[intro]Dear Helen, I would like to thank you very much for the thoughtless tweets that you sent out recently. It has helped me draw a line in the sand.[/intro]
I have always reached out to others across racial and political lines in the belief that we all have to learn to live together. I have tried to find ways to understand those who have oppressed us for so long. When your recent tweets screeched into the public domain, my daughter stopped me in my tracks. “You must not try to understand her,” she said. “It is time that she makes an effort to understand you. Why must we always be understanding when a white person attacks our dignity?”
Soon all of Cape Town from Camps Bay to Claremont will be predominantly white and rich making it impossible for my daughter to have the opportunity to live in Claremont where I was born.
Your tweets finally clarify why you have not broken these colonial practices. It is because your philosophical position sees nothing innately wrong with the havoc of colonial governance. This thinking has easily flowed into the present.
For a number of years you have bombarded us with the notion that the Western Cape is the best-run province suggesting that all eight other provinces are badly run. Your smug refrain has succeeded in placing an unhealthy wedge between this province and the rest of the country.
Like a stuck record, it repeated itself throughout your 2017 State of the Province address. Your tweets however pushed this refrain too high for the ear to bear. They deafened me.
You speak about piped water. Good grief. Before the colonialists came people had access to water, they could feed and shelter themselves and were not only sophisticated trackers but also sophisticated healers. They had their own systems of justice. They were great storytellers too. Read about Kabbo, the KhoiSan storyteller at www.thejournalist.org.za. He tells the stories of people of this region in 12,000 written pages stored at UNESCO. They were not passive human beings waiting to be rescued.
Your tweets confirm consistently repeated prejudice that feeds into the old apartheid consciousness: where whites rule, things are better: where blacks rule, things are a mess.
The Western Cape has been fortunate. Compared to other provinces, there were no homelands and endless small administrations to be amalgamated. Your political party could concentrate its best people in one province and not spread skill across all 9 provinces. Imagine the position was reversed and the governing party only had one province to concentrate on. I rest my case.
Despite the great challenges we face, there is still no denying that South Africa is a better place than it was 23 years ago.
The recent Institute for Race Relations report in November 2016 confirms that the country has made huge strides. Our economy is now 85% bigger than it was in 1994. While we have a serious problem of unemployment, job growth has almost doubled from 7 971 000 to 15 657 000. Over the period 1998 to 2015, there was a 50.4% increase in professional nurses, while the number of enrolled nurses increased by over 100%.
This is under a largely black government, not under a colonial or apartheid government. See some of the facts that we have extracted and see our link to the whole report.
It was a real eye opener for me and may just make an impression on you.
Additionally, Durban was recently voted as the highest-ranking city in South Africa for quality of living. It came in at 87 out of 231 cities in the annual Mercer Quality of Living survey. Cape Town came in at 94 and Johannesburg at 97.
And this year, Fortune 500 companies have identified Johannesburg as the leading destination for doing business in Africa this year.
Limpopo has the lowest unemployment figures in the country. Why your false claim that the Western Cape has the lowest?
How can it be possible that other provinces are beating the Western Cape in the matric line up when we inherited a schooling system that was in advance of them twenty years ago?
Research has revealed that Cape Town is the 10th most violent city in the world and the most violent in the whole of Africa. Surely this cannot be understood entirely without considering our colonial heritage of brutal violence and deliberate intoxication? Keep in mind that this research emerged a decade after you were elected as Premier of this province.
Your tweets have drawn a line in the sand for me. It means I must accept leaving you behind and journeying on with those who are creating a fresh narrative placing the colonial experience in a bigger story spanning many hundreds of centuries.
I am supporting all the many valiant efforts around the country to retell the story of South Africa. There is information that may make it possible for us to start our story in the year 500, more than a thousand years before the unfortunate arrival of the colonialists. In 20 years from now, 1652 will no longer be the defining date of our existence nor will any honour be given to an insignificant employee of the Dutch East India Company.
I am reminded of the words of one of Guinea Bissau’s and Africa’s greatest intellectuals, Amilcar Cabral, who said: “The colonists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history.”
I have to concede that my daughter is right: There will be no more effort to excuse or be kind to those who continue to perpetuate colonial thinking or advocate its benefits when in fact it was a system that decimated the African story and infringed the dignity of all of us as Africans.
It?¦s in point of fact a nice and useful piece of information. I?¦m glad that you shared this useful info with us. Please stay us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.
Hey! Someone in my Myspace group shared this site with us so I came to check it out. I’m definitely loving the information. I’m bookmarking and will be tweeting this to my followers! Outstanding blog and excellent design.
Very interesting information!Perfect just what I was looking for!
You are my aspiration, I have few blogs and often run out from post :). “Never mistake motion for action.” by Ernest Hemingway.
It is really a great and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you shared this useful information with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks – Enjoyed this blog post, can you make it so I get an email sent to me every time you write a new update?
Thanks for a marvelous posting! I genuinely enjoyed reading it, you can be a great author.I will ensure that I bookmark your blog and will often come back at some point. I want to encourage continue your great writing, have a nice evening!
This is the right weblog for anyone who desires to find out about this topic. You realize a lot its nearly arduous to argue with you (not that I actually would need…HaHa). You undoubtedly put a brand new spin on a subject thats been written about for years. Great stuff, simply nice!
You made some respectable factors there. I seemed on the internet for the issue and located most people will associate with along with your website.
An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!
I like this post, enjoyed this one regards for posting. “No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” by Agnes de Mille.
I don’t unremarkably comment but I gotta say thankyou for the post on this amazing one : D.
I have been exploring for a bit for any high-quality articles or weblog posts on this kind of area . Exploring in Yahoo I finally stumbled upon this website. Studying this information So i’m glad to convey that I’ve an incredibly excellent uncanny feeling I came upon exactly what I needed. I such a lot undoubtedly will make sure to don’t overlook this website and give it a glance on a relentless basis.
Heya i am for the first time here. I found this board and I find It truly useful & it helped me out a lot. I hope to give something back and help others like you helped me.
Precisely what I was searching for, regards for posting.
Great post. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely helpful info specially the last part 🙂 I care for such information a lot. I was looking for this certain info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different internet browsers and both show the same results.
You completed a number of nice points there. I did a search on the subject and found a good number of folks will go along with with your blog.
Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I find It really useful & it helped me out much. I hope to give something back and aid others like you aided me.
Nice post. I learn something more challenging on different blogs everyday. It will always be stimulating to read content from other writers and practice a little something from their store. I’d prefer to use some with the content on my blog whether you don’t mind. Natually I’ll give you a link on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.
Would you be concerned with exchanging links?
Hello there I am so glad I found your website, I really found you by error, while I was looking on Bing for something else, Anyways I am here now and would just like to say thank you for a tremendous post and a all round thrilling blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to read it all at the moment but I have book-marked it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the great work.
Appreciate it for helping out, excellent info. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” by J. K. Rowling.
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this website yourself? Plz reply back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know wheere u got this from. thanks
Howdy! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could locate a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having difficulty finding one? Thanks a lot!
I’m not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your blogs really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your site to come back later on. All the best
Regards for this rattling post, I am glad I observed this web site on yahoo.
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d most certainly donate to this fantastic blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to new updates and will share this website with my Facebook group. Talk soon!
This website online is mostly a stroll-through for the entire info you wished about this and didn’t know who to ask. Glimpse here, and you’ll undoubtedly discover it.
This really answered my problem, thank you!
It’s actually a nice and useful piece of info. I am happy that you shared this useful info with us. Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
Wonderful work! This is the type of info that should be shared around the internet. Shame on Google for not positioning this post higher! Come on over and visit my web site . Thanks =)
you are really a good webmaster. The site loading speed is amazing. It seems that you’re doing any unique trick. In addition, The contents are masterwork. you have done a excellent job on this topic!
Valuable information. Lucky me I found your web site by accident, and I am shocked why this accident didn’t happened earlier! I bookmarked it.
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do some research about this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such fantastic information being shared freely out there.
You have brought up a very good points, thanks for the post.
Hi my friend! I wish to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include almost all significant infos. I would like to see more posts like this.
Fascinating blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog stand out. Please let me know where you got your design. Thanks a lot
I’m not sure where you are getting your information, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning more or understanding more. Thanks for wonderful info I was looking for this info for my mission.
Just want to say your article is as astonishing. The clearness in your post is just excellent and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission let me to grab your feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the gratifying work.
Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good success. If you know of any please share. Cheers!
1WIN KZ – ставки на спорт в букмекерской конторе Казахстана. Скачать приложение для ставок. Вход и регистрация личного
Hello, i think that i noticed you visited my blog thus i came to “return the want”.I am trying to find things to improve my web site!I suppose its good enough to make use of some of your concepts!!
Enjoyed reading this, very good stuff, appreciate it.
Hi, Neat post. There is a problem with your web site in internet explorer, would test this… IE still is the market leader and a huge portion of people will miss your great writing due to this problem.
I genuinely enjoy examining on this website , it has got good posts. “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” by Andre Gide.
Great post however I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this topic? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Thanks!
You have noted very interesting details! ps nice site.
Hi, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your website in Safari, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Other then that, fantastic blog!
I have been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all webmasters and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much more useful than ever before.
Hi are using WordPress for your blog platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and set up my own. Do you need any html coding knowledge to make your own blog? Any help would be really appreciated!
Wow! Thank you! I permanently wanted to write on my site something like that. Can I implement a part of your post to my website?
I am perpetually thought about this, thankyou for posting.
Thankyou for this wondrous post, I am glad I detected this internet site on yahoo.
My brother recommended I might like this website. He was totally right. This post truly made my day. You cann’t imagine just how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
I simply wanted to thank you very much all over again. I am not sure the things that I would’ve achieved without the actual techniques shown by you over that problem. It actually was a horrifying dilemma for me, but being able to view a specialised approach you dealt with that forced me to weep for delight. I am just happier for the information and in addition trust you realize what a powerful job you’re carrying out educating most people through your webpage. I am sure you haven’t come across all of us.