Man, been busy these past couple days. But, bonus: have successfully convinced the scanner function on my printer/scanner to work with my laptop (previous frustrations). The software I used to use is still refusing to function, and it does other weird stuff (e.g. I can scan to my laptop from the laptop, but I can’t scan to my laptop from the scanner), but it goes. Hurrah!
So anyway, instead of a long blog, I’m just going to do what all us Kiwi bloggers do when we’re just phoning it in: quote the supremely self-satisfied Mayor of W(h)anganui, Michael Laws.
it was obvious, even in 1981, a liberated South Africa would exchange one form of madness for another. Apartheid was evil. So too is the African disease that has enveloped that nation, and from which it is condemned to never recover. (Sunday Star Times column, yesterday)
Evil of Apartheid = Evil of “the African disease”
I have no words.
Which is fine, because I need to do more work. Hurrah! Thank you Michael Laws!
I genuinely don’t know what he’s talking about there.
Yeah, I don’t either.
If I was to guess, I’d say it’s the corruption and violence that is endemic throughout Africa and stops them from being civilized.
i.e. it is a precise reframing of “yes our oppressive and violent colonial rule is bad, but without us these damned fuzzy-wuzzies would all kill and eat each other because they’re primitive beasts really”
Or maybe he’s talking about AIDS.
Or… I can’t think of anything else.
I think (with no comment as whether he has a good point, or he is crazy, or some combination), that he is saying that after apartheid (which he states was evil, and racist against black South Africans), the pendulum has swung too far the other way, with racism against white South Aftricans (which he states is also evil). That’s assuming that by “African Disease” he means “black African disease”. Which is a fairly big and disturbing assumption to make….