Aug-Sept 2014 K.indd

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www.cosatu.org.za • AUG/SEPT 2014

a recipe for civil war inspired by racial hatred. It is in this context that a call for the elevation of the National Anthem has to be located. The reality of the matter is that this call can also be analysed through the same prism of scepticism, doubts, cynicism with which the TRC itself was treated and now this will be done with concrete evidence against the national anthem in that singing is not aligned to the corresponding transfer of economic power which must create a rhythm for our people to sing and meaningfully put their hands next to their heart on the same song of economic emancipation. A question may be raised with good reasons as to whether a street vendor attaches the same signi fi cance and meaning to the singing of the National Anthem as a stock broker in the JSE. Does a mine worker attach the same meaning as the cigar puf fi ng CEO in the comfort of his Chamber of Mines Of fi ces? Does a farm worker see any fruits of hope from the singing of the National Anthem as much as the merciless farmer who can unceremoniously evict the farm worker from that farm without any protection from the government in the context where the Department of Labour have no capacity to ensure enforcement? Can a vulnerable artist who does know where his next income will be coming from attach similar signi fi cance and meaning to the National Anthem than the vultures from record companies who have starched ill begotten assets from the artist and invested it abroad to make even more money without developing South African talent? Will the National Anthem have the same harmony? Having said all this, the reality is that nations are not only built on the bases of anger from the past or simply on the

the families of his victims continue to be tormented by the nightmares of despair and pain and everyday have to confront poverty caused by the loss of those who could have been bread winners. As if this is not enough, in our country we still have the media such as the Eye Witness News (EWN) publishing cartoons on its website depicting ANC voters in ‘black’ as “clowns” and “poepholes”. This reminds us of how during apartheid, the newspapers assisted in the dangerous “demonization” of the liberation movements; it reminds us of the hypocrisy of the newspapers who trumpeted a liberal commitment to balance and objectivity - while failing to apply these principles in their own columns. We know as Andre Beaufre said that “Wars are not won on the battle fi eld but in the minds of men”. We still have, Democratic Alliance’s Deputy Chief Whip, Michael Waters, circulating racially offensive pictures on Twitter, which depict ANC voters as dogs lining up to vote for the party. We still have a Peter Mulder who, like his ancestors, told all of us that “Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa. That the Bantu speaking people moved from the equator down while the white people moved from the Cape up to meet each other at the Kei River”, arguing that there was suf fi cient proof that there was no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and North western Cape. In other words telling us that our land was never robbed and therefore we had no claim. All these are similar to Neo-Nazi groups who today continue to spout hatred for Jews and insisting that the Holocaust never occurred. When this is linked to the painful reality of the material life of poverty, unemployment and inequality still experienced by blacks in general and Africans in particular; it constitutes

Neo-Nazi groups today continue to spout hatred for Jews and other minorities, and insist that the Holocaust never occurred. Historical records show that the United States government participated in several conspiracies to help war criminals elude justice. Many of these criminals were talented scientists and engineers, and the U.S. government at that time made a policy decision that it was in the interests of this nation to exploit that talent rather than see that justice was done. The U.S. rocket program in the 1950s and 1960s was heavily in fl uenced by the work of German rocket scientists who had participated in war crimes. Even though as South Africa we chose the Truth and Reconciliation route but the after math of the TRC exercise has presented the country with even more complex challenges which are obstacles to achieving national unity. We still have Wouter Basson loitering in the streets as a freeman. This is a man who according Johan Theron, a former information of fi cer of South Africa’s apartheid who was involved in the deaths of more than 200 anti-apartheid political prisoners between 1979 and 1987, claimed that Dr. Wouter Basson, the former head of South Africa’s chemical and biological warfare (CBW) program, readily supplied him with the lethal drugs which he used on a majority of his victims. Dr. Basson was implicated not only in supplying the drugs used to kill anti-apartheid political prisoners, but also in administering them himself. In October 1999, Chris Pessarra, a retired French Foreign Legionnaire claimed he witnessed Basson injecting political prisoners with poison in their stomach during a fl ight over Mozambique territory. This is a man who after the TRC process continues to walk like a free man in the streets of South Africa and yet

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