Posted on 08/20/2006 9:11:39 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Sen. Barack Obama started a two-week tour of Africa on Sunday with a visit to Nelson Mandela's former prison island, paying tribute to the "incredible courage, resilience and hopefulness" of the anti-apartheid movement.
The only black member of the U.S. Senate and one of the Democratic Party's rising stars, Obama said the two-hour visit to Robben Island made him realize that everyday worries in the United States were "fairly trivial stuff compared to the very elemental, basic struggle" of Mandela and other former inmates.
Obama's late father was a goat herder who went on to become a Harvard-educated government economist for his native Kenya.
The senator was guided around the island by Ahmed Kathrada, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 with Mandela and other leaders of the resistance to white racist rule.
Kathrada was classified as Indian which — according to apartheid's laws — made him superior to black South Africans. He was allowed to wear long trousers and socks and got bigger helpings of food.
Mandela, Sisulu and all the black detainees suffered the humiliation of wearing shorts and petty discrimination like not being allowed syrup or jam at breakfast, he said.
"It is a reminder of the extraordinary struggle that not only Mandela went through but people all over the world go through to obtain things that we take for granted," said Obama. "To stand in Mandela's cell and have a sense of the incredible courage, resilience and hopefulness of these men puts into perspective the work we do back home."
Obama said hopes his trip, which will include a trip to his father's home in Kenya, along with visits to Congo and Chad, will help improve ties between the United States and the continent, and give him a better perspective on problems such as HIV/ AIDS.
He is due to visit AIDS patients and meet activists in the impoverished township of Khayelitsha on Monday.
Can't speak for the other places, but I traveled in Tanzania in the 1980s, under Nyerere. One newspaper in the whole country, put out by the state. Comical roads with potholes big enough to store a Volkswagen. And few of those. Secret police lounging around Dar-es-Salaam. Corruption absolutely everywhere.
But they were a "front-line state" against South Africa. I'm not endorsing South Africa, but sheesh! Black or white, people preferred it to Tanzania. If not for the Soviet interest and the racial obsession in the West, the country would have made a transition like Chile. Instead, it's headed down the tubes.
Oh my word.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE REST OF AFRICA EXCEPT THE DOMINATE TRIBE WAS WHITE.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE REST OF AFRICA EXCEPT THE DOMINATE TRIBE WAS WHITE.
You're twisting my words.
A difference between apartheid-era South Africa and other African countries was that although they were often ignored, other African countries had constitutional provisions that recognized legal equality among their citizens. South Africa had the opposite. This difference might have made apartheid more honest that brutal dicatorships in Zaire and Uganda, but it didn't make it better.
I believe the government was better in the 1960s and 1970s.
What evidence do you have that people preferred South Africa to Tanzania?
The comparison to Chile is a counterfactual one. It would be nice if we could say that such a transition would have happened, but there is no way to prove that such a transition would have happened.
It's your right to think that. Objectively, there were several countries (including neighboring Botswana and early 1980s Zimbabwe) that had more democratic governments than South Africa had. If you want to think that they were still hellholes, that's your right. However, they were democracies.
I say the ONLY reason people like you went after South Africa was that the dominate tribe was white.
And I would say that it was because it was fundamentally undemocratic. With other countries, if the laws were respected, things would be much better. Constitutionally speaking, all citizens were equal under the law.
Back in the 80's no one cared what was happening in Zim, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Liberia or even the hole Kenya was becoming.
What? Some people didn't care. Those people probably thought that all African countries were hellholes.
Citizens in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria were not equal in practice although the law stating that everyon was equal.
In South Africa, people were not equal in practice and the law backed them up.
In the first group of countries, you had criminals running the government. In South Africa, to treat people equally would have been criminal according to their laws.
And if you can't see that there is a difference, you don't know what you're talking about.
I've never read that, but I wasn't there. Maybe the inevitable effect of Nyerere's socialism hadn't taken effect.
What evidence do you have that people preferred South Africa to Tanzania?
A "divestment" campaign was never necessary to overturn the government in Tanzania. No one invested in Tanzania except a handful of Communist countries, and half-heartedly at that. A tell-tale sign that people weren't killing themselves to get into prosperous, wonderful Tanzania is that the border with Kenya was unguarded for vast stretches. South Africa, on the other hand, had people trying to get in illegally all the time.
The comparison to Chile is a counterfactual one. It would be nice if we could say that such a transition would have happened, but there is no way to prove that such a transition would have happened.
There's no way to prove it, but so what? The result of overthrowing a country and looting its productive land and industry is always a disaster, except for the looters-in-chief. And it has been so.
Before they threw in the towel, the Boers were making reforms constantly, for all the good it did them. Creating autonomous homelands might well have worked, if they'd been capitalist. Which probably was why the ANC couldn't stand the idea.
You are delusional.
I'll put it to you real simple:
Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda were run by criminals ignoring the law.
Apartheid was anti-democratic.
Do I think that some racists held white-run South Africa to I higher standard than other African countries? Sure.
Do I think that's what drove our foreign policy? No.
South Africa's strategic location and mineral wealth put it in the Soviets' crosshairs. To make South Africa safe for democracy, we first had to make South Africa democratic.
And yes, I also believe that we didn't intervene when Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda killed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of their citizens because too many people think that African countries are "hell holes" where massacres like that are accepted.
Whatever you think have at it.
Some wanted to go there because wages were higher, not because the quality of life was better.
What kind of Communist privities it's water, or it's electricity, takes loans form from IFI's, accepts "structural adjustment programs"? When I talk about Communist I point to North Korea test firing Nuclear Missiles at the US pointing them dead at the biggest military base outside the US, I point to China someone the US would never dare touch. When you talk about Communist you point to that Idiot Mandela, you point to Nicaragua, you point to Barbados?
too funny
read it again....get an english speaker to help you if you require it. There is no need for you to respond again, because no reply from me will be forthcoming.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1687143/posts?page=10#10
What Mandela wants and believes is irreverent to the world.
Now answer my question.
What kind of communist state privatizes it's water and power industry takes loans form from IFI's, accepts "structural adjustment programs"? Answer the question.
You think it's funny North Korea test fire missiles at the US? While the US remains over stretched hitting a State with little to no military no WMD and no treat to the US or Israel? What is funny?
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