Professional victimhood has become a lucrative business in South Africa of late. If there were to be an Oppression Olympics then surely South Africans would be going home with gold medals in the race, privilege and patriarchal categories. We would come in 2nd after Zimbabwe in being colonized and third after Castro and Chavez in blaming the west or capitalism for our own failures. We would at least walk away with a participation medal in toying with policies such as land expropriation that could kill the economy.

Nothing seems to sell better these days than to constantly fight over the conflicts of the past. This new marketing strategy resulted in an explosion in the best forms of literary and modern art. The political commentators are virtue signaling and race hustling, from local content such as Eusebius McKaiser to our international star Trevor Noah.

Let’s also note that it is not just a black phenomenon as authors such as Adrian Basson, Pierre de Vos and Melanie Verwoerd constantly remind us of how privileged whites really are. The white guilt industry is fueling the black victimhood one. A good masochist needs a good sadist and the guilt on the one side has a symbiotic need to continue victimhood on the other. The two are being kept alive by their own rigor mortises and one wonders if a Jesus is going to come to raise this Lazarus from the grave in 2019. It is election year after all.

Let’s not forget that the liberation movements never claimed to have achieved a victory against Apartheid, they rather “struggled” against it. If there ever can be said to be an original sin in the new SA, then surely it must be the notion that professional victimhood is a high ideal worth striving for. We reward struggles and then wonder why we do not achieve anything. The world in its tragic state owes us everything from transformation, to opportunities, to services and to free education. The struggle ideologic constantly feeds on new ideas, new categories and new absurdities. Their proponents seem to be impervious to evidence and basic common sense.

This has largely been the mindset of the ANC since the dawn of our democracy and it explains how they have been governing the country. Everything is a struggle. It is a struggle to keep the lights on. It is a struggle to get my driver’s license. It is a struggle to afford the petrol price or to stay in business with the burden of stupid regulations. Is it naïve to ask when South Africans are going to start seeing themselves as “achievers”?

The view of victimhood and struggle-hood is such as good seller given that there are good scapegoats to blame such as: white people; Indians; clever blacks; and the dead statutes of M. W. Steyn and Cecil John Rhodes. It appears that the DA is also recently trying to expand into the untapped victimhood market. The strugglers of the EFF all studied at some of South Africa’s most prestige Universities and the strugglers in the ANC are all beneficiaries of lucrative BEE deals. The irony could also have not been lost on Aswin Willemse, a struggler who benefited from a million rand gold field’s deal. I wonder if his struggles ever took him down a real mine shaft.

South Africans are being held prisoners by the con artists of victimhood. They are those who use their only marketable skill, guilt and skin color, to make money as we continually hear how the ghosts of Apartheid, Colonialism, Privilege and Patriarchy keeps us in ended bondage. They combine the expressions in song with a religious nature and tap into the irrational part of the human brain. For a lack of a better term, it does seem to be nothing more than victimhood propaganda.

If ANC has had one sure success then it is that they managed to turn struggle mania into an industry. We can now sell books of oppression, write news articles of how bad the current situation is and see ourselves in the role of perpetual victims. We can offer apologies for the sins of people that are long dead, all while our overseers continue to raid and loot the country. The struggle narrative is used to justify odious governmental laws and let’s also be sure that the looters of VBS, state capture and SAA actually do see themselves as victims. This is probably why they do not seem to have a guilty conscience. A victim or tyrant always has someone else to blame, or he can fall back on the good old alibi that he does his misdeeds for the betterment of all mankind.

It pays to be a victim and 2019 will certainly see an expansion of this lucrative industry.