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Thread: From the Rainbow Nation to just another part of darkest Africa.

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    From the Rainbow Nation to just another part of darkest Africa.

    I'll admit it. I am depressed right now.

    It's just a moment. It'll pass. Tomorrow I'll pick myself off the floor and put my shoulder back to the wheel to try to make things better - for myself, my family and those around me.

    But right now I'm still trying to come to terms with what this country has become. Slowly and insidiously - although the results are all coming home to roost virtually overnight.

    We've got the load shedding issue - I won't expand on that now.

    We have the distinct possibility in a change in economic policy - I'm not buying the "business as usual" statements for our future under JZ.

    We have a desperate skills shortage which is being discounted as "political points scoring."

    And now we can't even give away awards to people without them being rejected:
    A veteran New Zealand anti-apartheid campaigner has rejected a nomination for a prestigious South African award for foreigners, saying he is dismayed over conditions in the country, local media reported on Monday.

    John Minto, nominated for a Companion of OR Tambo Award by a South African government official, asked for the nomination to be withdrawn, the Christchurch Press newspaper said.

    "[South Africa] was the democratic country with so much hope and I think for so many people it's been the deepest of disappointments, and certainly it has been for me," Minto said.

    "I'm just deeply dismayed at what's happened," he told the newspaper.

    The Tambo award is the highest honour granted non-South Africans in recognition of friendship, cooperation and support.

    Previous recipients include Mahatma Gandhi, Kofi Annan, Salvador Allende and Martin Luther King Jr.

    In an open letter to South African President Thabo Mbeki, Minto blasted the African National Congress government which, he said, had left black South Africans "worse off than they were under [white] minority rule".

    "When we protested and marched into police batons and barbed wire here in the struggle against apartheid, we were not fighting for a small black elite to become millionaires," Minto wrote.

    "We were fighting for a better South Africa for all its citizens. The faces at the top have changed from white to black but the substance of change is an illusion."
    full story from M&G here

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    An update on the Minto story.
    The Presidency on Tuesday denied that anti-apartheid activist John Minto had been nominated for a prestigious national order, which Minto said he would decline on the grounds that the situation in South Africa was worse than under white rule.

    The Presidency "wishes to place it on record that Mr Minto has not, as a matter of fact, been nominated as a candidate for any of our national orders", said President Thabo Mbeki's spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga in a statement.

    The Presidency said it appreciates the role Minto and his colleagues played in the struggle and holds him in high esteem. "Government remains open to engaging with Mr Minto and the New Zealand anti-apartheid movement, especially as regards its honest and sustained efforts at delivering a better life for all South Africans under extremely challenging conditions."
    extracts from M&G article here
    The Minto rejection letter was stinging in its criticism.
    John Minto: "Apartheid was accurately described as a 'crime against humanity' by the United Nations and the ANC. I could not in all conscience attend a ceremony to receive an award conferred by your office while a similar crime is in progress."

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Here is a powerful article on the demise of the rainbow nation theme - Is this the end of the rainbow nation? by Alex Duval Smith. An extract:
    Yet this Africa Day, the rainbow nation looks like little more than a shallow advertising slogan. In the past week foreigners have been "necklaced" with burning tyres by rampaging mobs, shacks have been smashed and 25 000 people have sought shelter in churches, community halls and police stations. By Friday the attacks had spread as far as the Western Cape. Up to 50 foreigners -- from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia and Pakistan -- have been killed. For the first time since the end of apartheid, troops have been on the streets of the townships. Thousands of Mozambicans have boarded buses and gone home. Amid it all, President Thabo Mbeki seems oddly absent. Newspaper headlines cry out: 'Where are our leaders?'

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    anyone got details about the motorist killed by politicians convoy yesterday in durban???

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    just me duncan drennan's Avatar
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    In that same article, this part gives us much to chew over.

    "They say we take their jobs, and in a way it is true," said Nora Tapiwa of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum. "South Africans remain poorly educated and prefer to speak the vernacular rather than English. Employers, especially in the service industries, prefer Zimbabweans. Higher up the ladder, in banks and insurance companies, you even find many Zimbabweans benefiting from black economic empowerment. We are smart people and we are immigrants, so we don't sit around waiting for the government to deliver."
    Here are some things that strike me just from that paragraph (read the whole article if you have not yet done so - it is well worth it to contemplate the things being spoken about)

    • South Africans remain poorly educated
    • Companies are hiring black people (so let's stop with the race politics already)
    • Foreigners are benefiting from BEE, even though they don't classify as "black" in terms of SA legislation
    • People who don't sit around waiting for the government have been benefiting from the economic growth.


    It seems like the laws meant to benefit people are failing them, and that is because the laws are flawed and should be thrown out.
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    If the violence is not a direct result of some "force" whether political, criminal or otherwise -
    How is it possible for human beings in one area to take it as "permission" to commit such violent atrocities against immigrants - purely because it happened elsewhere?

    This causes me great fear for the future, especially after listing to Morning Live where an author being interviewed outright declared that one can only make a claim to being African if the "immigrant" of however many generations born in South Africa, completely embrace's the full values, cultures etc. of the black skinned African. Only a person of dark skin can claim to be African -was the message, and white skinned people remain "immigrants" English/African Dutch/African European immigrants etc.

    I am seriously despondent about our future.

    Further, the Candian Minister of Foreign Affairs has resigned due to the unacceptable delay in visas!
    Will our Minister of Foreign Affairs be resigning due to his incapability of protecting foreigners in our country? Deaths occured - not only a delay in obtaining a visa!!!!
    Oh! for the same "moral" values in our politicians!

    Yvonne

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yvonne View Post
    completely embrace's the full values, cultures etc. of the black skinned African.
    I'd like to see a clear definition of just what those values, cultures etc. are exactly. I'm guessing accepting diversity isn't one of them

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Allan Boesak also questioning the reintroduction of racial categorisation in rhetoric and law.
    Anti-apartheid stalwart Allan Boesak on Wednesday night slammed the ANC for bringing back "racial divisions and ethnic categorisation", saying that "the language of ethnicity had been brought back into the speech of the movement" and that the ANC, as the government, had "brought back the hated system of racial categorisation".

    He also said that affirmative action had, in some instances, "taken on new forms of racial exclusion, ruthlessly and thoughtlessly throwing overboard the solidarity forged through years of struggle".

    Boesak was speaking at the University of the Western Cape on Wednesday night where he delivered the fifth annual Ashley Kriel Memorial Youth Lecture.
    full story from IOL here

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