MfH South Africa (2011-2012)

Moments from History

Volume 1 : November 9, 2011

I

Mr Patekile Holomisa rightly enjoys the freedom that he and countless others fought for during the years of apartheid in South Africa. Those born since 1991 will have no concept of the price paid for that freedom. Today, South Africa is a democracy and an example of tolerance.

When President Nelson Mandela led his country he succeeded in achieving that which he publicly declared to the African National Congress at that time.

‘Never, and I repeat, never again will South Africa be called the skunk of the world.’

Consider the reactionary policies that had led to apartheid in the first place. Even today, writing the following quotation seems to be from another world, a world of fiction, a world where civilised people could not hold such views?

But reading afresh President Nelson Mandela’s speeches, one in particular registered and is Mr Mandela’s address from the dock of the South African Supreme Court in Pretoria on April 20, 1964 as the First Accused. 

He quotes the then South African Prime Minister Mr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd during an earlier debate on the Bantu Education Bill 1953, about which Mr Verwoerd had declared:

When I have control of Native education I will reform it so that Natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them. . . . People who believe in equality are not desirable teachers for Natives. When my Department controls Native education it will know for what class of higher education a Native is fitted, and whether he will have a chance in life to use his knowledge.

II

Fast forward half a century.

Mr Holomisa represents South Africa’s National House of Traditional Leaders. He is an ANC lawmaker. This is his declaration on the subject of LGBTQ people:

‘The great majority does not want to give promotion and protection to these things … …
homosexuality is ‘a condition that occurs when certain rituals have not been performed’.

I see no difference between Mr Holomisa and Mr Verwoerd. Both sentiments are out of order. They belong to a different age. An age of narrow-mindedness, belief in notions and potions, what I see as just simply hocus-pocus.

To obtain a balance, the African National Congress has made the following statement.

III

‘The ANC believes any law which denies people the right to their sexual expression
devalues them in our broader society
and as such
is an affront to their dignity
and a breach of our constitution.’

Narrow-minded people, often without malice but resting on ignorance and insistence that religious writings be taken literally.

Of people such as Mr Holomisa or of the late Mr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd then, as we say in Liverpool, don’t be surprised at a ballistic reaction!

Kenneth Thomas Webb
Liverpool

November 9, 2011
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One of the Fifteen Founding Members of Leaders Lodge