Open Letter to All Two Faced Apartheid Beneficiaries

By Nco Dube

Since its the open letter season, I thought I would pen a humble one to all unrepentant apartheid collaborators and benefactors who claim to love Madiba.

The love so widely professed for #Madiba by the former apartheid collaborators and benefactors should be shown in deeds. So many profess this undying love and admiration for #Madiba yet they continue to blissfully enjoy the fruits of the same ill that #Madiba so selflessly fought against without lifting a hand in the uplifment of the previously oppressed.

What Nelson #Mandela stands for is being deliberately twisted to suit certain sections of our society. #Madiba is now being touted as having sacrificed 67 years of his life for reconciliation. What a load of bull!

#Madiba sacrificed, fought and went to prison so there can be an end to apartheid, racism, injustice, economic exclusion and landless ness. The reconciliation comes as a result of an end to these things.

The hand of reconciliation that Madiba so generously extended is being undermined by a lack of commitment to transformation by the very same people who maintained, collaborated with and benefitted from apartheid. It’s now left only to Madiba’s party, the #ANC and the black society to bring about transformation to their own lives. Of course the #AnC as the ruling party has huge responsibility to head up and maple meant transformation, so are the formerly oppressed who need to rise from the ashes and be the change they want.

But above all, responsibility lies with those who perpetrated and/or benefitted from apartheid, to head the fight to erase the apartheid legacy.

Instead, they have become loud and critical bystanders who seem to revel in the failure of the #ANC to lead transformation while doing nothing to transform society themselves. They expect the #ANC to go it alone. This can’t be right.

It’s like invading a person’s home, strip it bare and burn it down. Bezixebulela umkhoma. All the fittings from the stripped home are distributed amongst yourselves to build your own homes. You exile, jail, kill and enslave the occupants of the home. When they finally rise up against you a settlement is negotiated.

Part of the settlement was that the occupants of the home need to be assisted, under their own leadership into rebuilding their house and that you are guaranteed not to lose your own house built from what was stripped from their home.

But then their leadership seems to be failing to help them rebuild quick enough while you fold your hands and carry on with your own life. Here is is the confusing part, you then blame their leadership and the occupants themselves for being homeless. Fair enough, they should take the blame for continuously electing an inadequate leadership. Their fault is failing to rebuild but you are still responsible for them being homeless in the first instance! You still share responsibility to be involved and participate in the rebuilding.

The sad fact is that when the formerly oppressed rise up against the slow pace of transformation you will also be in the firing line because you are ultimately are responsible for and/or are still enjoying the fruits of their suffering at apartheid’s hands.

The general feeling is that while the current government is fraught with its own problems that impede transformation, you are also not playing your part as agreed at Codesa.

You jump at embracing the reconciliation side of #Madiba so as to ignore what he expects of you in return for that reconciliation.

What are you doing to help black people rebuild? Are you forgetting that they still remember that the house you live in is built from their own home fittings? Yakhelwe ngamaqubu abo!

The point I’m trying to make is you can’t claim us you love #Mandela while you are not, personally doing your part in transforming society. #Mandela’s struggle didn’t start with the fight for reconciliation amongst South Africans. It started with the fight against apartheid, injustice, racism, economic exclusion and landless ness. #Mandela was not born in 1994.

#Mandela was the Commander-In-Chief of Robert McBride, Solomon Mahlangu, and many other MK operatives that you fight so tirelessly against just to even get streets named after. He led the same MK you claim was a murderous outfit. How could they be murderous when they were fighting against the same ruthless apartheid you claim to also abhor? We’re the Allied forces murderous for fighting against Hitler?

#Mandela fought against the Pretoria you fight tooth and nail to keep. How are you committed to reconciliation while embracing the remnants of apartheid, some of whom are deeply offensive to the black population.

It is hypocritical and disgusting to profess undying love for Madiba while you spitting on his face by impeding or not assisting in achieving the kind of society he dreamt of.

If you believe #AA and #BEE are reverse racism, then you have no business visiting #Madiba’s hospital to lay flowers.

For land reform to happen, you need to lose some of the land taken from black people, for economic reform to happen you need to lose some of the directorships, management and ownership positions you hold to create space for black people. It can’t happen while you continue to build on the advantages you already have.

For black judiciary officers to be appointed, it means no white officers should be appointed! Why be against this if you love #Madiba and what he stands for?

Spare us you crocodile tears about #Madiba if you believe it’s time for black people to ‘get over it and move on’ while you have never contributed personally to transformation.

We can only move on when all that #Madiba fought for has been achieved. And no, it’s not the responsibility of a black government only to do that. It’s a shared responsibility.

The reconciliation #Mandela preaches is a genuine show of Ubuntu from a person who believed you were also genuine about your agreements at Codesa!

The fact is that #ANC failures do not absolve you of your shared responsibility to erase the apartheid legacy.

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9 responses to “Open Letter to All Two Faced Apartheid Beneficiaries”

J

July 6, 2013

With respect, you capture the painful dialog of this country’s wounded heart with great skill. But may I, as one who has made sacrifices for the changes in our great land, humbly offer that the dialog is one you are having with ghosts, and with those who no longer matter. There is no coordinated group, white or otherwise, that speaks as you suggest. Perhaps, the dialog is really with your wounds, the blood that you and yours have bled, from our racial and national conciousness. The injustice of a hundred generations. The complicit failure of a million million souls who over the millenia could have changed the past. The past. Your writing seems to cry out for more injustice, discrimination, blood – anything to undo the sordid, putrid past. But there is no undoing, just doing. Is not Madiba’s legacy the strength to say, “You have taken our past, but we will not let you take our future from us. We will define our future, and who we are as human beings is ours to define, today, for our children tomorrow.” We can ALL chose, today, to make tomorrow better. Or we can bathe in the rotting mire of yesterday’s dreams. You, Nco, have the power to inspire tomorrow’s success, if your wounds can be bound and soothed, as Madiba did for our nation. I cannot claim Madiba as my own, or of mine, or in any way other than to say, I see an image of what a man can become, what he can overcome, and I am inspired. A new South Africa? Count me in.

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Anonymous

July 6, 2013

This is a letter that is written by an open minded person. unlike the other letters written by people who are not open minded yet they want or they say or believe that they can writte open letters Cde Ncodube U have just opened sum people’s eyes with this letter Amandla Qabane

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Jimmy Whatmore

July 7, 2013

Gee! As a white South African I must say, altough it irks me, that you speak the truth. We need to do some serious soul searching…

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Bronwyn

July 7, 2013

Nco, I hear you, and because of this I want to share what I posted on my FB page with this link.

“This post is not an easy one to read, it raises from very difficult and uncomfortable questions, but they are questions that we need to ask as a nation – esp as white South Africans. Not only because what he says is what many non-white South Africans think, but also because there is a very uncomfortable truth in many of the points that he makes.
So often I hear people saying that apartheid can’t be blamed for what is happening today, it has been too long, but I have worked with the young people in the townships and I have seen what the legacy of apartheid has done to these “born frees”. It is going to take many generations to undo the damage, change the way of thinking, and empower people to believe that they have the right to decent education etc, and that can only happen, when those that have achieved that reach out and help them across the divide. There are not enough people out there doing that – the population is just too large to leave it to the NGOs and the current govt even without their challenges. So perhaps we should think carefully about our role in the legacy and what we are doing to reach out and level the playing field before we start dismissing South Africa to the waste-bin of another failed state.”

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Ralph Manyaka

July 8, 2013

Mr Dube
I have read ya letter many times and given the background of certain invinsible realities (or we chose to ignore the truth), I have few pointers for your consideration.
1. When did the struggle of the African people starts and what were they fighting about?
2. Is apartheid a core factor of our struggle?
3. Wasn’t Codesa adressing superficial issues and destorting the true struggle of the African people?
4. Wasn’t Codesa a wholesale fora for the SALE of the African soul?

I am wondering what’s suprising you with the behaviour of the apartheid collaborators and benefactors, don’t u think Madiba is their kind and they are obliged to pay tribute to his contribution in the maintanance of the status quo in their control of our LANDS and resources? U can’t blame them for thanking him, can you?

Has it appeared to you that Madiba might not be the man he is flaunted by the western press to be? Has it appeared to you that Madiba might be a member of FREE MASONS? And surely if you knew and know how the system operated, he would not have lived, he would have followed the Bikos and the Sobukwes of these world.

Let me bring to your attention the following:
1. That Madiba was born 266 years after the second white settlers stepped on our shores
2. The wars of resistance by our forefathers was short of APARTHEID but more for LAND dispossession by the same collaborators and benefactors who went on to steal our Gold, Diamonds and our Fields.
3. Apartheid is the system that is 3 centuries less into Land Grab and rape by the european settlers and we all know that these Land does not and cannot belong to those who live on it but Africans, and these Land carries our soul and pride.
4. Apartheid is less of a problem but repossession of the Land back to the rightful owners is the only mechanism that can rekindle our soul as African. I am yet to see an African claiming British Lands and economies, show me any.
5. Madiba and his negotiating crew confirmed the wholesale ownership of our Lands and vowed to protect them with the Act of Law (refer to the the freedom charter and all acts of law including the constitution)
6. Centralization of Power can only mean that the fate of all African lies with corruptable system that cannot be accounted for and the Landless will continue to be landless regardless
(Refer: Banjul Charter, Universal Declaration on Indigenous People’s rights and visit Mines and Mineral Act Sierra Leone- see if all your acts in South Africa are not eurocentric and not seeks to perpetuate *Apartheid* or landlessness)
6. The african situation is not about human rights but Land repossession.
7. That the land belongs to Africans not everyone who lives in it.
8. That we are not *Blacks* but African (there must be clear distinction)
9. That there is only one race, the human race, multi-racialism as propagated by freedom charter supports and collaborates with Apartheid.

In conclusion, Madiba as a man faultered and his mistake, knowingly or unknowingly is severe for the African population and well manupulated by the powers that be hence they Glorify him the way they do, hence they Immortalize him the way they do. He benefited and still continues to benefit from the system. Apartheid Collaborators and Benefactors are to lose a very important person in their history of dispossessing an African of his lands and resources. Let us not distort our history and struggle, let us not mislead the generations after us by promoting apartheid, let us be ashamed of our Godfathers in the struggle of land dispossessions, the ANC has never fought our Lands and they will continue selling our land and soul to the highest foreign bidder, that is the reality.

Let us be proud to call our souls our own and the basis of our soul is our land, not human rights and all other whims and fancy.

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robber jones

July 8, 2013

What absolute garbage , Apartheid 2.0

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Anonymous

July 8, 2013

Diversity with out Inclusion (regardless of sex, nationality or religion) is Segregation (Apartheid, or any other name you may call this, is oppression). For we to continue into the future then we need to heal from our painful past. Not everyone can let go of the past. Not everyone has their brothers best interest at heart. Its easier to blame than to take responsibility. We All need to take responsibility. We All need to forgive … regardless and on purpose for the greater good of our beloved country. If we cannot lay down our anger (wether justified or not), then our future is bleak.

Society is immoral, narcissistic, corrupt and extremely self-centric. Until the children of Africa, regardless of their colour, do not recognise each other as co-inhabitors, as brothers, then we will not go forward and “Segregation” will always be around.

Powerful forces in past, present and future will always use these emotions to contain, manipulate the masses for their own selfish ends. Its embedded in the human heart. Look to history, greed, poverty, love of power, all seem to be insatiable.

We need to stop blaming, and start building. Building bridges of forgiveness. Remove divisions of culture, start accepting one another. Respecting each others beliefs. Value the potential of each day. Let us stop segregating against each other. Let us appoint based on competency and not colour. Let us esteem each person with the hope for a better South Africa.

I am an African, I was born in Africa, when will my brothers and sisters see me as one of their own and not as an illegitimate son. Even the prodigal son found acceptance.

As long as you see the colour of my skin, then you don’t see me.

“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”, May God help us all Heal, May God heal you from the past Mr. Dube

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Victor S. Wolf

July 8, 2013

Jakob Zuma is the biggest Apartheid benefactor to date. Without Apartheid, he would not have been president. It is simple, no Apartheid, no struggle white guilt voter ticket, no Nkandla…

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Tholang Chakana

July 24, 2013

There are those white South African who believe that after Mandela death black people are going rise against them to is just a guilty conscious but let me assure them we are not cappable of that we are a very forgiving nation but that doesnt have to be taken forgranted.
There is an incident that comes back to my mind when i think, a freind of mine from Swaziland was dating a white lady in former RAU,now known as University of Johannesburg. This lady was a South African and she confessed to this guy that she had always loved my Swazi friend but her problem was that she thought he was from South Africa hence why she had to surpress her feelings for her. She went on to say that she loves black guys even those from here in South Africa but her major problem was that she doesnt believe black people in SA are capable of fully and truly forgiving white people for all what was done by their forefathers, fathers, mothers, sons and daugthers to that black people from pre apartheid, to apartheid era hence why she would only prefer to only black guys from our neighbouring countries.
So one can see how far the damage was done but it is upon those who see need to reconcile fully not for our sake but for the future generation because without that Mandelas dream of a truly united South Africa where blacks and whites live in harmony would never be realized bt instead the opposite and for that to happen we need the second real Codesa not for voting purposes but for a real transformation not just a party political based one but for the inner soul searching and putting our country first.

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