"I grew up with two inheritances — the ability to speak and write and fight in the English language, on the one hand, and a deep suspicion of the English as racial hypocrites whose liberal pretence helped them escape the harsher criticism of apartheid reserved for white Afrikaans speakers, on the other. … But while Afrikaans has, rightly, been the target of political ridicule, English and the English continue to labour under what political studies professor Herman Giliomee famously called “the illusion of innocence”."