NELSON MANDELA WAS NO HERO AFTER HE BECAME A STOOGE OF JEWS AND THE EUROPEAN RACISTS AND IMPERIALISTS
APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA AND APARTHEID ISRAEL WORKED HAND IN HAND TO DEVELOP NUKES!!!
WHERE ARE THE APARTHEID NUCLEAR BOMBS, MR MANDELA??? IN ISRAEL???
"The white man’s favourite politician"
CHRISTIAN MARTYR AND HERO BILL COOPER NOT COMMUNIST TRAITOR NELSON MANDELA, YOU BUFFOONS!
Souvenir from the Caucasus
APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA AND APARTHEID ISRAEL WORKED HAND IN HAND TO DEVELOP NUKES!!!
WHERE ARE THE APARTHEID NUCLEAR BOMBS, MR MANDELA??? IN ISRAEL???
"The white man’s favourite politician"
CHRISTIAN MARTYR AND HERO BILL COOPER NOT COMMUNIST TRAITOR NELSON MANDELA, YOU BUFFOONS!
http://muhammad-ali-ben-marcus.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/christian-martyr-and-hero-bill-cooper.html
Adalberto Erazo
Today Saturday 7th of December 2013 at 1:52 AM
Today Saturday 7th of December 2013 at 1:52 AM
“In March of 1999, Cooper
sent his family out of the United
States. He remained alone at his home in Arizona, where he was
killed (murdered).”
Wednesday April 24, 2013
Special
Guest: Doyle Shamely; Bill
Cooper was very controversial because he spoke the truth. He served our
nation as well, in the military. Prior to 9/11 he saw the patterns that
are repeated over and over again.
Shortly
thereafter, he was assassinated. Doyle Shamley was his research
assistant. This interview will be the last one he will do regarding the
event.
Update : Bill was killed
(MURDERED) by the Apache County Sherrifs Department (SHERIFF GOLDSMITH &
OTHERS) during a raid on his home in November of 2001. He is now buried on a
hill in Eagar, Arizona. We will be updating this page with
more current information shortly (Spring 2003).
Hot Off The Press: Mandela received weapons training from Mossad
Friday, December 20, 2013 at 2:42AM Gilad Atzmon
Haaretz continues, "a letter sent from the Mossad to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem reveals that Mandela underwent military training by Mossad operatives in Ethiopia during this period. These operatives were unaware of Mandela’s true identity. The letter, classified top secret, was dated October 11, 1962 – about two months after Mandela was arrested in South Africa, shortly after his return to the country."
The letter states, “as you may recall, three months ago we discussed the case of a trainee who arrived at the [Israeli] embassy in Ethiopia by the name of David Mobsari who came from Rhodesia,” the letter said. “The aforementioned received training from the Ethiopians [Israeli embassy staff, almost certainly Mossad agents] in judo, sabotage and weaponry.” The phrase “the Ethiopians” was apparently a code name for Mossad operatives working in Ethiopia.
The letter also noted that the subject in question “showed an interest in the methods of the Haganah and other Israeli underground movements. It added that “he greeted our men with ‘Shalom’, was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel, and gave the impression of being an intellectual. The staff tried to make him into a Zionist,” the Mossad operative wrote."
We have to remember that in the 1960's Israel believed itself to be a socialist state and it naturally looked for allies within Left and Communist organisations and paramilitary operators around the world .
Haaretz quotes the newly revealed document, “in conversations with him, he (Mandela) expressed socialist worldviews and at times created the impression that he leaned toward communism."
This letter was kept for decades in the Israel State Archives and was never revealed to the public. It was discovered there a few years ago by David Fachler, 43, a resident of Alon Shvut, who was researching documents about South Africa for a Masters thesis on relations between South Africa and Israel at the Hebrew University’s Institute for Contemporary Jewry.
Born in Israel, Fachler grew up and received his Masters of Law degree in South Africa. “If the fact that Israel helped Mandela had been discovered in South Africa, it could have endangered the Jewish community there,” Fachler told Haaretz.
The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics and controlled opposition - available on Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk
THE
PUPPET (NELSON MANDELA) AND ONE OF HIS PUPPETEERS (DAVID ROCKEFELLA)
exercise intelligent critical thinking, those who can see mandela became
a puppet should also admit he is a puppet, and they should know for
whom he is a puppet, we as a people need to stop championing and
worshiping the puppets whom are used to keep African people around the
world under the thumb of oppression.
HOW THE ANC's FAUSTIAN PACT SOLD OUT SOUTH AFRICA's POOR IN THE 1990's, THE LEADERSHIP OF THE ANC MADE A SERIOUS ERROR, OUR PEOPLE ARE STILL PAYING THE PRICE.
written by Ronnie Kasril, for The Guardian, Sunday 23 June 2013
Lonmin mineworkers paid the price, Mpuzeni Ngxande, one of the 34 miners killed by police on 16 August near the Marikana mine paid the price.
''The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to end such barbarity.'' -Ronnie Kasril
South Africa's young people today are known as the Born Free generation. They enjoy the dignity of being born into a democratic society with the right to vote and choose who will govern. But modern South Africa is not a perfect society. Full equality – social and economic – does not exist, and control of the country's wealth remains in the hands of a few, so new challenges and frustrations arise.
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle like myself are frequently asked whether, in the light of such disappointment, the sacrifice was worth it. While my answer is yes, I must confess to grave misgivings: I believe we should be doing far better.
There have been impressive achievements since the attainment of freedom in 1994: in building houses, crèches, schools, roads and infrastructure; the provision of water and electricity to millions; free education and healthcare; increases in pensions and social grants; financial and banking stability; and slow but steady economic growth (until the 2008 crisis at any rate).
These gains, however, have been offset by a breakdown in service delivery, resulting in violent protests by poor and marginalised communities; gross inadequacies and inequities in the education and health sectors; a ferocious rise in unemployment; endemic police brutality and torture; unseemly power struggles within the ruling party that have grown far worse since the ousting of Mbeki in 2008; an alarming tendency to secrecy and authoritarianism in government; the meddling with the judiciary; and threats to the media and freedom of expression. Even Nelson Mandela's privacy and dignity are violated for the sake of a cheap photo opportunity by the ANC's top echelon.
Most shameful and shocking of all, the events of Bloody Thursday – 16 August 2012 – when police massacred 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by the London-based Lonmin company. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to bring an end to such barbarity. And yet the president and his ministers, locked into a culture of cover-up. Incredibly, the South African Communist party, my party of over 50 years, did not condemn the police either.
South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".
What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles.
Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals. To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.
To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.
It was a dire error on my part to focus on my own responsibilities and leave the economic issues to the ANC's experts. However, at the time, most of us never quite knew what was happening with the top-level economic discussions. As s Sampie Terreblanche has revealed in his critique, Lost in Transformation, by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer's Johannesburg residence – were crystallising in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa's mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa – and young ANC economists schooled in western economics. They were reporting to Mandela, and were either outwitted or frightened into submission by hints of the dire consequences for South Africa should an ANC government prevail with what were considered ruinous economic policies.
All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela's and the ANC's sworn promise to the "poorest of the poor", were lost in the process. Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanche's opinion, these ANC concessions constituted "treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come".
An ANC-Communist party leadership eager to assume political office (myself no less than others) readily accepted this devil's pact, only to be damned in the process. It has bequeathed an economy so tied in to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the plight of most of our people.
Little wonder that their patience is running out; that their anguished protests increase as they wrestle with deteriorating conditions of life; that those in power have no solutions. The scraps are left go to the emergent black elite; corruption has taken root as the greedy and ambitious fight like dogs over a bone.
In South Africa in 2008 the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income. While 83% of white South Africans were among the top 20% of income receivers in 2008, only 11% of our black population were. These statistics conceal unmitigated human suffering. Little wonder that the country has seen such an enormous rise in civil protest.
A descent into darkness must be curtailed. I do not believe the ANC alliance is beyond hope. There are countless good people in the ranks. But a revitalisation and renewal from top to bottom is urgently required. The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken.
At present the impoverished majority do not see any hope other than the ruling party, although the ANC's ability to hold those allegiances is deteriorating. The effective parliamentary opposition reflects big business interests of various stripes, and while a strong parliamentary opposition is vital to keep the ANC on its toes, most voters want socialist policies, not measures inclined to serve big business interests, more privatisation and neoliberal economics.
This does not mean it is only up to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu to rescue the country from crises. There are countless patriots and comrades in existing and emerging organised formations who are vital to the process. Then there are the legal avenues and institutions such as the public protector's office and human rights commission that – including the ultimate appeal to the constitutional court – can test, expose and challenge injustice and the infringement of rights. The strategies and tactics of the grassroots – trade unions, civic and community organisations, women's and youth groups – signpost the way ahead with their non-violent and dignified but militant action.
The space and freedom to express one's views, won through decades of struggle, are available and need to be developed. We look to the Born Frees as the future torchbearers.
PHOTO: NELSON MANDELA / DAVID ROCKELLER
— with Gradwill Bloom, Sibusiso Mhlongo, Jeff Prager and 25 others.HOW THE ANC's FAUSTIAN PACT SOLD OUT SOUTH AFRICA's POOR IN THE 1990's, THE LEADERSHIP OF THE ANC MADE A SERIOUS ERROR, OUR PEOPLE ARE STILL PAYING THE PRICE.
written by Ronnie Kasril, for The Guardian, Sunday 23 June 2013
Lonmin mineworkers paid the price, Mpuzeni Ngxande, one of the 34 miners killed by police on 16 August near the Marikana mine paid the price.
''The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to end such barbarity.'' -Ronnie Kasril
South Africa's young people today are known as the Born Free generation. They enjoy the dignity of being born into a democratic society with the right to vote and choose who will govern. But modern South Africa is not a perfect society. Full equality – social and economic – does not exist, and control of the country's wealth remains in the hands of a few, so new challenges and frustrations arise.
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle like myself are frequently asked whether, in the light of such disappointment, the sacrifice was worth it. While my answer is yes, I must confess to grave misgivings: I believe we should be doing far better.
There have been impressive achievements since the attainment of freedom in 1994: in building houses, crèches, schools, roads and infrastructure; the provision of water and electricity to millions; free education and healthcare; increases in pensions and social grants; financial and banking stability; and slow but steady economic growth (until the 2008 crisis at any rate).
These gains, however, have been offset by a breakdown in service delivery, resulting in violent protests by poor and marginalised communities; gross inadequacies and inequities in the education and health sectors; a ferocious rise in unemployment; endemic police brutality and torture; unseemly power struggles within the ruling party that have grown far worse since the ousting of Mbeki in 2008; an alarming tendency to secrecy and authoritarianism in government; the meddling with the judiciary; and threats to the media and freedom of expression. Even Nelson Mandela's privacy and dignity are violated for the sake of a cheap photo opportunity by the ANC's top echelon.
Most shameful and shocking of all, the events of Bloody Thursday – 16 August 2012 – when police massacred 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by the London-based Lonmin company. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to bring an end to such barbarity. And yet the president and his ministers, locked into a culture of cover-up. Incredibly, the South African Communist party, my party of over 50 years, did not condemn the police either.
South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".
What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles.
Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals. To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.
To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.
It was a dire error on my part to focus on my own responsibilities and leave the economic issues to the ANC's experts. However, at the time, most of us never quite knew what was happening with the top-level economic discussions. As s Sampie Terreblanche has revealed in his critique, Lost in Transformation, by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer's Johannesburg residence – were crystallising in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa's mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa – and young ANC economists schooled in western economics. They were reporting to Mandela, and were either outwitted or frightened into submission by hints of the dire consequences for South Africa should an ANC government prevail with what were considered ruinous economic policies.
All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela's and the ANC's sworn promise to the "poorest of the poor", were lost in the process. Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanche's opinion, these ANC concessions constituted "treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come".
An ANC-Communist party leadership eager to assume political office (myself no less than others) readily accepted this devil's pact, only to be damned in the process. It has bequeathed an economy so tied in to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the plight of most of our people.
Little wonder that their patience is running out; that their anguished protests increase as they wrestle with deteriorating conditions of life; that those in power have no solutions. The scraps are left go to the emergent black elite; corruption has taken root as the greedy and ambitious fight like dogs over a bone.
In South Africa in 2008 the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income. While 83% of white South Africans were among the top 20% of income receivers in 2008, only 11% of our black population were. These statistics conceal unmitigated human suffering. Little wonder that the country has seen such an enormous rise in civil protest.
A descent into darkness must be curtailed. I do not believe the ANC alliance is beyond hope. There are countless good people in the ranks. But a revitalisation and renewal from top to bottom is urgently required. The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken.
At present the impoverished majority do not see any hope other than the ruling party, although the ANC's ability to hold those allegiances is deteriorating. The effective parliamentary opposition reflects big business interests of various stripes, and while a strong parliamentary opposition is vital to keep the ANC on its toes, most voters want socialist policies, not measures inclined to serve big business interests, more privatisation and neoliberal economics.
This does not mean it is only up to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu to rescue the country from crises. There are countless patriots and comrades in existing and emerging organised formations who are vital to the process. Then there are the legal avenues and institutions such as the public protector's office and human rights commission that – including the ultimate appeal to the constitutional court – can test, expose and challenge injustice and the infringement of rights. The strategies and tactics of the grassroots – trade unions, civic and community organisations, women's and youth groups – signpost the way ahead with their non-violent and dignified but militant action.
The space and freedom to express one's views, won through decades of struggle, are available and need to be developed. We look to the Born Frees as the future torchbearers.
PHOTO: NELSON MANDELA / DAVID ROCKELLER
MANDELA, "PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD"???
"My advise to any oppressed people -
Don't
make Maximum Sacrifices for Minimum Gains - if
you are going to make Maximum Sacrifices demand
Maximum Gains!"
Imam Achmad Cassiem: Veteran Freedom Fighter Against Apartheid
When I look at the jewish controlled media (as well as the western
governments
responses) and compare the deaths of Nelson Mandela with that of Hugo
Chavez, I see a stark contrast in their reactions. When Hugo Chavez died
I noticed an underlying tone of satisfaction from both the western
governments and the media that one of their enemies had died and on the
other hand Mandela is being lauded as a "hero" and is almost being
Hollywoodized if I can use that term.
When you have western governments
praising you then something is definitely wrong.
Nelson Mandela may have
started out genuinely as a freedom fighter against the zionist backed
apartheid regime but towards the end of his life he deviated from the
path of liberation in a similar fashion to Yasir Arafat.
Both of them
made a Faustian pact with the devil which appeared different on the
surface but the end result is the same.
Yasir Arafat sealed his fate by
signing the Oslo accords in 1993 that essentially was a surrender
document that gave the usurpers of the zionist entity a free hand to
steal more Palestinian land until he became nothing more than the Mayor
of the West Bank and to top it off, the Mossad ended up murdering him
with polonium which just goes to show that you can never make a deal
with the israHelli devils. I don't think he had any idea that he was
signing the document for his own execution in 1993.
As for Nelson
Mandela he ended up selling out with the so called "Truth and
Reconciliation" commission which essentially let the oppressors walk
free of their crimes.
I don't know why people even praise that process
and they dare call it a process of "healing". I can tell you one thing
it certainly wasn't healing for the victims of Apartheid because it was a
sick joke. Sorry, for me that is not justice. The only way to achieve
peace for the victims is to punish the torturers, rapists, and murderers
for the crimes
whether it's throwing them in prison or executing them(preferably the
latter).
Not only that but Mandela never nationalized the industries or
seized the assets of the multinational corporations which were
involved in the exploitation of the native South Africans which could
have been used to benefit the people.
Instead South Africans continue to
be poor and are being oppressed in a neoliberal nightmare by the very
wealthy jewish family known as the Oppenheimmers who control that
countries economy and the Palestinians continue to oppressed by the
jewish land thieves who only think of wiping them off the face of the
earth. Different ways but the same result.
Only oppressors would dare push for "Truth and Reconciliation".
"it
is immoral, irrational, it is obscene for an
oppressor to tell the oppressed how they should
respond to oppression"
Imam Achmad Cassiem
Letter: Mandela sold out black nation
How the ANC's Faustian pact sold out South Africa's poorest
John Pilger - Apartheid Did Not Die [1998]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRlh2nUWrzs (Preview) Letter: Mandela sold out black nation
05 July 2013
A GROUP on Facebook had a post this week requesting
people to write open letters to the most talked about man in South
Africa, and most probably the world, utata uRolihlahla Nelson Mandela. I
was very disappointed at the lack of insight and critical thinking
shown by most of the young people who commented.
Many of them seemed to share the pervasive yet absurd idea that Mandela single-handedly fought against apartheid. Very few questioned and were critical of his false notions of the rainbow nation and reconciliation.
I don’t know if they think they will get detained if they speak the truth about Mandela – that he sold out the black nation of South Africa. He made peace with whites in the name of all blacks because he could not wait to rule.
He is not the person behind the abolishing of apartheid.
The system was overthrown by its rulers because it was no longer sustainable to run it.
Mandela had nothing to do with it. Millions of our mothers and fathers, ordinary men and women, in South Africa and abroad, were all behind the struggle.
Some of them lost their lives for freedom. They didn’t get to be president or get to live in big houses worth millions. They still live in the shacks they lived in under apartheid, using the bucket system.
You can find them at Wesley Estate, Soweto-on-Sea, etc.Many of them seemed to share the pervasive yet absurd idea that Mandela single-handedly fought against apartheid. Very few questioned and were critical of his false notions of the rainbow nation and reconciliation.
I don’t know if they think they will get detained if they speak the truth about Mandela – that he sold out the black nation of South Africa. He made peace with whites in the name of all blacks because he could not wait to rule.
He is not the person behind the abolishing of apartheid.
The system was overthrown by its rulers because it was no longer sustainable to run it.
Mandela had nothing to do with it. Millions of our mothers and fathers, ordinary men and women, in South Africa and abroad, were all behind the struggle.
Some of them lost their lives for freedom. They didn’t get to be president or get to live in big houses worth millions. They still live in the shacks they lived in under apartheid, using the bucket system.
While Mandela’s offspring hold fancy positions, flaunt their wealth on reality TV shows and drive luxury cars, the future for many South African youth is bleak.
There are no prospects of gaining employment, and they turn to drugs and crime.
The freedom our parents were all excited about because they thought it would bring a better life for them is only a dream. It is a reality to the few in the ANC elite. The only plausible factor that came from Mandela’s ruling was appointing Thabo Mbeki, a visionary, insightful thinker and underrated leader.
I don’t hate Mandela and I don’t hold him responsible for anything, but I think he is overrated and being over-praised. I don’t remember this much fuss being made when any of our late freedom fighters were sick.
I don’t even remember seeing pictures or videos of Walter Sisulu or Govan Mbeki being released from Robben Island. The world focused on Mandela. He was the messiah!
Our children also seem to believe that Mandela is the great man who brought us freedom because our education teaches them a culture of heroism instead of training them to be independent and critical thinkers. I weep for the future of this nation.
Look at the Eastern Cape, where Mandela comes from. It is the most impoverished province, with the lowest matric pass rate and has schools with no roof, mud schools and those where kids learn outside under a tree, not by choice but because there are no classrooms. That is not what we hoped for when we put Mandela into power.
Sibulele Magini, Grahamstown
Comment is free
How the ANC's Faustian pact sold out South Africa's poorest
In the early 1990s, we in the leadership of the ANC made a serious error. Our people still paying the price
Lonmin mineworkers pay
their respects to Mpuzeni Ngxande, one of the 34 miners killed by
police on 16 August near the Marikana mine. 'The Sharpeville massacre in
1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more
distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to end such barbarity.'
Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images
South Africa's young people today are known as the Born Free
generation. They enjoy the dignity of being born into a democratic
society with the right to vote and choose who will govern. But modern
South Africa is not a perfect society. Full equality – social and
economic – does not exist, and control of the country's wealth remains
in the hands of a few, so new challenges and frustrations arise.
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle like myself are frequently asked
whether, in the light of such disappointment, the sacrifice was worth
it. While my answer is yes, I must confess to grave misgivings: I
believe we should be doing far better.
There have been impressive achievements since the attainment of freedom in 1994: in building houses, crèches, schools, roads and infrastructure; the provision of water and electricity to millions; free education and healthcare; increases in pensions and social grants; financial and banking stability; and slow but steady economic growth (until the 2008 crisis at any rate). These gains, however, have been offset by a breakdown in service delivery, resulting in violent protests by poor and marginalised communities; gross inadequacies and inequities in the education and health sectors; a ferocious rise in unemployment; endemic police brutality and torture; unseemly power struggles within the ruling party that have grown far worse since the ousting of Mbeki in 2008; an alarming tendency to secrecy and authoritarianism in government; the meddling with the judiciary; and threats to the media and freedom of expression. Even Nelson Mandela's privacy and dignity are violated for the sake of a cheap photo opportunity by the ANC's top echelon.
Most shameful and shocking of all, the events of Bloody Thursday – 16 August 2012 – when police massacred 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by the London-based Lonmin company. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to bring an end to such barbarity. And yet the president and his ministers, locked into a culture of cover-up. Incredibly, the South African Communist party, my party of over 50 years, did not condemn the police either.
South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".
What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles. Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals. To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.
To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.
It was a dire error on my part to focus on my own responsibilities and leave the economic issues to the ANC's experts. However, at the time, most of us never quite knew what was happening with the top-level economic discussions. As s Sampie Terreblanche has revealed in his critique, Lost in Transformation, by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer's Johannesburg residence – were crystallising in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa's mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa – and young ANC economists schooled in western economics. They were reporting to Mandela, and were either outwitted or frightened into submission by hints of the dire consequences for South Africa should an ANC government prevail with what were considered ruinous economic policies.
All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela's and the ANC's sworn promise to the "poorest of the poor", were lost in the process. Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanche's opinion, these ANC concessions constituted "treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come".
An ANC-Communist party leadership eager to assume political office (myself no less than others) readily accepted this devil's pact, only to be damned in the process. It has bequeathed an economy so tied in to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the plight of most of our people.
Little wonder that their patience is running out; that their anguished protests increase as they wrestle with deteriorating conditions of life; that those in power have no solutions. The scraps are left go to the emergent black elite; corruption has taken root as the greedy and ambitious fight like dogs over a bone.
In South Africa in 2008 the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income. While 83% of white South Africans were among the top 20% of income receivers in 2008, only 11% of our black population were. These statistics conceal unmitigated human suffering. Little wonder that the country has seen such an enormous rise in civil protest.
A descent into darkness must be curtailed. I do not believe the ANC alliance is beyond hope. There are countless good people in the ranks. But a revitalisation and renewal from top to bottom is urgently required. The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken.
At present the impoverished majority do not see any hope other than the ruling party, although the ANC's ability to hold those allegiances is deteriorating. The effective parliamentary opposition reflects big business interests of various stripes, and while a strong parliamentary opposition is vital to keep the ANC on its toes, most voters want socialist policies, not measures inclined to serve big business interests, more privatisation and neoliberal economics.
This does not mean it is only up to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu to rescue the country from crises. There are countless patriots and comrades in existing and emerging organised formations who are vital to the process. Then there are the legal avenues and institutions such as the public protector's office and human rights commission that – including the ultimate appeal to the constitutional court – can test, expose and challenge injustice and the infringement of rights. The strategies and tactics of the grassroots – trade unions, civic and community organisations, women's and youth groups – signpost the way ahead with their non-violent and dignified but militant action.
The space and freedom to express one's views, won through decades of struggle, are available and need to be developed. We look to the Born Frees as the future torchbearers.
• This is an edited extract from the new introduction to his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous
There have been impressive achievements since the attainment of freedom in 1994: in building houses, crèches, schools, roads and infrastructure; the provision of water and electricity to millions; free education and healthcare; increases in pensions and social grants; financial and banking stability; and slow but steady economic growth (until the 2008 crisis at any rate). These gains, however, have been offset by a breakdown in service delivery, resulting in violent protests by poor and marginalised communities; gross inadequacies and inequities in the education and health sectors; a ferocious rise in unemployment; endemic police brutality and torture; unseemly power struggles within the ruling party that have grown far worse since the ousting of Mbeki in 2008; an alarming tendency to secrecy and authoritarianism in government; the meddling with the judiciary; and threats to the media and freedom of expression. Even Nelson Mandela's privacy and dignity are violated for the sake of a cheap photo opportunity by the ANC's top echelon.
Most shameful and shocking of all, the events of Bloody Thursday – 16 August 2012 – when police massacred 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by the London-based Lonmin company. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to bring an end to such barbarity. And yet the president and his ministers, locked into a culture of cover-up. Incredibly, the South African Communist party, my party of over 50 years, did not condemn the police either.
South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".
What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles. Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals. To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.
To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.
It was a dire error on my part to focus on my own responsibilities and leave the economic issues to the ANC's experts. However, at the time, most of us never quite knew what was happening with the top-level economic discussions. As s Sampie Terreblanche has revealed in his critique, Lost in Transformation, by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer's Johannesburg residence – were crystallising in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa's mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa – and young ANC economists schooled in western economics. They were reporting to Mandela, and were either outwitted or frightened into submission by hints of the dire consequences for South Africa should an ANC government prevail with what were considered ruinous economic policies.
All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela's and the ANC's sworn promise to the "poorest of the poor", were lost in the process. Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanche's opinion, these ANC concessions constituted "treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come".
An ANC-Communist party leadership eager to assume political office (myself no less than others) readily accepted this devil's pact, only to be damned in the process. It has bequeathed an economy so tied in to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the plight of most of our people.
Little wonder that their patience is running out; that their anguished protests increase as they wrestle with deteriorating conditions of life; that those in power have no solutions. The scraps are left go to the emergent black elite; corruption has taken root as the greedy and ambitious fight like dogs over a bone.
In South Africa in 2008 the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income. While 83% of white South Africans were among the top 20% of income receivers in 2008, only 11% of our black population were. These statistics conceal unmitigated human suffering. Little wonder that the country has seen such an enormous rise in civil protest.
A descent into darkness must be curtailed. I do not believe the ANC alliance is beyond hope. There are countless good people in the ranks. But a revitalisation and renewal from top to bottom is urgently required. The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken.
At present the impoverished majority do not see any hope other than the ruling party, although the ANC's ability to hold those allegiances is deteriorating. The effective parliamentary opposition reflects big business interests of various stripes, and while a strong parliamentary opposition is vital to keep the ANC on its toes, most voters want socialist policies, not measures inclined to serve big business interests, more privatisation and neoliberal economics.
This does not mean it is only up to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu to rescue the country from crises. There are countless patriots and comrades in existing and emerging organised formations who are vital to the process. Then there are the legal avenues and institutions such as the public protector's office and human rights commission that – including the ultimate appeal to the constitutional court – can test, expose and challenge injustice and the infringement of rights. The strategies and tactics of the grassroots – trade unions, civic and community organisations, women's and youth groups – signpost the way ahead with their non-violent and dignified but militant action.
The space and freedom to express one's views, won through decades of struggle, are available and need to be developed. We look to the Born Frees as the future torchbearers.
• This is an edited extract from the new introduction to his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous
NELSON MANDELA WAS NO HERO AFTER HE BECAME A STOOGE OF JEWS AND THE EUROPEAN RACISTS AND IMPERIALISTS
APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA AND APARTHEID ISRAEL WORKED HAND IN HAND TO DEVELOP NUKES!!!
WHERE ARE THE APARTHEID NUCLEAR BOMBS, MR MANDELA??? IN ISRAEL???
"The white man’s favourite politician"
Nelson Mandela, symbol of freedom or subservience ?
Nelson Mandela is « The white man’s favourite politician », says Thabo M’beki. Although originally a freedom fighter to liberate South Africa from the clutches of European savagery and oppression, Nelson Mandela ended up being used by the White Establishment as an instrument to further its cause. To show their gratitude, White Europeans, who originally branded him a terrorist, have turned him into a pop star and a demigod through propaganda
M Rafic Soormally
Dimanche 26 Juillet 2009
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, born 18th July 1918, was an anti-Apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC). He said he was inspired by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in his attempt to free South Africa
from White European terrorism and racism but, like Gandhi, he was also
committed to self-defence against violence if peaceful means failed. Mandela was also a member of the armed wing of the ANC, the Umkhonto we Sizwe. Europeans branded him a Communist and a terrorist. He
was arrested, charged with many ‘crimes’ and convicted of sabotage for
trying to overthrow the racist South African regime supported by
Western Europeans, including Americans, Canadians, Australians, New
Zealanders, and Israelis after the creation of Apartheid Israel in
Palestine in 1948.
The ‘freedom fighter’
As a freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela could be compared to the likes of Robert Mugabe of the then Rhodesia, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Osama Bin Laden of Arabia fighting to free Afghanistan from Soviet occupation, the late Yasser Arafat of occupied Palestine and thousands of others fighting for freedom from the global terror of mainly western imperialism.
Although
Apartheid was introduced by the racist National Party (NP) in the 1948
‘elections’ and became governing political policy, segregation was
practiced in South Africa long before. The
Apartheid regime committed unspeakable crimes and atrocities against
Black and Asian South Africans – crimes against humanity. The Soweto massacre is but one example. While
Nelson Mandela was spending 27 years of his life in the prison of
Apartheid, other opposition figures were kidnapped and murdered. Steve
Biko, who was gaining great popularity through slogans like « Black
consciousness » and « Black is beautiful », was stopped at a road
block, stripped naked, tortured and murdered in custody because his
captors knew he could not be bought nor would they be able to change
his psychological make-up in seeking justice for Black South Africans. On
the other hand, they could obtain ‘positive’ results in the case of
Nelson Mandela who they brainwashed in prison; otherwise, they would
have murdered him too. With Steve Biko and other
activists eliminated, only the name of Nelson Mandela reverberated
round the world as a mere symbol of freedom, but no more. Although
he may well have been a source of inspiration, it is ludicrous to make
people believe that Mandela was ‘leading’ a resistance movement from
prison.
Seeing
that the Apartheid regime was on the verge of collapse, and fearing
the consequences of a revolution that would take countless White lives,
the European West prepared the ground to place a Black stooge at the
head of the country upon the dismantling of the Apartheid regime. So, they decided to strike a deal with « terrorist » Nelson Mandela while he was still in prison. As
part of this process, the Apartheid President P.W. Botha made contact
with Mandela in 1985 upon the advice of the British and other European
governments, which include the USA and Israel. In
1988, the British authorised the organisation of the « Free Nelson
Mandela » concert at Wembley Stadium where pop stars and other
celebrities galvanised in the mind of the public only Mandela, but no
one else. At that time, Mandela was in his 25th year of internment. It
should be remembered that other ANC senior leaders, such as Walter
Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba, were also
incarcerated, but little is mentioned about them. No
explanation was given as to why such a concert was not organised many
years before, and why none was ever hosted to free the Palestinians
whose country was also stolen and populated by Europeans.
No justice sought
Nelson
Mandela surrendered to the diktat of Western Europeans and agreed a
deal in which no action would be taken against any White man despite
the atrocious crimes committed against the Blacks and Asians of South
Africa. Mandela agreed that the White
supremacists, who also have monopoly in the exploitation of its gold
and diamond mines, would keep everything they had stolen and continue to
manage the economy of the country. He also agreed to discontinue the nuclear weapons programme the Apartheid regime was pursuing with Apartheid Israel because they did not want nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of Black Africans. Upon
this blue print, President Frederick Willem de Klerk announced the
release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990, after 27 years of
incarceration. Even though Mandela still refused to renounce the armed struggle he committed himself to in the 1960’s because he said it « was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid
», to all practical purposes there was no need for it because he had
already effectively sold his country to the oppressors and became the
most revered Black poodle in the European West.
In the New Statesman dated 10th April 2008, John Pilger commented : « I wondered how he [Mandela] had emerged from a quarter-century of incarceration as a sane, rounded, tolerant and gracious human being. »
Without
adequate time for rehabilitation, Mandela was elected President of the
ANC in 1991, and took part in the country’s first multi-party
elections in 1994 when he was elected President of South Africa after
he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with Apartheid
President F W de Klerk. The South Africans were an exhausted and
traumatised people under decades of Apartheid, and they were more
concerned with its abolition than with Nelson Mandela who was a mere
figure head. Mandela only remained President for four years (1994 – 1999) after which Thabo M’beki became President.
European Agent
Nelson Mandela is seen by many as a European agent at the beck and call of White European supremacists. He cannot strictly be compared with M. K. Gandhi who was considered as a real leader with deep sense of values. The White European Establishment is using Mandela as a pawn to influence world affairs in their favour. From
his early release, instead of concerning himself with the monumental
tasks within his own country, especially having been in prison for 27
years and totally disoriented, he indulged in overseas missions at the
behest of Europeans.
In
1992, Mandela ‘proposed’ to President George Bush (Sr) to try the two
Libyans framed in the Lockerbie Pan Am Flight 103 crash over Scotland
in 1988 in a third European (not African) country, and ‘persuaded’
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to comply. In a corrupt
deal made with Gaddafi, who the Americans tried to assassinate but
missed and killed his adopted daughter in the bombing of Tripoli, the
two suspects were delivered to the Dutch authorities, the Netherlands
being one of the supporters of Apartheid. One was freed, but the second, Libyan agent Megrahi, was convicted on the most flimsy of ‘evidence’ (Ref. Robert Fisk & Mrs Irvine whose brother, Bill Cadman, was killed in the crash). On 15th
Oct 08, the High Court gave Megrahi leave of appeal against his
conviction on the ground that a miscarriage of justice may have
occurred. The appeal is expected to be heard in 2009 before the Criminal Appeal Court.
In 1999, Mandela agreed to intermediate between Israel, another ally of Apartheid South Africa, and its neighbours. During his visit to Iran (not truly a neighbour of Israel !), he was more concerned with the fate of the 13 Jews accused of spying for Israel and the United States. As
a ‘supporter’ of the Palestinian struggle, Mandela said that Israel
should withdraw to pre-1967 borders, but at the same time, he was
effectively against such withdrawal unless Arab States recognised the
Apartheid State in Palestine, and he saw Israel as an « economic
powerhouse » in the Middle East. He makes no
mention of the theft of Palestinian lands, the holocaust and exodus of
the Palestinian people, let alone the will of Palestinians. Would Mandela have accepted the creation of the Apartheid State of Israel in South Africa, his own homeland ? On
the other hand, condemning the assassination of the paraplegic Sheik
Yassin, Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela and former
President of the ANC Women’s League, said « Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated » (Source: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, 26 march 2004 – BBC Monitoring International Reports).
Although Mandela criticised American venture in Iraq
and for « undermining » the United Nations, he fails to ask himself
what good were the UN during all the decades of South African
Apartheid. Why is he not going to occupied Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Diego Garcia?
Mandela in Parliament Square
Like a ‘White European’ statesman, Nelson Mandela’s statue is in Parliament Square, which many Black Africans regard as « Apartheid Square », where he joins the Mothers of Apartheid. During the unveiling ceremony of his statue on 29th August 2007, Mandela said with shocking callousness : « We half-joked that we hoped that one day a statue of a black person would be erected here alongside that of General Smuts ». General Ian Smuts was the leader of the Boers and a racist who practiced segregation in South Africa. Strangely,
Mandela is not speaking out against Israeli Apartheid and freedom and
justice for Palestinians, but about some vague freedom all around the
world without saying where.
Pop concert in place of Soweto Trial
Nelson Mandela never sought justice for the sufferings of the South African people. There was no SOWETO TRIAL like there was the Nuremberg Trial, nor did he campaign for one. He never invoked the South African holocaust like so many other holocausts on the African continent. His
campaign is mainly against AIDS which, based upon European propaganda,
he accepts as an African disease, which is totally and utterly false. The first recognised cases of AIDS occurred in New York and California in the early 1980’s among male homosexuals, which Mandela does not want people to know.
When, at Nelson Mandela’s pop star status 90th birthday celebrations in Hyde Park on 27th June 2008 (ahead of his birthday in July 2008), June Sarpong, born of Ghanaian parents, describes Mandela as « the greatest man to ever walk the face of this planet », she was merely demonstrating the epitome of fascist propaganda which is so commonplace in the European West. It
is doubtful whether the South Africans whose families were murdered
and terrorised under Apartheid and for whom justice has never been done
would share her view. Nelson Mandela has been turned into a European pop star and a demigod. As a ‘gift’ for his 90th birthday, George Bush recently signed « into
law a bill removing Mandela and other members of the African National
Congress from a three-decade-old terrorist watch list. » [7 July 2008]. Now, the European west prepares for his 91st birthday on 18th July 2009 to shower more praise upon him for serving their interests so faithfully.
« The white man’s favourite politician »
Thabo M’beki said that Nelson Mandela is « the white man’s favourite politician » and that « When the White man kicks you down, he also tells you how to react ». Furthermore, M’beki said: « Sometimes
when you are in a helicopter and look down, you don't have to ask
which one is a white suburb and which one is an African location. You
can see it from the trees [..] That's what we inherited and that's what we must change ». He went on to say « "a long long time ago" there was a white man who was the president of Zimbabwe who said when he was asked when his country would be called Zimbabwe he said "never in a thousand years". Two years later that country was called Zimbabwe. »
African
countries should ensure that their people are taught their history
properly based upon credible African historians, and not allow racist
powers to meddle in their internal affairs. This is the real disease which is plaguing Africa and the Middle East. Freedom does not mean voting for a pro-European corrupt leader in an African country. Europeans are in no position to teach Africans about democracy, freedom and liberty. Nelson Mandela’s subservience to White Europeans is glaring and most regrettable. Their strategy is to try and elevate South Africa
as an African superpower under their aegis in order to dominate the
African continent, a design which they always had under Apartheid South
Africa.
Conclusion
Unlike the philosophy of M K Gandhi, Nelson Mandela is free to let the British write his autobiography (Ref. Anthony Sampson), landscape his garden (Ref.
Ground Force), put up his statue in Parliament Square alongside the
statue of racist General Jan Christian Smuts, also PM of South Africa
between 1939 and 1948, and visit the British Queen in her Palace, but
he should not pretend to speak in the name of Africa with its diverse
populations which have suffered so much without justice in sight. Mandela is far from being the symbol of freedom he used to be. For
the White Man, justice for Blacks against Whites amounts to vengeance,
and Mandela subserviently bowed down to this nonsense. Nelson Mandela
must go down in history for what he really is and not as some form of
messiah and idol manufactured by the European West. Mandela never truly freed South Africa. John Pilger confirms how « The struggle against apartheid has begun again in South Africa » [New Statesman, 10th April 2008].
M Rafic Soormally
London
15 July 2009 Nelson Mandela: The anti-apartheid campaigner, President and human rights hero ???
He was a protester who became a prisoner who became (???) an outstanding leader
By Lee Moran | Yahoo News – 13 minutes ago
Nelson Mandela charmed the world (???) ever since he re-emerged, after 27 years in prison, onto the global stage. (???)
Without bitterness at those who had locked him up for so long, he spearheaded South Africa's transition from apartheid regime to multi-racial democracy.
He was seen by many around the world as a symbol of resolve and reconciliation for his sacrifice in confinement, as well as his peace-making efforts during that tense transition.
Prior to his release the nation's all-white rulers - who'd oppressed the black majority by dictating where they could live and work - faced mounting opposition at home and abroad.
The country stood on the cusp of civil war.
[All the latest news on Nelson Mandela]
But it was Mandela's statesman-like behaviour, and his willingness to engage with his former tormentors, which ensured a largely bloodless transition. (???)
He was the right man in the right place at the right time - a protester who became a prisoner who became an outstanding leader.
But things may been so very different had he not fled an arranged marriage, and a promised life of relative luxury, aged 23.
Born Rolihlahla Mandela in Mvezo, Transkei, 1918, he was given his "Christian" name of Nelson by a teacher. (???)
Aged nine his father, a Thembu royal family counsellor, died and he was put in the care of the acting regent chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo.
Shunning an easy existence, Madiba (the tribal name he is called by many) ran away in 1941 before his upcoming nuptials.
In Johannesburg, and with a growing passion for politics, he studied law and started his own practice.
It was as a young activist that he married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944.
The couple, who had four children, later divorced in 1958.
[Mandela mulled death in unseen video]
With Oliver Tambo, a fellow African National Congress (ANC) member, he campaigned against the regime but was tried for high treason in 1956.
The charges were eventually dropped after a four-year trial collapsed.
It was then that Mandela married for a second time - a union that coincided largely with the years he spent locked up at the hands of the apartheid regime.
In 1958 he walked down the aisle with Winnie Madikizela, who stood by his side and actively fought to free him from prison.
But the couple, who had two children, split up in 1992 on the grounds of her adultery. She was also later convicted of kidnapping. (???)
In 1960, with the banning of the ANC, Mandela continued to protest. Soon after, police shot dead 69 black people in the Sharpeville Massacre. (???)
In response Mandela, who was by then ANC vice president, instigated a campaign of "economic sabotage". (???) He was charged with trying to violently overthrow the government. (???)
Speaking during his trial, he revealed his dreams for a democratic, free and equal South Africa.
But it made no difference. He was jailed, in the winter of 1964, for life. (???)
Without bitterness at those who had locked him up for so long, he spearheaded South Africa's transition from apartheid regime to multi-racial democracy.
He was seen by many around the world as a symbol of resolve and reconciliation for his sacrifice in confinement, as well as his peace-making efforts during that tense transition.
Prior to his release the nation's all-white rulers - who'd oppressed the black majority by dictating where they could live and work - faced mounting opposition at home and abroad.
The country stood on the cusp of civil war.
[All the latest news on Nelson Mandela]
But it was Mandela's statesman-like behaviour, and his willingness to engage with his former tormentors, which ensured a largely bloodless transition. (???)
He was the right man in the right place at the right time - a protester who became a prisoner who became an outstanding leader.
But things may been so very different had he not fled an arranged marriage, and a promised life of relative luxury, aged 23.
Born Rolihlahla Mandela in Mvezo, Transkei, 1918, he was given his "Christian" name of Nelson by a teacher. (???)
Aged nine his father, a Thembu royal family counsellor, died and he was put in the care of the acting regent chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo.
Shunning an easy existence, Madiba (the tribal name he is called by many) ran away in 1941 before his upcoming nuptials.
In Johannesburg, and with a growing passion for politics, he studied law and started his own practice.
It was as a young activist that he married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944.
The couple, who had four children, later divorced in 1958.
[Mandela mulled death in unseen video]
With Oliver Tambo, a fellow African National Congress (ANC) member, he campaigned against the regime but was tried for high treason in 1956.
The charges were eventually dropped after a four-year trial collapsed.
It was then that Mandela married for a second time - a union that coincided largely with the years he spent locked up at the hands of the apartheid regime.
In 1958 he walked down the aisle with Winnie Madikizela, who stood by his side and actively fought to free him from prison.
But the couple, who had two children, split up in 1992 on the grounds of her adultery. She was also later convicted of kidnapping. (???)
In 1960, with the banning of the ANC, Mandela continued to protest. Soon after, police shot dead 69 black people in the Sharpeville Massacre. (???)
In response Mandela, who was by then ANC vice president, instigated a campaign of "economic sabotage". (???) He was charged with trying to violently overthrow the government. (???)
Speaking during his trial, he revealed his dreams for a democratic, free and equal South Africa.
But it made no difference. He was jailed, in the winter of 1964, for life. (???)
Under
lock and key on Robben Island for 18 years, and then Pollsmoor Prison
from 1982, Mandela was even banned from attending his mother and eldest
son's funerals. (???)
While at Robben Island (Seal Island in Dutch), off the coast of Cape Town, he and other prisoners spent part of the time working in a stone quarry. (???)
He contracted tuberculosis as he languished in his cell, and has been vulnerable to respiratory problems ever since. (???)
While at Robben Island (Seal Island in Dutch), off the coast of Cape Town, he and other prisoners spent part of the time working in a stone quarry. (???)
He contracted tuberculosis as he languished in his cell, and has been vulnerable to respiratory problems ever since. (???)
But he kept his dream of a democratic South Africa alive - smuggling notes containing words of encouragement out to supporters. (???)
Then, in 1980, Tambo - now exiled leader of the ANC - called for Mandela's release as the focus of an international campaign to end the apartheid.The noose of sanctions - introduced in 1967 - tightened. (???) Tensions rose.
President FW de Klerk, fearing civil war, lifted the ANC ban and on February 11, 1990, Mandela walked free. (???) The two men started talks on forming a new democracy. (???)
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (???) - where victims and villains could speak, some with amnesty, about the past - was hailed as crucial to healing the nation's pain. (???)
The pair won the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993 (???) and, five months later, held the first truly democratic all-race general election. Mandela won by a landslide. (???)
Delegating the day-to-day running of the country to deputy Thabo Mbeki, Mandela set about repairing its tarnished reputation. (???)
Encouraging corporations to invest, he led peace talks across the African continent - most notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi - and beyond. (???)
His third marriage, to Graca Machel - the widow of the former Mozambican President Samora Machel- came on his 80th birthday in 1998 as he entered his role of world statesman. (???)
Stepping down as President in 1999, he continuing promoting his global message, only officially retiring from public life in 2004.
Despite claiming to want to spend time with family, he campaigned against HIV/Aids, a highly personal issue following the death of his son Makgatho from the disease in 2005.
On his 89th birthday he formed "The Elders," a group of world figures who offer expertise and guidance.
And he was also key in bringing the 2010 football World Cup to South Africa. (???)
But an advancing age and deteriorating health mean that, in the past few years, his appearances became less frequent.
He had been receiving medical treatment for the last three years and for the last six months has been critically ill.
On 5 December 2013, he died.
MASS MURDERERS MEET
Obamas, Bushes to head to South Africa for Mandela memorial
By Tangi QUEMENER | AFP – 1 hour 35 minutes ago -
Saturday 7 December 2013
- View PhotoAFP/AFP/File - US President Barack Obama(C), next to First Lady Michelle Obama, speaks to people taking part in the Fast for Families on the National Mall in Washington,DC on November 29, 2013
View PhotoA vendor stands near newspapers dedicated to late former South African president …
View PhotoFormer first lady Laura Bush watches as former US president George W. Bush leaves …
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will travel to South Africa next week to pay their respects to the late Nelson Mandela together with former first couple George W. and Laura Bush.
Ex-president Bill Clinton, who was in office when Mandela took power
to become South Africa's first black president, also said that he would
be making the trip with his family.White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obamas would "participate in memorial events" for the iconic leader who died Thursday at age 95.
Carney declined to provide more details on the trip, saying more information would be provided once it becomes available.
South African President Jacob Zuma said a national ceremony in Mandela's memory would be held Tuesday in the Soweto stadium.
His body will then lie in state in Pretoria for three days before he receives a state burial on December 15 in his boyhood home of Qunu.
The Bushes will be making the trip together with the Obamas on the presidential plane at the current first couple's request, according to Freddy Ford, a spokesman for the 43rd president.
"President and Mrs George W. Bush have gratefully accepted the President and Mrs Obama's invitation to accompany them to South Africa on Air Force One and attend president Nelson Mandela's memorial services next week," he said.
The White House invitation was also extended to former president George H.W. Bush but the 89-year-old declined since he can no longer travel long distances, said his spokesman Jim McGrath.
"But he will be there in spirit, of course," McGrath told AFP.
Clinton confirmed that he, too, was headed to South Africa.
"Our whole family is going," Clinton told CNN, implying that both his wife Hillary, a former US secretary of state and one-time rival to Obama to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, and daughter Chelsea would be coming along.
"I wouldn't miss this," said Clinton.
"He was a genuine friend to me, and he was a really fine partner as president.
"So my whole family will be there, and we're looking forward to having the chance to say goodbye one last time."
Representatives for the other surviving former occupant of the White House -- Jimmy Carter -- did not immediately respond to a request about possible attendance plans.
South Africa declared a period of mourning for all of next week, starting Sunday with a "national day of prayer and reflection."
In a tribute shortly after the revered statesman's death was made public, Obama mourned Mandela as a "profoundly good" man who "took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice."
"We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again," Obama said in a somber televised statement, hailing his political hero for his "fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others."
Obama, who ordered flags to fly at half-staff at the White House and public buildings, said Mandela, in his journey from a "prisoner to a president," transformed South Africa and "moved all of us."
The president on Friday phoned Mandela's widow to express his sympathy.
"This afternoon, President Obama spoke by phone with Mrs Graca Machel to express the condolences of the Obama family and the American people on the passing of her husband, Nelson Mandela," a White House statement said.
"The president thanked Mrs Machel for the profound influence that Nelson Mandela has had on him, and underscored the power of president Mandela's example for the people of South Africa and the entire world."
America's first black president met Mandela only once -- in 2005 when he had just become a senator -- but said he was inspired to enter politics by the anti-apartheid hero's example.
JONATHAN COOK THE PROPAGANDIST AND LIAR! THE GOOD LIAR ALWAYS TELLS SOME TRUTH TO MAKE THE LIES MORE BELIEVABLE!
Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
THE END OF CAPITALISM?
— Rob Urie on the future of capitalism; James Kilgore on the strange
politics of prisons in America; David Macaray digs into the history and
influence of the US Chamber of Commerce; Louis Proyect surveys the films
of Steven Soderberg; Lee Ballinger on political ballads; Jeffrey St.
Clair recounts the history of eugenics in America; JoAnn Wypijewski on
the American Memory Machine; Mike Whitney on how Quantitative Easing
fattened the wealthy; Chris Floyd on American patsies; and Kristin Kolb
on the buy-out of Big Green.
Weekend Edition December 6-8, 2013
Victorious Over Apartheid, Defeated by Neoliberalism
Mandela: a Dissenting Opinion
Nazareth.
Offering a dissenting opinion at this moment of a general outpouring of grief at Nelson Mandela’s death is not likely to court popularity. It is also likely to be misunderstood.
So let me start by recognising Mandela’s huge achievement in helping to bring down South African apartheid, and make clear my enormous respect for the great personal sacrifices he made, including spending so many years caged up for his part in the struggle to liberate his people. These are things impossible to forget or ignore when assessing someone’s life.
Nonetheless, it is important to pause during the widespread acclamation of his legacy, mostly by people who have never demonstrated a fraction of his integrity, to consider a lesson that most observers want to overlook.
Perhaps the best way to make my point is to highlight a mock memo written in 2001 by Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman. It is a wonderful, humane denunciation of Friedman’s hypocrisy and a demand for justice for the Palestinians that Mandela should have written. [http://www.keghart.com/Mandela-Palestine]
Soon afterwards, the memo spread online, stripped of el-Fassed’s closing byline. Many people, including a few senior journalists, assumed it was written by Mandela and published it as such. It seemed they wanted to believe that Mandela had written something as morally clear-sighted as this about another apartheid system, an Israeli one that is at least the equal of that imposed for decades on black South Africans.
However, the reality is that it was not written by Mandela, and his staff even went so far as to threaten legal action against the author.
Mandela spent most his adult life treated as a “terrorist”. There was a price to be paid for his long walk to freedom, and the end of South Africa’s system of racial apartheid. Mandela was rehabilitated into an “elder statesman” in return for South Africa being rapidly transformed into an outpost of neoliberalism, prioritising the kind of economic apartheid most of us in the west are getting a strong dose of now.
In my view, Mandela suffered a double tragedy in his post-prison years.
First, he was reinvented as a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility.
Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was required to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.
It is an indication of what Mandela was up against that the man who fought so hard and long against a brutal apartheid regime was so completely defeated when he took power in South Africa. That was because he was no longer struggling against a rogue regime but against the existing order, a global corporate system of power that he had no hope of challenging alone.
It is for that reason, rather simply to be contrarian, that I raise these failings. Or rather, they were not Mandela’s failings, but ours. Because, as I suspect Mandela realised only too well, one cannot lead a revolution when there are no followers.
For too long we have slumbered through the theft and pillage of our planet and the erosion of our democratic rights, preferring to wake only for the release of the next iPad or smart phone.
The very outpouring of grief from our leaders for Mandela’s loss helps to feed our slumber. Our willingness to suspend our anger this week, to listen respectfully to those watery-eyed leaders who forced Mandela to reform from a fighter into a notable, keeps us in our slumber. Next week there will be another reason not to struggle for our rights and our grandchildren’s rights to a decent life and a sustainable planet. There will always be a reason to worship at the feet of those who have no real power but are there to distract us from what truly matters.
No one, not even a Mandela, can change things by him or herself. There are no Messiahs on their way, but there are many false gods designed to keep us pacified, divided and weak.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”
(Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
Offering a dissenting opinion at this moment of a general outpouring of grief at Nelson Mandela’s death is not likely to court popularity. It is also likely to be misunderstood.
So let me start by recognising Mandela’s huge achievement in helping to bring down South African apartheid, and make clear my enormous respect for the great personal sacrifices he made, including spending so many years caged up for his part in the struggle to liberate his people. These are things impossible to forget or ignore when assessing someone’s life.
Nonetheless, it is important to pause during the widespread acclamation of his legacy, mostly by people who have never demonstrated a fraction of his integrity, to consider a lesson that most observers want to overlook.
Perhaps the best way to make my point is to highlight a mock memo written in 2001 by Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman. It is a wonderful, humane denunciation of Friedman’s hypocrisy and a demand for justice for the Palestinians that Mandela should have written. [http://www.keghart.com/Mandela-Palestine]
Soon afterwards, the memo spread online, stripped of el-Fassed’s closing byline. Many people, including a few senior journalists, assumed it was written by Mandela and published it as such. It seemed they wanted to believe that Mandela had written something as morally clear-sighted as this about another apartheid system, an Israeli one that is at least the equal of that imposed for decades on black South Africans.
However, the reality is that it was not written by Mandela, and his staff even went so far as to threaten legal action against the author.
Mandela spent most his adult life treated as a “terrorist”. There was a price to be paid for his long walk to freedom, and the end of South Africa’s system of racial apartheid. Mandela was rehabilitated into an “elder statesman” in return for South Africa being rapidly transformed into an outpost of neoliberalism, prioritising the kind of economic apartheid most of us in the west are getting a strong dose of now.
In my view, Mandela suffered a double tragedy in his post-prison years.
First, he was reinvented as a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility.
Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was required to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.
It is an indication of what Mandela was up against that the man who fought so hard and long against a brutal apartheid regime was so completely defeated when he took power in South Africa. That was because he was no longer struggling against a rogue regime but against the existing order, a global corporate system of power that he had no hope of challenging alone.
It is for that reason, rather simply to be contrarian, that I raise these failings. Or rather, they were not Mandela’s failings, but ours. Because, as I suspect Mandela realised only too well, one cannot lead a revolution when there are no followers.
For too long we have slumbered through the theft and pillage of our planet and the erosion of our democratic rights, preferring to wake only for the release of the next iPad or smart phone.
The very outpouring of grief from our leaders for Mandela’s loss helps to feed our slumber. Our willingness to suspend our anger this week, to listen respectfully to those watery-eyed leaders who forced Mandela to reform from a fighter into a notable, keeps us in our slumber. Next week there will be another reason not to struggle for our rights and our grandchildren’s rights to a decent life and a sustainable planet. There will always be a reason to worship at the feet of those who have no real power but are there to distract us from what truly matters.
No one, not even a Mandela, can change things by him or herself. There are no Messiahs on their way, but there are many false gods designed to keep us pacified, divided and weak.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”
(Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
"... mock memo written in 2001 by Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman. It is a wonderful, humane denunciation of Friedman’s hypocrisy and a demand for justice for the Palestinians that Mandela should have written."
[http://www.keghart.com/Mandela-Palestine]
Arjan el-Fassed, from Nelson Mandela to the NYT’s columnist Thomas Friedman.
"Mandela's" Memo to Thomas Friedman About Israel & Palestine
"However, the reality is that it was not written by Mandela, and his staff even went so far as to threaten legal action against the author." Jonathan Cook
Print
Send
PDFBy "Nelson Mandela", in Jefferson Corner - America's Speaker's Corner, 28 March 2001
"If you want peace and democracy, I will support you. If you want formal Apartheid, we will not support you. If you want to support racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing, we will oppose you."
Dear Thomas,
I know that you and I long for peace in the Middle
East, but before you continue to talk about necessary conditions from
an Israeli perspective, you need to know what’s on my mind. Where to
begin? How about 1964.Let me quote my own words during my trial. They
are true today as they were then: “I have fought against white
domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished
the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live
together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I
hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for
which I am prepared to die.”
Today the world, black and white, recognize that
Apartheid has no future. In South Africa it has been ended by our own
decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. That mass
campaign of defiance and other actions could only culminate in the
establishment of Democracy.
Perhaps it is strange for you to observe the
situation in Palestine or more specifically, the structure of political
and cultural relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, as an
Apartheid system. This is because you incorrectly think that the problem
of Palestine began in 1967. This was demonstrated in your recent column
“Bush’s First Memo” in the New York Times on March 27, 2001.
You seem to be surprised to hear that there are
still problems of 1948 to be solved, the most important component of
which is the right to return of Palestinian refugees. The
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation
and Israel is not a country that was established “normally” and
happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not
struggling for a “state” but for freedom, liberation and equality, just
like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.
In the last few years, and especially during the reign of the Labour Party, Israel showed that it was not even willing to return what it occupied in 1967; that Settlements remain, Jerusalem would be under exclusive Israeli sovereignty, and Palestinians would not have an independent state, but would be under Israeli economic domination with Israeli control of borders, land, air, water and sea.
Israel was not thinking of a “state” but of
“separation”. The value of separation is measured in terms of the
ability of Israel to keep the Jewish state Jewish, and not to have a
Palestinian minority that could have the opportunity to become a
majority at some time in the future. If this takes place, it would force
Israel to either become a secular democratic or bi-national state, or
to turn into a state of Apartheid not only de facto, but also de jure.
Thomas, if you follow the polls in Israel for the last 30 or 40 years, you clearly find a vulgar racism that includes a third of the population who openly declare themselves to be racist. This racism is of the nature of “I hate Arabs” and “I wish Arabs would be dead”.
If you also follow the judicial system in Israel
you will see there is discrimination against Palestinians, and if you
further consider the 1967 Occupied Territories you will find there are
already two judicial systems in operation that represent two different
approaches to human life: one for Palestinian life and the other for
Jewish life. Additionally there are two different approaches to property
and to land. Palestinian property is not recognized as private property
because it can be confiscated.
As to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza, there is an additional factor. The so-called “Palestinian
autonomous areas” are Bantustans. These are restricted entities within
the power structure of the Israeli Apartheid system.
The Palestinian state cannot be the by-product of
the Jewish state, just in order to keep the Jewish purity of Israel.
Israel’s racial discrimination is daily life of most Palestinians. Since
Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews are able to accrue special
rights which non-Jews cannot do. Palestinian Arabs have no place in a
“Jewish” state.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has
deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has
perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It
has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians,
contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged
a war against a civilian population, in particular children.
The responses made by South Africa to human rights
abuses emanating from the removal policies and Apartheid policies
respectively, shed light on what Israeli society must necessarily go
through before one can speak of a just and lasting peace in the Middle
East and an end to its Apartheid policies.
Thomas, I’m not abandoning Mideast diplomacy. But
I’m not going to indulge you the way your supporters do. If you want
peace and democracy, I will support you. If you want formal Apartheid,
we will not support you. If you want to support racial discrimination
and ethnic cleansing, we will oppose you.
When you figure out what you’re about, give me a call.
Arjan el-Fassed
Shortly after his release from 27 years in prison, Mandela described Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as “our friend and comrade . . . like us, fighting against a unique form of colonialism.” These comments, made on February 27, 1990 as Arafat joined Mandela at a pan-African summit, provoked a storm of push-back among Israel’s apologists. The next day, Mandela told a reporter: “If the truth alienates the Jewish community in South Africa, too bad.” Questioned about Mandela’s remarks, Arafat said: “We are in the same trench, struggling against the same enemies, against apartheid, racism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.”
The Israel Lobby rushed to attempt to counteract the damage to Israel’s image. “South Africa’s influential Jewish community [wants] to meet Nelson Mandela to tell him he was wrong to compare the Palestinian struggle with the black liberation movement,” Newsday reported a day later. When Mandela traveled to the U.S. three months later, in June of 1990, to meet with President Bush and Congress, Israel’s mainstream defenders prepared an indifferent, if not hostile, reception.
Right-wing Israel-boosting pundits went further, welcoming Mandela to the U.S. with opeds misquoting him and claiming that Mandela had called Israel an ‘apartheid’ regime. On June 19th The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page asserted:
By putting Arafat’s words into Mandela’s mouth, they inflated Mandela’s already serious accusations against Israel to a level that, perhaps they hoped, would damage his credibility. At the time, no major world leader – certainly not one U.S. President and two former Israeli Prime Ministers – had gone so far as to compare Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South African apartheid.
Even if it was a genuine mistake by the Journal (hard to believe), that was then picked up by the Journal‘s allies without vetting (also hard to believe), Charen’s comments seem to crack open a window into the philosophy of Israel’s most strident mainstream media boosters at a time when the Israel Lobby’s power was nowhere near as robust as it grew to become under the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations.
With Mandela’s passing, it is certainly not in the interest of Israel’s apologists to repeat the claim that he labeled Israel an ‘apartheid’ regime, which would simply validate the growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and the rampant ‘apartheid’ charges that have been leveled at Israel in the past 12 years. Instead, hypocritical eulogies that remove any trace of his indictment of Israeli policies are the norm.
An interesting postscript to the debate over whether Mandela called Israel ‘apartheid’… In 2002 Dutch-Palestinian political scientist Arjan El Fassed wrote a ‘mock memo‘ to Thomas Friedman — in the style of one of Friedman’s own ‘mock memo’ columns — pretending to be from Mandela, and labeling Israel an apartheid state. Although El Fassed’s ambition to get it published in the New York Times was never realized, when he posted it on a discussion board under his own name, activists stripped out El Fassed’s byline and circulated it widely, leading major editors to believe it was in fact penned by Mandela and quote it at length. El Fassed describes the saga of the mock memo here.
Although I have been unable to find a reliable record of Mandela using the word ‘apartheid’ to describe Israel, his comments accusing Israel of colonialism, as well as his subsequent remarks, should lay to rest any doubts about his beliefs regarding the legitimacy of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
Thanks to Hostage for prompting this inquiry with a comment on this story. For what it’s worth, an extended Wikipedia conversation about the validity of the “same trench…apartheid” quote can be found here. Lastly, a caveat: Although I spent many hours researching, it’s possible there’s a relevant news clipping out there that I missed that might affect some of the contours of this story.
Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator put itshortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”
As the world remembers Mandela, here are some of the things he believed that many will gloss over.
1. Mandela blasted the Iraq War and American imperialism. Mandela called Bush “a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly,” and accused him of “wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” by going to war in Iraq. “All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil,” he said. Mandela even speculated that then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan was being undermined in the process because he was black. “They never did that when secretary-generals were white,” he said. He saw the Iraq War as a greater problem of American imperialism around the world. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care,” he said.
2. Mandela called freedom from poverty a “fundamental human right.” Mandela considered poverty one of the greatest evils in the world, and spoke out against inequality everywhere. “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils,” he said. He considered ending poverty a basic human duty: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life,” he said. “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
3. Mandela criticized the “War on Terror” and the labeling of individuals as terrorists without due process. On the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008 himself, Mandela was an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s war on terror. He warned against rushing to label terrorists without due process. While forcefully calling for Osama bin Laden to be brought to justice, Mandela remarked, “The labeling of Osama bin Laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before he had been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenets of the rule of law.”
4. Mandela called out racism in America. On a trip to New York City in 1990, Mandela made a point of visiting Harlem and praising African Americans’ struggles against “the injustices of racist discrimination and economic equality.” He reminded a larger crowd at Yankee Stadium that racism was not exclusively a South African phenomenon. “As we enter the last decade of the 20th century, it is intolerable, unacceptable, that the cancer of racism is still eating away at the fabric of societies in different parts of our planet,” he said. “All of us, black and white, should spare no effort in our struggle against all forms and manifestations of racism, wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.”
5. Mandela embraced some of America’s biggest political enemies. Mandela incited shock and anger in many American communities for refusing to denounce Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had lent their support to Mandela against South African apartheid. “One of the mistakes the Western world makes is to think that their enemies should be our enemies,” he explained to an American TV audience. “We have our own struggle.” He added that those leaders “are placing resources at our disposal to win the struggle.” He also called the controversial Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat “a comrade in arms.”
6. Mandela was a die-hard supporter of labor unions. Mandela visited the Detroit auto workers union when touring the U.S., immediately claiming kinship with them. “Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, the man who is speaking is not a stranger here,” he said. “The man who is speaking is a member of the UAW. I am your flesh and blood.”
CREDIT: AP
Israel apologists attempted to discredit Mandela with false Israel apartheid quote
Did Nelson Mandela label Israel an ‘apartheid’ regime? Israel’s apologists claimed he did in 1990, apparently misquoting Mandela for their own political objectives.
Nelson
Mandela meets with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser
Arafat, right, on Sunday, May 20, 1990 in Cairo. (Photo via
news.naij.co)
Shortly after his release from 27 years in prison, Mandela described Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as “our friend and comrade . . . like us, fighting against a unique form of colonialism.” These comments, made on February 27, 1990 as Arafat joined Mandela at a pan-African summit, provoked a storm of push-back among Israel’s apologists. The next day, Mandela told a reporter: “If the truth alienates the Jewish community in South Africa, too bad.” Questioned about Mandela’s remarks, Arafat said: “We are in the same trench, struggling against the same enemies, against apartheid, racism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.”
The Israel Lobby rushed to attempt to counteract the damage to Israel’s image. “South Africa’s influential Jewish community [wants] to meet Nelson Mandela to tell him he was wrong to compare the Palestinian struggle with the black liberation movement,” Newsday reported a day later. When Mandela traveled to the U.S. three months later, in June of 1990, to meet with President Bush and Congress, Israel’s mainstream defenders prepared an indifferent, if not hostile, reception.
Right-wing Israel-boosting pundits went further, welcoming Mandela to the U.S. with opeds misquoting him and claiming that Mandela had called Israel an ‘apartheid’ regime. On June 19th The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page asserted:
Mr. Mandela has met the PLO’s Yasser Arafat three times, more than with any other foreign leader. Mr. Mandela says, “We are in the same trench struggling against the same enemy: the twin Tel Aviv and Pretoria regimes, apartheid, racism, colonialism and neocolonialism.”According to Newsday’s report from three months earlier, these were Arafat’s words, not Mandela’s. A few days after the WSJ oped, Pat Buchanan wrote in a June 24th column: ”Mandela’s past activities and present alliances should alarm, not awe, free men,” and Buchanan repeated the “same trench… apartheid” quote as being Mandela’s. Neoconservative Israel backer Joshua Muravchik repeated the same quote as attributed to Mandela in a similar be-scared-of-Mandela piece that ran in Commentary, October 1990. Neoconservative Mona Charen piled on a day after Buchanan, repeating the same quote and claiming it was Mandela’s. Charen wrote:
It has fallen to the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative columnists to make the point that Nelson Mandela has embraced one of the most pernicious ideas of the 20th Century, namely communism; that he has refused to renounce violence in the struggle to end apartheid; that he has on three occasions since his release from prison met and praised Yasser Arafat, saying, “We are in the same trench struggling against the same enemy: the twin Tel Aviv and Pretoria regimes, apartheid, racism, colonialism and neocolonialism…”What exactly had “fallen” to these conservative columnists, as Charen put it? Apparently, to make Mandela seem even scarier than he already was to a certain segment of Americans, most especially American Jewish supporters of Israel, who were wholly unprepared to consider the possibility that Israel was, in fact, an apartheid regime. Were these columnists acting in concert, according to pre-determined talking points?
By putting Arafat’s words into Mandela’s mouth, they inflated Mandela’s already serious accusations against Israel to a level that, perhaps they hoped, would damage his credibility. At the time, no major world leader – certainly not one U.S. President and two former Israeli Prime Ministers – had gone so far as to compare Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South African apartheid.
Even if it was a genuine mistake by the Journal (hard to believe), that was then picked up by the Journal‘s allies without vetting (also hard to believe), Charen’s comments seem to crack open a window into the philosophy of Israel’s most strident mainstream media boosters at a time when the Israel Lobby’s power was nowhere near as robust as it grew to become under the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations.
With Mandela’s passing, it is certainly not in the interest of Israel’s apologists to repeat the claim that he labeled Israel an ‘apartheid’ regime, which would simply validate the growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and the rampant ‘apartheid’ charges that have been leveled at Israel in the past 12 years. Instead, hypocritical eulogies that remove any trace of his indictment of Israeli policies are the norm.
An interesting postscript to the debate over whether Mandela called Israel ‘apartheid’… In 2002 Dutch-Palestinian political scientist Arjan El Fassed wrote a ‘mock memo‘ to Thomas Friedman — in the style of one of Friedman’s own ‘mock memo’ columns — pretending to be from Mandela, and labeling Israel an apartheid state. Although El Fassed’s ambition to get it published in the New York Times was never realized, when he posted it on a discussion board under his own name, activists stripped out El Fassed’s byline and circulated it widely, leading major editors to believe it was in fact penned by Mandela and quote it at length. El Fassed describes the saga of the mock memo here.
Although I have been unable to find a reliable record of Mandela using the word ‘apartheid’ to describe Israel, his comments accusing Israel of colonialism, as well as his subsequent remarks, should lay to rest any doubts about his beliefs regarding the legitimacy of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
Thanks to Hostage for prompting this inquiry with a comment on this story. For what it’s worth, an extended Wikipedia conversation about the validity of the “same trench…apartheid” quote can be found here. Lastly, a caveat: Although I spent many hours researching, it’s possible there’s a relevant news clipping out there that I missed that might affect some of the contours of this story.
How it started?
On March 27, 2001, Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the style of a ‘mock memo’ entitled Bush’s First Memo. In this ‘mock memo’ Thomas Friedman writes in the name of U.S. President George W. Bush a memo to Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.
This ‘mock memo’ — Thomas Friedman had published a number of them in the New York Times, for example, a ‘mock memo’ he wished Secretary of State Colin Powell would have sent to President George W. Bush was published on February 20, 2001 — triggered me to write to the New York Times’ Readers Opinions in the the ‘mock memo’ style that Friedman himself liked to use and offered Nelson Mandela responding to Friedman’s Bush’s First Memo to Arafat.
Mandela’s first memo to Thomas Friedman (30 March 2001)
Since Thomas Friedman tells his readers that Palestinians should forget about 1948 and forget about returning to their homes, I wanted to show that current policies against Palestinians resemble an apartheid-like situation. Since Nelson Mandela has become the personification of the struggle against apartheid, I thought a ‘mock memo’ including Mandela was the logical thing to do. I could also have taken Steven Biko who has said that “the most potential weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” or Oliver Tambo or others anti-apartheid activists.
The confusion
On 27 March 2001, after reading Friedman’s ‘mock memo’ I wrote a letter entitled Mandela’s first memo to Thomas Friedman to the op-ed editor of The New York Times and I posted the memo on the Thomas Friedman Discussion Board of the New York Times, hoping that Thomas Friedman would read it and that the New York Times would publish it. However, after two days, I came to the conclusion that the New York Times would not dare publishing this piece and I sent it on March 30, 2001 to Media Monitors, “a Platform for Serious Media Contributors”, an online daily.
Soon, however, I found the ‘mock memo’ I wrote and which clearly indicated that I wrote it, on various listservers and websites but without the byline mentioning that it was in fact written by me.
The main purpose of the Mandela-memo was to respond in a satirical way to Thomas Friedman using the exact same style and even phrases he uses in his columns. Obviously, the ‘mock memo’ had been forwarded to several e-mail lists containing the memo, which originally included the title “Mandela’s First Memo to Thomas Friedman” and a byline “by Arjan El Fassed”, but eventually was forwarded without my name and sometimes without title.
I posted the ‘mock memo’ myself on 30 March on an mailinglist of Al-Awda. Despite this, I’ve seen it several times being posted on the same list, something that gives you an idea of the lack of attention many people give to material they forward. In various posts I read, the subject title was changed for example, “Mandela supports…”, “must read”, etc. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. If Nelson Mandela would seriously have written to the New York Times, wouldn’t the New York Times just publish it? Moreover, I believe Nelson Mandela has better things to do then responding to columns written by Thomas Friedman.
How things got worse
On April 24, 2001, Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist and editorial writer for the Israeli national daily Ha’aretz wrote in his Strong Quote from Mandela that the Palestinian daily Al Quds published a letter that Nelson Mandela sent to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in response to a March 27 Frideman column, dubbed “Memo to President Bush.”
Immediately, I wrote a letter to Ha’aretz explaining what happened. Most probably, someone translated the memo (without byline) into Arabic and which was taken up by the Palestinian daily and printed on April 16, 2001, however, without verifying the source. The editor of Al Quds, Marwan Abu Zalaf, said that he had no idea it was a fake, and that one of his reporters found it on the Internet.
On Friday, April 18, the Lebanese daily As-Safir re-published the ‘mock memo’ in Arabic based on the article as printed by the Palestinian daily Al-Quds. On Monday, April 21, The Daily Star had an op-ed entitled “Sharon: Why does the world ignore me?” and at the top of the ‘memo’, they had the following boxed introduction:
"New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has recently popularized the idea of writing opinion pieces framed as "memos" from world leaders to various recipients, prompting various other writers to mimic the practice.
For the byline, at the bottom, the Star wrote in italics: Arjan El Fassed wrote this commentary for MediaMonitors, a website dedicated to providing a platform for all political opinions (NB. The Daily Star’s archive is currently not working).
The Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen published a commentary in which it quoted The Jerusalem Times which published the ‘mock memo’ on April 6, 2001, again without source, byline, or author, in its publication.
On April 24, 2001, someone wrote to Akiva Eldar the following:
——- Original Message ——-
From: ******* <********@yahoo.com>
To: eldar@haaretz.co.il
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 7:26 PM
Subject: Strong quote from Mandela
For the record, I have received the original messages containing each of Arjan El Fassed’s “memos,” sent directly from him (via an e-group). Mr. El Fassed’s byline is clearly present on each article, the articles come from his own e-mail address, and the more recent ones contain an explicit warning against forwarding the article without the byline. There is no possible basis for arguing that Mr. El Fassed intends for people to believe the memos were written by anyone other than himself.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would accuse Tom Friedman of impersonating a world leader if one of his “memos” was forwarded, sans byline, and then re-printed in another newspaper (though the newspaper re-printing the story would be a legitimate target for criticism).
To claim that Mr. El Fassed “tends to sign various missives he sends out to the world signed with the names of famous people” is, if not an intentional lie, than an inadvertent gross misstatement of fact. Whether you like Mr. El Fassed’s writing or not, you have a responsibility to correct what you wrote.
The next day, Akiva Eldar, replied:
—- haaretz eldar@haaretz.co.il wrote:
From: “haaretz”
To: “*******” <*******@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Strong quote from Mandela
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:15:42 +0200
Mr El Fassed has give me a full account of his position and it will be reported in my next column.
However, instead of being reported in his next column, Ha’aretz published my own response instead.
Worse, however, Toronto Star columnist, Michele Landsberg wrote on May 20, 2001, Forged letter slights dignity of Nelson Mandela, in which she claimed that she checked with Mandela’s office in South Africa and that she heard from his assistant:
"You enquired about the infamous article that has been doing the rounds across the globe. We’ve received numerous enquiries… . Mr. Mandela did not write the article/letter, and this matter has been referred to his lawyers for further action."
Nigel Parry responded to that column by writing a letter to the Toronto Star editor:
"Regarding Michele Landsberg’s column, "Forged letter slights dignity of Nelson Mandela", there was no "rat". Someone obviously forwarded her the memo without its byline and she failed to seek out its source.
The memo was a clearly signed spoof that was first published on the Media Monitors Network.
Landsberg’s assertion that the letter was a “forgery” is as baseless as her claim that the political philosophy of Zionism — which directly resulted in the establishment of an Israeli state on the ruins of 415 Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed of nearly one million Arabs, with a legal system that still discriminates between “Jewish” and “Non Jewish” citizens in areas such as property ownership — is somehow not racist.
The Toronto Star chose not to publish his letter.
On May 26, 2001, the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar published a clarification in Arabic which is similar to my own response in Ha’aretz.
Even now, some emails are still circulating with the ‘mock memo’. For example, the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace circulated the ‘mock memo’ and sent a message to their own list on 14 February 2002, saying that
"We sent you a letter, which was supposedly written by Nelson Mandela and addressed to Thomas Friedman. As we received it by email from a friend who was excited about a good answer to Friedman’s latest article in the New York Times, we misread the address, and thought it was in fact written in the New York Times. Thanks to the queries of some of you, we went to the source, and now we know for certain that Mandela did not write the article. It is still a good response, but we have no clue so far as to the author."
What other readers said
In a message posted on April 13, 2002 on a listserver called Ecunews, Rick Mitchell wrote that the ‘mock memo’:
"reinforces [my] claim that Israel is maintaining a system of Apartheid by keeping Palestinians in captivity (the current occupation dates back to June, 1967) and subject to second-class status. One need not agree with all of his statements, but it is illuminating to recognize that we see and hear very little of this argument in the U.S., as the policy of our government and of the mainstream media has been consistently pro-Israeli. Politics is, of course, politics, but the important point to consider is El Fassed’s (and others’) contention that Zionism is inherently racist and un-democratic, resulting quite logically in an apartheid system of discrimination. It is also the policy of the U.S. government."
What’s interesting is that some even argued, “but there is also a sense in which the ‘true’ or original author does not matter — and that sense is related to the question, ‘Is it true?’”
Others wrote on various lists, “If this is authentic, it is truly a moral bombshell in the present level of discussion…” and “[It may have been written] as a statement about what perhaps Nelson Mandela would say to someone such as journalist Thomas Friedman.”
"For those of you who are concerned about the authenticity of the Mandela memo, I have researched the matter with the help of others. Apparently Thomas Friedman often writes as though he were someone else and this piece is written with this understanding. I do not question the content because from my own personal experience, I can attest to an apartheid situation."
Someone else posted this question:
"How could I find an email for Nelson Mandela to alert him to the efforts of us in the Jewish world who oppose Israel’s current treatment of Palestinians - and to discuss with him strategies for having an impact?"
"My husband (among other people) forwarded the ‘Nelson Mandela memo’ to me. I checked up on it through my sources in Palestine and found that it was not written by Nelson Mandela but by someone else using the style of Friedman’s articles. The name of the person is in some email in my file but the name doesn’t really matter. Someone was trying to do good but left the rest of us with egg on our faces. You may want to pass this information on to those from whom you got it and to those to whom you sent it."
Another reader made this observation, “The existential reality of injustice witnessed first-hand…is a far more powerful teaching tool than injustice heard or read about.”
What Nelson Mandela indeed has said
"It is completely wrong that the United States must be the mediator in this conflict. Everybody knows the United States is a friend of Israel."
"As far as we are concerned what is being done to the Palestinians is a matter of grave concern. We are the friends of Yasser Arafat. We are the friends of the Palestinians. We support their struggle" (Reuters, 1 June 2001, Mandela, speaking at a news conference after talks with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin).
"Israel should withdraw from the areas which it won from the Arabs — the Golan Heights, south Lebanon and the West Bank — that is the price of peace" (Dispatch, 20 October 1999)
"Our men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence" (Associated Press , 20 October 1999)
"The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots" (Associated Press , 20 October 1999)
"The long-standing fraternal bonds between our two liberation movements are now translating into the relations between two governments" (Associated Press, 20 October 1999)
Address by President Nelson Mandela at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Pretoria, 4 December 1997
On March 27, 2001, Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the style of a ‘mock memo’ entitled Bush’s First Memo. In this ‘mock memo’ Thomas Friedman writes in the name of U.S. President George W. Bush a memo to Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.
This ‘mock memo’ — Thomas Friedman had published a number of them in the New York Times, for example, a ‘mock memo’ he wished Secretary of State Colin Powell would have sent to President George W. Bush was published on February 20, 2001 — triggered me to write to the New York Times’ Readers Opinions in the the ‘mock memo’ style that Friedman himself liked to use and offered Nelson Mandela responding to Friedman’s Bush’s First Memo to Arafat.
Since Thomas Friedman tells his readers that Palestinians should forget about 1948 and forget about returning to their homes, I wanted to show that current policies against Palestinians resemble an apartheid-like situation. Since Nelson Mandela has become the personification of the struggle against apartheid, I thought a ‘mock memo’ including Mandela was the logical thing to do. I could also have taken Steven Biko who has said that “the most potential weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” or Oliver Tambo or others anti-apartheid activists.
The confusion
On 27 March 2001, after reading Friedman’s ‘mock memo’ I wrote a letter entitled Mandela’s first memo to Thomas Friedman to the op-ed editor of The New York Times and I posted the memo on the Thomas Friedman Discussion Board of the New York Times, hoping that Thomas Friedman would read it and that the New York Times would publish it. However, after two days, I came to the conclusion that the New York Times would not dare publishing this piece and I sent it on March 30, 2001 to Media Monitors, “a Platform for Serious Media Contributors”, an online daily.
Soon, however, I found the ‘mock memo’ I wrote and which clearly indicated that I wrote it, on various listservers and websites but without the byline mentioning that it was in fact written by me.
The main purpose of the Mandela-memo was to respond in a satirical way to Thomas Friedman using the exact same style and even phrases he uses in his columns. Obviously, the ‘mock memo’ had been forwarded to several e-mail lists containing the memo, which originally included the title “Mandela’s First Memo to Thomas Friedman” and a byline “by Arjan El Fassed”, but eventually was forwarded without my name and sometimes without title.
I posted the ‘mock memo’ myself on 30 March on an mailinglist of Al-Awda. Despite this, I’ve seen it several times being posted on the same list, something that gives you an idea of the lack of attention many people give to material they forward. In various posts I read, the subject title was changed for example, “Mandela supports…”, “must read”, etc. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. If Nelson Mandela would seriously have written to the New York Times, wouldn’t the New York Times just publish it? Moreover, I believe Nelson Mandela has better things to do then responding to columns written by Thomas Friedman.
How things got worse
On April 24, 2001, Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist and editorial writer for the Israeli national daily Ha’aretz wrote in his Strong Quote from Mandela that the Palestinian daily Al Quds published a letter that Nelson Mandela sent to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in response to a March 27 Frideman column, dubbed “Memo to President Bush.”
Immediately, I wrote a letter to Ha’aretz explaining what happened. Most probably, someone translated the memo (without byline) into Arabic and which was taken up by the Palestinian daily and printed on April 16, 2001, however, without verifying the source. The editor of Al Quds, Marwan Abu Zalaf, said that he had no idea it was a fake, and that one of his reporters found it on the Internet.
On Friday, April 18, the Lebanese daily As-Safir re-published the ‘mock memo’ in Arabic based on the article as printed by the Palestinian daily Al-Quds. On Monday, April 21, The Daily Star had an op-ed entitled “Sharon: Why does the world ignore me?” and at the top of the ‘memo’, they had the following boxed introduction:
"New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has recently popularized the idea of writing opinion pieces framed as "memos" from world leaders to various recipients, prompting various other writers to mimic the practice.
For the byline, at the bottom, the Star wrote in italics: Arjan El Fassed wrote this commentary for MediaMonitors, a website dedicated to providing a platform for all political opinions (NB. The Daily Star’s archive is currently not working).
The Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen published a commentary in which it quoted The Jerusalem Times which published the ‘mock memo’ on April 6, 2001, again without source, byline, or author, in its publication.
On April 24, 2001, someone wrote to Akiva Eldar the following:
——- Original Message ——-
From: ******* <********@yahoo.com>
To: eldar@haaretz.co.il
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 7:26 PM
Subject: Strong quote from Mandela
For the record, I have received the original messages containing each of Arjan El Fassed’s “memos,” sent directly from him (via an e-group). Mr. El Fassed’s byline is clearly present on each article, the articles come from his own e-mail address, and the more recent ones contain an explicit warning against forwarding the article without the byline. There is no possible basis for arguing that Mr. El Fassed intends for people to believe the memos were written by anyone other than himself.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would accuse Tom Friedman of impersonating a world leader if one of his “memos” was forwarded, sans byline, and then re-printed in another newspaper (though the newspaper re-printing the story would be a legitimate target for criticism).
To claim that Mr. El Fassed “tends to sign various missives he sends out to the world signed with the names of famous people” is, if not an intentional lie, than an inadvertent gross misstatement of fact. Whether you like Mr. El Fassed’s writing or not, you have a responsibility to correct what you wrote.
The next day, Akiva Eldar, replied:
—- haaretz eldar@haaretz.co.il wrote:
From: “haaretz”
To: “*******” <*******@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Strong quote from Mandela
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 09:15:42 +0200
Mr El Fassed has give me a full account of his position and it will be reported in my next column.
However, instead of being reported in his next column, Ha’aretz published my own response instead.
Worse, however, Toronto Star columnist, Michele Landsberg wrote on May 20, 2001, Forged letter slights dignity of Nelson Mandela, in which she claimed that she checked with Mandela’s office in South Africa and that she heard from his assistant:
"You enquired about the infamous article that has been doing the rounds across the globe. We’ve received numerous enquiries… . Mr. Mandela did not write the article/letter, and this matter has been referred to his lawyers for further action."
Nigel Parry responded to that column by writing a letter to the Toronto Star editor:
"Regarding Michele Landsberg’s column, "Forged letter slights dignity of Nelson Mandela", there was no "rat". Someone obviously forwarded her the memo without its byline and she failed to seek out its source.
The memo was a clearly signed spoof that was first published on the Media Monitors Network.
Landsberg’s assertion that the letter was a “forgery” is as baseless as her claim that the political philosophy of Zionism — which directly resulted in the establishment of an Israeli state on the ruins of 415 Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed of nearly one million Arabs, with a legal system that still discriminates between “Jewish” and “Non Jewish” citizens in areas such as property ownership — is somehow not racist.
The Toronto Star chose not to publish his letter.
On May 26, 2001, the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar published a clarification in Arabic which is similar to my own response in Ha’aretz.
Even now, some emails are still circulating with the ‘mock memo’. For example, the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace circulated the ‘mock memo’ and sent a message to their own list on 14 February 2002, saying that
"We sent you a letter, which was supposedly written by Nelson Mandela and addressed to Thomas Friedman. As we received it by email from a friend who was excited about a good answer to Friedman’s latest article in the New York Times, we misread the address, and thought it was in fact written in the New York Times. Thanks to the queries of some of you, we went to the source, and now we know for certain that Mandela did not write the article. It is still a good response, but we have no clue so far as to the author."
What other readers said
In a message posted on April 13, 2002 on a listserver called Ecunews, Rick Mitchell wrote that the ‘mock memo’:
"reinforces [my] claim that Israel is maintaining a system of Apartheid by keeping Palestinians in captivity (the current occupation dates back to June, 1967) and subject to second-class status. One need not agree with all of his statements, but it is illuminating to recognize that we see and hear very little of this argument in the U.S., as the policy of our government and of the mainstream media has been consistently pro-Israeli. Politics is, of course, politics, but the important point to consider is El Fassed’s (and others’) contention that Zionism is inherently racist and un-democratic, resulting quite logically in an apartheid system of discrimination. It is also the policy of the U.S. government."
What’s interesting is that some even argued, “but there is also a sense in which the ‘true’ or original author does not matter — and that sense is related to the question, ‘Is it true?’”
Others wrote on various lists, “If this is authentic, it is truly a moral bombshell in the present level of discussion…” and “[It may have been written] as a statement about what perhaps Nelson Mandela would say to someone such as journalist Thomas Friedman.”
"For those of you who are concerned about the authenticity of the Mandela memo, I have researched the matter with the help of others. Apparently Thomas Friedman often writes as though he were someone else and this piece is written with this understanding. I do not question the content because from my own personal experience, I can attest to an apartheid situation."
Someone else posted this question:
"How could I find an email for Nelson Mandela to alert him to the efforts of us in the Jewish world who oppose Israel’s current treatment of Palestinians - and to discuss with him strategies for having an impact?"
"My husband (among other people) forwarded the ‘Nelson Mandela memo’ to me. I checked up on it through my sources in Palestine and found that it was not written by Nelson Mandela but by someone else using the style of Friedman’s articles. The name of the person is in some email in my file but the name doesn’t really matter. Someone was trying to do good but left the rest of us with egg on our faces. You may want to pass this information on to those from whom you got it and to those to whom you sent it."
Another reader made this observation, “The existential reality of injustice witnessed first-hand…is a far more powerful teaching tool than injustice heard or read about.”
What Nelson Mandela indeed has said
"It is completely wrong that the United States must be the mediator in this conflict. Everybody knows the United States is a friend of Israel."
"As far as we are concerned what is being done to the Palestinians is a matter of grave concern. We are the friends of Yasser Arafat. We are the friends of the Palestinians. We support their struggle" (Reuters, 1 June 2001, Mandela, speaking at a news conference after talks with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin).
"Israel should withdraw from the areas which it won from the Arabs — the Golan Heights, south Lebanon and the West Bank — that is the price of peace" (Dispatch, 20 October 1999)
"Our men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence" (Associated Press , 20 October 1999)
"The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots" (Associated Press , 20 October 1999)
"The long-standing fraternal bonds between our two liberation movements are now translating into the relations between two governments" (Associated Press, 20 October 1999)
| 6 things about Mandela the mainstream media whitewashes!
Six Things Nelson Mandela Believed That Most People Won’t Talk About ~ AVIVA SHEN and JUDD LEGUM, ThinkProgress.
In the desire to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life — an iconic figure who triumphed over South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime — it’s tempting to homogenize his views into something everyone can support. This is not, however, an accurate representation of the man.Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator put itshortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”
As the world remembers Mandela, here are some of the things he believed that many will gloss over.
1. Mandela blasted the Iraq War and American imperialism. Mandela called Bush “a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly,” and accused him of “wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” by going to war in Iraq. “All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil,” he said. Mandela even speculated that then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan was being undermined in the process because he was black. “They never did that when secretary-generals were white,” he said. He saw the Iraq War as a greater problem of American imperialism around the world. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care,” he said.
2. Mandela called freedom from poverty a “fundamental human right.” Mandela considered poverty one of the greatest evils in the world, and spoke out against inequality everywhere. “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils,” he said. He considered ending poverty a basic human duty: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life,” he said. “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
3. Mandela criticized the “War on Terror” and the labeling of individuals as terrorists without due process. On the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008 himself, Mandela was an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s war on terror. He warned against rushing to label terrorists without due process. While forcefully calling for Osama bin Laden to be brought to justice, Mandela remarked, “The labeling of Osama bin Laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before he had been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenets of the rule of law.”
4. Mandela called out racism in America. On a trip to New York City in 1990, Mandela made a point of visiting Harlem and praising African Americans’ struggles against “the injustices of racist discrimination and economic equality.” He reminded a larger crowd at Yankee Stadium that racism was not exclusively a South African phenomenon. “As we enter the last decade of the 20th century, it is intolerable, unacceptable, that the cancer of racism is still eating away at the fabric of societies in different parts of our planet,” he said. “All of us, black and white, should spare no effort in our struggle against all forms and manifestations of racism, wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.”
5. Mandela embraced some of America’s biggest political enemies. Mandela incited shock and anger in many American communities for refusing to denounce Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had lent their support to Mandela against South African apartheid. “One of the mistakes the Western world makes is to think that their enemies should be our enemies,” he explained to an American TV audience. “We have our own struggle.” He added that those leaders “are placing resources at our disposal to win the struggle.” He also called the controversial Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat “a comrade in arms.”
6. Mandela was a die-hard supporter of labor unions. Mandela visited the Detroit auto workers union when touring the U.S., immediately claiming kinship with them. “Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, the man who is speaking is not a stranger here,” he said. “The man who is speaking is a member of the UAW. I am your flesh and blood.”
CREDIT: AP
| Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel!
Dear revisionists, Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view. Right now, you are anxiously pacing the corridors of your condos and country estates, looking for the right words, the right tributes, the right-wing tributes. You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. “Let’s get together, and feel alright.” Yes, you will do that.
You will make out that apartheid was just some sort of evil
mystical space disease that suddenly fell from the heavens and settled
on all of us, had us all, black or white, in its thrall, until Mandela appeared from the ether to redeem us. You will try to make Mandela a Magic Negro
and you will fail. You will say that Mandela stood above all for
forgiveness whilst scuttling swiftly over the details of the perversity
that he had the grace to forgive.
You will try to make out that apartheid was some horrid spontaneous
historical aberration, and not the logical culmination of centuries of
imperial arrogance. Yes, you will try that too. You will imply or
audaciously state that its evils ended the day Mandela stepped out of
jail. You will fold your hands and say the blacks have no-one to blame
now but themselves.
Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was
about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was
even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the
current economic inequality in South Africa
he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And
perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent
almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter
millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or
aren’t nearly enough people like him.
Because that’s South Africa now, a country long ago plunged
headfirst so deep into the sewage of racial hatred that, for all
Mandela’s efforts, it is still retching by the side of the swamp. Just
imagine if Cape Town were London.
Imagine seeing two million white people living in shacks and mud huts
along the M25 as you make your way into the city, where most of the
biggest houses and biggest jobs are occupied by a small, affluent to
wealthy group of black people. There are no words for the resentment
that would still simmer there.
Nelson Mandela
was not a god, floating elegantly above us and saving us. He was
utterly, thoroughly human, and he did all he did in spite of people like
you. There is no need to name you because you know who you are, we know
who you are, and you know we know that too. You didn’t break him in
life, and you won’t shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are,
and you will fail.
Musa
Okwonga is a poet, author, sportswriter, broadcaster, musician,
communications adviser and commentator on current affairs, including
culture, politics, sport, race and sexuality. A scholarship student at Eton College, Musa studied law at Oxford University and then trained as a solicitor in the City before leaving the legal profession to pursue a career as a poet.
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Related articles
- People will try to reduce Mandela to a lilting reggae tune about ‘love’. They will fail (independent.co.uk)
- Mandela Will Never, Ever be Your Minstrel. (counterinformation.wordpress.com)
- Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel (newstatesman.com)
- Mandela Will Never, Ever Be Your Minstrel (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
- Quotes From South African Sermons Honoring Mandela (abcnews.go.com)
- Pope Francis tribute to Nelson Mandela (sandystrachan.wordpress.com)
- Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. by Musa Okwonga (chatpdx.org)
- Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. (acidxfactory.wordpress.com)
- Honoring Mandela: Dont Let Politicians White-wash Him, Remeber When the Usa Considered Him to Be a Terrorist. (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
NOT ENTIRELY TRUE!
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Mandela was 100% man he didn't allow other people to tell him what to
do, and he didn't allow people to pick his friends. America's enemies
were Mandela's friends. The U.S. Government does not like Fidel Castro of Cuba, Nelson Mandela said that Castro was his hero and a great inspiration to him. Mandela said that he was inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Castro and Mandela became very close friends.          Video
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The U.S. Government does not not like Minister Farrakhan of the
Nation of Islam, because he speaks out strongly against their evil.
Nelson Mandela invited Minister Farrakhan to his home where they met and
developed a friendship. Mandela said that they had a lot in common.  Video
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The U.S. Government didn't like Yasser Arafat, Arafat and Mandela were very close friends.       
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The U.S. Government hated Libya's president Muammar Gaddafi. Nelson Mandela was very close friends with Gaddafi. One of Mandela's grandsons is named Gaddafi. When Mandela ran for president of South Africa, Gaddafi financed his campaign.       
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| Minister Of Information | Yesterday, 11:11 PM Post #5 | ||||||
 Mandela, America, Israel and systems of oppressionBy Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Dec 10, 2013 - 10:02:37 AMPrinter Friendly Page
WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - In the 23 years since Nelson Mandela walked from his notorious Robben Island prison cell, leaving behind the rotting corpse of South Africa’s system of racial and economic oppression known as apartheid, a new generation has grown into adulthood there, literally unaware of the cruel exploitation and indignities the tiny White minority population inflicted on the masses of that country’s people.
President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama will lead a delegation of U.S. officials including former president and Mrs. George W. Bush, as well as dozens of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives who are preparing to attend the funeral of the man whose name was once a prominent fixture on the State Department’s “Terrorist Watch List,” when this country’s policies supported the apartheid regime and were squarely on the wrong side of the moral arc of the universe. But history and Mr. Mandela’s unconquerable spirit of freedom, justice and equality eventually vindicated him, rendering the legacy of his Afrikaner tormentors and their allies in the dust-bin of history. Mr. Mandela rose from a member of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth Leagues in the 1940s to face a life in prison sentence in 1962 for his role in the struggle for his people; he then emerged from prison to lead the entire nation in 1994.
“And of course they were interested in the super-exploitation of South African labor, as well as the exploitation of South African minerals. In order to do this, they developed a very rational system of exploitation and oppression which was codified as apartheid after 1948 when the Afrikaner Nationalist Party took power. “You had a system of contract labor, of mineral exploitation, and of course all of these racist colonial regimes were closely allied with each other—Portugal, the British, the Rhodesians, and of course inside South Africa after 1910 you had the Union of South Africa which was really an unholy alliance between the British and the Boer settlers. All of these economic interests, all of these colonial powers were supported by the United States,” said Mr. Azikiwe. “When we hear today, all of these accolades about Nelson Mandela, they don’t mention that it was the American CIA which was instrumental in his capture in 1962 and they had never recognized the ANC all the way up, really until 1990 after the release of Mandela when it became obvious that they had to normalize relations.”
At Mr. Mandela’s hideout in Soweto before the government put him on trial for his life, “Right before he was captured, this White couple took him in hiding. They were pretending to be gardeners, working and the whole bit,” said Mr. Curry. But they were really working with the CIA and British intelligence, “spying on him and writing regular reports to the South African government (on) his movements. So, our hands are dirty, from top to bottom, and this government was forced to change. “This country was very consistent,” Mr. Curry continued. “They supported minority rule in South Africa. Ronald Reagan wouldn’t sign a sanctions bill. Dick Cheney voted (in Congress) against it.” But U.S. sanctions were eventually approved “over Ronald Reagan’s veto. This is what we said you can’t minimize: the credit the African American community deserves—when you think about Randall Robinson, and Mary Frances Berry, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, being out there in front of the embassy every day. We brought about change, disinvestment, the whole community, we had student involvement. The United States didn’t suddenly just change (its South Africa policy). They were forced to change. That came from our community,” Mr. Curry said. “I like to focus on the system of oppression,” former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) said on The Final Call radio panel. “Then, the foreign policy of the United States supported a White supremacist international structure. And today, the foreign policy of the United States still supports that structure. “That structure is in trouble because of certain events that will turn that structure on its head, but it’s because of countries like China, and India, Brazil asserting themselves, and the economic progression that is bound to take place inside those countries due to the population shifts, and of course the alignment of Africa with those countries, as opposed to the alignment of Africa with the European countries. “So the system is still in place, and the face change has not resulted in system change, and that includes inside South Africa as well. What we have had though, inside South Africa, is the creation of a Black political class that has access to the economic rewards of that system that’s still in place that hasn’t filtered down to the masses of Black people in South Africa, and for that matter, that’s a global structure that denies access to resources to all people of color, because that structure, that system was not created by us. It was created by those who colonized and continue to oppress us,” said Ms. McKinney.
Israel’s President Shimon Peres denied the report, which claims there was an alleged nuclear pact between Israel and apartheid South Africa, according to the BBC. Later, as the apartheid regime was brought to its knees the forces supporting White minority control continued to attempt to extract political concessions from Mr. Mandela. They failed. “When Ted Koppel asked (Mr.) Mandela a question, he took a principled position,” A. Akbar Muhammad, international representative of the Nation of Islam, said on the radio panel. “You have to respect that. They named (Yasser) Arafat, Muammar Gadhafi, and Fidel Castro, and (Mr. Mandela) said that ‘your enemies are not necessarily my enemies.’ That was a great statement. They wanted him to denounce … they were opening a way now for South Africa to emerge, and they wanted him to denounce his relationship with those individuals.” But Mr. Mandela would not back down from his principles, Mr. Muhammad pointed out, particularly when the attack was centered on the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. “I’m going to call them ‘the lobby group’ around Mandela who said he should not meet with Min. Farrakhan,” Mr. Muhammad said. “They were working on that for about a week straight. And when he opened the way to meet us, in his home, and have open discussions with the press all over the place, I think it was a principled position and I greatly respect him for him to maneuver through that maze of White South Africans.” But, he added, after the meeting Mr. Mandela told the assembled media that there was nothing that he and Min. Farrakhan did not agree on. “The amazing thing about him, you see courage in him you do not see in a lot of leaders today. He would stand up. He would be consistent. He would not disavow his friends or people who had like interests. There was an enormous amount of pressure, not only for the Minister, particularly for Castro, and he did not, and he could have. It just makes the man that much greater to me,” said Mr. Curry. “So this historical period is very significant,” added Dr. Leonard Jeffries, chair of the Department of African Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY). “He has to be acknowledged as one of the great leaders, and he will be. But my great fear is that we will have what I call a ‘paralysis of analysis’ focusing on the greatness of an individual, and we will miss the important point, which is we have to have a systems analysis. “So after the praises and the ceremonies and the songs, we have to look hard at the question of the oppression of Black people in South Africa and other places, and that the system has to be looked at. That was one of the great weaknesses in the great work of our brother. People were calling him a philosopher-king. People are acknowledging him as the greatest of the leaders—not just Black leaders, but all leaders—but I think we’re going to miss the point that the system of domination, destruction and death, the system that has until this day kept Black people at the bottom of the ladder, the system that has gotten wealthy off of our oppression, is still in place and there’s no serious look at it. “So I hope that we praise him, because he stands, as someone said, to show the indestructibility of the human spirit, but we have to look at the system’s destructiveness. Black people have the best case for reparations in the history of the world for me, in South Africa, but that is something Nelson Mandela did not want to raise, because it would rupture relationships. “So we have a political agreement, access to the vote, but someone said, ‘not access to the purse.’ So this economic justice has to be raised. “My hope is that we do not take the brother’s greatness—which represents the greatness of our people to survive and to thrive past the system of dehumanization,” Dr. Jeffries continued. “So we praise Nelson because that is the praise due our great-grandfathers and grandmothers who have struggled out of the system of domination, destruction and death. But as we prepare for the future, if we can’t look at them in a hard way and see, agreements have been made to co-opt our leadership into the system, and then by co-opting them, they’re neutralized and they can’t continue to fight for economic justice. “We don’t have a real understanding of the three dimensions (of governance: economics, politics and culture) working together on our behalf, they work against us because the culture of white supremacy co-opts our people,” said Dr. Jeffries. “They get a comfortable leadership position, and they cannot make the continuous moves to share the wealth for what we’re talking about in terms of economic justice.” Mr. Mandela appeared to understand, and to resist that challenge to sell out. Shortly after he was elected, Mr. Mandela greeted a delegation of 200 from the United States, including former Federal Reserve Board member Dr. Andrew Brimmer. The group was enroute to Harare, Zimbabwe, led by the Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan to participate in his 1995 African-African American Summit. It wasn’t until after he was in office, that he was offered inducements “that he had never even dreamed of,” if he would only compromise his principles, President Mandela said speaking to the group in Johannesburg, pointing out that he had resisted the temptation. “So, economics and politics are the foundation of any system,” said Dr. Jeffries. “But culture is key, because culture tells you what type of economics to have, and who to do your politics with. So, I’m hopeful that some of us will be able to wake people up enough to say, ‘praise him,’ but let’s raise some serious questions. “You can’t create a system like America where you have the Wal-Mart family having as much wealth as 40 percent of the population on the globe. It’s unbelievable. “We need an analysis of the real deal, and then we can operate on that.” “It’s almost as if you win the war on the battlefront and lose it politically,” said Ms. McKinney. “So, no, I do not think that the people of South Africa—the masses, the majority of the people of South Africa—are going to settle for face change as opposed to regime change. “You have this bubbling undercurrent for land reform. And it is inevitability. It has to happen in order for, I believe, that country to continue, there are going to have to be some major economic shifts that take place that are systemic in nature,” she continued. “So as we put together these new nations that came out of these struggles in Africa and the Caribbean and other places, we’re still at the level of survival. We’re not even thinking how can we control the levers of economics, politics and culture so that the masses of people have a greater chance to be a part of the growth and development,” Dr. Jeffries added. “The dynamics of South Africa are still there. The potential of destructive behavior is still there. But people have to sit down and work out a system that is fair. The tragedy is that the wealthiest people don’t want that to occur and they are able to co-opt our leadership. “All over our experience, we win the battle and the struggle, whether it’s Civil Rights or independence rights, and then we go to the conference table and we negotiate away the victory. These are the things that have been happening since the Haitian revolution, where we win the great battle and there’s a victorious struggle, but then we go to the conference table and we lose. We lose. “We need to look at this global thing. We, certainly, who have a chance to sit back and do it, are obligated to celebrate, but we have to be re-dedicated to struggle and to fairness and justice,” he said. The struggle to which President Mandela remained loyal throughout his entire life.  |
The U.S. Government disliked the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.
Nelson Mandela was friends with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran was one of
the first countries that Mandela visited after he became the president
of South Africa. 
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CAUTION: I do not share all the views and propaganda found in this article! (BAFS)
Monday, 9 December 2013
Nelson Mandela and the Rainbow Nation
On 3 April 2000, Iain Kay was ambushed on his Zimbabwe farm by a large group of war veterans and squatters. They chased him into a school where he locked himself into a classroom. However, they broke down the door and attacked him savagely. His hands were tied with barbed wire and he was dragged away into the bush where he would have been killed but for the timely arrival of his son.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the war veterans in Zimbabwe says:
"The white farmers have two options: to hand over the land and leave or to stay and see what land we leave them. The whites are foreigners, they are British! They should go back to Britain. We don't need them here. They can all go."I see Mr. Hunvi's point. I'll tell you what, Hunvi, old sport, you can have all the hundreds of thousands of black Rhodesians in Britain, who came over here to get away from people like you, and we'll have your white farmers, fair enough?
Didn't think so.
On 15 April 2000, David Stevens a white Zimbabwean farmer, was taken from his property 75 miles east of the capital, Harare, and shot dead by squatters.
He was the first white farmer to be killed in the land confrontations inspired by President Robert Mugabe. Five other farmers who tried to help were also taken away, though they were later released after having been badly beaten up. One of them, John Osborne, witnessed David Steven's murder. He said:
"It was unreal. These guys are not playing, they are deadly serious and out of control."Approximately 1,000 farms were occupied involving 'war veterans' at this time and 100 or so white families fled their farms after this incident.
In March 2002, Terry Ford, was found dead, 40 kilometres west of Harare.
Terry, who had been shot, was the tenth white farmer to be killed since land seizures began.
We also know that white farmers have been killed and that the encouragement to kill came from him.
Compare him, however, with the sainted Nelson Mandela. Mandela has been eulogised at an almighty level by the media darlings and the political classes in this country.
More than one serving MP has said that they believe Mandela is the greatest living human being and the 'the greatest statesman of the twentieth century.'
"Nelson Mandela's statue should be placed on Trafalgar Square as a symbol of our respect for this great leader... There is clear support for the statue across the world, recognising Mandela's significance in world history... It is wholly appropriate that the statue of Nelson Mandela be placed in a prominent position in Trafalgar Square. By granting planning permission, Westminster Council will join the rest of us in honouring one of the greatest statesmen of our time."It's not too surprising that Red Ken would seek to honour Mandela in this way, he is a fellow communist after all. It isn't just London's Mayor who wants his statue erected in Trafalgar Square, however. Many MPs have signed Early Day Motions calling for the once empty plinth to be adorned with a likeness of the old chap.
And yet, in the 1960s, the former 'freedom fighter'
ordered bombs to be planted which killed innocent men, women and
children and, since he became the President of South Africa, 3,158 white
farmers and/or members of their family had been slaughtered by Blacks
up to 13 December 2011.That's 3,158 against Mugabe's 10.
Oh, and Johannesburg has earned itself the soubriquet 'the murder and rape capital of the world,' although I think more now get raped in The Democratic Republic of Congo, and about 1-in-5 of all black, South African adults have AIDS. Indeed, Mandela's own son died of it.
None of the happy, clappy 'let's erect a statue of St. Nelson' wagtails, ever told you any of this, did they?
Why didn't St. Nelson do something about all of the awfulness occurring on his watch?
Why, when we saw him on television, was he always wreathed in smiles, as though he didn't have a care in the world? Why didn't this 'honest' Commie tell us what was really happening in his country?
More to the point, why did our own politicians keep all of this hidden? Why is this bloke beyond criticism when, under him, South Africa degenerated so quickly into brutality and genocide?
Here are a few of the things Mandela has said along the way:
"At the beginning of June 1961... I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence... THE DECISION WAS MADE TO EMBARK ON VIOLENT FORMS OF POLITICAL STRUGGLE."
"I started to make a study of THE ART OF WAR AND REVOLUTION... I acknowledge that I made these studies to equip myself for the role which I might have to play if the struggle drifted into guerrilla warfare."
"The soil of our country, South Africa, is destined to be the scene of the fiercest fight and the sharpest struggles to rid our continent of the last vestiges of white minority rule."As of now, the minority rule of the ANC is entrenched and irreversible.
Let's take a look at what others have said:
In a 29 November 1993 speech at Kean College in Union, New Jersey, the black activist and Louis Farrakhan acolyte, Khalid Abdul Muhammed, told the student audience what he thought South African blacks should do to any white people who refuses to leave South Africa:
"WE KILL THE WOMEN. WE KILL THE BABIES. WE KILL THE BLIND. WE KILL THE CRIPPLES. WE KILL THEM ALL.... And when you get through killing them all, GO TO THE GODDAMN GRAVEYARD AND KILL THEM A-GODDAMN-GAIN BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T DIE HARD ENOUGH."On 13 January 1995, The Jewish Chronicle said:
"The African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa WAS GUIDED BY TWO COMMUNIST JEWS, Albie Sachs, 'one of its foremost intellectuals'and Yossel Mashel Slovo (Joe Slovo.)
Slovo was born in a shtetl in Lithuania and grew up speaking Yiddish and studying the Talmud. HE JOINED THE ANC'S TERRORIST WING, THE UMKHONTO WE SIZWE, IN 1961 AND EVENTUALLY BECAME ITS COMMANDER. He was named Secretary General of the South African Communist Party in 1986.
When Nelson Mandela's ANC took over South Africa, Slovo was named Minister of Housing. Slovo, a Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian Jew, was Secretary General of the South African Communist Party AND DIRECTOR OF THE MILITARY WING OF THE ANC, WHICH PERPETRATED NUMEROUS TERROR BOMBINGS AGAINST WHITE CIVILIANS."
It is, perhaps, interesting to note that, though such Jews as Sachs and Slovo were in driving seat as the ANC progressed to power in South Africa, with the rise of black power and militancy, around 40,000 of the country's 130,000 Jews emigrated elsewhere.
On 10 November 1997, the ANC Councillor, Mzukizi Gaba, said:
"When Mandela dies we will kill you whites like flies."On 29 July 1999, upon the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Ordination of Women, the Reverend Barbara Harris said this at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia.
"South Africa is... one of the 'rape capitals' of the world, where A WOMAN IS RAPED EVERY 26 SECONDS... women in some parts of the country are still being accused of being witches and killed as a result of such accusations."On 17 September 1999, The Guardian reported thus:
"A black South African army officer was shot dead yesterday after he went on the rampage against white colleagues killing seven, including several officers. Five white soldiers were also wounded, two of them critically...What do you think this chap would have said if a white officer had murdered seven black people?
The army tried to play down the prospect of a racially-motivated murder within its ranks, but the killings will raise many uncomfortable questions about the 'integration' of the armed forces after the end of apartheid...
An army spokesman said: 'The people who were killed were white. The officer who shot them was black, but it's very dangerous to look at a matter of this nature along colour lines'."
On 30 October 1999. Ross Benson of The Daily Mail reported thus:
"The nation the Queen so warmly welcomed back into the Commonwealth, and will visit again in a few weeks' time, is now half a decade into majority rule. In that short period it has contrived to make itself the most dangerous place on earth.On 13 November 1999, The Daily Mail reported thus:
A woman is raped every 28 seconds, qualified doctors are leaving in droves, while beggars and goats have set up home in the marble foyers of derelict banks. South Africa today has become a nation on the edge of self-destruction.
Farmers are butchered in their fields. The parks and beaches have become killing fields. Car-jackings with mind-numbing violence are a daily occurrence. The murder rate is running at 27,000 a year. A white security man commented on the criminal mayhem:
'It's happening to your friends, your brother, his wife, your sister, your mother... it isn't something you read in the papers or hear about on the television news any more.' He carried a gun, but he wasn't fooling himself. He knew it could happen to him. In Mandela's 'Rainbow Nation' the rainbow is running blood red...
This was once the richest city in Africa, a gleaming steel-and-glass citadel rising out of the brown ocean of the Veld, a testament to the economic power of the white community that built it, but also an example of what can be achieved by hard work and individual enterprise. The skyscrapers are still there but the people who gave them life and prosperity have gone, driven out by hordes of squatters, beggars and illegal traders who bought Mandela's promise of a 'better life for all' and demanded instant delivery.
Barbecues made of old oil cans blaze in the marble foyers of what used to be the headquarters of banks and airlines. There are goats tethered in hallways. Corrugated iron huts have sprung up on the once-manicured lawns.
'This is not an environment in which any respectable business person, be they black or white, can live or work. and most have fled'...
The Holiday Inn is a deserted fortress, its 800 empty rooms protected by reinforced steel shutters. As dusk falls the streets start filling with prostitutes and criminals pushing drugs, and pills that turn a black skin white before eventually killing you...
The police keep promising to move in and clean the place up; they never do, and if they did it probably wouldn't make any difference: the Minister in charge of so-called security recently admitted to parliament that a policeman is three times more likely to commit a serious crime than an average member of the public. So much for the dream. This is the reality - and it is a shocking one, worse than I had anticipated. I have seen cities abandoned in war. This is the first city I have ever seen abandoned to the barbarians in time of peace.
The government has lost the battle of the streets but they have control of parliament, and they have used their power to pass legislation aimed specifically at one ethnic group."
"As the first man made way for the second, he spat out the hate-filled words Anne, an Afrikaner, will never forget: 'For years you Boers always took from us. Now we're taking from you.'
In fact, Anne Brown worked as a care assistant looking after mainly black children at a Johannesburg home for youngsters. But her work on behalf of such an underprivileged, have-not section of the population obviously cut no ice with her assailants. Her race was all that mattered as far as they were concerned...
The attackers remained in the family's home, a second-floor apartment, for almost two hours before brazenly carrying away everything they could find, from furniture right down to the boys' favourite Dinky toys, through the front door and into a waiting car.'
The attack had what Jones describes as 'its desired effect.' The Browns left the city, with its 'gratuitously violent gangs and simmering undercurrent of residual racial resentment.' But their move to a rural location did not help them escape their nightmares. Their having been, in effect, thus 'ethnically cleansed' from Johannesburg...
The youngest son, nine-year-old Justin, gave vent to what must have been suppressed rage of staggering ferocity and bitterness in one so young. In an attack on what was apparently the closest friend he had in his new home, a black boy of his own age, he tied the latter to a tree with his shoelaces, in the same way as he had been bound by his mother's rapists back in Johannesburg and using exactly the same type of knots. He then beat the boy to pulp with a length of plastic hose.
Questioned by his parents, Justin, whom Jones describes as a 'usually affable and impeccably mannered' little lad, replied, according to his mother, that black people had come into our home and done horrible things to us, so why shouldn't he do the same to them?'
In the new South Africa, where the very mention of the words colour and race is now deeply taboo, I will no doubt be pilloried for relating this story, just as my colleague Ross Benson was vilified by sections of the press here two weeks ago for his painfully accurate article about the demise of post-apartheid South Africa.
Instead of rounding on 'racist' outsiders and attempting to draw a veil over the underlying causes of the rape epidemic sweeping through this country with the speed and devastation of a veldt fire, the media and the ANC government would be better advised to address the facts...
Thousands of women are expected to sign up for the first rape insurance policy. For £1.10 a month, it entitles victims to free anti-AIDS drugs, the morning-after pill, trauma counselling, alternative therapies and a full range of medical tests...
In South Africa today, we are rarely just talking about 'straightforward' rape, if that is not too trite and unfeeling a phrase, but increasingly brutal and despicable rape. Rape by bottles and sticks and knives; rape by gangs who behave like packs of wild animals, biting and gouging their victims, with the intention of disfiguring them physically as well as mentally...
Among the many harrowing cases I uncovered here, one black woman had her lips scorched off with a red-hot iron after her attack; another (black) woman had been deeply bitten all over her face and body.
A young (white) bank clerk was pushed into a clay-filled building-site pit and raped just as she arrived for work in busy Central Johannesburg. Both her legs were broken, and afterwards her demented attacker abused her horribly with fistfuls of clay.
Noeleen Naude, a 23-year-old Afrikaner, was caddying for her boyfriend and his father on a suburban golf course one warm Sunday afternoon when two black men, one with a gun, sprang out from behind a small hillock halfway round the course. After robbing the golfing party of their clubs and jewellery, the men took Noeleen away and raped her in turn, telling her:
'We are black men and you are a white woman. We can do exactly as we want'...
Thanks to appallingly shoddy detective work by male-chauvinist, ill-trained, insensitive and under-manned police forces (some of whom have raped the victims they were interviewing)... there is a higher percentage of white women raped than their share of the population...
This might, or might not, explain why the Mbeki government no longer requires the race section of the crime report forms to be completed."
"In the four years between Nelson Mandela walking free from prison in 1990 and his installation as President in 1994 there was more violence, more carnage, more deaths than at any other time in South Africa's history, even under the most brutal years of apartheid."What this South African MP and all the rest of the Mandela botlicks have never bothered to point out is that, in the 'years between Nelson Mandela walking free from prison in 1990' and the present day, many more WHITE South Africans have lost their lives at the hands of the BLACK majority than at any other time in the 20th century.
"Marike de Klerk, the former first lady of South Africa, was stabbed and then strangled, police said yesterday, making her the most high-profile white victim of the country's tide of violent crime...
Security guards found the body of 63-year-old Mrs de Klerk, dressed in pyjamas, in a pool of blood in the hall. A broken knife blade was embedded in her back... Police found no evidence of forced entry; the sliding door on the verandah was found to have been left unlocked...
Her ex-husband, F W de Klerk, the former president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for dismantling apartheid, was last night flying back to South Africa via London after leaving a gathering of Nobel laureates in Sweden early... 'Marike's death has come as a great blow to our family,' he said last night...
Violent crime has surged since the end of apartheid. Last year 21,000 people were murdered in South Africa...
A spokesman for the ruling African National Congress, Smuts Ngonyama, said:
'We are shocked. Mrs De Klerk demonstrated her deep love for South Africa. As a former first lady, she was never hesitant to support the leadership of a democratically elected government under a black leader.'
The opposition leader, Tony Leon, said she had played, 'an important supportive role,' during the transition to democracy...
A Security guard was arrested yesterday in connection with the murder of Marike de Klerk, the former First Lady of South Africa who was strangled at her Cape Town home earlier this week. The suspect, in his 20s, who works for the firm that provides security at the Dolphin Beach apartment block where Mrs de Klerk lived, was arrested after police checked the log of telephone calls from her flat...
Mrs de Klerk had been stabbed in the back with a steak knife, which broke, leaving the blade embedded in her, and had been strangled with bare hands."
On 30 July 2002, the BBC informed us of the widespread practice of baby rape in the Rainbow Nation:"A baby girl just a week-old has been raped in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, police say… She is the youngest recorded victim of sexual abuse in a country where there is a widespread belief that sex with a virgin cures Aids…On 28 September 2002, The National Alliance broadcast a programme titled, The Killing Of Whites In South Africa and America's Silence.
South Africa has the highest number of Aids sufferers in the world. Traditional healers, or witchdoctors, are often blamed for spreading this idea, and encouraging child rape.
Last Friday, a 23-year-old man, David Potse, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of raping a nine-month-old baby...
‘I am speechless and horrified’, said Kelly Hatfield, who heads a group opposing violence against women in South Africa. ‘Rape is about power and control but how much more powerful can you be over something so little and vulnerable?’...
About 21,000 cases of child rape were reported to police in South Africa last year. Children under 11 are the victims in 15% of all rapes in South Africa, according to police statistics. Convictions are secured in just 9% of all rape cases."
This is it:
"The murder and eviction of whites in Zimbabwe has been commented on in the news but in Zimbabwe's southern neighbor, south Africa, whites are being slaughtered at an even higher rate. South Africa has three times the population of Zimbabwe, and 13 times the White population: almost 6 million Whites live there. As with Zimbabwe, the media silence about the murder of Whites there is almost total; and in South Africa's case, EVEN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS ARE LARGELY SILENT, PERHAPS BECAUSE THE BLACK TAKEOVER THERE WAS SO RECENT AND SO MANY 'LIBERALS' HAVE AN EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT IN THE ANC/COMMUNIST REGIME THEY HELPED TO POWER.In November 2002, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported thus:
In 1994, after decades of propaganda in the media and sentimental whimpering from the churches, South African Whites were finally persuaded to hand power over to Black
Communists, who installed an ANC government that, for some strange reason, failed to follow Marxist ideology when it came to expropriating the business interests of the Oppenheimer family, who dominate South Africa's economy. They did succeed, however, in making South Africa into a multiracial sewer with one of the highest violent crime, murder, rape, and AIDS infection rates in the world. The media made a saint of Nelson Mandela, a convicted terrorist... and when the Whites capitulated he was made President.
After the media's announcement that their long campaign of sanctions, boycotts, and intimidation had finally succeeded in bringing 'equality' and 'democracy' to what had previously been one of the few outposts of White civilization on the African continent, the media coverage of that country almost ceased, and ONE SELDOM HEARS ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA TODAY IN THE MASS MEDIA. The reason is that SOUTH AFRICA IS RAPIDLY DESCENDING INTO CRIME, DISEASE, FILTH, AND SAVAGERY...
South African farmers now suffer the highest murder rate in the world -- 274 per 100,000. In a study commissioned by a leading South African bank, Nedbank, it was revealed that the Black attackers are deliberately targeting specific homesteads to kill the Afrikaner victims: robbery was not the prime motivation, in fact in 85% of last year's farm attacks, nothing had been 'robbed.' In other words, KILLING THE WHITE MAN, RAPING AND KILLING THE WHITE WOMAN, RAPING AND KILLING THE WHITE CHILD ARE THE REAL MOTIVATIONS. AND YET THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE IN THE AMERICAN MEDIA...
Unlike Zimbabwe, the government in South Africa does not have an officially-announced policy of supporting these farm invasions and massacres. But they do have a policy of looking the other way and doing next to nothing about it, a policy which encourages Black violence against Whites.
Their attitude is perhaps best expressed by Peter Mokaba, until recently South Africa's Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, who whined recently that:
'The high crime rate is seriously affecting tourism and an alternative image of South Africa needed to be promoted. We want to encourage people to come here and see that crime does not dominate.'
Really? What Mr. Mokaba did not tell you was that he himself is famous for the slogans he invented and uttered again and again when he was a leader in the ANC/Communist war against the White government of South Africa:
'Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!' and 'One settler, one bullet.'
Kill the Boer, kill the farmer. And it is to such a government that White farmers must appeal for protection. Even that government admits that, under Black rule, crime and murder are out of control. The South African Police Service report entitled Attacks on Farms and Smallholdings 1/99 stated:
'Violence seems to have become an endemic feature of South African life. According to the comparative crime statistics for 1996 released by Interpol, the country tops the list internationally as far as the incidence of murder and rape is concerned. the fact that attacks on the residents of farms and smallholdings are escalating at a rate out of proportion to the general increase in crime figures observed in South Africa is indeed cause for serious concern'...
The murder rate in the cities is even higher, for Johannesburg alone it is 500 per month. Many of the victims are White, and the attackers Black and racially motivated, a fact that is never mentioned in the US media.
THE MURDER RATE IN THE CITIES IS EVEN HIGHER, for Johannesburg alone it is 500 per month. MANY OF THE VICTIMS ARE WHITE, AND THE ATTACKERS BLACK AND RACIALLY MOTIVATED, A FACT THAT IS NEVER MENTIONED IN THE US MEDIA.
And South Africa is also the rape capital of the world. A woman is reported raped every 23 seconds in South Africa. A small child is reported raped every thirty minutes. And remember, these are the reported and admitted rapes...
On May 24 2000, the beaten, battered and nearly frozen body of a young Polish woman was found, clad only in a soaked t-shirt, along the road to South Africa's Sterkfontein Dam. Her body was so cold it was actually blue. Her hair was wet and she was covered with bruises, open wounds, deep scratches, and mud. She was curled in a fetal position. She was still alive. To students of rape in South Africa she was another digit in the statistics. To Americans and Europeans who get their news from the major media, she didn't even exist.
She was a 27-year-old newlywed on her honeymoon, a honeymoon that ended when three Blacks murdered her husband in front of her eyes and then brutally raped her, beat her, attempted to kill her and left her for dead. The bruise marks around her neck indicated that her rapists had tried to strangle her. At the treatment center she was immediately given AZT by Polish Consulate authorities (treatment refused her by the South African government) in the hope that it would prevent the transfer of HIV, since two of her three attackers tested positive for the virus.
She testified that after her attackers murdered her husband, they forced her in the trunk of their car, and went to a secluded spot where each of the Blacks raped her in turn. They then attempted to drown her by stamping their feet on her head in an attempt to keep her head underwater. The woman has returned to her native Poland and refuses to set foot in South Africa again, even to testify.
As reported by investigator Jack Galt, on November 17th of the same year, a 14-year-old White girl was cruelly raped by a gang of five blacks in her home in Pretoria. According to her counselors, she has been traumatized for the rest of her life. Spokesmen for the White Afrikaner community, who you will not hear on CBS, NBC, or Fox News, state that this attack was a deliberate attempt to terrorize Whites.
Five heavily-armed Blacks invaded the home, and proceeded to tie up the girl's mother, father, six-year-old sister and ten-year-old brother with barbed wire in the living room.
They then grabbed the 14-year-old girl and took her to the bathroom, where they brutally gang-raped her, each of the five Blacks in turn, with the family listening nearby, helpless. Then the Blacks returned to the living room where they beat and kicked the White father in the face while he was still tied up, ransacked the home, and fled in the family's car.
South African mother Ame Brown of Elliot in the Eastern Cape recently stated:
'On the 8th of October, 1998 my two children and I were overpowered by four Black men. We were robbed of everything, and before leaving the men took turns raping me in front of my two boys aged 8 and 12. They forced my boys to watch. I have since then been tested for HIV of which my tests at five months showed positive'...
Cape Town, South Africa has become the world capital of what is called the 'sex tourism' trade. Press reports have described it as the 'sleaze capital of the world,' and these days that's really saying something. Perverts from all over the world go there to have sex with children, many of them White sex slaves, but others imported from brothels as far away as Thailand...
'Child Sex Tours' are even sponsored by some 'entrepreneurs' while the government looks the other way.
In the bad old days of White rule and apartheid, such things weren't tolerated. But in the new 'rainbow' South Africa, where can the innocent victims look for protection? The mayor of Cape Town, a Black named William Bantom, was recently discovered to be enjoying his huge personal collection of child pornography in his office while on the job. And he wasn't ousted as mayor. Perhaps the Church will help them? Bantom is also a noted clergyman, known for his liberal views on 'human rights,' 'democracy,' and 'equality'."
"Reported rates of rape are at the most serious levels in the world, and there is much concern about the increase in violence against women and in particular against children."On 8 November 2002, Africa Online reported thus:
"South Africa has the very dubious honour of being the regional hub for drug trafficking, and the largest transit zone for illicit drugs in Southern Africa, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Thursday. It also appears to be among the rape capitals of the world!On 3 September 2003, BBC Correspondent, Hilary Andersson, reported thus from Tzaneen, in South Africa.
The country also earned the dubious honour of being upgraded by British officials as the most significant source of cannabis smuggled into the United Kingdom...
While cannabis was the most widely used drug in South Africa, followed by methaqualone (known as Mandrax) and cocaine, the study noted an increase in heroin use, particularly among white school children. Arrests for heroin use increased eight-fold since the mid 1990s and, worryingly, 51% of the people treated for heroin addiction in one study said they had injected the drug, a method not previously used in South Africa. This had serious implications for the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country...
Drug trafficking and organised crime had grown in South Africa since the mid 1990s, and had drawn on factors like the country's porous borders, the increase in immigrants, and international trade links... Drug trafficking was an 'extremely profitable enterprise' for the over 200 organised crime syndicates in South Africa...
Nigerian syndicates were heavily involved in cocaine and heroin trafficking... there was also prominent involvement in the trade by nationals from Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Ethiopia, often under the misnomer 'West African nationals'.
Crime was still the most pressing and visible social problem in the country, the report said. Violent crimes, such as attempted murder, aggravated robbery and violence against women and children, had shown a general increase since 1994."
"On the side of a motorway in northern South Africa, white couples held hands with their heads bowed, as a quiet prayer was uttered for 1,500 white farmers who have been murdered since apartheid ended in 1992. The murders, often horrific in their brutality, are on the increase, according to a report by South Africa's Human Rights Commission.On 25 November 2003, the BBC informed us thus:
Aatie Vermaak, a third generation white farmer, drove down a long dirt road on his farm showing us where he had been attacked in January. Black assailants had followed him, and when he stopped his car they shot him the stomach.
Mr Vermaak was intensive care for a month, his gall bladder had to be removed, his liver was in pieces, and he nearly died. 'They stole nothing. They just shouted kill the dog, kill the dog,' he said...
His farm is near the town of Polokwane, where just a year ago thousands of black South Africans gathered for the funeral of a prominent ANC activist... 'Kill the Boer! Kill the Farmer,' they chanted in unison to the beat of a warlike dance. That day NELSON MANDELA STOOD BY AND WATCHED."
"South Africa, alone, is home to 5.3 million people with HIV, more than any other country in the world... Two out of three new HIV infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa."On 10 March 2004, The Mirror featured the following article by Jenny Johnston in Johannesburg.
"He is seven years old. He has dancing eyes, a wide smile and an engaging giggle. And HE IS A RAPIST. He is not alone. The little boy who sits next to him in 'class' is seven, too. Their friends are eight and nine.
The youngest member of this group is just six - barely capable of tying his own shoe laces, yet somehow old enough to have committed the most serious of sexual offences, however impossible that might sound.
All are here for a reason most will be unable to fathom: they have raped.
One of the seven-year-olds raped his three-year-old cousin. Another forced himself on a neighbour, barely more than a baby. Another sodomised a fellow pupil in school...
Just down the corridor is a suite of medical rooms where South Africa's tiniest victims of rape are examined. The youngest are just two and three months old.
It is hard to know what is most disturbing about the Teddy Bear Clinic in Johannesburg... The fact that there is a guard with an openly displayed revolver sitting among the cuddly toys is horrifying. That the dolls in the playroom have genitals is something that stops you in your tracks...
One day the boys, even the youngest, practise Anger Management; the next they learn about Creating Victim Empathy... THEY ARE TAUGHT ABOUT MASTURBATION.
THEY ARE ENCOURAGED TO 'RE-ENACT' THEIR CRIMES, putting themselves in the role of victim. They are asked to talk about how they feel WHEN THEY SEE HARDCORE PORN.
Shaheda Omar is the woman these boys call 'Miss'... The courts turned to her when they realised the number of pre-pubescent rapists, too young to be prosecuted, was reaching terrifying proportions…
'Look, this is happening,' she says firmly, having little time for visitors who can't quite get their heads around what is going on here. 'IT IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY, IN EVERY PART OF SOUTH AFRICA. Boys are raping and they are not waiting until they are 18 to start. They are getting younger and younger. A few years ago I was shocked to be seeing boys of 11 and 12. Now we're seeing seven and eight-year-olds. I've had a six-year-old. I've even had A FIVE- YEAR-OLD WHO TOOK PART IN A GANG-RAPE.'
This morning she had her first session with a 'typical' group of 10-year-olds in Soweto - where a study showed that FOR HALF OF WOMEN LIVING IN THE TOWNSHIP, THEIR FIRST SEXUAL EXPERIENCE WAS A FORCED ONE.
'There were five of them,' she explains. 'THEY HAD GANG-RAPED A LITTLE GIRL. It was brutal. Horrible… I made each one of them imagine they were that girl. We went through it step by step. What was happening to her? What was she feeling? You have to force them to go there, in their heads, to imagine just what it would have been like for her, just how terrifying…
'What we are seeing is new… WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF AN EPIDEMIC and if we don't do something about it now we are going to be looking at a whole generation of serial sex offenders.'
But she has grown unashamedly attached to her young charges. 'THEY ARE LOVELY LITTLE BOYS, REALLY,' she says. 'THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. CHILDLIKE. INNOCENT. YES, INNOCENT'... Not once does she use the word rapist when talking about them...
'In the clinic, we call them 'ABUSE FACILITATORS'...
The mummy dolls and daddy dolls have breasts and genitals. No subject is taboo…
'They may watch porn at home, but there is a huge knowledge gap there… And they are growing up in one of the most violent societies in the world. That combination is having disastrous consequences. Children are seeing explicit sex on television, and WITHOUT PARENTAL CONTROL to explain and put it in context… They are seeing sexual activity all around them. Maybe there are 12 or 14 people living in a few rooms…
There is a dramatic upsurge in the number of children getting involved in other serious crimes, too. While we are at the clinic, on another side of Johannesburg A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD BOY SHOOTS A FIVE-YEAR-OLD DEAD.
A few months ago, eight-year- old Isaac Muggles was killed in the Western Cape by four children - aged seven, eight, nine and 11. They threw bricks at the little boy, hit him with a plank and an iron bar and choked him...
During a recent parliamentary debate, it was claimed THERE HAD BEEN A 400 PER CENT RISE IN SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN IN SOUTH AFRICA SINCE 1994.
DEPUTY PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA BLAMED APARTHEID for 'sowing the seed for the breakdown of the institution of the family'. STAFF AT THE TEDDY BEAR CLINIC TEND TO AGREE…
The clinic recently compiled an 18-page 'dossier of shame', claiming a widespread cover-up of the levels of rape and sexual abuse in schools. It is a devastating document, alleging that THE RAPE OF CHILDREN BY TEACHERS AND OTHER CHILDREN IS SOARING. It claims head teachers have failed to act…
At one school in the township, a teacher announced over the Tannoy: 'Would the three girls who were gang-raped last week please come to the office.' At another, a little girl was asked to lie on the floor of the staff room WHILE STAFF EXAMINED HER VAGINALLY, 'TO SEE WHAT A RAPED CHILD LOOKS LIKE'.”
And this is what the race laws are designed to protect.
From us.
The heart of every snarling do-gooder who knows so much better than you, would break on behalf of these 'lovely little boy' rapists. And if you dared to think of the as them as anything other than 'beautiful, childlike, innocent,' well that would make you a racist, I'm afraid. And if you dared to spread the information contained in this article around, in order to try and warn the people of this country what black people as young as five were capable of, why, you wouldn't just be a racist, you'd be a racist who was guilty of 'incitement to racial hatred.'
And you could go to jail for seven years. (See the video below)
That is what our politicians have done to us.
And the huge numbers of immigrants that Blair, Brown, Cameron, Clegg and co want to see entering our country every year? How about one or two of the following?
On 26 March 2004, the South African news service, News 24 reported thus:
"A woman accused of having killed a four-year-old boy in Rookdale is expected to be sent for mental observation, SABC news reported on Friday. Tshitshi Dlamini... will be sent for 30 days mental observation at Fort Napier Hospital in Pietermaritzburg.Dlamini later admitted that she had bashed Sabelo's head in with a spade. This because she suspected his mother of being responsible for her youngest child's death. She also confessed to cooking and eating part of the child's upper lip and ear.
Sabelo Dubazane, 4, was reported missing by his mother on Tuesday and shortly afterwards police established that the child was last seen at a house in the Rookdale area. Dlamini was found at the house but denied any knowledge of the boy's whereabouts when she was questioned. The house was then searched and the child's body was found in a tub under a bed, Inspector Les Botha said. Blood-stained clothing was found in another tub, also under the bed.
Sabelo had sustained an open wound to the side of his head, and his upper lip and part of his left ear had been severed. Police then found severed body parts which appeared to have been partially cooked in Dlamini's room...
Two weeks earlier North Rand police found a body of an unidentified boy who was blindfolded, trussed and set alight at the Daveyton Golf Course on the East Rand. The boy's body has not been identified yet and no arrest had been made in connection with his murder. He had not been reported missing. His legs and hands were tied and he was blindfolded with a white cloth. On the scene police found a bottle which smelt of paraffin next to his body."
On 17 June 2005, News 24 reported thus:
"Two KwaZulu-Natal girls have been left traumatised after seeing their father eat the flesh off their dead mother's face on Friday morning, said police. Captain Tienkie van Vuuren said police were called to Thembalethu Village near Mkuze in the Tugela Ferry area about 03:00 on Friday after a 13-year-old girl ran to her neighbours for help.On 21 June 2004, The Washington Times reported that, in the decade since the end of white rule in South Africa:
She said when they arrived at the house they had to force their way in the house to rescue the other girl, aged seven, who had been stabbed in the head by the father.
'Inside, police found a naked Jabulani Siphethu sitting on top of his common-law wife's body, eating the flesh from her face,' said Van Vuuren. 'Only the forehead was still intact. The bone was visible where the rest of the face used to be."
"1,700 farmers, nearly all white, have been killed on South African farms... If you look at what they did to these people in these attacks, there was hatred for white people. Black farmers have also been attacked, just not with the same brutality...On 3 July 2005, The Telegraph confirmed the above thus:
Many of the killings were unspeakably brutal. Rape is common. One wheelchair-bound elderly woman was scalded with boiling water until she died. And the number of 'farm attacks', where no one was killed, number in the tens of thousands."
"Countless white farmers have fled after a huge rise in farm attacks in the decade since the end of apartheid. As many as 1,700 white farmers have been killed, many with a brutality that has shocked the police investigating the cases...In October 2013, the following statistics could be seen at the 'Genocide Watch' web site:
Despite this sense of injustice, policemen like Captain Manie Van Zyl think the motive for the farm attacks is more prosaic: pure greed. But if this is the motive then why the extreme violence?
One case involved an elderly woman being hacked to death, her body suffering almost 40 cuts. The farmers make easy targets. Many farms are isolated and vulnerable...
Many attacks are linked to workers on the farms, who provide information if not active support to those accused of the attacks. The irony is that the outcome is often the abandonment of the farm and the loss of their jobs...
But the young men whom Capt Van Zyl has arrested for the attacks are not farm workers. They are rootless township poor, driven to find cash and weapons with which to further their criminal careers... Most are too young to remember apartheid, so it seems that it is avarice and poverty, rather than history, that pushes them towards violence."
"Since 1994, more than 70000 (and counting) white South Africans have been murdered of which more than 4000 were commercial farmers. Exact figures are very hard to come by as the South African police fail to report most of the murders that take place. These numbers are thus conservatively estimated. As the white population of South Africa was 4,434,697 according to the official state census in 1996, and more than 400,000 white South Africans have left the country, (The Daily Mail says 900,000!) it could be estimated that nearly 2% of white South Africans have been murdered in the 18 years of democracy.Here is just a fraction of the evidence of what has been happening in the 'rainbow nation' since Nelson Mandela came to power.
Compare that to the 7,518 black people that were murdered by the Apartheid government, which comes to a percentage of 0.02% of the black population."
May the images you see here haunt your dreams forever.
As for the rest of you, who's the bad guy here? Those that did what you see in this document? Those that kept this stuff from you?
Or me, for having made you aware of it?
Do you still think Nelson Mandela is a great bloke? A hundred times the horror seen here happened on his watch and he did next to nothing to stop it. Do you still think Ken Livingstone was right to want to stick up a statue of this man in Trafalgar Square?
Personally, I'd rather have a statue of the dead South Africans cited above erected.
In May 1999, a few months before he left office, Mandela said these things:
"I step down with a clear conscience because I have contributed in a small way to what has happened in this country… WE HAVE BECOME A MIRACLE NATION… Whites have been in this country for more than three centuries and NO GOVERNMENT WHATSOEVER THROUGHOUT THAT PERIOD HAS EVER ACHIEVED THE PERFORMANCE THAT THIS GOVERNMENT HAS ACHIEVED."Well, Mandela most certainly did contribute ‘to what happened.’ However, the country had only ‘become a miracle nation’ for those members of the ANC who were promoted way beyond their talents. It has not become a miracle nation for most of the rest.
Particularly the dead, the raped and those with HIV.
Mandela also said:
"No government whatsoever throughout that period has ever achieved the performance that this government has achieved."I would wholeheartedly agree with this comment, but not, I suspect, for the reasons that he and the PC crowd would wish me to agree.
PS. Just so you know that I'm a fair-minded chap, here is something Mandela has said that only a very few would disagree with:
"George Bush wants to get hold of the Iraqi oil."When Mandela became South African President in 1994, he appointed some very interesting people in his first cabinet.
For example, he appointed the Communist, Joe Slovo, as Minister of Housing and he also appointed the Lady Commie, Helena Dolny, Slovo's former wife, to the Executive Directorship of the Land Bank.
Speaking of banks, Mandela made another Communist, Gil Marcus, Vice President of the Bank of South Africa and another Communist, Michael Katz, the Chief consultant on Taxation.
He also appointed Trevor Manuel as Minister of Finance; Alec Erwin as Minister of Trade and Finance and Ronnie Kasrils as Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. He gave the Chairmanship of South Africa's privatised railway system to Professor Louise Tager and the Directorship of the Police Service to a Mr. Meyer Khan.
Mandela also appointed a gentleman by the name of Arthur Chaskelson to the Presidency of the Constitutional Court and appointed the former head of the International War Crimes Tribunal, Richard Goldstone, to that court.
He also appointed another ex-Commie, Albie Sachs, to the Constitutional Court. Sachs was also actively involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and both he and Chaskelson both had a hand in the creation of South Africa's New Constitution.
So, if you don't like Communists, you really ought not to think all that much of Nelson Mandela. For that matter, if you don't like Jews, you shouldn't be too enamoured of the South African Saint either. You see, all of the aforementioned twelve Mandelian appointees, from Slovo to Sachs, were not black folk, they were Jewish.
The official opposition to Mandela's ANC at the time was the Democratic Party, whose big shots back then were Tony Leon, Helen Suzman and Harry Schwartz.
These three were also Jewish.
The Democratic Party was being bankrolled at the time by the richest man in South Africa, the multi-billionaire, Harry Oppenheimer. Who, as you might have guessed, is also Jewish.
Ironically, the Byzantine nature of Judaic politics in Mandelaland was starkly evidenced during the handover of power, when the ageing Oppenheimer let it slip that it was he who had been ‘the quiet engine running the ANC for all these years.’
In theYouTube video below, a 'Death to the Boer' song is sung.
One of Mandela's top Jewish confederates, Ronnie Kastrils, (green shirt) can be seen singing along.
Mandela, himself, stands proudly by.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3czqorqhkI
Since it is Nelson R Mandela birthday today 18 July 2012, it is only befitting to write a letter to him as he and the world celebrates his birthday. This is an open letter to Mandela.Dear Former President Nelson Mandela,
I was only about 5 years old when were released from prison. I come from a poor background as a black child and I was raised by my grandmother. In 1994 South Africa had its first democratic elections; I remember people around me including my grandma were excited to vote for you and the ANC government. Sadly my grandma passed away before she could vote in beginning of April in 1994.
I understand that you had meetings between 1985-1990 with P. W. Botha to have a negotiated settlement. Revered late ANC President, Oliver Reginald Tambo, referring to your meetings with the colonial-apartheid regime in the crucial 1980s, said “Prisoners can’t negotiate their freedom”.
I have read that according to aged ANC veterans, Tambo seemed disturbed about senior members of the leadership including you, who could have compromised the organisation. He seemed to question whom to trust. This, according to those veterans, eventually led to Tambo’s first stroke.
In 1990 before you were released from prison you assured your supporters that the nationalisation of mines, banks and minerals were on the cards. That belief had formed the core doctrine of the ANC and was enshrined in a document known as The Freedom Charter.
"The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil; the banks and monopoly industries shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industries and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people," the charter states.
It later emerged that you and other ANC leaders were busily creatively re-interpreting the “Freedom Charter’s” commitment to nationalisation in order to comfort the monopoly white capitalists.
The nature of the sell out
When you negotiated the Nationalist had intended to oversee a settlement which guarantees the maintenance of a white capitalist South Africa and of the profits extracted from the exploited black masses, and leaves power firmly in the hands of the white capitalists for the foreseeable future. As De Klerk has insisted “I do not intend to negotiate myself out of power”. On the contrary, negotiations were intended to prevent the victory of the black masses. De Klerk had laid a trap for the blacks into which they were being led by you. Any so-called 'deal' made with devils MUST, by default, go wrong! Truth be told; you were out-negotiated by the Nationalists.
Failed transfer of power during negotiations
The negotiations focused on two aspects: one was political, the other economic. When you were negotiating with the Nationalists you choose to separate political and economic power. That was your biggest mistake and betrayal to black people. The transfer of ownership of wealth and land is at the heart of a transfer of power. Hence it was clearly stipulated in the Freedom Charter. But you chose to ignore that.
During the negotiations everyone was watching the political negotiations. You were too concerned that if the political negotiations didn’t go well there would be mass protest. People were not interested in the economic negotiations and when the economic negotiators would report back, people thought it was technical; no one was interested. (Lack of education) You should have known better. This is where we missed our freedom completely and you sold it to the Nationalists.
Failed economic negotiations and state ownership of the Reserve Bank
Mr Former President, your mandate from the people was to ensure that the values of the Freedom Charter were implemented including nationalisation of country’s assets. Instead of nationalising the mines you were meeting regularly with Harry Oppenheimer, former chairman of the mining giants Anglo-American and De Beers, the economic symbols of apartheid rule.
Shortly after the 1994 election, you even submitted the ANC’s economic program to Oppenheimer for approval and made several key revisions to address his concerns, as well as those of other top industrialists. Shame on you for selling out of minerals and land to the imperialists.
The outcomes of those meetings were that you could have the political power but the gold and diamonds would remain in the hands of the individuals that controlled it before. Have you forgotten what the Freedom Charter had said??
One of the most revealing aspects of the economic transition was the ownership of the Reserve Bank of South Africa. Arguably the most powerful institution in the country, its fate was explained by Durban businessman Vishnu Padaychee; asked to draft a document for the negotiating team on the on the pro’s and con’s of having an autonomous central bank, run with total autonomy from the elected government.
Padayachee could not believe what he was hearing. He and his team drafted and submitted the document with a clear policy of not allowing the Reserve Bank to be autonomous.
He was later told by the negotiating team that, “We had to give that one up”.
The bank is privately owned and today has some 650 shareholders. Why did you let go of the Reserve Bank and let the imperialist whites take control of it Mandela?
During the negotiations you agreed that not only would the Reserve Bank be run as an autonomous entity within the South African state, with its independence enshrined in the SA constitution, but it would be headed by the same man who ran it under apartheid, Chris Stals. Another Apartheid era figure, finance minister Derek Keyes, also retained his position in the new administration. Mandela how could you allow the people who oppressed us to be in charge of the Reserve Bank?
Padayachee lamented that with the loss of the Reserve Bank, “everything would be lost in terms of economic transformation”. This is indeed true; everything was lost when YOU handed over the Reserve Bank!!!!! One of the Freedom Charter pledges is the redistribution of land; this became highly constrained with a new clause in the constitution which protected all private property.
Failed rainbow-nation coated myth
You have been preaching this rainbow-nation myth to the world that does not exist but only exists in your head. Reconciliation has meant nothing but black people `forgiving’ whites for 300+ years of dispossession, humiliation and suffering. I experience pain every time a white South African - at the shop; in a bar; on the Talk Radio 702 or online forums - says that “We need to forget the past, get over it.” It is like they are saying to us `forget your pain’. And that from someone who benefited at your expense! We have suffered racial abuse and our abusers are among us.
You and Desmond Tutu’s rainbow myth glossed over this pain - much to the relief of whites. Whites fail to acknowledge our pain and suffering - and their position as beneficiaries of our pain. But you were overly concerned with not rocking the boat as far as whites were concerned. That is why you are the subject of a personality cult in the white community than the black community.
Whites in this country believe that you are the only honourable black person while the rest of us blacks are corrupt, criminals, rapists, drunkards and uneducated buffoons.
The FREE & FAIR environment post-94 is another rainbow-coated myth. Black people are not free (unless you describe freedom as being able to vote and not having to carry ID’s 24/7). We are not FREE and very little is fair! All thanks to you Mandela.
The current state
Are you aware that blacks remain landless, underfed, houseless, under- employed, badly represented in senior managerial positions? The state of healthcare and education for black people remains as it was, if not worse than, under apartheid.
Vestiges of apartheid and colonial economic patterns, ownership and control remain intact despite the attainment of political freedom by you. Are you aware that political freedom without economic emancipation is meaningless?
The unemployment crisis is also defined along racial lines due to the fact that in the third quarter of 2010, 29.80% of blacks were officially unemployed, compared with 22.30% of coloureds, 8.60% of Asians and only 5.10% of whites. About 12 million of the population lives on less than R2.50 per day, whilst 16 million South Africans receive social grants.
In terms of racial distribution of per capita income, African and coloured income levels in 2008 were still only 13% and 22% respectively of white per capita income, compared to 10.9% and 19.3% in 1993. The income gap for Indians has narrowed, with Indian per capita income in 2008 standing at 60% of those of whites as against 42% in 1993.
In 1995, median per capita expenditure among Africans was R333 a month compared to whites at R3 443 a month. In 2008, median expenditure per capita for Africans was R454 a month compared to whites at R5 668 a month. Source: [Leibbrandt, M. et al. (2010), "Trends in South African Income Distribution and Poverty since the Fall of Apartheid"]
The economy has failed to create jobs at the pace necessary to reduce extremely high unemployment, and the education system has failed to ensure that equalised public spending on schooling translates into improved education for poor black children.
Final thoughts
The democracy has not brought what was promised, you as former president of the ANC and of the country is responsible for that misdirection.
Mr Former President what you have done for black people is that you have laid the final brick by selling out on the struggle to achieve your dream of political victory. Your dream which has become our worst nightmare as black people.
You sold us as black nation for a “Noble Peace Prize” and that is the reason for the service delivery demonstration and the lack of service delivery. Our Constitution hailed as the best in the world favours the Caucasians while it oppresses the Africans. Thanks for nothing Mandela. You understood the Kempton Park negotiations as a sell-out solution to rescue white capital and for the few in power, and that such a democracy would continue the suffering of the black majority.
I have a problem with people giving “Messianic status to Madiba” like a black Jesus when we all know that you have failed the black nation.
When I started out this letter I told you about my grandma who died before she could vote for you. Well, I am glad that she never voted for you as she would have voted for a traitor. What you have done is simply continued where the apartheid government left us off and dug the holes of poverty and oppression deeper.
Before you leave this earth I would like you to take responsibility and apologise for your actions and what you did to black people. You sold our land to the imperialists, if you fail to apologise before you die it simply means you are an accomplice to them.
When you eventually die and meet the likes of Dr Hendrink Verwoerd and P.W. Botha may you have good time with them and laugh at how blacks continue to suffer. I have nothing but hatred for what you have done to us.
Signing out from the deep dark hell hole of continued oppression you put us in.
Yours Sincerely,
Youngster
CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU URSZULA MARIA PICKFORD!
“everyone will be impressed with their own opinion” a Sign of the End Time reminds us Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Mark Hanson
DEAR, you have proven to all readers who do not suck up to you that you are just another of those fanatics who believe they are the centre of the world. I waited for you to kick me out and stifle free speech.
You proved yourself a literal fool by posting hundreds of other peoples’ pieces and claiming these are your own beliefs with such fanaticism that you do not allow any kind of criticism.
You can keep on promoting proven perverts and stooges like Michael King aka Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or proven traitors like Nelson Mandela, or the likes of “Mother Theresa”, and so on, but what you do not realise is that you are no more credible about your stand against Zionism and the illegal occupation of Palestine.
If you cannot handle the truth, then you are not to be trusted at all! It looks like you are just another scavenger of the Internet and an addict!
Ghyslaine ROC has never sold out to anybody, to any religion or to any political group. Only the truth is important, and freedom and justice for all.
But, thank you for not flooding my page anymore with your endless posts which I allowed only as an act of friendship and charity, although it did provide us (and Basheer) with much useful information as well. No more of Urszula Maria Pickford – quite a relief! Abdassamad Clarke was another one who did not allow criticism! You both love to be complimented as Gods, but I do not give a damn about compliments! Truth stands out by itself. And, if you are impressed by Gandhi saying SO STUPIDLY (if he indeed said so!) “God has no religion”, I am not!
BUT, KEEP ON WORSHIPING YOUR OWN SELF, DEAR, IT SUITS YOU!
Ghyslaine ROC
Thursday 26th of December 2013
- You like this.
Ghyslaine Roc Ghys, you must not get too hard on Urszula. I made the mistake of posting a link on one of her immaculate posts and she got so pissed off that she ejaculated: WATS ZAT? We know now that she is not that serious about world politics. She better stick t...See More- Ghyslaine Roc Ghys, do you want me to post this on the Blog? Iit does not seem to be worth it at all. Who is that Urszula after all? Basheer
- Ghyslaine Roc Not really, old chap, Urszula should free her mind first from propaganda before wanting to free nations! Who are you calling old hag? Me or Urszula? Ghyslaine
- Today
Urszula Maria Pickford
Ghyslaine, I`m afraid we have to part. I cannot tolerate your arrogant attitude towards me and my friends. Your point would be much stronger if you weren`t a BIGOT!Such a shame that two of us ~ people that fight for the same cause have such a massive difference. Everyone has different point of view on things, it has to be accepted, if disputed then gently. Learn something will you.- Urszula Maria Pickford
You need a psychiatrist Ghys!
Mandela and Gaddafi: The Myth of the Saint and the Mad DogBy Linda HousmanJanuary 05, 2014 "Information Clearing House - “Question. Why was Mandela’s life celebrated by the world while Gaddafi after everything he did for Africa was gunned down like a dog?”, a Twitter user wondered days after Nelson Mandela’s passing.This question becomes even more valid in light of what the mainstream media, in the wake of the former South African president’s death, have been anxiously hiding from the public: the actual close and crucial alliance between Mandela and Gaddafi. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the West refused to allow sanctions against Apartheid in South Africa and used to call Mandela a terrorist, it was none other than Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi who kept supporting him. Gaddafi funded Mandela’s fight against Apartheid by training ANC fighters and by paying for their education abroad, and their bond only became stronger after Mandela’s release from prison on February 11, 1990.Nevertheless, one of them ended up being “gunned down like a dog” and his death was celebrated by the entire elite of the imperialist world, which celebrations were significantly summarized by Hillary “Warzone” Clinton in a now infamous interview in which she exults: “We came, we saw, he died!”As for the other one, the same entire elite of the imperialist world crowded into the FNB stadium in Soweto, South Africa, to attend the funeral of their hero, and to verbosely praise Mandela and his achievements with all possible superlatives.Mandela on GaddafiSo how did the branded Saint Mandela really feel about the branded Mad Dog Gaddafi? Let’s hear straight from the horse’s mouth what the mainstream media have left out of their laudatory picture of the former ANC leader.Right upon his release from prison, after more than 27 years behind bars, Mandela broke the UN embargo and paid a visit to the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where he declared: “My delegation and I are overjoyed with the invitation from the Brother Guide [Muammar Gaddafi], to visit the Great Popular and Socialist Arab Libyan Jamahiriya. I have been waiting impatiently ever since we received the invitation. I would like to remind you that the first time I came here, in 1962, the country was in a very different state of affairs. One could not but be struck by the sights of poverty from the moment of arrival, with all of its usual corollaries: hunger, illness, lack of housing and of health-care facilities, etc. Anger and revolt could be read in those days on the faces of everyone.Since then, things have changed considerably. During our stay in prison, we read and heard a great deal about the changes which have come about in this country and about blossoming of the economy which has been experienced here. There is prosperity and progress everywhere here today which we were able to see even before the airplane touched ground. It is thus with great pleasure that we have come on a visit in the Jamahiriya, impatient to meet our brother, the Guide Gaddafi.”When Mandela was taken to the ruins of Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, which was bombed by the Reagan administration in 1986 in an attempt to murder the entire Gaddafi family, he said:“No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do. Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi. They are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.”In response, Gaddafi thanked Mandela for his friendship, saying: “Who would ever have said that one day the opportunity for us to meet would become reality. We would like you to know that we are constantly celebrating your fight and that of the South African people, and that we salute your courage during all of those long years you spent in detention in the prison of Apartheid. Not a single day has passed without us having thought of you and your sufferings.”Eight years later, when then U.S. president Bill Clinton visited Mandela in March 1998, Clinton criticized the South African president’s meeting with Muammar Gaddafi. In reaction to that criticism, Mandela straightforwardly replied:“I have also invited Brother Leader Gaddafi to this country. And I do that because our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour in the history of this country. Not only did the Libyans support us in return, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle, and to win. And those South Africans who have berated me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go and jump into a pool.”Mandela on the WestSubsequently, let’s hear the ANC leader’s real thoughts on the West that has put him on a posthumous pedestal, and on topics that, to say the least, are not exactly popular among Western leaders.On the U.S. preparing its war against Iraq in 2002: “If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don’t care for human beings.”In a 1999 speech: “Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.”“The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” (RT)The revolutionary Mad DogOn the day of Mandela’s funeral, December 15, 2013, a citizen from Accra, Ghana, expressed:“All day long here in Ghana they have been broadcasting live the Memorial Service of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Courtesy, of course, of the BBC and Deutsche Welle? Why on earth doesn’t Africa have its own Broadcasting Network in this day and age? The news coverage on the BBC is always distorting according to their own interest, and that on Deutsche Welle a bit less, but still not African! And in all of Ghana – a nations with so many media resources – there is not a single foreign correspondent in the lot! Why must Africans always depend on others to tell their own stories to them?! Shame! Shame! Shame!”In fact, there actually was someone working on an African broadcasting network. Someone who already connected the entire African continent by radio, television and telephone. In the early 90s, this person funded the establishment of the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, which eventually provided Africa with its first own communications satellite on December 26, 2007. A second African satellite was launched in July 2010 and advanced plans for a continental broadcasting network were made. The person who funded at least 70% of this revolutionary project was the revolutionary leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, Muammar Gaddafi.Gaddafi thus angered the Western bankers, since Africa no longer would pay the annual $500 million fee to Europe for the use of its satellites, and of course no “self-respecting” banker was willing to fund a project that frees people from their claws. And this was not the only way in which Gaddafi angered the West to the point that he had to be eliminated from their agenda. The leader of the Libyan Al-Fateh Revolution worked hard and came close to embody the famous 1865 quote by American economist Adam Smith, saying: “The economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken.”On the eve of the NATO-led war against Libya, Gaddafi’s booming country largely co-funded three projects that would rid Africa from its financial dependence on the West once and for all: the African Investment Bank in the Libyan city of Sirte, the African Monetary Fund (AFM), to be based in the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde, in 2011, and the African Central Bank to be based in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Especially the latter angered France – not coincidentally also the main orchestrator of the war on Libya – because it would mean the end of the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, through which France kept a hold on as much as thirteen African countries. Only two months after Africa said no to Western attempts to join the AFM, Western organized “protests” against the AFM’s benefactor, Muammar Gaddafi, started to erupt in Libya… ultimately resulting in the freezing of $30 billion by the West, which money mostly was intended for the above mentioned financial projects.But Gaddafi helped the African continent in more than just material ways. More than any other African leader, he supported Mandela’s ANC’s struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. Above that, many Black Africans, especially sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, found a new home in Gaddafi’s prosperous Libya.Gaddafi understood that in order to develop a strong Africa that would be able to finally throw off the shackles of imperialism, unity was the first requirement. The 2009 Chairperson of the African Union also understood the African culture and recognized that African problems need African solutions. During a 2010 meeting in Tripoli, in which he addressed dozens of leaders from across Africa, he told: “African traditions are being replaced with Western culture and multiparty politics is destroying Africa.” Instead, Gaddafi promoted the establishment of a People’s Government (Jamahiriya) in which the power would not belong to (puppet) governments, but to the African people. And nothing scared the Western capitalists more than a united Africa – Muammar Gaddafi’s dream that was about to come true by the end of 2010.The lukewarm SaintWhen Nelson Mandela endured 27 years of isolation in prison, he paid the price of being the socialist revolutionary and the racial equality fighter that he was. His freedom was taken away by the South African Apartheid regime, a regime that was the result of the infiltration of South Africa by European colonial powers. How come the same colonial powers now consider him to be a hero and a saint? Did the Western elite have a massive change of mind, and thus all of the sudden embraced the exact same ideology that made them put Mandela behind bars a few decades ago?We only have to take a look at the current situation of the Blacks in NATO-led Libya to understand that this was not quite the case. Libya, in 1951 officially the poorest country in the world, under Gaddafi attained the highest standard of living in Africa. The country’s prosperity attracted many Black African immigrants, during the 2011 war on Libya by the mainstream media purposely misnamed as being “black sub-Saharan African mercenaries”. Gaddafi provided them with work and education. Those immigrant workers, to whom Gaddafi was a hero, a father and a friend, now face the cruelest forms of racism by the Western-installed Libyan puppet regime. Just one telling example is a video in which Libyan “rebels” force Black immigrants to eat the green flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya.Then why the 180 degrees change of attitude of the West towards Mandela after his release from prison?Statistics show that still 65% of the Blacks in South Africa remain unemployed, while 90% of the Whites own 90% of South Africa’s wealth. Over the last decades, Apartheid may have disappeared for the visual scene, fact is that Blacks remain poor while Whites remain rich.Yet the West regards Mandela as the protector of the South African economy. According to a Financial Times journalist, Mandela’s ANC “proved a reliable steward of sub-Sahara Africa’s largest economy, embracing orthodox fiscal and monetary policies.” Canadian The Globe and Mail recently added that Mandela did this “without alienating his radical followers or creating a dangerous factional struggle within his movement”.In other words, Mandela ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds… mainly economically – and nothing interested, interests and will interest the Western capitalist countries more than economics.As aptly stated by independent writer Stephen Gowans,“Thus, in [The Globe and Mail journalist Doug] Saunder’s view, Mandela was a special kind of leader: one who could use his enormous prestige and charisma to induce his followers to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good of the elite that had grown rich off their sweat, going so far as to acquiesce in the repudiation of their own economic program.”“”Here is the crucial lesson of Mr. Mandela for modern politicians,” writes Saunders. “The principled successful leader is the one who betrays his party members for the larger interests of the nation. When one has to decide between the rank-and-file and the greater good, the party should never come first.”“For Saunders and most other mainstream journalists, “the larger interests of the nation” are the larger interests of banks, land owners, bond holders and share holders. This is the idea expressed in the old adage “What’s good for GM [General Motors], is good for America.” Since mainstream media are large corporations, interlocked with other large corporations, and are dependent on still other large corporations for advertising revenue, the placing of an equal sign between corporate interests and the national interest comes quite naturally.”I believe the dictionary has a word for that: lukewarm.What if Mandela had not danced to the tune of the imperialists?What if he did have said words and did have made plans that were too threatening to the interests of the corporate financiers who run the planet – the reason why Gaddafi had to be killed? Then South Africa under his leadership quite likely would have become what Iraq and Libya currently are: a country in turmoil, torn apart by imperialist powers that Mandela, not inconceivable even out of fear for what they are capable of, preferred to side with.Also the inevitable question arises: where was Mandela when his brother Gaddafi’s country was bombed for nine months by the most powerful military alliance in modern history? Sources have declared by that time his health was too fragile and he was in a too vulnerable state of mind, for which reason his family deliberately kept him away from news that would severely upset him. Whatever the case may be, the significant fact remains that no ANC member stood up for Gaddafi during the war on Libya the way Gaddafi stood up for his friend Mandela during his imprisonment and afterwards.The lesson for usAt the beginning of a new year, let us allow ourselves to take a few moments to reflect on our destiny and on that of the post-Mandela and post-Gaddafi world we live in. We live in a time of transition on all fronts. More than ever we are faced with the choice of being guided by fear – especially by the fear of losing credibility with the public and being punished by “authorities” when we challenge the powers-that-be – or being guided by the freedom of thought. The latter will result in a higher level of understanding of both ourselves and the world around us, which is the main condition for a much needed (r)evolution and for the establishment of true democracy.What the world needs now, are “Mad Dogs”. Revolutionaries with a vision who dare to be unconventional and dare to be so all the way. It is time for us to become a Gaddafi rather than a Mandela. It is time to let the walls of fear around our thinking fall away. It is time to break free from the fear of not being liked, of no longer being accepted, of being looked upon differently, of being branded an outcast, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist or anything bad when we raise our voices.We need to dare to totally tear aside the veil of Apartheid that mights and media use to cover up what is really going on in the world. Only then real progress can be achieved.“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.” – Bob MarleyLinda Housman - The Power Hous, blog of a young Dutch female truth seeker. - http://thepowerhous.wordpress.com - Contact: powerhous@hotmail.comWhat's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments
The CIA-MOSSAD-DGSE-MI6 murder of Ghaddafi is what I call TALMUDIC VENGEANCE!
ReplyDeleteThe Talmudic murder of the Tzar and his entire family looked more 'HUMANE' comparatively!
BAFS
5 January 2016 at 09:25