An Apology to Blacks from a white South African
We apologize for giving you doctors and free medical care, as a result of which you have been able to survive plagues and catastrophes and grow in numbers;
We apologize for teaching you to read and write, and for building you thousands of schools which we have repaired after you vandalized them and burned them down. After all, if you could not read how could you have learned the words of Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung, and others who taught you how evil we are and how oppressed you are?
We apologize for building factories and highways and buildings that gave you employment;
We apologize for developing farms that to this day feed the bulk of Africa;
We apologize for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric instead of leaving you wearing the animal skins that you wore before our arrival;
We apologize for taking minerals from the earth, which you neither used, nor wanted, nor even knew, were there;
We apologize for those among us who have established welfare organizations and have devoted their entire life towards making life richer and better for your people;
We apologize that we have built roads and railroad tracks between towns and cities which you now use every day without thinking;
We apologize for paying the lion's share of taxation while spending less on ourselves than on you;
We apologize for giving you law and order and a strong central government that prevented your own warrior nations like the Zulu and the Matabele from slaughtering black people by the hundreds of thousands as they did year in and year out before we came;
We apologize for teaching you the English language which has opened to you the entire world of European thought, culture, and commerce;
For all these sins we humbly beg forgiveness, and if you will only accept our apology we will be happy to take back all of the above evil and horrible things we have done to you and return to our European homeland.
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