--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@clearwire.net> wrote:

> Well, from about the same period as Dickens(when the Pacific NW began to be seriously settled), until now, there has been massive "removal of excessive timber"), and it has been getting decidedly warmer. . . .and wetter. 

Wetter in Seattle? What, it now rains twice every day instead of just once? ;)

Seriously, though, massive deforestation has always been a hobby for Americans. The entire US eastern seaboard used to be one massive contiguous deciduous forest, and we managed to destroy all of it. The passenger pigeon, which may well have been the most populous terrestrial species on the planet, was not driven to extinction by hunting -- it disappeared because we cut down literally its entire habitat.

It's no wonder that so many Amazonian nations view the US as self-righteous hypocrites.

================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

Anybody who has a light sword is welcome to comment


Joe Cooper wrote:
>
>
> **George Lucas Gets Cease and Desist Letter
>
<http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/scienceblogs/dispatches/%7E3/OBm-rh06nOg/georg\
e_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php
>
<http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/scienceblogs/dispatches/%7E3/OBm-rh06nOg/georg\
e_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php>>**
>
>
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/george_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php?ut\
m_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fdispatch\
es+%28Dispatches+from+the+Culture+Wars%29
>
<http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/george_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php?u\
tm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fdispatc\
hes+%28Dispatches+from+the+Culture+Wars%29>
>
>

**George Lucas Gets Cease and Desist Letter
      
<http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/scienceblogs/dispatches/%7E3/OBm-rh06nOg/georg\
e_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php>**


http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/george_lucas_gets_cease_and_de.php?ut\
m_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fdispatch\
es+%28Dispatches+from+the+Culture+Wars%29

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@...> wrote:

> Well, from about the same period as Dickens(when the Pacific NW began to be
seriously settled), until now, there has been massive "removal of excessive
timber"), and it has been getting decidedly warmer. . . .and wetter. 


Wetter in Seattle?  What, it now rains twice every day instead of just once?  ;)

Seriously, though, massive deforestation has always been a hobby for Americans.
The entire US eastern seaboard used to be one massive contiguous deciduous
forest, and we managed to destroy all of it.  The passenger pigeon, which may
well have been the most populous terrestrial species on the planet, was not
driven to extinction by hunting -- it disappeared because we cut down literally
its entire habitat.

It's no wonder that so many Amazonian nations view the US as self-righteous
hypocrites.


================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

 

 

 

Right you are, Anne. Even these dummies know that the world Islamic community could give a rat's ass about the environment.

And that complete lack of environmental awareness on the part of the Islamic community is sad in itself, but hardy surprising. All fundamentalists, regardless of stripe, foolishly see the world only in terms of their holy scripture.

 

 

 

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "Len" <lflank@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "stanyardroger" <stanyardroger@> wrote:
> >
> I think the Thatcherites had pretty much the same view (wasn't it Thatcher who said at the time that anyone who supported the ANC was living in "cuckoo-land"?)
>
Yep Mrs T was an old fashioned reactionary when it came to South Africa. It led to sparks with Nelson Mandela, IIRC, when he eventually came to Britain.

Still there was a far amount of paranoia amongst British wingnuts in the 1980s when it came to "commies".

I was one of the first people in Brtian to own a satellte dish for watching a variety of British and European TV channels. The local Tory MP decided that I must have been a Russian spy using the dish to transmit secrets to the Russians. Too dim to realise that the dish was a one-way receive only device.

I got named in Parliament over related work at the time - alledged breaches of the Official Secrets Act, Section 2. That's the bit they can lock you up for life for disclosing the brand of tea drunk by civil servants or that daffodils are grown in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

Clearly I was a dubious and dangerous "lefty" of some sort!

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Anne Gilbert <avgilbert@...> wrote:

> About the only thing I remember about Botha was, he kept getting up and
wringing his hands and claiming he couldn't change anything.  At about the time
Nelson Mandela was getting ready to be let out of prison, I met a lady from SA
who I mentioned this to, and she just laughed and laughed.  SA was in "deep
doo-doo" by then anyway, thanks to this massive crime against humanity.


Yeah, I don't think apartheid could have gone on much longer even if they had
tried to defend it to the last rather than give in to the inevitable. Even the
most repressive police state simply can't last forever in the face of a hostile
population.



================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

 

 

"The indications are that the climate of
England is becoming warmer, and, consequently,
healthier; a fact to be partly accounted
for by the improved drainage and
the removal of an excess of timber from the
land."

from Household Words, June 1, 1850, pg 224

Editor: Charles Dickens

Greenwich Weather-Wisdom is the article title, no author indicated.

An article about the scientific weather studies at Greenwich, England

 

 

--- On Sun, 11/29/09, Michael Brass <mikearchaeology@gmail.com> wrote:

> Need to mention the Rubicon speech (1986) which led to real world-wide
isolation. The Deomcrat-controlled Congress forced Reagan to sign-off
on further sanctions.

I remember when that happened. Those of us active in the divestment effort thought the old bastard Botha would NEVER give up power voluntarily. As I recall, he later refused utterly to cooperate with the Truth and Reconciliation commisssion.

Apartheid was one massive crime against humanity. The whole lot of them should rightfully have died in jail.

================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, brianvds <brianvds@...> wrote:


> You see the same thing in some areas here where believe it or not, there are
still witch hunts. But the 'witches' that get burned very often are simply
people with some influential enemies.


As I recall, most of the victims of the Salem witch hunts in the US were also
female property-owners who had enemies (at the time, the local authorities
confiscated the property of condemned lawbreakers).



>On a related note, I once read that one reason why Lavoisier lost his head in
the French revolution is because years before, he was less than enthusiastic
about a young intellectual' s scientific theory. The failed scientist in
question was one Jean-Paul Marat...


I've always thought that Marat has gotten kind of a bum rap.  He was actually a
very perceptive and astute political observer, and he certainly was a tireless
champion for the interests of the downtrodden sans-culottes (at a time when most
of the other revolutionary leaders were just using the commoners as cannon
fodder in support of their own interests).

Too bad Marat went overboard on that whole "guillotine" thingie . . .

;)



> how many people have been added to the middle class (compared to a certain
other major western nation where the middle class has been shrinking... ;-)


Hey, the American economy has created a HUGE and GROWING middle class - in
China.

:)


================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/11/fox_brilliantly_demonstrates_f.php\
?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fgrrl\
scientist+%28Living+the+Scientific+Life%29

Faux News again.  Add up the percentages on the pie chart.

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, Lenny Flank <lflank@...> wrote:
>
> I remember Mr Mofokeng explaining to me that the divisions tended to be rather
abritrary, and it wasn't unusual for two members of the same family to be given
different racial classifications.

---It even happened that children were taken from their parents because they
belonged to a different race. Or couples forced to separate because it turned
out they were not of the same race. Like something from a Monty Python movie,
and it would indeed have been hilarious had it not been so monstrous.

> The odd thing about that is that Obama hadn't even yet actually DONE anything
for world peace -- and, I suppose, it could be argued that he still hasn't (and
indeed seems about to expand the Afghan War, a huge huge mistake). It seems to
me that Obama's primary qualification for getting the Nobel Peace Prize is that
he wasn't George W Bush, and provided a great opportunity for the international
community to hurl a final collective "fuck you, asshole" at Bush.

---And it follows then that Dan Brown should get the Nobel prize for literature
because he isn't Barbara Cartland... ;-)

> Indeed the ANC were themselves not angels.  The whole "necklacing" thing was a
not terribly good idea, and it's pretty certain that much of the actions against
"collaborators" and "informers" was very likely just disguised personal
vendettas.

---Yes, alas, that sort of thing tends to happen in revolutions, and one can
argue that even the real traitors did not deserve to die in such a manner. It
was of course partly also simply the complete lack of any proper policing - as
long as the darkies were killing each other, the police couldn't be bothered
(and indeed, the security forces sometimes deliberately fanned the flames of
such conflicts). You see the same thing in some areas here where believe it or
not, there are still witch hunts. But the 'witches' that get burned very often
are simply people with some influential enemies.

On a related note, I once read that one reason why Lavoisier lost his head in
the French revolution is because years before, he was less than enthusiastic
about a young intellectual's scientific theory. The failed scientist in question
was one Jean-Paul Marat...

> The book ends with Mandela's election.  If the ANC indeed descends into
thuggery, it does still at least deserve to be remembered for the anti-apartheid
fight.

---Yes, indeed, and in fairness, they have had very substantial successes as
well. It is easy to forget how nicely the economy has been growing for the past
fifteen years, how many people have been added to the middle class (compared to
a certain other major western nation where the middle class has been
shrinking...;-) and so on. It is not all just doom and gloom, and much of the
gloom bits are legacies of decades of violent repression and no fault of the
current government. But it remains rather disappointing to see how they
sometimes seem hell-bent on repeating every last mistake the previous regime
made.

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, stanyardroger <stanyardroger@...> wrote:

>I got named in Parliament over related work at the time - alledged breaches of
the Official Secrets Act, Section 2. That's the bit they can lock you up for
life for disclosing the brand of tea drunk by civil servants or that daffodils
are grown in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.


I got my first visit from the FBI after I wrote to the space museum in Moscow
about some articles I was writing, they put me in touch with cosmonaut Alexei
Leonov, and we corresponded a few times (this was in 1986 or 87). Apparently the
FBI at the time viewed the entire Soviet space program as just a cover story for
their nefarious military space-weapons world-domination program, and therefore
assumed that by speaking positively about the accomplishments of the Soviet
space program, I must have been part of the plot.

I remember saying to my sister at the time, "What sort of strange country do we
live in if writing to a space explorer is enough to get you a visit from the
state security police?"

Apparently, paranoid wingnuts are the same the world over.  (sigh)


================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

Again, many thanks to both of you.  I will begin making these corrections.

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Michael Brass <mikearchaeology@...> wrote:

>
> You mean that the Whites were granted semi-independence and
> non-Whites
> were sold-out by the Brits.


It does seem to be a pattern that, whenever one looks at a world trouble spot,
it does always seem to be the British, French, and/or Americans who are at the
central root of the problem  ;)



> > In 1959, the black nationalists formed their own
> group, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Their most famous
> member was Steven Biko.
>
> Nah. Biko founded the Black Consciousness Movement:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko


Ah, I thought he was with PAC.  I am mis-remembering. I mention Biko largely
because, in the US, he is the most well-known anti-apartheid activist (other
than Mandela, of course), and few people in the US understand that Biko was not
a member of the ANC.

Back in my younger days, in my conversations with David Mofokeng, we often
talked about the Black nationalists, particularly in regards to the role of
Inkatha and Chief Buthelezi.  ANC's position, essentially, was that Inkatha, by
accepting the existence of the Bantustans, was a sellout and a collaborator with
apartheid. My view was different, and was heavily influenced by the fact that,
at the time, I knew several members of the American Indian Movement, who were of
course fighting to gain the very thing that Inkatha had (at least in theory)--an
independent sovereign state under their own government. (As an aside, back in
those days, most activists and peaceniks tended to equate the African-American
civil rights movement with the Native American movement, and I had to spend a
lot of time explaining that the two groups actually had goals that were
diametrically opposite each other--the goal of the civil rights movement was the
acceptance of Blacks as
  equal integrated members of mainstream society (while mainstream society was
trying to keep them separate and marginalized and away from white Americans),
while the goal of the Native American militants was precisely to AVOID
integration and assimilation, and to instead maintain their own cultural and
national identity within their own independent sovereign states (while the
mainstream society tried very hard to stamp out their cultural identity and make
Americans out of them all).

So I argued that if Inkatha were actually able to win a truly independent Zulu
state, where it could maintain its national identity and culture, that would not
be a bad thing.

Mofokeng's argument to that was a good one, and was in fact the very same as the
argument I gave to my American Indian friends -- in both cases, whether Indian
reservation or Bantu Homeland, the land area was simply not big enough to allow
an economically viable independence, and inevitably would force them into once
more being dependent upon the surrounding dominant culture.

My AIM friends, in turn, made two counter-arguments to that: (1) even a small
land area would at least be enough for the "traditionalists" to keep alive their
own national identity and culture under their own sovereign government, and (2)
if all the US's treaties with the Native nations were actually enforced, the
Indians would actually own about one-fourth of the total land area of the United
States, enough to establish national sovereignty for each tribe. Of course, that
will not ever happen, as the US simply will not ever live up to those
agreements.


================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, Michael Brass <mikearchaeology@...>
wrote:
>
> 2009/11/30 Brian van der Spuy <brianvds@...>

> The first Bantu peoples entered South Africa in the second century AD.
> There were conflicts but also co-habitation, co-operation and
> intermingling between the Baswara and Bantu peoples.

---Well, there you have it. I have often wondered to what extent these conflicts
have been exagerrated to prove that "they also killed each other."

> > {Off-topic question on English grammar: should one say "politics IS" or
"politics ARE"? Is politcs one thing or many, grammatically speaking?}
>
> It depends on whether or not the person is talking about one or more
> political theme.

---Hmm, still not sure how I would apply this in practice. English should be
banned.  ;-)

Many many thanks to Mikey and Brian.  That's the wonderful thing about this
list--pick a topic, any topic, and there is bound to be a few people here who
know quite a bit about it.   :)


--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Brian van der Spuy <brianvds@...> wrote:

>I have a feeling you already know more about South African history than I do,
seeing as I learned most of my history at a government school, when the
apartheid regime was still in charge... ;-)


Most of what I know about South Africa, I learned from a guy named David
Mofokeng, who was an ANC member who travelled across the northeastern US in
1987-88 giving speaking engagements and media interviews about apartheid. The
first time I met him was at a mutual acquaintence's house in Philadelphia--he
and I grabbed a case of beer, sat alone in a corner, and literally talked all
night until the sun came up the next morning.


>But perhaps that is really too much detail for such a brief overview?

I do prefer to let the ANC speak for itself, through the documents. The purpose
of the preface is just to give American readers enough info so that when they
see references in the documents to things like "Bantu Education Act", "Oliver
Tambo", or "the pass laws", they'll know what it is referring to. Explaining all
those things in a short preface seemed better to me than interrupting the text
with lots of explanatory footnotes.

There will still no doubt be things in the documents that the typical American
reader won't grasp -- hopefully it will spur some to do research and learn more.
That period of history should never be forgotten.



>And the whole system eventually became even more complex and elaborate, with
the 'coloureds' being subdivided into several groups as well, because not all of
them were necessarily of mixed race.

I remember Mr Mofokeng explaining to me that the divisions tended to be rather
abritrary, and it wasn't unusual for two members of the same family to be given
different racial classifications.


>Instead, one of them got a Nobel Peace prize. Then again, the president of a
certain very belligerent western nation recently ALSO got a Nobel peace prize...
;-)

The odd thing about that is that Obama hadn't even yet actually DONE anything
for world peace -- and, I suppose, it could be argued that he still hasn't (and
indeed seems about to expand the Afghan War, a huge huge mistake). It seems to
me that Obama's primary qualification for getting the Nobel Peace Prize is that
he wasn't George W Bush, and provided a great opportunity for the international
community to hurl a final collective "fuck you, asshole" at Bush.


> One mistake is to see the entire history of the country as evil Afrikaners
against everybody else.

Indeed the ANC were themselves not angels.  The whole "necklacing" thing was a
not terribly good idea, and it's pretty certain that much of the actions against
"collaborators" and "informers" was very likely just disguised personal
vendettas.


>The other thing one should caution against is the History of Africa According
to Thabo Mbeki. Under his leadership, the ANC substantially watered down their
original ideals, and became just another party of upper middle class fat cats,
corrupt, incompetent, unprincipled, power-hungry and in fact ever more and more
like Botha's bunch of clowns, from whom they probably learned their dirty
tricks.


Alas, the day after the revolution, most revolutionaries become staunch
conservatives.  ;)

The book ends with Mandela's election.  If the ANC indeed descends into
thuggery, it does still at least deserve to be remembered for the anti-apartheid
fight.



================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

"The indications are that the climate of
England is becoming warmer, and, consequently,
healthier; a fact to be partly accounted
for by the improved drainage and
the removal of an excess of timber from the
land."

from Household Words, June 1, 1850, pg 224

Editor: Charles Dickens

Greenwich Weather-Wisdom is the article title, no author indicated.

An article about the scientific weather studies at Greenwich, England

2009/11/30 Brian van der Spuy <brianvds@...>
>
> One could of course also mention that the Bantu tribes were, just like the
European colonists, relative newcomers to southern Africa,

I have an anthropological problem with the concept of tribebs, btw.

The first Bantu peoples entered South Africa in the second century AD.

> where they treated the original Khoisan inhabitants of the region no better
than the European colonists treated them.

There were conflicts but also co-habitation, co-operation and
intermingling between the Baswara and Bantu peoples.

> {Off-topic question on English grammar: should one say "politics IS" or
"politics ARE"? Is politcs one thing or many, grammatically speaking?}

It depends on whether or not the person is talking about one or more
political theme.

> ---As far as I can work out, the correct spelling for the ethnic group, even
in English, is "Afrikaner" and not "Afrikaaner." Actually not too sure, but
Wikipedia goes with "Afrikaner."

You're right. I'm guilty of making the same mistake.

> ---I think the people removed from District 6 were actually mostly
"coloureds," though the numbers did include some Indians.

Yup.

> [[[In 1977, after police massacred thousands of unarmed student protesters in
Soweto, the UN placed an arms embargo on South Africa.]]]
>
> ---I am at work at the moment, where I only have access to Wikipedia,
according to which your above number is an exagerration: several hundreds of
people died in the Soweto uprising, perhaps as many as 600, but probably not
thousands.

Thousands injured, hundreds killed :-(

>It is also noteworthy that some of the bravest individuals in the
anti-apartheid struggle were ethnic Afrikaners,

Indeed.


--
Regards,
Mike

http://www.antiquityofman.com

[[[a request for our South Africans (kind of long, sorry)
   Posted by: "Lenny Flank" lflank@... lflank
   Date: Sun Nov 29, 2009 1:20 pm ((PST))
So I'd appreciate it if (1) our South African friends could point out any inaccuracies or important omissions that I made, and (2) if our Amercan friends could point out any sections that seem unclear, confusing, or not easy enough to understand.]]]

---I have a feeling you already know more about South African history than I do, seeing as I learned most of my history at a government school, when the apartheid regime was still in charge... ;-)

I'll point out a few very minor things:

[[[In the early 19th century, both the Dutch and the British had colonized South Africa. For a brief time, African chief Shaka Zulu had unified the Zulu tribes and had successfully resisted white encroachment,]]]

---I don't think Shaka so much resisted encroachment as that there wasn't much to speak of during his reign. The major encroachment started to happen when his half brother Dingane was King (after the latter assasinated Shaka). And in fairness one might perhaps point out that the mess that subsequently happened in Zululand wasn't ALL the fault of the Boers; Dingane was not exactly Mohandas Gandhi and had a hand in his own downfall. But perhaps that is really too much detail for such a brief overview?

One could of course also mention that the Bantu tribes were, just like the European colonists, relative newcomers to southern Africa, where they treated the original Khoisan inhabitants of the region no better than the European colonists treated them. I'm sure Mikey knows more about this though, and once again perhaps a bit too much detail for a brief overview, but perhaps you should be careful about not giving the impression that only white males have ever enslaved or massacred other people. I fear it is a very human trait. If there is one thing history teaches us it is that people are pretty much the same everywhere, and politics tends to be a struggle for power, not justice.

{Off-topic question on English grammar: should one say "politics IS" or "politics ARE"? Is politcs one thing or many, grammatically speaking?}

[[[ but by the end of the 19th century, the British governed the provinces of Natal and Cape Colony, while the descendents of the Dutch, who now referred to themselves as “Boers” or as “Afrikaaners”, controlled the Orange Free State and the Transvaal provinces (the Boers had migrated away from the areas that were under British control, in what they called “The Great Trek”).]]]

---As far as I can work out, the correct spelling for the ethnic group, even in English, is "Afrikaner" and not "Afrikaaner." Actually not too sure, but Wikipedia goes with "Afrikaner."

[[[South African society was divided into four groups, the British and Afrikaaner “Whites”, the African “Bantus”, the Indian and Chinese “Asians”, and the mixed-race “Coloureds”—with all of the non-Whites often being lumped together as “Blacks”.]]]

---And the whole system eventually became even more complex and elaborate, with the 'coloureds' being subdivided into several groups as well, because not all of them were necessarily of mixed race.

[[[land areas were assigned by race, and people who lived in the “wrong” areas were forcibly removed and “resettled” (in Johannesburg, some 60,000 Africans were forcibly removed to the newly-built “South West Township”, which became known as Soweto, while in Cape Town, 55,000 Indians were forcibly removed from District Six);]]]

---I think the people removed from District 6 were actually mostly "coloureds," though the numbers did include some Indians.

[[[In 1977, after police massacred thousands of unarmed student protesters in Soweto, the UN placed an arms embargo on South Africa.]]]

---I am at work at the moment, where I only have access to Wikipedia, according to which your above number is an exagerration: several hundreds of people died in the Soweto uprising, perhaps as many as 600, but probably not thousands.

Anyway, just a few very minor points that jump out at me.

[[[Re: a request for our South Africans (kind of long,  sorry)
   Posted by: "Lenny Flank" lflank@... lflank
   Date: Sun Nov 29, 2009 1:59 pm ((PST))
I remember when that happened. Those of us active in the divestment effort thought the old bastard Botha would NEVER give up power voluntarily. As I recall, he later refused utterly to cooperate with the Truth and Reconciliation commisssion.]]]

---As became clear from interviews with him in later years, he was as nutty as a fruitcake, believing in all manner of bizarre conspiracy theories and so on.

[[[Apartheid was one massive crime against humanity. The whole lot of them should rightfully have died in jail.]]]

---Instead, one of them got a Nobel Peace prize. Then again, the president of a certain very belligerent western nation recently ALSO got a Nobel peace prize... ;-)

When it comes to our blood-soaked history there are two things one should caution against; this is not aimed specifically at your article, but just two generalized observations. One mistake is to see the entire history of the country as evil Afrikaners against everybody else. History is more complex than that. Afrikaners have much to answer for; I would know because I'm one of them. But it should be noted that a very substantial number of the National Party's supporters were English speakers, and most of those who did oppose Botha's regime did so very politely, from the comfort of their middle class homes where they greatly enjoyed the living standard that apartheid afforded them. And when apartheid eventually ended, like they always claimed they wanted, huge numbers of them promptly emigrated to Australia (though lots of Afrikaners also did so, mind you.) It is also noteworthy that some of the bravest individuals in the anti-apartheid struggle were ethnic Afrikaners, and they paid a not insubstantial price for it (individuals like Beyers Naudé come to mind; he nowadays has a street or two named after him.)

The other thing one should caution against is the History of Africa According to Thabo Mbeki. Under his leadership, the ANC substantially watered down their original ideals, and became just another party of upper middle class fat cats, corrupt, incompetent, unprincipled, power-hungry and in fact ever more and more like Botha's bunch of clowns, from whom they probably learned their dirty tricks. As the National Party did, many ANC intellectuals also began enthusiastically engaging in a sort of Africanist Utopian myth-making, rewriting the region's history to suit their own agenda. It is perhaps still a bit early to see whether Jacob Zuma will substantially reverse this trend. My guess is he won't, and that in another decade or two, the ANC will perhaps be defeated in an election. Then, and only then, will our commitment to democracy really be tested: will they peacefully relinquish power? I almost hope they remain legitimately in power for the rest of my life: I'm getting too old for yet another damn civil war.  ;-)

--
Brian
http://brianvds.livejournal.com/  

2009/11/30 stanyardroger <stanyardroger@...>:
>
> Yep Mrs T was an old fashioned reactionary when it came to South Africa. It
led to sparks with Nelson Mandela, IIRC, when he eventually came to Britain.

She thought she could lecture Madiba. She lost.


--
Regards,
Mike

http://www.antiquityofman.com

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "Len" <lflank@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "stanyardroger" <stanyardroger@> wrote:
> >
> I think the Thatcherites had pretty much the same view (wasn't it Thatcher who
said at the time that anyone who supported the ANC was living in "cuckoo-land"?)
>
Yep Mrs T was an old fashioned reactionary when it came to South Africa. It led
to sparks with Nelson Mandela, IIRC, when he eventually came to Britain.

Still there was a far amount of paranoia amongst British wingnuts in the 1980s
when it came to "commies".

I was one of the first people in Brtian to own a satellte dish for watching a
variety of British and European TV channels. The local Tory MP decided that I
must have been a Russian spy using the dish to transmit secrets to the Russians.
Too dim to realise that the dish was a one-way receive only device.

I got named in Parliament over related work at the time - alledged breaches of
the Official Secrets Act, Section 2. That's the bit they can lock you up for
life for disclosing the brand of tea drunk by civil servants or that daffodils
are grown in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

Clearly I was a dubious and dangerous "lefty" of some sort!

> Preface:
> In the early 19th century, both the Dutch and the British had colonized South
Africa.

It is more accurate to say that the first permanent settlement was
established by Jan van Riebeck of the Dutch East India company. in
1652. The British annexed the Cape Colony in 1806 during the
Napoleonic Wars as they were concerned that Napoleon would attempt to
seize control of the sea route to the Far East.

> For a brief time, African chief Shaka Zulu had unified the Zulu tribes

The Zulus were a subset of a larger conglomerate of confederated
polities. Shaka seized control.

>and had successfully resisted white encroachment,

Nah. Shaka had been killed by the time the Afrikaaners penetrated KwaZulu-Natal.

> controlled the Orange Free State and the Transvaal provinces

Transvaal (which is no longer a province) was called the South African Republic.

> Incursions by the British into Afrikaaner-controlled areas, particularly after
the discovery of diamonds and gold, led to two conflicts known as the Boer Wars.

SA historians tend to call the wars the South African Wars which is
really was. Many blacks and coloureds were involved, fightening
alongside the Brits and Afrikaaners.

> The British attempted to solve the underlying conflict between the English and
Boer colonists by the 1910 Act of Union, which brought all four provinces
together into the Union of South Africa. Under the Union plan, South Africa
would remain a British Dominion, but the Afrikaaners were granted autonomy and
home rule.

You mean that the Whites were granted semi-independence and non-Whites
were sold-out by the Brits.

We had more than Home Rule as we had dominion over our foreign affairs too.

> With British cooperation, the South African government quickly took steps to
implement the strongly-racist Afrikaaner ideology,

The Brits stayed out of internal affairs after the Union was formed.
Louis Botha and Jan Smuts formed the first government,

> In 1905, the Pass Laws were imposed,

The pass laws came into being in 1923.

> in 1913, the Native Land Act restricted non-White ownership of land,

Don't forget the 1950 Group Areas Act.


> As a part of the British Dominion, South Africa was obligated to fight on
Britain’s side against Germany and Italy.

No. We decided to go to war, just like we did in 1939. We were under
no obligation to do anything.

> The Nationalist Party, however, with its program of Afrikaaner and white
supremacy, argued in favor of neutrality. Many Afrikaaner nationalists openly
sympathized with the Nazis, and formed an underground pro-Nazi group called the
Ossewabrandwag (“Oxwagon Sentinals”). Among its members were future South
African presidents John Vorster and PW Botha.

The National Party fused with Jan smuts' party to form the Union
Party. DF Malan and supporters split and formed the New National
Party. It was the NNP which won the 1948 elections.

> In 1959, the black nationalists formed their own group, the Pan-Africanist
Congress (PAC). Their most famous member was Steven Biko.

Nah. Biko founded the Black Consciousness Movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko

>  Botha also began making covert overtures to the ANC. In 1985, while Mandela
was recuperating from surgery in prison, Botha secretly sent a representative to
begin talks, offering to release Mandela if he would renounce armed struggle.
Mandela refused, but he was transferred from Robben Island prison to the
lower-security Victor Verser prison farm, where he was quartered in a private
house of his own. Botha himself met with Mandela there.

No. Mandela was taken to meet Botha. The approaches to Mandela were to
him as an individual in order to turn him and get the ANC onside by
proxy to arrive at a negotiated settlement on terms dictated by the
NP.

> In February 1990, de Klerk issued an order un-banning the ANC, the South
African Communist Party, the Pan-Africanist Congress, and other anti-apartheid
organizations.

I still remember watching his speech on tv.

> De Klerk, however, bowing to pressure from the Afrikaaner nationalists,
insisted that the White minority be given veto power over any majority-ruled
state, and negotiations came to an impasse.

Not exactly. The NP were terrified that the ANC would achieve a 2/3
majority in parliament and insisted on a threshold of 75% to change
the Constitution.

http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/521106.htm gives a
historical outline, btw.

--
Regards,
Mike

http://www.antiquityofman.com

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "stanyardroger" <stanyardroger@...>
wrote:
>

>
> Timing here is iportant. IIRC the key econmic factor was that the
international banks pulled the plug on South Africa in 1986, a year after the
date you quote. That event was a major turning point within parts of the
National Party.
>


Here in the US, it wasn't really until 1989, when it became apparent that the
Cold War was over, that the Reaganites finally began to view apartheid in a new
light.  Until then, the paranoid Reaganites, who saw Russians everywhere they
looked, viewed the ANC as nothing more than a tool of Moscow -- it apparently
never occurred to them that a large black majority that was being ruled by a
tiny white-supremacist Nazi-like minority, might want to actually, ya know,
organize and fight back. (But then, the Republicans also thought that Martin
Luther King Jr was a Commie and that the American civil rights movement was just
a tool of Moscow, too.)

I think the Thatcherites had pretty much the same view (wasn't it Thatcher who
said at the time that anyone who supported the ANC was living in "cuckoo-land"?)


================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, "buck12ga2000" <hannahd5302@...> wrote:
>
>
>>
> I mean - cap and trade legislation will increase my electric bill by
> 300%!
>
> Buck


It's absolutely true - I heard about it from Rush Lmbaugh. Everyone knows that
it is a criminal conspiracy to set up a New World Order run by the United
Nations. My wife, aka my sister, told me so.

I can't comment directly on this but my family, who live in South Africa, are
puzzled about what actually happened. It's alonng the lines that Botha was only
the tip of the iceberg. The Broderbond (or senior elements within in) had
already made up their minds that the apartheid game would result in defeat. It
was the Broderbond who made the initial moves with either the ANC or Mandela or
both but the full details have never been made public.

Timing here is iportant. IIRC the key econmic factor was that the international
banks pulled the plug on South Africa in 1986, a year after the date you quote.
That event was a major turning point within parts of the National Party.

You're probably aware that PW Botha personally detested Mandela.

Roger

--- In DebunkCreation@yahoogroups.com, Lenny Flank <lflank@...> wrote:
>>
>  Botha also began making covert overtures to the ANC. In 1985, while Mandela
was recuperating from surgery in prison, Botha secretly sent a representative to
begin talks, offering to release Mandela if he would renounce armed struggle.
Mandela refused, but he was transferred from Robben Island prison to the
lower-security Victor Verser prison farm, where he was quartered in a private
house of his own. Botha himself met with Mandela there.



I've already had to re-write this part.  As I've now learned, Botha's overture
wasn't to the ANC, it was to Mandela specifically.  Botha, knowing that
Mandela's father had been a tribal chieftain in the Transkei, apparently wanted
to try to use Mandela to gain credibility for the "Bantustan homelands". The
first deal that Botha offered Mandela was release from prison--on condition that
he accept the legitimacy of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to live there. 
Mandela categorically refused. The transfer of Mandela from Robben Island was,
then, apparently an attempt to make it easier for Botha's envoys, and then Botha
himself, to meet Mandela in secret, to try further deals. Mandela refused them
all.


===============================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

--- On Sun, 11/29/09, Michael Brass <mikearchaeology@...> wrote:

> Need to mention the Rubicon speech (1986) which led to real world-wide
isolation. The Deomcrat-controlled Congress forced Reagan to sign-off
on further sanctions.


I remember when that happened. Those of us active in the divestment effort
thought the old bastard Botha would NEVER give up power voluntarily. As I
recall, he later refused utterly to cooperate with the Truth and Reconciliation
commisssion.

Apartheid was one massive crime against humanity. The whole lot of them should
rightfully have died in jail.

================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*

Need to mention the Rubicon speech (1986) which led to real world-wide
isolation. The Deomcrat-controlled Congress forced Reagan to sign-off
on further sanctions.

More when feeling ok.

Will look properly either tomorrow or Tuesday. Apologies but am ill.

I'm currently editing a documentary history of the ANC (it will contain the
texts of things like the Freedom Charter, the Programme of Action, and some ANC
pamphlets and such), and am writing the preface for it.  I need it to be short
and simple, but still communicate enough of the history of apartheid that
Americans (who probably remember next to nothing about those times) can get
enough to understand a chronology, and what and who the documents are referring
to. I want the documents themselves to do most of the talking, not the preface.

So I'd appreciate it if (1) our South African friends could point out any
inaccuracies or important omissions that I made, and (2) if our Amercan friends
could point out any sections that seem unclear, confusing, or not easy enough to
understand.

This is what I got so far:

Preface:
In the early 19th century, both the Dutch and the British had colonized South
Africa. For a brief time, African chief Shaka Zulu had unified the Zulu tribes
and had successfully resisted white encroachment, but by the end of the 19th
century, the British governed the provinces of Natal and Cape Colony, while the
descendents of the Dutch, who now referred to themselves as “Boers” or as
“Afrikaaners”, controlled the Orange Free State and the Transvaal provinces
(the Boers had migrated away from the areas that were under British control, in
what they called “The Great Trek”). Incursions by the British into
Afrikaaner-controlled areas, particularly after the discovery of diamonds and
gold, led to two conflicts known as the Boer Wars. Also during this time, the
British imported large numbers of people from India (one of whom was the
then-unknown Mohandas Gandhi), to serve as a labor force.

The British attempted to solve the underlying conflict between the English and
Boer colonists by the 1910 Act of Union, which brought all four provinces
together into the Union of South Africa. Under the Union plan, South Africa
would remain a British Dominion, but the Afrikaaners were granted autonomy and
home rule.

With British cooperation, the South African government quickly took steps to
implement the strongly-racist Afrikaaner ideology, particularly in the provinces
where they held a large majority. South African society was divided into four
groups, the British and Afrikaaner “Whites”, the African “Bantus”, the
Indian and Chinese “Asians”, and the mixed-race “Coloureds”—with all
of the non-Whites often being lumped together as “Blacks”. In 1905, the Pass
Laws were imposed, which imposed a system of internal passes which severely
restricted the movement of non-Whites. Under the British Dominion, only Whites
and (in the Cape Province) Coloureds, were allowed the right to vote, and, in
1913, the Native Land Act restricted non-White ownership of land, and made it
illegal for Blacks to own land except in specified areas.

The increasing network of racist laws led to resistance.  A brief Zulu rebellion
led by Bombata was quickly crushed. Mohandas Gandhi began his political career
by organizing nonviolent protests among the Indian populations of Transvaal and
Natal. In 1911, an American-educated African lawyer, Pixley ka Isaka Seme,
called upon African leaders to form a political organization. The result was the
South African Native National Congress, which, in 1923, changed its name to the
African National Congress.

During the Second World War, the still-simmering conflicts between the
Afrikaaners and the British bubbled to the surface again. As a part of the
British Dominion, South Africa was obligated to fight on Britain’s side
against Germany and Italy. The Nationalist Party, however, with its program of
Afrikaaner and white supremacy, argued in favor of neutrality. Many Afrikaaner
nationalists openly sympathized with the Nazis, and formed an underground
pro-Nazi group called the Ossewabrandwag (“Oxwagon Sentinals”). Among its
members were future South African presidents John Vorster and PW Botha.

In 1948, the National Party won the elections, and Apartheid, or
“separateness”, became the ruling ideology of the state. A flurry of laws
were passed which legally enshrined racism and white supremacy. Mixed marriages
and interracial sex were outlawed; the pass laws were tightened (Africans were
now required to carry an identifying passbook at all times, and could not move
from one area to another without permission); the entire population was
registered by racial group (into “White”, “Bantu”, “Indian” or
“Coloured”); land areas were assigned by race, and people who lived in the
“wrong” areas were forcibly removed and “resettled” (in Johannesburg,
some 60,000 Africans were forcibly removed to the newly-built “South West
Township”, which became known as Soweto, while in Cape Town, 55,000 Indians
were forcibly removed from District Six); public amenities such as beaches and
restaurants were segregated; the right to vote was
  restricted solely to Whites; and a separate education system was set up for
Blacks (but controlled entirely by Whites) to give “appropriate” teaching to
the different racial groups.

To enable control of the population by the white minority, South Africa was
turned into a police state.  The Suppression of Communism Act allowed the
government to outlaw any “subversive” organization, while both individuals
and organizations were subject to ”banning orders” which prohibited them
from writing, speaking publicly, or attending public meetings. The Terrorism Act
established the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), which had authority to jail
“terrorists” (anyone who criticized apartheid) indefinitely without trial.

The ultimate stage of the apartheid policy was the formation of “Bantu
Homelands”, which were small areas set aside as “independent states” for
the African population. In theory, each of the “homelands” was to be a place
where each African tribe could have independence and self-rule, and all Africans
were involuntarily stripped of South African citizenship and assigned to a
“homeland”. In reality, however, the homelands were simply huge prison
camps, which served to remove the Africans from White presence until they were
needed as pools of cheap labor. None of the world’s nations ever recognized
the legality of the homeland “governments”.

Resistance to apartheid soon coalesced around the African National Congress,
which recognized that narrow opposition solely on an ethnic basis would not be
strong enough to defeat the white supremacists—only a unified mass
organization made up of all the victims of apartheid (as well as sympathetic
Whites) would have the power to challenge the Afrikaaner power structure. Under
the leadership of Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter
Sisulu, the ANC was heavily influenced by Gandhi’s campaign, among the
Indians, of nonviolent non-cooperation. In June 1952, the ANC and other
anti-apartheid groups began a Campaign to Defy Unjust Laws, a widespread civil
disobedience campaign that placed the group at the center of the freedom
movement. In 1955, the ANC issued the Freedom Charter, calling for a united
non-racial democratic government in South Africa, which became the guiding
document for the anti-apartheid movement. Among the most active
  supporters of the ANC was the clandestine South African Communist Party.

The ANC was not without rivals and opposition, however. A group known as the
“Africanists” rejected the ANC’s policy of embracing Indians and
sympathetic Whites as members, and argued that Africans themselves must carry
out the tasks of African liberation. In 1959, the black nationalists formed
their own group, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Their most famous member was
Steven Biko.

In March 1960, the PAC organized a mass protest against the pass laws, in
Sharpeville. The unarmed crowd was fired on by police with machine guns, and at
least 69 people were killed. Both the PAC and the ANC were quickly outlawed, and
over 18,000 people were arrested.

A short time later, the South African regime declared its independence from the
British Commonwealth, and announced the formation of the Republic of South
Africa. In response, the ANC organized a stay-at-home strike, which was the
target of brutal police repression.

The Sharpeville Massacre and the stay-at-home strike convinced the ANC that
nonviolent protest would never be effective against the Afrikaaner regime, and
in 1961, Nelson Mandela was given the task of organizing an armed wing to carry
out guerrilla warfare.  Known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (“The Spear of the
Nation”), the guerrillas planned to target the symbolic installations of
apartheid, such as pass offices, police stations, and courts. When the Western
nations, alarmed by the presence of South African Communist Party members in the
organization, labeled the ANC as a “terrorist organization”, Mandela turned
instead to the Soviet Bloc for weapons and training.

In 1962, Mandela, Sisulu, and eight other anti-apartheid leaders were arrested
in Rivonia and charged with treason and sabotage. The government originally
asked for the death penalty, but a wave of international pressure forced them to
settle for a sentence of life in prison instead. Mandela was imprisoned at
Robben Island, and his law partner Oliver Tambo took over as President of ANC.

The open racism and brutal repression practiced by the South African regime led
to international condemnation. In 1962, the United Nations passed Resolution
1761, declaring apartheid to be criminal. In 1963, the UN formed a Special
Committee Against Apartheid. The International Olympics Committee voted to
exclude South Africa from the Games. In 1974, the General Assembly passed a
resolution to expel South Africa from the UN, but the action was vetoed by
France, England and the United States. In 1977, after police massacred thousands
of unarmed student protesters in Soweto, the UN placed an arms embargo on South
Africa.

By the late 70’s, Pretoria was a virtual pariah state. The racist regime
still, however, continued to be propped up by the United States and Britain,
particularly during the Reagan and Thatcher years. Under a policy called
“constructive engagement”, American and British corporations were supported
in their dealings with South Africa, under the theory that they could then
presumably help to “influence” South African policy away from apartheid. The
South African government was particularly dependent upon American-made computer
technology, without which the bureaucratic task of administrating the maze of
apartheid laws and classifications would have been impossible. Both Thatcher and
Reagan classified the ANC as “communist” and a “terrorist organization”,
and ANC members were banned from entering the US without special permission.

In the United States, opponents of the apartheid regime organized a nation-wide
campaign for “divestment”, calling on companies and governments to cut off
all economic ties to South Africa. Although American corporations (and the
Reagan Administration) resisted the divestment movement, thousands of local and
state governments in the US passed laws forbidding economic cooperation with
South Africa. There were also increasing international pressures on South Africa
to release Mandela and other imprisoned activists.

By the 1980’s, the growing effectiveness of the ANC, and the increasingly
hostile international isolation of South Africa, led to a siege mentality within
the Pretoria government. President PW Botha surrounded himself with generals and
police officials and became obsessed with security, and his cabinet was often
referred to by critics as “secur-ocrats”. His actions became increasingly
more militaristic. The African nations that bordered South Africa became known
as “the front-line states”. Not only were they providing refuge for exiled
anti-apartheid activists and ANC guerrillas, but, as examples of Black-led
states, they were ideologically repugnant to the Afrikaaner white supremacists.
South African military incursions into the frontline states steadily escalated,
from small cross-border raids on ANC bases, to military and political support
for Pretoria-friendly guerrilla groups like UNITA in Angola and FRELIMO in
Mozambique, to military
  operations against the ANC ally SWAPO (South West Africa People’s
Organization, which was fighting to end South Africa’s illegal occupation of
Namibia), to, finally, a full-scale invasion of Angola. In 1985, parts of South
Africa were placed in a “state of emergency”, which was shortly later
extended to the entire country. During this time, the regime began a secret
nuclear weapons program and produced six deployed atomic bombs, reportedly with
the aid of Israel (which was already working cooperatively with South Africa on
the development of tanks and jet fighters).

South Africa’s deteriorating political position was now matched by economic
decline. In the 1960’s, South Africa had an economic growth rate almost as
rapid as Japan’s, and the white minority enjoyed the highest standard of
living in Africa. By the 1970’s, however, the enormous costs of administrating
and defending the apartheid system were a huge drain on the economy—a
situation that was exacerbated by increasing international sanctions (by 1989,
even the US and Britain had been forced to give into pressure to place legal
economic sanctions on South Africa). At the same time, the Congress of South
African Trade Unions (COSATU), allied with the ANC and the South African
Communist Party, was becoming increasingly more powerful, running a three-week
strike with 200,000 workers in the crucial  mining industry.

By 1983, the need to make reforms was unstoppable, and Botha introduced a new
Constitution containing a Tricameral Parliament, in which Indians and Coloureds
would now have their own legislative bodies. These would have authority to
administrate (and pay for) its own “internal affairs” such as education or
health care. National matters would still be decided by the white-dominated
Cabinet. Africans were to have no representation at all in the government; they
were considered to be “citizens” of their “Bantu homelands”—their
passbooks would be repealed, and they would now be issued “passports” from
their “homeland”. Henceforth, Africans would only be treated as “foreign
guest workers”. A new multi-racial group, the United Democratic Front (UDF),
was formed to oppose the proposed Parliamentary structure, and succeeded in
having most Indians and Coloureds boycott the elections.  The UDF quickly allied
itself with the ANC—and was
  as quickly banned by the government.

  Botha also began making covert overtures to the ANC. In 1985, while Mandela was
recuperating from surgery in prison, Botha secretly sent a representative to
begin talks, offering to release Mandela if he would renounce armed struggle.
Mandela refused, but he was transferred from Robben Island prison to the
lower-security Victor Verser prison farm, where he was quartered in a private
house of his own. Botha himself met with Mandela there.

In 1989, Botha suffered a stroke, and FW de Klerk replaced him as President of
South Africa. It was a turning point, as de Klerk realized that the entire
system of apartheid was breaking down and could not be saved. At the request of
the UN, negotiations were quickly begun to withdraw from Namibia, and to end
South African military involvement in the front-line states. In February 1990,
de Klerk issued an order un-banning the ANC, the South African Communist Party,
the Pan-Africanist Congress, and other anti-apartheid organizations. Nine days
later, Mandela was released from prison, after serving 27 years. He was promptly
elected President of the ANC.

The collapse of apartheid began. De Klerk agreed to the release of all political
prisoners, began dismantling all the legal machinery of apartheid, and ordered
the formation of a Convention for a Democratic South Africa (COSATU) to draw up
a non-racial constitution. De Klerk, however, bowing to pressure from the
Afrikaaner nationalists, insisted that the White minority be given veto power
over any majority-ruled state, and negotiations came to an impasse.

In September 1992, peaceful protestors in the Ciskei “Bantu Homeland”, who
were demanding the reintegration of Ciskei back into South Africa, were fired
upon by “homeland” police. At the same time, violent confrontations were
taking place between ANC supporters and members of the Zulu-based Inkatha
Freedom Party, which wanted to set up an independent Zulu nation in the KwaZulu
“homeland”. There was also violence from whites who feared black rule; South
African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated in April 1993 by a
white nationalist.

When negotiations restarted, de Klerk finally gave in and agreed to elections
for a new democratic government on the basis of “one person, one vote”.
Shortly after, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In April 27, 1994 (“Freedom Day”), South Africa’s first free election was
won by the African National Congress, with 62% of the vote. Nelson Mandela was
sworn in as President.


Contents

Native Union
How Congress Began
The South African Races Congress
An Appeal to the Members of the Imperial Parliament and Public of Great Britain
Presidential Address
Speech At The International Congress Against Imperialism
Africans’ Claims In South Africa
Programme Of Action
The Freedom Charter
Congress Fights On; Statement By The ANC
Memorandum Submitted To The General Assembly Of The United Nations
Strategy and Tactics of the ANC
Declaration of The African National Congress Executive Committee
Forward to Freedom
The Nature of the South African Ruling Class
From Ungovernability to Peoples Power
Statement on the Question of Negotiation
The Illegitimacy Of The Apartheid Regime
Colonialism Of a Special Type
Advance To Power; 75 Years Of Struggle
Statement Of The National Executive Committee
Advance To National Democracy
On The Working Class In The Struggle For National Liberation



================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

Red and Black T Shirts - T Shirts for social change
http://zazzle.com/lflank*