Monday, May 22, 2017

Knowing the Truth, Seeing the Truth but still Believing the Lies

White consciousness should have the following aims:

· To crystallise the needs and aspirations of the whites and to make known their grievances.

· Where possible to put into effect programs designed to meet the needs of whites and to act on a collective basis in an effort to solve some of the problems which beset them.

· To heighten the degree of contact not only amongst the white but also amongst these and the rest of the South African population to make the whites accepted on their own terms as an integral part of the South African community.

· To establish a solid identity amongst whites and to ensure that they are always treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.

· To boost up the morale of the whites to heighten their own confidence in themselves and to contribute largely to the direction of thought taken by various institutions on social, political and other current topics.

While these aims might appear to be couched in radicalistic language, they are in fact a sign that the white community has at last lost faith with their black counterparts and is now withdrawing from the open society. The whites are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves.

A time has come when whites have to formulate their own thinking, unpolluted by ideas emanating from a group with lots at stake in the status quo. It is difficult not to look at black society as a group of people bent on perpetuating that status quo. All suffer from the same fault basically of accepting as a fact that there shall be black leadership and even worse, that they shall occupy themselves predominantly with problems affecting black society first. We need to adopt the principle that whites should work themselves into a powerful group so as to go forth and stake their rightful claim in the open society rather than to exercise that power in some obscure part of the Kalahari.

It is a painful waste of time to engage in any dialogue with racially-bigoted organisations. Hence, this belies the belief that our withdrawal is an end in itself.

(Written by Steve Biko in 1970. I only inserted the word “white’ where he had written ‘black’. But so apt for where we find ourselves today – a group with no identity)