Dear white South Africans who were born after apartheid & white South Africans born before democracy who did not directly contruct a racist state,

You do not inherit the sins of your fathers and mothers and friends.

Certainly I think you should not.

You are not them. You were not them. And why should you be directly responsible for their moral, legal and political sins?

I’m especially sympathetic to you, 16 year old Kobus Verwoerd who never even met evil Oupa Hendrik who trampled on the dignity of most people in our country based only on their skin colour being different to his.

You cannot be responsible for what Hendrik did. You were but a future foetus then still.

But guys – and ladies – I’m afraid moral and social obligations do not just arise when we did things wrong ourselves.

We also have duties when we benefit wrongly.

Hendrik, the pizza you ate yesterday, bought with the trust fund from Oupa, which Xolani, 6 years old in Langa, will never eat, is a benefit you did not choose but which wrongly came your way BECAUSE OF Oupa Hendrik’s sins.

And yes I know 23 year old unemployed Charlize Vermeulen you don’t have a trust fund. But you don’t get assumed to be dumb when you walk into an interview, unlike Siphokazi. Why? Because white skin signals talent till proven otherwise. Black skin, laziness till proven otherwise. Cool huh?

You must see this stuff. Or choose not to?

And you must see that you have a moral conscience and an ability to reflect on this injustice of benefiting wrongly from someone else’s moral sins.

So in conclusion: you did not sin. I grant you that. Unreservedly.

But you benefit from sin. And you have a duty to make amends.

Please acknowledge this?

Unless and until you do we can’t get on with the next question: How can I make amends as a white person, young or old, for benefiting arbitrarily and so unjustly from the past, still?

Yours in non-EFF rhetoric,

Eusebius McKaiser