Seeing the light

A friend of mine at work is a Eugene Terreblanche hater. Before ETs death he would often decry me (and all South Africans) because nobody had killed him yet. In his view, as a blatant racist and inciter of violence he needed to be 'offed'.

I always laughed at him (kind of nervously) becuase I never really knew what to make of his tirades. Unfortunately it is only in ETs death that I find the answer. The fact that ET was allowed to live free and do his thing (whether that was going to jail, rattling on about some idea that white people might be better in some way than black people because they are white, falling of his horse, being a reason for many South Africans to be grateful that white neo-nazi's in SA don't have a better leader) in South Africa and was NOT killed by someone or tried by a kangaroo court shows exactly the type of miracle that the New South Africa is. A place where you can be a crazy, and still expect to be tried according to the laws of the same country all the other crazies are tried according to.

I think that if through his death and the trial of his killers, if we can keep this foremost in our minds, that all South Africans are equal in front of the law, we'll stay on track as a nation. No matter how much Julius Malema, Steve Hofmeyer and Jonah Fisher are trotted out to try to get us to forget this, we need to remember that all are innocent until proven guilty. And if I had another opportunity from my work colleague, I would love to tell him how ET living there is the best example of the beauty of South Africa.

What I'd like to see is some cunning plans on how we can all contribute to upholding these sorts of laws in our everyday lives.