Again, I think Nelson Mandela acted very well once released, and played a large part in easing tensions.

It just should not be forgotten that Nelson Mandela was previously a man of violence, who’s actions caused great misery and loss to people, black and white.

This seems to have been forgotten in the orgy of eulogising.

Yes, I listened to a more reflective account of Mandela on BBC Radio4 yesterday ca.1600 and was impressed by the political and personal journey Pik Botha made. What do you think was the main reason for the change of stance of the South African Government at the end of the 1980s?

Most definitely the beginning of the end of the USSR….glastnost, perestroika, destruction of the Berlin Wall…etc.

That was the main, but not the only, reason.

There was also the admission obviously that African political development had to be accomodated of course.
In this regard, PW Botha (different to Pik Botha, btw) set about the dismantelling of petty apartheid unilaterally. It made sense.

But as long as the ANC and SACP were bedfellows, and the USSR, via proxies such as Cuba in neighbouring Angola, were exporting communism, electoral or real change would quite simply not have happened.

The signs or implosion were there in the mid 80’s already, when the USSR was importing grain from the USA.
South Africa even bought a few T-72 tanks direct from Poland in the late 1980’s for evaluation, under Operation Cabernet.

The events at the very end of the 1980’s might have been a surprise to the public, but all signs are that people in the know read the signs quite accurately.

Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing created by Nelson Mandela, were actually extremely innefficient, the murderous intent aside.
Soundly trounced when they attempted to take on the South African Military, they resorted to planting bombs aimed at innocent civilians.

Even this campaign was ineffective, except for one or two events, like the car bomb on crowded Church Street in Pretoria during rush hour in 1983, that killed 19 people and maimed 220.

I doubt the papers will be giving such inconvenient events too much coverage though.

Wilhelm – were the benefits you referred to equally available to blacks and whites and equally provided?

The benefits are means tested.

The disability grant has morphed a sort of catch all payment used to alleviate poverty.

Of course, with millions of legal and illegal people from other parts of Africa (up to 5 million from Zimbabwe alone!) you would wonder how affordable it is in the long run.

The xenophobic attacks on foreign Africans a few years ago illustrates this.
The ANC don’t mind though. They’re all voting fodder for them. The less well educated or ill informed, the better.

See the constant dumbing down of state education in South Africa for this.

There has been more than one black politician or public figure that has stated publically that education for black folk was actually under apartheid.

There are an awful amount of myths bandied around about apartheid, as unjust as that system was.

One of them is that the Soweto uprisings were about black kids being forced to be educated only in Afrikaans across the board.
This simply wasn’t true, as a moments research will reveal.
It was utilised as a mobilising point very effectively though.

Petty apartheid was dismantelled largely by PW Botha, and from the early 1980’s for example, things like segregated busses were a thing of the past.
PW Botha offered to release Nelson Mandela in 1982, and again in 1985, if he simply renounced violence. This is a pretty normal and logical request, if you ask me.
Nelson Mandela rejected it.

Nelson Mandela himself paid public tribute to Botha for a wide range of things Botha did to hasten the end of apartheid from early on, but naturally, this doesn’t fit the narritive of the fairytale for the press, so most people remain utterly ignorant.

Like I said, there are many myths….

So does South Africa hand out free food to those without work in the townships? I am not getting at you but asking how it works.

There is a social welfare system in place, albeit nothing like Europe.

Social grants make up the bulk of government spending, and there are various social grants available.

Once again, a lot of this system was in place well before 1994.
In other words, during apartheid, which is another little fact that is seldom mentioned, as it doesn’t fit the storyline.

http://www.sanlam.co.za/wps/wcm/connect/sanlam_en/sanlam/investor+relations/economic+information/economic+commentary/the+sustainability+of+the+south+african+welfare+state

I have retreated from the TV over the Mandela mania. For gawds sake let it rest and concentrate on the UK. What has South Africa achieved anyway? It is still a violent starving place for the majority of its inhabitants who had hoped for better. Snapper I agree with you.

A small correction if I may…..

South Africa is one of the few places in Sub Saharan Africa that does not starve.

It is an exporter of food.

Starvation did not happen under Apartheid either, which accounts for an oft ignored and inconvenient point:

Black Africans from neighbouring countries would fight to try and get into apartheid South Africa, legally and illegally, to the point where the government of the day had to put up patrolled electric fences on the border to try keep foreign black folk out of apartheid South Africa.

The truth is often far more complex than the simplistic claptrap trotted out by the media.

For many years through the 1970s and 1980s I was predicting a racial bloodbath in S Africa as the only way in which apartheid could possibly end.

I am glad I was wrong. We owe it all to two men. Mandela and De Klerk

The thousands who outlived Mandela, who might otherwise have been hacked to death, necklaced, shot, disappeared in that strife, have good reason to be thankful for what he became.

Moggy

The necklacing, hacking etc were unfortunately by-products of the ANC’s path to violence, something that Nelson Mandela played a very big part in, unfortunately.
The very first recorded instance took place in Uitenhage on 23 March 1985 when black African National Congress (ANC) supporters killed a black councillor who was accused of being a White collaborator.

A favoured ANC terror tactic that resulted in untold misery.

Also, it is often overlooked that the the white poplulation voted for change in the March 1992 referendum.

Also overlooked is that the violence instigated by the ANC, as well as the external terror threat were actually not the primary driver behind change in South Africa.

It was very firmly the end of the Cold War that was the primary driver, with the communist threat receding that allowed change to take place.

Never underestimate the fear of communism had on white South Africans (private property, religion, etc…), particularly seeing as the ANC and the South African Communist Party were, and indeed still are, bedfellows.

As said, not being negative, but attempting to bring balance into the orgy of eulogising going on.

Nelson Mandela’s behaviour once released was exemplerary, again as mentioned.

Moggy has a point.

To be fair and balanced about some of the uncritical eulogies going around, it is important to remember a few points.

Nelson Mandela could have follow two recent examples of his time.

Ghandi, who followed a peaceful route.
Che Guevara who espoused violence.

Nelson Mandela chose the violent route.
This went against the grain of the ANC at the time, and in fact alienated several of the more famous ANC leaders who rejected violence, and actually caused a little bit of a schism.

He was influenced, like Guevara and others at the time, by violent comminist or marxist doctrine.
This lead him and a cadre of others to form Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing dedicated to violence.

There is no dispute over this. He himself acknowledged this.

Some of the first victims of the new policy of volence were black pipeline workers killed whilst going about their job, feeding their families.
One doubts they, nor the hundreds of other dead or maimed victims that came after, will even be mentioned.

He was offered release up to 10 years earlier, with the only condition being a renunciation of violence.
He chose not to.

It is important, in this time of uncritical adulation calling him a saint, as witnessed right here on this forum (axel-edwards), to remember this.

He himself has always stated he was no saint.

So he was imprisoned for treason and violence. I’ve spoken to people who assumed he was jailed simply because he was black.
That is the level of ignorance out there.

His prison term, as pointedly mentioned by Nelson Mandela himself, was what turned him away from violence in the end. Toward a position geared more toward understanding the history and fears of the Afrikaner, of which Britain had dreadfully contributed toward in the lifetimes of many of the leaders of the National Party.

He was also aware that most of the cards were held by the NP government. That included a very strong military, police force, and not least, nuclear weapons.

He did indeed come out of prison a changed man, and South Africa can be thankful.
But the campaign of violence and violent disobedience, orchestrated by him, haunts that country today.

All these are verifiable facts, very checkable, and indeed, acknowledged by Mandela himself.

His path after release was exlempary, and he should be lauded for it.
But equally, the violence unleashed by him, that still haunts a nation today, should equally not be forgotten.

But the news media and certain sectors of the West will simply find it convenient to ignore these uncomfortable points, for either guilt or selfish reasons.

The uncritical sainthood bandwagon orgy will continue relentlessly, unfettered by inconvenient facts.

Which is something he himself never wanted.

Oldibas.

Please stop swearing and using profanities on this forum please.