Christianity and Biko

Stephen Biko died almost exactly 33 years ago. I am reminded that not much has changed since. The nature of man to behave with basic decency remains afflicted by the consequence of reliance on delusional belief as much today - with a child molesting pope swanning around London - as it did 33 years ago.
Once delusional belief is accepted - through the vehicle of blind faith - any instruction can be followed in the same way.

To illustrate the point I am making - that delusional belief in invisible forces corrupts the innate humanity of the individual by acting at odds with the basic intuitive means by which the individual connects with his own morality - and is therefore unhealthy at best and murderously dangerous the rest of the time, here is a tale of two christians. Church going believers of the highest order.

Gideon Nieuwoudt and Harold Snyman.

In August of 1977, relying on a law devised by christians of the highest order - The Terrorism Act no 83 of 1967, which gave practicing christians (and only practicing christians) the legal right to arrest and detain anyone without any accountability, these chaps in their uniforms of the South African Police picked up former medical student Stephen Biko - a 30 year old writer, consciousness leader and atheist. Biko was interrogated in a police cell (6-1-9) for 22 hours hours, wherein he was pummeled senseless. His skull cracked leaving him in a coma state. Obviously no contradiction here with christian belief. Beaten to an inch of his life, the biblically named Gideon and his buddy Harold then thought it a good idea to drive the battered Biko 750 miles to a Police hospital. Clearly they had good reason to not take him to a nearby Hospital in Port Elizabeth, which might have taken all of 5 minutes, so they put him into the back of a land rover, naked, a nice christian touch in the circumstances, and bleeding with a major head injury for a 750 mile  across the country. Anyone who has been in the back of a police land rover in the 70's will know the degree of discomfort represented here. Its little more than a metal box with virtually no shock absorbers.

Biko died of his injuries shortly after arriving at the Hospital in Pretoria. The Land Rovers speed of around 50 miles an hour means the journey would have taken at least 17 hours. A crucifiction would have been a considerably more christian way to kill a man, but not for these christians.

I struggle to imagine the nature of a man that would put another man into the back of a metal box - a man already beaten to an inch of his life with a cracked skull - and drive him across a country, naked, knowing and rejoicing in his  experience of the most dreadful agonies before his certain death. What kind of belief system could turn any man so against the natural order as to make him debase his humanity in this way?

To demonstrate that delusional belief in one thing encourages it in another, these devout christians when called on the explain why this chap was dead, said he had killed himself by going on hunger strike. Not even honest enough to stand up and express the truth of their actions.

In the subsequent Police inquiry the Attorney General of the Eastern Cape, another devout practicing christian, ruled that there was no case to answer for officers involved in the arrest and detention of Biko. During the trial it was claimed that Biko's head injuries were the result of a self-inflicted suicide attempt, not those of any beatings. Believe one delusion and its so easy to carry on in the same vein.

So that was that. Black atheist kills himself. His own fault. Nothing to see here.

This is one small illustration of why delusional belief is not a harmless right to be enjoyed free from any persecution.

And on a happy note of conclusion, Harold Snyman died in 1997 of lung cancer. He is now in heaven where all christians go for eternity in paradise, many with an option on virginal pleasures. Meanwhile Steve Biko continues to rot in the fiery pits of hell that is the christian message to all non-believers.

You have just got to love the christian way.

Anika Smit.

Today Anika Smit, 17, was buried in Pretoria. Last week, 11 March, 2010, she was killed and raped in her own room. Her arms were cut off from the elbow and taken by the perpetrators. No one has been charged with her murder.

I was so horrified by this story that I sent it to all and sundry. No mention could be found in British press. I wrote to the Guardian and the Daily Mail. With the Soccer world cup looming, there is simply no interest in frightening visitors to South Africa.

Correspondence with South African friends revealed a consistent trend 'This is not news. It happens every day.'

One correspondent told me that racially motivated murder in South Africa since the end of Apartheid exceeds 300,000. More than 45-1 higher than racially motivated deaths during apartheid.

Crime in South Africa is a real and present issue. But the crime in Anika Smits case goes beyond anything that we, outside of South African experience, can relate to. This behaviour is a uniquely South African variant of tribalism enabling sexual incontinence that effectively normalises rape. Maintaining manifestly unhealthy arrangements in the name of tradition is a recipe for disaster which should be a matter for Governmental review, but in light of a Polygamous President with a history of defending rape charges, is not.

Considering these uniquely perverse crimes - raping and hacking body parts off people who are still alive, the better to make muti with - the issue of Apartheid is often presented as a contributory cause. I grew up in Apartheid South Africa and remember well the British approach of 'No normal sport in an abnormal society.' One I wholeheartedly agreed with then as I do now.

This is not a time for the world to be normalising South Africa's collapse into tribal barbarism and lawlessness by enjoying games of football in Stadiums whose cost cannot possibly be reconciled with the decayed lifestyles of South Africa's dispossessed majority even as their falsely elected new class of cuntocrats swan around in the accoutrements of obscene wealth.

No normal sport in an abnormal society. Why did that make sense in 1976 and not now? How many South Africans consider theirs to be a normal society?

Playing games of soccer in the shadow of 17 year old girls being raped and mutilated, whose killer might be the person sitting next to you at the games, smiling and cheering Bafana Bafana, is not the way the issue of barbarous decline in South Africa is best addressed. It maintains the delusional precept of a 'rainbow nation' thriving on 'the miracle of Mandela.'

I imagine all media coverage of South Africa today will be about football games and ticket sales and travel opportunities for visitors, leaving little interest ina story about Anika Smits father, as he buries those body parts of his butchered daughter that the rapists left behind. 

I certainly will find it difficult watching Dave Beckham swish around the England camp promoting football and talking up our chances against Germany knowing how far apart the world his values represent is from the reality of South Africa. This is not a normal society. Leaders like Zuma and Malema are not credible and one can but wonder how the legacy of Mandela arrived here in 16 short years.

Continuing unchecked at this rate, in another 16 years time there will be no opportunity for this subject to be raised again. 

For me these football games will be remembered as The Anika Smit Games. 
.......