Heather du Plessis-Allan: You can take the white South African out of apartheid but can you take the apartheid out of the White South African? (with only a tiny diversion to Kyle MacDonald, Rachel Stewart & Transphobia)

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
13
488

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog is not as mean to Heather du Pleases-Allan as the title suggests

So I’d heard on Twitter that Heather had said Pacific Islanders were leeches.

Now, I’ve decided not to partake in Woke Outrage Olympics on Twitter because it’s just so 2014-2017, and recently I experienced first hand the feral militancy of others projecting their own perceptions onto things I’ve said when a group of Trans-activists decided me pointing out the debate between TERFS & Trans-activists was ludicrously violent after my daughter was threatened by trans-activists furious a press release by TERFS had appeared on TDB (I thought Kyle McDonald’s full throated endorsement of trans-activists was funny when you consider the threats of violence towards Rachel Stewart recently. I love that anyone else making threats like that would be doxxed and decried by the Woke, but when it’s the Woke doing the threatening, you know, it’s a power imbalance against the heteronormative patriarchy so totes justifiable).

ANYWAY

I’m digressing.

Back to Heather, and me wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt after getting personally mauled by the new extra friendly members of the rainbow community.

So it turns out after closer scrutiny that Heather claims she was referring to the Pacific Islands themselves as leeches, which when you think about it, isn’t any inch less offensive than claiming Pacific Islanders are leeches.

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We do a crap job in NZ of detailing how Pakeha did wrong by Māori in our history and we do an  even worse job of highlighting the appalling actions of NZ towards our Pacific brothers and sisters.

Perhaps Heather is just ignorant rather than bigoted because while Heather doesn’t seem to realise it, we actually owe our Pacific Island brothers and sisters a hell of a lot for our injustices against them.

NZ has done sweet fuck all to mitigate climate change in anyway meaningful (beyond our bullshit carbon neutral  by 2050 crap), so when the worst edges of that pollution we have been pumping into the atmosphere damages cultures that have little hand in creating it, we have an obligation to do right by them because that’s a basic compassion and empathy most humans have. We contribute to climate change, climate change damages Islands in the Pacific, we help those Islands mitigate some of that damage with tiny payouts which don’t go anywhere near matching the enormity of what the developed world are plunging the developing world into.

Let’s remember that NZ incompetence in Samoa saw the influenza pandemic come ashore and almost wipe out the entire culture or Black Sunday that saw NZ forces kill 11 Samoans. What about the way we brought Tongans into the country in the 1970s as cheap labour but when it was politically expedient start dawn raids to force them out? How about the fact that the Cooks, Niue and the Tokelau islands are actually still under NZ sovereignty as free association States?

Let’s also remember that NZ had a hand in stripping Nauru of phosphate the same way we are with the Sahara right now, accusing these countries of being leeches when we have caused so much damage to them and in some cases are still responsible for them only adds insult to injury.

We are in debt to these nations because of our past behaviour, they are whanau, they are family and with Auckland being the largest Pacific city in the planet, insulting them is beneath where we want the debate to be.

Come on Heather, lift your bloody game.

 

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13 COMMENTS

  2. An exceptionally ignorant yarpie Ms Du Plessis -Allan.
    Why are Safa’s possessed of such dreary one dimensional personalities? Her opinions aren’t worth noting. Why does she have a job in this country ? she can’t write for shit! She epitomizes the drivel we are expected swallow in this ghastly 21st century of disinformation.

  5. The height of 21st century mass media: talkback radio.

    God help us all. The Ignorant have replaced the Lunatics and taken over the Asylum.

  7. At the risk of tagging all white arrivals from South Africa as racist, I have to admit the four or five I’ve met here all seem to have low opinions of Maori and Pasifika people. I avoid them at all costs and wonder why they even bothered coming here. I have a nasty suspicion Du Plessis-Allan hopes her foul comments will encourage the alt right to seek a higher profile in the manner Trump has empowered that lot in the US. Note, like the orange gorilla, she refuses to back down on her comments. A method in her madness; she wants a greater voice — and no doubt more — from them.

    • Billbo B you could be right. I have never forgotten from my Pol Sc days, the major role of the transistor radio in Algeria’s fight for independence.

      I’d assumed that Heather was a flibbertigibbet desperately seeking significance, and in doing so dragging NZ down in the eyes of our Pacifica neighbours, and too trite to be aware or care about looking brutish.

      In Algeria they jammed the radio signals; I don’t think it’s that difficult to do, and maybe a bit of signal jamming would befit the radio station which is paying Heather to up their ratings by going low.

      Is there a law against jamming radio signals ? Surely not.

  8. After Auschwitz, who would have thought that we would ever again hear anyone say that whole groups of people do not matter ?

    Ignorant or not, the only person who Heather dehumanises with this lack of civility and grace is herself.

  9. All these Sith Afrikans we’ve taken in because politics didn’t matter in the assessment system, despite it mattering a great deal in 1981 (… 35… 91). And most being unreflectively right-wing. The Bill Birch immigration system where democratic consultation had no purchase. Tho’ it has benefited National …? Every immigrant with no contemplation — but a mortgage. Probably a pretty true image of NZers born here.

  10. She may have been in NZ since she was 12 but if Du Plessis-Allan thinks Kiwis are ready to wash their hands of our Pacific Island neighbours the way the Aussies have with the boat people, the woman obviously has learned very little about us in the time she’s been here.

    Another thing, I was unaware she was married to Soper. Back in the day I thought he was a generally straight shooter on politics, albeit with a natural inclination towards the Nats. But I’ve been wondering for a few years why his views seem to have become much more firmly entrenched on the right of the aisle. His being wed to the girl with an apartheid family background explains a lot.

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