Only an apartheid president would defend apartheid

It’s amazing how many whites keep singing the song that apartheid was a heinous crime against humanity, that it was inhumane, and that they didn’t support it. It’s also amazing how they become silent corroborators when apartheid villains like FW de Klerk go on international public platforms not only to justify apartheid but to actually defend and glorify it. Sickening!

De Klerk proudly declared on CNN that Nelson Mandela was tried by a properly constituted court. Does that mean the 27 years he spent in jail was justified? Does that mean Mandela is nothing but a common criminal?

De Klerk claims apartheid was better for blacks. He forgets one little detail: we are free now! What was better when one could not exercise some of the most basic of human rights? When one could not acquire property, could not participate in the economy, could not even choose who to fall in love with?

This is a sickening culmination of the criminalisation of the black people’s fight against apartheid. The effort to criminalise our struggle for equal rights and opportunities started with trivial things like refusing to accept street name changes and banning struggle songs – and now we are told those who were tried by the regime under inhumane laws were properly tried. Sickening!

The apartheid villain that is de Klerk goes on to say apartheid wasn’t actually that bad but simply “separate equality”.

What a load of bull! De Klerk must then explain to me how my family lost huge tracts of land in the 1890s when white settlers and missionaries moved inland from Durban. They didn’t buy the land from my great-great-grandfather. They forcibly moved him and his family to the most barren corner of his land, and by 1976 the family had been moved to KwaNdengezi, packed in a couple of four-roomed semi-detached houses, and were paying rent every month.

Because of the negotiated settlement it meant my family could only claim for land forcibly taken from them after 1913 which was only 10% of the land originally in my family’s hands. And guess what we got back? Four hundred square metres of barren land lying under electricity pylons.

Some will argue that it is the ANC government that grants land restitution so they failed me. But the ANC government didn’t take our land in the first place. Primary responsibility still must rest with those who took it.

Where is the equality in that?

This apartheid denialism and justification fuels anger among black people about the continued impact of apartheid and the continued benefits many apartheid perpetrators and their offspring enjoy.

It is hard enough to have to reconcile only because white South Africans said they were sorry for apartheid even though nothing has been done to put black people back in the position they were in before apartheid. But now to have to reconcile with people who tell you that apartheid was actually good for you?! Did de Klerk read the reports of how many were killed in the townships by his soldiers? How many couldn’t get jobs because of inferior education? How many were diseased because of poor living conditions? How many died and are still dying in the mines while earning a pittance?

ANC failures (and there many) should never be used to justify the hideous crimes committed against black people during apartheid and their continued impact.

The ANC alone cannot be held responsible for the redress. Where are all the people who benefited and continue to benefit from apartheid?

What responsibility are they taking to really show they didn’t support apartheid?

You can start by telling de Klerk where to jump off and continue to fulfil your part in the sunset clause agreement. He has shown himself to be unpatriotic and deserves to be thrown in jail for his part in apartheid crimes.

For some reason, white people being “victims” of 18 years of disastrous BEE and affirmative action policies (which, by the way, are attempts at reversing the impact of what we all publicly agree was a crime against humanity) has overtaken the victimhood of 300 years of white superiority.

If we were all committed to redress there would be no victims by now. If we had all (ANC included) committed to what the negotiated settlement of Codesa tried to achieve we would be well on our way to becoming an equal society.

I challenge every white South African who has ever declared they never supported apartheid, every white South African who claimed to have been forced to serve the apartheid state, I challenge the Freedom Front Plus, the DA, AfriForum, every newspaper, every analyst and every member of the media, to speak out against FW de Klerk and his glorification of apartheid.

Everyone must show de Klerk how we all abhorred apartheid and its continued legacy, and how we all feel we can still work together to eradicate its remnants from our society. I am not holding my breath though.

However, it is about time De Klerk and other unrepentant active perpetrators of apartheid were prosecuted for apartheid crimes.