{"id":67029,"date":"2017-05-16T14:28:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T12:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/?p=67029"},"modified":"2017-05-18T12:59:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T10:59:06","slug":"comment-tobie-van-den-bergh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/news-headlines\/2017\/05\/16\/comment-tobie-van-den-bergh\/","title":{"rendered":"Comment: Tobie van den Bergh"},"content":{"rendered":"

A word that makes people – who just want to live in harmony every day \u2013 absolutely sick.<\/p>\n

A meaningless word when people go to bed hungry.<\/p>\n

A word bandied about by politicians to evoke emotions with which they attempt to canvass for votes.<\/p>\n

A word that is quickly hauled out and polished when a crime incident takes place.<\/p>\n

A word that awakens hatred.<\/p>\n

Coligny; the Coffin Case, the Dullstroom murders, utterances by students last year in the Fees-Must-Fall Campaign and the comments by the Free State Premier on Saturday creates the perception that the country is divided between white and black.<\/p>\n

Then you attend a rugby match on Saturday at Middelburg’s Kees Taljaard Stadium.<\/p>\n

Three-year-old Mnqobi Dlangalala happily plays with his many friends all day. Nobody sees or regards him as being “black”.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

In the Nelspruit and Middelburg teams, there are white and black players \u2013 but nobody thinks of them in that way \u2013 they are just players who play as hard as the rest of their teammates.<\/p>\n

There are spectators on the pavilions \u2013 they support each other \u2013 some are white and others are black, but they look past this.<\/p>\n

Does anyone realise that scarcely 25 years ago this would have been impossible?<\/p>\n

Doesn’t anyone realise that South Africa is a miracle?<\/p>\n

Doesn’t anyone realise that this miracle should be cherished?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The greatest swear-word in South Africa is \u2013 “Racism!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":67038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Tobie van den Bergh","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[509,7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-note","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}