At which point after their freedom do the oppressed forget their history and experience and become like their oppressors?
When do those who have claimed a higher moral and ethical compass cast aside their noble history and give in to the base and cruel instincts that drove their oppressors?
When the racist apartheid government of BJ Vorster tortured and murdered the most brilliant thinker of our time, Steve Bantu Biko, in 1977, police minister Jimmy Kruger rose to speak at a National Party congress.
“Biko’s death leaves me cold,” the cowardly and politically weak Kruger said.
The gathering laughed and clapped.
He tried to lie that Biko — who had been tortured for days — had died from a hunger strike and joked: “It is very democratic to allow prisoners the democratic right to starve themselves to death.”
The entire National Party conference clapped and laughed when Kruger said the death of another human being left him cold.
That is how inhumane our oppressors were.
Those peals of laughter came to mind this week as I listened to people applaud minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni after she laughed at or appeared amused by a question about the government possibly helping to bring up illegal miners at the disused Stilfontein mine in the North West.
“You want us to send help to criminals? You want us to send help to criminals, honestly?” she asked.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out.
“They will come out. We are not sending help to criminals.
“Criminals are not to be helped, criminals are to be persecuted,” she continued.
The minister then put her humanity on full display: “If your child is missing because they are dead underground [because of] illegal mining activities, you must come and tell us why didn’t you report that they are undertaking criminal activities.”
What callous, unfeeling, inhumane instincts! What cruel language!
A mother, poor and desperate and hungry, must not seek humanity from Ntshavheni and her fellow blue-light ministers, but must be treated with even more cruelty.
A minister should know that the parent and the son mining illegally are not criminals.
They are suspects who are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Whatever happened to SA’s vaunted Bill of Rights? Are people criminals now because a politician says so?
Nelson Mandela, who instructed us to build a country based on human rights, is surely weeping right now seeing what we have become.
In his inaugural state of the nation speech in May 1994, Mandela said: “The government I have the honour to lead and I dare say the masses who elected us to serve in this role, are inspired by the single vision of creating a people-centred society ...
“We must construct that people-centred society of freedom in such a manner that it guarantees the political and the human rights of all our citizens.
“As an affirmation of the government’s commitment to an entrenched human rights culture, we shall immediately take steps to inform the secretary-general of the UN that we will subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Today, with all these instruments signed, we treat fellow human beings with coldness and inhumanity.
We demonise them, branding them criminals, not even stopping to ask: who are these people?
These people working in unhygienic, smelly, dangerous tunnels in the belly of the earth are the millions the ANC’s leaders have stolen from through state capture; they are the millions who have no work as the unemployment rate stays above 30%; they are the desperate who have nothing in the pot today.
They sleep hungry; they wake up hungry. Our leaders then call them criminals.
There is so much hate and negativity spewed on social media and other parts of our society these days that many ordinary citizens are becoming cynical about politics and politicians.
Ask many citizens and they will tell you that politicians are greedy, selfish and in it all just for themselves.
They will tell you that politicians are the reason we are in the ethical, political, moral and economic morass we find ourselves in as a country.
They will point you at the blue-light convoys hurtling down our roads at high speeds, they will point you at the allegations of corruption and at the politicians hiding behind bodyguards and high walls, and they will pointedly ask you: “Is that a man or woman of the people in that car?”
There are hundreds of human beings hiding, desperate and afraid, in the bowels of the earth at the Stilfontein mine.
When the “government of the people” had to act in the interests of the rule of law and with empathy, it chose to become the weak, morally and ethically compromised Jimmy Kruger.
Through Ntshavheni, it said the possible deaths of those miners, of those human beings, left it cold.
Our government has become as cold, as callous, as inhumane, as our former oppressors.
HeraldLIVE
Our government has become as inhumane as former oppressors
Columnist
Image: Khumbudzo Ntshavheni/X
At which point after their freedom do the oppressed forget their history and experience and become like their oppressors?
When do those who have claimed a higher moral and ethical compass cast aside their noble history and give in to the base and cruel instincts that drove their oppressors?
When the racist apartheid government of BJ Vorster tortured and murdered the most brilliant thinker of our time, Steve Bantu Biko, in 1977, police minister Jimmy Kruger rose to speak at a National Party congress.
“Biko’s death leaves me cold,” the cowardly and politically weak Kruger said.
The gathering laughed and clapped.
He tried to lie that Biko — who had been tortured for days — had died from a hunger strike and joked: “It is very democratic to allow prisoners the democratic right to starve themselves to death.”
The entire National Party conference clapped and laughed when Kruger said the death of another human being left him cold.
That is how inhumane our oppressors were.
Those peals of laughter came to mind this week as I listened to people applaud minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni after she laughed at or appeared amused by a question about the government possibly helping to bring up illegal miners at the disused Stilfontein mine in the North West.
“You want us to send help to criminals? You want us to send help to criminals, honestly?” she asked.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out.
“They will come out. We are not sending help to criminals.
“Criminals are not to be helped, criminals are to be persecuted,” she continued.
The minister then put her humanity on full display: “If your child is missing because they are dead underground [because of] illegal mining activities, you must come and tell us why didn’t you report that they are undertaking criminal activities.”
What callous, unfeeling, inhumane instincts! What cruel language!
A mother, poor and desperate and hungry, must not seek humanity from Ntshavheni and her fellow blue-light ministers, but must be treated with even more cruelty.
A minister should know that the parent and the son mining illegally are not criminals.
They are suspects who are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Whatever happened to SA’s vaunted Bill of Rights? Are people criminals now because a politician says so?
Nelson Mandela, who instructed us to build a country based on human rights, is surely weeping right now seeing what we have become.
In his inaugural state of the nation speech in May 1994, Mandela said: “The government I have the honour to lead and I dare say the masses who elected us to serve in this role, are inspired by the single vision of creating a people-centred society ...
“We must construct that people-centred society of freedom in such a manner that it guarantees the political and the human rights of all our citizens.
“As an affirmation of the government’s commitment to an entrenched human rights culture, we shall immediately take steps to inform the secretary-general of the UN that we will subscribe to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Today, with all these instruments signed, we treat fellow human beings with coldness and inhumanity.
We demonise them, branding them criminals, not even stopping to ask: who are these people?
These people working in unhygienic, smelly, dangerous tunnels in the belly of the earth are the millions the ANC’s leaders have stolen from through state capture; they are the millions who have no work as the unemployment rate stays above 30%; they are the desperate who have nothing in the pot today.
They sleep hungry; they wake up hungry. Our leaders then call them criminals.
There is so much hate and negativity spewed on social media and other parts of our society these days that many ordinary citizens are becoming cynical about politics and politicians.
Ask many citizens and they will tell you that politicians are greedy, selfish and in it all just for themselves.
They will tell you that politicians are the reason we are in the ethical, political, moral and economic morass we find ourselves in as a country.
They will point you at the blue-light convoys hurtling down our roads at high speeds, they will point you at the allegations of corruption and at the politicians hiding behind bodyguards and high walls, and they will pointedly ask you: “Is that a man or woman of the people in that car?”
There are hundreds of human beings hiding, desperate and afraid, in the bowels of the earth at the Stilfontein mine.
When the “government of the people” had to act in the interests of the rule of law and with empathy, it chose to become the weak, morally and ethically compromised Jimmy Kruger.
Through Ntshavheni, it said the possible deaths of those miners, of those human beings, left it cold.
Our government has become as cold, as callous, as inhumane, as our former oppressors.
HeraldLIVE
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