Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, 2024 parliamentary candidate for North Durham, 2028 candidate for Mayor of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", banned from Twitter so officially more dangerous than the Taliban, eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Wednesday 1 November 2006
Don't call them "so-called"
The death of P W Botha has led the BBC, true to form, to claim that he made his name as a Minister by clearing District Six, home of the "so-called coloureds" (you can pretty much hear the small c as they say it). There is absolutely nothing either small c or "so-called" about the Coloureds, "of mixed European and non-European descent and speaking English or Afrikaans as the mother-tongue". That mixed means really mixed, and mixed a very long time ago: a distinct people with a distinct culture (and, please note, including half of all native speakers of Afrikaans). As they themseleves would tell the BBC or anyone else, they are "Coloured with a capital C".
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