Anti-immigrant violence rekindles disturbing apartheid-era images in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - It always begins out of sight, usually under the cover of darkness. This is the nature of South Africa's dirty little secret.

Ugly, xenophobic violence that kills in ways that are hard to imagine. Just as mobs sharpening their machetes in front of a cordon of police officers ready to open fire became a defining image of the government-sponsored violence in the days of apartheid, so too has it become a defining image of the new South Africa.

During apartheid, black supporters of the Inkhata Freedom Front attacked African National Congress supporters in violence that we now know was fueled by a white apartheid "third force." Now it seems it is fueled by poverty, ignorance and desperation.

It is not the first time that Africans from elsewhere on this continent have been the victims of raging, angry mobs in South Africa. In 2008 a wave of xenophobic violence hit townships in Gauteng; when it was over, 60 people lay dead. "Never again" and "not in my name" eventually were the words that resounded across this country. And yet here we are again - at least five people have been killed, shops looted and armed security forces patrol flashpoints because of fears the violence will rage out of control.

The deadly anti-immigrant attacks have forced more than 2,000 foreigners to flee their homes, according to one aid organization.

And let’s remember that where the Afrikaners settled, there were no blacks in the area, they migrated to those areas because of the economic opportunities that the Afrikaners and other European settlers created out of nothing.

It has always been thus, poor and desperate people will go where the opportunities are, and still as bad as SA may be, it is still light years ahead of the rest of the continent, in terms of economic opportunity.

In fact bad foreign policy and immigration are key reasons downed South Africa to the third world.
South Africans were arrogant trying to undermine communist government in Angola. Soviets warned them not to do so and matched South African aid with supplies to their side. Then South Africa intervened military Soviets made Angola into one big air base, unleashed leftist propaganda against South Africa, called Castro and flown in tens of thousands of trained black Cuban regulars to match for local rebels. It made enormous turmoil all around South Africa, and hordes of feral people getting inside to escape horrors of war.

Am unsure of the specifics you mention.

Nonetheless, I’d say South African governments (either black or white) were mostly ‘fascists’ for their own side. Whether a communist gov’t is better than a fascist one, is debatable. IMO, neither one has much good to offer to the rest of the citizens.

But, South Africa to date has both serious racial and governance problems. Maybe natives, Africans, in their own continent should have been allowed to remain and govern themselves since the beginning. The Dutch were not as ‘enlightened’ in their colonization as the Germans or the Brits in the African continent.

The Form of government (communist, etc..) is really immaterial to that part of the world. More so than the M.E. - in South Africa it has been primarily a racial demarcation problem, one race or another... and continues to be.

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14072

The Secret History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa

‘As the world focuses on Tuesday’s historic handshake between President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, we look back at the pivotal role Cuba played in ending apartheid and why Castro was one of only five world leaders invited to speak at Nelson Mandela’s memorial. In the words of Mandela, the Cubans ‘destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.’ Historian Piero Gleijeses argues that it was Cuba’s victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. We speak to Gleijeses about his new book, “Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991,” and play archival footage of Mandela meeting Fidel Castro in Cuba...

...SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Ladies and gentlemen, today is about honoring Nelson Mandela. And the president is at an international funeral with leaders from all over the world. He didn’t choose who’s there. They’re there to honor Mandela. And we appreciate that people from all over the world and from all different beliefs and walks of life who appreciated Nelson Mandela and/or were friends of his came to honor him. And I think, as the president said—I urge you to go read his speech, or if you didn’t see it or haven’t read it, because the president said in his speech today honoring Nelson Mandela, he said, “We urge leaders to honor Mandela’s struggle for freedom by upholding the basic human rights of their people”—...

...PIERO GLEIJESES: Cuba is the only country in the world that sent its soldiers to confront the army of apartheid and defeated the army of apartheid, the South African army, twice—in 1975, 1976, and in 1988. And in Havana, when he visited Havana in July 1991—I won’t to be able to repeat exactly the words of Nelson Mandela, but Nelson Mandela said, “The Cuban victory,” referring to the Cuban victory over the South Africans in Angola in 1988, “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor and inspired the fighting masses of South Africa. Cuito Cuanavale,” which is a victory of the Cubans in Angola, “is the turning point in the liberation of our continent and of my people from the scourge of apartheid.” So, in—’

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