Talk:One Settler, One Bullet

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Why I'm flagging this Article as POV[edit]

Basically it reads like a whitewash of the slogan, largely based on misleading chronology.

We are told:

In the ideological terminology of the Africanist PAC during its fight against apartheid, a settler was defined as a white person participating in the oppression of indigenous people, and did therefore not include white South Africans in general. White South Africans whose "sole allegiance was to Africa" were considered part of the African nation and therefore excluded from the settler category.[2]

However, grassroots sympathizers of the PAC at times interpreted the slogan as a call for attacks on whites in general and certain attacks on whites, such as the killing of Amy Biehl,[3] were indeed directly motivated by the slogan.

In other words, according to our article, white people like Amy Biehl were killed because grassroot sympathizers had sometimes misunderstood the true meaning of the slogan. (I can't check whether that's also what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said, as the link given is dead). Yet the slogan's common sense meaning is self-evidently 'Kill all whites in Southern Africa', and that is presumably precisely why it was popular (and precisely why it resulted in whites being killed in Southern Africa). Note that it would presumably have been possible to have a slogan such as 'One oppressor, one bullet', but for some reason seemingly no such slogan gained the requisite popularity. This 'misunderstanding of the proper meaning' seems (debatably) justified by the preceding paragraph about 'the ideological terminology of the Africanist PAC during its fight against apartheid'. Yet that paragraph only cites an article written in 1991 about the ideological position in 1991, based on the PAC leader's statement in 1991, by which time the fight against apartheid was almost over, the now-embarassing slogan had been disowned by the PAC, and the PAC had offered to conditionally enter into negotiations with the government, and was basically re-positioning itself for the expected post-apartheid era. There is no evidence offered that this was the position during the bulk of the fight against apartheid, and common sense suggests it probably was not. As Amy Buehl was killed in 1993 (that is, after those 1991 statements), it is possible that 'misunderstanding of the true meaning' has some (still very debatable) validity in her case, but the vast majority of killings motivated by the slogan presumably happened before 1991, and there is no evidence offered so far that these were due to 'misunderstanding the true meaning', contrary to the impression one would get by accepting this article at face value. Indeed quite likely Amy Biehl's killers didn't misunderstand anything either, but simply disagreed with the change of policy (always assuming they ever got to hear about it, and ever accepted the authority of the post-1991 PAC leadership) and disagreed with the absurd 'official' re-interpretation of the common sense meaning of the slogan (once again always assuming they ever got to hear about it). Incidentally, as an American anti-apartheid activist, Amy Biehl was presumably both highly untypical of most of the victims of the slogan, and quite possibly the only victim who was not a 'settler' in the common sense meaning of that word (unless perhaps one goes for a very literal interpretation of 'settler', and pretends to believe that the slogan's common sense meaning was a call to kill the long dead white people who came to settle in South Africa centuries ago). Tlhslobus (talk) 08:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Upon further reflection, I've now made a number of changes which I feel allow me to remove the POV flag I had inserted, though the flag will presumably have to go back in if somebody decides to revert those changes. Tlhslobus (talk) 08:34, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Afterthought: I don't much like saying this, but on the other side of the argument, a much better (though still thoroughly questionable) 'defence' for the slogan would be the words of William Smith O'Brien about revolutionary movements at the time of the 19th century Irish Famine: 'Sometimes extremism is necessary to gain a voice for moderation.'. In the Apartheid context this would mean that the regime would (arguably) be more likely to negotiate seriously with moderates like the ANC (as it eventually did), if it had to seriously fear that failure to do so might eventually lead to the triumph of genocidal extremists like the PAC (who might be bluffing about genocide, but the regime couldn't be sure of that). I think that such arguments are very debatable and dangerous and I tend to fear and hate them, but my personal preferences should be irrelevant here - in other words, however much I may dislike it, that sort of 'defence' should probably get some sort of mention in the article, provided somebody can find one or more reliable sources that at least discuss it, which wouldn't greatly surprise me. Tlhslobus (talk) 12:32, 7 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the article is still POV. There is no reference to the slogan being racist or genocidal. It would be hard for anyone to argue that it was not both, as well as incitement to mass murder.