Where are those that spoke so loudly for justice now that the tables have turned? Reghard Hamman wonders.
Pretoria - There are injustices which fly in the face and knock the breath from you, and then there are injustices which crawl beneath the surface, which make you shiver and leave you wishing you could shrug them off like something irritating to the skin. Others are more subtle, like a guilty conscience they whisper away your peace.
Some are apparent from the get-go and others grow on you. And it is such a thing which has been growing in me.
It is a cancer I have little doubt about. It ought to be cut out: not allowed to mature into the monster it will inevitably otherwise become.
We, Afrikaners, are a short-lived people but conceived of age-old sorrows. We are like those orphaned young but with old eyes, dull with the experience of a thousand hurts. We came as strangers to the dark continent, carrying little or nothing. We came not for gold for we did not know there was any. We did not come to make war, but rather to escape it. We did not come for slaves or to cause any kind of malice, we came seeking a home, for we were homeless.
The sweat upon our backs made the earth fruitful, our hearts travelled further, scouted ahead, tamed, built and conquered. When those people came from across the seas to take by force, we took up arms. We fought as one and many fell. Our blood-stained rivers, our cries echoed off the mountains, our tears fell like streams.
But as men are, we were weak. We, as almost every nation without exception, looked upon our brothers and saw in them an opportunity for abuse. We looked upon the treasures we had uncovered and found ourselves alive with greed. And then, when the dust had settled, we looked upon ourselves and saw fear. We feared losing our homes, our families and as cowards do, we built walls. We separated, alienated, suppressed and subdued. We made excuses, we were in denial and cruel. We became a people pretending: pretending that all was fine in our mansions, behind our Mercedes, swinging our golf clubs, going to France for holidays…
And so we would have stayed. For men do not of their own devices find themselves guilty of anything, let alone in need of change. It is only by grace divine that we saw what we had done and what we needed to do. And so, without quarrel or war, we gave. Some we gave back, some we just gave.
And we hung our heads in shame. We stepped back, we laid down and gave up.
When we felt wronged we were told and believed it was deserved. When we spoke out we were told we were “racist” and we were stilled. When history was rewritten we provided a pen and when our lives were taken we merely mourned the fallen and moaned the cause.
We who had been lions, sons of God, became not lambs seeking humility but worms crawling… We became a people of one: each one for himself.
We started telling our children that success is to leave. We tell ourselves that to remain is to remain unnoticed. We are even more afraid now than we were before. We now build prisons not for others, but for ourselves and we have to: our fear is justified.
Our brothers now govern us. They tell us who we can work with, who we can play with, what is ours and what should be theirs. They tell us who our parents were and what we as a people have done. They tell our children… They judge us for treason, saying when we cry, we cry only wolf. They did not give us passes, but just made it dangerous to go outside. They have and continue to nurture belief among their own that they are entitled to reap what they have not sown, take what they do not own, claim places to which they did not climb, collect what they are not owed.
And we are too scared to correct or oppose them. Too afraid to speak up because we believe we deserve to suffer these wrongs. But it is not those who wronged who are wronged and it is not those who suffered who are compensated. It is their children… becoming spoilt and bitter.
The injustice I feel is that two wrongs do not make a right – it never has, it never will. Whether you give it a pretty name, whether you argue it till the rooster crows, it is the same: it is wrong.
And it makes one wonder; where are they that spoke so loudly for justice for themselves and theirs now that the tables have turned? Where are those famed “heroes” of the “Struggle” now that they are needed for the same reasons? They are in their mansions, behind their Mercedes-Benz, swinging their golf clubs, going to France.
Reghard Hamman
Waterkloof Glen
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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