The ANC taught us that violence was the answer - Buthelezi

The ANC taught us that violence was the answer - Buthelezi

Mangosuthu Buthelezi | Inkatha Freedom Party | 22 August 2012

IFP leader says as a result violence accepted as standard in response to injustice

Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

In the wake of the Marikana Mine massacre, we in the opposition have called for answers. During yesterday's debate in the National Assembly, many pertinent questions were posed.

Who gave the order to shoot? Who authorised the use of live ammunition? At what point did the Minister of Mineral Resources intervene in the dispute? At what point did the Minister of Police intervene? Why did negotiations break down between the mineworkers' representatives and the management of Lonmin? Why were the striking workers carrying traditional weapons? Why were NUM and AMCU not given equal standing in talks with Government?

Beneath the many questions runs a common thread: how could this have happened in a democratic South Africa?

As our nation's representatives grappled with this painful question in the National Assembly, the eyes of the world were upon us. We were also watched from the gallery by the Minister for Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration, Kalon Dicki Chhoyang.

Kalon Chhoyang is visiting South Africa to raise awareness of the human rights violations which continue in Tibet. I had the pleasure of meeting with the Kalon on Monday morning in Durban, where she kindly thanked me for my support of the Tibetan struggle for autonomy.

Morality and Abstract Thinking: How Africans may differ from Westerners

Morality and Abstract Thinking

How Africans may differ from Westerners

by Gedaliah Braun
American Renaissance

A public service billboard in South Africa. Note old tire and gas can.

I am an American who taught philosophy in several African universities from 1976 to 1988, and have lived since that time in South Africa. When I first came to Africa, I knew virtually nothing about the continent or its people, but I began learning quickly. I noticed, for example, that Africans rarely kept promises and saw no need to apologize when they broke them. It was as if they were unaware they had done anything that called for an apology.

It took many years for me to understand why Africans behaved this way but I think I can now explain this and other behavior that characterizes Africa. I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.

What follow are not scientific findings. There could be alternative explanations for what I have observed, but my conclusions are drawn from more than 30 years of living among Africans.

My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.

A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. “Isn’t English your language?” they asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s my only language.” “Then why do you need a dictionary?”

They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “how can there be words you don’t know?” “What?” I said. “No one knows all the words of his language.”

Viva Barbarism.. The ANC's Long Walk to -- 'liberation before education comradeship' -- Freedom from responsibility continues...

Have we descended below worst kind of barbarism?

Aug 19, 2010, Sowetan
Flipside of Life, with Charles Mogale

LET'S get serious, for once. Last week South Africans saw the very worst possible savage barbarism visited on a couple of young women on the East Rand.

Long story short: the women took up jobs vacated by people who had been fired for going on an illegal strike at the OR Tambo International Airport.

They were apparently ambushed and caught by a bunch of yahoos on a train, stripped starkers and their clothes thrown out of the window.

Someone with a phone camera snapped away and the pictures ended up on the front page of a tabloid.

Now savagery does not go beyond that. The pity of it all is that if our past record is anything to go by, the perpetrators will never be arrested, let alone have their day in court and be convicted.

Gedaliah Braun's Hard Headed Look at Dark Continent

Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self Deceipt:

A Philosophers Hard Headed Look at the Dark Continent

by Gedaliah Braun
Excerpts

Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit: A Philosophers Hard-Headed Look at the Dark Continent, by Gedahlia Braun [AmRen]

Defining a Liberal: a conservative is someone who dislikes blacks as a group but likes them as individuals, and a liberal is someone who likes blacks as a group (i.e. vote-fodder for the welfare state) but dislikes them as individuals.

***

Horror At ‘Whites Only’ Sign

In 1987 I spoke with a Canadian academic (in Papua New Guinea) who had excoriated the govern-ment for doing business with South Africa. He mentioned how ‘horrified’ he had been to see a ‘Whites Only’ sign in a South African train station. (I had seen the same signs and confess that I was not hor-rified.)

He was more ‘savvy’ than your typical liberal and agreed that if blacks took power in South Africa they would sooner or later create ‘a fascist’ regime. Nevertheless there must be black rule because ‘even-tually’ they would progress in the way whites have.

But Africa cannot go through the same historical process of development as Europe, because the cul-ture Europe de¬veloped into already exists; and you cannot reinvent the wheel – especially when you know it’s already been invented! Western technology has, it is true, been copied by Orientals, but that is not happening in Africa and there’s not a scin¬tilla of evidence that it ever will.

This guy seemed to be asserting that no matter what South Africa must be ruled by blacks, end of story. But this presented a dilemma, for we both agreed that universal franchise eventually meant zero franchise. Given this, would he still insist blacks must run the country? Yes. Even if blacks them¬selves don’t want it? Well, if that were true it might make a difference; but he didn’t think it was.

ICC wants to know about Charles Taylor Blood Diamonds to Naomi Campbell at Nelson Mandela Charity Party on 25 September 1997

Mandela party photo that put Naomi Campbell in 'blood diamond' storm

War crimes trial of former Liberian president may rest on events surrounding 1997 photograph taken at party in South Africa

Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk,
Friday 23 July 2010 18.06 BST

Nelson Mandela is pictured with guests at a party in South Africa in 1997. The interaction of Charles Taylor, Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow at the event is likely to come under the spotlight at The Hague when Farrow and Campbell appear as witnesses at Taylor's war crimes trial. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features [Guardian]

The picture speaks volumes. At the centre of a group of 10 people stands Nelson Mandela and beside him his partner and later wife, Graça Machel. On Mandela's other flank is a short man dressed in a military-style jacket with his hand held out as though he, and not the great South African leader, was hosting the gathering.

He is Charles Taylor, and the photograph was taken a month after he was elected president of Liberia. Now Taylor is in prison at The Hague, the first African president to face trial for war crimes.

Morality and Abstract Thinking: How Africans may differ from Westerners

Morality and Abstract Thinking

How Africans may differ from Westerners

by Gedaliah Braun
American Renaissance

A public service billboard in South Africa. Note old tire and gas can.

I am an American who taught philosophy in several African universities from 1976 to 1988, and have lived since that time in South Africa. When I first came to Africa, I knew virtually nothing about the continent or its people, but I began learning quickly. I noticed, for example, that Africans rarely kept promises and saw no need to apologize when they broke them. It was as if they were unaware they had done anything that called for an apology.

It took many years for me to understand why Africans behaved this way but I think I can now explain this and other behavior that characterizes Africa. I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.

What follow are not scientific findings. There could be alternative explanations for what I have observed, but my conclusions are drawn from more than 30 years of living among Africans.

My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.

A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. “Isn’t English your language?” they asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s my only language.” “Then why do you need a dictionary?”

They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “how can there be words you don’t know?” “What?” I said. “No one knows all the words of his language.”