I love this photograph

of Nelson Mandela and Helen Suzman, a tireless anti-apartheid campaigner. How could you not love this photograph?

When history was rewritten in South Africa, the huge number of white South Africans who fought for the fall of apartheid seems to largely have been forgotten. They were incarcerated, tortured, sometimes killed and were always hated by both sides.

Today we have people like this:

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Roger Askew/REX/Shutterstock (5550610d) Ntokozo Qwabe: Ntokozo is a Rhodes Scholar Currently Pursuing an MSC in African Studies. He Completed a BCL at Oxford in 2014. He is an Organising Member of RMFOxford. "Rhodes Must Fall" debate at Oxford Union, Oxford, Britain - 19 Jan 2016 The Oxford Union debates the future of the statue of colonialist Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College — Refuses to give a tip to a white waitress in a restaurant in Cape Town (who was working two jobs to support her sick mother) unless she returns the land she stole from the black man. He then laughed at her ‘white tears’ He is also on a Rhodes scholarship but wants all statues of Rhodes pulled down at Oxford.

Mandela was our hope. He preached reconciliation.

Maybe today we have a new hope, in Mmusi Maimane, of the DA.

3 thoughts

This makes me so sad. Hate filled people seem to be on the up, in the Middle East, Africa, the US, and in Europe. Shame on the young man who will take a Rhodes Scolarship, but wants to take his statues down. His education has failed.

There is a general sadness in this commentary, but it makes me even sadder that it is coming out of South Africa, where so many people, white and black worked and died to make things better. We (as a people generally), may not always agree, but certainly we can agree to disagree on things. The subjugation of one race by another is unfounded no matter who it is, but once freedom is gained, to reduce the achievements made by turning around and doing what was done to your people is moronic at best. Hopefully we can all remember the work of the people who paved the way for us, and remember that hate is never the way to go