Last week we ran a couple of stories that detailed some of the racial tensions brewing in South Africa. We also included a couple of videos. What was most disturbing and noteworthy was seeing the extreme anger being expressed by white Afrikaners who are claiming they want ‘their country back’. Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like the rhetoric being expressed by Tea Party types who seem to have been motivated by having a Black man in the White House as opposed to the corporate heads (many of them white) who caused much of the economic upheavals they are railing about. Its hard not to hear about this anger among White South Africans and not compare that with what’s going on here. They want to celebrate and highlight what they claim is a unique culture and here in the US we have sitting governors publicaly harking back to the ‘the good ole days’ when the Confederate South was on the running things.
Sadly here in this country race trumps all logic and as we seen time and time again folks will vote against their own self interests rather than share power and resources with racial rivals. call it a warped sense of entitlement where some whites feel that they have a God-Given right to be economically, politically and socially better off then people of color. From what I’m reading about in South Africa, it seems like a resentment of no longer being in charge. In any case here’s a recent Africa Watch blog laying out some of what’s going on in South Africa…
-Davey D-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjDVnqEpHkY
Rising Dissatisfaction Among Post Apartheid Blacks. Is South Africa On The Brink Of A Bloodbath?
http://africawatch53.blogspot.com/2010/04/rising-dissatisfaction-among-post.html
Julius Malema
Julius Malema, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leader, and the recent brutal murder of the African Resistance Movement (AWB) creator Eugen Terreblanche may be the spark that lights the fuse of dissatisfaction at the limited gains received by blacks in post apartheid South Africa.
First Terreblanche is a white racist Afrikaner whose viciousness and brutality toward the killing of unarmed black South Africans came to light under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – he confessed his sins and walked away a free man.
Malema has received much scrutiny in the South African and British press lately, for, among other things, calling for the nationalization of South Africa’s mining industry, the singing and then banning by the courts of the song that includes the lyrics “shoot the boer,” and traveling to Zimbabwe and being met at the airport by 500 Zanu-PF youth members singing the above song, as well as being received on the tarmac by Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe.
The AWB (at their height they claimed a membership of 70,000) or what is left of it vowed to avenge Terreblanche, as the group has since toned down their call for revenge. According to news reports, “fear of growing racial tensions and polarization grew as condolences streamed in,” and the General-Secretary of the AWB blamed Malema. During a phone interview, he said to expect “revenge.” We are going to finish with funeral arrangements and thereafter have a summit conference on May one in Pretoria, where all of our leaders and members of the AWB will come together and decide on what actions we will take to revenge Terreblanche’s death.” He then linked the song with the lyrics “shoot the boer” reported News24.com, sung until recently banned by Malema as directly responsible for the killing.
“There were mixed reactions from political parties,” reported News24.com. Those included the Azanian People’s Organization (Azapo) that said Terreblanche died in a similar manner in which he murdered blacks. We are sad that Mr. Terreblanche died in the manner in which he died, murdered in cold blood. Sadly, this is how he killed black defenseless farm workers in Venterdorp.”
The Afrikaner author and political commentator Dr. Dan Roodt accused the ANC youth wing of creating “a crime of hatred towards Afrikaners” which, reported News24.com, could lead to “anarchy (and) Zimbabwean-style land evasions.”
In addition, the country is at the crossroad, he said, and appealed to the international community, including the European Union, the United States, and the United Nations to intervene and stop the potential for a bloodbath in South Africa.
Eugene Terreblanche
But all of this talk of a blood bath fails to consider that in post apartheid South Africa, the economy including 87 percent of the productive farmland, continues to be in the hands of whites. So Terreblanche might be the spark that lights the fuse, but the powder keg representing the unmet needs of black South Africans has been simmering for some time.
Then there is the land question, and all of the ink being abused in order to discuss white fear of a black takeover of the economy.
This question prompted then President Mandela to say in 1997 that: “Their task is to spread messages about an impending economic collapse, escalating corruption in the public service, rampant and uncontrollable crime, a massive loss of skills through white emigration and mass demoralization among the people… because they are white and therefore threatened by the ANC and its policies which favor black people.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPbExwBJiwY&feature=fvw
The current public discussion appears to be geared toward masking “racist narratives,” with a tendency to portray black wealth as something to be regarded with suspension, said Black Management Forman deputy president Tembakazi Mnyaka.
This is being couched in calls for “lifestyle audits,” which is a “smokescreen,” that Mnyaka claims, “the purveyors of this narrative seek to silence the emerging black economic elite and middle class, lest they are blackmailed by the now exposed banner that says: blacks cannot be wealthy.”
Mnyaka believes those that support calls for lifestyle audits “manipulate” and “de-historize the context.”
He also says, “We are made to question whether apartheid and its attendant policies that dehumanized blacks and created the most unequal society in the world really happened: and if the conclusion is that it did, we are made to feel guilty about correcting its wrongs.”
This narrative includes post apartheid blacks being made to feel guilty for desiring ownership of productive farmland 87 percent of which is in the hands of white South Africans.
President Zuma has promised to overhaul the governments’ land reform program, as a government minister said, “one of the most visible legacies of apartheid that has failed.”
This land distribution program to date, according to land reform minister Gugile Nkwinti, has not been “sustainable and has not provided the anticipated benefits to the recipients.” In addition, Nkwinti says, of the 15 million acres that has been distributed, most of which is non-productive land, and “has been transferred through restitution and redistribution… and has not created any economic benefit for many of the new owners.”
So this doomed from the beginning – failure at the redistribution of land stolen by whites under the 1913 Natives Land Act called, “the original political sin” by many, has no chance of meeting its mark. And at market prices, repurchasing one-third of that land and resettling black farmers by 2014 at a rate of $9.6 billion, is all but out of the question.
So maybe, ANCYL leader Julius Malema, with all his flaws, “is in fact the most appropriate leader,” according to South Africa’s Politicsweb, “for the moment.” Since he is unlike “the passive (Bantustan leaders) to the apologetic (liberal reformists like Desmond Tutu and Memphela Ramphela), the time has come for an explosive and radical character who will advocated for social equality without compromise.”
So the Youth League leader hits a nerve for his willingness to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. His criticism of the Zuma administration for under-resourcing of the National Youth Development Agency when President Zuma said he would support the NYDA during his State of the Nation speech shows why he has mass appeal among blacks and why whites fear his brand of leadership.
And then there is last week’s trip to Zimbabwe and his most recent call for he nationalization of South Africa’s mines. “We hear you are going straight for the mines, he said during a rally in Harare organized by the youth component of the Zanu-PF, “That is what we are gong to do in South Africa.”
“They have exploited our minerals for a very long time. We want the mines, now it’s our turn,” he said. The Sunday Times reported, Zimbabwe last month put in operation a law that requires foreign companies valued at over 500,000 US dollars to divest 51 percent of shares to non-white locals within five years.”
Malema apparently is taking his show on he road. In a tour designed to look at “nationalization programs,” the ANC Youth League leader will also visit Brazil, China, Chile, Cuba and Venezuela.
But of all the things, Malema has been criticized in the South African press, it is the media coverage of the “shoot the boar” song, the subsequent connection of the song to Terreblance killing, that has received the most ink. Malema’s singing of the song last month, according to published reports, in front of college students sparked a legal battle in which the ruling ANC challenged “a high court that ruled the lyrics as unconstitutional.” Boar means farmer in Afrikaners, and has negative connotations referencing white Afrikaners.
The killing of Terrblance appears to be in response to his unwillingness to pay two of his black farm workers, not motivated by listening to a song.
Jehron Muhammad can be reached at:Africawatch53@gmail.com
This man deserved to be killed. It was only right. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee was prolly something that the true Africans were compelled to settle for as they were out gunned by the Western(euro) powers that remain involved is Africa. All those guilty men deserved the firing squad or gallows.
For him to assert some white power nonsense in S Africa was going too far. That is to suggest that Africans again be put to the whims and abuses of gun toting crakkkas. Long live the ANC and the youth rebellion against colonialism.
From Boston to Zimbabwe All Day
The simplicity of it all lies behind the fact that a large percentage of economic power is still in the hands of a minority group of whites.
The fact they they want to continue solidifying their stranglehold on resources is what underlies all these tensions.
The ANC has indeed disappointed many of it’s own electorate by not firmly tackling wealth redistribution right from the start.
Those two guys did not come home from a Julius Malema Rally and decide to “shoot the boer”.
It was the combination of economics and having to deal on a daily basis with SA’s most notorious racist, that made them choose to commit the crime.
The man did not want to pay them their rightful wage and they were probably sick and tired of being his slaves for even with apartheid laws abolished, here in South Africa farmworkers are still treated no better than slaves.
I have to add that as much as I despised ET, his murder was a crime, one could even call it a heinous crime, but we would all be mistaken to think that Malema was the cause thereof.
IMO – Eugene Terblanche caused his own death.
And look at that name, Eugenics, white land is what it translates to. He prolly changed it to match his racist dream.
Whats up Ryan? and thanks Davey for the article. One thing that is crystal clear in South Africa, is that the Europeans are not remorseful for any of their actions, from slavery in the early Cape Colony, colonization and apartheid.Infact one hears arguments from these Devils that they did Africans a favor by civilizing them and thus rescuing them from savagery and barbarism.Witha mind set like that, one cannot expect them to be advocates of equality, especially land distribition and Socialist Democracy.Less than 5% of the land has been reditributed to Africans post 1994,this process will remain ineffective because of the “Willling Seller,Willing Buyer” policy, in which Europeans excessively inflate the prices of the land which they received by the barrel of the gun.The ANC leadership has become the enemy of African people`s aspirations, by advocating Capitalism and thus mantaining the pre-democracy status quo of white-economic domination.What we now have is a hand full of black millionaires all with political connections to the ANC, and the rest of the black population are still subjected to menial labor, just like they did during apartheid. With regard to the land that has been re-distributed to Africans the ANC government has failed or intentionaly refused to subsidize those recipients as it is the case in most parts of the world, in order to ensure a successfull transition.As a result those farms have been neglected and this validates the misconception that black people cannot be farmers and therefore do not deserve their land back.Without visionary leaders, who strive to serve their people, South Africa shall remain another tragic African story.The struggle continues.
man,
i told you about the south africa problematic in a e-mail some months ago!
there is division between folks there among color lines and apartheid mass murderers like Wouter Basson and Craig Williamson are still wandering around free there, because the government doesn’t want to stirr up controversy with the western governments who were involver in ilegal warfare against blacks in southern africa!
check: rhodesia, that was there test field for anthrax
Howzit Ghost of Shaka!
With all his inanities and sometimes weak attempts at getting attention, it would be folly for us South Africans not to Hear and Understand what underlies the statements that Julius Malema makes.
Ju-Ju tries hard to stir up the majority who are poor and still disenfranchised and tell them that they are entitled to immediate redistribution of wealth.
The only problem is that his expensive and extravagant lifestyle does not make Ju-Ju a very credible voice of the poor.
Adding to that, the companies he is involved in got government tenders that were supposed to build infrastructure in poor communities but they bungled it.
Now someone might want to ask what that has to do with Eugene Terreblanche’s death…
Well it has everything to do with his death but not in the sense that one can blame Malema for ET’s death.
The issues that Ju-Ju stirs up has everything to do with the fact that the rainbow of “The Rainbow Nation” never had a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The rainbow has become dull because it was compromised when the people who were supposed to drive social and economic transformation took there hands off the steering wheel and thought that the process would drive itself. That’s why land redistribution never happened and the majority of the mere 5% that was redistributed were not successfully turned into high yielding farms.
Their is also always this myth being spread that affirmative action has stripped the whites of jobs.
All lies. The population group in SA with the least unemployment just so happen to be the Whites.
A recent survey of companies concluded that White males are still the most likely to be appointed to senior management positions even when those companies have Affirmative Action programs in place. Clever manipulation of loopholes allow this.
Obviously there is a whole lot of resentment towards Whites.
The problem is that they are not helping us get over that resentment because they do everything that they can to block economic transformation.
They merely want us to forget that apartheid existed and want us all to pretend that the playing fields are level.
I can’t treat my oppressor as an equal if he still continues to attempt to oppress me.
My opion maybe if we should move Malema to be a youth president, things shall be better, And whether we did not seen that laugh out loudly cause he coming with more badly stuffs.
I am a South African citizen and what is written here is the work of a typical Yank, speaking of things that he does not know predicting things that will not happen and generally showing his ignorance and stupidity to the world.
The whole world knows that when it comes to ignorant people the Americans are first in line, and this article just proves it even better.
Your point of view is obviously a racist one and you will go to the ends of the Earth to hammer down your point. I don’t care that you hate whites, I don’t care what happens to the the whites either…. But please keep your one-sided-view out of our country, and stop with the lies. Julius Malema and Eugene Terreblanche are both tyrants and both in need of the same medicine… What happened to the Blacks was horrific, what is happening to the Whites are just as bad. If you support the killing of thousands of Whites in South Africa because of the past then you are the same as Usama Bin Laden who had the same point of view… If you want to spread your propaganda and talk shit about the Whites go ahead, but please don’t speak about countries and people you know nothing about, in other words: Keep your mouth shut about my country and leave the commenting about politics up to people who can look at the whole picture and not just from one point of view….
Thank you