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Lovely cufflinks 🙂
Delightful in fact !
And the "Southern" Rhodesia reference conjures up images of those wonderful halcyon days of colonial rule, before the natives got all uppity and when the Empire was strong, stable, and secure.
I'm quite jealous 😐
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it is clear that some ANC leaders have encouraged their followers to attack whites. Jacob Zuma is notorious for singing his personal anthem 'Bring me my machine gun' to the delight of ANC supporters. Julius Malema has been found guilty of hate speech for singing "dubul' ibhunu" (shoot the boer). Surely this is incitement to murder others because of their race just as Mugabe has done?
Yes and no. You'll find no disagreement from me that Zuma and Malema are scumbags, and it wouldn't surprise me if a few morons thought that Umshini Wami should be taken literally as a call to race war and had acted upon it.
At the same time, it's not a call to race war. It's a struggle song and it's understood as recalling the liberation movement. The reason why Zuma is so desperate to rake over the MK/ANC's proud history before 1994 and keep singing the song is precisely because its history since 1994 has been such a massive disaster. It's much the same as the Soviet obsession with the Second World War right through the 1980s - there wasn't anything since then to be proud of.
Zuma and the senior ANC don't want to actually precipitate any widespread changes or disorder - they've got their noses in the trough. The very fact that the ANC is being riven by Malema is evidence of this - the kid's going to upset the apple cart with all this radical talk, and Zuma wants to appear radical without actually endangering the business interests of him and his mates. (I don't believe that Malema actually believes a word of what he says either - he's just a opportunist).
Konnabunny- you make some good points. I agree that MK/ANC can be proud of its pre 94 history. To my shame I was not part of it. I was facinated to watch a recent documentary on the BBC on the anti-apartheid struggle - it was the first time that I'd seen any footage of Oliver Tambo speaking as a young man - very moving and put a lump in my throut.
I still feel that singing 'Bring me my machine gun' and 'shoot the boer' are pretty inflammatory and certainly intimidates white South Africans even if that is not the intent. Perhaps in a few decades it will be as innocuous as some lines in the English or Scottish athems or even La Marseilliase. However, right now it's not exactly fostering Madiba's legacy of the rainbow nation. It scares me now just as much as it did when sung by Toyi-toying masses in the 1980s.
It's has been interesting to see how Zuma has toned down his rhetoric now that he is in power. Sadly, it may mean that having, as you put it, their noses in the trough has actually defused some racial tension. As distasteful as it may be, this could be a pragmatic model when dealing with Mugabe's successors. Foreign investors in South Africa are pretty influential and persuasive - continued corruption may the price of peace.
* wonders off to fit new Chris King BB to his bike*
noses in the trough has actually defused some racial tension.
Absolutely - it's gone from a race struggle to a class struggle.