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A lot of talk of Apartheid
21stCenturyBoy
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Heard a lot of people discussing Apartheid in South Africa today, but the general consesus is that it now exists in reverse- with South Africans of white descent now the underclass minority.
Do you think this is the case? And if so, whats being done to promote a more equal society? Or can the white people in South Africa expect a future as bleak as that of Zimbabwe.
Do you think this is the case? And if so, whats being done to promote a more equal society? Or can the white people in South Africa expect a future as bleak as that of Zimbabwe.
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Haven't alot of them left which might well be the best option in the end.
But it's their home, and has been for over a century.
Most of them were born and raised there.
One of them was even active in fighting apartheid when it was apparent.
If there's a good job to be had it will go to a black person - and the boss will expect a kick-back.
The country is becoming more corrupt every day.
And the silence of Nelson Mandela says it all. I think I am one of the few people in the world who don't view him as a saint.
It might well be, I'm just saying that at least a good number of them were smart enough to get out because they could see the direction the country was heading.
When the government that is supposed to protect them used slogans such as "One Settler, One Bullet" to get into power, they must feel utterly hopeless. South Africa wouldn't even be hosting the World Cup if these people hadn't settled.
I didn't think of that.
South Africa also has a high Asian-origin population.
I'm not sure where they fall in all of this.
Country Lovers, the Edexcel GCSE Anthology.
Perhaps if those same people of white descent had never started apartheid, this would not be happening (IF its true).
Anyone ever heard of the phrase 'what goes around, comes around'?;)
Surely if that's the case, white people were just claiming their birthright after their ancestors were kicked out of Africa 100,000s of years ago??
Well in that case the Anglo-Saxon majority of Britain should be expecting to be kicked out by Celts very soon.
Apartheid was wrong, I'm not denying that, but these countries (Zimbabwe, South Africa et al) have run themselves into the ground since the social expulsion of the white people.
How do you explain Apartheid?
I'm not trolling, I genuinely am interested in South Africa.
The last thing I want is conflict, just some discussion, as I only know the story of post-Apartheid South Africa from one perspective.
One tribe keeping another at a disadvantage.
Wasn't that happening in Africa long before white people turned up?
The USA, Britain, Italy, Germany. It's a fact of life but it just seems so exteme in South Africa. First it was the black people who were the deeply opressed and now it seems the white citizens are in the position they once put the black citizens in.
But it's pretty f*cked up, and that IS still the legacy of apartheid. You have a system like that, there's no way, really, for it to be dismantled without a LOT of bitterness and hatred.
That's the problem with fascism and racism, and any ideology that polarises people into groups- the damage is done, and it's very hard to undo. Once the polarisation's happened, people will still be born to, and brought up by people for whom the wounds are still fresh. It's not hard for someone like Mugabe to capitalise on that for his own ends; here's hoping SA avoids the same fate.
Racism- the crime that keeps giving. Once a country is so broken, it's VERY hard to mend it again.
Understand this:
It was a culture of routine beatings, starvation, killings (the hanged represent only a small fraction of those who died in British custody during the Emergency) and torture of the most grotesque kinds. Alsatian dogs were used to terrify prisoners and then ‘maul’ them. There are other similarities with Abu Ghraib: various indignities were devised using human faeces; men were forced to sodomise one another. They also had sand, pepper and water stuffed in their anuses. One apparently had his testicles cut off, and was then made to eat them. ‘Things got a little out of hand,’ one (macho European) witness told Elkins, referring to another incident. ‘By the time we cut his balls off he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.’ Women were gang-raped, had their nipples squeezed with pliers, and vermin and hot eggs thrust into their vaginas. Children were butchered and their body parts paraded around on spears.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n05/bernard-porter/how-did-they-get-away-with-it
So If it is a fact of life, why are you complaining? Why justify one and not the other?
Then there were the pettier deprivations: women forbidden to sing hymns in Komiti camp, for example, because they were putting ‘subversive’ words to them. All this while anti-Mau Mau and pro-British propaganda blared out at detainees from loudspeakers. Anderson quotes the testimony of a European officer in 1962, recalling an attempt to interrogate some ‘Mickeys’ – a slang name for the Mau Mau.
They wouldn’t say a thing, of course, and one of them, a tall coal-black bastard, kept grinning at me, real insolent. I slapped him hard, but he kept right on grinning at me, so I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could. He went down in a heap but when he finally got up on his feet he grinned at me again and I snapped, I really did. I stuck my revolver right in his grinning mouth and I said something, I don’t remember what, and I pulled the trigger. His brains went all over the side of the police station. The other two Mickeys were standing there looking blank. I said to them that if they didn’t tell me where to find the rest of the gang I’d kill them too. They didn’t say a word so I shot them both. One wasn’t dead so I shot him in the ear. When the sub-inspector drove up, I told him that the Mickeys tried to escape. He didn’t believe me but all he said was ‘bury them and see the wall is cleared up.’
I'm confused.
Thats horrific
My girlfriend's dad is a White South African but came to Britain in the sixties when he was only a baby. He still has family in South Africa and says of the horror stories they hear (the mutilation of children, attacks on elderly farmers, regular rapes) that affect white people.
It seems that something as poisonous as Apartheid has infected South Africa with a culture of violence, that once was directed at the black citizens and is now inherently affecting everyone.
So I suppose by your premise, it makes it right?
I've kind of explained that above.
Not at all.
Just stating facts.
It's not just a black and white thing.
It's about who's clever enough to get into a position of power.