Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
It would seem that the recent and rather bizarre practice of apologising for historical wrongs is still on the increase. And flatly refusing to apologise for past sins has become almost as fashionable. People have realised that beating their breasts and slobbering on about what wrongs were committed before they were born is, at best, hypocritical.
Next, someone will be asked to apologise for the French Revolution, Cromwell, the Crusades. And what about some touching words of regret from Rome about that frightful man, Pontius Pilate? Retrospective victimology reaps a bountiful canon.
On the grounds that they had nothing to do with it, a conservative government in Australia recently resisted all attempts to “apologise” formally for a policy that would easily fit the definitions of ethnic cleansing. It was introduced early in the last century and was being practised right into the 1970s.
It was a crude functional eugenics whereby Aborigine children of a lighter cast of skin – and therefore of impure Aboriginal stock – were taken from their parents and fed into government-funded missionary schools, there to be brought up by white teachers as white children. It was intended that these children, later to be introduced into the greater white society, would, over a few generations, have residual aboriginal blood bred out of them – literally by force of genetic numbers. Early white settlers had introduced their strain by cohabiting with Aborigine women.
By reversing the results the half-whites would eventually be made fully white. The convenient moral kicker was that, at the same time, the remaining Aboriginal stock would be purified – and left to die out, which they were doing, anyway.
And there you were thinking that apartheid thought up all the possible tricks.
The largely excellent Australian documentary, Stolen Generation, was shown on SABC3 last Sunday. With a mixture of old footage and contemporary interviews it told the story with little resource to the heart-string-plucking which often accompanies such efforts. In fact the only sentimentality came from a few of the interviewees, products of the missionary schools, now in adult life. These tended to play to a perceived gallery and went on about how they still felt devastated by being plucked from their families all those years ago.
None of them looked too badly done by and, whatever the dubious motives of the government plan, the children who were press-ganged into the missionary schools ended up with educations and access to what, by any references, was a far wider world. Of those interviewed none seemed to have made much effort to go back to the halcyon bucolic life from which they had been so brutally snatched.
What made me feel distrustful was the somewhat smug little statement they put up on the screen at the end of the programme. It was a bit like those comforting assurances in most movies: “No animals were injured or harmed during the making of this film.”
Stolen Generation had this clumsy and ultimately meaningless bosh: “A cultural protocol was drafted during the process of filming to recognise and to maintain integrity in the storytelling and to honour the subjects whose stories were told.” The more sincere it is the more ridiculous political correctness becomes.
To round off this week, a few brief comments. Marion Edmunds’s Special Assignment feature on Zimbabwe – Tuesday before last – was about the first credible approach to the current brouhaha that the SABC has managed to produce. Until this excellent, balanced and thoughtful programme, all we’ve had have been interviews with leading Zanu-PF representatives – one, going as an independent “political analyst”, turned out to be President Robert Mugabe’s chief electoral officer.
The new Vodacom commercial is a winner: the one where the Olympics hopeful comes lurching over a horse jump, the fat lady dives and where Michael de Pinna gets dumped on by the vast wave. The trouble is that, like most Vodacom ads, they are airing this one far too many times. There’s nothing goes off as quickly as an oft-repeated joke.
Finally, an immortal example of the flourishing art of self-cancelling gobbledygook. This gem (verbatim) from Mr Roger Moore, heading the European Union Commission, recently in Zimbabwe.
“The commission hasn’t come here to make any judgement as to whether or not the elections are or are not going to be free and fair. But we have a contractual obligation to make that judgement and it will be made and that is one of the purposes of the observation.”
Once more, from the top.