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People have been blaming other people for their own misgivings since the beginning of time. In Germany the Jews where blamed for the financial situation of the country, in biblical times the Roman's where blamed for the death of Jesus, the Christians blamed for the corruption of nations, and most recently, also the most applicable to me as I live here, the whites have been blamed for the plight of the poor state of South Africa.
Firstly, I am not one of those hypocritical white people who claim that apartheid is over and people have had enough time to stop blaming apartheid for the poverty of this country, then goes home and spews forth negative racist jargon all over the place.
I believe that apartheid is to blame for the current financial state of my country. People seem to think that a whole country, with a history as sad and divisive as ours, can rebuild and be equal and rich in 20 years, this is most certainly short-sighted and erroneous. It is going to take a lot of time for this country to get back on track.
''It is the fault of corruption and crime that we are not moving forward,'' is a type of thing one hears a lot. I whole heartily agree, but why is there so much crime and corruption? Most privileged people would dismiss my answer as liberal bullshit before even wanting to think about it for five minutes, but it is certainly the fault of apartheid. People were poor for generations.
If your grandfather was poor, father was poor and marginalized, you were raised in a poor desperate environment, a whole different way of life and mindset is bred. A mindset where you have to do what you can to take care of yourself and your family. You might say that everyone wants to take care of their families, but the desperation of poor people is not easily understood, also not the effect thereof.
Now from the perspective of the poor, they might claim that then they must be empowered, even if it is at the cost of the rich. This is an understandable feeling, but blame is easily cast. Blame only fuels hatred, which in turn causes a chain reaction of hate throughout society.
Blame can be cast on the settlers who came and took the land of the blacks, and this blame might be justified, but where do you stop? Did the Xhosa's take the Zulu's land? Do the Khoisan deserve all the land? Is this argument in any way a road to go down? I do not believe so.
Blame only succeeds to hold us back. Its whole definition links it to the past, when we should be looking at the future. A lot of people in this country is negative, racist, backward, and mostly scared, but there a large amount of people like myself that wants to move forward. It might be easy for me to say, because of my privileged upbringing, but it does not change the fact that the only way forward is to stop the blame.
The only thing we need from the past is to learn, to learn what not to do. Violence and hate as always been a circle that never stops, lets hope we can be the first.
