Mandela - The Legend and the Legacy. Part 2

 

In the second of two articles examining the life of Nelson Mandela, in advance of Friday's concert in Hyde Park celebrating the living legend's 90th birthday, I shall look at his legacy 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 Earth which 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 the last few weeks 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 wold 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, Mr Mandela, happy birthday.

source Mandela - The Legend and the Legacy. Part 2

Mandela: The legend and the Legacy. Part 1

 

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 will play host to a concert in honour of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and we can be assured that it will receive wall to wall coverage by a star struck and worshipping media, who will continue to laud Mandela as one of the greatest, or indeed the greatest, heroes of our time.

No doubt the beaming old man will appear 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 will again be displayed in the press and by the unending line of politicians and dignitaries who will queue 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 will be raised, nor will his much vaunted “achievements” be subjected to any objective scrutiny.
No matter how many speeches are given or how many news articles are written, it is safe to bet that the full truth about Mandela will not be 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 some 21,000 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 necklacing whereby 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 a respected world leader or influential statesman with a blood stained past so in the next part I shall 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.

source : Mandela: The legend and the Legacy. Part 1

A new order is needed

30/06/2008 08:29  - (SA)

Jon Qwelane

This country has never been in worse shape, even under the hated control of the equally disgusting Nats!

A true "state of the nation" review would shock many people:

Turmoil abounds in the ranks of the judiciary, where judges are at one another's throats.
The police service is a hopeless mess: the chief of the police is on trial for payola and for defeating the ends of justice. In short, he is accused of flouting the very laws he is supposed to uphold. Just the other day, the police were firing at each other, after some had used official vehicles to blockade a national highway.
The head of the prosecuting authority has, in effect, been dismissed and there is an unconvincing hearing to determine whether he is the right man for the job.
The head of the intelligence services has been dismissed.
The public information system that is the SABC is a circus of a shambles; its shenanigans are simply unspeakable.
The head of the health services continues to talk twaddle about HIV/Aids.
Education is in a sorry state, and the authorities are keeping mum about the crippling illiteracy of the country's youth: only this week it was revealed that many children use SMS-speak to write answers to examination questions (I suppose something like "da gr8 lakes in da Afrika cntnt is cool, hey!").
Savagery of unparalleled proportions since 1994 is being meted out to immigrants from Africa.
Unemployment is at its highest ever, and the cost of living is astronomically high.

One could go on and on, ever conscious of the snipers waiting to pounce with their question: "What is your solution?"

Solution

We have never had it so bad, and even those who normally claim - falsely, of course - that I "hate" their president would be hard-pressed to deny this self-evident truth. And I am not lamenting the demise of the past order when I say, as I do here, that even under apartheid things overall were not as bad as this.

Politically correct "logic" will claim that I am not being truthful but, believe me, lots of people out there are saying apartheid was "much better compared to what we are going through right now".

But what do you say about the restive state of our judiciary? And what confidence will a visitor to this country have in the policing of our communities, when the law enforcement officers themselves go out to break the laws with impunity?

There are those in this land who brag that they are building "world-class" facilities and institutions, but where in the world is a commissioner of police on trial for graft - and the head of state renews his employment contract regardless?

The solution to all this mess, methinks, is in a new order altogether. And yes, I have heard your condemnations loud and clear: I will be voting next year, and I will also encourage a whole lot of other people to do the same.

As I have said before, the men and women with the bombs may have been good liberators, but hard experience convinces me that they are not necessarily good governors.

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

 

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No right to self-defence

24/06/2008 13:00  - (SA)

Blood Doll, News24 User

A report posted on News24 today states that a Rustenburg man will be charged with attempted murder and murder. This after he had wounded one intruder and killed another who had invaded his home and tied up his young daughters and domestic worker.

The question is this: has South Africa denigrated from the land of milk and honey into the land of crime and irony? You can now be charged with murder for defending those you love and that which is yours.

This is not a new occurrence, of course. The new dispensation has placed the rights of the criminal over those of law abiding citizens since its inception. That baby should have been thrown out with the bathwater. It seems its views of equality has become somewhat skewed; for at one stage human rights were the backbone of the ANC government's constitution, the unalienable right of every individual to live without bias or oppression.

It seems those rights also extend to animals, if not more so. They shoot horses, don't they? So, why may we not shoot the animals that rape our children and invade our homes? Has self defence and the right to security been omitted from their so-called Freedom Charter? It seems so.

Setting a prededent

The right to rape and pillage seems to have taken precedence and us, as law abiding citizens, have but one right - to do nothing. The government has turned us into voyeurs, forcing us to watch some sick snuff movie with those we love as the participants. Thanks, Thabo.

It seems ironic that the government can spend billions of rands on weapons to defend our country's borders against and unseen enemy yet it will not allow us, the tax-payer who funded it, to do the very same: to defend our borders. Moreover, our enemy is not an imaginary or future threat; they are very real and they're invading our borders, our homes, now. And, thanks to our government's derisory laws, we are left helpless.

Not one to regard the Americans as doyens of civil society, I have to admit sometimes they get it right. The state of Ohio has just passed a bill, Senate Bill 184, aptly referred to as the "Castle Doctrine". It purports to: "...establish a presumption that a person acted in self-defence when shooting someone who unlawfully enters his or her home or occupied vehicle."

Does that sound familiar? Of course it does, it happens everyday in good old SA. The UK has a similar if watered down version called the Intruder Law. This is exactly the type of legislation we need in this beautiful country to avoid law abiding citizens from being charged as common criminals just because we defended our own.

Hazy

Legalcity.net posts this warning: The question of when you may use a firearm on an intruder is an extremely hazy one that even lawyers approach with caution. Generally, a firearm may not be fired in a municipal area although its use in self-defence is sometimes considered justifiable.

Note, however, that you would not necessarily be justified in shooting someone who enters your house illegally, even if you believe that the intruder is a thief who may harm you. The fact that a suspected thief or burglar runs away and refuses to heed your command to stop is not sufficient reason for you to shoot at him or her.

The right to defend oneself against threats both foreign and domestic have become a misnomer. Are you listening, Thabo Mbeki?

Perhaps if you stayed in the country a bit longer you'd notice the invasion.

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'Kill for Zuma an insult to SA'

22/06/2008 21:04  - (SA) 

Johannesburg - The "kill for Zuma" statements made by African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi were an insult to the intelligence of voters, said former Pan Africanist Congress president Motsoko Pheko on Sunday.

Pheko said the electorate in the country had a constitutional right to choose political leaders without "fear or favour".

"The irresponsible statements must be condemned. Why is the killing of opponents in Zimbabwe, Somalia and Kenya wrong, but now should be correct in South Africa?" he asked.

"Our nation needs leaders with ideas and a national agenda that liberates people from poverty, and not bullies who are politically bankrupt and guided by egotism," he said.

Applause and cheering

On Saturday, Malema defended his controversial statement that the youth league would kill for ANC president Jacob Zuma.

Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi echoed the remarks on Saturday, SABC news reported.

"So, yes, because Jacob Zuma is one of us, and he is one of our leaders, for him, we are prepared to lay (down) our lives and to shoot and kill," he said to applause and cheering, reported the SABC.

Pheko questioned what would happen if political parties in the country killed for their leaders.

"If various political parties were to kill for leaders they love, what would remain of the country? Where would democracy and rule of law be?"

 

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'We will kill for Zuma'

June 17 2008 at 07:04AM

ANC Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema has vowed that the youth of South Africa would die in supporting ANC president Jacob Zuma.

"We are prepared to die for Zuma," Malema told a Free State rally. "We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma," Malema added at the end of his speech, while the crowd clapped hands and laughed.

Earlier, Malema said there was no question that the ANC president would be the country's next president. He added that those who did not respect the current ANC leadership should go.

Malema said those in the party who have indicated that they would not be available for positions in the new government, under Zuma, should not wait but leave now.

He also reiterated that the Scorpions case against Zuma, expected to begin later this year in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, should be dropped.

"The future belongs to us. We do not want a situation where the state prosecutes its own president," Malema said.

He said the ANCYL was planning to assemble a legal team to try to get the case against Zuma thrown out of court.

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100s object to expropriations

03/06/2008 20:15  - (SA) 

Bloemfontein - More than 300 objections to the proposed expropriation bill were handed to the portfolio committee on public works during public hearings in Grasslands on Tuesday .

"These are individual objections I hand over to you by members of the Free State Agriculture," said Dirk van Rensburg, chairman of the farming body's land-reform committee.

On Monday, nearly 900 objections by individuals were handed to the committee during a public hearing in Bethlehem.

According to Free State Agriculture, certain aspects of the bill are unconstitutional.

The Grasslands meeting was attended by farmers, almost half of those attending, and black Bloemspruit residents who claim to be victims of expropriation practices by the Mangaung local municipality.

Free State Democratic Alliance leader Roy Jankielsohn said he was happy to see the number of farmers who attended the meeting and by the input they gave.

However, he was concerned about wrong information contained in advertisements on venues and starting times for the hearings.

A black former plot owner told the committee he and other land owners in the area had "shot themselves in the foot" by electing black officials into power, after describing a "painful" experience of being "ripped off by fellow Africans".

Had lost five farms

A woman, also a former Grasslands plot owner, told the committee that she knew how "the xenophobia people" felt because she was now homeless.

"I have no residential address. People staying where I stayed, they have (a residential address)," she said, adding that she wanted to know how the meeting was going to "reverse it all".

Another woman said she had lost five farms due to the "lack of interest by government officials" and "lack of government action".

Committee chairperson Thandi Tobias urged the former plot owners to discuss their issues with the committee after the hearing.

She said it would be brought to the attention of the proper parliamentary committees.

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