1. Below is a thread on Helen Zille's (HZ)racist provocations. This first part is about her intentions. The 2nd group of tweets will look at the rape and land cartoon. I offer this as a contribution to a conversation with people who are interested. Please read the entire thread.
2. HZ self identifies as a ‘Classical Liberal’. Classical liberalism recognises the responsibility that comes with free speech, it draws the line where speech causes harm and, in this instance, as well as others which I will highlight, Helen Zille’s speech has been harmful.
3. Previously she tweeted about colonialism in a manner that many people, esp. black people felt minimised the damage of colonialism. When people pointed out how her comments were offensive, she simply refused to listen and instead amplified her views in articles and interviews.
4. People pointed out that the cartoon about rape and land is offensive, instead of revisiting her position and listening to what they say, she was aggressive & attacked ‘woke’ people who use ‘outrage’ to silence debate.
5. She doesn’t recognise their experiences as worthy of consideration. She has shown no empathy, she is incapable of self-reflexivity and she is aggressive. One gets a sensation of a prolonged exposure to a bully who is wilfully subjecting people to pain, a form of torture.
6. This second part is about Zille’s tweet accompanying the cartoon about land and rape. Before breaking this down, I want to touch on HZ’s ancestral origins. Helen Zille is of German ancestry.
7.She knows the dangers of minimizing the holocaust and how holocaust deniers have fed & continue to feed into anti-Semitism. I am certain that Zille will never make comments that would be interpreted even in the slightest sense, to suggest that holocaust had positive outcomes.
8. The impact of slavery and colonialism is unprecedented in human history. (Some people argue that slavery continues today, for example in the form of the American prison system).
9. So, why would an intelligent and experienced person of Zille’s caliber make the comments she did on colonialism? The answer is simple– colonialism has been minimised by many people because of the deeply but sub-consciously held belief in the supremacy of Western Civilisations.
10. Whatever the supposed benefits of colonialism it came with great destruction, dislocation and upheaval. The colonised never chose the trajectory of Western civilization. Zille’s comments about colonialism were a denial of people’s histories and experience.
11. This final instalment deals with the land and rape cartoon. BTW, despite protestations about racial generalisations, Zille doesn’t mind using them when it suits her. She talked about ‘black privilege’ instead of ‘privileged politically connected elite’ or ‘ANC privilege’.
12. The cartoon depicts two people arguing about stolen land and rape. The message is that ‘do not generalize about white people stealing land in the same way you do not want me to generalize about black man and rape’. Fair enough. But let’s talk about this, shall we?
13. It’s not clear whether the rape referred to is related to the wars of conquest and dispossession or simply stereotyping of black men as sexually violent. So, I'll try and deal with both. But first let me deal with the land issue in the context of the cartoon.
14. In my view, the land question refers to structural oppression and the legacy of land dispossession and colonial conquest whose legacy we see today. Yes, individual white people of today did not directly steal the land. But they are beneficiaries of a societal construct.
15. Here we are talking centuries of structural construction, long before the formal introduction of apartheid in 1948. The Union of 1910 was about formalizing this structure, institutionalising and monetising racial inequality. That legacy continues till today.
16. Where we live, the kinds of properties we have and don’t have is directly related to that troubled history of dispossession, conquest and apartheid. This is true, even with the 25 years of post apartheid democracy. And yes, the ANC failures have not helped.
I am taking a break from the HZ thread. The next instalment is on rape. Now, I must edit my make up shelf - yearly ritual. I'll finish the thread tomorrow.
I have deleted the rape instalment in response to Zille. Reading again, I found that in some parts, my tweets are ambiguous, esp in relation to African men's use of rape. I will post the revised tweets shortly. I apologise for my tardiness on so important and sensitive a topic.🙏🏾
17. This instalment deals with rape. Rape is always delicate question. I am explaining a historical fact, not minimising use of rape by any group. I do not condone use of rape as a weapon of war under any circumstances. But the question is whether it ever was a weapon of war?
18. The cartoon purports to present an argument against racial generalisation by answering accusation of land theft with accusation of rape of white women by black men. On what historical evidence is this based?
19. There's no historical evidence of African men’s deliberate use of rape as a weapon of war against white women in South Africa. If it happened there's no evidence of it being part of the approach in anti colonial resistance wars or later national liberation against apartheid.
20. Surely, Zille knows South African history. So why did she eagerly endorse a historically inaccurate and harmful tweet? Was she eager to make a point about racial generalisations even it is based on falsehoods? What about integrity? What is Zille’s game?
21. If there's no evidence of African men using rape as a weapon of war, why do many people hold this belief? For a long time, we've witnessed and experienced institutionalised hyper-sexualisation, weaponisation and criminalisation of black male sexuality in racist imagination.
22. Lynching of black men in the USA has been widely covered in literature. In South Africa’s apartheid era, there were incidents of black men beaten and arrested for simply looking in the direction of white women.
23. So, there is a deep seated and long held view of black men as representing hyper-sexuality, danger and a threat to what white considered to be theirs – white women’s bodies.the cartoon plays with the 'swart gevaar' mentality. Does Zille not see this?
24. Many people have said that we should look at the cartoon as satire as if satire and art is beyond criticism. The point about the danger of racial generalisation is important. However, the cartoonist undermines his point by using racist tropes.
25. Thank you for reading this thread.
