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Subject: Pretoria street names.
From: Kgaugelo
Date: Thu, July 04, 2013 10:56 pm
To: info@thetruthaboutsouthafrica.com
i bumped into your website about the Pretoria street names. i have a question for you, do you feel that it was ok for a few Afrikaners to rule south Africa while black people cleaned their houses and gardens? honesty I feel you need to have a little respect for the people who gave their lives for the democracy we have to day even though things are not perfect. it took many years of the white man messing things up and putting us into debt with Europe so it going to take a while to get things right. yes black leaders are not educated but don’t worry the next generation of black leaders will be. as for streets renaming, we are not trying to remove the history, just the legacy. put your personal feeling away for a moment and see it from our point of view
Hi Kgaugelo,
I don't think it was ok for a few Afrikaners to rule, but I also think white people should never have come to Africa. But we're here now. Black people still clean our houses and gardens, 19 years after the dawn of democracy. Someone has to do the menial work. And usually these people are uneducated and unskilled. Same thing in the UK and the USA. And before you say 'bantu education, blah, blah...' Who built 90% of the black schools in this country? Go look up how many universities the Apartheid government built for blacks as opposed to how many the ANC has built.
These people that the streets are named after now didn't bring democracy to South Africa, just like the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan didn't bring democracy to their countries. The powers in the West and big business in South Africa brought democracy to South Africa for their OWN interest and not for the interest of the majority of black people in South Africa. If these powers didn't want democracy in South Africa, there still would've been a white government, because we were almost self-sufficient and we had a powerful army. The ANC were as useless as a liberation movement as they are as a government. When communism ended, they pretty much fell apart. It was the West that kept them going for their own interest. Maybe you should read up on the real history of South Africa and not the crap that the ANC feeds you. The ANC cares NOTHING about ordinary, poor, black or white South Africans. They only care about holding on to power and the riches that come with it.
The white man messed up the country? Yes, ok, if you say so. Tell me, why is Liberia in such a state? They were never colonized. Do you think that maybe there is a correlation between the fact that South Africa is the biggest economy in Africa and the fact that white people ruled the country longer than any other African country? How do you think South Africa would've looked if the ANC came to power in the 60's like all the other African countries?
South Africa is going to go down the drain if the ANC stays in power. Democracy does not work when the 'liberation movement' has too much power as the ANC does. Read up about post-independence Africa. It's the same story in every African country. The liberation movements can't govern a country, but they just won't let go of the power. Look at Mugabe. Is that a democracy? The ANC didn't 'struggle' for democracy, they struggled for a one party state, which they got. Up until Codesa, the ANC's monetary policy was still Nationalization. They were communists.
The Afrikaners also suffered under the British in concentration camps and our farms were burnt to the ground. My great grand parents were treated like dogs by the British. My great grandfather on my mother's side fled to Argentina during the war. But I hold no grudge against the British. Most of us don't. I think it's time for black South Africans to stop complaining about Apartheid and move the fuck on. How long are they going to blame everything on the white man?
Our forefathers are guilty of treating black people like third-class citizens, true. But blacks also had the highest living standards of all blacks in Africa during Apartheid. Let's keep an open mind about it. There would've been nothing in this country if whites didn't have the insight to design roads, dams, buildings etc. Granted, the black hands built most of these things. But as a owner of a construction business myself, I can guarantee you that if I leave 20 labourers with a pile of bricks and cement, a building will not magically appear out of the blue. For that to happen, someone has to have the initiative, the knowledge, the managerial skills and the experience to make it happen. There's no reason why a black person can't have the experience and knowledge to do this, but it just wouldn't have happened if whites didn't come to South Africa.
The legacy of Apartheid is not only bad. That is what I'm getting at and that is why I have a problem with name changes. Go read my article. The streets were named after people who DID something to establish Pretoria as a city. The new names are all names of 'struggle heroes'. At the time that Pretoria was built, blacks didn't even feature as an issue in the Transvaal. They were still living in their tribal areas, ruled by their chiefs.
By all means, build a NEW hospital and name it after Tambo or whoever. Build a NEW road. All you're achieving by renaming streets is to alienate the whites in South Africa (whom you need in order to keep the economy going and to pay taxes to sustain the gravy train over-inflated civil service).
If we want this country to survive, we'll need to work together and get over the past. We need to tell both sides of the story to our children so that they don't grow up hating each other. You can't rewrite history anymore. The ANC learnt their strategies from Marxists who taught them that there needs to be a common enemy and a united proletariat (the victim). But these strategies are outdated and we all know communism was a failed experiment. If you keep making whites who weren't even a part of Apartheid the scape goats for everything that is wrong, we'll either leave the country or we'll be murdered by thugs who justify their actions by the lies of the ANC.
There you have it. This is my opinion and I don't expect other people to have the same opinion. Bottom line is: Apart from the fact that it's annoying to not be able to find the right streets in Pretoria CBD anymore, I couldn't really give a monkey's arse what the streets are called. I was trying to make a point that the streets were named after people who actually DID something to establish Pretoria as a city. Like the interchanges and major bridges in the country are named after the engineers that designed them. South Africa didn't magically appear after the first democratic election. But give the ANC a few years and that will be what they teach our children in school.
Put your personal feelings away for a moment and see it from our point of view.
Regards,
The Author
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