{"id":16818,"date":"2014-11-10T19:25:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T17:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=16818"},"modified":"2014-11-10T19:25:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T17:25:02","slug":"berlin-wall-i-immigrated-to-anti-communist-south-africa-but-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=16818","title":{"rendered":"Berlin Wall: I immigrated to anti-communist South Africa but now…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the excellent CNN coverage yesterday of the 25th<\/sup> anniversary of the breaking down of the Berlin Wall takes me back to 1964 when I was on my way to a new country South Africa from Canada with my South African husband and my son, born in Canada in 1961.<\/p>\n

On our way we travelled to Berlin and crossed Checkpoint Charlie to have a look at our first \u201ccommunist\u201d country. We walked down Unter den Linden street, an avenue of bleakness and despondency. Everything looked grey, even the people. We couldn\u2019t wait to get back to \u00a0vibrant West Berlin.<\/p>\n

I said to my husband thank Heavens we\u2019re going to a country which has so vehemently rejected Communism. En kyk hoe lyk ons nou!<\/p>\n

Our current regime\u2019s cabinet is replete with communists (either overt or still in the closet). True to type, they have purloined the capitalist\u2019s goodies for themselves and left their followers with promises, as did the communists of the greater Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Everybody derided the old National Party for its anti-communism (there\u2019s one under very bed!) but communism in the flesh was no party! Ironically and not surprisingly, none of the so-called communists in our government lived under communism as opposed to living with communists. Most of them were guests of the ruling cliques (who calculated there might be something in it for them in the long run!) but they never suffered as did those hapless souls who for example tried to scale the Berlin Wall and lost their lives in doing so. I wonder how many of our apparatchiks watched the ceremonies yesterday and saw the photos of those who died for a taste of freedom.<\/p>\n

These troglodytes of the SACP are a bunch of phonies, driving their BMW\u2019s and pontificating about \u201cthe people\u201d while quietly pillaging the country for themselves. And all in the name of democracy, nogal! What a travesty!<\/p>\n

– Gaye Derby-Lewis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching the excellent CNN coverage yesterday of the 25th anniversary of the breaking down of the Berlin Wall takes me back to 1964 when I was on my way to a new country South Africa from Canada with my South African husband and my son, born in Canada in 1961. On our way we travelled … Continue reading “Berlin Wall: I immigrated to anti-communist South Africa but now…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[10523,379,1022,842],"class_list":["post-16818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-berlin-wall","tag-communism","tag-national-party","tag-soviet-union"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16819,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16818\/revisions\/16819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}