Dear Fellow History Buffs
9 April 1652.
Sunlight dances off the waves of Table Bay. Women singing haunting Country and Southern African songs beat out the laundry on the rocks of a nearby stream. Skinny jeans for the nearby hospital. red overalls and Gucci underwear for the People's Army.
Jolly fishermen fill buckets with snoek and mussels, cheerfully sharing with passersby. A gigantic shadow obscures the sun. Sails and the banner of the Dutch East India Company fill the near horizon. Van Riebeeck docks his ships. Oblivious to the friendly greeting calls of 'Howzit', he and his motley, scurvy and syphilis infected crew storm onto the beach. Assaulting all and sundry and grabbing up the fish and laundry, they march into the interior. A string of Dutch obscenities and curses trails behind them. 'Jouw moer' and suchlike. They blaze a trail of looting, pillaging, rape and murder. Eventually Jan, sated with murder and other foul stuff, settles down to plant grapes and make a general nuisance of himself. The curses, however, pollute the land to this day. Many a hitherto innocent, righteous and pure politician has felt a tug at the heart and cast longing glances at dubious tenders and public funds once being touched by The Curse.
All of this I learnt from that great repository of accurate, unbiased history, Twitter. To amateur but passionate and knowledgeable Twitter historians I owe a debt of gratitude. Not only have I been emancipated from mental slavery and colonialism but this approach to history beats the hell out of memorizing the dates of Vasco de Gama's pointless voyages, eating hard biscuits, flogging the odd sailor and stringing some up from the yardarm. Or stories of Dick King's historic Durban July win, with his stablemate Ndongeni Surname Unknown, coming in a close second.
I also learnt of how South Africa's greatest president Mr Zuma has been demonized and misrepresented. Under the leadership of Mr Zuma, jobs were created, roads and bridges built and the lion lay down with the lamb. (Only to snack on him later,:when he arose again). Men beat their mshinis into plowshares. Unfortunately there was no land to plough, because the Curse of van Riebeeck ensured that the land remained in the grubby hands of his devious descendants, the Abelungu. This cunning tribe still plots and schemes against Mr Zuma around their totem, called The Braai. It is whispered that they offer burnt sacrifices to their gods, Apartheid, Doubleyouemsee and Stratcom, daily. But for their machinations, Wakanda would have been delivered by Mr Zuma.
There are conflicting records of the roles and deeds of other great leaders. Mandela is seen by some as a hero and by others as the man who signed away the country to the Abelungu. Mbeki is apparently renowned for his agricultural skills and knowledge. He reportedly specialised in the production of beetroot, garlic and the African potato, crops not only good to eat but having remarkable medicinal value. Mr Ramaphosa has a reputation for expertise in the furniture business, the establishment of think tanks, committees and commissions and the preparation of amphibians for high protein nutrition. On all of these matters our Twitter historians cannot come to unanimous agreement. Nevertheless we watch the Twitter Chronicles with bated breath as revelation after revelation unfolds
Incidentally, the arrival of the villainous van Riebeeck was recorded by a group of postgraduate students at the ancient University Atop the Hill. The recording was done on tablets, which South Africa already possessed long before modern technology developed the present day version. Yes, they were tablets of clay, but what the heck, a tablet, is a tablet, is a tablet. Sadly the ancient university was burnt to the ground by the savage invaders. Upon its ashes was built the erstwhile colonial education
centre, the University of Cape Town. Of the fate of the hapless post graduate students, little is known.
This is my kind of history, relevant, simple, with tartly refreshing hints of resentment and righteous indignation. Reminds one of a good, earthy box wine from Oxford's liquor store (not the university, a Durban supermarket chain).
It can easily be reduced to a simple formula, guaranteeing a 30% pass for all students, namely:
Zuma = Very good
Van Riebeeck and friends = Very, very bad.
Yours in the historic struggle for a true, decolonised history.
Richard
Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted
Capitec Bank, South Africa
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O Tichmann
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