South Africa – STILL Practising Apartheid

by Rolene Marks

During the Apartheid years, South Africa was seen as the world’s number 1 pariah state. Officially excluded from the family of nations, South Africa was subjected to harsh policies of academic, economic, sporting and other boycotts. Many, including poster-child for the BDS movement against Israel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have claimed that thanks to international policies of isolation and boycotts, the heinous Apartheid regime was brought to its knees and eventually ended.

Tutu and other proponents of the Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign rationalize their attempts to isolate Israel by making odious comparisons between the Jewish State and Apartheid South Africa. As someone who grew up in South Africa, bore daily witness to the daily workings of the Apartheid machine and now lives in Israel, this campaign is racist and nefarious to say the least. While Israel is far from perfect and there are instances of individual racism, just as there are in any other country, Israel is FAR from being an Apartheid State. Words like Apartheid have become the stick by which to smack the proverbial horse. Naturally there are those who will deny that these accusations are anti-Semitic by crying Mazel Tov! Gefilte Fish! We love the Jewish people – we just hate Israel. While in some circles it has become decidedly politically incorrect to attack Jews, the Jewish brand or State has been declared open season for battle.

This brings me back to the accusation I have made in the title of this post. The South African Ministry of Trade and Industry have passed a ruling calling for goods imported from the West Bank to have their “made in Israel” labeling removed. “For now, there is no decision but people should know that South Africa recognises Israel inside the 1948 UN borders,” Macdonald Netshitenzhe, the trade ministry’s director for trade policies and legislations, said. “Now coming to the issue of Palestine and Israel, a product from Israel has to be manufactured or produced within the borders of 1948.Under the 1948 boundaries, territories occupied after 1967 such as the Gaza Strip are not included. Therefore for the goods or vegetables which are grown in the area where Israel invaded other Arab countries, South Africa says, you better say these products are grown in Palestine or Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Netshitenzhe added. (courtesy News24.com)

It seems that the country that famously defeated discriminatory policies after the first democratic elections in 1994 has done an about turn and is fast hurtling downhill back towards its racist past. This time, instead of discriminatory laws being passed based on race; South Africa is claiming its “moral high ground” to pass racist laws against the Jewish State. And yes, they are racist. By singling out one country for opprobrium and sanction because its identity is defined along ethnic-nationalist lines, that is APARTHEID. By resorting to ridiculous kangaroo courts such as the Russell Tribunal which placed the State of Israel on trial for “crimes against Apartheid” you are perpetrating anti-Semitism. By ignoring the human rights abuse and transgressions of some of the world’s greatest offenders, one of which is on your border (hello Robert Mugabe) or ignoring the plight of your own citizens and rather choosing to focus on Israel that is Apartheid.

We should not dismiss the actions of the South African government or pooh-pooh them with the excuse that South Africa means little in the grand Western political scheme of things. We need to take heed very carefully. The actions of this government who many see at the benchmark by which we measure racism are proving popular with many other countries, including Denmark who may follow suit.

Many forget who truly stands to lose when boycotting Israeli manufacturers. Apart from hurting importers of Israeli goods, boycotts will lead to the loss of jobs for many Palestinian workers in factories or on farms. While proponents of this action are motivated by ideology the end result can prove to be disastrous for those they intend to help. Peace in my belief will come from the ground up and not by sowing division.

To the South African government whose policies of quiet diplomacy and lack of action have meant that dictators like Robert Mugabe can continue to starve their people, or red-carpet treatment of Jean-Bertrande Aristide of Haiti, Bashir of the Sudan, Assad of Syria or the Foreign Minister of Iran and others makes its own statement, I ask when are you going to start labeling goods from these countries? South Africa, where once you could have played a vital role in the brokering of a lasting peace in the Middle East, you have lost all credibility.

Why no scholarships for white people?

by Alex Urbina Favela

Why is it that there are no scholarships that specifically target white people?

I mean, there are plenty of scholarships out there that are designed for people of certain ethnicities, such as the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, but it is hard (or maybe impossible) to find one that specifically caters to Caucasians. I mention this in order to point out a double standard in our society.

Although it does not directly address scholarships, affirmative action upholds a similar double standard in our country.

The Supreme Court has recently decided to review a case that is tied to affirmative action, and it seems the chances for upholding racial quotas are weaker than ever.

The case in question is Fisher v. the University of Texas. Abigail Fisher has alleged that UT denied her admission due to her race.

Since the last time it ruled in favor of an affirmative action plan in 2003, the Supreme Court has become decisively more conservative.

Justice Samuel Alito has subsequently replaced the moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor after her retirement in 2006, marking a shift away from a liberal majority. This leaves the Supreme Court with five conservative justices out of a total of nine.

In addition to that, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who most likely would have voted for use of race quotas in admissions, has recused herself from the upcoming review due to her involvement in the case as Solicitor General. No, things do not look well for affirmative action at all.

But we must ask ourselves if affirmative action is something we think truly represents the American spirit.

Consider this: what if you were told that you could not receive admission into a university or receive a scholarship because of the color of your skin? It would be devastating and blatantly outrageous, correct? Well, this argument used to only apply to ethnic minorities’ rights to education, but I think the same can now be said of those with a Caucasian background.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I am of Mexican descent and as swarthy as they come. But I just cannot help but call out this obvious hypocrisy in our culture.

We are all so quick to preach equality and fair opportunities for everyone regardless of race, but at the heart of the issue is a general notion to combat the idea of whites getting everything.

Accordingly, we establish that it is okay to grant scholarships and college admission to some and not to others. Is this not racism in and of itself? Is this not what the previous generations tried so hard to eliminate?

It is my opinion that affirmative action should be discontinued. It is nothing more than racial balancing with a catchy title. It purposely gives a select few an advantage while denying that same advantage to others. Racial balancing is racist and we all know it.

However, I will give our racism in this matter some credit: it does increase classroom diversity. Proponents of affirmative action could say that this increase in diversity leads to better classroom discussion and an increase in overall learning.

But I would argue that the link between classroom diversity and classroom learning is not as strong as one would think. It, of course, plays a role in greater multi-cultural understanding but we must not fool ourselves into thinking of classroom diversity as a cure-all solution for learning.

I propose that instead of continuing to discriminate based on race, college admissions should be based solely on merit.

This way, race would not even be taken into consideration and everyone would have an equal chance at gaining admission to the college of their choice. This is only fair.

Whatever the solution is, race needs to be kept out of the acceptance process. Until things like this are dealt with, racism will be hard at work in the U.S. as double standards continue to exist.

FW de Klerk attacked for ‘defending the white man’

A black South African columnist has just published the following article in the London Guardian, blaming whites for blacks’ continuing poverty under a black government.

FW de Klerk: defender of the white man

South Africa is trying to move on from apartheid. It’s a shame its former president is not

by Justice Malala

The last undemocratically elected president of South Africa, the Nobel Peace laureate FW de Klerk, has in recent months been holding forth on the state of the nation. It’s a familiar view: that South Africa is becoming yet another post-colonial country destined to fall into maladministration, corruption, famine and finally war because the white man has lost political power.

In his utterances, it seems, the only thing that can save the nation from this preordained state of affairs is continued protection of white minority privileges and rights. All attempts to discuss a South Africa that is not riven by the terrible inequalities wrought by apartheid are seen, by him, as a threat to these privileges.

We heard elements of this narrative again this week. “The Mandela and Mbeki era of reconciliation is over,” de Klerk warned darkly. “White males are quite unjustly blamed for the continuing triple crisis of unemployment, inequality and poverty.”

He did not ask South Africans to come together and find solutions to these problems. Instead, he asked them to “get [on to the] playing field and become politically active”. The message is clear: they must fight and stop the ruling ANC’s talk of speeding up measures to stem unemployment and poverty.

These utterances come in the wake of De Klerk’s interview on CNN in May when he claimed that black people under apartheid “were not disenfranchised, they voted”. In this he was defending the heinous homeland system, under which Africans were “cleaned out” from “white South Africa” and confined to impoverished “black reserves”.

It increasingly seems that De Klerk cannot change from the person an angry Nelson Mandela identified during the democracy negotiations in 1991: “His weakness is to look at matters from the point of view of the National party and the white minority in this country, not from the point of view of the population of South Africa.”

Though De Klerk chooses to appoint himself defender of the country’s white males, they need very little defending. Almost all of the 20 best-paid directors in Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies are white men. This is not to vilify them, but it is a reminder that all of us South Africans need to do something, urgently, about inequality and poverty. After all, just this week the World Bank said South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the top 10% of the population accounting for 58% of its income and the bottom half less than 8%. “Circumstances at birth are important drivers of inequality in South Africa,” said the bank’s report.

South Africa faces massive problems of unemployment and poverty. The ruling ANC has spectacularly failed the poor after 18 years in power. Under President Zuma things are getting worse: the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality need a new vision and new leaders. But the De Klerk soundtrack, that South Africa is on the verge of collapse because the white man is allegedly under threat, is tiring and depressing. It does nothing to solve these urgent and collective problems.

De Klerk still believes he is the leader of a threatened white minority. He should learn to think of not just the white males whose survival he so energetically claims to defend, but also of the poor and marginalised who every day stand on our street corners and beg for alms.

That is the complex narrative of a country that has defied stereotypes and had three democratically elected presidents in 18 years; which has avoided racial conflagration; which has given more electricity to more people in the shortest space of time than any other in the world. It is not the narrative of a country whose sole obsession is the survival of a white minority’s privileges.

Original article.

Why I’m fleeing South Africa

by Anne Paton (widow of Alan Paton)

Liberal author Alan Paton wrote the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of South Africa, the novel Cry, The Beloved Country, which sold 15 million copies worldwide in the late 1940’s. Not so long ago, his widow fled South Africa, after having been terrorised by black criminals. Here is her parting letter, published in the London Sunday Times on 29 November 1998.

I am leaving South Africa. I have lived here for 35 years, and I shall leave with anguish. My home and my friends are here, but I am terrified.

I know I shall be in trouble for saying so, because I am the widow of Alan Paton. Fifty years ago he wrote Cry, The Beloved Country. He was an unknown schoolmaster and it was his first book, but it became a bestseller overnight. It was eventually translated into more than 20 languages and became a set book in schools all over the world. It has sold more than 15 million copies and still sells 100,000 copies a year.

As a result of the startling success of this book, my husband became famous for his impassioned speeches and writings, which brought to the notice of the world the suffering of the black man under apartheid.

He campaigned for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and he worked all his life for black majority rule. He was incredibly hopeful about the new South Africa that would follow the end of apartheid, but he died in 1988, aged 85.I was so sorry he did not witness the euphoria and love at the time of the election in 1994. But I am glad he is not alive now. He would have been so distressed to see what has happened to his beloved country.

I love this country with a passion, but I cannot live here any more. I can no longer live slung about with panic buttons and gear locks. I am tired of driving with my car windows closed and the doors locked, tired of being afraid of stopping at red lights. I am tired of being constantly on the alert, having that sudden frisson of fear at the sight of a shadow by the gate, of a group of youths approaching – although nine times out of 10 they are innocent of harmful intent. Such is the suspicion that dogs us all.

Among my friends and the friends of my friends, I know of nine people who have been murdered in the past four years. An old friend, an elderly lady, was raped and murdered by someone who broke into her home for no reason at all; another was shot at a garage.

We have a saying, “Don’t fire the gardener”, because of the belief that it is so often an inside job – the gardener who comes back and does you in.

All this may sound like paranoia, but it is not without reason. I have been hijacked, mugged and terrorised. A few years ago my car was taken from me at gunpoint. I was forced into the passenger seat. I sat there frozen. But just as one man jumped into the back and the other fumbled with the starter I opened the door and ran away. To this day I do not know how I did this. But I got away, still clutching my handbag.

On May 1 this year I was mugged in my home at three in the afternoon. I used to live in a community of big houses with big grounds in the countryside. It’s still beautiful and green, but the big houses have been knocked down and people have moved into fenced complexes like the one in which I now live. Mine is in the suburbs of Durban , but they’re springing up everywhere.

That afternoon I came home and omitted to close the security door. I went upstairs to lie down. After a while I thought I’d heard a noise, perhaps a bird or something. Without a qualm I got up and went to the landing; outside was a man. I screamed and two other men appeared. I was seized by the throat and almost throttled; I could feel myself losing consciousness. My mouth was bound with Sellotape and I was threatened with my own knife (Girl Guide issue from long ago) and told: “If you make a sound, you die.” My hands were tied tightly behind my back and I was thrown into the guest room and the door was shut. They took all the electronic equipment they could find, except the computer. They also, of course, took the car.

A few weeks later my new car was locked up in my fenced carport when I was woken by its alarm in the early hours of the morning. The thieves had removed the radio, having cut through the padlocks in order to bypass the electric control on the gates.

The last straw came a few weeks ago, shortly before my 71st birthday. I returned home in the middle of the afternoon and walked into my sitting room. Outside the window two men were breaking in. I retreated to the hall and pressed the panic alarm. This time I had shut the front door on entering. By now I had become more cautious. Yet one of the men ran around the house, jumped over the fence and tried to batter down the front door. Meanwhile, his accomplice was breaking my sitting- room window with a hammer. This took place while the sirens were shrieking, which was the frightening part. They kept coming, in broad daylight, while the alarm was going. They knew that there had to be a time lag of a few minutes before help arrived – enough time to dash off with the television and video recorder. In fact, the front-door assailant was caught and taken off to the cells.

Recently I telephoned to ask the magistrate when I would be called as a witness. She told me she had let him off for lack of evidence. She said that banging on my door was not an offence, and how could I prove that his intent was hostile?

I have been careless in the past – razor wire and electric gates give one a feeling of security. Or at least, they did. But I am careless no longer. No fence – be it electric or not – no wall, no razor wire is really a deterrent to the determined intruder. Now my alarm is on all the time and my panic button hung round my neck. While some people say I have been unlucky, others say: “You are lucky not to have been raped or murdered.” What kind of a society is this where one is considered “lucky” not to have been raped or murdered – yet?

A character in Cry, The Beloved Country says: “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving they will find we are turned to hating.” And so it has come to pass. There is now more racial tension in this country than I have ever known.

But it is not just about black-on-white crime. It is about general lawlessness. Black people suffer more than the whites. They do not have access to private security firms, and there are no police stations near them in the townships and rural areas. They are the victims of most of the hijackings, rapes and murders. They cannot run away like the whites, who are streaming out of this country in their thousands.

President Mandela has referred to us who leave as “cowards” and says the country can do without us. So be it. But it takes a great deal of courage to uproot and start again. We are leaving because crime is rampaging through the land. The evils that beset this country now are blamed on the legacy of apartheid. One of the worst legacies of that time is that of the Bantu Education Act, which deliberately gave black people an inferior education.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that criminals know that their chances of being caught are negligible; and if they are caught they will be free almost at once. So what is the answer? The government needs to get its priorities right. We need a powerful, well-trained and well-equipped police force.

Recently there was a robbery at a shopping centre in the afternoon. A call to the police station elicited the reply: “We have no transport.” “Just walk then,” said the caller; the police station is about a two-minute sprint from the shop in question. “We have no transport,” came the reply again. Nobody arrived.

There is a quote from my husband’s book: “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.”

What has changed in half a century? A lot of people who were convinced that everything would be all right are disillusioned, though they don’t want to admit it.

The government has many excellent schemes for improving the lot of the black man, who has been disadvantaged for so long. A great deal of money is spent in this direction. However, nothing can succeed while people live in such fear. Last week, about 10km from my home, an old couple were taken out and murdered in the garden. The wife had only one leg and was in a wheelchair. Yet they were stabbed and strangled – for very little money. They were the second old couple to be killed last week. It goes on and on, all the time; we have become a killing society.

As I prepare to return to England , a young man asked me the other day, in all innocence, if things were more peaceful there. “You see,” he said, “I know of no other way of life than this. I cannot imagine anything different.” What a tragic statement on the beloved country today. “Because the white man has power, we too want power,” says Msimangu. “But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man if he is not corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power and money to put right what is wrong, and when he gets them, why, he enjoys the power and the money. Now he can gratify his lusts, now he can arrange ways to get white man’s liquor. I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it.

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

A racial revolution in France

by Timothy Spangler

When the Socialist Francois Hollande took over the French presidency this spring, many French voters hoped that his new government would bring about a distinct change in direction from the “bling-bling” administration of his predecessor, Nicholas Sarkozy. By filling his Cabinet with many fresh faces, Hollande seems committed to looking at complex and contentious issues from new perspectives.

This week, one of the most awkward and inviolate elements of the French political foundation – the issue of race – was explicitly called into question by one of Hollande’s new ministers.

Article Tab: In this June 19, 2009, file photo, two women, one wearing the niqab, a veil worn by conservative Muslims that exposes only a woman's eyes, walk side by side in downtown Marseille, France.

In this June 19, 2009, file photo, two women, one wearing the niqab, a veil worn by conservative Muslims that exposes only a woman’s eyes, walk side by side in downtown Marseille, France.

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

According to the philosophic orthodoxy that cuts across partisan politics in France, there is only one type of Frenchman. Everyone is equal in France because in France every Frenchman is equally French. As a result, the “hyphenated identities” prevalent in the United States and a key feature in contemporary Britain have not been officially sanctioned in France.

Although there are “African Americans” and “Black Britons,” in France there is no such thing as a “French Algerian” or a “French African.”

This week, however, Yamina Benguigui, Minister of the French Language, made the radical proposal that the French government should recognize and accept that the concepts of ethnicity and race actually exist in the French Republic. To date, no official statistics are compiled based on ethnic or racial backgrounds, so no formal attempt to analyze the French nation, or any problems it faces, from this perspective can take place.

Benguigui, a film producer whose father was from Algeria, argues that France should recognize the effects of decades of immigration and the failure of assimilation has had on many communities. Despite the importance of “equality” and “fraternity” to successive generations of French government officials, a lack of pragmatism has meant that abstract ideals about how the French state should be constructed have limited the government’s ability to address important race-relation problems.

The television images of burning cars and nightly violence that regularly emerges from the dire suburbs that encircle Paris and other large French cities are a constant reminder that many men and women, born in France as the children or grandchildren of immigrants, still do not feel included in the Cartesian perfections of the French Republic.

According to Benguigui, the time has come for the government to take off its blindfold and begin to recognize that communities based on ancestry have always existed in France and will continue. Only then could a pragmatic new approach be fashioned to address the challenges France faces.

Unfortunately, for any French politician to stand before television cameras and say that France should look to America or Britain for inspiration on how to solve its problems is either the very definition of “political bravery,” “political suicide,” or both.

Will President Hollande back his minister’s controversial views on race relations?

His new government faces many pressing challenges, so it will be interesting to see how much political capital he is willing to devote to what is certainly a controversial new position on an intractable problem.

Hollande’s honeymoon period ended this week when he received a stark warning from the French government audit department, the Cour des Comptes, that he will need to cut more than $40 billion from government spending in order to meet stringent deficit-reduction targets. Hollande had campaigned on a platform for shifting the country away from austerity, but the reality of France’s spiraling debt and empty coffers may be superseding his personal political priorities.

Even if Hollande manages to increase taxes to 75 percent on every French citizen earning over 1 million euros (about $1.25 million), as he has proposed, he will still not have anywhere near the revenue necessary to close the budget gap.

In the face of such negative economic prospects, it remains unclear how much of a priority Hollande will give to Benguigui’s radical new rethinking of how French citizens should define themselves and, consequently, how the French government should develop policy to address the challenges facing this diverse country.

Like much abstract thought, there is something intellectually appealing about a government structured to deal with its citizens solely as philosophically undistinguished units devoid of individual characteristics and “back story.” If such an approach could work, it would satisfy the desire that many have for highest-possible level of equality before the law.

However, the reality of life in France shows that, rather than facilitate assimilation and integration, France’s inability to recognize or adapt to the ethnic and religious backgrounds of its citizens is causing more harm than good. Discussion of these issues is coded and indirect and awkward, but these issues are arising again and again, regardless of the intoxicatingly abstract desire that they did not.

As France tries to climb its way out of its deep fiscal hole, millions of its citizen remain excluded from the economy and society. At times like these, a country need all hands on the oars, in order keep the country moving forward as fast as possible. Hopefully, the French government eventually will recognize that there are times when the direct results of pragmatism trump the aesthetic pleasures of abstract idealism.

Read the whole article here.

Separate development afforded blacks their own identity

by Jacques du Toit

In yesterday’s City Press, Alistair McKay claimed that “Apartheid desensitised white South Africans to human suffering and filled most of them with an unthinking sense of superiority and fear”.

Mr. McKay, Separate Development (SD) was above all an attempt to provide black South Africans with an opportunity to develop their own identity and control over their own forms of government. Unfortunately, especially the White English-speaking population undermined this by spreading various lies about the system abroad. Today those lies have become fact. Internally your universities agitated and assisted in destabilising the country, as did your Anglican Church and your press. Many people died in the ensuing riots. Shameful!

English big business undermined the system by building hostels for black labour. This drew them away from their traditional homelands, and put them in the most disgusting accommodation. No human should live like that. The liberal English press never moaned about that! Again this lead to sociopolitical unrest and even more deaths. Shameful! English capitalists made huge pools of black labour a permanent feature of traditionally white cities – a cocktail for future conflict.

You say: “Some judge a black South African’s intelligence purely on his or her English,…” Fascinating! The English mind, measuring everybody according to the level to which they have been Anglicised. I’ve never looked at a black this way!

You then proceed: “…and completely overlook the humbling and impressive multilingualism of so many black South Africans.” This is exactly what SD tried to achieve. Today an Anglo-African dispensation is forced down our throats. Nobody is better off for it.

Simon Kuper, we will never integrate

by Hannelie van der Westhuizen

Simon, the true Afrikaner/Boer will never integrate with the English. Obviously you have very little or no knowledge of our heritage and our love for our language, history and culture.

I never voted “yes” for the ANC to take over our country. And you know why not? I saw first hand what Mandela’s terrorists did when they exploded that bomb (one of many in SA), in Church Street, Pretoria. The body of a baby being torn apart. Women screamin. And the pain and suffering.

The ANC has never (even to this day) complied with the one ultimatum set by the then NP Government, namely, to suspend their armed struggle. They quietly continue with their weapons and killing of white Afrikaner people and continue their armed struggle against us, even at this very moment.

There have always been poor Afrikaner people in this country. And there will always be. What is happening now is that the middle-class Afrikaner has become poor due to BEE and the racist affirmative action of the ANC. But the loss of Afrikaners jobs due to these ethnocentric practices by the ANC, with the DA also supporting it, has opened the door of opportunity for us. We never lie down and go broke. Not the true Afrikaner and Boer nation. We will always stand up! Time and time again. Once again you, don’t know us. It is in our make-up and our genes. The history of the Afrikaner/Boer is my witness.

What is happening now is the blatant disregard of the ANC for our Afrikaner people, who are standing up and those who have already stood up. They have started their own businesses and are targeted once again through the racist implementation of BEE and AA in these businesses. “Too many whites in Management”. Now they want to implement a racist strategy to force white-owned businesses to deploy black “managers” in top positions. Businesses that were started through the innovation and hardship of the white Afrikaner in this country. This is racism at its best.

I will repeat what I have said. There were in the past, since we started out in this Republic, very poor and homeless Afrikaner people. Many of them. They don’t want to work and they have no ambition. My parents, since I was small, have tried and helped these people as long as I can remember. Their faces are still the same today, only their surnames have changed. And they will always be with us.

Please distinguish between the true Afrikaner/Boere nation and them. We don’t and never will lie down and disintegrate or disappear in the face of any struggle, war or famine. We never have and we never will. Of that you can be certain.