Category: Social Commentary

When I was in high school, I listened to heavy metal and wanted to grow my hair long. The school rules, however, prevented me for doing so. From my perspective this created a feeling of us and them among my teachers and I. It was in large part because of this that I saw my teachers as part of a system that had failed humanity.

Obviously the situation with the students in Pretoria is different because of South Africa’s history and where the students have come from. Nonetheless, I am sure that the restrictions on their natural hair creates the same sense of us and them. It creates a feeling of oppression rather than support and encouragement which is what we all want from our school. It also creates a sense of division at a time when South African of all colours more than ever need to listen to each other, respect our differences and come together. Therefore, I support and commend the students in Pretoria.

The tactic of divide and conquer has been at play throughout history. The tactic works by dividing people (often according to race or language) so that they will be easier to control and unable to unite against their conquerors. It was used by all the colonial powers to some degree. The phrase, ‘dived and conquer,’ itself is attributed to King Philip the 2^nd of Macedon (born in 382 BC and father of Alexander the Great), who laid the foundation of the Macedonian Empire, which became the greatest colonial power of its time.

The divide and conquer tactic is still being used today. Today, however, the battlefield is the human mind with the divisions being mental instead of physical. The way to control (or in other words conquer) people these days isn’t through walls and barriers but through the suppression of information and the emphasis of information that works in favour of the conquerors. The Nazis suppressed any criticism of Hitler while broadcasting that he was a great and moral leader. In North Korea the press is tightly control and state owned. The Apartheid government didn’t allow black people access to proper education. The list of instances of suppression of information goes on and on and is in itself a suppression of people.

The point is that any organization which seeks to limit your access to information is doing so to either secure or maintain its conquest over you. Of course is plenty of disinformation and propaganda out there but by being well informed you are less likely to be fooled by propaganda. Propaganda itself is a means of drowning out (suppressing) facts.  By isolating people and feeding them only certain information political parties, religions and other organizations are better able to control and exploit the people in question.

Ultimately what suppression of information and propaganda do is create a division between you and reality.  What knowledge does is create a connection between yourself and the real world in which you live. By being connected to the real world you are better able to navigate your way through it. You are better able to choose options that truly empower rather than enslave you.

More than ever it is important for people to look at the information their political parties, religions ect are feeding them and to research whether their claims actually true. Any organization based in truth will welcome such investigations; those that don’t have something to hide.

Those who truly seek freedom will not used the tactic of divide and conquer. Instead they will use a far more powerful tactic: unite and prosper. A united people cannot easily be overcome. People working together on mass regardless of racial, cultural, religious differences ect are a people capable of near limitless success. United we can break whatever chains the powers that be try to throw around us, but it must begin with each individual seeking truth above all else.

Some people I know believe that voting is useless. “My vote won’t make a difference anyway so why bother,” they say.  Of course, they still complain bitterly about the state of the country and endlessly criticize the government. Arguing the merits of voting with them doesn’t make any difference.

The only thing that seems to shut them up is laying out some numbers for them. For example, in the 2014 South African General Elections the ANC got 11,436,921 votes. That same year 6,985,585 registered voters didn’t turn up to vote.  If that same number had voted for the DA, the DA would have won 11,077,169 votes and the ANC would have had their seats in parliament practically cut in half. If the non-voters had voted for the EFF or even a much smaller party like COPE, then one of those parties would have easily been the new official opposition.

True, not all of the non-voters would have voted for the same party. Nonetheless, think about this: South Africa has a population of almost 53 million people; let’s call it 52 million for argument’s sake.  According to the IEC’s (Independent Electoral Commission) 2014 statistic there are 25,388,082 registered voters in the country. That means that at least 26,611,918 South African’s didn’t vote. Naturally, a large portion of those South Africans are under 16 years of age and therefore too young to vote.  I haven’t been able to find out exactly how many South Africans are too young to vote but given the 2011 census numbers and current birth rate the number should be about 15 million (if anybody out there has the real number, I would love to hear from you). What that means is that about 11, 611,918 South Africans are not voting. In other words, there are more people in SA not voting than there are people voting for the ANC, the ruling party.

If all the non-voters (who believe their votes wouldn’t make a difference) decided to form a single party and vote, they would be the new ruling party. In a land that has fought so long and hard for democracy, the real majority, as it turns out, are the people who don’t engage in the democratic process.

The point is their votes would make an enormous difference. If you happen to be one of the non-voters, please bare in mind that your failure to vote has made the votes of those who do engage in the democratic process more powerful. Moreover, you through your failure to act are also responsible for the state of the nation.

I am truly grateful to be living in South Africa. I realize that many of my white brothers and sisters don’t understand how lucky we are to be here.  They don’t realize that we were lucky enough to get out of apartheid with our lives, let alone our lifestyles.

If the black people had not been so wise and farsighted, we would have been driven into the sea or murdered on mass when apartheid ended. The atrocities and injustices suffered by black people by white hands are near endless and date back many centuries. Nonetheless, when apartheid ended our black countrymen let us continue to live among them, in their land, in peace and prosperity; a prosperity which they themselves were denied through apartheid and which the legacy of apartheid and colonialism continue to make very difficult for them to obtain.

I cannot begin to voice how grateful I am to the black people I live among. They are much more intelligent than they are given credit for.  They deserve heck of a lot more respect than they get. Whenever I see a white person being rude or arrogant to a black person for some petty reason, I feel like shaking them. “Wake up!” I want to shout in their faces, “Do you know where you are? Do you understand what they did for us after all we did to them?”

Sure South Africa is a land plagued with problems; a land whose history was too often written in blood. Nonetheless, it is a land to be proud of with a people who I am proud to call my countrymen.

It is important face to what is wrong with South Africa and its past that still haunts us. It is also important to build on what went right and to give credit where it is due. I for one am grateful that whatever South Africa’s problems are, I will face them with a people who have proven themselves to be more honorable and civilized than any western nations that I can think of.

Are there black people who are part of the problem? Of course there are but so what. There are plenty of white people who are part of the problem, too. Even these people, black or white, are human beings in need of guidance more than anything else. Until we start looking at each other as part of solution instead of part of the problem we will never be the kind of nation that South Africa once promised to be; the kind of nation that could be an example to the world. Meanwhile, I will continue to be grateful to be a South African and to live among a great people.