The Big Lie

The nouveau racists and professional victims in our country would have us believe the following.There is a chasm fixed in our country between people of various hues. So it is and so it has always been. Good resides in one group and evil in the other. It's the kind of arrant nonsense that no adult with a gram of common sense would entertain. Unless they wanted to - for reasons unrelated to truth or reality.

This is no different from the Verwoedian drivel that we endured for so long. With tragic, disastrous consequences. Some of our current social engineers, professional and amateur, even indulge in the same fine distinctions and categorisation as did their Nationalist  role models.

Many people that I and others know, paid the price for seeking justice and equity during the apartheid years. Some paid the ultimate price. And the yahoos spit on their graves. Unlike some of the comrades, I don't see the need to dwell on the details of their struggle (a term now so devalued). Those that lived, moved on with their lives, memories and lessons learned. 

Being black, green or puce of skin does not absolve one from the duties of being truthful, fair and reasonable. Nor is one released from the obligations that go with being a human being worthy of the name. We all know what those are.

This is not a plea for reason. There are those who prefer to dwell in the dark alleys and dingy places where the lust for hatred, revenge and the dubious pleasures of victimhood live, mingle, copulate and breed detestable offspring. Best to forget them there, in the hell of their creation. 

This is merely a comment on the Big Lie that marches through South Africa to various populist tunes. 

I leave the last word to well-known South Africans, quoted in Helen Joseph's book, 'If This Be Treason':

 'The amount of support we received when news of our arrests became public was quite astonishing, certainly far beyond our wildest expectations. 

What is more, that support came from every quarter; black and white worker and businessman,  local and International.....

A fund was set up immediately to raise bail for the accused and one of the great liberal church men of the time Bishop Ambrose  Reese,  then Bishop of Johannesburg, headed the fund. A treason trial committee was set up in Johannesburg to provide legal aid and welfare assistance and its efforts extended around the country.

 Under Canon Collins of St Paul's Cathedral a similar fund was started in Great Britain and was to become known as the Defense and Aid Fund....

I should add that among those who stood bail for us was the late Doctor Ellen Hellman,  a distinguished anthropologist, who was later to become the president of the Institute of Race Relations and the late Walter Pollack,  QC,  a leading member of the bar and a great lawyer. 

Walter M Sisulu

'The trial has been an  inestimable blessing, because it forged together diverse men and women of goodwill of all races, who rallied  to the support of the treason trial fund and to keep up the morale of the accused. 

What would have been the plight of the accused without our Bishop Reeves, Allan Paton, Dr Hellman, Canon Collins,   Alex Hepple,  Christian Action,  Archbishop de Blank,  Archbishop Hurley and all the other loyal men and women without whose help and cooperation chaos would have prevailed in our ranks?

 ... I should like to say on behalf of all the accused that our future course of conduct will justify your help, for in all things we shall be motivated by the noble urge of human unity rather than division and separativeness'.

Chief Albert Luthuli

There is truth.

And then, there is the Big Lie.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

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