Copts – praag.org

I was still pondering the implications of “black colonialism” as set out in a previous column when it struck me that some of South Africa’s ethnic categories are completely wrong.

Afrikaners were the first group in the country to refer to themselves as “Africans”, as long ago as 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw said: “Ik ben een Afrikaander.” However, today Afrikaners have been defined as an out-group by South African legislation that simply classes them as “whites”.

Most of our affirmative-action legislation has been imported from the USA and BEE is just an adapted form of what is called “minority procurement” over there. So there is nothing “African” about the current race-classification system!

In German, “Afrikaner” means simply “African”, yet the current laws define Afrikaners as Europeans. The ultimate irony is that ANC and especially SACP ideology has been constructed by recent immigrants from Lithuania (like Joe Slovo) and, of course, Britain.

Imposing racial quotas on everything from the medical schools at Afrikaans universities to the Blue Bulls rugby team is bad enough. But stripping us of our age-old Africanness by legislative fiat represents the ultimate insult, making us interlopers in our own country.

Searching for answers, I reread Thabo Mbeki’s “I am an African” speech, but it is simply a fanciful restatement of American multiculturalism, with echoes of (Swedish) Gunnar Myrdal’s “melting pot” idea. So nothing “African” there, either.

We urgently need to bring back the term “Bantu” and I have begun to recommend its use on social media and everywhere else. There seems to be a certain squeamishness about using this word, meaning “people”, which is unfathomable. Even the famous Xhosa definition of “ubuntu” contains it: “Ubuntu ungamntu ngabanye abantu.”

Anthropologists, linguists and other people in need of proper definitions have never stopped referring to the “Bantu peoples”, “Bantu languages”, etc. Even Bantu education has been rehabilitated by such leading authorities as Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and a lecturer at Wits Business School, Mr. Rabelani Dagada, both of whom consider it better than the current schooling system.

The first ANC-supporting newspaper in the 1920s was called Abanthu-Batho and today there is a clothing brand which is thus advertised: “Abantu is a ladies wear brand which creates timeless pieces which speak to the South African audience.”

The Bantu peoples inhabit East and Southern Africa. For them or their Lithuanian theorists to arrogate unto themselves the sole right to being called “Africans” is not only intellectually unsound, but also unfair. After all, there are 200 million North Africans, including Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers, Copts and so on, who are Africans, by definition. West Africa too, is given the cold shoulder by Bantu imperialism.

In the nineteen-twenties some leading German and French anthropologists claimed, upon the basis of very ancient mining activity in these parts, that whites may have inhabited both South Africa and Zimbabwe as long ago as 3500 B.C. They must have been the first Afrikaners and we should venerate them as our true founding fathers, together with the Khoi and San.

Either we must qualify for affirmative action like other “Africans” – and even the Chinese! – or the Bantu must clearly announce their pretensions to being a kind of continental nobility with special privileges.

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This column also appeared as a letter in Business Day.

Egypt’s Christians terrified after church attacks

Egypt’s Christians are living in fear after a string of attacks against churches, businesses and homes they say were carried out by angry supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

As police dispersed Morsi supporters from two Cairo squares on Wednesday, attackers torched churches across the country in an apparent response.

“People are terrified; no one dares leave home,” Marco, a 27-year-old engineer, told AFP by phone from the central city of Sohag.

The city has become a ghost town, he said, describing an atmosphere of terror where attackers “know where the Copts live” and torched several churches before turning to homes.

The Maspero Youth Union, a Coptic Christian youth movement, denounced what it called a “retaliation war” against the religious minority, which makes up around 10 percent of Egypt’s population.

The group accused Morsi supporters of targeting them in response to Coptic Pope Tawadros II’s support for the July 3 coup that ousted the Islamist leader.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a local NGO, says at least 25 churches were torched on Wednesday and Thursday, and that attackers also targeted Christian schools, shops and homes across all 27 provinces.

Iraq’s Chaldean Christian archbishop Louis Sako told AFP that one of his community’s churches was among those targeted on Wednesday.

“This is a real disaster,” he said, saying the region is a “dangerous volcano.”

For Marco, the attacks against the churches were not a surprise –Christian religious buildings have been targeted before.

It was the torching of Coptic Christian homes and the looting of their businesses that shocked him.

The attackers were “people chanting pro-Morsi slogans and wearing headbands with the phrase ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ written on them,” he said.

The Maspero Youth Union, which documented abuses against Christians during Morsi’s one year in office, also laid blame for the attacks on supporters of the ousted leader.

“Maspero Youth Union condemns the terrorism Copts are facing now in Egypt after supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi waged a retaliation war against Copts and their churches, homes and businesses,” the group said.

“Copts were attacked in nine governorates, causing panic, losses and destruction for no reason and no crimes they committed except being Christians.”

Morsi’s supporters have often accused Christians of supporting president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Ironically, Christians were also targeted when Mubarak was in power.

On Thursday, the country’s interim army-installed government described attacks on Egypt’s Christians as a “red line” and pledged that authorities would “respond forcefully” to any new attack.

Shortly afterwards, the defence minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who led the coup, pledged that the army would pay for the rebuilding of the churches attacked on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, interim prime minister Hazem Beblawi also announced he had met with Coptic Pope Tawadros II to express solidarity in the wake of the attacks.

And state news agency MENA reported that 80 Morsi loyalists had been arrested and turned over to military courts for their alleged involvement in torching churches in Suez province on Wednesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood had little to say on the issue, with spokesman Gehad el-Haddad suggesting the authorities were behind the violence.

“Military coup regime is resorting to instigating sectarian violence exactly as they did when Mubarak was about to fall,” he tweeted.

The government’s promises have so far failed to convince Christians and activists that authorities would prevent future attacks.

“The state must intervene to protect the population. Concrete action is needed after all the big speeches,” said Ishak Ibrahim, an EIPR researcher on religious issues.

He described a “discourse of hatred” against Christians throughout the country, more from the Salafists, the most conservative of Islamists, rather than members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

And he pointed out that most of the attacks had taken place outside the major cities, in areas where security presence is often minimal.

“Families who are too scared to go out to get supplies are waiting for something concrete,” added Karem, another resident of Sohag.

“Right now as we speak, attacks against Christians are continuing,” he said.

“No one is protecting us!” – AFP

Obama Administration condemns Christian Copt protest in Egypt

Obama fully supported protests to overthrow the relatively friendly Egyptian Government of Mubarak. U.S. support paved way for an Islamist takeover by the oppressive and violent Muslim Brotherhood.

Now those suffering the most under this brutal Islamist rule want to protest, and the Obama Administration is trying to prevent it.

As Egyptians of all factions prepare to demonstrate in mass against the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi’s rule on June 30, the latter has been trying to reduce their numbers, which some predict will be in the millions and eclipse the Tahrir protests that earlier ousted Mubarak. Among other influential Egyptians, Morsi recently called on Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to urge his flock, Egypt’s millions of Christians, not to join the June 30 protests.While that may be expected, more troubling is that the U.S. ambassador to Egypt is also trying to prevent Egyptians from protesting—including the Copts. The June 18th edition of Sadi al-Balad reports that lawyer Ramses Naggar, the Coptic Church’s legal counsel, said that during [Anne W.] Patterson’s June 17 meeting with Pope Tawadros, she “asked him to urge the Copts not to participate” in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood. […]

So why is the Obama administration now asking Christians not to oppose their rulers–in this case, Islamists–who have daily proven themselves corrupt and worse, to the point that millions of Egyptians, most of them Muslims, are trying to oust them?

What’s worse is that the human rights abuses Egypt’s Coptic Christians have been suffering under Muslim Brotherhood rule are significantly worse than the human rights abuses that the average Egyptian suffered under Mubarak–making the Copts’ right to protest even more legitimate, and, if anything, more worthy of U.S support.

Among other things, under Morsi’s rule, the persecution of Copts has practically been legalized, as unprecedented numbers of Christians–men, women, and children–have been arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they “blasphemed” Islam and/or its prophet. It was also under Morsi’s reign that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral–holiest site of Coptic Christianity and headquarters to the Pope Tawadros himself–was besieged in broad daylight by Islamic rioters. When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral. And the targeting of Christian children–for abduction, ransom, rape, and/or forced conversion—has also reached unprecedented levels under Morsi.