h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is with immense sadness that I saw this morning's headline in the paper: Chris Louw, a 'voice' for so many of us frustrated Afrikaners, committed suicide yesterday. He used an AK47 rifle ... notorious for being the choice arm used by freedom fighters in the days of Apartheid.

Chris Louw was able to voice the extreme discontent of a generation of Afrikaners who felt themselves *doubly betrayed*. First, they were betrayed by the old Apartheid Masters who brainwashed them and even sent many of them off to fight and die for an injust and doomed sytem. Then, they were betrayed by the new post-Apartheid government ... discriminated against for being perceived as part of the 'old order', and shoved aside. So many have lost work, lost status, lost all certainty, and even lost their minds.

In the year 2000, Chris wrote an iconic article called "Boetman is die Bliksem in" elucidating all this. Boetman means 'brother-man'- and is the kind of term used condescendingly by old paternalistic authority figures when addressing younger men such as the ones they sent off to do their dirty work. "Die Bliksem in" is a somewhat rude term that might be translated 'p****d off', but even stronger in sense.

Here's an excerpt of what Louw wrote:

"You were the first generation of Afrikaners who delegated your children to go and die for you ... The Generation who took up the burden to form its children by its own hand, and to cast them: tin soldiers who had to go to the border to fight, to kill and be killed, for your ideals."

The article just took off under the Afrikaans people and became *the* manifesto of how so many of us felt. It was, as said in the article in the paper, the needle that lanced the boil of our unspoken thoughts and feelings that have been festering in silence for decades. 'Boetman' became Chris Louw's nickname after then.

But Louw was equally critical of the new SA government, for its corruption, for its inadequacies, for continued discrimination, and for betraying the ideals of white *and* black in this country. Chris was evenhanded in his criticism, he was a true voice of reason.

But there was always the underlying frustration, the feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. Another excerpt of his writing:

"What is left for me? I am too old to be totally innocent. I am too young to be totally culpable. I am too innocent to concoct excuses. I am too guilty to wash my hands. I am fed up [actually a much stronger term], totally, fed up to the throat, with having to take orders. First from the Apartheid patriarchs, now from the same converted Pontius-Pilate patriarchs, and from the new black Elite ..."

His criticism was scathing but justified. He was the voice that would not be silenced.

Chris Louw especially reported on crime recently and the despair felt by many communities who feel they've been left to the wolves. It seems this despair took hold on him and became too much. After a few messsages sent, sort of announcing his intended suicide, he retreated to an old bird cage on his small farm and shot himself with the AK47 that people still don't know how he obtained. This was the very same kind of rifle that killed so many of his friends and fellow-'Boetmans' who were sent off to die and get killed for Apartheid.

So, after all, the voice of disillusionment and frustration, the voice calling for true justice and fairness to all, is indeed now silenced.

He leaves behind his wife and two grown-up children. My condolences and best wishes go out to them.

Very difficult for him. For you too, your's is also a difficult generation to be in.

Yes, inherited guilt feelings are impossible to dissolve; even if you are of totally the opposite opinion.

P (my partner)is German & still feels innate guilt about the Holocaust which happened many years before he was born; yet is about as liberal, non racist, free-thinking a person as could be.

R.I.P Boetman

Hello Waz and Terri and thanks for your comments! Terri, there's more than just 'inherited' guilt here ... there's *actual* guilt of people who have been 'duped' into supporting an evil system in their *own* lifetimes. The guilt of 'having to have known better'. That's my own guilt ... even though I was only a teenager, and I learnt what was for in my early twenties, and didn't really ever do anything to harm anyone ... I feel guilty for, for a while, having thought the notion of Apartheid wasn't so bad. Guilty for having, for a while disregarded the aspirations of 'peoples' other than my own'. Now ... in effect, I have no 'people' any more, apart from Humanity as a whole itself, and even more - animals and plants too. A 'brother-and-sisterhood' of all living things. That's the only thing that makes sense to me now.

Anyways, there are still 'holocausts' of sorts happening, still atrocities where people 'should have known better', but let them happen ... still there will come future generations who will look back about what messes we made, and they will ask us - "how could you have done such things, or let them happen?"

Yes, maybe these things creep up so gradually 'nice' people like us don't actually realise it's happening until too late.

I feel a certain inherited guilt for being (possibly) part English; since they colonised so much, so aggresively.

I'll probably never know my actual genetic background; probably a mix of half Irish & maybe half or quarter Asian Indian, but raised in England.

I think all we can do is what we are doing; with awareness, we see individuals, regardless of race, disability or whatever as humans who inhabit this 'small but mostly harmless' 3rd rock from the sun & try to do our best to be kind.

We won't always succeed, we are not God, or even , but we can *try* to be as good as possible....you certainly do.

zdt

Hi again Terri! The 'creeping up on nice people' effect ... in my case, I see it, as 'nice people' not having a sufficiently wide view to understand all the repercussions of things. They can be easily taken in, easily lied to, easily manipulated ... brainwashed, even. They're naive and trusting and literally don't see the 'not-niceness'. Or they see the not-niceness but don't realise the way they themselves cause it ... or contribute to it ... or how they *could* act in order to do away with it.

Right now in the world there are several 'evil systems' still at work. Global capitalism is one of them. Many nice people don't see the problem with this because they believe what economists say. They think that communism was *the* evil system, they don't see the evils of capitalism as well. To make my own stance clear: the evils of capitalism are mainly the way money is turned into an absolute ... it becomes the 'raison d'etre' for human life which it is not! And ... rich people become the 'standard' for human life (and 'lifestyle' - I hate that word) and human aspirations ... the word or concept 'enough' is driven to extinction. Capitalism is inherently greedy, and greed is destroying our worlds. Perhaps later an entry about the sins of capitalism!

And ... the thinking has been so 'dualistic' ... there was communism, then capitalism. Now, communism is over and done with - it was a horrible flop - so now, *all* that is left, is capitalism, and we must fully embrace that. Communism has been the loser so capitalism must be the winner! And so ... 'nice' people go along with it, and close their eyes to the evils.

And we have so many smart people coming to the defense of the principles of our global economy! What the world needs ... is more growth, more prosperity. Those words sound so good and nice, don't they? But growth and prosperity brought us to the mess we are in right now! The very search for prosperity ... is bringing prosperity to *some* at the cost of misery for so many *more*. Growth ... economic growth, technological growth, growth in agricultural production ... is responsible for there being too many people on the planet, for the pollution and the greenhouse gases that may threaten our global climate and our civilisation itself.

I see the advertisements on TV by energy companies ... the 'sinners' when it comes to destroying the balance of nature ... saying what we need, is more energy! More of what caused the problem in the first place! They spin the issue and promise us 'clean and sustainable' energy. Oh really? Show me!!!

But it all sounds so nice! In economic terms again ... we should invest money into 'clean energy' ... thus the technology will be developed, and we will all become rich, too!

NOBODY ... well, nobody I know of, that has a clear and loud 'voice' ... is saying to people what they *need* to hear ... just what they *want* to hear. And we've brought this upon ourselves ... we've become too comfortable, heck, we ... we modern, educated, affluent, Western-civilisation people ... have *always* had a very complacent view of things, of ourselves. The issues we need to face are *nasty* ... and may hit us in places that will hurt like heck.

THERE ARE OTHER WAYS ... but we may literally have to rip ourselves loose from the crippling mindsets of the past ... watch our own comfortable world-views collapse ... let go of our pretensions, and our dreams even ... and face a stark reality, in our nakedness and insecurity ... and *face up to it*.