By Madibeng Kgwete: posted on 30 March 2007
The concerns that South African commentator Hamilton Wende expresses in his opinion article in The Star newspaper, “It could have been so different” (Opinion & Analysis, 29 March 2007), are concerns that thousands of voiceless people across the world have long been expressing about George W. Bush, the tyrant at the helm down in Washington DC .
Wende aptly describes the Bush administration’s detention-without-trial and abuse of suspected terrorists at Guatanamo Bay as “an unforgivable indictment on the ideals which have made America the oldest constitutional democracy in the world”.
It is a grave pity that, after years of protest against America’s unjustifiable use of violence against antagonists, particularly those in the Arab world, Bush and the yes-men and women surrounding him seem to have renewed their arrogance towards the world as a whole.
It is ironic that Bush and his right-hand men in Britain and Australia, Tony Blair and John Howard respectively, are the same individuals trotting the globe to preach about democracy and human rights in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Their hypocrisy will not take us anywhere.
If Bush truly believes in democracy and respects other people’s right to life (both of which I doubt he does), he could not have invaded Iraq for reasons known only to himself, his dubious spooks and the head-nodding diplomats surrounding him.
The suffering inflicted on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the detainees at Quatanamo Bay and other US detention camps around the world makes Bush’s regime comparable to the very regimes he so vociferously despises, such as Zimbabwe's.
Bush is in the same league with his Zimbabwean counterpart. Just like President Robert Mugabe, Bush came to power after a controversial election victory. Bush, like Mugabe, disregards critics, condones the use violence in campaigns to advance his interests and does not seem to value human life.
Bush is as undemocratic and authoritarian as his counterpart in Harare . The tone in Bush’s public speeches is similar to that of Mugabe’s. Both use words as unpresidential as “go to hell”. For example, Bush is on record as having said: “I will never relent in defending America - whatever it takes”. Mugabe, on the other hand, recently told his critics to “go hang”.
With the main proponents of democracy – Bush, Blair, Howard, etc – advocating human rights, liberty and peace whilst practicing the opposite, our continent Africa and the rest of the third world need to formulate an independent positions on matters affecting countries such as Zimbabwe.
It is easy to blame African leaders for non-action in Zimbabwe . Africa’s critics – both in and out of the continent – have strongly argued that South Africa abandons its so-called quite diplomacy and that sanctions should be imposed on Mugabe and his supporters.
That may help in pushing Mugabe out of office, but the questions really are: “Are the punitive international protocols only reserved for poor African autocrats and tyrants?” “Is the US , its president and his cronies all above the law?”
Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday, March 9, 2007
Colonial and apartheid names must go -- now!
By Madibeng Kgwete: posted on 09 March 2007
In his letter in The Star newspaper, www.thestar.co.za, “Name changes are going to haunt us” (09 March 2007), Mqizilili Gamedze makes a number of regrettable conclusions about name changes in South Africa, guided by his apparent lack of both historical knowledge and understanding.
Gamedze says, for example, that: “Post-apartheid opportunities for the redress of racial imbalances have worked in [the ANC’s] favour, providing the impetus to perpetuate the lie: VIP toilets, BEE (whatever that means), African renaissance and, of course, ostensibly to rewrite this country’s history”.
Sounding like a perfect example of an apartheid apologist, Gamedze further writes: “Changing place names of historical significance to other population groups, even if that history is written in African blood, is against the spirit of reconciliation, which brought the ANC to power in the first place”.
Gamedze’s greatest deficiency is his unwillingness to accept that the twin systems of colonialism and apartheid have done so much damage to the pride of black people that the many colonial names still hanging around our country serve to remind us that blacks are still a conquered lot.
To pump some pride back into the black people – who now have achieved their age-old dream of self-governance – the question of renaming key landscapes such as airports, cities, roads, etc, is so critically important that non-action would, in my view, amount to negligence.
Gamedze may think we’ve already had more than enough name changes already, but I think we have done too little too late. We blacks still have a lot more colonial and apartheid names to get rid of: names such as East London, Port Elizabeth , Bloemfontein , King William’s Town, Port St Johns, etc.
We black people would be doing a great disservice to the pride of our great continent Africa if, in this era of black political rule, we become too complacent, too comfortable and too oblivious to worry about reclaiming our past and safeguarding our integrity.
The previous administrations have succeeded in instilling within black people a false sense Europeanism, of compulsorily having European names and promoting other Eurocentric beliefs and practices. Sometimes we black South Africans are accused by our own counterparts in other African countries of being easy convertibles.
Because of this false sense of Europeanism instilled within us by our previous masters, we still shun our own languages and even families. As the current political office bearers, we have a choice between maintaining a Eurocentric country, with all its European names (some of which as quite derogatory), and reclaiming our pride by getting rid of aparheid and colonial names.
An edited copy of this article appeared in The Star newspaper on 13 March 2007 under the headline, "Old place names remind us daily that blacks are a conquered lot", page 15.
Yes, but -- says a reader
Posted on 01 April 2007
I fully agree with the writer when he says "Colonial and apartheid names must go now!". However, one has to give consideration to the latest Supreme Court of Appeal decision that consultation is key in deciding whether these names should go or not.
It is my view that our hatred for the ills of the past undoubtedly overshadows our intentions to ensure that we do not repeat the excesses of the apartheid military junta that ruled in an autocratic manner. The will of the majority has to be considered through a consultative and inclusive process, enlisting the views of the Afrikaners and other interest groups even though we are clear that a minotiry of these groups are still clinging to our divided and racial past with passion.
Consultation might be challenging and demanding given the fact that most indigenous people, who unfortunately constitute the majority, do not have the necessary resources to make inputs in these processes as they are concerned with survival than lobbying. Remember, the majority of South Africans have been excluded from economic activity as result of the draconian laws of the previous racist regime that ensured that the historically oppressed, especially Africans, the most oppressed, do not even own property, let alone the means of production - the essence for survival. One must not forget that blacks in general and Africans in particular continue to bear the brunt of economic exclusion in South Africa despite the sterling efforts by the democratic government to integrate them to the mainstream economy.
These efforts of government, although noble, cannot transform over 350 years of colonialism and oppression over 12 years since 1994 - the year for the South African miracle where the poor compromised to ensure that there is peace in the Southern tip of Africa and this peace is for social cohesion and economic development for the benefit of the historically oppressed, especially the African majority that we said has no resources to engage in campaigns of this nature such as renaming towns, cities and institutions that remind us of our grim past.
Consultation is key and it requires us - myself, the writer and the rest - to be careful of becoming the copycats of Afrikanerdom and the imperialist agenda of failing to take into consideration the views of the minorities and the majorities that must be outlined to the public before we take the decisive actions of removing these sickening names from our new dispensation and replacing them with names understood and accepted by a major section of people that benefited from the Apartheid past. Sifiso Ndlazi
In his letter in The Star newspaper, www.thestar.co.za, “Name changes are going to haunt us” (09 March 2007), Mqizilili Gamedze makes a number of regrettable conclusions about name changes in South Africa, guided by his apparent lack of both historical knowledge and understanding.
Gamedze says, for example, that: “Post-apartheid opportunities for the redress of racial imbalances have worked in [the ANC’s] favour, providing the impetus to perpetuate the lie: VIP toilets, BEE (whatever that means), African renaissance and, of course, ostensibly to rewrite this country’s history”.
Sounding like a perfect example of an apartheid apologist, Gamedze further writes: “Changing place names of historical significance to other population groups, even if that history is written in African blood, is against the spirit of reconciliation, which brought the ANC to power in the first place”.
Gamedze’s greatest deficiency is his unwillingness to accept that the twin systems of colonialism and apartheid have done so much damage to the pride of black people that the many colonial names still hanging around our country serve to remind us that blacks are still a conquered lot.
To pump some pride back into the black people – who now have achieved their age-old dream of self-governance – the question of renaming key landscapes such as airports, cities, roads, etc, is so critically important that non-action would, in my view, amount to negligence.
Gamedze may think we’ve already had more than enough name changes already, but I think we have done too little too late. We blacks still have a lot more colonial and apartheid names to get rid of: names such as East London, Port Elizabeth , Bloemfontein , King William’s Town, Port St Johns, etc.
We black people would be doing a great disservice to the pride of our great continent Africa if, in this era of black political rule, we become too complacent, too comfortable and too oblivious to worry about reclaiming our past and safeguarding our integrity.
The previous administrations have succeeded in instilling within black people a false sense Europeanism, of compulsorily having European names and promoting other Eurocentric beliefs and practices. Sometimes we black South Africans are accused by our own counterparts in other African countries of being easy convertibles.
Because of this false sense of Europeanism instilled within us by our previous masters, we still shun our own languages and even families. As the current political office bearers, we have a choice between maintaining a Eurocentric country, with all its European names (some of which as quite derogatory), and reclaiming our pride by getting rid of aparheid and colonial names.
An edited copy of this article appeared in The Star newspaper on 13 March 2007 under the headline, "Old place names remind us daily that blacks are a conquered lot", page 15.
Yes, but -- says a reader
Posted on 01 April 2007
I fully agree with the writer when he says "Colonial and apartheid names must go now!". However, one has to give consideration to the latest Supreme Court of Appeal decision that consultation is key in deciding whether these names should go or not.
It is my view that our hatred for the ills of the past undoubtedly overshadows our intentions to ensure that we do not repeat the excesses of the apartheid military junta that ruled in an autocratic manner. The will of the majority has to be considered through a consultative and inclusive process, enlisting the views of the Afrikaners and other interest groups even though we are clear that a minotiry of these groups are still clinging to our divided and racial past with passion.
Consultation might be challenging and demanding given the fact that most indigenous people, who unfortunately constitute the majority, do not have the necessary resources to make inputs in these processes as they are concerned with survival than lobbying. Remember, the majority of South Africans have been excluded from economic activity as result of the draconian laws of the previous racist regime that ensured that the historically oppressed, especially Africans, the most oppressed, do not even own property, let alone the means of production - the essence for survival. One must not forget that blacks in general and Africans in particular continue to bear the brunt of economic exclusion in South Africa despite the sterling efforts by the democratic government to integrate them to the mainstream economy.
These efforts of government, although noble, cannot transform over 350 years of colonialism and oppression over 12 years since 1994 - the year for the South African miracle where the poor compromised to ensure that there is peace in the Southern tip of Africa and this peace is for social cohesion and economic development for the benefit of the historically oppressed, especially the African majority that we said has no resources to engage in campaigns of this nature such as renaming towns, cities and institutions that remind us of our grim past.
Consultation is key and it requires us - myself, the writer and the rest - to be careful of becoming the copycats of Afrikanerdom and the imperialist agenda of failing to take into consideration the views of the minorities and the majorities that must be outlined to the public before we take the decisive actions of removing these sickening names from our new dispensation and replacing them with names understood and accepted by a major section of people that benefited from the Apartheid past. Sifiso Ndlazi
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