LETTERS | Whites are yet again trumping it in SA

Whites are yet again trumping it in SA

How does one acknowledge injustice, live among those who still benefit from it, and resist the trap of victimhood and retribution?  

Years ago, Ariel Dorfman delivered the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, and his words have haunted me ever since. He described South Africa as “a pot of boiling milk on the stove with the lid on”. Even then, in 2010, he saw the tensions simmering beneath the surface, and said that “white South Africans will continue to benefit and enjoy the privileges of their apartheid legacy for many generations to come”.  

Fifteen years later, I see that he was right. I see it in my suburb, where half a dozen new white families have moved into the neighbourhood, their young children playing carefree under the watchful eyes of their black housekeepers. They will never have to question how they arrived at this position of comfort and privilege.  

I see it too up the West Coast, where my home is surrounded by white families who have occupied these coastal spaces for generations. Under apartheid, only white people were allowed to buy property along the coastline of South Africa. Today, those same properties, are sold at astronomical prices, often to international buyers. The legacy continues uninterrupted, untouched.  

And yet I am forced to sit across from these new beneficiaries at meetings and be polite in spaces where my very presence is never truly embraced. The hypocrisy of it gnaws at me. The emotional toll is irreparable.  

When I hear US President Donald Trump declare that white Afrikaners are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” and has granted them refugee status in the US, I feel an anger that words cannot fully capture. The claim is not just false, but an inversion of reality. The same group that benefited from the violent dispossession of my ancestors now claims to be the oppressed. The same community that continues to retain economic power long after political change, is now framing itself as the victim. Meanwhile, the true victims of apartheid are nowhere in this conversation.  

Dorfman once said that we should not expect white people to return the homes and properties they usurped, but that they should at least remember, be grateful and acknowledge how they got them. Even that, it seems, is too much to ask.  

— Sudeshni Naidoo, Cape Town

Trump derangement syndrome?

I am afraid I can only see misfortune for your paper, one I have enjoyed since the mid-1960s. Your delusional anti-Trump columnists seem, just like the Democrats in the US , out of touch with reality. Their  Trump derangement syndrome is so strong that they cannot think straight.

Our government (the ANC ) is as racist as can be. In a country of about 70-million there are about 3-million whites, 2-million coloureds and about half a million Indians who are all discriminated against, the whites getting the worst of it, in the name of redress.

It is conveniently forgotten that when the whites were in control, with a powerful and competent police and defence force, they voted to do away with apartheid and in fact many of them actively fought against it. Today their grandchildren are the recipients of reverse apartheid, and many have had to leave the country to earn a living. It is delusional to believe that we are an inclusive society. The very reason nothing works anymore is because people, for the last 30 years, have been hired for their race and not on merit, and the chickens have come home to roost. Every official form demands to know what race you are. In any institute today you are highly unlikely to be served by a white (or even see a white),  Indian or coloured except in the Cape.

South Africa, like the rest of Africa, is ruled purely on the basis of tribalism and whichever tribe gets in power looks after itself and only itself. There is hardly a country in Africa that is not in some kind of civil war — that includes us (100 murders per day). Many commentators brag about our democracy, that too, I am afraid, is delusional as we do not vote for a person but for a party that promotes its owntribe.

Where oh where is the black Trump for us?

— Dave Nicoll, Bushmans River Mouth

Disorder in the Eastern Cape

In his article headed “Disorder in the Courts” (February 2) Bobby Jordan refers to the widespread shoddy state of Magistrates Courts in various areas of the country. In the Eastern Cape the situation is equally bad, if not worse.

There are more than a hundred Magistrates Courts in the Eastern Cape. Those in the metros of Gqeberha, Makhanda and East London have the standards to allow one to feel that whatever business being attended to there, would be done in a professional manner. Those in the rural areas however give the impression that the wheels came off many years ago. In small towns and villages such as Lusikiski, Komga, Ntabethemba, Whittlesea, Seymore and others the Magistrates Courts suffer from lack of security, collapsed ceilings, lack of water and broken toilets — a situation that could leave one doubting the standard of justice being administered in such an environment.

One might think that the lack of care is due to budget constraints, but it seems that is not the case. The fate of the High Court, seated in Makhanda, still hangs in the balance. At a meeting in Makhanda City Hall in July, 2023, the then minister of justice stated that he thought the High Court should remain in Makhanda. This is ministerial double talk as it is the moving of the seat of the High Court that is the contentious issue. Figures given for the cost of moving the seat of the High Court to Bhisho vary between R1bn and R10bn. The people of the Eastern Cape would benefit far more if these funds were used to improve the Magistrates Courts which serve so many people and are accessible even to those in rural areas. Leave the seat of the High Court in Makhanda which is accessible to those who need it.

— Peter Sturrock, Makhanda

Pot calling the kettle riviera

Isn’t it interesting that President Donald Trump has condemned our Expropriation Act ferociously, even though no piece of land has been expropriated without compensation in South Africa yet, while he announces that he intends to annex Canada and Greenland and will expropriate Gaza from the Palestinians with a possible compensation of housing in countries that do not even agree to this process? He wants to steal Gaza from the Palestinians, to build his new real estate empire, the “Riviera of the Mediterranean”. It looks suspiciously like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

— Anne Marie Smith, Elardus Park

Cops terrified of taxi bosses

Diminishing state capacity has created a dangerous environment in which non-state actors have accumulated to much power, notably the taxi industry, which is notoriously known to engage in extrajudicial methods to eliminate opponents. Previously such cruelty was reserved for those in the taxi industry but now it seems that with the killing of Rea Vaya bus drivers the methods is being extended to the transport industry.

To exacerbate the tragedy are rumours that during the July riots politicians went cap in hand to ask taxi bosses to help quell the violence, which has prevented government from acting against some of the aggressors. The culture of impunity is destroying the democratic edifice.

It seems some police officers are sleeping  partners in the taxi industry. Those who burned trucks and were captured on dashcams because they were aggrieved about the hiring of foreign drivers were not prosecuted. Why was the government reluctant to enforce a court order compelling it to help halt the violence directed at long distance bus operator Intercape?

One would be forgiven for concluding that the killers of the two Rea Vaya bus operators will never be apprehended. The court found shamelessly  that SAPS and the Hawks failed to help the company against threats of intimidation, extortion and shootings. With lawlessness spreading like wildfire, if something drastic is not done South Africa will in 20 years be like other failed African states like Somalia, Sierra Leone and DRC. 

— Polisario Nthane,  Haartbeespoort