I

Twenty two years into our freedom and democracy, the majority of black people are still economically disempowered. They are dissatisfied with the economic gains from liberation. The gap between the annual average household incomes of African-headed households and their white counterparts remains shockingly huge. White households earn at least five times more than black households, according to Statistics SA. The situation with regards to the ownership of the economy also mirrors that of household incomes. – President Jacob Zuma, State of the Nation Address, 9 February 2017

In few places do divisions run as deep as in South Africa. Wealthy communities with living standards equal to those in the West and inhabited disproportionately by whites rub shoulders uneasily with desperately poor townships. A government survey released in January found that black South Africans, who make up 80 percent of the population, earned only one-fifth of what whites did in 2015. – Article by Norimitsu Onishi on the minimum wage in the New York Times, 15 February 2017. In the article pictures of life for the working black poor of Khayelitsha are juxtaposed against those of whites (nationality unknown) following leisure pursuits in the wealthy Cape Town areas of Clifton and Sea Point.

II

We all know that the Dutch gangsters arrived here and took our land by force and the struggle has since been about the return of the land into the hands of rightful owners. Yet those who went to negotiate on behalf of our people during the negotiations sold out this fundamental principle which constituted the struggle against colonialism. So, those who claim to be radical enough and who want radical change today should actually be in the forefront of agreeing that this Constitution must be changed to make it possible for our people to own the land. It can’t be correct that less than 10% of the population owns almost more than 75% of the land and those people who own the land happen to be - in an acceptable language, ‘private people like individuals, trusts and companies,’ but when you search deep as to who are these people, they are white people who are still owning our land. We remain a conquered nation even when we claim to have democracy. We remain a conquered nation because white monopoly capital still owns the means of production and the centre of that is the land question. – EFF leader Julius Malema speech in debate on the Section 25 of the Constitution, Tuesday, 28 February 2017 

The APC will support any measure, resolution or programme that seek to enhance and fast-rack access to land by the dispossessed African majority. The message must be sent strongly and consistently that whites cannot continue to own land in excess to their population figures. The fact that white people, as a social class, talk about reconciliation whilst tenaciously clinging to wealth and land accumulated through the criminal oppression and exploitation of the majority indigenous Africans, means the majority is being taken for a ride. - APC MP and SCOPA chairperson Themba Godi, same debate.

III

Once the audit has been completed, a single law should be developed to address issue of land restitution without compensation. The necessary constitutional amendments would then be undertaken to effect this process. That’s why we need to accept the reality that those who are in Parliament where laws are made, particularly the black parties, should unite because we need a two-thirds majority to effect changes in the Constitution. – Speech by Jacob Zuma at the opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders in Parliament, City Press, 3 March 2017

IV

Whites are alien in South Africa. How can this historical fact be racism? Whites are colonialists who sole our land. – Andile Mngxitama, Twitter, 7 March 2017

V

AgangSA, believe that white farmers should stop vomiting on the forgiveness of black, which has displayed itself since 1994. They should stop assaulting and murder of farm workers. They must assist in building social cohesion. While AgangSA is not condoning farm attacks or murders, white farmers should minimise their arrogance and recognise that things have changed and they have to share with black people. They must embrace a nonracial society. If you go to most of these farms, farm workers are treated like animals. When you check where they live, even pigs can go on strike to refuse to live there but our people are subjected to these conditions by the same white farmers, who have no mercy, very sadistic and deriving pleasure from the suffering of our people. – Agang MP Mr M A Plouamma during debate on the problem of farm murders, Parliament, 14 March 2017

VI

AfriForum Youth today laid a charge of assault at the Midrand Police Station against Lindsay Maasdorp, spokesperson of the Black First Land First movement. This comes after Maasdorp today assaulted members of AfriForum Youth at the National Education Crisis Forum in Midrand, which was attended by several movements. Students who claimed that they belong to the #Feesmustfall structures also told AfriForum Youth that they could not speak at the event. “I walked up to the podium for my allotted turn to speak, and then these students approached me and said that I was not allowed to speak because I am white,” said Jaco Grobbelaar, AfriForum Youth’s coordinator for Tuks. “They also shouted the slogan ‘one settler, one bullet’ in our faces and sang the ‘kill the Boer’ song. A huge fight broke out – people threw chairs at one another and members of AfriForum Youth were assaulted by Maasdorp,” said Renier Goosen, chairperson of the Tuks branch. – AfriForum Youth press statement, 18 March 2018

BLF notes the sensational story by the Johann Rupert propaganda arm, the Sunday Times, about the racist land thieves AfriForum opening a case against the National Spokesperson of Black First Land First (BLF). Our movement regards this act by the racist AfriForum as an act of provocation and a racist attempt to abuse the criminal justice system to serve its evil white supremacist agenda. AfriForum is an openly racist organisation. BLF demands that legislation be passed to ban racist organisations such as AfriForum. We ask the organisers of the Higher Education convention, why they invite and even give speaking rights to a racist colonial organisation which represents land thieves? – Black Land First press statement, 19 March 2017

Between the caucus and the second and final disruption, Afriforum and a few of my comrades were interviewed. The smug of whiteness was apparent at this convention and it had stained what was a much needed conversation. Post the interview, there was a brief and swift interaction between myself and the Afriforum delegate and it ultimately saw Afriforum leaving the convention and subsequently laying an unwarranted charge of assault against me. White people are criminals but such is their right in this anti-black society that they can go and lay charges against black bodies despite them being the embodiment of violence. – Lindsay Maasdorp’s account of the altercation, 22 March 2017

VII

Kolosa Ntombini from the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) got onto the stage [at the start of the lecture at UCT] and asked that [Ngũgĩ wa] Thiong’o assist in asking white people to leave the event. “How do we have a lecture and form a consolidated voice, as the oppressed, in the presence of those who oppress us?” UCT’s professor Xolela Mangcu took the stage immediately after the intervention and declined the request, saying that it would be disrespectful to wa Thiong’o – whom Mangcu himself had invited to speak.... This is not the first time Mangcu shut down a request by students raising points of concern surrounding the presence of white people when talking about issues of particular concern to black people…. [During question time] Mangcu closed the meeting after a white member of the audience attempted to ask a question and was shouted down by many in the audience. – Daily Vox, 3/4 March 2017

The presence of white people in decolonial spaces does not make sense. Professor wa Thiong’o was delivering a lecture on decolonising the mind and from a basic understanding it is obvious whom the target of this knowledge is: it is those whose mind has been colonised and that is not white people. Yet white people have this sense of entitlement to be present in these lectures and conversations. To me this questions the genuineness of their so-called liberal stance. They claim to want to help dismantle the system and claim to want to move us forward as a society yet when we ask for our space in order to engage with a man whom we revere, they refuse. - Kolosa Ntombini explaining her stance, Black Opinion 6 March 2017

VIII

Did you guys honestly publish this? REALLY? Wow.Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Those people have me sounding like an ambulance before I've finished my breakfast. Yhuuuuu. You [Daily Maverick] may not be endorsing them but you're giving problematic views a platform, which for me is just as bad. I don't expect U to subscribe to my worldview. I think it is NB as journos we must critically think re what, who we give platform to. One of those is romantisation of colonialism. I think giving them platform is keeping them alive & giving them legs to grow. For me, both as journalist&reader, giving them a platform means you see or find validity in these views. That their offensiveness/ racism doesn't matter all in the name of objectivity. Finding it problematic that a platform was given to someone who thinks there was some good in colonialism & media freedom are not the same. I guess I'm an "advocacy journalist" then & this whole convo is why I became a journalist, to think differently about my role. And this is why I became a journalist. – Mail & Guardian journalist Pontsho Pilane responding to the Daily Maverick’s decision to publish a column by Helen Zille on Singapore and the colonialism Twitter controversy, and then Ranjeni Munusamy’s defence of the same. Source Twitter.  

In Africa, southern African whites operate as a conveyor belt for Western interests, working closely with the army of Western migrants that occupy key positions of the economy and development industry across the continent. The tiny African elites they have co-opted are rapidly losing legitimacy, and are increasingly alienated from the vast majority of citizens. Helen Zille is one of the many hired guns offering their services to the likes of Donald Trump and Theresa May to help them strike favorable trade deals and wage wars to protect Western interests. – Italian anthropologist, Vito Laterza, Africa is a Country.

Whitie, it's not your place to say anything about colonialism unless you're bringing ideas on how to dismantle all its systems & prejudices. So know this, my whities, the patience with pro-colonialism and defense of racism rhetoric is running thin! If you continue to poke the bear. The victims of colonialism, who were oppressed for 350yrs, and still suffer residuals today, are the only folks who may decide its legacy. White people: we have ZERO right to comment on any effects of colonialism because we ONLY benefitted from it. It's not our place to decide. - Actor and director Pieter Bosch Botha. Twitter.

White people in South Africa need fundamentally to change the way they think. There is absolutely nothing, apart from the heroism in the face of threat of a very few whites over the centuries we have been here, to be proud of. We need to crush our sense of achievement and success and see those things for what they really are. Nowhere in the world is there a population quite so privileged as white South Africa. We came, we saw, we conquered and we lived like kings. And we remain deeply racist, pretty much all of us. I fight mine all the time. It is all you can do when you recognise it. At the office, in the car, watching the politics. You have to be conscious of what that feeling that rises in you is. Racism is the sense one race has that it is superior to another. Our white ancestors brought it here, chasing slaves and then chasing land and gold. – BDFM editor-in-chief Peter Bruce, BusinessLive.

There are many such liberal moderates in this country who are paraded as woke Blacks. Whites produce them everywhere. In business, media, politics, art etc. They show up everywhere and when they do, you can be sure that whites are safe. Xolela Mangcu, Mmusi Maimane, Sipho Pityana, Cyril Ramaphosa, Thuli Madonsela, and many other buffoons fall in this category. Helen Zille can spew all the tripe she likes, she is safe for as long as we have Black liberals who sing, “Not All Whites Are The Same”. The script should be one, whites came, whites stole, whites raped, whites killed and whites must pay! – Xola Skosana, Black Opinion.