Forgiveness

I promised on Facebook last year that 2020 was going to be the year of revelations. I did not say what or who would be doing the revealing but suffice it to say that the year is young and we still have a long way to go.

Last week we had the Ring Master, President Cyril Ramaphosa, delivering The State Of the Nation Address.

Let me rephrase that. He tried to and after several attempts the speaker of the House had to close down the joint sitting because of Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Front.

Sometimes I want to tell him to EFF off and other times he is a source of amusement, so, I tolerate him (sometimes unfairly) as a necessary evil.

In the audience was the last bastion of apartheid, the much- maligned FW de Klerk who had made a statement in an interview a week before, that Apartheid was not a crime against Humanity!

Was it just too good to be true?! Too convenient? Was Julius just lucky that it had come at such an opportune time? Was there more at play? Perhaps a bit of United States type of set up for finesse? Are we that developed in our politics?

Julius jumped at the opportunity and stopped Cyril Ramaphosa in his tracks by demanding that FW should be removed from Parliament.

For about an hour after that we watched on television the futile attempts by the Speaker of the House, parrying attack after attack from the well organised EFF.

In all of this Julius managed to slip in the true intention for his protests. It was to bring in his renewed attempt at having the former

Minister of Finance Pravin Gordan removed.

SOME EFF people are embroiled in a fight to get themselves removed from the eye of the ZONDO COMMISSION of INQUIRY into State Capture, which has as its main target Jacob Zuma ex President of South Africa, who was absent from proceedings because, like others in his clique, he is now too “ill” to do anything.

F W de Klerk apologised and so did his Foundation.

Ever the politician though, the man cannot do anything without trying to score a point and he had to mention the Black on Black violence of the struggle years.

Qualifying your apology is something vastly different from actually apologising. It is a fault that every politician needs to look at.

The Black on Black violence has been mentioned ad nauseum by so many that it has become almost hackneyed.

There is always a motive when the person mentioning it, is not Black.

Does de Klerk want Black people in general to admit to it and to apologise for it like most Black people expected White people to apologise for Apartheid?

Why is very little if any mention made of the killings by Blacks of Blacks, that took place in the revolutionary camps in foreign countries?

What of the whispered stories of “coloured,” struggle heroes who were “sacrificed” by the top echelons of the struggle groups?

What of the whispered stories of trade offs by the politicians at the end of apartheid when it became clear the axe was about to fall?

Those stories of the TOP people who broke under pressure and revealed names who later agreed to most of the apartheid designers, perpetrators of murders, torture and the like, getting off scott free in exchange for their silence?

Why does de Klerk not mention any of those in his accusations?

Is it because we can never get to the real killers of those people he so quickly mentions every time he is confronted with apartheid and his role in it?

Is it because mentioning any of the other things would open a can of worms so bottomless that we would all be able to fish for a lifetime without ever having to pay for bait?

Will the furore ever abate or will it be allowed to die down until the next election or the next time a false flag is needed?

I used a South African context for this piece but it really applies to any country.

We have long time to go before we can look to the future free of people who still have to apologise for genocide, ethnic, cleansing and all the other atrocities carried out, ultimately in the name of power and money.

We have Israel, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, China, Myanmar, Russia, Australia, South and North America, in fact we have the entire globe self-righteously looking for apologies from everybody else.

We have not even touched on what religions are being blamed for.

Forgiveness?

Give me a break!

In the case of those seeking healing, should the question not be forgiveness by whom for whom?

During the Apartheid years, the Afrikaaners appeared to be “God- fearing,” people. I assume that FW de Klerk was/is also.

This self-righteous man who feels he has the right to tell people who and what they should be looking at, for apologies, when the acts they perpetrated, that he is now reminding them of, were brought on by him and his ilk.

I am 71. I am from an age when we were expected to take our punishment like men, so apologising came to me late in life.

I learnt that you said you were sorry and said what you were sorry for.

It was up to the next person whether they accepted it or not.

As much as you cannot make a man apologise, you cannot make another accept it either.

There is of course motive behind everything.

South Africa rode the Gumbaya wave of Nelson Mandela’s forgiveness strategy after he was released but things started souring when the promises made by the West, did not pan out.

The party elites and the politicians were okay but not so the ordinary man, White and Black.

Rich Whites left very quickly and some Blacks who had a bit of money quickly capitalised on the vacant spaces and Black empowerment and other deals allowing them (read Tokyo Sexwale et al) to becone millionaires and billionaires, the true reason that people want power today.

The poor Back people were left with only the lies told by the politicians and the ashes of their dreams.

In my novel, “Night of the Dogs,” I say that History is important but that emotional history should be left in dusty boxes, in the Lost and Found Departments of the airports, railway stations and other departure points in the journey of life.

Emotional history in the minds of the immature, like Julius Malema, only breed enmity, animosity and the need for revenge. It can only be offset with the desperation displayed by people like F W de Klerk.

Sadly while some pontificate about the merits and what is right and wrong, the effects are manifest in South Africans who are innocent, suffering violence when they were not even born when de Klerk’s forefathers dreamed up their dastardly scheme.

If we play the “blame game,” then we can say, “Oh we were treated like that, that’s why we acted in that way,” but where does it stop?

At Caine?

Really?

Somebody is then bound to come up with the hypothesis that God is to blame for it all, because if God had made us all then he made us flawed and if it is so, then, are we all innocent?!

Then what about free will?

Dream on people, because nothing is free.

Either way, whether we believe in GOD or not, in the end we will ALL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE for our own actions for taking what essentially belongs to others!

FORGIVING?

That, is a foreign concept for now!

This is your Raconteur in Retropect, signing off until the next time.