 “Maybe the decision of the ANC youth cadres to take up witchhunting, was also based on the calculation, that party politics and revolutionary slogans would not be sufficient for mobilizing the population. Witchhunts on the other hand seemed to be a common cause for which one could expect broad-based support.” (1993:527) |
Note: I am not sure any of Brandon's muggers, robbers or stabbers, stopped to ask him, whether he had mixed blood, or whether any of his family had ever demonstrated an affinity for multi-cultural blood mixing.
What the muggers, robbers and stabbers saw was a 'white man', whether Huntley himself even at that time, identified himself as 'white' or not; he clearly at some point, made the distinction, that he was targetted for his colour, as whites are in South Africa.
Having spent a year in an African prison, with nothing to listen to, but African criminals, I can tell you, most of them, openly and very frankly admit that white people are their targets; because they are white; and because they are white and afraid.
The fact that I was married to a black man, meant nothing to African muggers, or robbers or assaulters; the only thing mattered was 'jou fokken AWF meid' (you fucking AWB maid); was my skin tone; and that I was not afraid of them, meant that I was a 'racist'. My ideological or political views meant nothing. All that mattered was my skin colour, and my lack of fear.
Racism is alive and well in South Africa, on all sides. It is a favourite word in any ANC Press Release, and it is never defined; only they know what racism is, and what racism feels like, or looks like. What is not alive and well, is a willingness to hold an honest conversation about its root causes; nor how Politicians exploit the word, for their own benefit, accusing every single white person under the sun of being a racist. It is impossible, not to be a racist in South Africa, in the eyes of all whose beliefs are informed by the witchcraft paradigm.
“In communities where a witchcraft paradigm informs understandings about other peoples’ motives and capacities, life must be lived in terms of a presumption of malice.”
-- AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Adam Ashforth
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Brandon Huntley's Mixed Race Family Saga
by Cape Slavery Heritage
Articles by insightful and humorous journalist Tony Weaver are always a captivating read. In last Friday’s Cape Times he drew on a story in the Cape-Slavery-Heritage blogsite to highlight a little known facet of the history of Mowbray and in so doing, used this in his usual skilful use of the pen, to flick a great big dollop of ink on the antics of one, Brandon Huntley.
Brandon Huntley was awarded ‘refugee’ status in Canada base on claims of ‘being persecuted as a ‘white person’ by black South Africans’. The issue has released a torrent of debate in the media and on the internet and has illustrated how much division exists amongst South Africans. Interesting enough, while there has been a negative outpouring by white ‘new South Africa hate champions’ and many racist diatribes, there has however also been a welcome ‘rainbow line-up’ of new South Africans of all national groups who have united in rejecting the Huntley’s ridiculous and dishonest statements.
Tony Weaver, also picked up the fact that my maternal grandparents were Huntley’s. With a little ferreting I’ve established that these indeed were the same roots of this young ‘Tweedle-dummer’ as Zapiro’s cartoon in the weekend papers labels him. This of course makes Brandon Huntley’s case all the more absurd.
I know that one of Brandon’s ‘white’ cousins (who he does not know) cohabits with an African woman in Khayelitsha and has worked in black townships for ages and has not been living in fear of his life. Over fifty percent of Brandon’s relatives are people of colour in South Africa and don’t share his race attitudes or so-called ‘fear problem’. At least one of his direct family, his father’s brother, is married across the colour line. Brandon Huntley is a fourth generation descendent of William Huntley and Mary Anne Haddon whose children married black and white South Africans.Brandon’s great great grandmother, Francina, was a woman of colour, married to great great grandfather William Haddon, one of the first Englishmen to settle in the Transkei in the mid 1800s, where he lived happily and un-endangered amongst Xhosa people in Cala, until he died of old age at 100 years old in 1908.
The young man, whom I don’t know, (as many of this extended family are estranged from each other largely due to the Apartheid era), is probably ignorant of his own family history. He has behaved ignorantly, selfishly, opportunistically and dishonestly, and brought dishonour to his ancestors. Like many white South Africans he has chosen to ‘minoritize’ himself by looking past the ‘Ties that Bind Us’ and project himself as an endangered species like the ‘white rhino’. Oh that people would rather wish to look to the Quagga for inspiration!
Most commentators on this case simply show their own ignorance, but often expouse dangerous prejudices that do not bode well for common nation-building. Behind every story there is another story that gets lost in the cracks of the dominant discourse. Highlighting the stories that fall between the cracks is what this website is all about.
We have a wonderful country and beautiful upstanding, law-abiding and caring people of all hues. Brandon Huntley has besmirched the name of South Africa and the wonderful achievements we have accomplished since the end of Apartheid. In so doing he has uncovered a festering sore of discord amongst many who have not reconciled to government by majority vote; - corelating to the very ordinary fact that we are in Africa and here most people are black.
However, we have to progress from notions of majority and minority, to get to a place where we can talk as one! To talk of - OUR PEOPLE – where we can have pride in our diverse identities but have an even stronger sense of first being South Africans with a common destiny. Even when we talk of our diverse identities in South Africa we should be setting the bar higher than pigmentation. I am heartened to see how many people across national groups have stood together in condemning the Canadian decision and what can only be described as an elaborate confidence trick played on the Canadian panel by Brandon Huntley and his lawyer.
As an end-note, the greatest challenge to our hard fought struggle for liberation in South Africa has been the challenge of crime. Like Apartheid, Crime and Criminals has also taken away the freedom of citizens. And here it is important to note that crime affects all regardless of colour and criminals are of all shades. Unacceptably high levels of crime in South Africa have been recorded from the mid 1970s which was the height of the Apartheid era. Its genesis can be identified in the breakdown of social cohesion associated with two things; the low-level but pervasive state of war and repression in South Africa, and with the grand social engineering that occurred in this country.
While we attained democracy in 1994, the legacy of the previous decades of upheaval, together with the fact that we have abject poverty alongside vulgar affluence, has resulted in a continuation of the undermining of social cohesion. In plain language, crime spikes under conditions of war and conflict which shatter the cement that normally makes societies bond and marginalises outlaw activity. For South Africa to succeed we need to rebuild social cohesion, but to do this requires huge efforts on all our parts including some sort of Marshall-Aid Plan like that which turned Europe around after the war. We have just not seen the kind of effort required by all, and particularly the affluent, to turn around the hopelessness of the vast majority of alienated people. Those who are not doing their bit in this regard should not complain. We are all potential problem-solvers in South Africa.
More than anything too, we have to learn that a house divided will not succeed. South Africans of all national groups need to find each other and begin to emphasise the ‘WE, US, OUR’ over sectional interests.
Criminality is a scourge which we all need to stand united against. Crime knows no colour. Only a racist analysis would argue otherwise.
Source: Cape Slave Heritage
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