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There is something interesting about relationships, we can have a go at our own but if someone tries to do the same with those close to us, we become very protective. It is the case with my relationship with the ANC. I am the first person to lambast any wrong doing by the ANC but I am very intolerant to anyone who attacks the ANC to make conversation, I find that I become aggressively intolerant if the person is white.
This will then confirm my discovery that forgiveness is amongst the toughest life lessons.
I stay in the South of Johannesburg and as life would have it, we were blessed with water shortages this weekend. I resisted the idea of going to fetch water the entire Saturday, but by Sunday the words, what you resist persist and what you embrace disappears we screaming in my consciousness and I therefore went to fetch water.
When we got there, I saw an equal South Africa, we were all in a queue, Black, Coloured, Indian and White, waiting for our turn to fill our vessels with this precious commodity we sometimes take for granted. It is almost as if the white gentleman standing next to me read my gratitude at the sight and wanted to challenge my state of peace, when he said, new South Africa neh. Suddenly an angry black man in me came out like Verwoerd was staring at me.
See this white gentleman is complaining because of this experience and this is because he has always had access to the finer things in life, my parents had fetching water and wood as a way of life in the Villages of Katnagel and Debrak respectively. It was only after the ANC won, that for the first time, my grandparents exchanged a lantern for electricity.
So you will understand when I don’t appreciate this New South Africa comment. The funny thing about the comment is that fetching water brings an unpleasant memory for me too because I grew up in a township called Itsoseng in the North West, and the last time we saw ourselves enjoying tap water was after my dad who was a strong ANC leader and his accomplices successfully orchestrated the fall of Mangope.
Thereafter people wanted to feed their stomach, my dad left politics and we did not have water because of poor running of municipalities and lack of assigning the right expertise to the right roles.
What we all have to appreciate is that, if you share resources amongst the small minority, you are less likely to experience problems, but when you then share resources amongst all children of God, infrastructural challenges are likely to kick in. The biggest mistake our government made with regards to electricity and water is lack of proper planning, and of course the challenge that still persist, assigning right jobs to wrong people with no expertise.
The corruption that occurs is also a challenge because money is wasted when we have so many critical issues to address. With this said, I am able to write this column freely because of every soul that fought for freedom. And what the gentleman who said new South Africa does not know is that he is able to stand in a queue like this because better provisions are still made for suburbs as compared to villages and townships.
So the next time any of my fellow white South Africans want to have a go at the government, take ownership for the role of apartheid in the situation we find ourselves in i.e. own your part and then criticize constructively. You never realize how deep the scars of apartheid are until you get ill informed comments like these, but as man are our mirrors, this incident reminded me to be patient with my process of healing and forgive myself when I can’t seem to walk through the valley of the shadow of death that is apartheid.
Healing does take time and I will still call the ANC out when it wrongs us and hopefully one day I will be able to embrace without judgement other people’s take on the ANC no matter how unstructured the communication might seem. The pain body truly is something interesting as Eckhart Tolle rightfully points it out.
