THE PARIS TERRORIST ATTACK OF 13 NOVEMBER 2015 - A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

THE PARIS TERRORIST ATTACK OF

13 NOVEMBER 2015

A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

Stes de Necker

As a South African I wish to pay my respect to those Parisians who lost their lives in the diabolical terrorist attack in Paris on the night of 13 November 2015.

I’m convinced that I speak on behalf of many South Africans in offering my condolences to all those who have lost a loved one during this diabolical attack and we express our solidarity with the French people suffering now the trauma of this murderous mayhem perpetrated on innocent people.

As a Christian I denounce any and all acts of genocidal, homicidal, and suicidal violence, anywhere in the world; and in particular, I wish to denounce the criminal gangs gathered under the flag of "Islamic State" or any other similar group terrorising innocent people all over the world.  

In a speech expressing his solidarity and sympathy with the French, US President Barack Obama said, "This is an attack not just on Paris, its attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share."

Of course, the attack on the French is an attack on humanity, but is an attack on a Lebanese, an Afghan, a Yazidi, a Kurd, and Iraqi, a Somali, a Palestinian or a South African farmer any less an attack "on all of humanity and the universal values that we share"?

What is it exactly that a North American and a French share that the rest of humanity are denied sharing?

In his speech, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking as a European, was emphatic about "our way of life", and then addressing the French he added, "Your values are our values, your pain is our pain, your fight is our fight, and together, we will defeat these terrorists."

What exactly are these French and American and British values?

In Paris, 120 people lost their lives. Between 1990 and mid-year 2015, a total of 1‚747 farmers were murdered and 3‚542 farm attacks took place in South Africa. For years we have tried to gain international awareness regarding theses senseless farm attacks. It is important for the world to take notice of how serious these farm attacks are.

So whilst we have all the sympathy for those that died in Paris in the terror attacks, people must understand that South Africans will be more concerned with the vicious murders of our farmers and our people in our own country.

When South African farmers die at the hands of the selfsame criminal elements in South Africa, they are reduced to their lowest common denominator and presumed ‘White Apartheid Activists’. 

But when French or British or US citizens are murdered, they are raised to their highest common abstractions and become the universal icons of humanity at large!

Some 400 years ago, in the ‘Merchant of Venice’, William Shakespeare turned the internally demonised European Jew into a figure of defiance against systematic stigmatisation and allowed his Shylock character to cry out loud:

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?"

Or does the murder of one South African farmer not constitute harm to the entire body of humanity?

It is time that the West, and in particular the United States and Europe, stop applying their hypocritical values arbitrarily and selectively and start to apply their ‘universal values’ openly and without favor or prejudice.