Do you think South Africa under Nelson...

[p_p_man]

...Mandela was just too kind to the Apartheid lot.

I think most of the world was astounded at the complete calm and self control that Nelson Mandela portrayed when he was eventually released from prison.

I think they were probably even more astounded when after becoming president he did exactly nothing against the supporters of the former regime.

No retribution, no arrests for crimes against humanity, no confiscation of property...nothing. The least the black population would have expected would have been a series of arrests and trials but...nothing.

It's as though Mandela slid into a seat which was being kept warm for him whilst he was "away". No wonder the blacks feel frustrated and let down. Cape Town and other major South African cities have become crime infested centres, there has been no marked improvement in the personal lives of the black population and the whites carry on as if nothing has happened.

They still have the best housing, the best health care and the best jobs. They still act as though they run the country but now they can turn around, shrug their shoulders and say the situation is nothing to do with them.

Why wasn't there some sort of tangible revenge process which would have helped assauge the anger for the poverty, murders, torture and mass inhumanity to the blacks.

As Arch-Bishop Tutu said recently...where was the revenge?

 

[miles]

It's PPman against the world.

 

[p_p_man]

LOL

Well after all the fuss on my India thread I would have thought this would have attracted more attention...

 

[Darowyn]

I hope you don't think that Nelson Mandela should have instituted a series of reforms based on the example of his neighbour and produced the Heaven-on-Earth which Robert Mugabe has made of the former Rhodesia.
For the isolationists on the board, Mugabe has been licencing tribal thugs to intimidate and kill white farmers as a way of achieving "land reform" .
As a result, one of the best and most productive countries in Africa is starting to starve.
It's bringing three threads together, but
You don't have to be white to be racist.
You don't have to be male to be sexist.
You don't have to be a first world country to be an oppressor.
You don't need an empire to be imperialist.
But all of those things cause suffering to someone, and suffering is happening to huge numbers of people all over the world.

 

[Siren]

I am curious PPman

 

[p_p_man]

Re: I am curious PPman

Just what would you have liked to see him do?

If I was involved personally in South Africa and I had some of my family murdered by the authorites, I would have to show my pass to go in and out of certain areas, I could work for the whites but not have any social contact with them, and I would be a criminal to marry (or have sexual relations), with members of the white minority, I suppose I would be quite bitter.

The Kosovo problem is now producing trials of the men responsible for crimes against humanity and I suppose I would think if Kosovo why not South Africa?

But I'm not personally involved. This thread was started because a few weeks ago I was watching a progamme on TV about South Africa after the change of Government and about the confusion among the blacks that the whites were still ostensibly in control whilst their own situation is getting worse.

But it was Arch Bishop Tutu who made me think when he said that the Mandela policy was far too soft and that the whites should have been made to pay (he didn't say how) for past atrocities. He added that the people wanted some sort of "revenge" to help their own rehabilitation.

His comments struck a chord with me. Because I suppose like many other people in the world I have just accepted the situation in SA without giving it too much thought. But when all is said and done the whites have continued the same life style they had before without any real disruption to their lives.

And it just seemed to me that it was wrong they should do so.

 

[Merelan]

Where is zuluboy or slutboy when we need them?

They could explain so much better then me why he couldn't do what you want. He wants a peaceful united Africa. Bloodshed and revenge would only begat more bloodshed.

 

[p_p_man]

Merelan...

...I don't particularly want anything.

For some reason on my two posts today my intentions of discussing in broad terms situations in two different countries have been narrowed down to what and how I think personally.

I know that Mandela was not a free agent that the African Nationalist Party has more say in what goes on than Mandela has (or had), and being a genuinely nice, gently man, I don't really believe he has a malicious thought in his body.

I am just saying that until I saw the TV programme I had not given SA a thought except for a couple of conversations with different white South Africans in the UK for holiday/work.

The programme made me realise that I had dismissed a situation from my mind without thinking, that all is not right in that country and why hasn't there been any retribution.

I don't know the answer...

I'm just asking the question...

 

[Doulton]

You've got me thinking too P P man. Like you, I suppose I just assumed that once Mandela got into power things would improve remarkably for the black people in South Africa. I would argue that seeking revenge never gains anyone anything, but as it has already been said and no one really seems to be arguing to the contrary, I won't bother One more point though, I don't think you can blame the violence and crime in those major cities on the fact that the people are angry that no retribution has taken place. I believe they were already very crime-ridden before the elections and Mandela's inauguration, but I may be wrong about that one.

 

[Cheyenne]

Where is zuluboy or slutboy when we need them?

I don't remember zuluboy, but that's exactly what I was thinking about slutboy when I read this last night. Maybe he'll see it and join in!

 

[MinkSoul]

found this at the US State Department...

The post-apartheid governments of South Africa have made remarkable progress in consolidating the nation's peaceful transition to democracy. Programs to improve the delivery of essential social services to the majority of the population are underway. Access to better opportunities in education and business is becoming more widespread. Nevertheless, transforming South Africa's society to remove the legacy of apartheid will be a long-term process requiring the sustained commitment of the leaders and people of the nation's disparate groups.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by 1984 Nobel Peace Prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has helped to advance the reconciliation process. Constituted in 1996 and having completed most of its work by 1998, the TRC is empowered to investigate apartheid-era human rights abuses committed between 1960 and May 10, 1994, to grant amnesty to those who committed politically motivated crimes and to recommend compensation to victims of abuses. The TRC's mandate is part of the larger process of reconciling the often conflicting political, economic, and cultural interests held by the many peoples that make up South Africa's diverse population. The ability of the government and people to agree on many basic questions of how to order the country's new society will be a critical challenge stretching into the 21st century.

One important issue continues to be the relationship of provincial and local administrative structures to the national government. Prior to April 27, 1994, South Africa was divided into four provinces and 10 black "homelands," four of which were considered independent by the South African Government. Both the interim constitution and the new 1997 constitution abolished this system and substituted nine provinces. Each province has an elected legislature and chief executive -- the provincial premier. Although in form a federal system, in practice the nature of the relationship between the central and provincial governments has yet to be determined and is the subject of considerable debate particularly among groups desiring a greater measure of autonomy from the central government. A key step in defining the relationship came in 1997 when provincial governments were given more than half of central government funding and permitted to develop and manage their own budgets.

Although South Africa's economy is in many areas highly developed, the exclusionary nature of apartheid and distortions caused in part by the country's international isolation until the 1990s have left major weaknesses. The economy is now in a process of transition as the government seeks to address the inequities of apartheid, stimulate growth, and create jobs. Business, meanwhile, is becoming more integrated into the international system, and foreign investment has increased dramatically over the past several years. Still, the economic disparities between population groups are expected to persist for many years, remaining an area of priority attention for the government.




Personaly....i think they'r doing pretty well.... considering what they've gone through...

 

[Merelan]

Zuluboy was back awhile. One of the original posters here. He actually lived in South Africa, if I am remembering right. What worried me was that he disappeared offline just about the same time the government took over all the "white" lands and divided them up, in a rather violent way.

 

[shadowsource]

It's all about MONEY!

Mandela is certainly a secular saint, but his policies were also aimed at avoiding white flight - and with it, any chance of staying connected to the kind of capital investment that a sophisticated world-playing economy needs. The ANC thus had to coddle the whites who controlled management and the bureaucracy as the ANC very slowly began to try to build roads, housing, water and sewage connections, schools, etc. The whites, of course, literally got away with murder, and they're still exploiting the hell out of the colored people (who have no power at all) and blacks. There isn't really a solution, thought the most obvious reaction will be a gradual corruption of the new riuling black elite (as some former ANC leaders are already saying of Mbeki), as well as a grass-roots uprising against the ANC's conservative land-reform policies (which we are no seeing from the Pan-Africanist Congress, a separatist, former anti-apartheid group that was originally founded in the offices of the US Information Service in the 1960s to serve as a counter to the ANC, which the US regarded as communist).

It's a terrible situation that offers too little hope to a lot of people who just need and and want a break. But again, if anything renders Wall Street nervous - or even just if the world economy weakens much further - things will get nasty there. They need time and the kind of dedicated, inspired leadership that the US hasn't seen since FDR, WWII, and th Depression.

 

[p_p_man]

Re: It's all about MONEY!

Mandela is certainly a secular saint, but his policies were also aimed at avoiding white flight - and with it, any chance of staying connected to the kind of capital investment that a sophisticated world-playing economy needs

Yes that makes sense, and goes a long way to explaining the softly, softly approach.

Just as a footnote, the two separate groups of white South Africans I've met in the last couple of years have both told me the same stories about crime in the centre of Capetown.

It is now a no-go area for most people and large groups of homeless blacks have occupied the hotels where they've moved in with their livestock in order to put a roof over their heads.

I've not seen anything in the media about this but the people I spoke to could not have known each other as I met them some 8-10 months apart.

Copied from Minksoul's post:

"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), chaired by 1984 Nobel Peace Prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has helped to advance the reconciliation process."

This looks a strange statement considering it was Archbishop Tutu's remarks about "revenge" that started me thinking in the first place...the two don't look compatible somehow.

 

[shadowsource]

Tutu

He doesn't want any kind of revenge, but he's using his pulpit and celebrity to do what he's always done - try to get the country's rulers to cater more to those at the bottom. It's just a slightly different ruling configuration. Tutu is obviously worried about what's happening in Zimbabwe, and he's serving notice to Mbeki's ANC that the poor want change now. It's a warning....

 

[p_p_man]

shadowsource...

...thanks for your reasoned posts.

They've cleared a lot up in my own mind and I can now focus my thoughts better...

 

[Slut_boy]

Re: shadowsource...

I enjoyed reading this thread [thanks Cheyenne... god I miss you sooo much sometimes].

I think that some of the posts on the TRC were very thoughtful and insightful. Its my view that the TRC helped heal SA in pretty much the same way as a boil helps heal a human body. When we are sick and have toxins and poisons in our body then we get a boil through which we expel the shit - lest it stay in our blood and pollute our system forever. The TRC was a way of getting the political poison of the past out of SA's system. All the tribunals that heard cases served to "get it out" - the truth about what happened. If the truth had remained suppressed then SA society would, in my opinion, have always been a "sick" one. Perhaps more than anything else, the TRC facilitated peaceful transformation. It was great to be here when it played its magic.

I did a lot of work (as a human rights lawyer) in the TRC and so its something really close to my heart. Thanks p_p_man for posting this thread....

 

[Cheyenne]

Re: Re: shadowsource...

I enjoyed reading this thread [thanks Cheyenne... god I miss you sooo much sometimes].

Good to see you! Why don't you come visit us more often? I'll even stock up on white cotton panties for ya!

 

[Slut_boy]

Its a deal....