Black fascism

Spectator, The, Jul 5, 2003 by Kenny, Andrew

During the apartheid years, Afrikaners used to jeer at English-speaking liberals, saying that they (the Afrikaners) understood the blacks better than we did. In many ways this was true. For one thing, they were much more likely to speak an African language. When I worked at a mill in Zululand, I found that many of my Afrikaner colleagues - apartheid supporters - were fluent in Zulu and understood black tribal culture quite well.

One Afrikaans supervisor in particular used to laugh at my notion of equal treatment for whites and blacks. He was tall, humorous, even swarthier than I, and got on very well with his black staff, whom he bossed about in a jovial sort of way. He had business dealings with Zulus in the countryside. He told me that the only thing the black man understood was authority, either from his chief or from a white baas, and that apartheid recognised that fact. He died unfortunately, hacked to death by Zulu pangas, the result of a liaison with a Zulu maiden. The passions of her father and brothers had spilled over, not because of the sex but on account of the amount of money they wanted from him so that he could extricate himself from the affair. Prom the next world, if he could witness President Mbeki's oration at the funeral of Kaiser Matanzima, he would grin from ear to ear and say, 'See what I mean, Andrew?'

Well, yes, I do. But I hold to my liberal views because they are decent and rational and they will prevail. Their histories might differ, but there is no innate political difference between blacks and whites. Matanzima and Mugabe need to be condemned, not praised, and as a matter of fact the majority of black people in Zimbabwe agree with me.

Andrew Kenny is an engineer and a freelance Journalist.