I saw this letter on IOL last week, it struck a chord.......
""ALTHOUGH hard to
swallow, us black people despise everything that looks like us. To prove my
point, not so long ago fellow blacks who had run away from atrocities in their
own African countries were beaten, burned and some even killed by fellow blacks
in South Africa.
In Namibia , black supporters of the ruling party Swapo
and the opposition parties clashed in 2009 and we still hear of such quarrels or
violence just in the name of politics. Through studying history, I have come to
learn that we actually disliked one another before colonialism, hence fierce
tribal fights during those years. Colonialism united us all in the fight against
a common enemy and after colonialism, we saw the rebirth of things we thought
were buried a long time ago, like tribalism, regionalism, favouritism,
etc.
Although we do not like others from other tribes, we all love things
that we do not produce. We love fine branded clothes from Europe , we love
American and German-made cars, we love expensive wines and whiskeys, yet no
African person brews any of them.
All we own, unfortunately, are
thousands of shebeens where we drink ourselves to death, stab each other with
knives/bottles, infect each other with the HIV virus, make lots of unwanted
babies and then blame others for our miseries. We love all sorts of expensive
foreign made items and show them off yet we look down at our indigenous products
that we fail to commercialise.
As blacks, we know very little about
investments, whether in stocks, or in properties. All we know is how to invest
our money in things that depreciate or evaporate the fastest like clothes, cars,
alcohol and, when we are at it, we want the whole world to see us. I know some
brothers driving BMWs, yet they sleep on the floors and don't have beds because
nobody will see them anyway.
This is what we love doing and this is the
black life, a life of showing off for those who have. A black millionaire
entrepreneur living in Ludwigsdorf or Klein Kuppe in Windhoek will drive to the
notorious Evelyn Street in Katutura where he will show off his expensive car and
look down on others.
We sell our natural resources to Europe for
processing, and then buy them back in finished products. What makes us so
inferior in our thinking that we only pride ourselves when we have something
made by others? What compels us to show off things that we don't manufacture? Is
it the poverty that we allow ourselves to be in? Is it our navigated
consciousness, our culture, or just a low self esteem possessing us? For how
long are we going to be consumers or users of things we do not produce? Do we
like the easy way out, such that we only use and consume things made by
others?
Do designer clothes, expensive wines or changing our names to
sound more European make us more confident in ourselves?
Our leaders
scream at us how bad the Europeans are yet they steal our public money and hide
it in European banks. We know how Europeans ransacked Africa but we are
scandalously quiet when our own leaders loot our countries and run with
briefcases under their arms full of our riches to Europe . The Europeans took
our riches to Europe but our African leaders are doing this too.
Mubarak
of Egypt, Gadaffi of Libya, Mobutu Sese Seko of the (then) Zaire, all had their
assets allegedly frozen in Europe . Why do our African leaders, who claim to
love us, run to invest 'their' money in Europe ? Again when they get sick they
are quick to be flown to Europe for treatment, yet our relatives die in hospital
queues. Don't our leaders trust the health systems they have created for us
all?
Why are we so subservient, so obedient to corruption when committed
by our very own people? Nobody can disagree with me that in this country that we
are like pets trained to obey the instructions of their masters. I am sure we look down when we think of our broken
lives but what do we see then? I wonder if we realise how we sell our dreams to
our leaders for corruption, misery, poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and
all other social evils affecting us.
How long are we
going to let our manipulated minds mislead us, from womb to
tomb?
How long are we going to blame the
whites for our own inability to rise above ourselves and our situation? Waiting
for stuff to be given to us for free, hands held out for alms to cross our
palms? And sadly, at the next election, we vote ourselves right back into the
same state of affairs!"
LINK: http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/the-r582m-road-to-nkandla-1.1399892#.UHVSWRXMikI (http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/the-r582m-road-to-nkandla-1.1399892#.UHVSWRXMikI) "
At a guess I'd say that letter was a black flag operation i.e. a piece of agents provocateurism not written by an African. Can we now look forward to a bunch of yeah-rights jumping in to support it?
Of course it struck a chord. The chord was nostalgia, the wish for things past.
I dont like letters of this vein , they tend to generalise and as Bob says origin dubious , However Bob admit to it .... strings do get plucked
Right on the button, Sandy. My chord was plucked fairly aggressively when I visited my little Hout Bay Eden a few years ago, only to have a stand-over incident which suggested I pay to park on the beachfront or else.
Judging by the attitude of the standover committee I doubted that my car would still be in the same condition when I returned if I didn't comply so I paid up.
The chord plucking started on the drive from the airport, beginning with a kilometres long shanty town on both sides of the road, leading to an overcrowded refuse-strewn city and houses that from the outside looked more like jails than homes.
The article originally appeared in the Namibian last year on 8-4-2011
(http://www.namibian.com.na/letters/full-story/archive/2011/april/article/the-way-things-are/ (http://www.namibian.com.na/letters/full-story/archive/2011/april/article/the-way-things-are/))
The author is given.
I wont say too much except that when I read it, it did ring a chord with me as well. Unfotunately most of it seems true (from where I am here in Aus). But I wont go into the perils of African politics and all its complexities - its too damn hard.
Malcolm
Well remembered there Malcolm....
Wonder if IOL will be interested to know that this was lifted from the Namibian a year ago....