Go easy on Tumi Morake – we still carry the scars of apartheid

Twenty-six years after the abolition of a crime against humanity, its effects are still evident.

Tumi Morake. Picture: supplied.

If anything, the Jacaranda FM saga goes to prove that South Africa truly has a long way to go in terms of racial unification.

I’m not taking sides, but it must be said that it’s sad that a simple analogy about a bicycle can lead to such a reaction.

Perhaps the furore would have been less dramatic had Ms Morake not used the word “bully”, which is where I suspect the trigger was. Apartheid is a tricky one for all of us, not just Afrikaners.

Twenty-six years after the abolition of apartheid, its effects are still evident.

It’s in the squalor of dilapidated townships and villages of predominately black residents. It’s in the exploitation of farm workers. It’s in the inability of black families to send their children to the best schools without having to beg “madam and baas” for a little extra.

If you want to see the after-effects of real apartheid, look at family members of those who disappeared and were buried in shallow graves, in the MK veterans who sacrificed for this freedom we enjoy.

This freedom where the black majority has the right to do even the most menial of tasks, go to the beach without prior authorisation from an unfair system, sit on any park bench without having to question if someone of their pigmentation was allowed to do so.

There is a misconception that every black family turned out to be like the Sisulu, Mandela, Tambo, Zuma and Ramaphosa families after apartheid because of BEE. Not all black families got their happy endings.

I only met my uncle for the first time this year and I’m 31. He fled South Africa for the United States just after the 1976 revolt. We didn’t get a fat cheque in the mail or 20 seats in parliament post the 1994 elections. Life just carried on. Not all of us hit the post-apartheid jackpot.

Like I said, perhaps Ms Morake might have shot herself in the foot with the bully comment, but that does not invalidate her statement.

So I implore you to forgive us. These are serious scars we carry and, to some extent, they have become a part of us and will be a part of the generation that will follow us.