Take a chill pill on colonialism, says human rights lawyer

Human rights advocate Richard Spoor took to Facebook on Monday Night to express what was “on his mind” in the wake of the great anger towards Western Cape premier Helen Zille, who has been accused of racism for tweeting that not all aspects of the colonial legacy are bad.

She has subsequently apologised for what she said was not her intention to come across as defending colonialism.

Spoor points out in his post that colonialism “pertains to the conquest of and domination by one nation over another” and that “slavery and the violent and brutal suppression of resistance are chief among” the consequences of colonialism.

However, he writes that it also “introduces the coloniser’s cultures, traditions and technology”. He argues that religions such as Christianity and Islam have all been spread through “colonial conquest” and that technologies such as “reading, writing and guns are good examples of technologies introduced by colonisation”, though these could also have been introduced through more peaceful means.

To support this, he offers the example of Ethiopia and China that were never colonised and yet were also able to adopt modern technologies.

After a long explanation of how modern concepts and practices were birthed by the Enlightenment in Europe, he writes that, “ironically, the enormous economic and technological benefits that flowed from the enlightenment led directly to the age of colonialism that defined the greater part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century”.

“Colonialism was its own nemesis, the ideas and the technology birthed by the enlightenment were adopted by the colonised to resist and to oppose colonisation.

“In the latter half of the 20th century the colonised successfully fought for and regained their sovereignty.

“Had the colonised not adopted many of the ideas and technology introduced by the coloniser, the liberation movements would not have achieved a fraction of what they did.

“So let’s take a chill pill.

“Colonisation is bad, but many of the the ideas and values and technology that it introduced have been adopted and internalised by us, the colonised, and have made us stronger and better.”

Read the full post below.

Although his post received support and was widely shared, it also came in for severe criticism. Some people had not taken their “chill pills” on the subject.

Moemedi Kepadisa told him: “Hitler invented the Volkswagen, as a concept of a vehicle for the masses. I guess this makes Nazism a beneficent ideology. The 6 millions Jews should be grateful for that, I guess. Your logic is truly astounding for a human rights lawyer.”

Fernandez Pedro responded: “I am also grateful to the colonisers for repeatedly raping my mothers, beating my fathers, dispossesing us from everything my family owned, destroying our language, culture and forcing foreign names into us. They did really great in this land of ours these colonisers who brought ‘development’ to our land.”