Wow, do we live in interesting times. I really thought khaki had died out a long time ago along with the Ford Cortina and the Pan Africanist Congress. But recent events in this "smartie box" country of ours, a.k.a. The Old New South African Republic of Azania and Like-Minded States or Orania, has pulled the curtain down on, not just deep-seated racism, prejudice, intolerance and a total lack of inhibition, but also alarming levels of gullibility.
"I'm glad he's dead. I'm going to drink beer and celebrate" blurted out an onlooker at the murder scene of Eugene Terre'blanche (or ET as he's adorably referred to by his 16 remaining supporters). On the other side of the barbed wire fencing, resplendent in his toight-as-a-toiger khaki shorts someone called Dirkie, Koos, uhhhh... Gert or something like that belted out Die Stem, the Klipdrift fumes hanging heavy around his moustache. Guess who's side he's on? As racial slurs are traded, mumbled into their rage, amid spittle and foam, in the small and now not so forgotten town of Ventersdorp, the very obvious question still hangs in the air, waiting for a moment of sanity so as to be answered - Don't these people have better things to do? Sure, it's a gruesome murder at the centre of this debacle, which must not be condoned. Sure, ET was a (high-profile, depending on the day of the year) individual who was murdered. Okay, so we clearly all still have issues relating to racism, which our therapists, faith healers, counsellors, teachers, parents, political leaders, etc. couldn't and will never adequately address. But surely, we can all take a step back and just calm our minds for a second or ten. ET was a despicable individual. As despicable as Julius Malema, as horrid as Verwoerd and as hated as Mugabe. I'm not saying we should pop the champagne in celebration of his death or the fact "Shoot the Boer" is now "officially" banned. But we have to take a look at what he stood for, the anachronistic nature of his politics, his history. It's ludicrous, backward, asinine, base, idiotic and dangerous. As are the mindless views of Julius and the myriad of confounding tirades he's launched in the past on everyone who is Julius. There wsa no space for the AWB in this "new" country of ours. There's certainly very little patience left for Malema's loquacious, puzzling outbursts. There's always a balance to the stupidity being liberally perpetuated by followers of both the left and right. That's there right, granted, but come on, is that a right we want to even air, to give substance to and to allow to linger and pollute intelligence?
I invite those of you clinging on to your intelligence and rationality, step inside my camp and savour the breath of fresh air that accompanies the freedom from this futility of madness and blind faith. In this camp we welcome selective apathy, which I we should enforce amid these climates of rage and puerile justifications. From here we can point and laugh at those dimwits, the wannabe-Vootrekkers and Stalinists, the pretend-revolutionaries and commandos, who poke their heads out of their laagers and political rallies to proudly proclaim their glaringly obvious ignorance.
I don't doubt we have loads of issue to wade through over the next thousand years. Most of us love postulating views and pontificating about where South Africa is going. We are a nation which loves to debate. And that's great. But can we just expurgate these debates from terrains where the likes of the "newly revitalised AWB" and Malema prefer to piss out their racist, myopic and pointless garbage.
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