Does SA need a ‘new past’ which views colonialism as awful, but productive?
We’re well into our third decade of inclusive democracy and still the dominant progressive narrative is the one involving black suffering and white guilt. This is entirely understandable, given our history, but deeply problematic nevertheless. It reflects sustained patterns of privilege and privation, but it’s inimical to the kind of growth that could mitigate both those scourges. And to happiness.What follows is, effectively, a call for a new past. What it emphatically isn’t though is an attempt to deny that much of what ails our country today is attributable to the (continuing) legacy of European settlement. Colonialism, and its mutant spawn apartheid, were in force for more than three centuries and their effects will be felt for decades to come. Both were highly exploitative and egregiously racist projects and between them they had an incalculable impact on African culture, institutions and self belief.It’s the four decades from 1948 that draw most latter-day attention, and ire, ...
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