By Wayne T. Dowdy
WARNING: This blog contains graphic images of violence and disturbing contents that some may find offensive.
NO SAFE HAVENS: I could not figure out what drove a young white male to walk into a Bible study at the Emanuel African-Methodist-Episcopalian Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, sit with nine African-American members for an hour, and then pull a handgun to shoot each of them multiple times. I searched for the “Why” he committed a horrendous crime. I have an idea about what motivated him; it arrived in an email I received on December 7, 2013.
CHARLESTON CHURCH MURDERS: Hearing about the June 17, 2015, murders of nine innocent people at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church troubled me. What drove a person to act so inhumane toward other human beings? Are not churches and places of worship supposed to be safe and sacred places? I concluded that evil has no boundary.
(Read my June 2015 blog post, “Love and Evil Are Color-Blind” for more information on the crime and victims of the Charleston Church Murders.)
My access to information on current events is limited to what I see and hear on television news channels; read in books, and an occasional newspaper, because I cannot access the Internet. My mind works full-time to understand what goes on in the world I am so far removed from by me living inside a prison cell. The news I am fed is censored by reporters and news agencies; however, a college educated friend sent me some information a long time ago that may help explain why Dylann Roof killed three men and six women, most of them elderly and defenseless.
Things I heard and read on the News about an online manifesto by the shooter made me wonder whether a correlation existed between his crimes on American soil and events on another continent: Africa.
WHY DID HE DO IT? Roof referenced to people talking about it on the Internet but not doing anything about “it” (Negroes committing atrocities against white people), and then nominated himself to commit the horrific crimes he confessed to doing when arrested.
One clue as to why he may have done it concerns a flag from South Africa (SA). As reported on various news agencies, a social media photo showed him waving a Confederate flag, while wearing a jacket with the flag of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). SA and Rhodesia were once ruled by white minorities.
Him waving the Confederate flag lead to it being removed from several places. South Carolina officials took down the flag that had flown at the State House since 1961 to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Civil War that began in Charleston on April 12, 1861. I do not know of anyone mentioning a correlation between the foreign flag emblems he wore on his jacket and the murders. I did hear a news report that mentioned “The Last Rhodesian” during coverage of the event.
My mind went into overdrive thinking about the Charleston Church Murders and those flags. I searched its memory bank until I got a hit. I remembered an email a friend had sent me in 2013 about the genocide of whites in SA. To me, the content of the email connects the church murders and atrocities in South Africa. This is how I believe the two correlate:
EMAIL ON DEATH OF NELSON MANDELA: I sent out this email to everyone on my contact list on December 5, 2013:
SUBJECT: Nelson Mandela Made the World a Better Place
On this fifth day of December 2013, the world lost a truly unique person who set an example that should have inspired everyone, even those who may have hated him because of the color of his skin, or envied him because he rose from a place of destitution to become a leader. He was one of a kind, a very special person sent by God to do the impossible. He was a man of strong resolve who not only survived prison and refused to allow it to make him a cruel and mean person; he rose to conquer those who had put him in prison and then ruled a nation with love, dignity, and honor. He proved what one person can do. He made the world a better place by showing how much a person with determination and ambition can accomplish. He did what most would have said to be an impossible task: rise from prisoner to ruler-a good ruler-one who did not abuse his power as most people in his situation would have done. He left behind shoes that may take a millennium for another to come along who can fill them. May God be with his family and loved ones as they grieve his loss and celebrate the legacy he left behind.
RESPONSE FROM A FRIEND ON NELSON MANDELA
December 7, 2013
“[T]here is some disturbing truth I felt compelled to share with you about the Mandela the media would have no one to know. You don’t have access to uncensored Internet or International media sites but the truth of South Africa is horrifying. I have been pen pals with men and women from SA for a long time and their country is collapsing with atrocities against white people that haven’t been seen before. I can send you foreign articles and photos that I will send to your gmail account if you are able to access that.”
[I cannot access my email accounts due to the modified email system that I use through Corrlinks.com, which strips photos, symbols, and any formatting from messages sent to me. Approved people send me information from email accounts through Corrlinks.]
“I had a girlfriend in 1990 from SA whose family fled before the Clinton Administration put its 7th fleet off their coast and embargoed them into handing over the country to the African National Congress (ANC). There is a systematic genocide that has been taking place against the Boer farmers. The Boers are of German-Dutch ancestry and colonized that part of the continent whose countries and territories have changed names over the years depending on the different regimes. Bands of black men invade their homes where they have a pattern of systematically torturing, raping and killing the women, babies and children in front of the men before they torture and kill them. I have been sent the crime scene photos of burnt babies snatched from their mother’s arms and set alight in front of them. I have the photos of people’s bodies who were murdered with machetes and those who have still survived with wounds from machetes.
“The machete is their favorite weapon. There is a memorial hill called Plaasmoorde which is the Afrikaans word for ‘farm murders.’ It is really a small mountain where the entire side is in the shape of a white cross made from hundreds of individual white crosses. The idea is that the blacks will take the land or just terrorize the white people off it, not realizing they feed the country.
“Nelson Mandela was a militant terrorist and leader of the ANC in the 1960s and that is why he was imprisoned. When the country was handed over to him he unleashed his retribution squads behind his grandfatherly smile and eventually gave the Presidency to Jacob Zuma who was the youth leader of the ANC and is nothing more than a warlord.
“Mandela’s first wife ‘Winnie’ is known for her necklace punishment. That is where a tire tube filled with gas is put around the neck of someone with their hands tied and then set on fire.
“The black politicians consult witch doctors to make decisions and SA is the rape and AIDS capital of the world. Something else that is beyond imagination is the belief that exists down there among many blacks is that they think they can cure themselves of AIDS if they rape a virgin. Child rape is astronomical and social workers have even passed out devices that fit into vaginas that can be removed but have barbs on the inside that have to be medically removed from an inserted penis. It doesn’t stop the rape but doesn’t make it enjoyable. Of course, once word got out then they just told women to take it out if she had one or get her throat cut.
“My pen pals give me updates every morning on the savage violence that media can’t get out of the country and that the U.S., Canada and Australia won’t air. There is a growing movement to get this censored genocide out and recently a world wide Internet petition and marches were held called ‘Red October’ to bring awareness. Human Genocide Watch has begged the United Nations to do something but the sad reality is it just isn’t politically correct to bring attention to the fact that this is a black on white thing. That would make all of the countries who pressured SA to end Apartheid look really bad for endorsing mass rape, torture and murder of the SA white people who make up only 8% of the population and are by far the smallest ethnic minority. The ANC passed a law called BEE which means Black Employment Empowerment where whites are kept from getting jobs and are driven into poverty. Many neighborhoods have been turned into squatter camps. The people I message with and I have a deal where if I don’t hear from them after three days, it means they are most likely dead. There have been two in the last three months I no longer hear from. All of the police are black so you can imagine. BMW and Range Rover will no longer insure their vehicles in their country. I guess it will all come out eventually. Probably when the world can no longer help but ask the question, ‘Hey, what happened to all dem white folks down there?’ It really is sad.
“Well, enough of all that depressing stuff. Just shows the powerful psychology of government controlled media. …..”
The above information altered my perception of Nelson Mandela. I still respected him for what he accomplished in his life, even though I found the SA events repulsive. I imagine Roof operated on similar information about the SA atrocities with the Boer farmers, in order to justify murdering those at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. That is how I feel the South Africa atrocities were associated with the Charleston Church Murders.
Additionally, as written in “Love and Evil Are Color-Blind,” the torture and murders of a white couple, their young son and and a maid in a Washington, D.C. mansion, “may have fueled his hate and rage toward blacks.”
CONCLUSION: No one knows what really causes people to go out and commit mass murders, other than their inherently evil nature, maybe. I’m sure reasons vary from psychopath to psychopath. If my suspicions about why Roof murdered the people at the church is correct, I fail to understand the logic behind killing a group of people in one country for the actions of people in another country. Then again, I do not understand murdering innocent people under any circumstance. That includes dropping bombs from the sky because of political reasons, whether it be to obtain natural resources or strategic positions to battle one’s enemies.
CONFESSION: I confess that if had the military capacity to hunt down the bands of men who go on killing sprees in Africa with their machetes, I would not hesitate to use Apache helicopters and other military weapons and machinery to obliterate them. I’d do the same to any group of people committing crimes in the name of ethnic cleansing, who display ruthless acts of cruelty, as has happened in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Sudan, Darfur, and other parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. That may not make it right but it would get the point across and eliminate those who turned from human to animal.
How can humans eliminate evil minds without becoming evil themselves? I believe that is a paradox of human existence, and of the struggle to live a righteous life and survive in a dog-eat-dog, hostile world.