Black Lives Matter - I Would Know

Story at a glance:

Power-hungry bureaucrats create division, it keeps them in power

Highlighting differences causes division

The exploitation of workers keeps people oppressed

Corruption is cancer, a silent killer of people and nations

“They are savages, look at how they treat each other and their children, they have no respect for themselves or their own people.”

The quotation above would often be the gist of what was said around many dinner tables in various houses growing up as a white kid in a middle class of an extremely violent and divided country.

Little did I know at the time that I was being conditioned and brainwashed into believing the lie that all black people are bad, the government at the time had an ironclad grip on the censoring of anything that went against their narrative.

Power-hungry bureaucrats were the elites, but on the other side, we had our entrepreneurial class in both black and white and amazing Asian (Indian) traders, who were just brilliant at making money and raising themselves and their communities out of poverty, with no help from the aforementioned elitist bureaucrats.

I played soccer in my youth and soccer is the sport of the South African nation, the real nation, the rainbow nation, we had some black guys who played soccer too and this was where the government narrative for me broke down.

Befriending some black youngsters who played in our team showed me a completely different story to what the government at the time was espousing.

My Grandad stopped a black gentleman in the street one day and spoke to him in Xhosa, my grandad was fluent, having grown up on a farm in the Eastern Cape.

I asked him after he had spoken to the man what their conversation was about?

“I asked him if he had any money for me, and he offered me half of what he had on him. Incredible, that is probably all that he has to live on and yet here he is offering me half.”

“That is very kind, that he would do that, Grandad,” I said

“Yes, but I still wouldn’t trust him. You know, they will steal the milk out of your coffee, given half the chance!”

And there it was, a situation that I played over and over in my head, but to this day cannot understand, other than to say, how my grandad really felt deep down and how he was expected to act, were not consistent, and that’s the power of government indoctrination.

I was too young to understand the socio-political scene at the time, but that brief encounter has always remained with me.

10 learnings from living in Apartheid South Africa

1. What is taught in schools is not always true

2. What is broadcast through the media mostly isn’t true

3. Cultural differences enrich understanding if one will put in the effort to learn

4. People want the same things, no matter the cultural differences

5. Labelling of people and cultures divides them

6. Exploiting weaknesses to keep people oppressed is key for tyrannical governments

7. Continually emphasizing the differences, divides, celebrating commonalities unifies

8. Regulated capitalism, to protect worker rights is very necessary

9. There is only one race, the human race.

10. Corruption is cancer, it kills everything and destroys countries

Is South Africa any better off now than in the past, well yes and no, the crime and racism still exist, racism cuts both ways, because the scars run deep and the divide is still there, and yet there are many examples of people truly embracing each other and living as a rainbow nation.

There remains a deficit of respect in many people, and amongst people, many people are hurting from the crime and history of what was, and these issues cut deep. Right now it is amongst the most dangerous jobs in the world to be a farmer in South Africa, because of the threat of being slaughtered. There seem to be those that seek evil, who are still stoking the fires of hatred behind the scenes.

There remains this dichotomy of division in unity or unity in division, it’s highly complex, and only people of the nation that have lived there, truly understand it. I have hope that it all works out, it just has to. There is only one race, the human race.