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Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
South Africa - The Future
Dr Marc Faber, a leading investment an ex South African and a guru, tells it how it is.......
Interesting Reading… This was published in a UK paper.
Let us hope he has it wrong -it’s pretty heavy.
I expect, like me, you are aware e that there has never been a prosperous black-led country, but perhaps it's just because of "bad luck", or whatever, for that incontrovertible fact.
Take Haiti as an example.
Before the black slaves revolted and killed all the whites and half castes Haiti had a GNP greater than most of what is now the USA A. It supplied 60% of all the sugar used in Europe.
Today it is a wasteland.
Apparently if you Google Earth the place you see is a sere, brown colored landscape compared to the neighboring Dominican Republic which is green and verdant.
Twice the USA has occupied Haiti, building roads, ports, hospitals and schools while putting in a functional society.
The moment the Americans left they reverted to dictatorship, voodoo, witchcraft, corruption and
barbarism. They did not stagnate;; they regressed to the primitive savagery of their forefathers.
Since the 1960s, when the Congo o expelled the Belgians this has been a mirror of African regression, moving steadily southwards until the example of Zimbabwe.
Once a prosperous, well educated d exporter of food the population now eat rats to survive.
Will SA go the same way?
There are those optimists who say "No, we have such a strong economy, such sophisticated
infrastructure, such a talent pool, that we can never sink".
My belief is that they have not considered the root cause of Africa's failure.
A cause that is not spoken about as it is fearfully politically incorrect, and probably illegal to speak about.
That cause is the deficiencies of the black "mentality", for want of a better word.
Are there differences between races, or is race just a meaningless social construct?
Until recently, I believed all races were the same under the skin variations, and that perceived
differences were only the result of f cultural differences.
I believed in a common and equal humanity.
But things did not always ring true; observable anomalies were inexplicable if all men are the same.
Why, under apartheid, did the Indians prosper; become doctors, scientists, educators, merchants and professionals while the vast majority of the equally oppressed black Africans remained hewers of wood?
Why can black Africans run, jump and throw better than honkies, but why, out of a billion of them, have they never invented a single thing of any worth?
Why have they, collectively, contributed absolutely nothing to the advancement of humanity?
Well the physical thing, the running, throwing bit is easily and uncontroversial answered.
Simple, people of African descent (especially the Jamaicans) are genetically better equipped in this regard.
Their muscle fibres are different and the typically have 15% more free testosterone than other
peoples.
Acknowledging this is regarded as racism.
Unfortunately, racist or not, that is proven and a fact.
Google it and you will find that for over 70 years, in test after test, done by dozens of university
professors and Nobel laureates plus USA government studies, most people of African descent trail other races by a wide margin.
Of course I.Q. tests have been attacked, especially by those who perform badly at them, as one might expect them to do.
Detractors claim cultural bias, dysfunctional families, past oppression, poor schooling and a host of other reasons for poor black performance, but the professors defend their contention that I.Q. is largely an inherited trait; that differences are inherent, built into a person's inherited DNA.
For every argument attacking the validity of these tests they have a host of results confirming their accuracy and typicality. Fascinating stuff if you are interested in reading up on it.
The effect of high/low I.Q. has also been studied in depth, with fairly predictable results.
Low I.Q. individuals performed badly in social class, family stability, income, educational levels,
illegitimate pregnancy, single parent families, rate of prison incarceration, rape, violent crime etc. etc. etc.
I.Q. measurement measures different facets of intelligence and mental competence.
Sadly it is in the absolutely vital sphere of cognitive ability that blacks score worst.
This means they score abysmally in things like forward planning and anticipating the consequences of their actions.
It is this I.Q. (and testosterone) disparity that is blamed for the fact that African Americans are 5 times more likely to be imprisoned than white (including Hispanic) Americans, 9 times more likely than Americans of Asiatic descent. All in line with I.Q. distributions.
Once imprisonments for violent crimes are computed the numbers become stratospheric.
These are American government collated statistics, so pretty accurate.
Our government in SA do not, for obvious reasons, publish similar stats, but a pound to a pinch of salt they are even more astounding.
So why the lecture on I.Q.?
Well for a start you must understand that our ruling party are voted into power by a largely moronic plebiscite.
I choose the word moronic intentionally.
If the cut off point for moronic is an I.Q. of 70, half the voting population would be classified as such.
Only one in 40 black South Africans achieves the average I.Q. of his white fellow citizens.
One in a hundred has the I.Q. to achieve university entrance requirements.
That is why only one in ten blacks pass our dumbed down Matric (with a pass percentage of 30% in many cases).
One in 6000 black grade one learners will pass Matric with both Maths and Science.
Simply put, they are bloody stupid, and they rule us.
Furthermore Zoooooma says they will rule us until the second coming. I believe him.
This explains why the ANC have such idiots in their positions of power and influence, the likes of Zuma, Malema, Khomphela and Cele. They are, unfortunately, the best they have!
Well, they are the best blacks they have.
All the critical positions in government are held by Indians, coloureds or whites, something I am
grateful for, but which p--s Malema off big time.
Will this last? I doubt it.
The black/white polarisation is growing and the rhetoric is becoming more extreme.
Listen to the pub or workplace chatter, read the blogs and comments sections of the newspapers and it becomes obvious.
Whites are gatvol at the waste, corruption and stupidity of the black elite.
Blacks are demanding, as their right, the wealth of the whites by means of redistribution of assets. No matter that they have not worked for those assets, they claim them as the spoils of war.
Just in the past week the Mayor of Pretoria, Malema, a minister and Winnie have gone on record as blaming whites for sabotaging redistribution and exploiting blacks.
Malema calls out "Kill the Boers for they are rapists" to thunderous applause by university students.
Four influential ANC opinion makers who are echoing the groundswell of mutterings in the ghettoes. The natives are getting restless. Things are not going to improve.
They cannot, there is no reason to believe our slow slide into a failed state can be reversed with our current regime, and there is no prospect whatsoever of there being a change to governance based on meritocracy.
Anyone who believes otherwise, or that the ANC can mend their ways, is living in LaLa land.
They do not have the intellect. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating pot we have become inured to the slow collapse of our hospitals, schools, courts, water supplies, roads civil service and service levels.
They will become totally dysfunctional shortly.
Inevitably so.
Those in charge do not have the mental capacity to organise things.
Our economy and Rand is reliant on short term "hot" funds from overseas that can flee at the touch of a computer button, and probably will if our Rand weakens. Conversely we need a weaker Rand to encourage exports. 6 million taxpayers support 12 million recipients of social grants, and that figure is set to rise this year. The National Health Insurance scheme will happen, no matter how unaffordable.
That will push our social grant costs up to four hundred billion Rand.
Four hundred billion Rand which produces absolutely no product.
Inflation is set to stay and worsen.
The consequence of being the biggest socialist state on earth.
I do not believe the ANC has the intellect to conceptualise how big a billion is, let alone 400 billion, or what effect this will have on the economy.
You do not believe Malema's call to nationalise the mines?
This guy articulates what the hoi polloi are thinking, but the ANC leadership will not say yet.
The tactic is to set the bar high, then lower it and the victims will sigh with relief and say it could have been worse.
So perhaps it will not be total nationalisation but rather 51%, a' la Zim. Just look north for revelation, Zuma does.
Who would have believed that this country would ever be headed by an unschooled, rape accused, adulterous, corrupt, sex obsessed bigot like Zuma.
Anything is possible with the ANC.
SUMMARY
You have few years left to enjoy what is left of the glorious SA lifestyle, especially in the Cape, but understand it is not permanent. The end could be sudden as the tipping point is reached, just as it was sudden for those Zim, Zambian, Mozambican or Angolans whites.
It could, conceivably, be as bloody as the Hutu/Tutsi uprising when primitive tribal bloodlust
overcomes a thin veneer of inculcated civilisation.
Enjoy it while you can, and enjoy it in the Cape where the population mix is more favourable, but be aware that change is inevitable.
Your children must get a world class education, because they will not be adults in SA.
Get assets stashed offshore, you and your children will need them there.
This is a huge WAKE UP SOUTH AFRICA call!!!!
There are lots of South African articles doing the rounds, this is one of the best.
I have always tried to understand why Africa has not prospered more with all the mineral wealth and available labour.
This is without a doubt the most plausible explanation for me.
Nelson Mandela The Myth Bigger than Nelson Mandela the man.
South Africa Needs a Post-Mandela Revolution.
After Mandela
There will never be another Nelson Mandela, but maybe that’s just what South Africa needs to save itself from ruin.
Late on Wednesday night, March 27, former South African president Nelson Mandela was admitted to an undisclosed hospital for a recurring lung infection. This is the third time Mandela has been hospitalized in recent months. He spent a weekend in hospital in early March for what the government described as a "check-up," and most of December in hospital, where he was treated for a lung infection and had his gallstones removed. The last time Mandela was seen in public was almost three years ago, at the closing ceremony of the 2010 World Cup, in Johannesburg. But that doesn't mean that he's not still everywhere.
Take his "appearance" at the kickoff this January of the 29th African Cup of Nations, an intercontinental soccer tournament held every two years. The elaborate opening ceremony, celebrating African culture, was a feast of entertainment, music, and dancing; at one point, an enormous Mandela puppet took to the stage. Dressed in the former president's trademark loose, patterned shirt, the puppet swaggered, tottered, jilted, and jived. The audience applauded, for the puppet was instantly identifiable, instantly empathic, instantly adored. Everything else on the stage -- and there was much else, including hundreds of dancers in colorful traditional dress -- could well have been invisible. Yet there was something perfectly ironic about the puppet: in its enormousness and vitality, it was somehow a better stand-in than Mandela himself, whose age and condition no longer allows him to take the stage.
The ailing former president has been squarely on South Africa's mind the last few months. At 94, he is frail and fading fast. Housebound and bedridden in his Johannesburg estate, he is rumored to be senile; some claim he no longer speaks at all. One especially devastating newspaper report, quoting his former wife, said that his"sparkle was fading."
Each time Mandela is admitted to hospital, a wall of silence goes up between Mandela's spokespeople and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government, on the one side, and local and international media, on the other. The official ANC line is always the same: Mandela is "in good health," he is "stable," his medical examinations are "routine" -- nothing to see here, folks, move along. The unofficial line is decidedly different and, by all reasonable accounts, much closer to the truth.
There's also a striking gulf between the local and international media in their reports on Mandela's health. The foreign press are more beatific -- they exhaust transcendental superlatives in attempting to describe the elderly statesman -- but also more ruthless and fatalistic. They polish the halo, or they rehearse the deathbed scene, but, for the most part, they don't seem terribly interested in any middle ground. Each time Mandela takes ill, they wonder if this hospital stay will be the hospital stay, if the unthinkable is about to happen, if the big story is here.
South African reporters are generally shrewder and tougher, indifferent to hyperbole and reflexively critical of the party line. They do a better job of portraying Mandela as an actual human being. But they have also been disciplined into deference by a government that curbs the media, threatens its freedoms, and queries its patriotism.
The ANC has been shameless in exploiting apartheid-era security laws -- such as prohibiting anyone from providing "any information relating to the security measures applicable at or in respect of any" property designated a National Key Point -- to restrict press coverage of Mandela. This extends to the current president, Jacob Zuma, whose controversially funded homestead has itself conveniently been designated a National Key Point. For the ANC, all apartheid-era laws are understandably abhorrent -- except when they can be used to enhance the party itself, protect its politicians or cover up their crimes, in which case the laws are not only acceptable, but also admirable. As the sociologist Roger Southall has noted, the ANC "blurs the distinction between party and state (and between legality and illegality)."
That the ANC has repeatedly bungled its media response to Mandela's hospitalizations, with a damage-control strategy that would be laughed at by any reputable PR company, is revealing. In December 2011, police removed three CCTV cameras that overlooked the Eastern Cape home where Mandela then lived. The cameras had been placed there by Reuters and the Associated Press, and were to be switched on in the event of Mandela's death. Following a public outcry, authorities condemned the news outlets for their intrusiveness, despite the fact that, according to the outlets, these same authorities had given permission for the installation of the cameras.
Indeed, the morbid Mandela death watch is in full swing. Writing in Britain's Guardian in December 2011, that newspaper's Africa correspondent, David Smith, noted that there "are top-secret works in progress. It would be imprudent to discuss them with rivals, and tasteless to admit their existence in polite company. But one day they will be activated -- the only question is when. These are the 'M-plans,' the euphemism for scenarios drawn up by media organizations preparing to report the death of Mandela." Smith noted that "Major broadcasters have spent years -- and 'fortunes' -- building studios, buying prime locations, pre-booking hotels and transport, hiring local 'fixers,' and signing up pundits."
It's almost a cottage industry. As far back as 1997, the South African journalist Lester Venter published a book entitled When Mandela Goes. Since then, there have been several books with similar titles, the most recent of which is After Mandela, by the Daily Telegraph's former South Africa correspondent, Alec Russell. For decades, people have worried what would happen after Mandela's death; whether the country would fall apart without this stabilizing (and largely mythical) force. In Russell's crisp phrase, Mandela's gift to South Africa was his "reconciliatory wizardry," for not only did he ease South Africa into democracy, but he encouraged unity, forgiveness, and faith in humankind. For journalist Alex Duval Smith, writing in the Independent, Mandela is "our planet's last living legend." For Time's Africa bureau chief, Alex Perry, and millions of others, Mandela is a "kind of secular saint to the world."
It seems that too many ostensibly objective journalists have forgotten George Orwell's dictum (in his 1949 review of a Mahatma G
andhi biography): "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." Mandela himself announced, after his 1990 release from 27 years of imprisonment: "I stand here not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people" ... which is, come to think of it, the kind of thing a prophet would say.
Recovering from a bad case of Mandela Illness Fatigue in December, the Cape Town-based AIDS activist Nathan Geffen wrote on his website that "myth-making about Mandela, the continued suggestions by the ANC that he is infallible and superhuman ... coupled by the failure to critically discuss and debate his lifetime's ideas, actions, successes, and failures, does him a disservice. It reduces his life to feel-good quotes and excuses all kinds of bad behavior done in his name. This dehumanizes Mandela and actually means we fail to learn from his achievements."
Geffen sounds like the only grown-up in a world populated by eternally idealistic and overly excitable adolescents, but more and more South African writers are examining Mandela's legacy from a critical perspective, and many young people have also begun to cast a cold eye on Madiba (the affectionate nickname for Mandela), especially the so-called born-free generation, who have only ever known democracy and lack the older generation's baked-in gratitude and goodwill toward the former president.
The born-frees are disheartened by their country's inequality (which has actually widened since apartheid, and is now one of the worst in the world), its debilitating 71 percent youth unemployment rate, its broken education system, and its lack of adequate housing and healthcare. They are angry at South Africa's staggering crime (the country remains one of the most violent in the world).They are frustrated by being endlessly poor: according to the United Nations Development Program, almost half of all South Africans live below the poverty line. And they feel betrayed by a corrupt ANC elite that appears to aspire only to enrich itself, that promises everything at election time but delivers little. None of this is Mandela's fault, of course, but then nor is it the fault of South Africa's youth. One provocative 2012 born-free blog post was titled, "How Mandela Sold Out Blacks."
The truth is that Mandela never actually governed South Africa as president. From the beginning of his single term, in 1994, he delegated (or was perhaps coerced into delegating) all his decision-making to his deputy, future President Thabo Mbeki. Even then, Mandela was little more than a figurehead, spending much of his time posing for photographs with American celebrities, making seemingly meaningful but frequently vacuous statements, and, later, coaxing President Bill Clinton through his Monica Lewinsky trauma. (Clinton early on understood how to exploit Mandela for the subtlest political purposes. Shamed by the nation for cheating on your wife? Mention you've sought counsel from Mandela, and all will be forgiven.)
Mandela's role was necessary at the time: reassuring both South Africa and the world that the transition from apartheid to democracy had been successfully undertaken, encouraging tourism and international investment, and soothing the psyche of an anxious nation that looked to him as a stable, moral presence. Much was accomplished policy-wise during Mandela's first term, but with little input from the great man himself.
Thus, Mandela often takes credit to this day for policies Mbeki and others engineered (the relatively successful neoliberal economy; the important first steps in redressing poverty and giving homes to the homeless), and occasionally gets blamed for what were, in retrospect, mistakes of Mbeki's making (not taking a firmer stance on Robert Mugabe's increasingly tyrannical rule of Zimbabwe; a frequently confused and self-defeating foreign policy; the widening of the inequality gap).
For activists, Mandela's greatest sin was failing to speak out forcefully about the AIDS epidemic -- which has crippled the country over the last two decades, leading to millions of deaths -- and neglecting to put in place effective policy to both prevent further infection and distribute antiretrovirals to those suffering from the disease. But even here Madiba deserves some leeway. After all, AIDS was the mandate of the then-Health Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ex-wife of the current president and now chairperson of the African Union Commission. In fact, a costly attempt by Dlamini-Zuma to draw national attention to AIDS was one of the new South Africa's earliest public embarrassments. Besides, it is easy, with hindsight, to talk about the government's mishandling of the HIV time bomb. In the very early years of democracy, before Mbeki unforgivably turned HIV denialism into government policy, AIDS was just one enormous social issue among many.
Mandela certainly had his share of political blunders. The most public may have been his 1993 stance, ahead of the first democratic election the following year, that the voting age be lowered to 14. It was a peculiar proposal for a man who should have known his party stood to win an overwhelming majority of votes anyway, without attempting to gerrymander the youth vote. (Even some ANC militants, who thought that too many concessions had already been granted to the Afrikaners, were mystified by Madiba's suggestion).
Privately, and on rare occasions, people who know Mandela mention moments when the former president was petty, acquisitive, churlish, compromised, even craven. This is not to say that Mandela is not a great man -- he most assuredly is -- but that he remains just that: a man. As South Africa's last apartheid president and Mandela's Nobel Peace Prize co-awardee, F.W. de Klerk (himself no hero) recently said, "He was by no means the avuncular and saintlike figure so widely depicted today."
In his envy and tacit resentment of Mandela, de Klerk has an unlikely companion in Thabo Mbeki, who understood that, no matter how able a politician he was (and the young Mbeki was an extraordinarily accomplished lobbyist and tactician), he would never live up to Mandela's legacy.
Even before he became president, Mbeki humiliated Mandela, both implicitly and overtly, publicly and privately. Poised to become president, Mbeki, in a speech at the ANC party conference in 1997, addressed the question everyone was asking: how he intended to step into Madiba's massive shoes.
"I will never, ever be seen dead in your shoes," he said, speaking directly to Mandela, "because you wear such ugly shoes." It was a joke, but it also wasn't. Mbeki later mocked Mandela's "silly" shirts. Once president, he even refused to take Madiba's telephone calls. For his part, Mandela suspected that his successor had planted listening devices in his home -- not an unreasonable assumption, given Mbeki's well known paranoia.
The truth is, Mandela set an unreasonably high bar for any South African politician. Incapable of being better than Mandela, his successors as president seemed content to be worse. Mbeki, who was prone to quoting from Shakespeare, Yeats, and Langston Hughes, should have read more Freud. Mandela's successor became increasingly autocratic, alienated, and obsessive -- and was eventually ousted by his party as he attempted to close in on an unconstitutional third term.
The current president, Jacob Zuma, with 783 charges of racketeering, fraud, and corruption against him, makes Lance Armstrong look like a stand-up guy. He has made tacit threats to South Africa's Constitution, to its media, and to its judiciary. He recently spent $28 million of taxpayer money on a luxurious homestead for himself and his large family. The Guardian's former Africa correspondent Chris McGreal once described Zuma as being "almost shorn of ideology." But it has now become clear what Zuma's ideology is -- it is the philosophy of self-enrichment.
Despite the emergence of a new political party in February, there is still no party that has a broad enough appeal to the majority of black South Africans to be a viable threat to the ANC. For better or worse, the party of Nelson Mandela will be the dominant party of South Africa for the foreseeable future.
And while Mandela himself may be fading from public view, the Mandela industry continues unabated. This is the franchised, fetishized, minted, molded, mass-produced, and endlessly exploited "Mandela" -- one that bears no relation to the actual human being. This is the world's Mandela, commodified in countless iterations: part Che Guevara, part Mickey Mouse.
Madiba's image adorns everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to South Africa's recently released new banknotes. There are multiple Mandela clothing lines. There is a Mandela gold coin collection marketed to wealthy South African expatriates (those who love the country enough to brag about it, but not enough to make their home there). Curio shops in touristy areas sell Mandela memorabilia, with signs advising foreigners to "Take a Part of Africa Home With You" -- never mind that it's probably made in China.
The hagiography has long been internationalized. The Hollywood adaptation of The Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela's bestselling autobiography (ghostwritten by Richard Stengel, now managing editor of Time) is scheduled for release this year. Idris Elba, the British actor of Ghanian and Sierra Leonian heritage, best known for his role on HBO's The Wire, will play Mandela in the film. Some black South African actors expressed outrage at the casting. "Mandela has already been portrayed by Danny Glover, Morgan Freeman, and Sidney Poitier," an actor friend said to me recently. "When is an actual South African going to play the world's most famous South African?" And now, of course, there's a reality show. On February 10, NBC's Cozi TV channel launched Being Mandela, featuring three of Mandela's granddaughters, who are evidently attempting to keep up with the Kardashians.
Meanwhile, a letter leaked to the press last July revealed a rift between the ANC and its most famous family. In the letter, Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, complained that, "No one has cared to establish how we are doing as a family. It is quite clear that we do not matter at all, we only do when we have to be used for some agenda." That's rich, considering Madikizela-Mandela was herself was one of the earliest exploiters of the Mandela name, selling soil and other knick knacks from her husband's Soweto property to tourists for exorbitant prices.
Still, Madikizela-Mandela has a point. In today's South Africa, Madiba is little more than a puppet tossed about between the ANC (which uses his name to rally its base or remind supporters of its glory years), opposition parties (which brandish his name as a weapon), or by the international media (which mentions Mandela as a shorthand to point out how the country has failed to live up to its ideals -- nevermind that they were impossible, anyway).
Perhaps Mandela's death will occasion a compassionate assessment of where South Africa is as a country right now, where it should be, and how to get there. The hope in a post-Mandela South Africa is that younger leaders can find their voice anew, liberate the political parties from the sins of self-enrichment that have robbed this country of moral authority, fight once more for the rights of the poor majority, and deliver to South Africa a vigorous democracy once again. It's sad that it might take the passing of Madiba for that to be possible.
Read more at ONTD Political: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10523341.html#ixzz2XECF97Rg
http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10523341.html
After Mandela
There will never be another Nelson Mandela, but maybe that’s just what South Africa needs to save itself from ruin.
Late on Wednesday night, March 27, former South African president Nelson Mandela was admitted to an undisclosed hospital for a recurring lung infection. This is the third time Mandela has been hospitalized in recent months. He spent a weekend in hospital in early March for what the government described as a "check-up," and most of December in hospital, where he was treated for a lung infection and had his gallstones removed. The last time Mandela was seen in public was almost three years ago, at the closing ceremony of the 2010 World Cup, in Johannesburg. But that doesn't mean that he's not still everywhere.
Take his "appearance" at the kickoff this January of the 29th African Cup of Nations, an intercontinental soccer tournament held every two years. The elaborate opening ceremony, celebrating African culture, was a feast of entertainment, music, and dancing; at one point, an enormous Mandela puppet took to the stage. Dressed in the former president's trademark loose, patterned shirt, the puppet swaggered, tottered, jilted, and jived. The audience applauded, for the puppet was instantly identifiable, instantly empathic, instantly adored. Everything else on the stage -- and there was much else, including hundreds of dancers in colorful traditional dress -- could well have been invisible. Yet there was something perfectly ironic about the puppet: in its enormousness and vitality, it was somehow a better stand-in than Mandela himself, whose age and condition no longer allows him to take the stage.
The ailing former president has been squarely on South Africa's mind the last few months. At 94, he is frail and fading fast. Housebound and bedridden in his Johannesburg estate, he is rumored to be senile; some claim he no longer speaks at all. One especially devastating newspaper report, quoting his former wife, said that his"sparkle was fading."
Each time Mandela is admitted to hospital, a wall of silence goes up between Mandela's spokespeople and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government, on the one side, and local and international media, on the other. The official ANC line is always the same: Mandela is "in good health," he is "stable," his medical examinations are "routine" -- nothing to see here, folks, move along. The unofficial line is decidedly different and, by all reasonable accounts, much closer to the truth.
There's also a striking gulf between the local and international media in their reports on Mandela's health. The foreign press are more beatific -- they exhaust transcendental superlatives in attempting to describe the elderly statesman -- but also more ruthless and fatalistic. They polish the halo, or they rehearse the deathbed scene, but, for the most part, they don't seem terribly interested in any middle ground. Each time Mandela takes ill, they wonder if this hospital stay will be the hospital stay, if the unthinkable is about to happen, if the big story is here.
South African reporters are generally shrewder and tougher, indifferent to hyperbole and reflexively critical of the party line. They do a better job of portraying Mandela as an actual human being. But they have also been disciplined into deference by a government that curbs the media, threatens its freedoms, and queries its patriotism.
The ANC has been shameless in exploiting apartheid-era security laws -- such as prohibiting anyone from providing "any information relating to the security measures applicable at or in respect of any" property designated a National Key Point -- to restrict press coverage of Mandela. This extends to the current president, Jacob Zuma, whose controversially funded homestead has itself conveniently been designated a National Key Point. For the ANC, all apartheid-era laws are understandably abhorrent -- except when they can be used to enhance the party itself, protect its politicians or cover up their crimes, in which case the laws are not only acceptable, but also admirable. As the sociologist Roger Southall has noted, the ANC "blurs the distinction between party and state (and between legality and illegality)."
That the ANC has repeatedly bungled its media response to Mandela's hospitalizations, with a damage-control strategy that would be laughed at by any reputable PR company, is revealing. In December 2011, police removed three CCTV cameras that overlooked the Eastern Cape home where Mandela then lived. The cameras had been placed there by Reuters and the Associated Press, and were to be switched on in the event of Mandela's death. Following a public outcry, authorities condemned the news outlets for their intrusiveness, despite the fact that, according to the outlets, these same authorities had given permission for the installation of the cameras.
Indeed, the morbid Mandela death watch is in full swing. Writing in Britain's Guardian in December 2011, that newspaper's Africa correspondent, David Smith, noted that there "are top-secret works in progress. It would be imprudent to discuss them with rivals, and tasteless to admit their existence in polite company. But one day they will be activated -- the only question is when. These are the 'M-plans,' the euphemism for scenarios drawn up by media organizations preparing to report the death of Mandela." Smith noted that "Major broadcasters have spent years -- and 'fortunes' -- building studios, buying prime locations, pre-booking hotels and transport, hiring local 'fixers,' and signing up pundits."
It's almost a cottage industry. As far back as 1997, the South African journalist Lester Venter published a book entitled When Mandela Goes. Since then, there have been several books with similar titles, the most recent of which is After Mandela, by the Daily Telegraph's former South Africa correspondent, Alec Russell. For decades, people have worried what would happen after Mandela's death; whether the country would fall apart without this stabilizing (and largely mythical) force. In Russell's crisp phrase, Mandela's gift to South Africa was his "reconciliatory wizardry," for not only did he ease South Africa into democracy, but he encouraged unity, forgiveness, and faith in humankind. For journalist Alex Duval Smith, writing in the Independent, Mandela is "our planet's last living legend." For Time's Africa bureau chief, Alex Perry, and millions of others, Mandela is a "kind of secular saint to the world."
It seems that too many ostensibly objective journalists have forgotten George Orwell's dictum (in his 1949 review of a Mahatma G
andhi biography): "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." Mandela himself announced, after his 1990 release from 27 years of imprisonment: "I stand here not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people" ... which is, come to think of it, the kind of thing a prophet would say.
Recovering from a bad case of Mandela Illness Fatigue in December, the Cape Town-based AIDS activist Nathan Geffen wrote on his website that "myth-making about Mandela, the continued suggestions by the ANC that he is infallible and superhuman ... coupled by the failure to critically discuss and debate his lifetime's ideas, actions, successes, and failures, does him a disservice. It reduces his life to feel-good quotes and excuses all kinds of bad behavior done in his name. This dehumanizes Mandela and actually means we fail to learn from his achievements."
Geffen sounds like the only grown-up in a world populated by eternally idealistic and overly excitable adolescents, but more and more South African writers are examining Mandela's legacy from a critical perspective, and many young people have also begun to cast a cold eye on Madiba (the affectionate nickname for Mandela), especially the so-called born-free generation, who have only ever known democracy and lack the older generation's baked-in gratitude and goodwill toward the former president.
The born-frees are disheartened by their country's inequality (which has actually widened since apartheid, and is now one of the worst in the world), its debilitating 71 percent youth unemployment rate, its broken education system, and its lack of adequate housing and healthcare. They are angry at South Africa's staggering crime (the country remains one of the most violent in the world).They are frustrated by being endlessly poor: according to the United Nations Development Program, almost half of all South Africans live below the poverty line. And they feel betrayed by a corrupt ANC elite that appears to aspire only to enrich itself, that promises everything at election time but delivers little. None of this is Mandela's fault, of course, but then nor is it the fault of South Africa's youth. One provocative 2012 born-free blog post was titled, "How Mandela Sold Out Blacks."
The truth is that Mandela never actually governed South Africa as president. From the beginning of his single term, in 1994, he delegated (or was perhaps coerced into delegating) all his decision-making to his deputy, future President Thabo Mbeki. Even then, Mandela was little more than a figurehead, spending much of his time posing for photographs with American celebrities, making seemingly meaningful but frequently vacuous statements, and, later, coaxing President Bill Clinton through his Monica Lewinsky trauma. (Clinton early on understood how to exploit Mandela for the subtlest political purposes. Shamed by the nation for cheating on your wife? Mention you've sought counsel from Mandela, and all will be forgiven.)
Mandela's role was necessary at the time: reassuring both South Africa and the world that the transition from apartheid to democracy had been successfully undertaken, encouraging tourism and international investment, and soothing the psyche of an anxious nation that looked to him as a stable, moral presence. Much was accomplished policy-wise during Mandela's first term, but with little input from the great man himself.
Thus, Mandela often takes credit to this day for policies Mbeki and others engineered (the relatively successful neoliberal economy; the important first steps in redressing poverty and giving homes to the homeless), and occasionally gets blamed for what were, in retrospect, mistakes of Mbeki's making (not taking a firmer stance on Robert Mugabe's increasingly tyrannical rule of Zimbabwe; a frequently confused and self-defeating foreign policy; the widening of the inequality gap).
For activists, Mandela's greatest sin was failing to speak out forcefully about the AIDS epidemic -- which has crippled the country over the last two decades, leading to millions of deaths -- and neglecting to put in place effective policy to both prevent further infection and distribute antiretrovirals to those suffering from the disease. But even here Madiba deserves some leeway. After all, AIDS was the mandate of the then-Health Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ex-wife of the current president and now chairperson of the African Union Commission. In fact, a costly attempt by Dlamini-Zuma to draw national attention to AIDS was one of the new South Africa's earliest public embarrassments. Besides, it is easy, with hindsight, to talk about the government's mishandling of the HIV time bomb. In the very early years of democracy, before Mbeki unforgivably turned HIV denialism into government policy, AIDS was just one enormous social issue among many.
Mandela certainly had his share of political blunders. The most public may have been his 1993 stance, ahead of the first democratic election the following year, that the voting age be lowered to 14. It was a peculiar proposal for a man who should have known his party stood to win an overwhelming majority of votes anyway, without attempting to gerrymander the youth vote. (Even some ANC militants, who thought that too many concessions had already been granted to the Afrikaners, were mystified by Madiba's suggestion).
Privately, and on rare occasions, people who know Mandela mention moments when the former president was petty, acquisitive, churlish, compromised, even craven. This is not to say that Mandela is not a great man -- he most assuredly is -- but that he remains just that: a man. As South Africa's last apartheid president and Mandela's Nobel Peace Prize co-awardee, F.W. de Klerk (himself no hero) recently said, "He was by no means the avuncular and saintlike figure so widely depicted today."
In his envy and tacit resentment of Mandela, de Klerk has an unlikely companion in Thabo Mbeki, who understood that, no matter how able a politician he was (and the young Mbeki was an extraordinarily accomplished lobbyist and tactician), he would never live up to Mandela's legacy.
Even before he became president, Mbeki humiliated Mandela, both implicitly and overtly, publicly and privately. Poised to become president, Mbeki, in a speech at the ANC party conference in 1997, addressed the question everyone was asking: how he intended to step into Madiba's massive shoes.
"I will never, ever be seen dead in your shoes," he said, speaking directly to Mandela, "because you wear such ugly shoes." It was a joke, but it also wasn't. Mbeki later mocked Mandela's "silly" shirts. Once president, he even refused to take Madiba's telephone calls. For his part, Mandela suspected that his successor had planted listening devices in his home -- not an unreasonable assumption, given Mbeki's well known paranoia.
The truth is, Mandela set an unreasonably high bar for any South African politician. Incapable of being better than Mandela, his successors as president seemed content to be worse. Mbeki, who was prone to quoting from Shakespeare, Yeats, and Langston Hughes, should have read more Freud. Mandela's successor became increasingly autocratic, alienated, and obsessive -- and was eventually ousted by his party as he attempted to close in on an unconstitutional third term.
The current president, Jacob Zuma, with 783 charges of racketeering, fraud, and corruption against him, makes Lance Armstrong look like a stand-up guy. He has made tacit threats to South Africa's Constitution, to its media, and to its judiciary. He recently spent $28 million of taxpayer money on a luxurious homestead for himself and his large family. The Guardian's former Africa correspondent Chris McGreal once described Zuma as being "almost shorn of ideology." But it has now become clear what Zuma's ideology is -- it is the philosophy of self-enrichment.
Despite the emergence of a new political party in February, there is still no party that has a broad enough appeal to the majority of black South Africans to be a viable threat to the ANC. For better or worse, the party of Nelson Mandela will be the dominant party of South Africa for the foreseeable future.
And while Mandela himself may be fading from public view, the Mandela industry continues unabated. This is the franchised, fetishized, minted, molded, mass-produced, and endlessly exploited "Mandela" -- one that bears no relation to the actual human being. This is the world's Mandela, commodified in countless iterations: part Che Guevara, part Mickey Mouse.
Madiba's image adorns everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to South Africa's recently released new banknotes. There are multiple Mandela clothing lines. There is a Mandela gold coin collection marketed to wealthy South African expatriates (those who love the country enough to brag about it, but not enough to make their home there). Curio shops in touristy areas sell Mandela memorabilia, with signs advising foreigners to "Take a Part of Africa Home With You" -- never mind that it's probably made in China.
The hagiography has long been internationalized. The Hollywood adaptation of The Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela's bestselling autobiography (ghostwritten by Richard Stengel, now managing editor of Time) is scheduled for release this year. Idris Elba, the British actor of Ghanian and Sierra Leonian heritage, best known for his role on HBO's The Wire, will play Mandela in the film. Some black South African actors expressed outrage at the casting. "Mandela has already been portrayed by Danny Glover, Morgan Freeman, and Sidney Poitier," an actor friend said to me recently. "When is an actual South African going to play the world's most famous South African?" And now, of course, there's a reality show. On February 10, NBC's Cozi TV channel launched Being Mandela, featuring three of Mandela's granddaughters, who are evidently attempting to keep up with the Kardashians.
Meanwhile, a letter leaked to the press last July revealed a rift between the ANC and its most famous family. In the letter, Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, complained that, "No one has cared to establish how we are doing as a family. It is quite clear that we do not matter at all, we only do when we have to be used for some agenda." That's rich, considering Madikizela-Mandela was herself was one of the earliest exploiters of the Mandela name, selling soil and other knick knacks from her husband's Soweto property to tourists for exorbitant prices.
Still, Madikizela-Mandela has a point. In today's South Africa, Madiba is little more than a puppet tossed about between the ANC (which uses his name to rally its base or remind supporters of its glory years), opposition parties (which brandish his name as a weapon), or by the international media (which mentions Mandela as a shorthand to point out how the country has failed to live up to its ideals -- nevermind that they were impossible, anyway).
Perhaps Mandela's death will occasion a compassionate assessment of where South Africa is as a country right now, where it should be, and how to get there. The hope in a post-Mandela South Africa is that younger leaders can find their voice anew, liberate the political parties from the sins of self-enrichment that have robbed this country of moral authority, fight once more for the rights of the poor majority, and deliver to South Africa a vigorous democracy once again. It's sad that it might take the passing of Madiba for that to be possible.
Read more at ONTD Political: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10523341.html#ixzz2XECF97Rg
http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10523341.html
Just For The Record
Just for the record. I do not celebrate the passing of Mandela. But I wont shed a tear either. We (Whites / ANC) were once enemies, at war with each other, and then there was a change and everyone went to the negotiating table. It is all fine and well to go to the negotiating table, and it may change the situation, but it does not change the attitude. You all sing "Kill the farmer, Kill the Boer." while you stuff your faces on the product of our toil. You think this makes me love you?
Treat me with respect and leave me alone, and I will do likewise. And vise versa. But your lot can't, so neither can I.
I sincerely hope that the day of your passing will not be remembered as the day that the new South Africa was lost, because, in my honest opinion, if things get any worse than they are at the moment, you may very well find that is exactly what is going to happen.
All I can say is farewell Madiba. I shall neither shed a tear nor smile, for you meant nothing to me when you were here, and your passing is of even less relevance to my life. All I know is that since you took over, this country has turned into a hell-hole and cesspit of note.
Don't anyone ever tell me about your wonderful legacy. Your corrupt party has ruined it for pretty much everyone except the few political elite.
Since the ANC took over ... This country, SHE BE ALL BROKEN ... and I don't see anyone taking any steps to fix it. Wearing a rugby jersey and basking in the glory of the white mans efforts never did cut it for me. But isn't that so symbolic of South Africa, ... A black man quick to jump on the white mans efforts and own it for himself. Just like he is quick to slap his name on as many things as he can that he never worked for or paid for.
https://www.facebook.com/michael.brink.77?hc_location=stream
Please read the comments to this post here.
Treat me with respect and leave me alone, and I will do likewise. And vise versa. But your lot can't, so neither can I.
I sincerely hope that the day of your passing will not be remembered as the day that the new South Africa was lost, because, in my honest opinion, if things get any worse than they are at the moment, you may very well find that is exactly what is going to happen.
All I can say is farewell Madiba. I shall neither shed a tear nor smile, for you meant nothing to me when you were here, and your passing is of even less relevance to my life. All I know is that since you took over, this country has turned into a hell-hole and cesspit of note.
Don't anyone ever tell me about your wonderful legacy. Your corrupt party has ruined it for pretty much everyone except the few political elite.
Since the ANC took over ... This country, SHE BE ALL BROKEN ... and I don't see anyone taking any steps to fix it. Wearing a rugby jersey and basking in the glory of the white mans efforts never did cut it for me. But isn't that so symbolic of South Africa, ... A black man quick to jump on the white mans efforts and own it for himself. Just like he is quick to slap his name on as many things as he can that he never worked for or paid for.
https://www.facebook.com/michael.brink.77?hc_location=stream
Please read the comments to this post here.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Mandela - The Legend and the Legacy
It is often said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, however, this usually means that the other man has been less than fastidious in his choice of hero, or that the “freedom fighter” in question was on the crowd pleasing side.
On the 27th of June, London's Hyde Park played host to a concert in honour of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and as expected it received wall to wall coverage from a star struck and worshipping media, who continue to laud Mandela as one of the greatest, or indeed the greatest, heroes of our time.
The beaming old man appeared on stage in one of his trademark multi-coloured shirts and cheerily acknowledge the cheers of the adoring crowd, most of whom have been taught to believe in his sainthood since their first days in primary school, which, for many of them, will have occurred around the same time their hero walked free from Robben Island.
The unquestioning belief in Mandela's universally admired saintliness was again on display in the gushing media coverage and by the unending line of politicians and dignitaries from presidents to Prime ministers who queued up to genuflect before him and sing his praises. It is a brave politician or journalist who would dare to question the godliness of this legend and consummate showman, and hence no such questions were raised, nor were his much vaunted “achievements” subjected to any objective scrutiny.
No matter how many speeches are given or how many news articles are written, it will be a long time if ever before the truth about Mandela is told.
In fact the truth about Mandela is so hidden in mythology and misinformation that most know nothing about him prior to Robben island, and those who do tend to exercise a form of self censorship, designed to bolster the myth whilst consigning uncomfortable facts into the mists of history.
For most people all they know about Mandela, prior to his release in 1990, was that he had spent 27 years in prison and was considered by many on the left at the time (and almost everyone now) to be a political prisoner. However, Mandela was no Aung San Suu Kyi, he was not an innocent, democratically elected leader, imprisoned by an authoritarian government.
Mandela was the terrorist leader of a violent terrorist organisation, the ANC (African National Congress) which was responsible for many thousands of, mostly black, deaths. The ANC's blood spattered history is frequently ignored, but reminders occasionally pop up in the most embarrassing places, indeed as recently as this month the names of Nelson Mandela and most of the ANC remained on the US government's terrorist watch list along with al-Queda, Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers. Of course the forces of political correctness are rushing to amend that embarrassing reminder from the past. However, Mandela's name was not on that list by mistake, he was there because of his Murderous past.
Before I am accused of calumny, it should be noted that Mandela does not seek to hide his past, in his autobiography “the long walk to Freedom” he casually admits “signing off” the 1983 Church Street bombing carried out by the ANC and killing 19 innocent people whilst injuring another 200.
It is true that Mandela approved that massacre and other ANC killings from his prison cell, and there is no evidence that he personally killed anyone but the same could be said about Stalin or Hitler, and the violent history of the ANC, the organisation he led is not in question.
According to the Human Rights Commission it is estimated that during the Apartheid period some21,000 people were killed, however both the UN Crimes against Humanity commission and South Africa's own Truth and Reconciliation Commission are in agreement that in those 43 years the South African Security forces killed a total of 518 people. The rest, (some 92%) were accounted for by Africans killing Africans, many by means of the notorious and gruesome practice of necklacingwhereby a car tyre full of petrol is placed around a victim's neck and set alight. This particularly cruel form of execution was frequently carried out at the behest of the ANC with the enthusiastic support of Mandela's demonic wife Winnie.
The brutal reappearance of the deadly necklace in recent weeks is something I shall reluctantly focus upon later.
Given that so much blood was on the hands of his party, and, as such, the newly appointed government, some may conclude that those who praised Madela's mercy and forgiveness, when the Truth and Reconciliation tribunal set up after he came to power, to look into the Apartheid years, did not include a provision for sanctions, were being deliberately naive.
Such nativity is not uncommon when it comes to the adoring reporting of Nelson Madela, and neither is the great leader himself rarely shy of playing up his image of fatherly elder statesman and multi-purpose paragon. However, in truth, the ANC's conscious decision to reject a policy of non-violence, such as that chosen by Gandhi, in their struggle against the white government, had left them, and by extension, their leader, with at least as much blood on their hands as their one time oppressors, and this fact alone prevented them from enacting the revenge which might otherwise have been the case.
As the first post Apartheid president of South Africa it would, be unfair if not ludicrous to judge Mandela entirely on the basis of events before he came to power, and in any event there is many arespected world leader or influential statesman with a blood stained past so let us now examine Nelson Mandela's achievements, and the events which have occurred in South Africa in the 14 short years since he took power in following the post Apartheid election in 1994, and the new South Africa which he created after coming to power on a surge of worldwide optimism and hope in 1994, when, following the end of Apartheid, he and his followers promised a new dawn for what became termed the Rainbow Nation.
No matter how many speeches are given or how many news articles are written, it will be a long time if ever before the truth about Mandela is told.
In fact the truth about Mandela is so hidden in mythology and misinformation that most know nothing about him prior to Robben island, and those who do tend to exercise a form of self censorship, designed to bolster the myth whilst consigning uncomfortable facts into the mists of history.
For most people all they know about Mandela, prior to his release in 1990, was that he had spent 27 years in prison and was considered by many on the left at the time (and almost everyone now) to be a political prisoner. However, Mandela was no Aung San Suu Kyi, he was not an innocent, democratically elected leader, imprisoned by an authoritarian government.
Mandela was the terrorist leader of a violent terrorist organisation, the ANC (African National Congress) which was responsible for many thousands of, mostly black, deaths. The ANC's blood spattered history is frequently ignored, but reminders occasionally pop up in the most embarrassing places, indeed as recently as this month the names of Nelson Mandela and most of the ANC remained on the US government's terrorist watch list along with al-Queda, Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers. Of course the forces of political correctness are rushing to amend that embarrassing reminder from the past. However, Mandela's name was not on that list by mistake, he was there because of his Murderous past.
Before I am accused of calumny, it should be noted that Mandela does not seek to hide his past, in his autobiography “the long walk to Freedom” he casually admits “signing off” the 1983 Church Street bombing carried out by the ANC and killing 19 innocent people whilst injuring another 200.
It is true that Mandela approved that massacre and other ANC killings from his prison cell, and there is no evidence that he personally killed anyone but the same could be said about Stalin or Hitler, and the violent history of the ANC, the organisation he led is not in question.
According to the Human Rights Commission it is estimated that during the Apartheid period some21,000 people were killed, however both the UN Crimes against Humanity commission and South Africa's own Truth and Reconciliation Commission are in agreement that in those 43 years the South African Security forces killed a total of 518 people. The rest, (some 92%) were accounted for by Africans killing Africans, many by means of the notorious and gruesome practice of necklacingwhereby a car tyre full of petrol is placed around a victim's neck and set alight. This particularly cruel form of execution was frequently carried out at the behest of the ANC with the enthusiastic support of Mandela's demonic wife Winnie.
The brutal reappearance of the deadly necklace in recent weeks is something I shall reluctantly focus upon later.
Given that so much blood was on the hands of his party, and, as such, the newly appointed government, some may conclude that those who praised Madela's mercy and forgiveness, when the Truth and Reconciliation tribunal set up after he came to power, to look into the Apartheid years, did not include a provision for sanctions, were being deliberately naive.
Such nativity is not uncommon when it comes to the adoring reporting of Nelson Madela, and neither is the great leader himself rarely shy of playing up his image of fatherly elder statesman and multi-purpose paragon. However, in truth, the ANC's conscious decision to reject a policy of non-violence, such as that chosen by Gandhi, in their struggle against the white government, had left them, and by extension, their leader, with at least as much blood on their hands as their one time oppressors, and this fact alone prevented them from enacting the revenge which might otherwise have been the case.
As the first post Apartheid president of South Africa it would, be unfair if not ludicrous to judge Mandela entirely on the basis of events before he came to power, and in any event there is many arespected world leader or influential statesman with a blood stained past so let us now examine Nelson Mandela's achievements, and the events which have occurred in South Africa in the 14 short years since he took power in following the post Apartheid election in 1994, and the new South Africa which he created after coming to power on a surge of worldwide optimism and hope in 1994, when, following the end of Apartheid, he and his followers promised a new dawn for what became termed the Rainbow Nation.
Today South Africa stands out as one of the most dangerous and crime ridden nations on Earthwhich is not actively at War. In 2001, only seven years after the end of Apartheid, whilst the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands with 5,6 murders per 100,000 population was declared the "murder capitol of Europe", Johannesburg, with 61.2 murders per 100,00 population and remains the world's top murder city.
In South Africa as a whole, the murder rate is seven times that of America, in terms of rape the rate is ten times as high and includes the ugly phenomenon of child rape, one of the few activities in which South Africa is now a world leader. If you don't believe me, you can read what Oprah Winfrey has to say about it here.
All other forms of violent crime are out of control, and Johannesburg is among the top world cities for muggings and violent assault, a fact seldom mentioned in connection with the 2010 World Cup which is scheduled to be hosted in South Africa.
As always with black violence the primary victims are their fellow blacks, however, the rape, murder and violent assault of whites is a daily event, and there is more ...
As with the Matabeleland massacres, news of which the BBC, together with much of the world media suppressed for twenty years to protect their one time hero, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, another secret genocide is being ignored by the world media, the genocide of white Boer farmers, thousands of whom have been horribly tortured to death in their homes since the end of Apartheid. Anyone who clicks on this link should we warned that it includes some very gruesome images as the savagery of these attacks belie the authorities attempts to dismiss them as nothing more than a "crime wave".
Given that it is now all but illegal in South Africa to report the race of either victim or the perpetrator of a crime (unless the perpetrator is white and the victim black) and as modern South Africa's official crime statistics are notoriously massaged, it is impossible to know the exact numbers of farm murders that have taken place. Many reliable sources estimate the figure as close to 3,000, but even if we take the more conservative figure of 1,600 quoted in the politically correct South African press (but not quoted at all in ours) this is three times the numbers killed by the South African security forces over a period of 43 years, and which the UN calls a crime against humanity.
To put this in perspective, the population of South Africa is 47 million, (13 million less than Britain despite its far greater land mass) of which the 4.3 million whites account for 9.1%, about 1% less than the immigrant population of Britain. Can you imagine the outcry if 1,600 (let alone 3,000) members of a minority community in Britain were tortured to death by the native population?.
Yet when the victims are white, there is hardly a peep in the South African press and silence from the international media. Compare this to when a white youth is the killer, such as in the case of Johan Nel, who shot three Africans, a story which became instant world wide news with the predictable screams of racism and machete wielding mobs baying for his blood.
(And they accuse us of hate?!! Don't such people nauseate themselves with their hypocrisy?!)
Crime aside, Mandela and his ANC inherited the strongest economy in Africa, indeed, despite economic sanctions, South Africa was still one of the richest world nations, and indeed initially there was a brief post Apartheid boom, resulting from the lifting of sanctions and due to the fact that until affirmative action forced most of the whites out of their jobs to be replaced by under qualified blacks, those who had built South Africa were still in place.
However, any optimism was to be short lived. Now, after just 14 years of rule by Mandela and his grim successor Mbeke, corruption is rife, the country is beset with power cuts and the infrastructure is crumbling.
The nation's great cities like Durban and Johannesburg, which could once rival the likes of Sydney, Vancouver and San Francisco, had descended in to decaying crime ridden slums within a decade.
And in recent months we have seen the so called Rainbow nations ultimate humiliation, as xenophobic anti immigration violence spreads across the country. (“xenophobic” is what the media call racism when blacks do it) As poverty and unemployment explodes and is exacerbated by the floods of immigrants flooding in to escape the even more advanced Africanisation of the rest of the country, the mobs turn on those they blame for stealing their jobs, their homes, and their women.
Thus the cycle turns, and, like watching some barbaric version of “back to the future", on the news we see exactly the same scenes we saw on our televisions twenty years ago, wrecked buildings, burning vehicles, mobs brandishing machetes, axes and knives hacking at everything and everyone which comes within their reach. Most horrific of all, we see the return of that most savage symbol of African brutality, the necklace where, to the cheers of a blood thirsty crowd, some poor trembling soul, with a tire around his neck, is dragged from his home and set alight, exactly as all those other poor souls were set alight throughout the Apartheid years, when we were told it was all the evil white man's fault.
As nothing else the return of the necklace exposes the failure of Mandela's revolution, and those who fought for him should weep.
Under Apartheid, blacks and whites went to separate hospitals but they received world class health care, whatever their colour, now the facilities are collapsing or non-existent. Black children went to different schools than white children, but they received an education, something which is now a privileged luxury. When they grew up, their bosses may have been white, but they had jobs and a living wage, as the recent violence shows us, such security is but a memory for most South Africans.
Eighteen years after Nelson and Winnie made their historic walk towards the cameras, and 14 years, since Mandela assumed power on a tide of optimism, a once proud South Africa slides like a crumbling, crime ridden, wreck towards a precipice created though greed, corruption and incompetence.
For all his gleaming smiles, grandfatherly hand gestures, and folksy sound bites, tomorrow night, when crowd cheers the retired terrorist in the gaudy shirt, they would do best not to focus too closely upon his much admired legacy, as they might just find that the Xhosan Emperor has no clothes. For Nelson Mandela's lasting achievement is that, in the face of a world wishing him well, he, and the party he leads, have shown the world that, for all its flaws, Apartheid was a more benign system than what replaced it, and that the average South African was immeasurably better off under the hated white rule than they are under the alternative which black rule has created.
That is quite an achievement, even for a living legend.
In South Africa as a whole, the murder rate is seven times that of America, in terms of rape the rate is ten times as high and includes the ugly phenomenon of child rape, one of the few activities in which South Africa is now a world leader. If you don't believe me, you can read what Oprah Winfrey has to say about it here.
All other forms of violent crime are out of control, and Johannesburg is among the top world cities for muggings and violent assault, a fact seldom mentioned in connection with the 2010 World Cup which is scheduled to be hosted in South Africa.
As always with black violence the primary victims are their fellow blacks, however, the rape, murder and violent assault of whites is a daily event, and there is more ...
As with the Matabeleland massacres, news of which the BBC, together with much of the world media suppressed for twenty years to protect their one time hero, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, another secret genocide is being ignored by the world media, the genocide of white Boer farmers, thousands of whom have been horribly tortured to death in their homes since the end of Apartheid. Anyone who clicks on this link should we warned that it includes some very gruesome images as the savagery of these attacks belie the authorities attempts to dismiss them as nothing more than a "crime wave".
Given that it is now all but illegal in South Africa to report the race of either victim or the perpetrator of a crime (unless the perpetrator is white and the victim black) and as modern South Africa's official crime statistics are notoriously massaged, it is impossible to know the exact numbers of farm murders that have taken place. Many reliable sources estimate the figure as close to 3,000, but even if we take the more conservative figure of 1,600 quoted in the politically correct South African press (but not quoted at all in ours) this is three times the numbers killed by the South African security forces over a period of 43 years, and which the UN calls a crime against humanity.
To put this in perspective, the population of South Africa is 47 million, (13 million less than Britain despite its far greater land mass) of which the 4.3 million whites account for 9.1%, about 1% less than the immigrant population of Britain. Can you imagine the outcry if 1,600 (let alone 3,000) members of a minority community in Britain were tortured to death by the native population?.
Yet when the victims are white, there is hardly a peep in the South African press and silence from the international media. Compare this to when a white youth is the killer, such as in the case of Johan Nel, who shot three Africans, a story which became instant world wide news with the predictable screams of racism and machete wielding mobs baying for his blood.
(And they accuse us of hate?!! Don't such people nauseate themselves with their hypocrisy?!)
Crime aside, Mandela and his ANC inherited the strongest economy in Africa, indeed, despite economic sanctions, South Africa was still one of the richest world nations, and indeed initially there was a brief post Apartheid boom, resulting from the lifting of sanctions and due to the fact that until affirmative action forced most of the whites out of their jobs to be replaced by under qualified blacks, those who had built South Africa were still in place.
However, any optimism was to be short lived. Now, after just 14 years of rule by Mandela and his grim successor Mbeke, corruption is rife, the country is beset with power cuts and the infrastructure is crumbling.
The nation's great cities like Durban and Johannesburg, which could once rival the likes of Sydney, Vancouver and San Francisco, had descended in to decaying crime ridden slums within a decade.
And in recent months we have seen the so called Rainbow nations ultimate humiliation, as xenophobic anti immigration violence spreads across the country. (“xenophobic” is what the media call racism when blacks do it) As poverty and unemployment explodes and is exacerbated by the floods of immigrants flooding in to escape the even more advanced Africanisation of the rest of the country, the mobs turn on those they blame for stealing their jobs, their homes, and their women.
Thus the cycle turns, and, like watching some barbaric version of “back to the future", on the news we see exactly the same scenes we saw on our televisions twenty years ago, wrecked buildings, burning vehicles, mobs brandishing machetes, axes and knives hacking at everything and everyone which comes within their reach. Most horrific of all, we see the return of that most savage symbol of African brutality, the necklace where, to the cheers of a blood thirsty crowd, some poor trembling soul, with a tire around his neck, is dragged from his home and set alight, exactly as all those other poor souls were set alight throughout the Apartheid years, when we were told it was all the evil white man's fault.
As nothing else the return of the necklace exposes the failure of Mandela's revolution, and those who fought for him should weep.
Under Apartheid, blacks and whites went to separate hospitals but they received world class health care, whatever their colour, now the facilities are collapsing or non-existent. Black children went to different schools than white children, but they received an education, something which is now a privileged luxury. When they grew up, their bosses may have been white, but they had jobs and a living wage, as the recent violence shows us, such security is but a memory for most South Africans.
Eighteen years after Nelson and Winnie made their historic walk towards the cameras, and 14 years, since Mandela assumed power on a tide of optimism, a once proud South Africa slides like a crumbling, crime ridden, wreck towards a precipice created though greed, corruption and incompetence.
For all his gleaming smiles, grandfatherly hand gestures, and folksy sound bites, tomorrow night, when crowd cheers the retired terrorist in the gaudy shirt, they would do best not to focus too closely upon his much admired legacy, as they might just find that the Xhosan Emperor has no clothes. For Nelson Mandela's lasting achievement is that, in the face of a world wishing him well, he, and the party he leads, have shown the world that, for all its flaws, Apartheid was a more benign system than what replaced it, and that the average South African was immeasurably better off under the hated white rule than they are under the alternative which black rule has created.
That is quite an achievement, even for a living legend.
Let's vote out the ANC - Xhosa king
AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo has launched a scathing attack on President Jacob Zuma and the ANC, saying they are "corrupt hooligans" who ate out of the Guptas' dustbins.
Dalindyebo hijacked a prayer service for the ailing Nelson Mandela, in Qunu, Eastern Cape, and told well-wishers that the ANC had distorted the former president's legacy.
The king warned: "If the ANC does not change its direction and keeps on behaving arrogant[ly], rather vote for the DA, it has never oppressed anybody."
Addressing several AbaThembu chiefs, clergy and villagers at the Bumbane Great Place, just outside Qunu, Mandela's home village, on Saturday, Dalindyebo said he could no longer sit idly by and watch the organisation his forefathers gave birth to being destroyed from within.
"It seems like we don't have human beings in the ANC listening to [party] members. We have members rushing for the Guptas' dustbins."
Zuma has come under fierce criticism for his links with the Gupta family, which in May landed a chartered aircraft carrying more than 200 wedding guests at Waterkloof Air Force Base, Pretoria, breaching security protocols.
A number of Zuma 's relatives are involved in business deals with the Gupta family.
"If you eat out of the dustbins of the Guptas you are a non-starter. If you fear to speak out about what is wrong ...we are not.
"We are not rushing for the Guptas' dustbins. You [the ANC] have been corrupted by rich people," said Dalindyebo to loud applause.
The ANC yesterday accused the king of abusing his position by insulting Zuma . ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said Dalindyebo had no right to insult Zuma.
"It's unfortunate that such comments come from the king.
''He can't insult a head of state and then demand to be respected in return."
The king hailed Mandela, a member of his AbaThembu clan, as a leader who had tirelessly fought for South Africans and was always available to the people. He lashed out at Zuma for not upholding Mandela's principles.
"Zuma's leadership is distorting Madiba's leadership; it's distorting the ANC's leadership," he said.
Criticism of Zuma has intensified in recent days, with businessman and socialite Kenny Kunene attacking him and his leadership in an open letter at the weekend.
This, surprisingly, prompted the ANC to issue a statement on Friday defending Zuma and the organisation from "opposition forces".
The ruling party said it was "convinced that the mainstay strategy of the opposition forces in all formations and structures is that of agitation for discontent".
As the country prepares to hold general elections in about 10 months' time, attacks on Zuma are expected to increase.
But Dalindyebo's message was particularly clear and brutal.
"If the ANC continues to [govern] the country for the next 10 years then you should know that your freedom will be compromised," he said.
"The ANC should be out of power within the next six years, if not at the next elections. Let's take them out democratically."
The party's failures, he said, had forced him to look to the DA.
"The DA has never oppressed anyone as an organisation. To segregate the DA is to segregate your own future. Ïf you give hooligans an inch of respect, then you will see the butchering of standards," he said.
He added that he would soon invite DA provincial leader Athol Trollip and Helen Zille to address the AbaThembu.
"One of the reasons I don't want to be under this government is because of [the] credentials of the head of state. The president . I can't enjoy his leadership. I will stop smoking dagga the day Zuma stops being corrupt. One of the reasons I don't want to be associated with the government is because I don't have respect for them."
But Mthembu said the king must not decide for his subjects.
"The king speaks for himself and his subjects will decide for themselves who to vote for come the elections," Mthembu said.
Church Street Bombings - 20th May 1983
The Church Street bombing murdered both black and white people, and far more civilians than police or military.
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