Paramilitary demagogue, dare I say, Carl Niehaus, has rubbed many people the wrong way.
Strange enough that each time I see Carl rambling on about “white monopoly capital” and other some such rhetoric, my mind travels back down memory lane.
The first time I heard or saw the younger Carl was when he was in leg-irons, frog-marched to court after being captured as a terrorist for the then outlawed ANC.
With a bushy beard, the young Afrikaner looked awkward as he punched the air in a “viva!” salute to his beloved ANC.
Fast forward to the release of political prisoners, the SABC hosted a pre-1994 talk show which featured political parties across the spectrum.
One of those pitted Carl of the ANC against the late Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) firebrand Youth Brigade strongman, Themba Khoza.
The irony was that Themba was a blue-blooded Zulu warrior, while Carl was a former underground operative of an erstwhile terrorist organisation, the ANC.
During the heated exchanges, Themba dared Carl that he was Afrikaner (or white) and “privileged”, while he, the descendent of King Shaka, was black and “oppressed”.
Carl’s response caught Themba completely off-guard.
The young Afrikaner dared to Themba that he, as an IFP Youth Brigade operative, was trained by the Apartheid System to do battle with fellow blacks (ANC), while he (Carl) was a political prisoner for taking up arms against the self-same regime.
In response, Themba was so furious that he nearly spat Carl in the face.
I share this race-based irony to re-enforce my personal argument that this thing about racial profiling continued to be exposed for what it is: a weapon of the intellectually-weak to intimidate political opponents.
While on a workshop in the lovely valley of Genandedaal east of Cape Town the other day, my curiosity was drawn to a pitch-black English gentleman, who told me how he feared coming to South Africa.
He feared malaria and all other creepy-crawlies associated with you and me who are proud of being as South African as “pap en boerewors.”
At the workshop there was also a Coloured Capetonian, whose skin pigmentation was as white as that of Jan van Riebeeck.
For one reason or the other, the Coloured fellow and the English gentleman did not see eye to eye, until the Capetonian stormed out of the workshop.
When I helped him carry his bags to find a taxi back home, the Capetonian was poignantly lyrical about how he was proud to be a “real” African, compared to the black man from the United Kingdom.
The Capetonian even half-closed his blue eyes and raised his open palm, saluting his political inspiration, Professor Robert Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.
