As I sit here and blog, I am in a new home, out of the inner city. After nearly twenty years of life in the inner city, which to start off were fine, and for someone in their twenties, with the convenience of being close to work and good shopping centres/restaurants etc it was great. However the last five years or so, there was definitely a deterioration in the area we lived in, with littering/rubbish, and the proliferation of prostitutes into the street we lived on. If the prostitutes had been discreet and quiet, maybe we would have stuck it out, but there was nothing like that about those women that stood on the street corner, and under the tree outside our house there. Not only were they a noisy lot, they were dirty, leaving used condoms and their mess on the little field opposite our house, and on the pavement, and in the storm drains. From early on in the evening, until well after midnight, one would hear their noisy catcalls and shouting, with men driving past, hooting at them, and shouting back. Often they would park their cars outside our house, music blaring, and conduct their business there and then. Asking them politely in the beginning, not to make a noise, was met with rudeness and then we got frustrated and cross with them, it was like it was our fault, not theirs. I wonder how many of those many men, would appreciate strange people and cars outside their houses, wherever they lived, waking up their wives and children? Complaints to the police did nothing and it seems there was an acceptance of such behaviour, despite the fact that even though this was the inner city, there were still decent hard working people living in the area, with children and schools around. Well, enough was enough. We found a house in a decent suburb. My drive to work is about five minutes longer, so it’s not much further. The streets are clean, and it’s generally quiet. I can say with absolute certainty that I do not miss the grime and noise of the inner city, and am enjoying the relative peace of the area. After what we put up with, particularly the last five years, we deserve this peace.
If there are Americans that had never heard of Rhodesia before, which I am sure there are, Jon Stewart has made sure that his country at least knows there is a Rhodesian badge, and that the Charleston shooter wore it on a jacket. Whether or not there are many Americans that will pick up exactly what he meant by that and that Rhodesia was a country, one wonders.
http://www.rhodesia.nl/mission.htm. While Jon Stewart mentions the “Rhodesian badge” that the Charleston shooter wore on his jacket, and lets his comment sink in – I wonder what he is implying? That all or most white Rhodesians were a racist and murderous lot? For sure, the Rhodesian govt had it’s racist policies and there was war but the majority of us were not bad people. Yes, Ian Smith felt that blacks were not ready to rule themselves then, (or in a thousand years) but whites did not go around whipping, lynching or shooting blacks or riding around on horses, covered in white sheets terrorising people just because they were a different race to us. In Rhodesia, we never had such a group like the KKK in America (as far as I’m aware). Yes the country was segregated, and the blacks did not have the vote – which I am not justifying, but what of America’s history? When did African Americans get true civil rights? In the sixties? Not so long ago really. It seems some Americans may have have short memories in regards to their not so squeaky clean race relations history. Many of us were born in Rhodesia, and it was home to us. Many of us also accepted Zanu PF and Zimbabwe in 1980 and stayed on in the country we were born in and knew as home. The “freedom fighters” or terrorists as the whites called them, were backed by communists, and I think thats where a lot of white fear came from, that we would have future govts led by communists and that we would end up living in countries like Russia or East Germany. I guess though, when one one looks at the mess Zimbabwe is now in, those fears were not wholly unfounded. I am not implying that continued white rule should have carried on, but the Zanu PF Govt led by Mugabe for the last 35 years has certainly not been a successful Govt. It may have started off with hope, but the last fifteen years particularly have not been good and what has happened in Zimbabwe post 1980, cannot simply be blamed on Colonialism, Rhodesia, Rhodes, Imperialism, the West, the white man etc. The current Govt also needs to take it’s fair share of blame for the sad state of affairs the country sees itself in.
That said, pre 1980, atrocities were committed in Rhodesia, in the name of freedom and wrongly so, on very innocent people, children & babies included. While I am not comparing the motives & circumstances of the Charleston shooter to those of the “freedom fighters” – both however killed innocent people, inexcusably so, and the latter did so particularly cruelly and savagely, as happened for example, 37 years ago, to the day, in 1978, at the Elim Mission in the Vumba Mountains when eight missionaries four of whom were young children, including one baby, whose purpose was to serve God, were killed, because they were easy targets. I am not implying either, that all freedom fighters were cruel & merciless killers, but there were those who did kill innocents and that should not be forgotten either, just because they were on the “right” side and the whites were on the “wrong” side. While the freedom fighters may have believed they were fighting for their freedom, those that killed so savagely, lost their respectability and honour when they killed innocent people, those not involved in war and those not even protecting themselves with arms, particularly young children and babies. While America mourns the Charleston victims, and rightly so, let us also never forget those innocent people who died 37 years ago by the hands of evil men.
Rants and Raves of an old hen. 