South Africa

This is a MUST SEE VIDEO!! from 60 Minutes. Draw your own conclusions.

...doesn't it? :

The words of Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States envoy to Iraq, were so chilling last week because they gave voice to a growing fear. He warned that “we have opened a Pandora’s box’’ that “would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child’s play’’. He was referring to the nightmare scenarios of civil war provoking wider regional conflict drawing in Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Afghanistan’s violence is on a smaller scale but still vicious. Last year 1 400 Afghans were killed. The choice of targets is particularly cruel -- teachers and schools have been attacked, along with administration officials. The introduction of suicide bombings indicates new outside support, which prompted the gloomy recent assessment to the US Congress by the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency that attacks are likely to increase.

The war on terror has failed -- it has been the most catastrophic blunder in half a century of British and American foreign policy. Ill-conceived and spectacularly badly implemented, it was redolent of an old-fashioned understanding of conflict and quaint faith in superior military technology.

It has had precisely the opposite impact from that allegedly intended, by significantly increasing the threat of terrorism while alienating Muslim opinion across the globe. Yet the politicians who made the decisions, who lied, and ignored and manipulated expert opinion are still in power and uttering the same platitudes.

 

                               "Can I get a hell yeah..."

Dear Your Excellency, Mr President, The Chosen One, African Visionary, Bob

Please forgive me for being late in sending you my sincerest birthday wishes. As I'm sure you know South Africa also has its problems with an uppity press and errant judiciary, so this humble blogger has been hard at work showing them the light of inspiration that resides across our northern border. Yes my dear Robert it is a hard path to walk but with your fine example it makes the burden a bit easier to carry (sigh). The other day my good friend Vuyo Mvoko was saying how he was considering moving on to the fertile plains of East Harare. I replied to him earnestly "Go my son and know that all South Africa wishes you well on your journey to the most democratic state in Africa (if not the world!)" Some among us have questioned whether this African Utopia can be real, others can scarcely believe it to be true - fools! But then the chattering classes always try to break down a true visionery with their foul invective and fearmongering. No fear Robert, no fear, we have the facts on our side - the truth shall set them free -

• Under your fine leadership Zimbabwe has a triple digit inflation rate of over 600%;
• Under your exemplary tutelage Zimbabwe has a 70% unemployment rate;
• Under your visionary direction more than two-thirds of Zimbabweans consider food shortages as one of the most important problems they are facing;
• Under your most excellent management 46% of Zimbabweans surveyed said they had gone without food often in the past year;
• Under your inspirational target driven fiscal control 82% of Zimbabweans say they expect living conditions to be "much worse" in the year ahead;
• Under your charismatic, forward looking agenda Zimbabwe was given a world-wide press freedom index Rank of 155 out of 167 countries;
• Under your stupendously wise decision making Zimbabwe received the following fine letter of recommendation from Amnesty International. "Following [the ZANU-PF government's] first major defeat in a national referendum to change the constitution, the government began using its supporters and state agents to pursue a campaign of repression, aimed at eliminating opposition and silencing dissent. Since then, state-sponsored intimidation, arbitrary arrest, torture and attacks on supporters of the political opposition, human rights defenders and the independent media have steadily escalated."

What better way to batter those critics and nay sayers than with a bit of cool, cold logic eh? So to you Robert and all the fine gentleman of the ZANU-PF government, I would like to salute you! Yes, salute you for doing so much in such a short time - truly inspirational. Now of course no birthday message can be complete without giving some sort of gift, a small token of our feelings to you Dear Leader. In this regard I would like to turn things over to the late, the great Johnny Cash in wishing you, Bob, a most Happy Birthday!

Regards.

Comrade Someamongus.  

Back in '96 I made my first visit to Zimbabwe. I was extremely impressed by how good race-relations were and at the general goodwill of all the people there. The feelings of most people I met seemed to be of cautious optimism for the future and an abiding understanding of what had happened in the not too distant past. Over the next few years I met a mixed bag of Zimbo's - black, white, indian, coloured. Although I used to make fun of their little cricket team and atrocious sense of fashion sense (shorts - the 80's kind - were apparently still in style), all of them were a good laugh and great to have round for a few beers. Then of course "the situation" started in Zim and things started going to hell in a handbasket, gradually this same group of characters I had got to know were put under great stress - businesses destroyed, families split-up, racial prejudices inflamed etc etc. It was heartbreaking to see.   

More than anything though, what happened in Zim shook my faith in our newly formed democratic government. Surely, I thought at the time, our government with its foundation built on popular resistance to injustice and a respect for human rights will raise its voice against what is happening? Right? However I was in for a very long wait... The outrages that took place in Zim and continue to this very day are greeted by our government with an insulting silence which doesn't border on but is in my opinion criminal indifference and callousness. What I saw in Zim all those years ago amongst its people was how I hoped SA race relations may develop. With people achnowledging there differences in the past but moving forward together. The fish, as they say, rots from the head down and so it was to be as the power-crazed, tyrant Mugabe lied, cheated, assaulted, murdered, betrayed his way into electoral "triumph", thus ending this period of unity.

I have tried to look at the SA governments stance logically and attempted to decrypt its motivations strategically, but after all these years I have come up with nothing! It hurts to watch, to hear. Sometimes I feel like a child of a policeman, the policeman is proud and strong, but while he struts his stuff in our living room through the walls of our house I can hear the neighbour beating his wife senseless - Dad the policeman does nothing and ignores the screams, the pleading, the crying.... Screams for help are ignored as the TV's volume is turned up and Dad takes care of his own little problems...

Anyway enough of my ramblings, for a great analysis on what is happening in Zim today you should visit this blog. I do occasionally, but not very often because usually it is too painful to read and brings out feeling of both impotence and rage. 

Maybe post-Thabo we can talk?

Tom Tomorrow is also The Man!

Ward Sutton is The Man!

In my last post on this topic I noted that one Colonel Tim Spicer was investigating the video that apparently showed South African Danny Heydenreycher firing indiscriminately at Iraqi motorists (the post can be found here). At the time I knew Spicer's name was familiar but I couldn't quite recall why. Well, while looking round the 'net I stumbled onto this article and now I know why. I would strongly suggest reading the article in its entirety, but for those just looking for a summary it basically details the goings on of Spicer as a "manager" of various mercenary front organisations.

Spicers involvement with South African's began with a now infamous organisation, the local mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes (EO). Spicer took the lead in rebranding EO as "Sandline International" when the Mandela government moved to crush local private military operators. In 1997 Spicer and the group of mainly South African mercenaries he led were arrested on arrival in Papua New Guinea after being hired by that government to "fight dissidents on the island of Bougainville and to re-open a lucrative copper mine." Spicer also has very close ties to Simon Mann (serving time in Zim for the mercenary debacle last year) and Mark Thatcher (bankroller of the said mercenary debacle). 

And this is the guy leading the "investigation"?

The latest news coming out of Australia is that South Africa's cricketers were racially abused and called "kaffirs" and "kaffir boeties" during the first Test in Perth. This kind of behaviour is completely unnacceptable and should be dealt with severely by Cricket Australia. The current punishment of simply ejecting offenders from the ground, is insufficient and a mere slap on the wrist.

Any person heard shouting things like that should be thrown out the ground and face a charge of crimen injuria (or whatever the Australian legal equivalent is). I remember in 2002 when the Australians toured South Africa a spectator spat at Steve Waugh as he left the field, that incident led to a charge of crimen injuria being laid. Using the K-word is the verbal equivalent of spitting in a persons face and should be treated just as seriously.

This stuff has got to stop and CA needs to be more forceful in hammering this racist element out of the game.

April 13, 1997 : Williams posts an apology for his previous gang activity on www.tookie.com, lamenting, "When I created the Crips youth gang. . . in South Central Los Angeles, I never imagined Crips membership would one day spread throughout California, would spread to much of the rest of the nation and to cities in South Africa, where Crips copycat gangs have formed. I also didn't expect the Crips to end up ruining the lives of so many young people, especially young black men who have hurt other young black men. . . . So today I apologize to you all the children of America and South Africa who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did. . . . I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions." (Villagevoice.com)

I saw this Press Conference and it was disturbing on so many different levels. Donald Rumsfeld seems to be fast losing his grip on reality and is starting to resemble a twisted combination of Dr Strangelove/Colonel Kurtz :

Washington - More than two and a half years into the Iraq war, Donald H Rumsfeld has decided the enemy are not insurgents. "This is a group of people who don't merit the word 'insurgency,' I think," the US defence secretary said on Tuesday at a Pentagon news conference. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.

 

"It was an epiphany." Rumsfeld's comments drew chuckles but had a serious side. "I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe," he said. "These people don't have a legitimate gripe." Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of 'insurgent'. He promised to look it up.

 

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as "rising up against established authority".

 

Even General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood beside Rumsfeld at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term 'insurgent'. After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, "I have to use the word 'insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now." Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How's that?"

 

At another point in their news conference, Rumsfeld and Pace had an unusual exchange in which Rumsfeld corrected his senior military adviser, only to have Pace gently insist that it was the defence secretary who was wrong. A reporter asked Pace what US commanders in Iraq are supposed to do if they find Iraqi forces abusing prisoners. Pace replied that if inhumane treatment is observed it is a service member's duty to stop it. "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it - it's to report it," Rumsfeld said, turning to Pace.

 

Replied the general: "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it."

 

Truly bizarre and truly disturbing.