Margaret Thatcher made no mention of Nelson Mandela during the only formal talks she held with South Africa’s leader PW Botha, documents released recently reveal.
The papers blow apart recent Tory boasts that she helped end apartheid – and her own claim that she had pressed for his release at the summit.
Instead Thatcher relegated the issue to a short, private chat with Botha before the June 1984 talks officially got under way. No notes were taken so there is no evidence of what was discussed.
The then PM had been urged by the British Foreign Office to raise Mandela’s imprisonment officially during the four-hour minuted formal discussions.
But Thatcher, who objected to sanctions against Botha’s regime and had branded Mandela a terrorist, failed to do so.
Thatcher’s own account says Mandela’s incarceration was “noted” during a private audience on “sensitive issues”.
But her adviser John Coles stated: “No note-takers were present. Mr Botha said he could not interfere with the South African judicial process.” – extract from The Mirror
A BMW 7-series similar to the one bought for Modise
While the South African cabinet has prohibited extravagant expenditure, such as luxury vehicles, for government officials, the premier of North West, Thandi Modise, province has just bought a car worth R1,3 million (about $125 000).
The vehicle concerned is a high-end BMW 750i. South Africa’s black politicians can often be seen speeding along the highway in expensive black cars, surrounded by VIP escorts with flashing blue lights, burning taxpayers’ funds.
The provincial MEC for transport, Raymond Elisha, jas confirmed to the Sunday Times newspaper that such a car has been purchased by the province for use by Modise.
“No laws were broken,” he said. “The car was purchased in compliance with the ministerial handbook, which states that a car to the value of 70% of her annual salary can be purchased,”
With great fanfare, it was announced in October by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan that henceforth there would be a more frugal policy on vehicle prrocurement and travel by government officials.
But, according to Elisha, the decision to purchase the luxury BMW “had been taken long before the cost-cutting plans were announced”.
The provincial premier is on record as saying: “I do not determine whether a jet is procured or whatever. All I know is that I have been using a car that is constantly sent for repairs and finally I was told ‘we are buying a new car’.”
DENVER – Pot shops did record sales compared to the “medical marijuana days” on Wednesday when recreational marijuana opened. Pot shop owners across Colorado believe they collectively made more than $1 million statewide.
According to a report in the London Financial Times, legal cannabis sales in Colorado could amount to $578m this year, yielding nearly $70m in tax revenue under a 25 per cent levy.
Supporters, critics and other states are waiting to see what will happen in Colorado on day two and beyond. In Perth, Australia, headlines say “Move Over Amsterdam.”
Long lines and blustery winter weather greeted Colorado marijuana shoppers testing the nation’s first legal recreational pot shops Wednesday.
It was hard to tell from talking to the shoppers, however, that they had waited hours in snow and frigid wind.
“It’s a huge deal for me,” said Andre Barr, a 34-year-old deliveryman who drove from Niles, Mich., to be part of the legal weed experiment. “This wait is nothing.”
The world was watching as Colorado unveiled the modern world’s first fully legal marijuana industry – no doctor’s note required (as in 18 states and Washington, D.C.) and no unregulated production of the drug (as in the Netherlands). Uruguay has fully legalized pot but hasn’t yet set up its system.
Colorado had 24 shops open Wednesday, most of them in Denver, and aside from long lines and sporadic reports of shoppers cited for smoking pot in public, there were few problems.
“Everything’s gone pretty smoothly,” said Barbara Brohl, Colorado’s top marijuana regulator as head of the Department of Revenue.
It may seem like everyone was excited for the legalization, but there were vociferous critics too. It’s a good reminder that 35 percent of Colorado voted against Amendment 64.
Colorado residents must be 21 or older to buy marijuana in Colorado. But just like alcohol, there’s a good chance people underage might find a way to get their hands on the drug.
State regulators were out on Wednesday, making sure no one under 21 was able to buy marijuana. The pot shop 9NEWS went to on Wednesday was very diligent about checking everyone’s ID.
9NEWS spoke with one doctor from Denver Health who treats kids with substance abuse issues. He says addiction numbers have gone up since Colorado approved medical marijuana. While there are no long-term studies on the effects of pot on adults, there has been research done on kids.
The doctor 9NEWS spoke with says marijuana can do some real damage to young people who are still growing.
Marijuana skeptics, of course, watched in alarm. They warned that the celebratory vibe in Colorado masked dangerous consequences. Wider marijuana availability, they say, would lead to greater illegal use by youth, and possibly more traffic accidents and addiction problems.
“It’s not just a benign recreational drug that we don’t have to worry about,” said Dr. Paula Riggs, head of the Division of Substance Dependence at the University of Colorado-Denver medical campus.
Colorado has hundreds of pending applications for recreational pot retailers, growers and processors. So it’s too soon to say how prices would change more people enter the business, increasing supply and competition.
While the nation fretted over the ouster of one Duckster from the parallel reality of a TV reality show, more of the protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution evaporated.
Just after Christmas, district-court Judge William Pauley ruled that the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution were relative freedoms, not absolute ones. As such, Fourth-Amendment rights had to be calibrated against a government’s need to maintain a database of records that would (putatively) prevent future terrorist attacks.
Paraphrased by The Guardian, “Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s ‘bold jujitsu’ strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.”
You’d think that the purview of the justice elite is to “marry” American law with Islamist ideology, rather than uphold a timeless principle that states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
“The judgment,” continued The Guardian, “directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court [a week earlier] which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was ‘almost Orwellian’ in scale.”
Friday’s ruling, surmised the vigilant British paper, “makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.”
Indeed, in August, media-enabled megalomaniac Obama told a rapt press corps that, in his magnanimity, he’d be prepared to “jiggle” his surveillance apparatus here and there to better allay unnecessary fears (“provide greater assurances,” as the president put it).
In his remarks, Big Daddy said—in defiance of the evidence—that he was comfortable “the NSA program [was] not being abused,” going on to promise that he’d outsource the matter to a new hire: A civil liberties officer. (CNN’s Jessica Yellin was in estrus.)
This is the inglorious history of American freedom and federalism. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along (as nicely as plaything Justice John G. Roberts did for ObamaCare)—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, “independent” regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.
A “civil liberties officer,” for example.
The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another. The idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government was worse than naive.
Ditto the Duck detritus: they are the new wholesome in America.
As “luck” would have it, legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment was previously in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing the judge needed to justify an anti-constitutional ruling. To wit, the grounds upon which the New York jurist dismissed this ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) case against the NSA were, primarily, “that bulk collection was [already] authorized under existing laws allowing ‘relevant’ data collection to be authorized by secret US courts.”
Here you have the essence of modern-day, Managerial-State America. Natural law, common-law and Constitution have been nullified; buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedent, ad infinitum, rights having long-since been outsourced to the “better” judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts.”
In this case, to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.
Not only has Obama “the sinner” trusted Holder his “sin eater” with the expansion of surveillance-state USA; he has, it would appear, charged him with dealing a one-two Knockout punch to white America.
Eric Holder’s first arrest in the string of Knockout attacks across the country is a first in more than one way.
The arrest is unique in that it is of a white offender. Knockout attacks have been, almost exclusively, black-on-white hate crimes.
Were it not so disquieting for what it portends, this single arrest would be as comical as the specter of global-warming scientists marooned in Antarctic ice so densely packed that no man-made machinery can affect it.
Heeding Holder, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas has remanded Conrad Alvin Barrett (27 years old) to prison for breaking the jaw of a man (79 years old), while “laughing and saying; ‘Knockout’” as he beat it.
The question is not whether this is a good arrest. If he’s guilty, let Barrett rot. The question is, why have there been no arrests for the multiple killings and maiming of innocents by feral black thugs across the country?
Befitting a banana republic, Holder, who carries water for President Camacho, is likely attempting to deploy the law to frame the Knock-Out phenomenon as an equal-opportunity crime. This is the administration’s ultimate racial reprisal against white victims of hate crimes: “know thy place, Honky!”
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry will no doubt deem the “banana” usage here to be racist, “conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed to . . . render [a black man] inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.” This is what our unsharpened pencil thinks of the word “Obamacare.”
But Obama and his fans “can’t have their banana and eat it.” It is an incontrovertible fact that under Strong Man Obama, America’s banana-republic- and surveillance-state credentials are that much stronger.
Ever since Britain started getting seriously interested in South Africa after the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley in 1866, there have been at least two conflicting views of the country. Throughout the twentieth century too, South Africa has borne the brunt of the Western ideological revolutions, all the way from colonialism and so-called “white supremacy” to contemporary political correctness. In fact, in the aftermath of the Mandela funeral, one could almost speak of the West’s religious devotion to black Africans who are being endowed with all the capricious amoral innocence of Greek gods.
More precisely, South Africa has been the theatre of an “epistemic war” if I could be excused such a French-sounding term. Apart from the very palpable shifts in demographic, political, economic and military power towards South African blacks, locals are also acutely aware of how the Western world view is no longer the dominant one in South Africa.
A few years ago I spoke to a liberal, anglophone, Jewish woman who lived in Johannesburg but who had some connection to the huge Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, one of the proud achievements of the former Afrikaner-led government. Within the Afrikaner mind, blacks had wanted not real political power but hospitals, schools, universities and jobs which is why they put so much effort into constructing such public institutions. Those institutions are currently being derided as having been entirely useless and a sop, or an insult to blacks, especically to the divine black leaders such as Mandela.
The point is, however, that since the black takeover in the country “they have changed the frame of reference” as my liberal Jewish friend put it. But she wasn’t really speaking in general terms, referring to the broad sweep of history and politics. First and foremost, she was speaking in medical terms. What she was saying, was that with the new order had come a new way of looking at healthcare, at patients and the function of a hospital. In short, the age-old belief systems of Africans have been reasserting themselves and “success” is no longer measured in white or European terms. That is why, when whites decry the deterioration of the state hospital system, as well as standards of professionalism and hygiene there, blacks are quick to retort with the ubiquitous cry of “racism”. After all, blacks are now in charge and they make the rules and set the standards against which a hospital, a school, a university or even a government will be measured.
It is really hard to understand the hullabaloo over President Zuma’s expenditure on what amounts to a private Zulu homestead or kraal at Nkandla. Compared to the billions being frittered away in corruption and unauthorised expenditure, the R240 million (about $20 million) involved seems almost paltry.
It is a truism of historians and philosophers alike, that one’s assessment of a situation – any situation – depends on one’s perspective. Not so long ago I read a paragraph by French political philosopher Alain de Benoist wherein he said:
… I am not fighting for the white race. I am not fighting for France. I am fighting for a world view. I am a philosopher, a theoretician, and I fight to explain my world view. And in this world view, Europe, race, culture, and identity all have roles. They are not excluded. But mainly I am working in defense of a world view. Of course, I am very interested in the future and destiny of my own nation, race, and culture, but I am also interested in the future of every other group.
That all sounds very interesting, but somewhat abstract. To the Afrikaner farmer who is being attacked in his or her home by a group of blacks who had imbibed some form of “medicine” or muti to make them invincible, the quesion is one, not of philosophy but of survival.
At a more mundane or political level, the clash is one of perspectives, even a traditional fight between the left and the right. In South Africa, any statement expressing concern over the future of whites or their well-being is almost always characterised as “right-wing”. Blacks are simply too good-natured and inherently moral ever to commit evil on a significant scale against whites.
This is also the foreign perspective. A Marxist theologian in Germany or a pro-white militant in America would concur that whites “have no place in South Africa, at the southern tip of a black continent”. On the other hand, the Afrikaner perspective is quite the opposite. They feel deeply rooted in South Africa and reject the “black supremacism” of both the foreign whites and the anglicised, superficially Westernised blacks who see them as being “not indigenous” to the country or the continent.
For most of the twentieth century, there has been a perspectival war around the notion of whether Afrikaners or whites really “belong” in South Africa or not. Once, I was shocked to see the former leader of the opposition, Tony Leon, being bluntly told by a BBC announcer on the programme Hard Talk that he was a “white politician” and that South Africa had always been “their country” – meaning that of the blacks – even in former centuries when their numbers were limited to about a million, nomadically drifting through parts of a mostly unpopulated territory twice the size of France.
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History, as the ruling ANC politicians usually put it in their quasi-communist way, is “a terrain of ideological struggle”. Needless to say, whites have lost that ideological struggle – or the perspectival war over the past – hands down. It is now better to kiss the feet of Mandela’s bronze colosssus than to voice your own opinions or interpretation of history.
Faulkner, that strange author from the American South who uses the “N word” in his novels but depicts his own Southern whites with relentless cynicism, once wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” So there will always be a feud over history, everyone’s history.
But looking at the future of South Africa, or even our present safety in a physical sense, it also depends on one’s perspective. To foreigners and overseas correspondents in South Africa, this is Mandelatopia, a liberal democracy with same-sex marriages and universal suffrage – although cannabis is not yet quite legal. According to this view, which is based on a very superficial “multicultural” reading, “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity”, as it is stated in our incongruous constitution, replete with rancour and affirmative-action clauses.
Many whites, especially women, have a sense of impending doom. The crime, corruption and general sense of lawlessness portend worse to come. Usually, they are not arguing against the dominant ideology with its illusions of democratic bliss. Rather, they intuit some kind of typically African implosion or civil war during which whites will be punished for all the evil they have wrought in their zeal to “uplift” and “civlise” blacks, admittedly ridiculous notions within the present context.
To the pessimist or the more intuitive analyst, South Africa’s future represents the “chronicle of a death foretold”, or many deaths, if you will pardon my paraphrasing the fetching title of Gabriel Márquez’s little novel. It will be Zimbabwe on a much vaster scale, and much bloodier. It is already much bloodier, and ultimately the country will be ethnically cleansed of its Caucasian undesirables, probably to universal acclaim.
Depending on one’s point of view, South Africa is either a “problem that has been happily solved” or a disaster in the making. Looking at the past, especially the nineteenth century when indigenous whites were as weak as they are now and were regularly massacred by blacks, as well as the history of postcolonial Africa, I am not macho enough to cast all caution to the winds and believe in the foreign male fantasy of a South Africa that is some kind of Switzerland or Singapore, clean, tolerant and law-abiding.
There being no common ground in this war of perspectives, no rational debate will take place either. I am inclined to trust those “womanly” truths that are as unspeakable as they are likely to come to pass.
Internally displaced refugees in the Central African Republic, being cared for by a Western aid agency
Fighting brorke out between Muslims and Christians in Central African Republic’s capital, causing the deaths of at least three people on Wednesday. According to reports, angry residents threw grenades and set dwellings alight.
French and African troops sent to the country have struggled to stop the internecine violence between Muslim Seleka rebels, who seized power in March, and Christian self-defence militia. The fighting killed more than 1 000 people in December.
Residents of Bangui said that Seleka militiamen in civilian clothes threw grenades at Christian homes in a northern district of the city, burning them to the ground. Christian youths then launched reprisal attacks, torching nearby Muslim dwellings.
“The Muslims came and set fire to the houses … everyone was affected,” said Aristide Yenga, resident of the Ngou Simon neighbourhood in the north of the capital Bangui.
“This morning they began shooting and when we heard that we left for the larger (displaced persons’) camps.”
The corpse of a Seleka fighter with his left hand cut off and missing lay in the middle of a large dirt avenue following the attacks. A resident of the neighbourhood who asked not to be named said that two other Muslims had been killed there during the night.
No peacekeepers were present, although a French helicopter flew overhead, according to eyewitness reports.
Despite the ongoing faction fighting, interim President Michel Djotodia called for reconciliation during a New Year’s speech on Wednesday, suggesting everyone should return to their homes.
In the meantime, the president of the neighbouring Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, warned of the “tragic and fatal” consequences for the region of CAR’s descent into civil war.
“It is imperative that we avoid such a disastrous outcome,” he said in a speech on Wednesday.
A doctor of the French NGO, Médécins Sans Frontières, at Bangui airport where it provides refuge for over 100,000 displaced people said it had received around 15 injured and two dead.
“Among the two dead was an adolescent of 12 years with a gash on his skull,” said MSF’s Gaetan Adouaka.
It was not clear if those killed were the Muslims from the northern district. The previous day a four-month-old baby died from a gunshot wound, the charity said in an earlier statement.
Aid workers say they are battling to provide for the country’s more than 800,000 displaced people, most of whom are now living in crowded refugee camps, because the constant violence is disrupting supplies.
Others have fled via boats across the Congo River or by air to other countries.
The Central African Republic is one of Africa’s poorest states despite enjoying abundant mineral resources. SInce independence from France in 1960, five coups have taken place. – News agencies and praag
82-year-old Mrs Hannetjie Bezuidenhout was attacked in her bed at 03h30am at her Roodeplaat, Pretoria home by four young black males who tried to cut off her lips and slice through her throat with a knife. However, Mrs Bezuidenhout fought back bravely and screamed very loudly: an excellent tactic as the thugs ran away.
Nothing was robbed. But her thumb was nearly severed, her chest-bone was broken and her face is horribly bruised. During her courageous fight with these four “heroes of the revolution”, she screamed loudly for help whereupon the assailants ran away. Mrs Bezuidenhout survived and is undergoing medical treatment, writes the Boere Krisis Aksie assistance group on Facebook, Jan 1 2014.
While a general dumbing down of the school curriculum has ensured rising pass rates for South African matrics, the standards body Umalusi says that “in some of the key subjects such as mathematics the majority of learners still perform at lower levels”.
In statement released last night, Umalusi further expressed its concern about the quality of markers in the matric examinations.
While the setting and moderation of question papers seem to have stabilised, the quality of marking still poses a significant challenge in many subjects. In this regard we must reiterate our call that those who wish to mark exams should take a competency test on the subject they wish to mark. Markers with limited subject knowledge tend to disadvantage top learners who produce innovative and original responses to questions. This is particularly the case in open-ended questions where innovative and creative responses are provided by the learners.
One of the easiest subjects in which to obtain a pass, apart from the mandatory “Life Orientation” is in an African Home Language. According to Umalusi:
While progress has been made in ensuring that African Home Languages are assessed at an appropriate level, there remain some significant challenges to be addressed. These challenges must be addressed without delay in order to ensure that these languages occupy their rightful place in our constitutional order.
Average is just not good enough; we must set our sights higher!
The Umalusi Council expressed its satisfaction that ” the system is stabilising well and has reached a significant level of maturity as evidenced by the high percentage of subjects whose raw marks were accepted after the moderation process”.
However, in about 50% of subjects, “raw marks” were adjusted during a standardisation process which may not exceed 10%.
Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling.
World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.
War, on the other hand, is the only venture that the human race throughout history has failed to avoid, leading Einstein to say that he did not know how World War III would be like but most certainly the fourth would be fought with sticks and stones.
Added up, the means available to the two most powerful powers –United States and Russia— amount to 20,000 (twenty thousand) nuclear warheads. Mankind should know that three days before John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of his country on January 20, 1961, a US B-52 bomber, in a routine flight, carrying two atomic bombs with a destructive capacity 260 times that of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, had an accident and the aircraft crashed. For such cases sophisticated automatic equipment are in place to prevent the bombs from exploding. The first bomb landed without risks. In the case of the second, three of the four mechanisms failed, and the fourth, in very critical conditions could barely function. The bomb did not explode by mere chance.
There is no present or past event I remember or have heard of that has impacted world public opinion so much as the death of Nelson Mandela, and not because of his wealth, but for his human quality and the loftiness of his ideas and feelings.
Throughout history and barely one and a half century ago — before robots and machines took over our modest tasks with a minimum energy cost– none of the phenomena that today shake mankind and inexorably rule each and every person –men and women, children and elders, young and adult, farmers and factory workers, manual workers or intellectuals– existed. The prevailing trend is to move to the cities, where the creation of jobs, transportation, and basic living conditions demand huge investments to the detriment of food production and other more rational ways of life.
Three powers have landed in our planet’s Moon. The same day Nelson Mandela, covered with his country’s flag, was buried in the backyard of the humble house where he was born 95 years ago, a sophisticated module from the Peoples Republic of China descended upon a bright spot in our Moon. The coincidence of both events was purely by chance.
Millions of scientists are studying earth and outer-space matters and radiations. Through them we now know that Titan, one of Saturn’s rings, accumulated 40 times more oil than the existing amount in our planet when oil extraction began 125 years ago and which will last barely one more century at current consumption rates.
The fraternal feelings of profound brotherhood between the Cuban people and Nelson Mandela’s homeland were born out of an event that has never been mentioned and about which we have never said a word during all these long years; Mandela, because he was an apostle of peace and did not want to hurt anyone; Cuba, because we have never done anything for the sake of glory and prestige.
Since the very triumph of the Revolution in Cuba we extended our solidarity to the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Liberation movements in that continent had colonialism and imperialism on the rack after World War II and the liberation of the Peoples Republic of China –the most highly populated country in the world— following the glorious triumph of the Russian Socialist Revolution.
Social revolutions were shaking the pillars of the old world order. In 1960 the inhabitants of the planet amounted to three million. Along with this, the power of big transnational companies –almost all Americans– was growing and the American currency, underpinned by US gold monopoly and its intact industry so far removed from the battle fields, took control of the world economy. Richard Nixon unilaterally abolished the backing of US currency in gold and his country’s companies took control over the main resources and raw materials in the planet which they bought with paper bills.
Nothing I have said till now is new.
But why do they try to hide the fact that the Apartheid regime –that brought so much suffering onto Africa and arouse so much indignation in most nations throughout the world– was the fruit of European colonial powers and was turned into a nuclear power by the United States and Israel, something Cuba, who supported Portuguese colonies in Africa fighting for their independence openly condemned?
Our people, handed over to the United States by Spain after 30 years of heroic struggle, never reconciled with the slavery regime imposed during almost 500 years.
In 1975, racist troops supported by light tanks equipped with 90-millimeter guns set off from Namibia –then occupied by South Africa— and penetrated more than one thousand kilometers into Angolan territory up to the vicinity of Luanda, where an airborne battalion of Cuban Special Troops and several Cuban crews for Soviet tanks with no crews, succeeded in delaying their advance. This happened in November 1975, 13 years before the Cuito Cuanavale Battle.
I’ve already said that we have done nothing for the sake of prestige or seeking benefit of any kind. It is a fact that Mandela was an upright man, a profound revolutionary and a radical socialist who endured with great stoicism 27 years of solitary confinement. I could not but admire his honesty, modesty and enormous merit.
Cuba was strictly fulfilling its internationalist duties by defending key positions and training thousands of Angolans in the use of weapons every year. The USSR was providing the weapons. At the time, however, we disagreed with the idea of the main advisor of the suppliers of military equipment. Thousands of young and healthy Angolans were constantly joining the units of their then incipient army. Their main adviser, however, was not a Zhúkov, Rokossovski, Malinowvsky or any of the many men that brought so much glory to Soviet military strategy. His obsessive idea was to send Angolan brigades carrying the best weapons to the territory where the tribal government of Savimbi – a mercenary serving the United States and South Africa– was supposedly located, which was tantamount to sending the troops fighting in Stalingrad to the border with the Falangist Spain that had sent over hundred thousand troops to fight against the USSR. That year a similar operation was going on.
The enemy was advancing behind several Angolan brigades severely hitting them near the place they had been sent to, approximately 1,500 kilometers away from Luanda. They were returning from there, pursued by South African troops en route to Cuito Cuanavale, a former NATO military base, located some 100 kilometers away from where a Cuban Tank Brigade was stationed.
At such a critical point, the President of Angola requested the support of Cuban troops. The commander of our troops in the South, General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, sent us the request as usual. Our firm reply was that we would provide such support provided that all Angolan troops and equipment would be under the Cuban command in South Angola. Everybody understood that our request was a requirement to turn the former base into the ideal battle field to hit the racist South African forces.
There was a positive response from Angola in less than 24 hours.
It was decided that a Cuban Tank Brigade would be immediately sent there. Several other were in the same line towards the West. The main obstacle was the mud and humidity due to the rainy season and the fact that every stretch of land had to be checked for anti-personnel mines. The military personnel to operate the tanks and guns without crew were also sent to Cuito.
To the East, the base was separated from the territory by the large and fast- flowing Cuito River over which there was a solid bridge under the frantic attack of the racist army. A radio-controlled airplane full of explosives was hit, brought down on the bridge and put out of action. The retreating Angolan tanks still moving were crossed more to the North. Those that were not in good conditions were buried with their weapons facing East; a thick strip of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines turned the line into a mortal trap on the other side of the river. When the racist troops renewed their advance and ran into that defensive wall, the artillery and tanks of the revolutionary brigades came down on them shooting from their positions in the Cuito area.
The Mig-23 fighters had a special role to play. Flying at a speed of almost 1,000 kilometers per hour and 100 (one hundred) meters altitude they were able to distinguish if the artillery personnel was black or white and began firing relentlessly against them.
When the battered and immobilized enemy began to withdraw, the revolutionary forces began to get ready for the final combats.
Numerous Angolan and Cuban brigades began moving quickly and keeping proper distance to the West towards the only wide routes from which South Africans always began their military actions against Angola. The airport, however, was approximately 300 (three hundred) kilometers from the border with Namibia, which was totally occupied by the Apartheid army.
While troops reorganized and rearmed the urgent decision to build a runway for the Mig-23 was made. Our pilots were using the aircraft equipment provided by the USSR to Angola, whose pilots had lacked the time for a proper training. Several aircrafts were inoperative sometimes due to the action of our own artillerymen or anti-aircraft weapon operators. South Africans still occupied part of the main road going from the border of the Angolan plateau to Namibia. They began shooting from the bridges over the wide Cunene River –located between Southern Angola and Northern Namibia– with their 140-millimeter guns giving their projectiles a range of about 40 kilometers. The main problem was that the racist South Africans had, according to our estimates, 10 to 12 nuclear weapons. They had even tested them in the frozen areas or seas to the South. President Ronald Reagan had authorized such tests and the device for blasting the nuclear charge was among the equipment delivered by Israel. Our response was to organize the troops in combat groups of no more than 1,000 men, who would have to advance equipped with anti-aircraft tanks throughout an extensive territory at night.
According to reliable sources, South African nuclear weapons could not be transported by Mirage planes; heavy Canberra type bombers were required instead. In any case, our forces’ air defense had many different types of missiles that could hit and destroy air targets located dozens of kilometers away from our troops. In addition, a dam with 80 million cubic meters of water located in Angolan territory had been occupied and mined by Cuban and Angolan fighters. The explosion of that dam would have been tantamount to the explosion of several nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, a hydroelectric plant using the strong current of the Cunene River, before reaching the Namibian border, was being used by a South African army detachment.
When the racists began shooting with their 140-millimeter guns in this new theater of operations, the detachment of white soldiers was strongly hit by the Mig-23 and the survivors fled the place leaving some posters criticizing their high command. That was the situation when Cuban and Angolan troops marched over the enemy lines.
I learned that Katiuska Blanco, the author of some historical accounts, together with other reporters and press photographers were there. It was a tense situation but everybody kept cool.
It was then that we got the news that the enemy was willing to negotiate. We had succeeded in stopping the imperialist and racist adventure in a continent where, in 30 years time, the population will exceed that of China and India together.
The role of the Cuban delegation on the occasion of the demise of our brother and friend Nelson Mandela will be unforgettable.
I congratulate comrade Raul for his brilliant performance and particularly for his strength of character and dignity when in a kind but firm gesture greeted the United States Head of Government and told him in English: “Mr. President, I’m Castro”.
When my health imposed limits to my physical capacity, I did not hesitate in expressing my criteria on who, in my view, could assume the responsibility. A life is a minute in the history of the peoples and I believe that whoever holds today that responsibility must have the experience and authority required to choose among an increasing -almost infinite— number of alternatives.
Imperialism will always have several cards up its sleeve to subdue our island even if it has to depopulate it, depriving it from young men and women to whom they offer the scraps of the goods and natural resources it ransacks from the world.
Let the spokesmen of the empire now talk about how and why Apartheid came to life.
I managed to watch 10 torturous minutes of “Duck Dynasty” so as to catch up on the controversy.
In the tradition of American pop-theology—light on doctrine; heavy on hellfire and damnation—the ostensibly devout and “educated” Dynastic patriarch, Phil Robertson, phrased his abhorrence of homosexuality thus:
‘It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. ‘That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying?
How profound. How refined.
The rest of this reality show’s stars are unsharpened pencils too – dull, not particularly witty and plenty vulgar. Yet 12 million Americans draw spiritual sustenance from watching hours packed with dumb, Duck-Dynasty vignettes.
Easily the phoniest, most contrived of characters is Si Robertson. During the brief penance I served in front of the teli, Uncle Si voiced a Vietnam-era fondness for booster injections—Vitamin B he called this military mainlining. Si then proceeded to fondle and fall atop a mannequin in a clothing store. The lewd old man is, of course, a preacher too. Lovely.
Then again, this column was assailed when, in 2008, it judged Miley Cyrus to be a precocious, brassy, none-too-bright exhibitionist, singularly propelled by fame. Miley was “wholesome,” I was told — even as she nestled in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus in various states of undress.
Ditto the Duck detritus: they are the new wholesome in America.
Give them a few months, and the Ducksters’ downmarket flourishes will include “Dancing With the Stars” and a teen pregnancy. The dynasty has already been conferred with the Barbara-Walters Mark of Cain. That dumbo added “Duck Dynasty” to her annual lineup of cretin, otherwise known as America’s most fascinating personalities.
“Duck Dynasty” represents “the best of America,” came the angry retort from readers on Facebook. Oy vey!
Somehow, I think H.L. Mencken would disagree. Southerners, to paraphrase that great American, had been drained of their best blood by the War of Northern Aggression.
Although vestiges of good breeding, charm and civility remain in many a Southern man, the uncouth Duck hunters from down South are not it.
What would the Duck-Dynasty debate be without “lite-libertarian reductionism”? The Ducksters are capitalists, they scolded. As a capitalist yourself, a critique of this cultural product ought to be beyond the pale.
Indeed, there is nothing wrong with making a good living catering to the base, voyeuristic demand created by many millions of Americans, as do the Ducksters. But are capitalists compelled to like their product because it makes money? No. It is perfectly productive, if far from lucrative, for me to criticize all aspects of the puerile Duck production.
The Ducksters are part of a debased culture—the right-wing answer to Kim Kardashian, whose deformed figure and ass elephantiasis you can ogle online and on late-night Leno (1.21 minutes in).
Then there is the matter of Duck-Dynasty religiosity.
“I think you’re missing an important point, Ilana,” said one perceptive Facebook Friend. “The [Ducksters] were selected for the show because they are how you describe them. Duck Dynasty was meant to be a redneck minstrel show. They were supposed to be objects of ridicule for cosmopolitan America. They are what blue-state America imagines religiosity to be.”
Arguably, this is precisely what being devout looks like in the USA.
Delve more deeply, and you’ll discover that Christianity in our country is a lot like what the Ducksters profess. No longer doctrinaire or demanding, the mishmash of pop-religion practiced in churches across America is an extension of the therapeutic culture: festooned with feelings, mostly misdirected. Untempered by intelligent interpretation of scripture.
As for the Ducksters’ occupation. I’ll leave you with Proverbs 12:10:
Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
Various newspaper reports suggest that Mandela’s heirs are fighting tooth and nail over the world-famous terrorist’s estate. One family friend even described the environment as “toxic”.
Apparently the Mandelas aim to kick Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, out of the mansion in Houghton she had been sharing with her late husband. She was flatly told to leave the house once the famous Mandela had died.
Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, who is married to a Ghanian, is often not on speaking terms with Machel. According to reports, Makaziwe has also “verbally abused staff and repeatedly insisted she alone will determine how to divide the spoils of Mandela’s estate”.
Using her father’s name, Makaziwe Mandela has climbed the social ladder in South Africa’s black power politics. According to Wikipedia, her biography reads as follows:
Pumla Makaziwe “Maki” Mandela-Amuah (born 1954) is the daughter of Nelson Mandela and his first wife Evelyn Mase. She was named after her older sister, born in 1947, who died aged just nine months. Of the four children born to Nelson and Evelyn Mandela, Makaziwe is the only one still living. She is married to Dr. Isaac Amuah, who is of Ghanaian origin.
She received her secondary education at Waterford Kamhlaba UWC of Southern Africa before going to the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. In 1993, she earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
She has held senior posts at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and now heads the Industrial Development Group (IDG), with interests in mining and petroleum.
As if the hostility of Makaziwe was not enough, Graça Machel is said to have suffered verbal abuse from Mandela’s grandson Ndaba Mandela who “he even tried to attack her physically but was restrained from doing so after the intervention of household staff”.
Machel is supposed to leave the luxurious Houghton home for a lesser abode in the Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston. Mandela family members suspect her of “having spent all Mandela’s money” although they have no proof.
Mandela’s will has not been read yet, but legal battles over the spoils are expected to ensue. The first salvo was fired by his daughters Zenani and Makaziwe even prior to his death when they tried to have the directors of two companies owned by the Mandela Trust removed. George Bizos, Tokyo Sexwale, Bally Chuene and Eastern Cape Judge President Themba Sangoni were sued in a failed attempt to remove them.
The Mandela daughters eventually gave up on their case and agreed to pay the costs of the proceedings, prompting the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to issue the following statement on behalf of the directors:
“This ill-considered and misguided application had the effect of causing reputational harm not only to the respondents as directors and trustees but also to the trust and the image of the founder, Mr Nelson Mandela, himself.”
The 19 people massacred at Shobashobane as they were about to celebrate Christmas 1995 should be remembered as heroes whose blood was spilt so that we could enjoy our democracy today, said KwaZulu-Natal Premier Dr Zweli Mkhize.
“It is our responsibility now to forgive the perpetrators of this act, and to ensure that they too are beneficiaries of our democracy,” he said at a commemoration service in the area near Port Shepstone on Sunday.
Mkhize, accompanied by State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo, Human Settlements and Public Works MEC Ravi Pillay, suspended police chief Bheki Cele, and members of the ANC’s disbanded military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, spent Christmas with the families affected by the massacre.
Cele, while struggling to hold back tears, described in graphic detail how one victim had been chopped to pieces “as if someone was preparing to braai meat”, and how he, together with the region’s ANC leadership, had pleaded with the police days earlier to offer protection. The ANC had received information of an impending attack on all ANC supporters in the area, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
“I received a call on Christmas Day saying there had been an attack and what I saw was beyond belief. The killers were parading in the area with the private parts of another victim, saying this was their trophy,” said an emotional Cele.
Mkhize also pledged to ensure a memorial was built on the victims’ burial site, and said all their graves should have gravestones by next year.
The Zulu premier lauded the community for having been at peace since 1995. “I want to salute the community of Shobashobane for their commitment towards peace and reconciliation. They have said the time for political violence is over and never again should the brothers and sisters go to war against each other,” he said. – Daily News and government press release
North West Premier Thandi Modise has called on provincial authorities to clamp down on initiation schools that operate outside the law. This follows the death of two teens at an initiation in Makwaneng near Amalia since Friday.
“Chancers and those who commit atrocities at initiation schools undermine our tradition and culture and should be brought to book. We call on traditional leaders as custodians of our tradition and culture to monitor initiation schools within their areas of jurisdiction and report ill-treatment and illegal operations to authorities,” stressed Premier Modise
According to police, a 16-year-old started vomiting after drinking water on Friday. He reportedly collapsed and died
“The next day, a 17-year-old complained of stomach cramps after eating and was later declared dead by emergency services, The remaining initiates were taken to a hospital in Schweizer-Reneke,”said Colonel Emelda Setlhako.
While investigations are continuing,Setlhako said that no arrests had been made.
Police in Lehurutshe are investigating cases of Murder and Inquest after Warrant Officer Sachs Tlhowe Mothowagae’s body was found inside a car at the gate of his sister’s place on 22 December 2013 at about 03:45 at Welbedacht Township near Zeerust. It is alleged that the warrant officer was shot through his mouth.
The warrant Officer was stationed at Mahikeng Organised Crime.
According to the information, the 53 year- old suspect went to his 42 year- old girlfriend’s house in the early hours of the date mentioned and found her asleep. According to the witness (girlfriend’s friend), who was also in the house, both the suspect and his girlfriend went outside. It is alleged that later, a passerby came to the girlfriend’s house and reported that the girlfriend was lying in a pool of blood outside her gate at Welbedacht Township. The deceased had a bullet wound on her right ear. Police were alerted.
Investigation led the police to the Warrant Officer’s sister’s place where they found him in a car and discovered that he was allegedly shot, but was still alive. He was transported to the nearest hospital where he later died. Police Investigation continues.
In a statement, the North West Provincial commissioner, Lieutenant General Zukiswa Mbombo, has condemned the selfless killings, and has tasked the investigating team to ensure that a thorough investigation is done so that justice could be served.
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