EVERY time I read a new story or see the latest TV footage of Anders Brehring Breivk I think of the racists in our region in my lifetime — Dr Malan, H F Verwoerd, Winston Field and Ian Smith.
They too seemed to wish to wipe out a whole race, or to render it so useless it would practically amount to nothing.
If apartheid had been allowed to blossom, there would have been no real black race in South Africa.
Dr Malan, obsessed with the creation of an Afrikaner nation, had a song composed to record just how evil he was. UDoctor Malan ulemthetho enzima (Dr Malan has tough laws).
I remember listening to that song with a chill running down my spine. I can’t remember who sang it, but it wasn’t one of my favourinte SA groups, The Dark City Sisters. This was a protest song against Malan’s repugnant racist policies, anchored on the separation of the races.
The cardinal point was to highlight the superiority of the white race and God’s alleged will for them to be superior. I think Malan was a high-ranking person in the Dutch Reformed Church.
If Ian Smith had been allowed to carry out his own crazy racist grand plan, the Africans of Southern Rhodesia would probably have disappeared from the face of the earth, as a distinct group.
If they existed at all, then they would amount to almost nothing as human beings. They most certainly would not exist solidly enough to celebrate 32 years of independence from the likes of Smith. The objective of the racists, including the Norwegian who killed 77 of his own fellow Norwegians, was to wipe out of existence all races they perceived as a threat to their own race.
If Hendrik Verwoerd had survived the fatal stabbing in Parliament by Dimitri Tsapfendas in 1966, who knows what he might have done to the non-white population?
Even if they continued to exist as human beings, they would amount to virtually nothing as participants in the life of their country.
These racists had such a contempt for non-whites, they considered them no better than wild animals. I shall always remember this white lady who looked at me, as I worked in office in Salisbury in the 1950s: What is that monkey doing in there?
A white friend once remarked that this was “no big deal”.
But if my boss, as white as the foul-mouthed woman, had not defended me, who knows what a chip I would have carried on my shoulder. As it was, my boss’s defence in the woman’s presence, diluted any permanent anti-white hatred I might have developed. Adolf Hitler was a rabid racist.
If Good had not triumphed over his Evil design, what would have happened to Humankind?
In Germany and perhaps all over Europe, neo-Nazis wish Hitler’s grand design had been accomplished.
All who believe theirs is the Super Race ought to be certifiable. What possible malady would they be suffering from to imagine that everybody else on this planet, walking on two legs, would be intrinsically inferior to them?
Of course, without wanting to be crude, they too go to the lavatory to do what all of us have to do. They too procreate in the same way that we do. Okay, so do the animals. But they don’t speak as we do, or sing as we do.
So Adam and Eve were white? Says who?
In Africa, if all the whites had appreciated the significance of the assassination of Verwoerd by a white man, they would have had a rethink. Another member of his own race had tried to kill him earlier. l have abandoned any notion that black people hired a white “hit man” to waste Verwoerd.
There was never any evidence that both men were hired by a militant black group. Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik sounds utterly insane. Mind you, all people who kill out of a hatred of one distinct group have to be insane.
They ought to be locked up and the key thrown away. Society has known for a long time what to do with such people. It is why we don’t have mad people running the world — so far.
Bill Saidi is a veteren writer based in Harare.
