[News] RIP FW de Klerk

[Seagull58]

No, Indian families were trying to take over though:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-48980964

I met the leader of the SA Communist Party several times as he used to come in my shop after staying in one of the most expensive hotels in the country with his wife, bodyguard and driver of his top of the range Merc. Nice one comrade.

Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu don't ride bikes and live on bread and water either. The politics of corruption.

 

[KZNSeagull]

Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu don't ride bikes and live on bread and water either. The politics of corruption.

Indeed

 

[Seagull58]

Might upset a few on here, but a real 'old school' statesman, who made some tough and brave calls and almost certainly averted a bloody civil war in South Africa.

RIP

He didn't make any of those calls because he wanted to. He was forced to negotiate by the international boycott and the black boycott of white-owned businesses. After a number of previous attempts to negotiate a partial handover of power, he finally did the deal with Nelson Mandela because the alternative was to try and negotiate with Winnie! To his credit he saw the writing on the wall and persuaded his colleagues to sign up to a democratic electoral system.

 

[1066familyman]

Are the ANC now thick with former communists who are now bloated from their exclusive access to the trough? Are they attempting to create family dynasties like we've seen in India?

Even if they are, it's their gig, now, though.

Regarding who was there first, some Jamaicans felt that their freedom should have been followed by seven Black Star liners taking them 'back' to Ethiopia, because the Arawaks was there (in Jamaica) first. Most people think this is all a bit silly. Where will it end - the only people allowed being Adam and Eve, and even they need to stay inside the Garden of Eden - no poncing about up and down the Euphrates, the slags).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irWpxvAROsM

Hang on a minute, you can't go equating the North Atlantic Slave Trade to the history of Azania.

The North Atlantic Slave Trade involved the forcible removal of people's from their homeland. Those slaves lost not only their homeland, never to return (Liberia aside) but also their freedom, name and culture. That's not quite what happened with the movement of peoples in Southern/East Africa.

I'm not sure most people with a full overstanding of what Rastafari and Garveyism is about really think 'this is all a bit silly'. I personally think it's a most natural response to a brutal past. At least certainly on a spiritual level.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Hang on a minute, you can't go equating the North Atlantic Slave Trade to the history of Azania.

The North Atlantic Slave Trade involved the forcible removal of people's from their homeland. Those slaves lost not only their homeland, never to return (Liberia aside) but also their freedom, name and culture. That's not quite what happened with the movement of peoples in Southern/East Africa.

I'm not sure most people with a full overstanding of what Rastafari and Garveyism is about really think 'this is all a bit silly'. I personally think it's a most natural response to a brutal past. At least certainly on a spiritual level.

I suspect you've got the wrong end of my stick here. An earlier post questioned the right of the Zulus to the land in SA versus the right of Afrikaans. My slightly facetious post was meant to illustrate that how far you decide to go back is a bit arbitrary. An African pal of mine trumped that debate when he claimed he could trace his ancestry back to Lucy

Take Palesine, for example. Or better still, perhaps let's not.

The OP simply noted the passing of FW who, on the whole, in the end, was an instrument of necessary change (albeit the thread seems to have been a failed attempt to bait friends of Peter Tatchell).

Never mind

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

It was always interesting to see other African nations throw their borders open to any South African farmer who would locate to their nation.

Think Zambia and Mozambique were two nations who have done quite well out of it.
No doubt the same happened with Zimbabwean farmers moving elsewhere in Africa.

Which in the end drains SA of experienced people and their lose becomes another nations gain.

 

[zefarelly]

Far Far better people have died today. One of them, one of us.

 

[mikeyjh]

I think there was a lot of fear. Me and my other half surprised a friend in Joburg and ended up staying there for two days. Lovely and hospitable chap, but yes, an attitude towards blacks that rather shocked me. Mainly his assumption of them being in service. I remember being in a bar with him where he treated the waiter like a bond servant. I was very polite to the waiter who I think felt a bit uncomfortable with such treatment, or not used to it.

I recall a similar experience the first time I had dinner with a senior colleague in India, the expression he uses to request attention from a waiter was simply 'serve me', wanted the ground to swallow me up. Like you allude to, it's noticeable how conditioned people are to their social status in some places. In many of my visits to India, I used the same driver, probably for about 10 years, I would always (naturally) treat him as an equal but he would always kowtow to me. It still make me feel quite sad that so many humans are oppressed in to accepting their place in society.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I recall a similar experience the first time I had dinner with a senior colleague in India, the expression he uses to request attention from a waiter was simply 'serve me', wanted the ground to swallow me up. Like you allude to, it's noticeable how conditioned people are to their social status in some places. In many of my visits to India, I used the same driver, probably for about 10 years, I would always (naturally) treat him as an equal but he would always kowtow to me. It still make me feel quite sad that so many humans are oppressed in to accepting their place in society.

I read a story a few days ago around Desmond Tutu’s 90th birthday about what made him decide to become an Anglican Priest. He was walking with his mother along the pavement in South Africa and there was a white man coming the other way. People of colour were expected to (by law?) step off the pavement to give way and respect to white people. Instead the white man stepped off the pavement for them. He explained that he was doing it to give them that respect.

When Tutu asked, he was told the man was Bishop Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican Priest who was Bishop of the Indian Ocean or some such daft title and a thorn in the side of the South African Government.

It was also Huddleston who gave Hugh Masakela, the great South African jazz trumpeter, his first trumpet when he was a kid, recognising his talent.

 

[GT49er]

As white \saffer politicians go (or went) de Klerk was a decent one. I think he saw the vision of, and hope for 'the rainbow Nation' - just a shame that the likes of Mbeki and Zuma were never going to let that happen. RIP.

 

[father_and_son]

I was there about the same time BL and again the only people I knew were white. I soon realised that what they missed most was bullying the blacks out there.
They knew the game was up.
That’s not to say I didn’t meet many wonderful people. Even the people I knew beforehand turned out more racist than I could ever imagined.
I had to give arguing up with them all because I was only there for less than two months and wasn’t going to change them.

I suppose I could play devils advocate and say they all told me that there were things I couldn’t possibly know about.

I had two (married) in my team at work at one point, I asked whether they would ever go back to SA. The reply was that "the grass really is greener over here. The problem is we have to mow it ourselves." I didn't press further!

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

My uncle & aunt moved to SA about 60 yrs ago, & my 3 cousins were brought up over there. All 3 moved here about a decade ago, as they said they just didn't have the jobs over in SA, & now have very successful careers as teachers etc. My uncle and aunt still live in Port Elizabeth, but last year my uncle was mugged outside his architect business one night when he was locking up, & fell through a plate glass window. He is now in a home after suffering a massive stroke and is unable to communicate or recognize anyone. My aunt visited a few weeks ago - and she has said, like others on here, that the whole country is falling apart....and telling us how white farmers are now having their ranches forcibly taken away from them - even if they have been there generations.

Sad to see what was a flourishing country start slipping back into violence and corruption.

 

[Lower West Stander]

I recall a similar experience the first time I had dinner with a senior colleague in India, the expression he uses to request attention from a waiter was simply 'serve me', wanted the ground to swallow me up. Like you allude to, it's noticeable how conditioned people are to their social status in some places. In many of my visits to India, I used the same driver, probably for about 10 years, I would always (naturally) treat him as an equal but he would always kowtow to me. It still make me feel quite sad that so many humans are oppressed in to accepting their place in society.

That is so true.

When I was living in Manhattan, My mum and dad came over for a visit and I decided to take them on a guided coach tour as a treat.

Also on the bus was an Indian family. The tour had a set route of various landmarks but didn't go past the UN building which this family clearly wanted to see for some reason. The head of the family just told the coach driver they wanted to go there - and just couldn't comprehend it when the driver said no. He just kept repeating that he insisted they saw it as the head of the family.

To watch was interesting and disappointing in equal measure.

 

[mikeyjh]

That is so true.

When I was living in Manhattan, My mum and dad came over for a visit and I decided to take them on a guided coach tour as a treat.

Also on the bus was an Indian family. The tour had a set route of various landmarks but didn't go past the UN building which this family clearly wanted to see for some reason. The head of the family just told the coach driver they wanted to go there - and just couldn't comprehend it when the driver said no. He just kept repeating that he insisted they saw it as the head of the family.

To watch was interesting and disappointing in equal measure.

Quite the eye opener isn't it - I mean, who is right and who is wrong? I think we're right, treating people equally has to be the right approach.

 

[Seagull58]

It was always interesting to see other African nations throw their borders open to any South African farmer who would locate to their nation.

Think Zambia and Mozambique were two nations who have done quite well out of it.
No doubt the same happened with Zimbabwean farmers moving elsewhere in Africa.

Which in the end drains SA of experienced people and their lose becomes another nations gain.

Zambia offered land and grants to Zimbabwean farmers wanting to get away from Mugabe's farm expropriation policy (and farm murders). Zambian agriculture has done well in the last 20 years as a result.

 

[Seagull58]

As white \saffer politicians go (or went) de Klerk was a decent one. I think he saw the vision of, and hope for 'the rainbow Nation' - just a shame that the likes of Mbeki and Zuma were never going to let that happen. RIP.

That's not very fair on Mbeki. Yes, he made a mess of HIV/AIDS but he didn't participate or encourage rampant corruption. It was largely because of his attempts to prosecute Zuma for his involvement in the corrupt Thales arms deal in '99 that he was "recalled" by the ANC and replaced as ANC leader and SA president by none other than Zuma. Then the snouts really went in the trough.

 

[Seagull58]

Quite the eye opener isn't it - I mean, who is right and who is wrong? I think we're right, treating people equally has to be the right approach.

I would agree but there are millions/billions of people (particularly in other cultures) who don't agree.

 

[Pretty pink fairy]

Old Skool like Ian Smith

Regards
DF

 

[GT49er]

That's not very fair on Mbeki. Yes, he made a mess of HIV/AIDS but he didn't participate or encourage rampant corruption. It was largely because of his attempts to prosecute Zuma for his involvement in the corrupt Thales arms deal in '99 that he was "recalled" by the ANC and replaced as ANC leader and SA president by none other than Zuma. Then the snouts really went in the trough.

Not only HIV/AIDS. His unstinting support for Mugabe, blocking any sanctions/actions against him also weighs heavily against his legacy (and if Mugabe wasn't rampant corruption, with a side dish of racism and murder, I don't know what was!)