THERE is a popular belief about Karma — what you sow, you reap. By Karma, those who sow evil must reap evil, even if payback time could be a later generation.
But could Karma also come in advance, punishing the parents in anticipation of their unborn children’s future crime?
Could the traumatic apartheid system, under White minority rule, have been just but advanced desert for criminal progenies now plaguing South Africa, well beyond the era of apartheid and White supremacy — and with some tacit official support?
First, what is the difference between the racial violence of apartheid (separation and different development of races) that brought the South Africa of Nelson Mandela to its knees; and the xenophobic violence that criminal-minded South African natives inflict on fellow Blacks, which by the way, Bongani Mkongi, South Africa’s deputy Police minister, insists is no xenophobia, but just speaking “truth”?
So, if South Africa has somewhat failed to satisfy the yearnings of its post-apartheid natives, the solution is to attack, loot the shops and kill hardworking foreign nationals in that country, even if some of these foreigners are themselves accused of drug pushing and sundry crimes?
Minister Mkongi’s nativist bluster, in the face of clear evil, is a perfect manifestation of the popular quip: patriotism is the last bastion of the scroundrel! Though Gen. Bheki Cele, the Police minister, has apologized for Mkongi’s vomit, that such crap could come from such a high official of state means the xenophobia, by the lowlifes, is not entirely an accident.
Mkongi just told the world that since foreigners dominate South African cities and townships like Hillbrow to the tune of 80 per cent, no one should raise an eye-brow that the overwhelmed 20 per cent natives see looting and arson and murder as their sole salvation. Good luck to such a criminal country!
Yet, that violently jars against the spirit of the Madiba, the one and only Nelson Mandela, one of 20th century’s living saints. Now, did all decorum and decency and nobility die with Mandela — Mandela who after spending 27 years in White gaol, still emerged as one of the noblest and most refined personage in the whole of the globe?
Is this present redoubt of muggers, looters, arsonists and murderers really Mandela people? Or Mandela was just a freak, conferring undeserved humanity to vandals, who thoroughly deserved the trauma and horror of apartheid?
Mandela must be weeping in his grave!
Still, it’s important to state that these barbarians, and petty, murderous thieves, can’t define South Africa, if Hardball is not to commit the illogic of sweeping profiling.
Gen. Beki has apologized for Mkogi’s crap. Julius Malema, the maverick leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, the radical breakaway of hotheads from the ANC, has also condemned this horror. Let more weighty voices speak up, not the least President Cyril Ramaphosa — and ANC.
Meanwhile, these scums and petty xenophobes are giving nobody but their country a bad name. For starters, they portray their country as crawling with idle, lazy and spiteful denizens, looking out for foreigners’ trove to pounce on.
After the foreigners have been scared to return to their home countries, or have fled elsewhere, the mad dogs will continue pouncing on their own kind.
That is when this brewing lunacy would fully dawn on those decent South Africans who now, for political expediency, keep mute.
Meanwhile, puff goes in smoke, the South African tourism market. Who wants to go to a country of hateful xenophobes?
(The Nation)
