MAX DU PREEZ, DYLANN ROOF AND BAREND STRYDOM
In an article in Tuesday's Media24 publications Max du Preez states that Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine black worshippers in Charleston, S. Carolina, “shares apartheid’s ideology.” Du Preez goes on to say that Barend Strydom’s random killing of seven black South Africans in 1989 made him think “that his (Roof’s) identification with apartheid wasn’t so inappropriate after all.”
This inescapably creates the impression that the wanton killing of black people was somehow an integral aspect of the ideology of apartheid. After establishing this perceptual link, Du Preez later concedes that “apartheid didn’t aim to wipe out black South Africans” and that Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir had “killed more of their people killed than was done under apartheid”.
In fact, however wrong their policies may have been, there was not a single pre-1994 leader who would not have been filled with the deepest revulsion at Roof’s cold-blooded killing of nine black worshippers at the Emanuel Church in Charleston - or who would not have been equally repelled by Strydom’s actions.
Nobody should whitewash the injustices of apartheid. However, it is unacceptable to equate in any way Roof’s actions - and the heinous killings of Barend Strydom - with the values and policies of previous National Party leaders. Such accusations serve only to perpetuate the ANC’s divisive version of history - which Du Preez evidently shares - in terms of which the pre-1994 white establishment was uniformly evil, while all those on the ANC’s side were uniformly good. The ANC uses this white/evil, black/good analysis of history at every opportunity to justify its own increasingly aggressive racial agenda.
We need a balanced understanding of our past that reflects the infinite shades of grey that actually characterise our history. Together with the injustices of apartheid we should consider