Whites 'love Mandela more than Jesus'

20 September 2011 - 02:42 By MHLABA MEMELA
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Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Image: Debbie Yazbek

Controversial anti-apartheid activist Dr Allan Boesak has accused white South Africans of loving Nelson Mandela more than Jesus because, according to him, even Jesus took a stronger stance on social justice than the former president.

"Jesus was far too radical and Mandela didn't want to go that far because he understood our people in this country," said Boesak yesterday.

"But if he would say tomorrow what Jesus said they wouldn't like him [Mandela] any more."

He then joked that "pretty soon they [whites] will have Julius Malema left," he said.

Boesak was delivering the University of KwaZulu-Natal Steve Biko Memorial lecture on black consciousness and the struggle for meaningful humanity when he began to explain that whites were creating a false sense of victimhood when social injustice was mentioned.

He said it was interesting to note that whites loved Archbishop Desmond Tutu when he talked about forgiveness, but when he mentioned correcting social injustice of the past by introducing a white tax, he was no longer liked.

Boesak said on the other side of what he called "false innocence of whiteness" is the false innocence of black elite groups.

"They [elite blacks] have made alliances with the old wealthy elite, alliances against the masses and are part of the small 20% of the country's top elite who now gobble 75% of our GDP while 53% of our masses live in dire poverty and get between 6% and 8% of what is left. That is not black consciousness.

"What we say to white people is you have to leave your false innocence behind."

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