Schwartzerwitz: Blame Whitey (what the Spear taught me)

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Blame Whitey (what the Spear taught me)

The controversy over the Brett Murray painting The Spear has brought the racial fracture lines of South Africa front and centre. Art is what you personally make of it. Interpretation is everything. The "outrage" which has been stirred up by the ANC in particular has had a decided racial angle about it. Why did the race of the artist matter? Senior counsel Malindi had to concede in court that the matter was not about race, yet the ANC continued to cast it as such.

The change in racial discourse in the past two months has been noticible. The victims of the piece are "blacks in general" and the villains are "the whites". The racial epithets are used without questioning whether they are valid. Continuing to use the racial classification of pre-1994 shows that we have learned nothing from history. .

The time of blaming failure on apartheid is over. Now is the time to blame "whites". Julius Malema set the alarm bells ringing with his black and white view of the world. To hear it from Kgalema Motlanthe was sad.

Where has the president been while all this has been happening? Absent as usual? No.

The SABC describe how:

"At the end of his keynote address to the National Union of Mineworkers' conference held in Kempton Park last Wednesday, visibly-hurt and emotionally-shaken President Jacob Zuma broke into a liberation song titled: "Senzeni na?" (What have we done "to deserve this cruel racist treatment"?). Never before have I seen Zuma in such a shaken and troubled state of emotional composure."

The president is out there playing the victim. He's not out there vacuously promising jobs any more, he's playing the race card. After his advocate had conceded that it was not about race in court he's back at it. I have to wonder if the president was able to push some fake tears? A worthy performance from the same man who has been totally silent when our black brethren are beating on their African brothers.

Justice Malala asked Paul Mashatile the ultimate question of why he "as a black person" should be offended by the painting. There was no answer.

I am tired of being racially classified. I keep paying for the colour of my skin. Try and transform as I might I just don't seem to be turning "black". From now on I am going to have to challenge all attempts at classification with "Hold on - if you are going to want to use racial classifications then you are going to have to have an authority to determine what race people are." Calling me "white" is an insult. It is up there with "you people" "coloured" "Indian" "coolie" "hotnot" "nigger" "spick" "kaffer" and "blacks in general".

One Party State by Brett Murray. Interpret it as you please or will.

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Every Pogrom needs an Armband....

Welcome to Schwartzerwitz. The inevitable consequence of 4 million illegal immigrants arriving in South Africa. More desperate than our local folk they are willing to work longer harder faster for less. The immigrants are more reliable than South African unskilled labour and have outcompeted the local folk. No matter what anyone says it's not FAIR on our locals. Adding 4 million hungry mouths to the country has exacerbated the rocketing food prices felt across the globe. Adding 4 million potential electricity users to the mix has undoubtedly worsened the electricity situation. Having 4 million people send home money to their family drains the economy of money which should stay within the borders. Adding 4 million people and not registering them as taxpayers has cost the country billions. What chance does our government of ridding the country of shacks as per the Millennium Development Goal when 4 million immigrants build/rent shacks. Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe....? Just move to a shack in South Africa. On an individual basis this site condemns violent acts against individuals. However as a collective the illegal immigrants deserve no sympathy and should be deported back from whence they came. These people are economic refugees - "not real refugees" - and they are(generally speaking) in South Africa illegally.

kwerekwere.

The inside cover of my Oxford English dictionary features a word with which I have become all too familiar: the word is kwerekwere.

(It may be more familiar to you with one of its vernacular language–dependant prefixes prepended — the Sotho singular being le– and plural ma–, the Nguni singular being i– and plural ama–). This word is used to refer to black (in the morphological sense) Africans who are not South Africans — South African being defined as Sotho, Nguni, Venda and Tsonga ethnic groups (by that measure the Swazis, Batswana, etc. would be South African?). This word has a very negative sting to it and is often used with contempt. From what I gather it has undertones which speak of how black Africans are believed to be sub–human, too dark and have a pungent smell.