EDITORIAL: Zille was out of line
Blanket defenders of colonialism often use language that appears to be factual, but is actually code for a racist commentary — black people were and are incapable of building and running things
After Adolf Hitler came to power, before World War 2, the national network of autobahns was built. National feeding schemes were introduced. Unemployment was reduced from a third of working Germans to zero. Does this mean the Nazis should be given some credit? Try telling that to the Jews, 6m of whom were murdered, and to the families of millions who died in a war that was waged by a mad dictator. Infrastructure is useful, but it is fallacious to equate its creation automatically with benevolent government. Western Cape premier Helen Zille may have been factually correct when she tweeted that SA’s independent judiciary, transport infrastructure and piped water network had their origins in the colonial era. She disputed that “the legacy of colonialism was only negative”. This was quickly interpreted in the resultant social-media storm as an endorsement of colonialism, which she denied. Blanket defenders of colonialism often use language that appears to be factual, but is actually cod...
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