Tag Archives: Africa

SA:’Race-Based’ Rations & Radicalization

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Apartheid era menu showing the racialization of food rations.

Apartheid era menu showing the racialization of food rations.

During Apartheid, the political prisoners of South Africa’s Robben Island would frequently go on hunger strike over the quantity and quality of their rations.  Dietitians in the service of the state’s racial system determined ‘racial diets’, according to the Western determined ‘tastes’, with little input from the races themselves. Taste differs from individual to individual.

When prisoners complain, wardens would often respond, “like it,” or “I eat no better at home.” The food would then be quickly traded among the prisoners, until that activity found out and suspended; it later resumes.  There is no need for a racial structure of rations, except but to make detention efforts more backwards and cumbersome. Why should they go through such an effort?

It seems to me that a diet of hunger and frustration only serves to radicalize.

SA TRC: What Truth & Reconciliation?

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Tutu_TRC-1From the onset, declared in the constitution, amnesty for past atrocities was proscribed to all parties of South Africa’s Apartheid era conflicts. Initially, it was commonly represented that amnesty was granted for the crimes of the Boer. Men of all colors lost their hands, their lives, or bore indefinite detention, prison sentences or fire-bombings.

Yes, it is true that the state system of apartheid was an injustice. Anyone who did not recognize it long ago, realizes it now. Many whites might long for standard of living they once enjoyed, but all of us now know the great moral cost it inflicted.

It’s “a new beginning…not about skin color, culture, or language, but about people.” The international press would do well to recognize that, and not characterize the Afrikaner as the stereotypical villain. There are villains enough on all sides, regardless of color.

Amnesty, it turns out, has come to shield the new government from their crimes against humanity. The average individual did not engage in criminality. That was the doing of our government, and one set of tyrants has been traded for another.

Reconciliation will happen in the future, but not now. The wounds are too fresh. The villains have negotiated a compromise, and given themselves immunity from their actions. They will rule for another generation, and then maybe the tree will be cleansed from root to branch.

Image source & Additional TRC coverage: http://www.sthp.saha.org.za/memorial/articles/the_truth_and_reconciliation_commission.htm

SA: Homeland of the ‘Migrant Labourer’

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65-254-E6-168-overcoming_apartheid-a0a7h5-a_3272Blacks came to be considered ‘migrant labor’; never ‘indigenous’ in South Africa. If you were not able-bodied, you were a ‘superfluous appendage’ and subject to removal and criminal penalty.

White children could play in the park, supervised by their black nannies. Black children played in the street, unsupervised. The nanny feeds her charge but her children are malnourished back home. She is lucky, even, if she gets to see them. If the father also lucky, if he gets to play any part in raising the children, because the law forbids their cohabitation. Families are separated, consigned to hostel living, and state barriers to intermingling. 

‘Family’ reached new definitions under apartheid.

Whites, Coloureds, Asians, and ‘honorary whites’ have their own sit-down restaurants. Blacks are made by law to stand and eat the fast-food on their local corner.   Because of this, ALL people in SA are still forced to look over their shoulders in fear. Could policy makers not see how this builds resentments? Did they blindly believe these policies would stand in perpetuity?

Amnesty Gives Power to ANC Criminals

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The extent of the crimes is well known…
and the government is full of perpetrators…
can amnesty really be the mechanism of reconciliation?

1990: Namibian Independence: Winnie & Nelson Mandela with Joe Slovo at the Namibian Independence celebrations.

Winnie & Nelson Mandela with Joe Slovo at the Namibian Independence celebrations.

The many crimes of the ANC have been absolved by amnesty.

It’s hard to hear the name ‘Mandela’ without also recalling ‘Mandela United’ (football club) or the South African Communist Party. While the man himself may or may not be a Saint, he endorsed something which became so barbarous and wild. Near the end of his revolution, children were killing children. Who could know the number killed or maimed by land mines. Not to mention, conscionable dissenters, ‘rehabilitated’ at Camp Quatro. Is this how they will steward this new nation? the How could anyone, black or white, sleep safe.

If one was lucky to survive a revolution (which has the color of klepto-communism), must they now face a ring of violent conspirators and tortuous murderers as their newly elected ministers. Is this an improved South Africa; for everyone, black or white? Can the media be trusted to examine the corruption, or will they look over the scandal? Are they willing to challenge the ANC on behalf of their readers or viewership? Time will tell if this new nation will be victims, again, unless the rotten are purged.

The Party of a violent Revolution should not be the party of the people and state.

SA: Land ‘Protection’ Racket

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Horse safaris are popular in Bhangazi, SA

Horse safaris are popular in Bhangazi, SA

The Bhangazi’s claim on the Eastern Shores of Lake St Lucia is currently the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park.  It has been labeled a World Heritage Site of ‘international importance’.  Is it important to protect these lands? Does international need trump local need? Were these lands protected to keep them from the Zulu in the first place? How much weight does the titanium of its dunes hold in the negotiation?

In 1998, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) asked people if they would rather a monetary payout than land and “the overwhelming majority” chose money. Would money solve their problems? Is a payoff in their best interest? Would it solve squalor, hunger, and HIV? Does it make sense to allow the disruption of productive white-owned farms for the newly enfranchised black novice? The government needs to sponsor holistic solutions.

What about the mines? Will Anglo-American extract the resource and export them as it suits their bottom line? Diamonds are plentiful here, yet most are poor. The mines should be African ran and should suffer no want of employment or lull in production. South African diamonds on the open market, for all purposes, beyond Western jewelry, could better the lives of people throughout the world.

image via https://www.facebook.com/kznhorsesafaris

AIDS Patients of Khayelitsha SA

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Khayelitsha+township+xgold+2012

Most of South African AIDS patients of Khayelitsha live in shacks. They don’t have access to water or electricity in their hovels. They are unemployed, and probably lack the diet necessary to take the drugs. Just as many have tuberculosis. More than 5 million people in South Africa have HIV, and probably more than 1000 die every day HIV/AIDS and the diseases that accompany it. AIDS affects South Africa more than any other country. There us access to drug therapy, but their use must be regimented for them to be effective.

These drugs will have to be taken for as long as the patient lives. People need to be trained in their use for them to hold back the virus effectively. Low-cost generic versions which work just as well, but there are just so many people to reach. It is a logistical quandary short of manpower.

There are not enough hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses, counselors, or meals to meet the need of the afflicted. An effective state program to combat the matter is the only hopeful solution. Until then, many will go without.

Alongside anti-retroviral therapy, the government must find a way to treat the human—clinic access, food, water—or any other obstacle that stands in the way of ARV distribution and efficacy. The selection must be fair, as this epidemic has elevated AIDS treatment to a human right. Because Khayelitsha is one of the apartheid regimes final attempts to enforce separate development, it is the mandate of the ANC to assist in resolving its problems.

The Return of Africa’s Strongmen

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The Return of Africa’s Strongmen – WSJ

“After World War II, Britain, France and other European empires withdrew. But the militaries of many newly independent African states continued to suppress their own civil societies. Africa weathered more than 60 coups between 1960 and 1990.”

How can that be good for any country/continent?

Biko Was No ANC Communist

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Mr. Biko understood that society must acknowledge its group consciousness, and do so under one banner, as opposed to multiple, self-defeating fronts.

He was disheartened by the committees which advocated revolution, feeling that there was no need for violence–that the overall numbers gave them the leverage they needed. Biko hoped that barbarism and riotous behavior could be avoided. He believed that black South Africans would have a free nation, one day, in ANY outcome, because the untenable situation mandated it and that it would be quite sad if it came by way of bloodbath, when it needn’t be.

The ANC claimed ‘solidarity’ with the working men of the world, but failed to unite their own people against their local oppressors. Biko feared they were at the suggestion from outside influences and willing to use violence when the most effective approach would be peaceful confrontation.Biko felt that submitting to the ANC’s claim of representation, meant sharing the guilt in their crimes, and suffering the penalty of their actions.

The ANC overlaid the nonsense of foreign geopolitics on top of the liberation struggle. This resulted in justice seeking blacks like Biko being called a great many things: ‘agitators’, ‘communists’, while holding no sympathies to Russia or planned economies. From what I have studied, Biko believed that there were more liberating philosophies, and perhaps room for both the public and private sectors in the economy.

Biko believed that participation in the economy had been legally denied, as well a voice in that process. From his point of view, no white representative could suffice in fully representing the concerns of black South Africans. Nor, he felt, should he be the speaker of the people his race marginalizes. What Biko sought was representation and the ability to represent. The same status before the law.

But many of South African leaders leaders disagreed, aligning with the ANC, content to subscribe to borrowed notions to solve the disparity. Biko believed that Communism would not solve South Africa’s woes, in the same way that the Western Democratic model would be ill suited. Biko suggested the solution must be African, and borne of black Africans, who recognize their entitlement to such freedom under God.

Genocide: An Inexacting Buzz Word

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France Rwanda Genocide

Genocide is: Killing members of a group or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.  It can also be describe inflicting conditions on a group to bring about their destruction, as well as preventing births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Not to belittle the term, or those who experienced violent and barbaric equivalencies as mentioned above, but by those definitions, genocide occurs here, in our own country, first, and still, with the Indian population and shortly afterwards, the black population.  These demographics have consistently, since the inception of this country, have been subject killing and bodily harm by state sanctioned or popularly led actions; though the brutality of such grievous treatment is in remission, elements of hatred based on race still exist. Genocide prerequisites such as “mental harm” to the group are evidenced in land appropriations, forced relocations and legal codes meant to stifle and isolate. The lack of reparations is obvious; the United States still exists: there is no Iroquois Confederacy or Cherokee nation or a sovereign Lakota territory within American borders.

I say this because the term fails.  Its non-usage in the face of obvious atrocities, such as those in Bosnia or Rwanda, almost shows that the term is only applicable so long as the victim is white, Jewish or a popular form of Christianity.  Inaction almost wiped out the Jews and Armenians, and UN idleness in the last few instances that fit the genocide definition, almost resulted in the same for their respective peoples.  The use of the label is inexact, although, I’m sure, a sincere attempt to redress what could just be simply put: barbarism. I say we forget about the nomenclature, and work to stamp out barbarism in our own society and others we are in league with, rather than deliberating incessantly over the term ‘genocide’ and when and if each situation deserves to be legally defined as such.

ZIM HIV/AIDS Response: Near Tie w/SA

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via http://www.thezimbabwean.co/lifestyle/health/53415/the-right-to-arvs.html

via http://www.thezimbabwean.co/lifestyle/health/53415/the-right-to-arvs.html

Although Zimbabwe was one of the first African nations to witness a decline in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, the disease is as much a problem, still, as it is in the rest of southern Africa.  Adult prevalence has 24.6% of the population to 15.3%. However, “caution should be taken when interpreting the data available,” according to Avert.com.  Large numbers of homeless and displaced people aren’t regularly surveyed.

“Many people have left Zimbabwe and the ones that are left are so struck down by poverty and the collapse of the health delivery system such that they cannot access hospitals. We wonder if these figures can be trusted.”

Like many countries, the Zimbabwean government was slow to acknowledge the AIDS problem.  In 1999, a formal AIDS policy was announced.  These measures have helped, but poor mismanagement and politicalization of the issue (both negative and positive) have “overshadowed the implementation of the National AIDS Policy.”

http://www.avert.org/aids-zimbabwe.htm

FOLLOWUP STORY:
http://www.thezimbabwean.co/lifestyle/health/53415/the-right-to-arvs.html