I hope she surrenders our passport, while she is at it.
—Zukiswa Wanner
Annelie Botes in the colour she dislikes
Afrikaans author Annelie Botes, 53, was not unhappy to confirm that she is a racist. She told Rapport newspaper that she is scared of Black people and dislikes Black people. However, she likes Indian and mixed-race people.
What of albinos and Asians that are as dark skinned as Black people? A recent DNA revealed that Adolf Hitler’s ancestors were Jewish and Black people but he was an ignorant and arrogant racist like Annelie Botes in his lifetime.
“I don’t like black people.”
She continued: “I don’t understand them! … I know they are people just like me. I know they have the same rights as me. But I do not understand them. And then I do not like them. I avoid them because I am scared of them … My neighbour was brutally murdered. For what?
“If black people are hungry, why don’t they, like in the old days, break in, steal the fridge and walk away? I know where their anger comes from. It has f**k all to do with apartheid. They are angry because of their own incompetence.”
—-iOL News
Botes stuck to her racial comments that sparked off a debate in the print and electronic media. She later told Rapport that she meant that she did not like “all black people”. What much difference did it make? She probably contacted Rapport because she lost a job as a newspaper columnist elsewhere and her publisher refused to be involved in her racial mess. Botes is a bigot that cannot always own up to her claims and counter claims.
It was probably better for her to stop pretending to like Black people than dine with them with long spoons. She claimed that her laptop was once stolen with her manuscript but was she ever mugged or attacked by Black people? Her racist slur was outrageous for a widely travelled writer because criminals exist in all countries.
If you hate Black people why live in a Black country? Has she forgotten that apartheid is abolished like slave trade? The years of racism in South Africa are gone forever. If she had made the same comments in a West African country, Embassy officials may not renew her visa. Luckily, Botes is ‘presumably’ a South African Citizen.
What Botes should have done during the interview was to point out the fact that the South African government is not doing enough to rehabilitate young offenders and drug addicts or curb the high rate of crime in the country. It is as if the downtrodden are neglected or relegated to the slums and don’t fit in, in the new South Africa.
Botes may need ‘book therapy’ to get over her neighbour’s death. I would suggest that she is annually invited to the Black History Month celebration in London, New York, Berlin, Hamburg or Prague. A holiday in the Bahamas may do her wrinkled cheeks some good… Maybe she has never met a nice black person in her life but then… is she a nice person?
It was unfair for Botes to delibrately put a criminal tag on black South African people because of the lapses in President Jacob Zuma’s government, when the president preferred to marry more wives as if that was what he was elected to do. Anyway, his second wife allegedly had an affair with her bodyguard. Polygamist Zuma, 68, got married five times 'and has 20 children'.
Author in trouble over racial slur
I don't like black people, says South African novelist
DNA tests reveal 'Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated'
Hurricane Sanusi and the Chambers of Rogues
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi aka Hurricane Sanusi
Some Nigerians now spell the lower chamber of the National Assembly as the notorious House of 'Representathieves'. Of course, not all of them are rogues but which one of them has ever returned his or her share of the ‘freebies’ in anger with claims that the ‘booty’ was too much as per US dollars? The upper house is not better. In fact, the Senate President wants to remain on his seat rather than buzz off like a bee.
Last week, the chambers of rogues had the effrontery to summon the Governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi aka Hurricane Sanusi, one after the other in order to intimidate him because he was bold enough to conclude that about 25% of the annual budget went to the National Assembly lawmakers, sorry lawbreakers.
Instead of the senators or 'sinators' to bow to fate they decided to invite Sanusi and the Finance Minister Segun Aganga to scolding sessions. They said Sanusi’s calculation was wrong and tried to muzzle him but failed woefully because Sanusi refused to retract his statement or apologise while Aganga denied misleading the nation with his utterances.
The argument is not whether Sanusi's calculation was wrong or not but the fact that their purported or ‘correct calculation’ was still too much to be spent on lazy lawmakers in the first place. After all, a legal luminary, Professor Itse Sagay revealed that each Nigerian senator earns a fatter salary than the US President Barack Obama. The July 2010 allegation made some Nigerians in the Diaspora very glum.
How many bills have they passed this year? They spent months off on recess as if they were all on maternity leave with twins, triplets and quadruplets. When Sanusi could no longer bear the ‘interrogation’, he almost lost his temper and said he could resign if they wanted him to. It was too much for a man who worked as hard as he could to reform the banking system amid criticism to bear.
2009 was a significant year for Nigeria’s banking sector. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, the mass bank fraud perpetrated by major bank CEOs was exposed and they were sacked. If not for Sanusi, the bank fraudsters would still be in big financial businesses.
Nigeria needs a Senate President and Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives that think like Sanusi. Of course a large majority of lawmakers would say, “God forbid bad thing”. Such a Senate President would slice his salary into two and admit that he is over paid but elected to serve.
He/she would make sure that apart from legislative sessions there are committees working on how to gradually abolish all the draconian military laws in the constitution within the next few years. Why should military laws still remain in force under democratic governance?
Such military laws are some of the the reasons why some retired soldiers, including Senate President David Mark, are still interested in politics. Former dictator Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s brouhaha was not for nothing. If the PDP had not clipped his wings, he planned to return to power in order to continue with his old military decrees.
Presidential candidates Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari have paramilitary and military antecedence and are not better that Babangida in anyway. In fact, Babangida is more intelligent than them. It could be ‘dangerous’ and undemocratic to allow Atiku or Buhari to rule Nigeria as democratic presidents when they would have access to military laws. Although, it must be emphasized that Nuhu Ribadu’s 'paramilitary background' can be overlooked because of his successful tenure as the boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Theoretically, David Mark protects the senate in order to keep the military laws in check. There are upright Nigerians like Sanusi but most of them are unlikely to end up in the corridors of power because they are blunt to the core.
Reps to question Sanusi today
I stand by my statement -Sanusi
NASS Budget: Sanusi refuses to shift grounds
FG, Senate succumb as Sanusi wins spending debate
Ade Adepitan on 'African Voices'
Ade Adepitan
Ade Adepitan is a Paralympic basketball star, TV presenter, actor and motivational speaker in the UK. Some months ago, he was on the cover of a British Telecom phone book. The CNN interview on African Voices shows that he has not forgotten his African roots and still has a good memory of his childhood.
Adepitan, 37, has not allowed his disability to stop him from achieving his goals in life. He suffered from polio and became disabled in Nigeria before he came to the UK with his parents. He received two honorary doctorate degrees from British universities in 2006 and 2010 and was awarded an MBE in 2005.
