The ANC government has been the recipient of some of the harshest of criticisms and condemnations ever levelled both at government and individuals, in both the government and party, in 21 years of democracy.
It has been criticised left, right and centre on issues ranging from crime to corruption, economic to social issues, governance to service delivery, and policies to strategies in dealing with nagging issues.
This is discounting our activists’ criticism and condemnation of the apartheid system, which forever fell on deaf ears – with some people even going as far as faking memory loss at the TRC. They claimed they were not aware of the atrocities of apartheid which were happening right in front of their noses, as though they were living in a totally different planet from the one where we, the victims and apartheid, lived acrimoniously together.
Unlike today, because it suits them, they suddenly know and are well informed in terms of what is happening and who is stealing how much from the public coffers. They suddenly know, too, that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s rule is bad and that he does not have an iota of regard for human rights.
But none of these people will ever tell you how bad the former Prime Minister Ian Smith’s regime was on Africans, in as much as some people today want to glorify former State President PW Botha.
If we’re to move forward as a country, this thing about selective memory is unhealthy and must stop now. We must all be unanimous in condemning what is bad and congratulating what is good.
I am not saying government officials are not thieving from public coffers, in as much as company executives are looting from private coffers too, but what I want is for all of us to call a spade a spade.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is not one of my favourites, nor is Mugabe, in as much as the Bushes of America are not. This selective memory and selective justice are clouding the issues in our beautiful world today.
The Bushes and Obamas of America must also stand trial for their atrocities committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and of late, Syria. How many atrocities have they committed in the name of the defence of human rights?
As a baseline point, let’s all agree that slavery was bad, that apartheid was a crime against humanity, and that the colonisation and brutality exerted on African people by colonial masters was atrocious, and we can thus move on and all then be qualified to criticise the ANC government on its application of democracy and governance.
As long as the DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard has not moved from the premise that apartheid was bad and those who presided over it were equally inhuman, she does not qualify to criticise a government that presides over a democratic state.
Equally, Americans and other European countries should set an example by hauling their own people before this, selective, justice court known as the ICC first. How many people has Al-Bashir killed in Dafur compared to those Americans killed in Iraq?
The Queen’s language has it that you cannot point out a splinter in another’s eye before taking the log out of your own, or simply put –charity begins at home.
