[There is powerful stuff in this piece from Tony Leon, of the Official opposition, and it is well worth the read. Firstly, many people in S.Africa are in COMPLETE DENIAL regarding the remarks made by our new Vice President when she said we can learn from Zimbabwe how to fast track land reform. I noted that DIE BEELD, an Afrikaans newspaper actually regared it as a joke. You will see that Tony Leon of the DA treats it as the same because they cannot believe the ANC is this insane – but I disagree – that remark was no joke. That’s really scary stuff.

Secondly, read the historical facts, which compares what the White Apartheid Govt did with forced removals, and compares that with what Mugabe has done in the last 2 months in Zimbabwe – and you will see, that Mugabe’s actions make Apartheid’s forced removals seem completely insignificant by comparison. Indeed, the Whites moved the Blacks, during Apartheid, but Mugabe’s people came and smashed people’s houses to bits without warning, with all their possessions inside. They were left with no homes and were thrown into camps, from whence they were sent into the rural areas, where they have to start with nothing. Their lives are a complete ruin. The scale of it, makes Apartheid look like a walk in the park. But you don’t see outrage from the Left do you?

Here are my views: The ANC are hypocrits. The ANC are just like Mugabe. The ANC will do to Whites what Mugabe did to them. The ANC will do the same to the Blacks too, if the Blacks stop supporting them. It is my belief, that the Blacks in S.Africa will one day not be able to remove the ANC from power even if they want to. The ANC is nothing more than another Dictatorship, like Mugabe – but vast numbers of people inside S.Africa, and even larger numbers outside S.Africa fail to see the sheer horror which this country stares in the face, and which will be coming our way in the next 10-20 years. Jan]

The African National Congress has engaged in a long series of “winks and nudges” in dealing with the human rights abuses and autocratic behaviour of President Robert Mugabe, says official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.

In his regular internet column on Friday, SA Today, he said Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka may have been joking when she said on Wednesday that South Africa “learned a few lessons from Zimbabwe” on land reform.

“Yet her banter, as government spin doctors described it, is actually the latest in a long series of winks and nudges from ANC government officials who approve in principle, if not in practice, of much of what Robert Mugabe does.

“Two years ago, for example, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdlalana was quoted as saying that ‘South Africa had a lot to learn about land reform from its neighbour [Zimbabwe]’.

“It seems that no amount of human rights abuses, autocratic behaviour or economic destruction can shake the faith of ANC leaders in their former comrade-in-arms.

“Indeed, Mugabe’s ‘cocking a snook’ or giving a ‘two’s-up’ to whiteys and the West seems to appeal to a sizeable constituency in the ANC, even though there are some prominent individuals in the ruling party who are privately appalled by what Mugabe is up to.

“It took the apartheid government 16 years to forcibly remove about 60,000 people from District Six in Cape Town.

“In contrast, it took Mugabe only a few weeks to forcibly remove about ten times as many people — about 700 000, according to the report of United Nations envoy Anna Tibaijuka — from the cities of Zimbabwe in Operation Murambatsvina.”

Leon said: “Somehow, the ANC has failed to see that what was wrong in the 1960s and 1970s remains wrong today.”

He added that South Africa should, instead of its present course, be insisting on the implementation of a road map to democracy, which would incorporate plans for the departure of Mugabe from office, the establishment of an interim government, the drafting of a new Constitution and the holding of fresh elections. — I-Net Bridge

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/br…/p>