WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-15 Time: 15:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Alexander Kanengoni
Harare – I AM tempted to contribute towards the huge debate about Ndebele ethnicity that Nathaniel Manheru ignited a week ago, but something else equally compelling has held my attention; the unfolding South African political drama.
I can’t stop wondering how much longer Nelson Mandela’s legacy will survive because it is clear it is not sustainable.
The firebrand ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema, is making the headlines again.
This time, it’s not about liberation war songs that the South African judiciary, in its “wisdom”, banned. It’s his wrath targeted at the ANC leadership, his bosses.
The young man made disparaging remarks about those leaders with multiple wives and warned them they would not be venerated above the party. It’s not difficult to guess who he means.
The young man fires unguided missiles, doesn’t he?
ANC chairperson, Madame Baleka Mbete, tried to douse the flames. She explained that the country’s real problem was not the transgressions of the party leadership, but the continued economic marginalisation of the black people.
Tough words indeed from the ANC leadership that whites would be apprehensive to hear.
Words that one would have expected to come from Malema himself! Isn’t that what we have always been saying? Nelson Mandela’s myth and legacy were created to forestall tackling the issue of black economic empowerment. Is the ANC ready at last to take the issue head-on?
Then there was Cosatu secretary general, Zwelinzima Vavi, a key ally of the ANC in government, threatening the government during the recent nationwide strike to remember that power was in Cosatu’s hands and not the ANC’s.
The ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe retorted quickly that if Cosatu ever dreamt that was the case, then they were mistaken. The ANC is under siege. It might be forced to take unprecedented political decisions it never thought it would take to save itself.
There is no disagreement in the sub-region, in fact in the world at large, that Zimbabwe has almost resolved its fundamental issues regardless of the enormous cost. Unfortunately, South Africa has not even started yet and there is no way it is going to escape it.
But then, much like our own Rhodesians, the whites down there will never learn. Nelson Mandela’s legacy, the myth they are desperately propping in order to hide behind, is not sustainable.
South Africa’s farmer organisation held its annual meeting sometime last week; it was there in the news. The conference hall was jam-packed but there wasn’t a single black face among the hundreds, if not thousands, attending the meeting.
Even if there were separate organisations for black farmers, why were they not invited? The leader of our own increasingly peripheral white commercial farmers union, Dion Theron, was there, presumably by invitation. If that was the case, why then were our black farmers organisations like the ZFU and ZICFU not invited?
How many members does Theron’s organisation have, anyway? In Centenary where I farm, I can count the number of remaining white farmers on the fingers of one hand! I suppose he is representing farmers that have relocated to the UK, South Africa and Australia.
They still dream they will come back one day. Unfortunately, this is the dilemma of the white man in post-colonial Africa. He cannot regard himself as an equal to the black man.
In other parts of independent Africa, they avoided that “humiliation” by emigrating. In South Africa, as it was in Rhodesia, their interests are so entrenched they are prepared to fight to death.
In Rhodesia, they believe they were sold by the British, Ian Smith said so in his book, The Great Betrayal. It’s difficult to see how Mandela’s legacy can survive for much longer. The ANC has started talking about the economic marginalisation of the blacks as the root cause of the country’s instability and it is under siege.
The images on television of the white farmers at their conference reminded me of the chilling feeling I had at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria during a visit to South Africa recently. Built on top of a hill directly facing Union Buildings, South Africa’s parliament, the colossal stone structure, to commemorate the history of the Afrikaners, took a decade to construct. We were told it was built from 1937 to 1947.
And engraved on granite right round the walls of the gigantic stone structure are images that tell the story of the Afrikaners during the Great Trek during their journey north from the Cape, away from British domination. Unlike the English who were predominantly entrepreneurs and miners, the Afrikaners were farmers.
They fled from British persecution and domination from the Cape to Natal, then Orange Free State and finally Transvaal where they could not take it any longer and war broke out, the Anglo-Boer War. And throughout this long journey, any mention of the black man is when they were engaged in a military confrontation as they took away his land.
For instance in Natal, there was a war with the Zulus as they did to the Zulus what they did not want the British to do to them; subjugate and rule them. To show how despicable they regarded the Zulus, they engraved on the walls an image of Zulu warriors killing Afrikaner babies and another where the warriors were being trampled by horses ridden by their gallant soldiers.
Those two graphic images, among others in the colonial spiral, summarise the painful story of how the Africans lost their land. There were other groups like the Ndebele under Mzilikazi that the Afrikaners crushed.
Mzilikazi fled across the Limpopo and established his capital at Bulawayo.
And between the hill with the Vootrekker Monument and Union Building is another smaller hill where the ANC have built their own Freedom Memorial Park after the demise of apartheid in 1994, a version of our own Heroes Acre.
For me, it is here that you come face to face with South Africa’s irreconcilable contradictions. Everyone that you care to think about have got their small space here. Even the generals who fought to crush the black resistance are mentioned and the citation for one is: “he showed compassion for the injured victims.”
How such a general can find space alongside Che Guevara and Steve Biko, as is the case here, is beyond comprehension. All the names of soldiers who perished during the First and Second World Wars, black, white, Indian and coloured, are also listed at the Freedom Memorial Park.
Whereas the Voortrekker Monument is easy to define, it is difficult to do the same with the Freedom Memorial Park. South Africa is honouring at its national shrine soldiers who perished during wars between imperial powers to control the world.
The question then becomes: Who is telling the story here? It certainly cannot be the ordinary South African telling such an unclear and confused story. The Afrikaner from the other hill could well be telling the story here!
We have our divergent opinions here but the definition of our Heroes Acre is indisputable.
The criterion of who should and should not go there is clear. There is very little dispute over that. Ndabaningi Sithole and Gibson Sibanda were classic examples of individuals who, by definition, failed to make it there.
It is an indication of the clarity of our vision.
A South African colleague and also a former member of Umkonto weSizwe, who was with us during the tour, whispered in my ear that a sub-committee of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined the criterion of who should and should not be mentioned here.
The TRC is selecting South Africa’s heroes? No wonder.
The former MK colleague then made a cynical remark: that the Freedom Park mirrored the confusion surrounding the vision of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. If Oliver Tambo were around to witness this, he continued, the man would cry.
In fact, there was a young AZAPO activist who had earlier on declared that if Biko was still around, he would not bother to vote.
The Freedom Memorial Park is the black man with his head bowed down, clasping his hat in his hands, apologising to the West for trying to fight the white man.
But if there is confusion in the definition of South Africa’s Freedom Memorial Park, there is absolute clarity in the Hector Peterson Memorial Square in Soweto. We also went there.
The whole world remembers that famous picture from the June 16, 1976 Soweto students uprisings because it captured the horrors of apartheid.
The picture of a young man carrying a dying little boy in his arms and a crying girl on the side? Yes, that picture. There is a square in Soweto to the little boy’s memory. His name was Hector Peterson and he was 10. The little boy was the first victim of the June 16 Soweto massacre. The little girl crying on the side was his sister and her name was Antoinette.
The young man carrying him was Mbuyiselo Makhubu. The three young people encapsulated the face of South African internal resistance against apartheid: the pain (the dying little boy), the helplessness (his crying sister) and the determination (the young man’s anguish as he tried to carry the dying little boy to safety).
They say Mbuyiselo eventually died during the struggle outside the country.
The primary school nearby where the three were pupils is named after him, Mbuyiselo Makhubu Primary School. Antoinette is a librarian at the Memorial Square’s library.
It is difficult to imagine that the road from the place where the little boy called Hector Peterson was shot dead on June 16, 1976 would one day lead to the Freedom Memorial Park.
What happened? Perhaps it is a case of a struggle that lost its way or a struggle that was hijacked along the way.
Madame Mbete is right. Julius Malema’s anger with the top ANC leadership is misdirected. The same applies to South Africans’ anger against fellow Africans from neighbouring countries that is commonly known as xenophobia.
The real problem is the continued economic marginalisation of the blacks and that is Nelson Mandela’s legacy. I don’t see this legacy surviving much longer. No matter how much money is used to prop it, it is bound to crumble. The ANC is under siege.
Original Source: 
Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Original date published: 15 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009150188.html?viewall=1