To understand the diatribes penned by Helen Zille on the pages of the Sunday Times and various other platforms romanticising colonialism, we will have to hark back to the heyday of European Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries and follow its evolution into the present day society, identifying its supposedly civilising mission throughout the colonised world.
At the heart of this radicalisation is a demand for the decolonisation of our country which would tear into shreds white economic privilege and strip its economic and ideological stranglehold over our lives.
White South Africans such as Zille are scared that they will be kicked off the saddle which they have occupied since their triumph against our ancestors.
Hence they do their best to belittle calls for decolonisation at every turn, seeking to point us to what they claim are the positives of the colonial mission.
We must resist these mealy-mouthed attempts at sanitising colonialism by pointing to a non-existent positive side.
She and her ilk have never lived under the lash of the colonial master. Never once have they seen their world destroyed and a new one forced upon them as has happened to the Africans.
Not once has she found an “independent judiciary” unable to shelter her as happened to African people who live in squalid conditions plagued by disease and malnutrition, without so much a word of protest from the colonial justice which she calls upon us to celebrate. Consequently, she cannot understand the violence we experience every day because of colonialism and its civilising mission.
She is in no position to articulate for us how we should feel about the violence brought to our lives by colonial subjugation, its forms of justice and infrastructure or even healthcare.
It would do us good as an oppressed people to ignore her and her ilk because thus far, their existence and mode of being in the world has brought us nothing but misery. We must forge ahead with the demand for decolonisation and radical transformation.
Lazola Ndamase is SACP deputy secretary in the OR Tambo district
Superior mindset blinds Zille to Africa’s pain
At the heart of this radicalisation is a demand for the decolonisation of our country which would tear into shreds white economic privilege and strip its economic and ideological stranglehold over our lives.
White South Africans such as Zille are scared that they will be kicked off the saddle which they have occupied since their triumph against our ancestors.
Hence they do their best to belittle calls for decolonisation at every turn, seeking to point us to what they claim are the positives of the colonial mission.
We must resist these mealy-mouthed attempts at sanitising colonialism by pointing to a non-existent positive side.
She and her ilk have never lived under the lash of the colonial master. Never once have they seen their world destroyed and a new one forced upon them as has happened to the Africans.
Not once has she found an “independent judiciary” unable to shelter her as happened to African people who live in squalid conditions plagued by disease and malnutrition, without so much a word of protest from the colonial justice which she calls upon us to celebrate. Consequently, she cannot understand the violence we experience every day because of colonialism and its civilising mission.
She is in no position to articulate for us how we should feel about the violence brought to our lives by colonial subjugation, its forms of justice and infrastructure or even healthcare.
It would do us good as an oppressed people to ignore her and her ilk because thus far, their existence and mode of being in the world has brought us nothing but misery. We must forge ahead with the demand for decolonisation and radical transformation.
Lazola Ndamase is SACP deputy secretary in the OR Tambo district
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