Letters to my Comrades by Jordan Zweledinga Pallo;

Author:Jordan, Zweledinga Pallo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jacana Media
Published: 2017-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

A response to a letter by Stephen Mulholland, managing editor of Times Media Limited, which combines humour and a stringent critique of Mulholland’s claims.

Letter to the Editor

Sunday Times, 3 February 1992

Sir.

I was persuaded that either the English language has become a little opaque or my ability to express myself clearly in it has become impaired after reading Mr Stephen Mulholland’s letter in the Sunday Times, 2nd February 1992.

I find it odd that Mr Mullholland seems think that racial laws came onto South African statute books with the National Party’s victory in 1948. Surely he is aware that many of these preceded the 1948 elections by at least 38 years, beginning with the exclusion of people of colour from a full franchise in terms of the 1909 Act of Union. Others, carried over into the Union, came into effect in the British colonies and the Boer republics during the 19th century. I was under the impression that such facts were imparted as part of the high school history syllabus.

The laws I was specifically referring to are the 1913 Natives Land Act; the 1923 Urban Areas Act; the 1927 Native Laws and Administration Act; the 1936 Natives Land and Trust Act and the 1946 Asiatic Land Tenure Act.

Though the National Party opposed none of these laws, it was not directly responsible for any, except for the 1927 Native Laws and Administration Act. After 1948 the National Party built on and elaborated the edifice of racial laws it found in existence, tightening up their provisions and introducing a consistency born of its own fanaticism.

Responsibility for the destruction of the property-owning classes among the African people and other black groups must therefore be shared among both the National Party and the former South African Party/United Party axis.

All serious historians recognise the role played by both the mining houses and White agricultural interests in pressing for the 1913 Land Act: The mining houses motivated by a desire to secure their labour supply; the White farmers to eliminate a troublesome potential competitor. Attempts to saddle the National Party, and by implication its constituency, alone with these pernicious policies will just no longer wash!

The point I wished to make is that having deliberately engineered this set of circumstances through its exclusive hold on political power, the advantaged racial community today insists that property rights are sacred and should not be tampered with.

There is an old Yiddish saying: ‘Please do not piss on my back and tell me its rain! ‘I fear Mr Mullholland seems intent on doing exactly that to your readers. Successive White governments, before and after 1910, have ridden roughshod over the property rights of every black group in this country! The principle, if that is what it can be called, we are being asked to accept is that the property rights of Whites are sacred and should not be tampered with!

My recounting of the tale about the ANC branch in Drakenstein was to illustrate the effect that the power wielded by the property-owning classes, (who now are, thanks to the laws tabulated above, almost exclusively White) over the propertyless.

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