EUGENE TERRE’BLANCHE IS DEAD, SO WHAT? Tuesday, 06 April 2010
By: Kaizer Mohau The death of Eugene Terre’blanche, the leader of the AWB should at no stage be allowed to be used by the right wing forces in their quest to create anarchy and lawlessness. Their argument about our historical songs should as well be dismissed as an excuse to avoid serious political issues. The media equally must be warned against its obsession with sensationalisation - while we respect the role of the media as the main tool we use as the public in getting news etc. we should at the same time remind the media that it is very wrong to assist the right wing in trying to auction our history and the political realities of our times. The media as usual again forgets who this Terre’blanche is and what has been his role in the evolution of the body politic of our country – firstly we all know that Terre’blanche was a racist whose hatred towards Black people in general and Africans in particular was equal to that of Adolf Hitler. The AWB was unapologetically a Nazis organisation, that is why they chose to adopt the Nazi swastika as their main and strategic symbol. So clearly Terre’blanche was no angel either to Afrikaners’ or any part of the South African population. It therefore in writing his “public” obituary the media must be and must face the truth without trying to cause racial chaos in this country. It is Terre’blanche who used many white Afrikaners in their attempt to destabilise the process of negotiations for a peaceful settlement of historical problems of our country – AWB members stormed under this Terre’blsanche’s leadership the World Trade Centre in June 15 1993. Their demands were clearly about their opposition to the removal of apartheid and white supremacy. It is the same Terre’blanche who commanded an attack on innocent Black people in the North West in defence of their apartheid garden boy in the form of Lucas Mangope. AWB members killed a number of innocent civilians again to ensure that apartheid system and its racist arrangements are maintained at all cost. Terr’blanche has been in prison for his atrocities against innocent Black people – he has on many occasions been accused of ill treating Blacks and using many stupid racists in his dirty racist actions. I am not even surprised at the manner in which many Black people in Ventersdorp are not willing to send condolences to this Hitler type mass murderer. It needs to be very clear from the onset that here I am not trying to justify the killing of the AWB leader but I am very concern at the way this killing is being interpreted. Terre’blanche in my view was initially wrong to employ a child; this is illegal in the context of our labour laws. It is an open child labour and it must be condemned even though it should not be used as an excuse for criminal actions. I think what it is naturally justifiable is the decision by the Ventersdorp community to attend the court case in its first appearance in court to be in solidarity with those accused of killing Terre’blanche, to an extend this action is justified based on the manner in which our courts have been dealing with cases of this nature. We know very well that white farmers who murder Black farm workers normally get granted bails but black people struggle a lot to get a bail. As much as we know that based on the principle of innocence until proven otherwise, everyone is entitled to bail – but in the North West province and especially in Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp to be specific, this right is limited to white farmers and racist whites under similar circumstances. For many in the community the killing represent freedom from racist terrorism and harassment by Terre’blanche and co of fascist racists. While others will say, “Rest in Peace” Terre’blanche myself and others are saying “Rest in Hell” Today’s Hitler! Historical liberation songs Let us make this point very clear with or without the apartheid court and judge decision to rule unconstitutional these songs, that we are not and will never be apologetic about our singing of these songs – I am not convinced about those who are coming an telling us that these songs should be treated as unconstitutional and at the same time they never declared unconstitutional the killing of black people by white racist for so many years. We will continue to remember and teach others about the past so that we are able to build our future based on a clear understanding of history and in the true sense of it. As we all remember and know that currently the white Afrikaner communities in many parts of the country are fighting against the change of names of cities, streets and other institutions, amongst others the argument is that we cannot delete the heritage and history of whites, but why should we delete ours? What makes the Afrikaner history and so-called heritage better and superior then ours? This is wrong constitutionally and otherwise. So it is equally in this context that we shall sing every song and we are prepared to make the supreme sacrifice in defence of our democracy and our history. Sometimes after the brutal killing of Steve Bantu Biko and later of Cde Milo Ngalo in the Free state Province, a song was composed which sang as follows: “Maburu ke dintja, ba bulaile Steve Biko, ba bulaile Milo Ngalo” – if they did not kill our leaders then we could have not composed such a song. It is in our view that art at some point reflect our lives and experiences not the other way round. It is now obvious that those racists who even have a decency to threaten the country by revenging the death of their evil little god are now mobilising against democracy and peace – what we need to say in response to this is that they must never forget that this is not a banana republic, in this country we have institutions which are strategically created and strengthened to deal with lawlessness – failure which we will never allow our country to be bullied by cheap elements and racist cults. We shall not fold our arms and let innocent people to be attacked – the time for white supremacist hatred of Black is over and we are at the time when we should all come together to build a non racial society based on equality and democracy. We hope our democratic movement will use all in our power to challenge the apartheid court which declared unconstitutional the singing of our liberation songs – we will not do justice if we leave the issue as it is now. Chances are that some of us will defy the court on this matter because we are certain our history is not auctioning, while we highly respect our court and the law we are equally of the view that courts are sometimes politically manipulated – thus these wrong decisions. Kaizer Mohau writes in his capacity Potchefstroom (North West province) Mobile: 072 080 2824 072 731 5818 -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
