by Hannes Wessels 

Looking on as the EFF (Economic Freedom Front) men and women in red run amuck, vandalising over 400 Clicks stores around the country with impunity, causing millions of Rands worth of damage, all sorts of questions and harsh reminders jump out at me about how we got here and why we’re in such a mess.

The latest sorry saga starts with an advert that appears to be suggesting that ‘fine and flat’, white hair is more desirable than black hair. Just who wants ‘fine, flat’ hair so badly is missed on me, but this has touched off a political firestorm, rampant wrecking mobs and a major retailer is reeling from the fallout. One EFF leader in the Eastern Cape has now called for the burning down of a hospital because it contains a Clicks store. Out of all the ensuing, blatantly criminal behaviour that has happened country-wide, the only person I have seen arrested is an elderly white lady in a Port Elizabeth shopping mall who produced a pistol when she felt threatened on being surrounded by one of the mobs in red.

All this against a backdrop of  R500 billion designated for Covid-relief going missing, a disastrous drop in the country’s GDP, millions of people on the breadline, crime on the rise, hospitals collapsing, dysfunctional schools, a judiciary looking increasingly unreliable and law enforcement agencies becoming more and more ineffectual.

The first question I ask is when is advertising not about something we might want but may not necessarily have and may never have? Should adverts trumpeting the joys of having hair upon heads, whether tight and curly or flat and straight then give bald people the right to go and trash a Clicks store. Should I be angry when I see an advertisement for a Range Rover and know I will never own one, but most of the ANC hierarchy can, despite never having done a day’s work in their lives. And what about slimming solutions; should these not cause outrage among the obese who might ask what is wrong with weighing in at over 300 lbs?

The fact is, it is no secret that many black women, for reasons known only to themselves, do want flatter, straighter hair and they spend enormous sums of money on acquiring this look. The former, US First Lady Michelle Obama is one of these women. Is it now the fault of white people everywhere that some people of different ethnicities, want to look like them? If it is their fault, as appears to be the widely held view, then what are they to do about it? How now do they eliminate the ‘whiteness’ that appears to be so problematic? They certainly cannot renounce their natural look and identity and try another because that will bring howls of outrage involving charges of ‘cultural appropriation’.

My daughter, studying in London, has recently been berated by a black fellow-student for wearing a bead-bracelet purchased from a local lady in Kenya; God help her if she were to try any harder to look ‘African’. The blame game knows no bounds in this country. Let us not forget an ANC MP blamed whites for dams that were not filling in the Eastern Cape because white racists during the apartheid era had built them too big. We also have on record a minister blaming whites for blighting the country with ‘cold fronts’. And an MP who believes lightening specifically targets blacks, so not even God (who I assume is white) appears innocent of being a racist.

Julius Malema, the man who triggered the violent furore when he put out a tweet rallying his troops: “Fellow fighters and ground forces; ATTACK!!” He went on: “If they want war give it to them including any landlord of any mall who refuses you entrance.”

Mr. Malema seems to have no problem with double standards. Here he claims to have a problem with the perception of some that there is something superior in white Western culture that is being exploited by the ‘white-monopoly-capitalists’. But this is the same man who seems to spend vast amounts of money (where he gets it from is not known to me) on the best watches, shoes, cars and fashion brands, all of which are made by white people in that dreadful place known as Europe where most of Africa is trying to break into. Why we see so little of him in more traditional, ethnic attire, is a question he needs to answer because as a political figure of consequence, in the way he conducts his personal life, he appears to be sending all the wrong signals if he’s genuinely interested in the noble concept of ‘black pride’. If we lived on a level playing field when it came to trading insults, Mr. Malema would have a very tough time defending himself against charges of ‘cultural appropriation’.

And while the accepted wisdom is that this whole alleged outrage was orchestrated by ‘white supremacists’ lording themselves over their black compatriots, it appears this is far from the truth. The CEO of the company is an Indian, highly placed employees in the corporate’s management and marketing departments are black, and the actual advertisement came from an agency with significant input from black staff members, but this will not be made widely known in the interests of legitimising the actions and targets of the belligerents.

What is also clear is that Clicks has, over the years, made a massive effort to right the alleged wrongs of the segregated past by actioning a range of initiatives aimed at empowering and enriching black employees and share-holders while following, ironically, a business stratagem that is biased against whites. But the lesson to be learned here is that your best is invariably not good enough in the dangerous process of trying to be fair while making amends for past mistakes. When the political extremists sense an opportunity to make mayhem and attract publicity, facts and good intentions amount to nowt.

Old habits die hard; Piet Retief also tried to do what he thought was right and honourable in the quest to achieve racial harmony based on fair play and look what happened to him.  Unlike the Clicks management hierarchy, he and his people did not live long enough to fall upon their knees and plead to be forgiven for having done nothing wrong.

 

26 thoughts on “Hair-raising Hypocrisy.”
  1. Unfortunately Hannes you are preaching to the converted. South Africa has already begun the certain slide towards the precipice of self destruction that every indignant African country has felt it right to enact and the deja vue I feel right now in SA is copy/paste Zimbabwe. There is a shona saying which translates to “caterpillars are stupid, they eat the trees they live on”.

  2. God the Creator, created us ‘in His image’, which has nothing to do with physical bodies.
    God is not white, black, brown or yellow, because God is not a person.
    God cannot be objectivised because God is not an object.
    God can only be perceived as “the Peace that surpasseth Understanding”, or in ‘samadhi’ which can only be directly experienced.
    One needs to earn that Experience through effort, in the spiritual search – it cannot simply be demanded.
    Those demanding ‘proof’ need to be reminded of the saying ‘Never give strawberries to pigs’.
    This is me wearing my esoteric hat today.
    We can live life at the mundane level of the world and worldly things.
    Or we can remember there is a higher level, that we are all spiritual beings, children of God, having a brief physical experience.
    We can get ‘lost’ in that physical experience of “my life” or we can remember who we really are, God’s eternal creations.
    That is why eastern spiritual philosophy describes the physical world as ‘maya’ – ‘illusion’.

    1. This response is an excellent, short yet succinct passage of the real perspective we should all have, yet we deny the spiritual side of our nature in this atavistic culture. We should instead be focused on our father God who has created us to spend eternity with him if we have a relationship with Him.
      God isnt seen, but the evidence of his handiwork is as obvious as the smallest creature, or the enormity of the universe that surrounds us.

    1. Hi Salvatore, I would like to have that option but from what I see of the constitution it’s a very long shot indeed from a legal point of view. There is an allowance for ‘self determination’ but under onerous conditions. I actually believe the only way Africa has any chance of being turned around would be through the creation of mini-states within countries where specific cities and surrounds have some sort of autonomy and might have a chance to escape the endemic incompetence and misrule that characterises most of the continent.

  3. A great article, I weep for all the hard working blacks that were affected by the EFF criminal acts – and ANC looting -please could we find a way to charge and jail those responsible?

    1. I weep for all the hard working White peoples who are unemployed due to the apartheid ANC’s racist anti-White BEE B.S.

  4. I think we are truly stuffed.

    One cannot reason with illogical logic.

    Poor Spock must be having the worst nightmares……..

  5. Good one Hannes,
    Mandela’s dream of the Rainbow Nation finding a pot of gold at the end, with this ANC/EFF comrade practice will end up in a huge black hole.
    And, it’s happening sooner, rather than later.

  6. As always Hannes a great synopsis of current situation. I personally feel that like the Americans its time to stand up and be counted against the gross lawlessness that is sweeping through the world like a raging bushfire before the New World Order swamps the boat .

    1. Sadly Ant, America is experiencing the same madness and woke platitudes that are, like the roman empire, undermining and crumbling it. We need to realise that the barbarian is at the gate.

  7. It is frustrating. The blame culture is rife, not only in SA but around the world. The unfortunate part; whilst we find this frustrating, we are the exception, the masses tend to believe based on the level of intelligence and the propaganda machine that understands this level of intelligence.

  8. Cry the beloved Continent. Sadly it’s finished. There is no coming back from the abyss into which it has fallen. For those believing otherwise have a real deep think again. It’s tribalism playing out out again. Sadly no matter how much we think tribalism has disappeared it is very much alive in Africa and will remain so. It is apparently still alive and well in the USA too as events in SA are in my view nothing more than a mirror of ongoing events in America. These people apparently are above the rule of law and order and unless authorities and police put a stop to this chaos God knows where this ends. I see Africa’s return to the 1900’s very soon

    1. Yes Warwick your foresight may come true. Africa may well return to where it existed in the early 1900’s. As a publisher in Zimbabwe I once put this suggestion to Robert Mugabe who in response smiled and replied.
      ‘That’s fine with me. People living at a subsistence level are easy to control. I don’t want to see people like you in my country as you are too outspoken and therefore difficult to control.’
      Thinking white and black Africans are united in their desire to live in a democratic Africa and make no mistake there are millions of black Africans in this category. This will never happen with the paradox that currently exists on the continent. How can we expect a democracy to emerge when the only seemingly peaceful method of attaining it is undemocratic to the core?

      1. As a postscript I’d like to say how much I enjoy and am stimulated by being a member of this group of postings. However when I think deeply about it I believe that all the intellect, experience and goodwill that I’m fortunate to share with fellow contributors are in the main ‘preachings to the converted.’
        As a past Chairman of the Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe, I attempted, and I now realise somewhat naively, to influence peaceful political change in that country. There is no doubt that as a political party we, the MDC, won all the elections that we contested but the corrupt vote counting ensured that our victories were never recognized. Even more tragic many of my colleagues are now dead simply because they had their own hopes, beliefs and stories to tell.
        I sense that the same scenarios are being played out in South Africa and Uganda, just to name two African countries that immediately spring to mind.
        So how do we overcome this corrupt curse peacefully? Anyone who has the answer to that question and who is brave enough to enact it could save not only Africa but the world.

  9. The fact is they have nothing to offer and all this is a smoke screen to hide what they are really up to unfortunately there are those that aren’t bright enough to see through them. Everything they do is opportunist and aimed at drawing attention to themselves through mayhem but when a stand is made as was the case in Hermanus they run like the cowards that they are.

    1. Well said Jack. But what about us white folk?
      We should also wake up and comprehend that there are many black people who think the same way as you. Us whites are often quick to generalize and slow to analyze.
      I was a Provincial Chairman of the Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe. Many of my white colleagues joined me in extensive research in both rural and urban areas in our attempts to establish what our black party members really felt about our country’s political and human relations. Most of the data we collected confirmed the points you have expressed.
      The MDC won the main ‘battle’, the elections but the Mugabe regime won the ‘war.’ They continued to rule. Why?
      Because of corruption and intimidation, the latter being the most prevalent. The threat and consequential fear of the murder of your family (not just yourself) if you don’t succumb to the regime’s wishes is what destroys any hope of democracy. I only stopped my legitimate campaigning because of the regimes threat which simply was … ‘Stop now! We know where your mother lives.’
      All our members also have mothers and family.
      Kleptocratic control has little to do with race and much to do with power and self-seeking control. Kleptocrats are colourblind.

  10. Sad for so many decades that when you stand up against criminal intent, that you become expedient “collateral damage”, and more likely, the guilty party dragged straight off to a holding cell until further notice. That of course, if you survive an attack from a suddenly offended self-righteous mob. One can only wonder so much as to what extent the “Man-in-the-hat” (love your description Steve), chief SANDF honcho and Covid Task/Command Force (sounds so awfully ominous and omnipotent but for whom?) allow, condone, abet and frankly, stand idly by while insolent and possibly ignorant mob members go about disrupting good people going about their daily lives and business owners attempting to operate. Maybe the EFF had shopping lists to fill for these “stalwarts” protecting us from our own terrible selves. Obviously, hair in these “upper echelons” is of paramount importance as witnessed by their gross impotence and incompetence in being unable to even control any of these actions despite being forewarned???? The World villifies Hitler and his henchmen but how many little Hitlers and co have sprung up in Africa, even before Hitler’s times? Some of them from old were and still are well-respected and considered worthy opponents but as for the current bunch of BA’s and MA’s and “honourary Doctors'”, the more said in fact, the better! Hannes, good article as always and I do enjoy the factual read.

  11. Thank you for this well written and carefully researched article Hannes. Its content is based upon good old fashioned common sense, intellect and logic. This is why it will not be heard, understood or considered by the arbitrators of these crimes.
    Deep down these criminal actions are not really about race they are about kleptocratic control of the Nation. The ‘Race Card’ is merely the seedbed that propagates the poison.

  12. Thank you as always for your clear and rational viewpoint of this world gone mad. The mindless and inane chanting parodied across the world is certainly a wake up call. Whites berating other whites for being white is the epitome of ludicrousness in society today. Take care, keep writing and all the best.

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