Verwoerd – praag.org

Nelson Mandela welcomed Bantustans

The NP under FW de Klerk started the negotiations with Nelson Mandela “well”, but abandoned most white demands in September 1992, leading to the current growing assault on property rights, says Hermann Giliomee. He recently gave a lecture in honour of Richard Elphick at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn, USA.

In 1960 Mandela along with mostly white communists decided to form an armed body, later called Umkhonto we Sizwe, to embark on a campaign of sabotage and terror against whites and black moderates, now euphemistically called the “armed struggle”.

Albert Luthuli, the incumbent ANC president was firmly opposed the ANC embarking on a terror campaign.

Two Russian historians, Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson, in The Hidden Thread; Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era (Jonathan Ball), write that Mandela was present as a member of the SACP’s central committee:

Using the ANC’s distinction between members of the SACP, i.e. communists, and members of the ANC proper, or nationalists, the two [Russian] historians conclude there was no nationalist present when the SACP decided to embark on an armed struggle.

The controversy intensified when the Mandela Foundation released the 627 page original manuscript of Mandela’s account of his life, which was smuggled out of jail. It now appears that some very interesting passages was expurgated from the prison manuscript in producing the printed version of Mandela’s autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom (1994).

The unexpurgated prison manuscript include detail particularly on how Mandela wanted to deal with the Bantustans.

From the mid-1970s the tide turned against the white regimes in Southern Africa. The economy became bogged down by the sudden jump in oil prices together with a slump in commodity prices and growing demands from a much more assertive black work force.

The collapse of the dictatorship of Portugal in 1974 was the start of rapid withdrawal of Portugal from its Southern African colonies. Soviet-aligned regimes came to power in Mozambique and Angola. A South African attempt to intervene in Angola misfired badly. The Soviet government airlifted some 30 000 Cuban troops to the country. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned Vorster that due to opposition in the American Congress the Ford administration would not be able to counter further Soviet intervention in southern Africa.

In June 1976 a major uprising erupted in Soweto, near Johannesburg, and quickly spread to townships across the country. The political isolation of the white community was starkly exposed. The situation was so serious that on 8 August 1976 the Vorster cabinet had on its agenda the issue of the release of Nelson Mandela, which was by then twelve years in jail. There is no record of the decision.

What would have happened if Mandela were indeed released in 1976? Neville Alexander records that in 1971 he and Mandela debated using the apartheid channels, flawed as they were. Two years earlier, in 1974, Mandela had written a secret memorandum, entitled “Clear the obstacles and confront the enemy”, that was smuggled out.

In this document Mandela confronted the fact that the government of the Transkei, which was the putative homeland of most Xhosa, had opted to take the apartheid style independence in 1976. In terms of a 1971 law, Mandela who was born in the Transkei, would lose his South African citizenship.

Undeterred, Mandela wrote in his 1974 memorandum that the ANC faced an entirely new development: the independence of the Transkei, which was sure to be followed by other Bantustans. Mandela wrote: “The Transkei will have an independent legislature, judiciary and executive and may control its foreign relations” and then added:
“For the first time since conquest the people will run their own affairs. Now Africans will be able to be judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, inspectors of education, postmasters, army and police officers, and they will occupy other top positions in the civil service. Would it not be far better to consider independence as an accomplished fact and then call upon the people in these so-called free territories to help in the fight for a democratic South Africa?”

If a free Mandela had pushed for this policy of recognising the Transkei’s independence the strains in the ANC may well have become too great to contain. A major split may well have occurred in the movement, putting South Africa on a quite different course than one it took between 1976 and 1990.

The white musician’s burden

It has become part and parcel in South Africa today for various opinion makers, entertainers and activists to take to political hectoring and vilifying of their fellow entertainers.

Since last week, various commentators and activists have come out strongly against Afrikaans singer and activist Steve Hofmeyr, who has been a thorn in their side for a while now for a variety of reasons.

Firstly he took a clear stance in favour of his people, stating how they are being killed off in droves while the major news sources, such as Naspers and its sister network Netwerk24 prefer to turn a blind eye.

After that he threatened to include the incendiary “K-“ word in one of his songs, followed by him singing “Die Stem”, the original South African anthem, which by the way nowhere refers to white supremacy or black inferiority at all, but pays homage to the natural splendour of South Africa.

Last but not least, he tweeted that black people themselves were behind the shaping of apartheid, and that was the last straw.

Hofmeyr has transgressed every petty taboo that the communist-based ANC has laid down, and now it’s payback time. From the house of Naspers – South Africa’s Pravda – came a vitriolic attack from a certain liberal retard named Virginia Keppler whose emotional outburst was only overshadowed by her complete ignorance of South Africa’s past, and one wonders if she actually had lived over there back then. To add insult to injury, the turncoat Afrikaner editor Adriaan Basson did not even correct her on these obvious fallacies as is wont of a respectable editor. Instead he chose to disable the comment section, perhaps realising all too well that Keppler’s pathetic outburst would be an object of ridicule, elevating Beeld’s status as a purveyor of mendacity even further.

It is doubtful whether the medieval Inquisition would have stooped to this level of idiocy. At least the Inquisition – in spite of their primitive techniques – consisted of trained scholars who abided by the principle of Res Ipsa Loquitur, or let the facts speak for themselves. (Not many people nowadays realise that the burning of witches and hanging of heretics were in the vast majority of cases legal sentences passed in secular courts and not sovereign acts committed by the Inquisitors.)

In the “progressive” Rainbow Nation called South Africa the opposite tendency holds true. People are criminalised for speaking the truth. In the case of Hofmeyr’s tweet regarding blacks being behind apartheid, the various Bantu tribes strove for a patch of land for themselves, especially after a major tribal onslaught – the Difaqane – orchestrated by King Shaka and Mzilikazi killed up to three million blacks. This occurrence is historically documented, yet a heresy at the same time. The aftershock of this assault could be taken as a first step in the direction of Verwoerd’s grand apartheid plan. Need we also not forget that after the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Sotho, Swazi and Tswana tribes intentionally distanced themselves from the Union and demanded their own independent states.

On 23 January 1962, after Verwoerd had declared the homeland Transkei independent, he stated (translated from Afrikaans): “There are Bantu leaders with whom we have spoken who clearly stated that they are just as much in favour of keeping their own identity as we are. Maintaining their national ideals, their culture, their heritage are dear to them and they realise that this could only be achieved if they are granted independent suffrage and rights separately from the other groups.”

In other words, Hofmeyr wasn’t far off the mark, if at all.

During the dark years of white rule, Africans freely roamed through the streets of Johannesburg. Virginia Keppler’s unfaithful reporting that blacks weren’t allowed on the sidewalks has backfired on her. Shall we not forget the fierce propaganda war that the Western presses waged against South Africa, including the staged filming of “dead black people” scattered on the lawns of Joubert Park in downtown Johannesburg with “whites in the background nonchalantly walking by”? If one were to pass Joubert Park or any stretch of greenery in Johannesburg today, those “bodies” could still be seen basking in the African sun, only to get up and leave when something else has crossed their minds.

Not to mention how the Western presstitutes published damning pictures of black mine workers “chained to the rock face”, while in reality a safety harness on a treacherous slope is not such a bad idea.

Whereas South Africa’s feigned Mandela miracle was exported to the rest of the world, the culture of deceitful journalism was imported. It has become firmly ensconced in South African life, but instead of being the opium of the masses as the ruling elite had hoped for, it has become its laughing stock. It is unimaginable that someone would pay R99 (approximately US$9) per month to absorb slanted views written by their army of opinion makers whose intellectual courtesy emanates from their hatred of the language they were raised in. In fact, these opinion makers have only succeeded at one thing, and that is to fill the comments section with laughter and mockery from the disillusioned masses.

That is why Hofmeyr is their latest scapegoat. He is pointing the needle at their over-inflated balloon. Instead of trying to approach Hofmeyr with an honest debate regarding his views, mendacious columnists and comedians such as ventriloquist Conrad Koch are roped in to do the job, relying on their status as satirists to crucify him without further ado. After all, who needs cold intellectual talk if you could have a carnival of cant instead?

Remaining on the fringes is thus Hofmeyr’s fate, along with many followers who cannot stand the brokenness any longer. Whoever is tired of being swayed will themselves return to the path of principles and character, their integrity growing stronger.

To quote Rudyard Kipling:

Take up the White Man’s burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Coloured ANC leader wants to honour assassin Tsafendas

Christian Martins, MPL for the Eastern Cape

A request has been made to declare the graves of Hendrik Verwoerd and his assassin Dimitri Tsafendas national heritage sites.

The request came from ANC Eastern Cape MPL Christian Martins in a letter to the National Heritage Council of SA, released to the media on Monday.

Martins argues in the letter that South Africa’s history would be incomplete without Verwoerd, referred to as the “architect of apartheid”.

Verwoerd served as South Africa’s prime minister from September 2, 1958 to September 6, 1966, when he was stabbed by Tsafendas in the then House of Assembly in Parliament.

“Dimitri Tsafendas and Hendrik Verwoerd arguably changed the course of post-war South African history more than any other, when Tsafendas stabbed to death the ‘architect of apartheid’,” said Martins.

Martins said that while Tsafendas was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity, research showed Tsafendas knew what he was doing and planned the assassination well in advance.

“And further research clearly shows that this act of Tsafendas was politically motivated, aggravated by the heinous racial prejudices that Verwoerd exploited to try to entrench white rule on the subcontinent.”

It was Martin’s opinion that rather than forgetting these important role-players in the country’s history, homage should be bestowed upon Tsafendas, a hero and martyr for the cause of the South African people.

“The assassination of Verwoerd was our exodus from the policies, laws and by-laws articulated and crafted by Verwoerd,” he said.

“Verwoerd inculcated in South Africans a belief that those who opposed apartheid or criticised it either misunderstood the policy or were dangerous communists.”

This led to violence which drove black leaders into exile and quenched internal opposition, giving birth to a form of leadership within many mass movements that saw South Africa transformed to democracy.

“Shared opposition and shared passion for apartheid shaped South Africa and for that we have to honour and remember the oppressed and the oppressor, the villain and the hero,” said Martins.

Martins was punished by the Eastern Cape legislature’s ethics committee in September for referring to the Democratic Alliance as peacocks in October last year.

He was penalised one months salary and suspended from participating in the activities of the legislature for 30 days from October 1. – Sapa

Verwoerd’s hated legacy

NEWS FLASH FROM 50 YEARS AGO
• Safmarine buys two refrigerated cargo ships of 10 000 tonnes each to transport export fruit to Europe for R2 million.
• South Africa takes the lead with 100 000 bales of cotton spun every year on 230 000 spindles and 3 500 looms, creating 10 000 jobs.
• South Africa is the largest exporter of fish in the southern hemisphere and sixth in the world with exports valued at R40 million.
• Great Britain report that on average 250 applications for emigration to South Africa are received daily, especially from skilled artisans.
• Maree, Minister for Education, establishes the Board for bantu Education, aimed at improving black education to the same level as education for whites.
• 2000 white refugees from Kenya’s uhuru uprising are relocated in Natal where they are helped to produce tea, coffee and sisal.
• Local governments for the coloured community in the Free State established by MEC Haveman.
• SA Railways and Harbours orders 100 new electric locomotives at a cost of R13 million and with the provision that 68% material from South Africa be used in the manufacturing process.
• A hand-spinning and weaving factory for fabrics erected in Umtata, Transkei to create jobs for blacks by the Bantu Investment Corporation.
• The cape Hospitals Department spend R23 million on new hospitals, including the new University of Stellenbosch Teaching Hospital.
• A two-storey hotel for blacks erected in Daveyton, Springs for use by black sportsmen and VIP’s handed over to black entrepreneurs by Benoni Town Council.
• Dr FW Quass says that of the 2060 welfare organisations in the country, 2000 are aimed at the black population.
• The Department of Statistics releases figures of an 18% increase in employment. Monthly income for the year rose to R111,4 million compared to the previous year’s R102 million.
• Some coloured townships, including Haarlem in the Langkloof, exempted from the Group Areas Act and put under own administration.
• Between 1959 and 1962 a total of 91 631 houses for blacks were built at a cost of R38 million in urban areas, while 474 sub-economic units were built for whites at a cost of R1 million.
• South Africa has 300 000 miners employed at gold mines and 250 000 in coal mines. The fatality figures stands at 1,29 per thousand workers.
• Foreign investment grew from R142 million in 1961 to R503,6 million according to Trust Bank.
• The government announces plans to make it possible for 35 000 Xhosas in Western Transvaal to bring out special votes during the Transkei elections.
• Chief Pilane of the Tswana says he foresees the establishment of an independent Tswana state where his people and whites “can live in peace as we have always done”.
• PW Botha, Minister of Housing, announces plans to build 2000 houses in Klerksdorp and 2000 in Port Elizabeth to make provision for new immigrant employees.