It’s news to them: Botha’s a Monster

UPDATE: 18-06-08

I have not been able to find any credible source that lists this speech as having everbeen written or presented by PW Botha. I am taking the link to the “speech” off, but I still think it’s fascinating how riled up my colleagues got over this. When I told them it was a fake, they were a bit hesitant in believing me. I told them that this doesn’t meant that Botha wasn’t a monster, but this particular piece was probably not written by him. They accepted my claim based on the fact that none of them could find the speech on the internet AT ALL.Oh, and my apologies to Abdner- I spelled his name wrong below. My bad, mano.

Yesterday I was in the field with Chau, Luisa, Abdiner (one of our field workers) and our Community Development, Sr. Titos Langa. Our visit to Macia (south of Xai-Xai) largely focused on the implementation of a program that teaches parents how to talk to their kids about issues like HIV. The problm is that there is such a strong stigma attached to HIV that parents in rural areas have rarely showed that they have the technical knowledge not to mention the vontade (voice) to sit down with their children and have a frank discussion about safe sex. We are trying to adapt a method that was used successfully in Malawi to sensitize parents to HIV as well as make them comfortable talking about such touchy subjects. It’s a manual that requires the community to act together, so yesterday we went to different communities to talk to the neighborhood leadership to get permission to proceed with the program. Such is the custom that before you do anything in a community, you need to inform the community leaders. These leaders can be school or church directors, and some are elected officials. And then there are the leaders who have inherited some measure of influence under the traditional community structure that still is very strong in Mozambique. Trying to talk to some of these people, some of which are educated and some of which never passed third grade, can be interesting, especially when it comes to topics like HIV. We have all known the kind of leader that refuses to hear information that contradicts his/her way of thinking, right?!

So, we arrived at the first community for a 1000hrs meeting. We got there at 0950. We waited until 1145 until we finally got in touch with the head of the council, who said that people were “on their way”. No surprise, but we had places to be, so we left them.

Such is life here, but you may be wondering what we do for over 2 1/2 hours in the field waiting for a meeting to start. Well, in this case,  Titos randomly whipped out a copy of some sort of speech or document written by former South African President P.W. Botha. Botha was everyone’s favorite racist state leader who continued the Apartheid regime in South Africa- a regime that not only oppressed Black Africans within its own borders but funded the conflicts that destroyed entire nations (see: wars in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique among others). Here is a link to the speech in english:

Botha “speech”- 1985- Removed: 18-6-08

I put quotations around the speech because I have since looked up the speech and found that there are people saying that it is fake. I honestly haven’t done a lot of research on it yet so I won’t yet say if it is a real speech, but that really isn’t the point of this story.

The point is that we passed around the speech for about 45 minutes. Chau ended up reading most of it out loud to us. In it, “Botha” repeatedly refers to blacks as inferior beings to whites. Among other things, they are incapable of leading a country. It is vile stuff, but I was surprised by my colleagues’ reactions. As Chau read it, you could see his blood pressure rise like one of those cartoons where their bodies turn into thermometers. You see the mercury rising in Foghorn Leghorn moments before he blows his stack. That’s what chau reminded me of, only not in a comical way. I really saw the passion in him as he read from the speech. You could tell that if Botha were standing there, Chau would like to probably take a swing at him.

Luisa and Titos and Abdiner had similar responses. They just couldn’t understand how someone exhibits so much hate for other people. Whether or not the speech is true is trivial. We know that hatred exists, and it surprises/pleases me that my colleagues get so worked up about this. Luisa, Chau and Abdiner are all under 30, so I expect them to be a bit removed from blatent racism that accompanied the 70’s and 80’s in Southern Africa. Titos, however, was also worked up. This is a guy who I have never seen raise his voice in anger to ANYONE. The only time he gets really worked up is when he can’t stop laughing. The words ‘jovial’ and ‘wise’ come to mind. At Save, he is one of the patriarchal figures who is always used as the voice of reason.

And yet, Titos looked like he wanted a piece of Botha too. How is it that these folks still get so pissed about something so little as a speech from 20 years ago. I asked them if this type of thing is ever discussed in school. Most had never seen anything so controversial in any type of school, even university (of which all 4 are enrolled  in or have completed to some extent). They said that even in their families, this kind of thing is not normally analyzed. It is only through the distribution at work or through friends that this kind of material reaches their hands. It has also been much easier since they learned how to use the internet.

My main point is that even though we didn’t really get a lot done in the 2 1/2 hours of sitting waiting for a meeting that never happened, we were able to have an amazing discourse on racism and politics in Africa. Something that never would have happened in their classes or at home. Aided by technology and the presence of an American, these folks were able to express themselves about race as well as discuss concepts that don’t normally get a lot of attention during your average workday.

This brings me to another point. Technology in a developing country can be extremely dangerous. I love showing my colleagues how to use e-mail, or how to navigate the internet (Chau is obsessed with Wikipedia). But just imagine how easy it would be to send a statement around that says “Fidel Castro reassumes power: starts nuclear weapons program”. It happens here with spam messages that people think are real offers (“You may have already won the $1,000,000.00 prize!!!!!! Just give us your credit card number!”) and I worry that a lot of people will/have been taken advantage of because of their naivety. I know it happens in the States as well, but we are talking about entire countries who don’t even have widespread secondary school education being able to look at the internet on their phone. Makes for an interesting situation.

Makes me realize how important it is to not just propogate any story you hear to others, esp on the internet. I know that it’s easy to say, but I wonder how many of us have read things on the internet and not realized it was a pice of trash imagined by some whackjob in a basement in Idaho… or Sanibel (minus the basement), or wherever!

But I’m really happy to see folks here get passionat about something. Too often I hear about people in the world (US and Mozambique alike) that just aren’t interested in politics or history,a nd it encourages me when I see “the spark” go off in someone. I just hope that Botha story is true, though if it isn’t I will duly inform my colleagues that it is a piece of crap. And it’ll be off my blog ASAP.