Posted on 09/21/2008 10:16:25 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The African National Congress's decision to sack President Thabo Mbeki has been described by some South African commentators as "regicide".
Certainly it is unprecedented in South African history that a head of state is dismissed in this way. Nor is the ANC the kind of organisation that goes in for this humiliation of its leaders.
So why did it happen?
The immediate cause was Mr Mbeki's ongoing feud with his former deputy, the ANC party leader Jacob Zuma.
But this was not just a personal vendetta between two men. Behind these events lie two major factors: one political, one personal.
Fight with the left
Thabo Mbeki, although a former member of the South African Communist Party, has used conventional economic policies to drive the country's development agenda.
Tight monetary and budgetary targets have been set and met. The result has been a period of unprecedented economic growth, reaching 5% a year in recent years.
In June 1996 Finance Minister Trevor Manuel introduced a neo-liberal economic strategy known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear).
This included commitments to open markets, privatisation and a favourable investment climate.
The ANC is in a formal alliance with two groups on the left, the Communists and the trade union movement, Cosatu. Both were fiercely critical of the strategy and argued that they had been excluded from its development and implementation.
In the report to the Communist Party Congress in July 1998 the Central Committee spelled out their objections to Gear in great detail.
This concluded: "We remain convinced that Gear is the wrong policy. It was wrong in the process that developed it, it is wrong in its overall strategic conception, and it is wrong in much of its detail.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Flame away, but there’s not one part of Africa that has done better since the end of colonial rule.
If Baracks elected I expect all sorts of ANC ties to be strengthened and millions of African”refugees” to pump up the voter roles to counter the influence of the Latino/Bloc Vote.
Botswana is about it.
So basically Mbeki was sacked because his economic policies were effective and not Mugabe like?
This is bad for all of South Africa then, I thought Mbeki may have been sacked because he was too liberal, that is not the case, how stupid of the ANC.
I’m not going to go as far at to say Ghana has done “better.” But, it has certainly avoided the precipitous descent other African nations have suffered.
It should be pointed out that in British and European usage "liberal" means essentially the opposite of its usage in America. It generally references classically liberal policies, which Americans would call conservative.
And if I read correctly, Zambia (or is it Nambia?) is not doing so badly either.
Flame away but it was European colonialism that, at root, caused all these problems. Britain, Franc, Belgium etc. conquest and carving up of Africa is the cause of all this mess. Yes, they governed better than the current crop of thugs but what right did they have to take Africa in the first place?
I think you mean Namibia, which I understand isn't a total loss. But you should read sometime how Germany behaved when they controlled that territory. A dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.
You mean, Africa didn’t have tribal warfare and was progressing nicely along with the rest of the world before colonialism? They were keeping up technologically, making good use of their rich resources, all getting along peacefully, before the evil whites showed up? They were curing malaria, making clean drinking water, building great public works? It’s all the evil white man’s fault, even before he ever showed up in Africa, that Africa was behind in progress. And it was a land of peace and plenty before then.
I’m not saying colonialism was morally right, but it wasn’t colonialism that caused Africa’s problems, colonialism even stemmed some of them-Africa has reverted right back to the rule of the strong man since its end.
European colonialism did not lead to stable African nations, in large part because the borders did not reflect local tribal identity. In addition, during the pre-independence period they brought numbers of future African leaders to school in Europe, where they learned Marxist nonsense. BUT, the idea that Africa would be better off in the primitive brutal barbaric societies that prevailed before the colonial period is ludicrous.
No, I'm saying it was carved up into a bunch of artificial countries by colonial occupiers who took Africa only for the purpose of exploitation. You should read the history of European colonialism, it's far from pretty. And the good things you mention were done to further the exploitation of the native peoples, not because they are abstract goods. I'm sorry, but Africa's current tragedy can be attributed more to London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels than to the current crop of thugs.
“Flame away but it was European colonialism that, at root, caused all these problems. Britain, Franc, Belgium etc. conquest and carving up of Africa is the cause of all this mess. Yes, they governed better than the current crop of thugs but what right did they have to take Africa in the first place?”
Wait, wasn't the Americas “Colonized”? So the native Africans are better off with Genocide, starvation, disease, and poverty. Africa should be re-colonized, with 100 year contracts that would allow them to return to self rule after they were educated through 4 -5 generations, in civilization and governance.
I had a manufacturing plant in SA where I was training blacks in trades, and management, but due to US do gooders, cutting off dollars to SA, I had to close the plant.
How do you know that? First, Europeans killed millions of Africans in the process of conquering the continent. Second, Africa may well have developed organically if left alone, possibly by borrowing what works in Western civilization. For all we know the people would be much better off now if the European conquest hadn't happened.
I know that colonialism wasn’t “pretty”, but there thugs-warlords-strong men-making use of the resources of Africa(as far as their technology allowed) for their own purposes long before colonialism, and murdering the innocent people caught in the middle long before whites were ever seen in Africa. They didn’t care before, and they don’t care now, how many children are killed or raped, how many innocent people are carved up with machetes just for being the wrong place at the wrong time. The “evil white man” has nothing to do with that, it has been from time memorial in Africa, and colonialism was the only time it ever had the brakes put on even a little of it.
I understand it’s a sterile argument, what’s done is done and there’s no unscrambling that egg. It’s just that people arguing that colonialism was better for Africa makes me upset. Colonialism was a disaster for Africa.
My favorites in this drama of the new South Africa are Tokyo Sexwale and Blade Nzimande. The underlying question is who will become South Africa’s Mugabe.
Apartheid left a damaged nation today and really it's the Whites fault for never involving the Blacks in the political process until 1994. To me, what's even more amazing is that the Afrikaners are refusing to move out of the continent. (I know that South Africa is their true home since they've been there since 1652
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