Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) condemns the racist remarks of UNS academic Theo Venter, as well as the general atmosphere of vilification against former president Jacob Zuma
7 June 2018
The Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) is outraged by the insulting and down-right racist remarks that Theo Venter, a political and policy specialist at the North West University (NWU) School of Business and Governance, made during a radio debate with comrade Carl Niehaus, our Spokesperson and MKMVA NEC member, under the title ‘Praat Saam’ (Talk Together) on the Afrikaans radio station Radio Sonder Grense (RSG). The debate was live on RSG on Tuesday the 5th of June 2018 from 08:00 - 09:00, and covered the topic about the responsibility of the South African State and the African National Congress (ANC) towards former President Jacob Zuma.
In the course of the debate Theo Venter saw it fit to make an outrageous comparison between former President Jacob Zuma and the white supremacist Prime Ministers and Presidents that ruled racist and apartheid South Africa since 1910 up to 1994. He made the outrageous claim that former President Zuma was worse than any of them. The full debate, and the deeply offensive comments that Venter made, can be listened to via the following link: https://iono.fm/e/567359 (we apologize that an English transcript of the debate that took place in Afrikaans is not yet available).
What Venter in effect did was to compare an ANC liberation fighter, with an illustrious career as a freedom fighter and a Commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, who was the 12th President of the ANC and 3rd President of our democratic South Africa, in the person of comrade Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, with the likes of DF Malan, Hans Strydom, Hendrik Verwoerd (the architect of apartheid), John Vorster, PW Botha and FW de Klerk. All of them were racist rulers that brutally oppressed black (especially African) South Africans. They were gross human rights abusers of the worst kind, and in terms of international law criminals who should have been charged, brought to book and jailed for the human rights crimes that they have committed.
These racist apartheid monsters were responsible for the destruction of millions of black lives, and the death and mayhem that were inflicted on the majority of black (especially African) South Africans. Not a single black South African escaped the deep physical and psychological abuse, outright destruction and injury that these criminals inflicted on them through the systemic racist system of apartheid. For Venter to even dare to compare Msholozi, who dedicated his whole adult life to the liberation struggle against racist oppression, with these racist human rights abusers and to dare to say that they were better than him was not only grossly insensitive, but it is downright unbridled racist. In doing so Venter exposed himself as totally insensitive to the pain that apartheid through the actions of these white racist leaders inflicted on black South Africans, and the continued negative consequences of apartheid that every black South African still battled with up to this very day.