Mr President, there is no difference between the former apartheid regime and the likes of Bashir’s regime, says Colleen Werth.
Johannesburg - This week, we remembered June 16, 39 years ago; the day children were shot dead by the apartheid regime.
Over the years, that regime shot dead, “braaied”, threw out of helicopters, disappeared, brutalised, murdered in their cells and assassinated South Africans.
Against these atrocities, the ANC rose up and finally, in 1994, silenced apartheid.
But how things have changed.
While on Tuesday we remembered Hector Pieterson and his schoolmates and the atrocity perpetrated against them, we now learn the ANC embraced a man who has been indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
What makes President Omar al-Bashir feel so secure with our government’s friendship? How did he know he could come here without being arrested? Please, Mr President, let us in on your secret.
How can the president shrug his shoulders in the face of the verifiable atrocities Bashir has sanctioned over the past 25 years?
And how can Zuma cock a snoot at the Sudanese living in South Africa? These are the self-same people who fled Bashir’s ethnic cleansing.
As for xenophobia… for Zuma to fulsomely hold forth against it on the one hand, and on the other hand, welcome the very man who caused Sudanese refugees to flee to South Africa, is unconscionably crass.
If Zuma can so disrespect the Sudanese refugees among us who have suffered persecutions we can’t imagine, what would he be willing to allow against South African citizens?
How can we feel safe under a man so callous about genocide?
He should never have allowed Bashir to enter South Africa.
And having entered, he should have arrested him immediately.
Zuma has shown his true colours once and for all.
He can no longer hold forth on apartheid’s atrocities, for he himself supports a man who perpetrates “crimes against humanity”.
Genocide? What is that to the ANC? Let the perpetrators of genocide visit and befriend us.
Crime in South Africa? What is that to the ANC? Let there be a free for all for it is not as bad as genocide.
This is the face Zuma has portrayed to South Africa of what it is like to be under ANC rule.
Everything is relative, is it not? But some things are more relative than others; especially if they are your friends and peers; and especially AU friends and peers.
No, Zuma cannot speak out against a man like Bashir.
The price to his reputation among his peers is far too high.
Cry for all those who died, that we may have a miracle new country.
Cry for the IFP woman who screamed at me over the phone in the lead-up to the 1994 elections, when I called to ask how many people had died that day and how they died; how many were injured and how they had been injured while I was working for a research institute.
Cry for her and many like her who lost her head even as we were speaking.
Cry for Hector Pieterson and his friends.
Cry so that we will never forget that schoolchildren were mowed down – for what?
The current form of democracy?
For a president like Zuma who shames the very memory of those who died so that we may become human again?
Mr President, there is no difference between the former apartheid regime and the likes of Bashir’s regime.
Ask Eugene de Kock.
The sad fact is that the ANC would rather die – and it will, Mr Zuma, despite what you say – than take the moral high ground and hand Bashir over to the ICC.
Colleen Werth
Jeppestown
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star