the warning that war – physical or verbal – is never an answer.
Hate speech and retaliation only serve to perpetuate an unbreakable cycle of conflict. Whoever is right or wrong – this serves no purpose in building relationships and communities.
It is possible for people of different backgrounds and beliefs to peacefully coexist. So long as the international community allows war and hatred to persist in Palestine no nation can be truly safe from extremists.
Similarly, calling black people monkeys and K-word provocations do not only hurt but fertilise the ground for extremism.
To call upon black people to forget and forgive the horrors of apartheid is as delusional as asking the Jewish people to forget what Hitler did to them. Forgiveness is necessary.
But forgetfulness means we have not learnt from history; and if we have not learnt it is likely that humanity may allow Nazism and apartheid to happen again. Gauteng Department of Health Maja writes in his personal capacity
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