Maravi

(HERALD) Forgive them not, they have hidden agendas

Forgive them not, they have hidden agendas
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 00:00
Udo W. Froese

THE racial viciousness of the well-heeled neo-colonial movement has again demonstrated that it will stop at nothing when it comes to humiliating an indigenous black South African man. President Jacob Zuma is merely used as an avenue to racialise Africa. Remember the “garden boy” and the “kitchen girl”, no matter their age and seniority?

Some art gallery in Johannesburg’s mainly white and resourced north, in Parkwood, has exhibited a range of so-called art works with cheap and vulgar attempts to undermine the dignity of an African man, husband, father and grandfather and the achievement of the national liberation movement.

A pornographic picture of President Zuma’s genitals is the point of attack.
In the African culture such vicious racism is unforgiving, as no young person will allow his/her parent, or grandparent to be humiliated by being shown naked in private and/or in public.

Besides being a head of state and the president of the ruling party, President Zuma is a 70-year-old father and grandfather.

When the mining companies recruited their cheap African male labour, adult African men had to strip naked en masse to be physically inspected by white medical staff, more often than not being white women.

Zuma is attacked as an African man in the most vulgar and disrespectful manner.
That so-called “art” brings back a deep pain and memory on how the African men and women were treated, such as, Saartjie Baartman. It begs the question, what will be the attitude of whites, if one sketches Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk with his genitals out there dripping of blood, having raped a black “kitchen girl”?

How would the white colonial neo-liberals respond with the public illustration of the female organ of the DA’s Helen Zille, dripping with the so-called “refugees of the Eastern Cape”?

Can Murray, the so-called artist, paint his father and grandfather with their genitals urinating on an indigenous African “garden boy” and African “maid” and then display it in a so-called art gallery, as they have been an integral part of the old colonial-apartheid South Africa?

Would such paintings be receiving the exposure, protection and the support of the white-owned media, as does the vulgar and cheap pornographic picture on President Zuma?

How would the globally networked and influential “Brenthurst Foundation” respond to a so-called artistic version of the Oppenheimers and their friends, including the Ruperts, whence they are illustrated relieving themselves onto the masses of their black employees?

Imagine, Johan Rupert’s genitalia publicly displayed smoking more than any cigar, suffering from lung cancer and emphysema . . .?

Is this what South Africa calls neo-liberal democracy and constitutional rights? Remember when the South African artist, Yule, displayed in his art gallery in Greenside, Johannesburg, a dead and naked Nelson Mandela, dissected by leading personalities such as De Klerk, Tutu, Mbeki, Ramaphosa and others? He and his work were closed down. What is the difference here?

Is there any resourced white minority cabal in this country that wishes a racial war?
If so, you are indeed challenged to come out of the shadow. It is on you to stop making use of your “Fifth Column” (your former CCB) and the media.

You now have to come out clearly as your media will not be able to protect you, not now, not any time in the future. We are waiting for you.

By the one-sided perpetuation of racial insults, Ms Kossef of the Goodman gallery in Parkwood, Johannesburg, and the editor of the white owned and controlled Sunday newspaper for blacks, “City Press” in Auckland Park, also in Johannesburg, edited by a certain Ferial Haffajee, challenge the ANC in its bid to have that painting removed.

The ANC had to take this matter to the courts, as both women, Kossef and Hafajee, claim their rights of “freedom of expression”, “freedom of speech”, “freedom of the media” and many other neo-liberal democratic freedoms, the indigenous majority of South Africans do not enjoy, but suffer from as illustrated by that obscene picture.

Like South Africa’s media and the corporate world that gallery advertises itself as a leading light in the fight against apartheid.

It is amazing that South Africans talk about the lifestyle of their president, Zuma.
Remember the sexual escapades of former US president Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky, when Clinton’s sperm was found on her dress?

Nelson Mandela had to intervene to protect Bill Clinton as America’s president and husband to Hillary Rodham-Clinton.

However, the Americans have never displayed the genitals of their presidents, no matter how immorally they lived.

And, remember Italy’s former Prime Minister Berlusconi, who was alleged to have slept with under-aged girls, at the same time, having a strip tease artist living in his residence?

The obsession with President Zuma is out of context.

For your record, President Zuma has actually been through a due process of a court of law, where he was acquitted of rape.

It is confusing to be exposed to South Africa’s media and its hidden agendas, deliberately and intentionally distorting the facts and how the courts function.

In terms of the South African constitution customary laws are accepted.
President Zuma lives and acts within the customary laws.

If South Africans have a problem with the customary laws of the land, they would have to challenge those laws first and not Zuma.

The national debate should, therefore, be handled in an honourable manner and not reduced to cheap, pornographic means.

It is shocking to hear Caucasians and their media in South Africa moralising about Zuma and his four wives, when there are strip clubs and whore houses with known pimps such as the murdered Lolly Jackson in the centre of those affluent suburbs.

Amazingly, those Caucasians could not care less when hiding their lust for Russian, Chinese, East European and African prostitutes.

This is kept very quiet and is morally accepted by those very people setting their own “high standards”.

Yet, it is in those very elitist suburbs that President Zuma is consistently harassed for having married four wives.

Whose moral standards are attacked in South Africa’s media? This smacks of serious racial double standards.

How often must Africa forgive, turn the other cheek, and accept public humiliation, structured poverty and engineered polarisation to again be turned into a war zone?

Take note, the silence of the majority does not mean that they are cowards.

I write this as a white man, born into Africa of German colonial-settler background in the third generation, who cannot identify with racism.

Udo W. Froese is an independent political and socio-economic analyst, published columnist of German colonial-settler stock born in the third generation in Namibia, Africa.

Labels: ANC, JACOB ZUMA, NEOCOLONIALISM, RACISM

posted by MrK @ 3:27 PM