Pik Botha Reflects on Mandela

 

Ex-South African foreign minister reflects on his relationship with Mandela

 By Roelof Frederik "Pik" BothanPublished December 07, 2013

 

I first met Nelson Mandela at the historic meeting between the former government and the African National Congress at Groote Schuur on May 2, 1990.

To this day, I remain deeply impressed by Mandela’s opening address.

He displayed a remarkably thorough knowledge of the history of the Afrikaner, referring to the pain and sorrow of the Anglo-Boer War: 27,000 women and children who died in the concentration camps. Boer soldiers returning to graves and ruined farms. The ensuing poverty of the Afrikaner and his harrowing feeling of being wronged.

The enormous suffering of the Afrikaner he could understand. But what he could not understand, he said, was why the Afrikaner, when they started recovering from their devastation, didn’t then reach out to their fellow black South Africans who were equally impoverished, degraded and subjugated.

He posed a haunting question to us.

The answer is that the whites also became victims of apartheid, the Afrikaner more so. We had fought fiercely and paid a terrible price for our own freedom, but failed to realize that we could not truly be free unless all the people living and working in what we considered to be white South Africa could share that freedom with us.

After I departed from politics in 1996, Mandela wrote the following inscription, dated July 30, 1997 in his biography “Long Walk to Freedom” which my daughter and her husband bought to commemorate the christening of their son, my grandson, James Barry Hertzog:

‘To James Barry Hertzog. You carry a historic name and are the grandson of an equally talented South African who has made his contribution towards the development of our country. Good luck on the occasion of your christening on 10 August 1997.”

(sgd) Nelson Mandela
30 July 1997”

Mandela knew that my son-in-law, Bertus Hertzog, was a descendant of Gen. James Barry Munnik Hertzog, a famous Boer-general of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 and prime minister of South Africa 1924-1939.

This is but one of the innumerable examples of his capacity to apply his accumulated knowledge with sensitivity and insight to the realities of the day and not to allow the bitterness of his suffering in prison to displace his determined pursuit of reconciliation.

***

On May 1, 1998, I underwent an operation to have my prostate removed due to cancer. That afternoon, after the operation, President Mandela visited me.

When I came to my senses, he was standing next to my bed in the intensive care unit. He took my hand and said, “I have come today to say to you not to worry. You must relax. You have made it. That is all that matters. I went through the same ordeal and I survived. We need you. Get well and carry on.”

This is how I got to know him – an unfathomable human being.

An elder brother.

A person who endured imprisonment for 27 years and then handled the presidency of the country as if he had never spent a single day in jail.

His visit to me in hospital dimmed the pain of the surgery, but mentally I wrestled with remorse over what he had to endure during 27 years of imprisonment.

His conviction in court did not preclude him from adhering to his conviction that black and white needed each other to achieve progress and prosperity for all our people.

He decided that he was not going to allow himself to be governed by hatred and bitterness.

He believed that the inequities and animosities of the past could be ruled out by a charter or bill of fundamental human rights.

He assured us that majority rule would not entail a black majority dominating a white minority.

He emphasized that we live in a country that belongs to all of us, black and white. The black majority will need the white minority to achieve the same level of proficiency in management and craftsmanship.

***

I first met prof. Stephen Hawking, the famous astrophysicist, in Cambridge on December 12, 1997 and again in Cambridge on March 9, 1999.

In May 2008, Hawking visited South Africa as part of an initiative by the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) to find an African Einstein. His visit was described as the most historic visit to the Cape of Good Hope since Charles Darwin moored here on May 31, 1836 onboard the HMS Beagle.

Having being invited to the event, I flew to Cape Town and also participated, at the request of Hawking, in a TV interview which prof. David Block, astronomer of the University of the Witwatersrand, had arranged.

Stephen Hawking had long coveted a desire to meet Nelson Mandela. The organizers of the Cape Town conference endeavored to arrange a meeting, but Mandela’s office could not fit it in at such short notice due to an overburdened program.

As fate would have it, I had an appointment to meet with Mandela on May 15, 2008. Zelda le Grange, Mandela’s exemplary aide-de-camp, agreed that Hawking and Block could be included in my meeting with Mandela.

I consider it to be one of the highlights of my life that I had the privilege to bring Mandela and Hawking together and to be part of the meeting.

Mandela achieved his “cherished ideal” with an immeasurable endurance of suffering, without having to die for it.
He warded off the temptation to be guided by the bitterness of suffering 27 years imprisonment and resolved to persevere on the road of reconciliation and peaceful negotiations to accomplish his arduous “long walk to freedom” for all the people of South Africa, black and white.

His death is irreversible, his legacy, undying. All of us, the government, the voters, civil society, the churches, are faced with an inescapable challenge: are we going to honor and sustain his legacy or deviate from it.

Indeed, leaders across the globe ought to reflect on his legacy -- particularly while they have the option to resolve disputes through peaceful negotiations instead of violence; abolish all nuclear devices or retain them to destroy our planet; take the quantum leap required to avert the lethal consequences of climate change and the depletion of the planet’s natural resources or enjoy our daily greed to such an extent that it forbids us to preserve our planet for our children to survive.

Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha is a former South African Foreign Minister who served his country in the final years of the apartheid era.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/07/reflections-on-my-relationship-with-nelson-mandela/ 

The Passing of the Great Madiba

The passing of the Great Madiba by Cuan Elgin

It is said to be disrespectful to speak ill of the dead; the presumption being that they are no longer around to defend themselves.

What then does one say of a person who was around for 95 years to defend himself against accusations of being a cunning & deceitful terrorist, responsible for the violent deaths of many innocent South African civilians, both black & white, but yet never did defend himself against these charges in court, pleading guilty thereto, and later even admitting to approving of more terrorist bombings of civilians? He never did renounce violence as a legitimate tool for the overthrow of the state, or apologized to the families of the victims, nor showed any remorse after his early release from a life-sentence in jail.

It is easy to go along with the madding crowd, and eulogize the man, painting him as a glorious freedom fighter, a statesman, a champion of non-racial democracy, a humanitarian, and one of the greatest figures of the age. The fact that he is often depicted as "Africa's Che Guevara" in comparing him to a man who was a sadistic murderer, and who had a very low opinion of African revolutionaries, makes one wonder if those who so admired him, did so through ignorance, or that they hold that "the end justifies the means" in gaining power through violent revolt, or the threat thereof. Some even compared him to Jesus Christ.

It is much harder and less popular to take the other, dissenting view: that he was an unrepentant murderer who brought communism, a sense of entitlement, abortion, pornography, lawlessness and amongst the highest murder, robbery & rape incidence in the world, to South Africa; a formerly conservative, largely law-abiding & orderly country which is, according to many, now unsafe for honest & decent people, and more divided than ever.

For sure, he was a canny showman, a man with the common touch, and he had a sense of occasion. But was he really much more? Some say he was purely an invention of the Liberal Left media and the international communist movement. His biography, his speeches and his widely published sage "sayings" were, by and large, written for him, or merely adaptions of the sayings of other, more original thinkers.

Yet, despite his close friendship with many non-democratic despots, and his thus disingenuous criticism of democratically elected Western leaders, he was feted in the capitals of the world, with receptions befitting an emperor, and will, whether the dissenters like it or not, be an icon of the age, for many years to come.




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Man of Peace?

NOT ONCE did Mandela stand up and say that he was sorry for all the people murdered on his command by his private revolutionary army, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation", abbreviated MK).

Not once has he repented. Not once did he say that violence wasn't the way to bring about political change. Not once did he say that he was wrong to have killed innocent people using guerrilla warfare and terrorism to try to achieve his vision of a Communist state.

Not once did he ask for forgiveness from the families of his bombing victims.

Not once did he say he was sorry.

No. That would take a big man - a true reformed man of peace - not a coward.

Instead he held all of his Communist principles dear to his heart while the World held him up as a father figure. A man of peace. A champion of human rights.

A champion of human rights?

Where were the human rights of his bombing victims? The innocent men, women and children of all races which he blew up?

Yes, a true champion of human rights - even though he spent his time as SA president cavorting with some of the biggest human rights abusers and dictators in the world.

Sure, sure, he was concerned with human rights, just not the human rights of the people who happened to live in the countries of his dictator friends.

A man of two faces?

Yes, sure if you say so. The problem with that theory is that he never had two faces - only the ones people wanted to see. Mandela never hid who he was. He flaunted it in the face of the world for all to see. The world chose to see the "good" and ignore the bad.

But, but, they say, Mandela was the reason South Africa didn't descend into chaos after the ANC took over.

Again, rubbish!

The reason the country didn't descend into chaos was that the Whites still believed the bill of goods F-wit de Klerk had sold them. They were assured that the ANC would govern for all and that they had nothing to fear. They were placated into a coma by their Churches who told them that handing the country over to the ANC was the right thing to do.

And once the ANC were handed the country on a silver platter, they quickly purged the once feared military of Whites and replaced them with MK operatives. Guns were removed from the general population as Mandela and the ANC knew they needed the White population unarmed and unable to fight back.

And once Whites awoke from their kumbaya coma, it was all too late. The fight had gone, and anger has now replaced the hurt when they realised that F-wit de Klerk had never secured a homeland for the White people of South Africa when he handed the country over - especially for the Afrikaners. A homeland away from the marauding Black hordes - a homeland similar to what Lesotho and Swaziland enjoy within South Africa's borders.

Now it's too late.

That is the reason the transition of South Africa went so smoothly. It had nothing to do with Mandela, but everything to do with traitor F-wit de Klerk selling out the White people. And instead of the world giving Mandela the praise for such a smooth transition, they should be thanking the White people of South Africa.

Today the Whites are money-making puppet slaves for the ANC, living in continual fear of their Black masters. Too scared to put a foot wrong. Too scared to leave the security of their homes.

Of course there's a lot more to what I've written here. So much more to tell. This isn't the entire story. Yes Apartheid would have ultimately failed, but we as a country should have been left to solve the issue, not have been pressured to hand the
country over to a group of clueless murdering Communist idiots.

 


 There he is, standing proudly under the hammer and sickle, with Jewish Marxist Joe Slovo, and his inconvenient ex-wife Winnie "Bring-Me-A-Tyre-Petrol-And-My-Matches" Mandela.

http://ozziesaffa.blogspot.com/2013/12/apparently-saint-nelson-mandela-had-two.html 

The Devil and The Saint

Since this tired old canard keeps cropping up to hit white South Africans over the nose like a rolled up newspaper, I thought it perhaps time to separate fact from fiction once and for all. Let those who object say so now or forever hold their peace. While we're at it, let's put apartheid as a system into perspective.

Do we know how many blacks were killed under apartheid?

We do, and the source is none other than the Human Right Commission submitted as evidence to the TRC in 1997.

The statistics they proffered relate to the number of blacks killed between the years 1948 up to the election in 1994. The total number of blacks killed were 21 000. But wait, it gets more interesting. It's not the full story.

The HRC report also makes a distinction between two periods. One from 1948 till 1989 and the next from 1990 to the election in 1994. The number killed for the period from 1948 until 1989 is 7 000.

That means the number killed from 1990 to 1994 which is AFTER the unbanning of the ANC and for all intents and purposes apartheid had ended is a whopping 14 000, involving mostly black on black violence between the ANC and the IFP and various other factions! Not whitey's fault.

Of the 14 000 killed during those 4 years, 92% of deaths were caused by blacks killing blacks. Only 5.6% were attributed to the Security Forces at the time and usually in retaliation to attacks initiated by the ANC/UDF that had been unbanned. Remember Ciskei? The difference in % is due to unknown causes.

What this means is that during the apartheid reign of 41 years, 7 000 blacks died compared to double the amount of dead in just 4 years! Let me break it down yet further, 170 blacks were killed as a result of apartheid ANNUALLY. That's 170 people per year! That's the HRC figures people! Sounds like an insignificant number now doesn't it?

More blacks then were killed under De Klerk's 'new' anti-apartheid government of 4 years than in 41 years of government under full blown apartheid! How good was the propaganda of the anti-apartheid movement eh?!

Let me summarise, this needs to sink in:
1948 - 1989: 7 000
1990 - 1994: 14 000 (of which 92% as a result of 'black-on-black' violence)

Really, is this the death toll of the "heinous" apartheid system the world grew to hate? Just 7000 deaths? And was it the worst thing to happen in the 20th century? Um, let's look at the Left's favourite socialist/ communist/ marxist/ dictators leaders to name but a few:
• Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) : 23 million (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
• Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) : 78 million
• Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79): 1,7 million
• Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78): 1,5 million

Apartheid: 7 000.

The list of far worse political systems is quite extensive and apartheid wouldn't even feature. But such was the venom against it that the result is a country destroyed. Apartheid was far from the monster it continues to be portrayed. I agree though that it was unjustifiable and unsustainable and just plain wrong and given a do-over, whites would rather leave blacks to find their way than provide jobs and healthcare and other services which caused their population to balloon from 500 000 when Van Riebeeck landed to the almost 40 million in 1994... Facts people, inconvenient little things that keep getting in the way.

https://www.facebook.com/SouthAfrica1994 

"Personally Signed Off"

In his book, ”Long Walk to Freedom”, Peace Laurette, Mandela writes that as a leading member of the ANC’s executive committee, he had “personally signed off” in approving these acts of terrorism : 

1981 – 2 car bombs at Durban showrooms 

1983 – Church Street Bomb (killed 19, wounded 217) 

1984 – Durban car bomb (killed 5, wounded 27) 

1985-1987 – At least 150 landmines on farm roads (killed 125) 

1985 – Amanzimtoti Sanlam shopping centre bomb Dec 23 (killed 2 white women and 3 white children) 

1986 – Magoo’s Bar bomb (killed 3, wounded 69) 

1986 – Newcastle Court bomb (wounded 24) 

1987 – Johannesburg Court bomb (killed 3, wounded 10) 

1987 – Wits command centre car bomb (killed 1, wounded 68) 

1988 – Johannesburg video arcade (killed 1 unborn baby, wounded 10) 

1988 – Roodepoort bank bomb (killed 4, wounded 18) 

1988 – Pretoria Police housing unit, 2 bombs (wounded 3)

1988 – Magistrate’s Court bomb (killed 3) 

1988 – Benoni Wimpy Bar bomb (killed 1, wounded 56) 

1988 – Witbank shopping centre bomb (killed 2, wounded 42) 

1988 – Ellis Park Rugby Stadium car bomb (killed 2, wounded 37) 

Late 1980s – numerous Wimpy Restaurant bombs (killed many, wounded many) 

Our “hero” consistently refused to renounce violence even after he was released.

Mandela In Morocco

 Mandela in Morocco 1962 (2nd row, middle). He was there to do military training.

Sycophantic Outpouring Of Grief...

By Michael Smith

I am somewhat disgusted by the sycophantic outpouring if grief for the death of Nelson Mandela in the media. They automatically assume that we are all grief stricken.

I am not. Mandela was a man of violence, who if he didn't carry out the attacks himself, planned, organised and ordered bombing attacks on bus stations that left young white school children dead and maimed. Not once did he renounce violence, not once did he expressed sorrow for his victims.

If Mandela had improved the lives of Black South Africans, I would respect him for that, but he didn't. Health, welfare, education and life expectancy for the African poor in South Africa is worsening by the week. South Africa, once a law abiding country is now plagued by crime, murder and rape, the worst in the world.

I respect and admire Gandhi who a man of peace, understanding and reconciliation. He rejected the use of violence throughout his long life. I respect and admire Martin Luther King, who forced the United States to look inward and examine it's conscience and treatment of citizens based on the colour of their skins. I admire Mohammed Ali for his stand against the draft, his intelligence and inherent gentleness.


I admire every Black teacher, nurse and doctor who sets out every day to improve the lives of those in their care. I admire every Black police officer, firefighter and serviceman or woman who puts on the uniform to serve, protect and defend their fellow citizen. I admire every decent hardworking African person wherever they are who works hard, studies diligently and achieves through personal effort.

I do not and will admire or respect Mandela, a convicted terrorist no different to Gerry Adams, Martin McGuiness or any other man of violence determined to impose their view on others.

AN ADDED POST:

Yesterday, I attracted a great deal of criticism for my views on Nelson Mandela. I cannot change or apologise for my opinions. Mandela planned and ordered bomb attacks which killed and maimed innocent people. He ordered attacks on bus stations aimed at killing white children and women.

In later life, although he said a great many good things, he neither renounced the use of violence nor publically condemned either MBeki of Zuma for the increasing violence against Whites.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

A far better man was the Rev Martin Luther King who, in his 'I have a dream speech', spoke for the whole world.

No-one must be judged on the colour of their skin. I am afraid, even in his old age, Mandela still did.



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Ja Well No Fine......

One Less

Is Zuma Becoming a Liability for the ANC?

The 2013 future fact survey's most recent findings show a massive slide in trust and confidence in President Zuma to a score of 37 from a high 257 five years ago.  

There is a threefold increase in the no confidence scores among those who say they are wavering in their support for the ANC (their ‘no confidence' rating moves from 12% five years ago to 31% now).

This is in marked contrast to Trevor Manuel, Pravin Gordhan and even Cyril Ramaphosa whose trust and confidence scores are dramatically higher than the President's at 227, 193 and 118. 

Confidence in the President has been strongly eroded within the working classes and those who live in informal settlements, as well as among the middle and upper middle classes, many of whom could find a new political home in one of the newer parties.  The erosion of confidence in the President has also resulted in an increase from 73% to 87% among those who want the country's President to be chosen by the people not the party.  Interestingly the same levels are reflected even among currently strong supporters of the ANC. 

This disaffection with the President is likely to have rubbed off on the ruling party, even though the party's popularity hasn't dropped to anything like the same extent as the President's.  

Confidence scores for the ANC have declined from 146 to 110 over the last year.  It is clear the people are asking for a strong leader to emerge to restore order and discipline, based on their disillusionment on a variety of issues, from attitudes to corruption and crime and aspects such as accountability in government. 

There is an upside  - our faith in the democratic process.  Despite the fact that so many have lost confidence in the President and to a lesser extent in the ANC, two thirds of those surveyed (up from 60% in 2011) believe our democracy is strong and will endure. 

futurefact has been surveying the attitudes and beliefs of South Africans since 1998.  The findings presented above are from futurefact 2013 which is based on a probability sample of 3,025 adults aged 15 years and over, living in communities of more than 500 people throughout South Africa representing 21.6 million adults.

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=469991&sn=Detail&pid=71616