-Caveat Lector-
This is a good overview of how life is at present in South Africa, from
Liberty,september 98.
I have not personnaly experienced frequent electricity failures, but much of
the rest is reasonably accurate.
Crime has been generally removed from newspaper reporting except for the
bizarre(such as last week 5 people were
locked in a meat refrigeration van when the crooks stole the meat. the
people died of suffocation. They managed to catch one of them but he simply
worked out of the holding cell)
Dispatch
Die, the Beloved Country
by Jim Peron
There's more to the political transformation of South Africa than what they
show on CNN.
When a country begins sliding into oblivion it really is the
little things that get to you. You wake up in the morning and turn to see
what time it is. The clock is off. The electricity is off again. Sometimes
for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours, but it seems to happen more
regularly than before.
You pick up the phone at work to make a call. Nothing. Your
neighborhood is without telephone service again. You breathe a sigh of
relief -- at least if all the phones are out, they'll do something
relatively soon to fix it. If it's just your own line, it can take days
before they'll do anything.
After the power comes on, you turn on the television to
watch a favorite program, and hope you get the right sound with the right
picture. Sometimes you get the sound of one show with the picture of
another. Sometimes it's just the one or the other. Or a radio station
instead of the soundtrack. You've read the papers -- a large number of the
"old" employees have walked out of the broadcasting studios. They couldn't
take it anymore. And since television is an arm of the government, their
replacements are appointed politically, not because of their experience or
ability.
You drive home after going out for dinner. Entire
neighborhoods are without street lights. Well, to be more accurate they are
without lights that work. And the lights have been out for months. The city
has said it won't fix them.
These are the little things in South Africa today. These are
the things that annoy. The big things are too frightening even to consider.
Kafkaburg
For two years I couldn't get a water/electricity/tax bill
from the city of Johannesburg. Water and electricity are socialist
enterprises here. I didn't have an account number, nor did I know how much
to pay. I tried calling the bureaucrats, but no help there: they said they'd
get back to me, but they didn't.
On September 25th, they showed up to turn off my electricity
for failure to pay. The city workers refused to show identification,
wouldn't say whose account they were turning off, and wouldn't show any
legal authorization to do so. In fact, they told me they didn't have to
speak a language I understood (English). I called the police. I have a
videotape of these civil servants telling me they aren't obligated to
identify themselves, and that if I refused to allow them on the property
they had the right to tear down my gate. When I asked one of them for
anything that would show them to be city workers, he replied, "This isn't
America you know." I know! I know!
I told him, "It's not Nazi Germany, either." He later
chastised me for running down "Nazi Germany." "I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't
realize you were a Nazi."
I went to the city hall and waited hours for someone to see
me. I was finally told to make a plan to pay the account. I was willing. I
had R7,000 (7,000 rand) cash on me. But the bureaucrats wouldn't let me pay
or make a plan. They had forgotten to transfer the account to my name, you
see; it was still in the old owner's name and the bill was going to the
wrong address. I was ordered to wait until they changed it over and sent me
a statement.
I pay a R700 deposit and go. Two days later they turn on the
electricity. Two months later, and still no statement has arrived. I call
and call. "I'll call you back," they say. They don't. I keep calling.
Finally I get a sour bureaucrat who tells me I'll have to pay R9,000
immediately and the rest over six months. I asked about the year payment
plan. That was discontinued in November. "But I wanted to pay in October and
you people wouldn't let me," I protest. "That's your problem," she says.
Back at city hall, I see another woman who spends the entire
time screaming at everyone who comes near her. She screams in the phone. She
screams at the switchboard for "bothering" her with phone calls. She informs
me that it's my obligation to pay my account whether or not the city sends
me a statement. It doesn't matter if I don't know the amount owed. It
doesn't matter if I don't have an account number to which the money is to be
credited. My obligation is to pay an unknown sum into an unknown account,
and if I don't get it right they'll turn off my electricity.
I got off relatively easy, though. Today's newspaper told of
one man who received an account for R500,000 in water use. The man owns a
well and doesn't even use city water. When he went in to talk to the
bureaucrats, they were very sympathetic. They told him to pay 50 percent now
or have his electricity cut off.
The Rise of Violence
Recently, I went into a print shop to get some flyers
printed. The woman there was quite pleasant and we talked about the short
blackout that day. She asked what I was doing in South Africa and told me
that she and her family want to flee. Her family originally immigrated from
India; like some Indians she was quite dark. Clearly she was not a member of
the class "privileged" by apartheid. But what she said surprised me.
"My husband and I decided we were better off under
apartheid. Sure now we can live next to white people and ride the same bus.
But those things aren't important."
What is important? Not being afraid.
Today, the murder rate is ten times greater in South Africa
than in the United States. One world atlas reports: "South Africa is the
world's most dangerous country (beside war zones), with 40,000 murders a
year." It wasn't this way four years ago, before the ANC took power. But the
government says the murders are a "legacy of apartheid."
That's part of the problem. Everything that goes wrong is "a
legacy of apartheid." The violence in the rest of Africa is a "legacy of
colonialism." It's a legacy that has gone on for almost 40 years. Every time
something goes wrong (and that happens constantly), the same litany of
excuses are recited. "We inherited this problem from the corrupt apartheid
regime."
I lived for thirty-some years in the U.S. and never met
anyone who had been shot. I was never near a bank robbery. Never heard of a
friend's car being hijacked. Only one person I knew suffered a burglary.
In the last two years many people I know have been
burglarized. In fact, burglary is so common that people have stopped talking
about it. One of my friends was hit six times in one year. The last time I
saw him I asked what he had done that day. "I got a new TV," he said. "Oh,
how generous of you," I replied. He has since left for England.
White farmers in particular are being targeted. Some, like
Werner Weber, president of the Agricultural Employers Organization, believe
there is an orchestrated campaign to force whites off the land so it can be
redistributed. Farm attacks rise almost every year: 92 killed in 1994, 121
in 1995, 109 in 1996 and 140 last year. In some attacks people are murdered
but nothing is stolen, indicating that robbery isn't the motive. Farmer
Dudley Leitch told an AEO meeting that while the murder rate among South
Africans in general is 13 per 100,000, it is 120 per 100,000 for farmers.
A major cellular phone company placed an anti-crime ad in a
newspaper saying, "President Mandela -- you were in prison. Now we all are."
A top official of the bureaucracy that regulates telephones called the
company and the ad was withdrawn. I guess it was too rude to state the
obvious.
In America, you don't see what's happening. I know; I watch
CNN. It doesn't even come close to telling the truth about the decline and
death of South Africa. The American media can't tell the truth now -- they
have invested too much in telling everyone what a saint Mandela is.
Meanwhile, we live in prisons. My house has a set of bars on
the outside of the windows and another set inside. I have a Rhodesian
ridgeback dog patrolling the yard. I had a big, spiked, remote-controlled
gate put in the drive. I can't afford the precautions that others are
taking. You now see individual homes with security guards. Walls over eight
feet tall are common, with barbed wire or spikes on top. Across the street,
my neighbors put an electric fence on the wall -- now a commonplace sight.
People are armed and have hired private security companies. In the U.S.
following all these precautions would be considered paranoid. Here it's
average.
Police Story
On the street where my bookstore is located, a grocery has
been robbed a couple of times. So were the post office and bank.
In the last few months, four of my customers have been
hijacked by armed gangs, one of them in my parking lot. One was shot through
the leg, another was shot at but missed. Another was beaten and spent weeks
in the hospital. Well over 3,000 hijackings are reported each year. A family
driving to Durban for holiday pulled to the side of the road so the two
little boys could get out and take care of business. Several hours later the
police found the two children sitting against the bodies of their dead
parents; murdered for a car.
The new president of the ANC, Terror Lekota, told the press
that the hijackings are the fault of apartheid. He claims the "apartheid
regime" gave immunity from prosecution to hijackers in exchange for
"intelligence" gathering on the ANC. Last year, another top government
official blamed the spate of hijackings on whites. He said there was no
crime wave at all, and that whites were inventing crimes just to collect
insurance.
The acting head of the Licensing Department for the
Johannesburg area, Gerrie Gerneke, issued a report in July 1997 confirming
that the department was in the control of criminal syndicates. He said that
half of all cars stolen in the Johannesburg area are "legalized" with new
official documents within 30 days of being stolen. He said that cooperation
between criminal gangs and union members has made it impossible for senior
staff members or security staff to take any action. After Gerneke's report
to the government was made, two anonymous letters accused him of being a
racist. As a result of these anonymous complaints, Gerneke was suspended for
five months. A year later Gerneke says the government has not acted on any
of his recommendations to deal with corruption. When a car theft ring was
recently exposed, five of the 16 individuals arrested were policemen. The
chief investigator said, "We found that policemen were receiving stolen cars
and then selling them to their clients."
In 1997 corruption reached such a level that Mandela
appointed a Special Investigating Unit to look into the matter. According to
Judge Willem Heath, head of the unit, there are currently more than 90,000
cases under investigation. If Heath and his crew manage to resolve one case
of corruption per day, including weekends and holidays, it will take about
247 years to clear the current backlog. This doesn't include any new cases
that will arise. Heath thinks the cases involve a sum of around 6 billion
rand.
In 1997 approximately 2,300 police officers were charged
with corruption -- just about one every three hours. Almost 500 police
officers have appeared in court on charges of working with criminal gangs.
In the Johannesburg area alone 700 police officers are facing trials for
committing crimes ranging from murder to burglary. And everyone assumes this
is only the tip of the iceberg.
Over the last two years,there have been dozens of major
highway robberies. In broad daylight gangs of a dozen men armed with AK-47s
and other "military" weapons attack security trucks carrying large amounts
of cash. These robberies have netted millions for the gangs. Government
officials blame security companies, banks, and anyone else they can think
of. But some arrests have finally been made, the ringleaders have turned out
to be ANC activists. The leaders who were arrested were officials in the
so-called "armed wing" of the ANC, Umkhonto weSizwe. One gang leader had
been Youth League secretary for the Johannesburg area. A close associate of
his, also a gang leader, was arrested but "escaped" from jail. Both were
recent guests at the birthday party of Peter Mokaba, Deputy Minister of
Environmental Affairs and Tourism. There is evidence that Umkhonto weSizwe
activists are not only behind some of the robberies, but that they are
working with other armed cadres associated with so-called liberation
movements from bordering countries.
In 1997 alone, there were 465 bank robberies. In all about
$40 million was taken. Banks are raising their fees substantially to
compensate for the losses.
Crime seems to be the only thing that works in South Africa
-- the risk of being arrested, tried and convicted is minuscule. In 1997,
only 14.6 percent of murders led to arrest and conviction. Of 52,110 rapes
there were only 2,532 convictions -- about 6.7 percent. For the 330,093
burglaries there were 15,710 convictions, about 4.8 percent.
Experienced prosecutors have quit their jobs, replaced by
novices who owe their positions to affirmative action.
During the 1997 Christmas season, the police and prisons
"lost" almost 300 prisoners. In one instance a policeman took two prisoners
to a bar for drinks. One of them borrowed his keys and returned to the jail
to release 23 other prisoners. At another jail nine prisoners walked out,
leaving behind a note: "We are out for Christmas and will be back on January
3." (They didn't come back.) Several prisoners left a police van when guards
didn't bother locking it.
In 1995, Sylvester Mofokeng was taken out of his cell for a
soccer game. When he was returning to prison, he simply jumped out of the
truck and ran through gates that were left unlocked. He was rearrested three
months later, but in August 1996 he escaped again. Somehow he obtained a gun
from a visitor and used it to force guards to release him.
Josiah Rabotapi is believed to be the leader of an armed
robbery syndicate involved in the theft of up to $14 million in 30 armed
robberies. He is also wanted for 16 murders. So far he has been arrested
three times and escaped every time. Jan van der Westhuizen, a convicted
murderer, has escaped from prison or police custody seven times.
When the police aren't "losing" criminals, they are killing
them. A recent government report showed that one person dies every twelve
hours either while in police custody or as a result of police action.
Two-thirds of these deaths take place during apprehension. According to one
report, "an overview of 100 shooting incidents between police and civilians"
showed a heavy "imbalance in casualties." David Bruce, a researcher for the
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said, "In only five of
the cases was a policeman hurt, and in one case a policeman was killed."
In the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, citizens are
fighting back. In some areas they have put security guards at the entrance
to a subdivision. Entrances are closed off with gates to control who comes
in and who goes out. Criminals can no longer simply load their cars with
stolen goods and speed out when security guards stop them at the gate. These
areas have seen dramatic reductions in crime. But the ANC has ordered the
gates removed. It claims these efforts force crime away from white areas and
are therefore racist.
This is life in South Africa today.
I've lived in South Africa for six years and I've seen a lot
of changes. Even a few for the good. But the standard of living has
declined. And people's attitudes have changed: hope is gone, replaced by
fear, anxiety, even horror. There is a joke going around: Americans have
Bill Clinton, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope. South Africans have Nelson Mandela,
no cash and no hope.
The Return of Apartheid
Another popular joke is that Mickey Mouse has a watch with
the picture of our Ministers of Finance. In the six years that I have lived
here the South African rand has depreciated by 50 percent. In just the last
year it has dropped 30 percent.
The government has conducted a massive "jobs" program. But
since the ANC has taken power the number of jobs has declined, despite
sanctions being lifted and increased trade with the rest of the world. The
only job increases are in government departments.
South African workers are not particularly productive. But
the government has been pushing new labor legislation that continues to
drive up the cost of South African labor. No wonder that fewer and fewer
South Africans are employed.
The ANC is pushing a new "Equity Employment" bill through
Parliament. This bill will force all employers to reserve a number of jobs
for blacks. Businesses that don't comply with the mandatory racial quotas
face heavy fines. And so apartheid is back -- the old laws in new packaging.
Recently, ANC members of Parliament have announced that they
intend to introduce legislation applying racial quotas to sports.
Specifically, the government wants to control rugby, a sport played
traditionally by whites (unlike soccer, which is dominated by blacks).
Mandela ordered a commission to investigate racism in the South African
Rugby Football Union. SARFU took the issue to court and the court ruled
against the commission. ANC officials then proclaimed the judge an
unpatriotic racist for requiring Mandela to testify on why the commission
was created.
ANC MPs, unable to get control of rugby legally, resorted to
intimidation. They announced on the floor of Parliament that unless the
leadership of SARFU resigns, ANC members will forcibly close airports to
prevent other rugby teams from entering South Africa. Major corporations,
all fearful of the ANC, threatened to remove financial support from SARFU
unless the ANC got its way. Rugby head Louis Luyt, who had defeated an ANC
partisan for the job, was forced out by the threats. After Luyt resigned,
SARFU apologized to Mandela for making him go to court.
Communists in Government
The government of South Africa is actually a coalition of
three groups. The ruling triple alliance is made up of the Congress of South
African Trade Unions (COSATU ), the South African Communist Party (SACP),
and the African National Congress (ANC), which leads the coalition. The SACP
has a lot of influence in COSATU and together they exercise a great deal of
control over the ANC. Thabo Mbeki, who just replaced Mandela as leader of
the ANC, and is pegged to be president of South Africa when Mandela steps
down, was trained in Moscow. His father, Govan, is an old line Marxist and
SACP activist. At a recent ANC conference the hard left solidified its
control over the ANC by capturing nine of its eleven top positions. Of the
ANC's 240 MPs in Parliament, 80 were appointed by the SACP. The ANC and
COSATU also used some of their quotas to appoint SACP members to Parliament.
When Chris Hani was assassinated by Janus Waluz, a Polish
immigrant, CNN called Hani, "a top ANC official" or "anti-apartheid
activist." But CNN didn't mention that Hani was the head of the Communist
Party and that Waluz was a refugee from communism. Instead, the impression
was given that Hani was another Martin Luther King.
In the same way, many facts about Mandela and the ANC are
never reported by the media. For example, Mandela awarded South Africa's
equivalent of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom to Libya's Muammar
al-Qaddafi. Mandela has publicly said that Cuba is a model for a free,
democratic society that is, in fact, more democratic than the United States.
Castro has been here for friendly visits. When U.S. officials complained
about Mandela's cozy relationship with dictators, Mandela said that no other
nation has the right to interfere in South African affairs -- this from the
man who supported sanctions against the old government. Curiously, Mandela
dropped recognition of Taiwan at the demand of Communist China.
The ANC's Bill of Wrongs
Gay rights are now enshrined in South Africa's Bill of
Rights. Gay publications around the world have praised the ANC for this. But
in fact gay sex remains illegal. The government has taken no practical steps
to legalize homosexuality. When a gay rights group took the sodomy laws to
the Constitutional Court, the government opposed its effort. After a
world-wide outcry, the government backed down. It appears the ANC is hoping
the courts throw out the law, thereby taking credit for being pro-gay while
not being responsible for the change. Yet the South African government
continues to deny foreign gay partners of South Africans the right to stay
in the country legally. The issue is in court, but the government is opposed
to changes in the policy.
The ruling ideology is that "there are no absolute rights,"
so the ANC put "weasel" clauses into the Bill of Rights. Any right
guaranteed by the Constitution can be ignored. For instance, the right to
engage in enterprise is absolute -- unless infringed "by law." Thus the
government can do what it wants since it passes the laws. Other
constitutional clauses say rights can be limited by government consistent
with the operation of an "open" and "democratic" society. And remember,
Mandela considers Cuba democratic.
The bill of rights negotiated by various political parties
guaranteed freedom of speech. Repressive censorship laws were relegated to
the dustbin. But the ANC has been pulling them back out and wiping them off.
A bill to repeal censorship was introduced in Parliament. I
even testified in favor of it. The bill was mediocre but livable. Later, the
ANC rewrote it in secret and passed it without making a written version
available. The new bill actually creates a censorship body. All videos and
films must be approved by the censorship board before they can be
distributed. So-called "x-rated" material can be sold only in licensed adult
shops. Anything deemed "hate speech" is illegal. The new "obscenity"
standard is that anything "degrading" is illegal. Another victory for clear,
concise legal concepts.
Lindiwe Sisulu, deputy minister of home affairs, said the
government "tries" to balance free speech with the rights of "society, in
reality, however, there can never be an absolute balance." This means "not
all speech can be equally protected." Sisulu interprets the new censorship
legislation much more strictly than in the past. She claims that "anyone who
downloads pornography from the Internet will commit an offense." Note that
she has broadened this beyond the act which banned "degrading" pornography,
bestiality, child porn, and hate speech. Now she says that any downloaded
porn is illegal. Expanding the prior censorship of films and videos, Sisulu
says all photos must be classified by the government before distribution.
"No person may screen a film or photograph, including on a computer screen,
which has not been classified by the Publications Board. This means that
anyone placing material on the Internet must have a classification
certificate for that material." In other words the government now claims the
right to classify -- and ban -- all photographs before they are distributed
to anyone.
Yet the ANC stills finds the bill of rights too restrictive
of government. Peter Mokaba recently gave a speech in a black area demanding
that all blacks vote for the ANC so it can get two-thirds control of
Parliament. He said this would allow it to rewrite the constitution and end
all restrictions on government power. ANC secretary general Kgalema
Motlanthe said that if the ANC won two-thirds control in the next election,
it could govern "unfettered by constraints."
Supine and Pusillanimous
In the last four years, the nation's largest string of
newspapers has lost its independence from the government after being taken
over by Irish press baron Tony O'Reilly. O'Reilly's Independent group is
cozy with the ANC. An article in The Times of London says O'Reilly has been
criticized for "his unhealthily close relationship with the ANC government.
He began by appointing an advisory board stacked with ANC supporters and has
been vocal in his support for all manner of ANC causes and watchwords."
Journalists have been unhappy that O'Reilly brought in his biographer, Ivan
Fallon, to run the newspapers because Fallon "is disliked for his refusal to
stand up to Government attempts to bully the press into uncritical support."
According to The Times O'Reilly's newspapers have downplayed
scandals within the ANC government. In the Virodene scandal, ANC politicians
promoted -- and still promote -- the so-called AIDS drug. Documents show
that the company producing the drug was planning to offer a six percent
share of the profits to the ANC. O'Reilly's papers "have played down the
whole matter, neglecting to cover key press conferences."
Other newspapers, however, still manage to criticize the
government, and the ANC and Mandela don't like it. Mandela constantly
attacks the press for being "opposed" to the "transformation." In fact the
press, on the whole, was staunchly critical of apartheid. Still, Mandela
says the media, with the exception of television, are racist. In the next
few years, legislation directed against the newspapers is almost certain.
Mandela's hero, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, wiped out recalcitrant newspapers
by simply turning them over to the government.
Television is exempt from Mandela's criticisms because the
three main television stations are already controlled by the government. ANC
officials run the stations and they are often deathly silent about the
problems in South Africa. But they do have time for endless documentaries on
Mandela and the ANC, with titles like "Our Heroes." One new news director is
a long-time ANC supporter with no broadcasting experience.
Two new mini-series have been produced for the coming
season: one is a glowing film about the life of communist Helen Joseph and
her fight for the ANC, and the other is about ANC partisan Bishop Tutu. A
new television series, funded by the Labour Ministry, is called "Let's
Talk." A recent episode showed the workers, all of whom are called
"comrades," on strike. The owner of the factory, who for some reason had an
American accent, locked out the strikers. But the company management didn't
know how to build their own product, houses, and built them upside down! The
government and the trade unions seem to believe that entrepreneurs and
management are useless, and that all productivity comes from labor.
The South African Broadcasting System's political
allegiances are no secret: one station's promotional commercial shows its
on-air talent in "rainbow" clothing and marching with colorful flags to
triumphant music. Several flags feature the face of Mandela. In another
Stalinoid presentation, the television producers' award show included a
musical number with the chorus, "Oh, Mandela, we sing praise to you." Not
long ago, the son of the former president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, who
hosts an SABC talk show, ran an hour-long special praising media mogul Tony
O'Reilly. No doubt the fact that O'Reilly has cuddled up to the ANC had
nothing to do with the praise heaped upon him.
Fascism, South African Style
Civil society is being politicized. Everything must be
solidified in the hands of the State and the State must be in the hands of
the ANC.
Last year the government nationalized all water resources in
South Africa. Under new legislation it will be illegal to dig a well without
prior approval from the central government. The ANC attacked critics of the
legislation as "racist whites" who want to protect their luxury swimming
pools. Meanwhile the new rulers admit they can't find 45 percent of all the
water shipped to Johannesburg. Only 55 percent of the water is metered out
-- the rest simply disappears. But considering that meters are found almost
exclusively in white areas, while black areas have unmetered taps, this
should be no surprise.
But water is only the camel's nose in the tent. The ANC
Minister of Mineral Affairs, Penuell Maduna, called for the nationalization
of all minerals, saying that "private ownership of mineral rights is
unacceptable to the government." Government spokesmen call private ownership
"racist" because not everyone owns mineral rights in a private system.
Maduna previously floated the idea that the government should also control
all oil companies. Under the current system, price competition in petrol is
forbidden and all prices are set by the government.
The hospitals in South Africa have become nightmares. Two
years ago Mandela announced free medical care for children. The hospitals
are now filled with unemployed women and their children. They sit there for
hours to have a cough or a runny nose checked.
Dr. Zuma, Minister of Health, seems determined to make
health care in South Africa equally bad everywhere. She has conscripted all
medical students to be servants. They are to give two years of their lives
to the State, to do what the State orders, anywhere the State orders. The
legislation doesn't even specify that the service has to be in South Africa.
Speculation is that at least some will be assigned to Cuba.
When it was pointed out to Zuma that huge numbers of doctors
and medical students are now emigrating, she called them "traitors," and
attributed their fleeing to "racism." Wits School of Medicine reported that
45 percent of all students who graduated in the last 35 years have already
left the country. A recent survey of the top doctors in South Africa
revealed the almost unanimous opinion that Zuma is destroying the nation's
health-care system. The Independent wrote, "Many doctors said that Zuma's
apparent intention to introduce a communist or socialist national health
system was stifling private practice and initiative. This, coupled with
excessive control and interference, has left doctors despondent." A
spokesman for Zuma responded by saying that if the proposals are "seen as
socialist, then we will continue to do so and offer no apologies."
The destruction of health care has even affected the food
supply. Vaccines that are urgently needed to protect livestock have run out.
The only legal source for purchasing the vaccines in South Africa is through
the government, and the government labs are empty. Farmers who send in their
checks to buy the vaccines have the money returned. The top veterinary
scientists are also leaving the country. At the Onderstepoort Research
Centre only one of the original six specialists is still there.
Onderstepoort, once considered one of the best research centers in the
world, is now limping along. Scientists say there is a good chance that
mutated viruses will decimate the beef, pork, and lamb industries before new
vaccines can be developed. They warn that the public should expect a
shortage of meat and milk as a result.
Under the old apartheid regime, government schools in black
areas were woefully deficient. When the ANC took over the education system
things changed. Now all the schools are woefully deficient. -- equality has
been achieved. But the number of students graduating from high school has
declined under the ANC. Those who do well in school prosper only if they are
the right color. The student who passed more courses with distinction than
any other student in South Africa can't even get a scholarship. Each
application he has made has been rejected because he's the wrong color. He
has the best scholastic record in the country but no one cares. It isn't
wise to give money to anyone not approved by the ANC.
In the Eastern Cape, near Port Elizabeth, is the
impoverished Khwezi Lomso Comprehensive School. The principal is Cecilia
Behrent. During her tenure the school has achieved a pass rate of 84
percent, well above the national rate of 47 percent and double that of the
provincial pass rate of 42 percent. The teachers' union, in cooperation with
the government, has been trying to have a union official replace Behrent,
who is white. Her ouster is opposed by almost every one of her 1,100
students, almost all the teachers, and over 700 parents who have signed a
petition on her behalf. The government refused to accept the petition.
Johannesburg Besieged
Johannesburg was a relatively safe and clean city when I
moved here. I moved into a racially mixed area in the city center. I left a
year later. Today, I won't drive there in broad daylight. The streets are
controlled by criminals. Some gangs sit at street corners and rob passing
motorists. They break the car window, take what they want, pile it on the
curb, and then wait for another car. They don't even run with the stolen
goods. They don't need to; no one will arrest them.
Residents of my old neighborhood, Hillbrow, have discovered
a new game: take cans of trash and throw them from 15th floor windows at
pedestrians. The streets are filthy and reek of urine. Businesses are moving
out. The luxury Carleton Hotel held on for awhile but finally gave up the
ghost. No one would stay there, so the hotel closed its 200-plus rooms, and
now sits empty.
Mayhem reigned on New Year's Eve. In the Hillbrow section of
the city, nearly 200 police officers patrolled an area of just a few square
blocks -- to no apparent effect. Three people were murdered on the streets
that evening. Police who tried to stop looters were pelted from the
high-rise apartment buildings. Paramedics were attacked when they tried to
aid the injured.
So the ANC took action. Johannesburg is a massive city, and
the ANC promised to break its management into several regions. "Local
control" would then be achieved with four gerrymandered districts. Each
district was drawn in the most convoluted way possible, ensuring that each
had enough blacks. The ANC knows where its voters live.
The city hired thousands and thousands of new bureaucrats.
In many cases two people did the same job -- one black worker with the title
and one white worker to do the work. Money was redistributed to the
"previously disadvantaged." While black townships haven't improved, white
areas have declined. Now Johannesburg, once the wealthiest city in Africa,
can't pay its bills, and can't get bank loans. It went from budget surplus
to bankruptcy in just two years. More ANC magic.
This black magic is being worked throughout South Africa.
The British-based Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy
recently said that 281 municipalities in South Africa are now technically
bankrupt. That's one out of every three cities in the country.
Public parks are now squatter camps. Broken water mains gush
for days before they're fixed. Pot holes remain unrepaired. The city budget
allocates less than $100,000 for street repairs for the entire city!
Inefficiency reigns. Under questioning in Parliament, ANC officials admitted
that roads in Gauteng have deteriorated under their management. Transport
Minister Mac Maharaj admitted that only 37 percent of the roads were in good
or very good condition in 1997 where this was true of 80 percent of the
roads in 1985.
The Political Struggle
In Johannesburg the opposition party to the ANC is the
Democratic Party (DP). Once a leading anti-apartheid party, it is now the
only real opposition to the ANC left, and it has become increasingly
libertarian. It supports the rights of gay people and free enterprise. It
opposes affirmative action and censorship.
The northern suburbs are now staunch DP territory. And they
are in a tax revolt. The government responds by sending in armed goons to
terrorize elderly couples. The ANC isn't happy. My area is the one area
where the ANC doesn't have a clear majority. It can't institute one party
rule here, so it intimidates, punishes, and withdraws basic city services.
To counter the opposition, the ANC now plans to make the
entire Johannesburg area a "mega city." No more regions. The DP areas will
be swamped "democratically" by ANC supporters, allowing the ANC to continue
to steal from DP voters and give to ANC bureaucrats.
Critics of the mega city were, of course, branded "racists".
(Today, that term has lost all meaning in South Africa. In fact, if you're
not labeled a "racist" one time or another, you're simply not a decent human
being.) Various community groups asked for a referendum. The ANC said that
was undemocratic, and wouldn't have it.
Local DP politician Frances Kendall called for a private
referendum. Hundreds of voting booths were established throughout the city.
The ANC ordered its supporters not to vote. In black areas voting booths
were harassed and intimidated into closing. Then the ANC said the vote
didn't count because there weren't enough voting booths in black areas. Just
under 100,000 people voted. The vote was overwhelmingly against the "mega
city". The ANC said it didn't care and would ignore it. After all the poll
only expressed the views of racists.
When the ANC won power, the election was declared "free and
fair" by European Community observers. One observer admitted to a Federal
Party official that the election would be declared corrupt if judged by
European standards, "but this is Africa." For instance, more voters voted
than existed. A recent census showed the population at under 39 million, not
44 million as previously claimed. Since more than half the population
consists of children, there can't be more than 19 million voters in the
country. Yet more than 19 million cast ballots. No one seems to care that
the ANC was elected with millions of fraudulent votes.
I was receiving hourly vote tallies by fax from the
Independent Electoral Commission. I remember my amazement when I noticed
that the vote total for the Federal Party was higher at 6 p.m. than at 7
p.m. Votes were disappearing. Vote counting went on for days when suddenly
it stopped. For two days no results were released. IEC officials met with
political party officials behind closed doors before the final results were
negotiated and announced.
For the last several years the ANC has done everything
possible to manipulate the voting system to increase its totals. First, it
proposed that the voting age be reduced to 14 years since the overwhelming
majority of youths are black. Public ridicule has quashed this proposal for
the time being. Next, the ANC tried to change the laws so that non-citizens
could vote provided they were from "neighboring," i.e. black, countries.
Because most white non-citizens are from England, Canada, the United States,
etc. the white vote wouldn't have increased. Opposition parties managed to
kill this proposal as well.
Instead, the ANC achieved the same goal through the back
door. The vast majority of "illegal" immigrants in South Africa are blacks
from neighboring countries. The ANC granted them immediate citizenship.
Meanwhile, "legal" immigrants, who are mainly whites from Western countries,
find it increasingly difficult to stay in South Africa. Permanent residency
for "legal" immigrants has become more difficult to receive, and the cost of
simply applying has increased from less than $100 to over $1,400.
The National Party (NP), once South Africa's dominant party,
is fast losing support. It has never really opposed the ANC on anything, and
it has made numerous backroom deals with the ANC to retain privileges for
its leaders. The job of standing up to the ANC is filled by the "liberal"
Democratic Party.
The DP has contested by-elections recently in several NP
strongholds. In each case the DP handily beat the NP candidate. White voters
no longer trust the NP, and with good reason. In the most recent local
election the DP garnered 90 percent of the votes. Just before the election a
top NP official said this seat was the NP's "safest" in the country. But the
ANC is launching a counter-offensive.
DP activists, many of whom were arrested for denouncing
apartheid, are now branded racists by the ANC. ANC media mouthpieces refer
to the "liberal racists" of the DP. ANC officials call liberals "bigots" and
use the term "conservative liberals" to denegrate ANC critics. Party
officials regularly give speeches denouncing critics as being "unpatriotic."
And recently they have started claiming that whites are preventing its
programs from succeeding.
Mandela openly denounces the DP as racist. His objective is
to sideline the DP. Of all the opposition parties -- outside the Inkatha
Freedom Party, which is strictly Zulu-based -- only the DP has a hope of
attracting black support. It must be destroyed if a one-party ANC state is
to be constructed.
What happens depends largely on how the rest of the world
views South Africa. If there is sufficient criticism and publicity, the
would-be ANC dictators will back down. They have before and will again. But
the ANC is whittling away at the rule of law and the world isn't saying very
much. The ANC won't ban its opposition outright -- at least not in the
immediate future. Total government control of all the media isn't in the
cards yet either -- but the newspapers will be attacked in the guise of
promoting "diversity." But there is a hope. International pressure and
continued support for the DP may at least hold things off.
But the odds are against it. South Africa will most likely
walk the road to misery, corruption, despair and destruction. Give it time.
It won't be any different here than in the rest of Africa.
Liberty, September 1998 <../issues/67issue.html>, © Copyright 1998, Liberty
Foundation
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
