Reminiscing about the good times we had stirs up the endorphins in our body. This is often why we enjoy talking about times in the past that was good for us.
We are in danger of becoming bitter, disillusioned people when we reminisce and constantly live in the past in order to bring the past into the present. The world is ever changing and we have to move with the times or be left by the wayside living lives that’s no longer relevant in today’s society.
There are very few people who do not have mobile phones so this indicates that we have changed and adapted to the present technology. Our duty is to accept changing times in situations affecting our lives and adapt accordingly. No amount of whining will stop technology in its tracks because you don’t like the idea of a mobile phone.
The same applies to our political climate. When I hear white people reminisce about the “good ole days,” I’m at a loss how to respond because your good ole days were bad days for many people of colour. So you whine about the lack of policing and fondly recall how you would run to the friendly officer if you were lost or needed a ride home. People of colour, even if they never lived during apartheid, do not have good feelings about the police. We know them to be brutal and violent and to simply ignore our basic rights as citizens. Your whining about the lack of police to poc’s is insensitive to our history and so I have to ask why you would long for something that wasn’t good for us in anyway but to uphold your law and order. Not the law and order because we remember Andries Tatane, we remember the Marikana Miners, both of these terrible events happened at a time people of colour were meant to trust the police. Where is the lobbying and marches to Parliament or the Union Buildings to make our lives safer in the townships we are dying in?
You whine about the full beaches at year end when your space is limited and you feel “uneasy,” with all the people of colour flocking to the beach. You reminisce about the days the beach was a “safe space” for you to just sit and think, catch a tan or calmly walk your dog without its leash. Good times you recall with a faraway look and longing in your eyes. Not once has it occurred to you that there are some people of colour who only manage to scrape together enough money to visit the beach you are close to once a year. You moan about the filth, the public urination but never do you get together with your little book club and lobby for portable loo’s and extra rubbish bins to accommodate the people of colour. The white privilege you have is spent whining about the terrible condition of the beach, once people of colour have gone home, as if it belongs to you. I watch a series on DSTV called Bondi Beach and am amazed at how full the beach is and how well run it is by the Local Council because they make provision for those extra people. Why is it easier for you to simply sit and whine?
In every single way that you could help with integration and smooth transition of people of colour into suburbia, you have resisted. You may not have actively resisted like the right wing groups we have but your failure to do nothing but whine about what you perceive to be your dwindling white privilege, is just as bad if not worse. You reassure us you don’t align yourselves to right wing groups yet you don’t actively speak out against them or march against what they stand for even if you march alone. The constant whining and longing for the good ole days have brought these right wing groups springing into action, playing on your fears and insecurities and even worse, speaking on behalf of you.
Many of you are shaking your heads while reading this and saying, they don’t speak on behalf of us. I disagree! We heard you loud and clear when you spoke out against Zuma, we hear you loud and clear when you speak out against Malema and his “unruly” bunch but we never hear you speak as loudly against right wing groups that would like nothing better than to move back in time, if that were possible, and bring back apartheid. Apologies, not apartheid, that’s too harsh a word, but the “right to self govern” themselves aka separate from all those black people.
