In the last few years there has been a notable increase in the level and virulence of anti-white rhetoric in South Africa. This constitutes hate speech in its true form. The purpose of restricting such speech is traditionally precisely to protect vulnerable minorities from language which incites violence against them; for example, to protect the Muslim and Jewish communities in Europe, and black minorities and gay people from potential outbreaks of xenophobic or homophobic attacks.

Whites make up eight percent of the South African population, and the increasingly strident “anti-colonial” rhetoric we are witnessing needs to be challenged. It is self-evidently dangerous for one particular minority to be blamed for all the present problems of a country.

It is undeniable that, along with the bad, colonialism brought some good to South Africa – the Christian religion for one thing. In the 2001 census 79.77 percent of South Africans claimed to be adherents to Christianity. If Christianity is appreciated and valued so much by so many South Africans, then the debate over whether colonialism’s legacy was “not only negative” need not go any further.

Helen Zille illustrated this clearly by quoting a section of a poem by the renowned Thembu poet (imbongi) D.L.P. Yali-Manisi, which shows how the Xhosa appreciated missionaries such as Bennie and Ross, who transcribed the Xhosa language at Lovedale in the Eastern Cape. Zille quoted the Xhosa version but I will quote the last six lines of the English translation, which can be found online in Jeff Opland’s Oral Tradition (1988):

We’re thankful, we of the Xhosa,
For the arrival of men like Ross and Bennie
Who ignited the mind of the Xhosa
On the day they first wrote down the language
The unshakable language of the Xhosa.
I disappear!

The current debate then is basically one of truth versus political correctness, and truth doesn’t just win by itself. It needs to be fought for. All that Zille did was state an obvious fact, which no reasonable person can deny, and then all hell broke loose because there is nothing like the truth to hurt people’s feelings.

Seeing that almost 80 percent of South Africans claim to be Christian, maybe our intelligentsia should look at what Jesus thought of colonialism. Israel was colonised by the Romans in 63 BC, and in Jesus’ time there were factions amongst the Jews who rebelled against Roman rule.

The practice of “impressment” allowed a Roman soldier to conscript a Jewish native to carry his backpack for one Roman mile, and Jesus commented on this practice, as well as on whether it was right to pay taxes to the Romans. When Jesus was questioned about taxes he said, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”, and about impressment he said, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

He basically said (in my words), “Yes, pay your taxes to the Romans and have a forgiving and generous attitude to the soldiers who want to press you into service for a mile. By doing so you will change their hearts by showing them love after they have used you.” This is very different to the current-day view of colonialism; but Jesus was different, and Christianity is different, and people who are believers ought to act differently too.

Jesus distinguished clearly between Caesar and God / the political realm and the spiritual realm, because he understood that what prevents people from going forward is their internal attitudes rather than who has previously conquered them or who controls the government. He knew that feeling angry and bitter about something that cannot be changed is not helpful.

Furthermore, in Christianity, and in liberal democracy, each person is judged according to what he or she does, and not according to what his or her relatives did to someone else’s relatives. The anti-colonial mindset says the reverse - and it harps on about the past and unsolvable questions such as which group owes which group reparations.

Jeremiah 31 says, “…they shall no longer say: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’. But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.” Ezekiel 18 confirms this by saying, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” Romans 12 chides believers not to avenge themselves and give place to their anger, and reminds them that “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord”.

Jesus was the furthest you could get from being politically correct. He placed truth above avoiding hurting people’s feelings, and he got crucified for it. Maybe Helen Zille will be dethroned from her Western Cape Premiership, but at least she has spoken the truth against the dangerous lie that all white settlement on the tip of Africa was inherently immoral to begin with and contributed nothing to the building of our country.

This lie has been responsible for making white people feel less and less welcome in the country of their birth.