To Live, To Give,
To Love, To Prove, To See, To Be
The date was
Wednesday, 27th April 1949. The place
was Cape Town.
During this post-war
period, the dentists in the Western Cape were going through a financial
crisis. They sent a petition to the
government requesting assistance from the then minister of health. This petition was forwarded to the Prime
Minister, D.F. Malan.
Economists,
scientists and politicians, from around the country were summonsed together to
propose solutions to the problem.
Eventually the following proposal was accepted:
1. We need to create customers for the
dentists.
2. In order to create customers, we need to
create a problem.
3. We also need to determine a target group
for the problem.
4. In order to successfully attack the target
group, we must have them all located around a particular centrality, outside of
the main urban centrality.
And so, in 1950,
the Group Areas act 41 of 1950 was enacted.
The target was
the coloureds and after they were moved to the newly created centralities, the
water system feeding those areas was deprived of essential fluoride.
This ladies and
gentlemen is how the coloured community in the Western Cape lost their front
teeth.
Proof of this
lies in the classified section of the National Intelligence Agency; pending the
outcome of the debate on access to classified information that is debated in
the case of Bulelani Ngcuka and the so-called spy files, we are unable at this
point to provide you with the documentation.