1985-October

Progressions Magazine

South Africa

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

South Africa

Upon principle and good sense, we should stand by the oppressed people of South Africa. We should be against the expansionist, the demagogue, President Pieter Botha. We should consult together to decide on a response as concerned U.S. citizens.

We must not only complain and register disapproval, but we must also live up to what we have published in the past. If it is wrong for us, it is wrong for everybody else. If something is an injustice to us, it is an injustice to everybody else. We cannot strive and prosper in a world where we make great claims, but when others are in our situation, we don't respond or have any concern for them.

We have to get out of this narrow concern for just ourselves and come into the concerns for the whole of humanity. We must live consistently. We should not contradict our own moral claim when we are called upon to respond to the need of another person, another people, or another nation.

Moral Inconsistencies

We should feel a pain inside for the need to publish our differences with those guilty of blatant moral inconsistencies, who say, "Come to South Africa and see our life and our situation, then you can understand our judgment, our decision." We don't have to go to South Africa, when we hear them plainly say, "That we sacrifice the original native in the interest of our own self interest. We can't make changes now for them, because to bring in that kind of democracy would be to have them gain power. Their majority numbers would put them in power, and we will lose our haven here."

If they are truly human, and true to the spirit of the excellent human being that God made, then they would say to that weakness within, "Move, be dead that I may live as a human being today." If they want to be true to the excellent spirit God put in the human being, they will have to die to whatever their interest may be. They have to die to whatever their profits are. They have to die to everything in order that they may live true to the human excellence in the real man that God made.

We can't be silent anymore. I remained patient in the case of South Africa because I know how this nation came through the same kind of history and trouble. I know how it had to come out of those troubled times and how, with patience, it did bring respect to the country and to the once oppressed African-Americans.

In view of our history, and how we as an oppressed people in America dealt with the problem of segregation and the denial of justice to the oppressed caused me to have patience with South Africa. But his European stranger (Prime Minister, Pieter W. Botha) on the continent of Africa cannot be called a member of the human race. He has beast power, and not because he is white, but because of the conscience of his soul. He is a stranger, an alien, a foreigner in Africa, and he should get out of there.

We cannot be patient anymore. This man has closed the door with his mouth. Though he made recommendations for change, he's just pacifying his supporters in the Free World, and the stupid uncle toms of the natives in South Africa. I read in the newspaper several months ago where they said, "Oh, we are ending the restriction on marriage between the groups," as if that is a favor. Before they give the natives justice, the right to their own land, dignity in the land that God created them in, they offer them an opportunity to mix with women of another race. What an insult! They add insult to injury.

If the white South Africans really want to be respected by other nations of the earth, they should risk the loss of their power and their position in South Africa if it will bring in democracy and give justice to all of the people there.

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"O My servants, surely I have forbidden
oppression for Myself, and I have made
it forbidden among you. Therefore do not
oppress."

Quote from Hadith
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