It’s an uncomfortable question, but one that bears asking, because it has far reaching implications for the future of South Africa.
The battle for Nelson Mandela’s legacy has begun, even before his death.
In an interview published by the London Evening Standard, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela had no doubts as to where her ex-husband stood. “Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.”
How did this happen?
A few weeks ago Black Consciousness expert Andile Mngxitama wrote in a column about some bizarre aspects of the Freedom Charter. For example, he asks how, at the height of the struggle, the Freedom Charter demands equal voting powers to all when it was clear that the main area of disenfranchisement were land and freedom. Paint it in any colour you want, it is obscene that 85% of the population were forced on to 13% of the available land. That fact is simply indefensible.
A quick aside: you may wonder why anyone bothers with a document written over 50 years ago, and seems to be, for all intents, dead and forgotten. The reality is, when it’s convenient for the ANC to remember it, the Freedom Charter is trucked out and paraded as a pillar document of the National Democratic Revolution and even our Constitution. Take, for example, the ongoing debate regarding the nationalisation of the mines. The Freedom Charter unambiguously states that “the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and the monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people (socialist-speak for “the State”) as a whole.” Julius Malema likes to remind everyone that when Mandela left prison, nationalisation was almost a given for him. But by the time he ascended to power, he was strangely mute on the subject. We’ve got to the point where the current government unequivocally states that nationalisation of the mines will not happen. I’m not complaining, mind you. Just making an observation.
When Mandela was released from prison, he put into place steps that would eventually lead to the present state of events, where not much has changed for the average black South African, who remains economically sidelined. The current system only benefits the connected few, the Sexwales, the Ramaphosas and the Motsepes of this country. Let’s not forget the Malemas as well. Is this what the struggle was about? Did thousands of people die, tens of thousands more suffer countless horrors so that a select few could live in decadence?
Mandela (and Mbeki) lead us away from a path of greater economical parity, our dialogue being directed away from a question of economic distribution, and towards a system that culminated in cronyism, meaningless tokenism and even more suffering for the majority of South Africans. T Osiame Molefe puts it more forcefully, “Instead, and admittedly reasonably, but I contend cowardly, an uneasy compromise was reached. Black South Africa would be allowed to phase in reclaiming what they’d waited for, in exchange, white South Africa, the beneficiaries of apartheid, would keep their ill-gotten gains.”
Before you leap on your high, “Oh, but look at what happened in Zimbabwe” horse, consider this: the tragic situation in Zimbabwe is an extreme example. In fact, it’s what is definitely going to happen within the next 50 years if we don’t fix our situation now.
Whenever the topic of economic redistribution gets raised, people point at Zimbabwe and claim that we’ll end up like that if we even contemplate the idea of sharing the economy more equally with everyone. That is absolutely not true. I can’t state that more vehemently. The reason why we seem to think Zim is the only end point of economical parity is because we’ve never had the debate. We’ve never discussed, as a nation, what the options are. We’ve never seriously contemplated how everyone in the country can benefit from democracy. We’ve been content to let a few fat cats stuff themselves, and the poor could go to hell for all we (yes, we) cared.
I agree with Mondli Makhanya that land redistribution as it is occuring now isn’t the best option, given that the trend is towards urbanisation. Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti only recently conceded that most of the repossessed farms are not functional. Leave farming to those who really want to do it.
A democratic movement that sought to implement meaningful change may have been lost as far back as 1955 when the Freedom Charter was penned (the whys and hows are a debate for another blog post). Mandela may have just laid the final brick by selling out on the struggle to achieve his dream of political victory. A dream which is fast becoming our nightmare. We need to have this debate, and soon, before the truly disenfranchised decide to do something drastic about their worthless freedom. Because then we’ll really have Zimbabwe on our hands.
There definitley was no overcrowding in the homelands and that 13% just happened to be the most arable parts of South Africa. The rest is mainly semi-desert that requires very innovative farming techniques in order to succeed. The apartheid government spent billions on training and farming equipment for the former homelands, but it all came to naught.
I think you have to remember why Mandela comprised with the Afrikaner Nationalist Party (Nats): some of the Nats might have seen the writing on the wall but there were others who thought you could damn the revolutionary sea with enough guns, tear gas and tank wheels. There were Nats who thought that their Nationalist Party Leaders had been too ‘easy on’ the ANC (or the “terrorists” as they so fondly called our democratic leaders). It takes a brave and intelligent man to see when comprise is the best answer and I believe if Mandela had not comprised then “moderate” Nats like De Klerk would have fallen and die-harders would taken their place. Men who would burn the cities, blacken the fields, and choke the rivers with blood rather then suffer democratic revolution. Sure the ANC would have won in the end, but what would they have won? A nation of dust and rubble. Sometimes comprise is better than the alternative.
@Owen – so we should be happy because “apartheid South Africa” was better than Zimbabwe? Is that what you are trying to say?
Anyway, I’m glad Winnie said what she said (still to be confirmed) because black South Africans have not been evaluating the quality of this “freedom” that we have.
Mandela and his associates – they got the ball rolling – that we cannot deny and maybe expecting anything more from that generation is a bit unreasonable.
The problem is us young black people. We lost focus of the bigger picture – blinded by temporary gains. Some of us that are fortunate enough -are not sharing what we have with the less fortunate.
We are too lenient with the Government. Those are the people we need to hold accountable. Those are the people who need to come up with feasible strategies to spread the country’s wealth to all its people.
Sipho, although I’m sure many would diagree, i find myself thinking along the same lines as you.
If Zimbabwe had found a way to effectively transfer the ownership of it’s farms 20 years ago, the anger would have stopped boiling up underneath back then and the current crisis may have been avoided. We can’t make the same mistake in SA, we need to be more aggressive about the transfer of the economy, or the tension that is simmering now will start to boil in 10, 20 years time. The question is how to do it. If SA were to get it right, we might be the first, it’s no easy task and requires a lot of careful debate and policy making. The last thing you want to do is lose your foreign investors, and unfortunately they are all orthodox capitalists.
@Darkie – if you were really a “darkie” you’d know that this concept of a “FREE & FAIR environment post-94″ is another rainbow-coated myth. Black people are not free (unless you describe freedom as being able to vote & not having to carry ID’s 24-7) We are not FREE! And very little is fair!
It just upsets me when white people claim that we are lazy and we just want handouts when they have no idea what we went through and what we continue to go through.
You ask : “Why is Africa the planets richest continent, but throughout history has remained the poorest with the most wars, famine etc, think about it, there really is a straight forward answer staring you right in the face.”
Off course there’s an answer for that – the African continent was raped by your forefathers.
I’m not saying there were no challenges before colonization – but the fact is there can be no true reconciliation between black and white Africans if we don’t acknowledge that white Africans (as a collective) have a major headstart over Black Africans.
“If you’re still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today”.
A no holds honest debate is vital and necessary but what should it be about: blame attributing or future solution orintated?
Submit it should focus on the latter without ignoring or forgetting our bad history but mostly as a means of not repeating this history.
A start should be studying what other strife/oppressive societies have done, eg could some people please advise what the following countries have done to heal wounds and move on:
- Russia/USSR and the many colonised countries under the USSR plus all those oppressed E European countries,
- Cambodia (over a million murdered)/Viet Nam/SE Asia
- Chile
- Nigeria after the Ibo war
- Rwanda after the slaughter of nearly a million people
etc etc
It is easy to point fingers/moan/complain and tear down (Winnie did this well against Apartheid but now that she is part of the ruling elite so should change accordingly) but so much harder to build up. We are all in the same boat together whether we like it or not and can only survive against the rest of the world if we combine as a team – that was Mandela’s genius.
Brent
I think Mandela deserves the respect he is getting. It is his successors that failed or continue to fail the people.
The 2007 Polokwane conference sought to address the forgotten agenda of the majority of this country’s population, but sadly COSATU and SACP are forced to struggle yet again to have these implemnented…..the Polokwane resolutions I mean.
They seemed to be doing well before the elections, as they managed to have some of the resolutions implemented. If you were to revisit what the people were struggling for before 1994 you would conclude that we have not made any strides that satisfies the expectations of this marofity voters.
The control of mines was one of those things the majority demanded over the years though we seem to be afraid to say it because we have been mingling a lot in the corporate world. Botswana has a proud legislation that prescribes that the mines will be 51% owned or controled by the government and guess what, they are doing very well. De Beers and other investors did not leave instead they are planning to expand.
I seem to be happy that we are having this debade as it may help make those in charge realise why the people of this country are revolting.
@Po,
I wonder. Ever heard of Oliver Tambo? Pity he had that stroke when he did.
@Brent,
I agree with your assertion that the struggle wasn’t based on the purest of philosophies, whatever those may have been. Neither were all the leaders necessarily ‘good’ (Joe Modise leaps to mind). I also think that the struggle should be contextualised properly, as I did in the blog post.
I cringed inwardly when, during the State of the Nation address, President Jacob Zuma praised the armed struggle for bringing an end to apartheid. It was a blatant attempt at rewriting history.
And it’s true that the governments we’ve had post-94 have served only to compound the some of the problems. That is the greatest tragedy of the post-94 ANC – in many cases they’ve had the tools to right previous wrongs, but have been content to enrich themselves.
P.S. I am lax to agree with you with regards to education and what happened in the 80s. Shed some light there, perhaps?
Those who feel ‘sold out’ by our new SA, please provide details. What were you expecting from Democracy? How exactly were you short-changed? Details, please, not just waffle like ‘whites still own the economy’.
And, to reiterate Maggie’s point, what are your solutions?
Without answers to these questions your bitterness will simply fester, negatively affecting your health and the health of this country.
@Jan Hofmeyr,
Sir, with respect, that is an astoundingly nescient position to take.
1. 16 years to right 400+ years of wrong? Not all the money and good intent in the world can do that. And yes, the lacklustre governments we’ve had so far have made the problem worse.
2. Immigration. Are we to turn a deaf ear to the plight of our less fortunate fellow Africans? I think not! More checks perhaps, but certainly not far-right xenophobic, anti-immigration control.
3. Zimbabwe. Is a sovereign country! Do I need to type this out in CAPS? Invading and deposing Mugabe would only be a solution if SA itself were lead by a latter-day Alaric the Goth. This isn’t the Dark Ages, you know.
Sipho Hlongwane: I read your response to my comment and I totally agree. But then elsewhere you also say “They could have and should have pushed for more.” What do you mean by this? If you were at the negotiating table, what would you have insisted on?
Nyathi: I read your response to Maggie and I agree with most of it. But I do take offense to you claiming that all white people think they are superior. I think any thinking person would agree that that is simply not true.
I’m also against the idea of collective punishment and therefore collective guilt and against the idea of all white people collectively apologising to all black people. You mean white teenagers and little children should apologise to black people? What on earth did they do to them? Even then.. what good would that do?
The rest of your comment I agree with, but I think that’s already happening to a large extent. You just seem to overestimate exactly how much disposible capital there is and how many individuals there are with that kind of money, time and power. And how many positions there are to be filled. By and large most white people are self employed or work for tiny little companies. We’re not all CEOs of huge corporations that employ thousands of people.
But I would like to see more people get involved in educating and training people. There is certainly more we can do.
… and its time for a bit of intelligent auditing of Andile Mngxitama’s oft-repeated twak about whites ‘ill-gained’ wealth. There must be around 2-3 million white adults in this country, of which maybe 20% are seriously wealthy. There is an equal number of seriously wealthy black people too (whose wealth, like Julius, could certainly be ‘ill-gained’).
The middle class family, friends and community that surround me certainly arn’t wealthy. As a nurse I don’t ever expect to be wealthy … and Im not going to cry about it, unlike many blacks who seem to think that wealth is their god-given right. If you aren’t wealthy the revolution failed? Nelson Mandela sold you down the river because you can’t afford the bling you dribble over in your dreams?
Get a LIFE! .. and adopt values more meaningful than trashy cash.
I disagree completely, although I think your article was well written.
I think Madiba did what needed to be done under really tough circumstances: bring a divided, hurt and angry country together. He passed the baton on & unfortunately the recipient stopped along the way for a bit of self-enrichment & his job wasn’t completed. I shudder to think how far forward we could be right now if that did not happen. Then the baton was forced out of Thabo’s hands and into Jacob’s hands and now he’s wallowing in the pool of self-enrichment. So much so that we’ve gone backward. If we’d kept on going forward, at the pace that Madiba set, we’d have far more educated and economically uplifted majority. I cannot comprehend bad-mouthing Madiba’s work. We have new oppressors in town. The sooner we realise that the sooner we move forward. We keep looking 16 years back at could-have should-have, but the issues are happening right now & the current regime is still using the past as a smokescreen for current evils. By the sounds of it, their spin is starting to wear thin, but is it too late?
There is a factor which nobody seems to remember, but which I think is quite relevant to the present discussion. The Anglo-Boer war left the Afrikaner population in the vanquished republics severely impoverished. Despite this, the more enterprising among them were willing to make great sacrifices to get their children a better education than they themselves had had. Despite this, the Afrikaner penetration in the higher echelons of the mining, industrial and commercial world remained almost non-existant till the 1960s and even later. These were in the hands of English speakers, and despite Afrikaner domination of the political leadership since 1910 there was no AEE or AA. Afrikaners that made it to the top, did so by their own initiative and hard work. In the public sector they had a practical advantage after 1948 when bilingualism was required. Through the years public service and state enterprise salaries remained embarrassingly low. Strict accounting was enforced in the civil service. Self-employed Afrikaner professionals started doing well since about the mid 1940s, but they were in no advantaged position with regard to English speakers. Compare to the blacks’ situation today.
The Aids epidemic has caused more harm to black South Africans than whites could have done over 300 years. Maybe the lack of apparent progress has something to do with health.
John
“I chose to tell no one what I was about to do. Not my colleagues upstairs nor those in Lusaka. The ANC is a collective, but the government had made collectivity in this case impossible. I did not have the security or the time to discuss these issues with my organization. I knew that my colleagues upstairs would condemn my proposal, and that would kill my initiative even before it was born. There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way. Finally, my isolation furnished my organization with an excuse in case matters went awry; the old man was alone and completely cut off, and his actions were taken by him as an individual, not a representative of the ANC” – Nelson Mandela (1994), Long Walk to Freedom, page 627,
“Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.” – Winnie Mandela (2010), Alleged Controversial Interview with Nadira Naipaul at http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812947-how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-ex-wife-winnie.do
Mandela was, obviously, only one man among many people who were engaged in the negotiations. Objective conditions prevented the ANC from getting all that it really wanted.
However, Mandela was overly concerned with not rocking the boat as far as whites were concerned. (That is why he is so much more subject of a personality cult in the white community than the black community.) Arguably, Winnie is right that he went too far in this respect.
The ANC could have done a lot more in the decade after liberation than it did, to involve the general public in decision-making and to dynamise people to support initiatives towards making the country a better place. Slogans were not enough.
The pursuit of GEAR may have been necessary, but because it meant reneging on earlier commitments to the poor, it required a more authoritarian stance from both Mandela and Mbeki than was healthy. This, in turn, reinforced the undemocratic tendencies implied in parts of the 1994 settlement.
Meanwhile, the left, instead of rethinking strategies, simply dug in its heels and sought allies in the corporate and criminal classes, and so sold out. But that’s not something Winnie could be expected to say.
Yes Mandela sold us out.
But the idea of white privilege is a sore in our country even the ignorance in the comments display this superiority of thought, opinion and state of being at our expense. Am reminded of Tim Wise’s Pathology of White Privilege.
@Belle
“and its time for a bit of intelligent auditing of Andile Mngxitama’s oft-repeated twak about whites ‘ill-gained’ wealth.”
And then you end off with “GET A LIFE”?
Yup, that’s intelligent auditing. Well done.
@Belle
You might be a nurse as per your choice of profession, but remember there are too many South Africans who are nurses not because they chose to be so. While you had a choice. You could have been CA and your parents could have afforded that, thanks to a priviledged past by your parents for 300+ years. You may not give a damn about cash – what the fuss, cos your family is secured for the next 200+ years. I can bet you, you live in a secure home, no worry about floods, the coming winter etc.
What about somebody who lives in mud huts in the rural villages of this country; the shacks which get swept away on stormy days? Be sensitive.
Some of us are simply saying, the perpetuation of the status quo is not sustainable. The problems we are saying emanated from the negotiations, forget now who was who there.
Remember the story of people who cam back from 2nd World War. Black people were given Bycicles and whites were given farms.
A guy who was given a farm even if he is not farming today must be 10 times well off than the guy give a bycicle.
Our people must be given their land back with all the wealth in it. The solution to our dilema is the question of land. Again read the book by Hernando de Soto: The Mystry of Capital.
I hope you understand the meaning of middle class, that surrounds you. Wake up
@Nicola
I agree with you, we must not wait 20 years to address the problem. Our Land affairs Department must catch a wake up. This notion of throwing the towel bacuase the few farms given to blacks failed really makes me sick.
We all know why the black famers fail. You cannot take one farm and give it to 20 people and expect success. Govt mst give one farm to a capable single black farmer.There are many of such capable people. such people must be given support like white farmers had.
Also, we talking about land not only in farming areas. We talking, prime land possibly with mineral wealth beneath; but also prime land that can be used for property development etc.
I think a dispensation must be reached quickly where white people on current land must forget compesantion, instead they must keep all that they benefited on , i.e money made over property over 300+ yrs – that is enough compensation.
For me the nationalisation of mine proposal is not far fetched as a viable idea. Also, this notion of investor flight is overstated and exaggerated. In the early 90′s there was so much focus on attracting foreign investors, I worked for the DTI then. Who really came up to now? Instead we were fools for selling Iscor to Mittal, Vodacom to Vodafone, Absa to British bank. Can we call those investments? These are buying of going concerns.
We got to do this thing now before it its late.
@Tshunungwa
You don’t get it. We are not asking for Welfare we are demanding what is ours. If you take my money by force today, I should not expect us to negotiate about you bringing it back. Why should we nogotiate about our land?
It’s quite simple really. the Whites of SA will always be the whipping boy when things go wrong. When the corrupt, venal, authoritarian ruling party fails to create a fair and equal society, whites will take the blame. Again and again and again. UNTIL YOU RIP EACH OTHER TO SHREDS.
400 years of wrong- Repeat after me..
400 years of wrong
400 years of wrong
400 years of wrong
400 years of wrong
400 years of wrong.
God help you all.
Freedom can sincerely be freedom if you’re financiallt liberated,as much as we’re politically free,sadly majority of our people are still living in conditions that are beneath basic human standards,this is really nothing short of a plight we sadly have to deal with,truth be told Mandela played a phenominal role as far as the success of this country politically is and i guess if you were to ask the majority of poor people in this country,you’ll get your answer,opportunities are there,no doubt! but there,they’re reaching enough people,so i also agree that there has to be atleast a debate about……
That’s ME told, innit, Ed?
Glad you got that off your chest.
Based on Malema’s rhetoric, the support for Malema’s rhetoric, the misconceptions about white wealth and control of the economy articulated in this “thought”, and many of the comments, I think SA is heading for Zim at best, genocide at worst. The “blame the whites” excuse is impervious to facts and very effectively hides the incompetence and looting taking place behind an ANC front.
A message to white and black; get out now. Unless you are one of Julius Malema’s sycophantic minions or unless you want to be a refugee in Zim or the DRC, if you are lucky.
The article should actually be “Did Nelson Mandela and ANC sell out? It was after all part of the ANC’s plans to continue downpressing the people of South African by maintaing the Imperialist democracy of injustice and inequality. That why they high jacket the Freedom Charter from the people. The failure of Zimbabwe is because there leaders sided with the downpressors instead of upholding the peoples dignity. The Revolutionaries of South Africa should wake up from their slumber becuase the sell out is nothing new but something the late I.B. Tabata warned us long time ago.
I just glanced through this article and it leaves me wondering,about the victim dilemma syndrome currently in South Africa.
The ANC has been in power since 1994 ,even with the few developmental changes,the ordinary populace is divided and disfranchised.
Compromises involve a varied bunches of agreements that work and some that do not work.
South Africans as a people, got something to look forward to regardless of circumstances of the present or the future.
United as a nation you can achieve alot, go tribal with all the nonsense of nepotism, and my goodness, the entire world will laugh and be stunned by the action of the few fools orchestrating the failure of a great nation.
Many People were involved in the struggle, from all creeds and walks of life, unsung heros and of course the few famous known ones.Economic miracles do not work over night and for the few who know economics, nationalisation has never achived anything but poverty and jobs for the few.Name a country that has succeeded with nationalization, and I give you a list of 100 where it has failed.
Look all over Africa,Asia or even Europe and smell the coffee,there is no sucess with it.
The very businesses that were nationalised, cost money to run, politicalconnected creeps in and corruption snags it causing utter collapse.
The result is privatization, back to individual enterprise.
Nation eith empower creativity in the people or disenfranchise them for the select few
@Tshunungwa, I have been saying what you said for a long time. The ANC/MK never had a military victory against the SADF and Mandela went to the bargaining table with a very weak hand. In the US when they had their civil war, the Confederacy forces had one victory after another. President Lincoln tried to get them to settle this dispute by talking to end the war and they refused. After the battle of Gettysburg, the Confederacy forces took a massive lost and the Federal forces came out with a major victory. The Confederacy government sent out feelers to end the war and Lincoln said the surrender have to be unconditional. The French would not talk in Vietnam until Giap great victory against the French in 1994. Then the French setup a talk to give the people their independence. In both of these great battles mentioned above there was a lost of a lot of lives that SA didn’t experienced. What is missing also that the role that foreign powers played in this peace agreement. One must remember that the NATS government had came to the US to buy advance fighter planes and Regan wants to sell them but the congress stop him over his veto. Finally,Mandela got my vote for doing a great job a the bargaining table.
Sipho
Why should you get something for nothing just because you are black? No-one else did – including the whites. This was Khoisan land remember.
Black SA was in the same stage of development when the whites arrived as the Congo is now.
Would you have been better off in the Congo (which is where all the Nguni came from; like all the whites came from Europe). The ANC has undone 350 years of development in 16 years.
Zimbabweans have voted since 2000 for Mugabe to go and the MDC to come into power. The ANC refuses to accept their vote.
And when are you going to answer my question on where is your source for the division of land figures?
How quickly the people forget! Typical South African reaction! Damn the lot of you. Nelson Mandela sacrificed his LIFE for his people. And when he was released after being incarcerated for 27 years he embraced those who had ‘crucified’ him so that no more blood would be shed. We had a bloodless revolution and this is the thanks he gets? He has never showed an ounce of bitterness for his sacrifice. What would you all be saying about him today had he been “hanged by the neck until you are dead” and his death sentence not commuted to life in jail? What would you be saying about Steve Biko if he had NOT been martyred? Nelson Mandela is a living martyr. So much for loyalty, gratitude and allegiance. Tata, I apologise to you for all these ungrateful South Africans who now have the OPPORTUNITY, thanks to you; if they do not take it it is not your fault. I personally thank you that, despite the mess Mbeki made and Zuma is making of this country I, as a white South African, can look all my fellow countrymen and women in the eye and remind myself that because of you we are equal. If they are still in chains it is not your fault. YOU made me proud to be a South African.
Correction, I meant General Giap victory in 1954.
I would like to for the ppl who refuse to acknowledge the FACT that white ppl r 2 blame 4 da inequalities in our country to tell me who is to blame? For 400 hundred yr whites were openly taking from black ppl and redistributed that which was illigitimately accured to their brothers and sisters and when the issue is raised we r told 2 move on and work hard to improve our situation… To this day it is easier 4 a white person to get a job than a black person, and white ppl stil get paid mo than black ppl, i gues we should get ova that 2?
I think da Zimbabwe situation is allowed to continue 4 this long to be a scarecrow 4 other countries who myt want 2 ask 4 economic change.
Sipho
The ANC had no other option but settlement. they had an “army ” of a few thousand men, not even on the borders in the front line states anymore, but kicked into North Africa. After the battle of Cuito in 1988, the Russians and SA settled, and at those negotiations the Russians advised the SADF they had become disillusioned with the ANC.
I also quote the following:
“Three months after Bush’s inauguration, his secretary of state, James A Baker 111, wrote to the president….the administration’s ( Bush’s) stress on negotiation came at a time when it believed that Moscow had come to share its view. A Secret intelligence memo….said in March 1989 that the ANC’s information director, Thabo Mbeki…was in Washington wanting to pursue a dialogue begun in 1986 between Tambo and George Shultz. The background to Mbeki’s visit was that the Soviet Union was putting pressure on the ANC to negotiate. “Whatever Moscow’s broader political motives for counseling talking rather than fighting…The Soviets believe the ANC’s military wing is ill disciplined, badly led and heavily penetrated by South Africa…Moscow will continue to give the ANC military aid, but the ANC recognizes there are new limits and conditions. Without Soviet military support, the ANC loses its major lever on Pretoria” “
“Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The authorised biography of Bishop Tutu” by John Allen (pg 299)
Majobe, maybe you are looking at all these thieving white people with lascivious eyes. Maybe one day white people will get so tired of your victim approach to life that they will say “sc?ew it, take it it is yours”, I hope that you will realize the responsibility that comes with it.
I must say from my own perspective, I need to decide if I should continue eating this victim bs or if I should move or if I should say “sc?ew it, I am tired of playing in a pond of pathetic iron age cultural traditionalists, willing to sell their neighbor for the next tender.” Tough decision.
I have been reading on Rwanda, what is your opinion?
p.p.s. What economic change are you asking for? Confiscation? Jobs for pals? Outright murder and incarceration of the economically privileged?
Come on, spell out this new economic dispensation, so at least I know if I am wasting my time here trying to make a living for myself and my family. I acknowledge that many black “ppl” have a raw deal. Listen bud, it aint going to improve by threatening the only “ppl” that are going to get YOU out of the you-know-what.
Yes it IS you told Sipho. Whether you digest it or not is another thing. But perhaps in 20 years it’ll make sense to you.
@lyndall Beddy,
Your point is neither here nor there. If we are to accept, as you contend, that the homelands were formed “to protect the blacks from themselves”, does that in any way validate apartheid? And if we are to discover that the homelands actually took up, say, 25% (or 30%, or 50%) of the available land, does that make apartheid less evil?
As for your fantastic little history lessons that litter my blog posts of late, who are your sources? Seems to me you still subscribe to a discredited version of our history.
Great article Sipho. Wake up the sycophants. Some in this comment thread have mentioned how the negotiated settlement was the only possible outcome short of a civil war. that may be true, however, with the ascendency into political power of the ANC, they had all (ok, maybe not all but substantial) the tools at their disposal to bring about change for the majority of the people in SA. To be truthful, they were out-negotiated by the Nats but they still got political power out of the deal which, if they were not hypocrites, could have used to alleviate poverty, through concentrating on the most important thing in today’s economic environment – education and skills. Instead they would rather have had it that those of their ranks prospered at the expense of the masses. The very same negotiators at CODESA, are the biggest beneficiaries of BEE. Service delivery has been hampered, the provision of much needed education and skills has been neglected in favour of dropping the standards of education in the form of the farce that is outcomes based education which only serves to doctor the numbers of students who pass matric so that the ANC led government can bark in the glory of very artificial light of their own making. They had the chance (and still do I might add) to change this country for the better if only they would stop thinking about lining their own pockets at every avilable opportunity.
Nice article Sipho and thanks for keeping the debate going. To many of our white friends here, they should be glad that we are actually trying to debate these issues and we are not bottling them in, only for them to burst out a couple of years down the line.
Sipho, by now you should learn to avoid this Lyndall Beddy character. He/She comes up with stats without facts and she is always out to discredit anything that the Liberation movements contributed towards our democracy. I told her ages ago when she claimed that Mandela and the ANC were forgotten in the 80′s and it’s the white who turned around and decided to reconcile. Hell I am 28 now and I was very little in the 80′s but I remember all the known Liberation movements in my province and what they stood for and even remember Mandela very well during those times even when he anything refference of him was banned.
@Lyndall Beddy- Please for once come up with solution to problems of SA. Why don’t you for once write a blog that will contribute towards nation building, that’s if off course you are interested in nation building.
Sipho
I quote my sources, and I have a degree from UCT in History.
I did not support apartheid and the Nats, any more than I support the ANC and BEE.
The fake history at the moment is faked by the ANC.
Especially dishonest was their pretending not to be communists to get money from the West and support for the Free Mandela campaign; while training in secret in Vietnam and Moscow.
And they are not the ANC, because they are communists and Pan Africanist. The ANC of Dube, Plaatjies and Chief Luthuli was Christian Democrat.
For instance the first thing they wanted was the borders of SA shut so that cheap labour could not come in and compete with SA black labour.
Mandela and Tambo, who were the ANCYL, ignored the elders and took the ANC communist.
The Afrikaner even believed the communists had killed Chief Luthuli to take over the ANC – which is why they isolated Mandela in special protection in prison for the last 10 years(in case he got killed and they got the blame).
Every thing that the previously disadvantaged are fighting for today they have earned and paid in blood and tears… Nelson Mandela and many many more who where involved in the struggle did not do that so that things should remain the same… The truth is we were misled, and it is about time we go back and continue in the struggle for FREEDOM, complete freedom not just ‘political freedom’… I must say if u r not atleast willing to listen or engage in a debate without insulting and rediculing the ‘victim’ ,as u so like to call them, then the ‘new’ revolution won’t won in the negotiating tables but with a barrel of a gun…
When a crime was commited against someone everyone expect the perpetrator atleast acknowledge the crime and be found guilty and punished for the crime… The ‘victim’ is told to talk about it, that talking helps, and is encouraged seek justice… But when a large section of our society was violated, it is told to keep quiet, move on, whats done is done… What a society of HYPOCRITE we are…
MajObe
The whites killed about 2000 blacks in a 40 year war, less than 700 in prison, the rest in riots.
The blacks (mainly the ANC) killed 14,000 – 30,000 other blacks ( mainly their opposition PAC and IFP ) in their people’s war in the townships.
Read “People’s War” by Anthea Jeffery of the South African Institue of race relations.
Less than 300 whites asked for amnesty from the TRC (the majority the security police who are like the KGB and the CIA)
Almost 700 ANC asked for amnesty at the TRC.
@Lyndall Beddy, how is history going to treat this subject matter with Mandela? This man went to the the bargaining table with a rag tag MK and he was facing a well armed group with nuke weapons, he was able to steal the pot with the losing hand. Most African leaders give the US credit for getting this agreement that change SA history. This is something that many of the people in the ANC will not admit publicly but, when nobody is around they will talk about the role the US played in this agreement. Mandala also got ten billions dollars worth of aid when he assumed office as the first black president. You are right about the Russians didn’t want to be bothered with the ANC because they had problems of their own.
Fergie
The Mandela myth is already shot to ribbons.
He needs to redeem himself before he dies or he goes down in history as another Mao or Stalin.
Read “People’s War” by Anthea Jeffrey, and some of my posts on Richmark Sentinel (just click on my red name below).
The governments of South Africa that began in 1910 were responsible for the situation in todays South Africa,as they were minority undemocratic ones,in which non whites had no say,so having said that,let us forget the evils of those years,and work together to right the wrongs of the past,the only ones that will allow this to be a failure is the present ANC Government who has failed the hopes and aspirations of those of us who would like to see a new South Africa in which every one of all etnic origin,can work together to make South Africa a country that can take its place in the world as a true democracy and not a sham one that there are so many of,who rule under the cover of democracy,but do not practise it
Karooseun
Most African Governments are controlled by minority elites who got in by indimidation – and stayed in power by vote rigging. Look at Zimbabwe.
the limitations of knowlwdge seem to be a problem for many South Africans. Yes change take time for a country that has be abused by foreigners but it should not take too much time when our own people are in power. This shows that the efforts which were put when fighting for freedom were wasted. And yes pointing fingers will be great if it took us somewhere but in doesn’t. We most South Africans are lazy even if freedom came 60 years ago nothing would have changed the level of development and progress of the country. This is because we are good at blaming each other and chasing other Africans who do not have the same opportunity as we do.
..blacks need justice..period.