Re: Sure, I accept the historic wrongs done by the apartheid regime and also previous governments to the black communities -- but neither I nor my children were involved in that, in fact, I opposed it. Furthermore, I spent my professional career working in a "black" hospital for and with people of colour. So why should we, and simply because we are white, now have to bear the responsibility and, indeed, make good on the reparations (a) for wrong-doings for which we were not responsible? and (b) to people who were not even wronged?
Actually, you and your siblings are "involved" to the extent that you, collectively, benefited from the iniquitous apartheid regime... You talk as if a repressive political regime that lasted more than a century could be dismantled overnight with NO, absolutely NO lingering scars on the social fabric.
You should be aware that law itself, that is, the whole corpus of rules and legislative writings that legitimized --indeed, legalized-- South Africa's white private property, was not abolished altogether by the new ANC regime. Now, what's the social, political purpose of laws? Society's ruling elites draft laws and regulations basically to perpetuate themselves and to keep the social order as it is --to make the present state of affairs the LEGACY of future generations. When such a legacy is fundamentally challenged by a new class, we call it a revolution. Just think of what happened in Russia in October 1917, or in Germany in 1933, or in France in 1789,...
The ANC, however, didn't go as far as depriving the white minority of all its "legislative legacy" and allowed it to keep most of the advantages resulting from the apartheid regime's legislative corpus....
Re: What's going on in SA now is exactly the same as the people of Germany or Switzerland having to make reparations for the Holocaust and other wrong-doings by the Nazis not to those who were affected or their descendants but to Zionist organizations and to Israel.
Again, another gross exaggeration of yours.... First, you should notice that "Holocaust Industrials" (as Norman Finkelstein would call them) are not after people at large in Germany, Switzerland, and even Belgium, they are suing the banks only. But then, I grant you that they've been guilt-tripping public opinion at the same time. Besides, to claim that the bloodless reparations of post-apartheid SA are similar to that of defeated, post-1945 Germany is totally ludicrous. Did you have a Nuremberg? Unlike the Goebbels, Himmlers, Goerings and other Nazi leaders, NO apartheid official has been hanged or put before the firing squad....
Re: But my queries still stand -- (a) why are you obsessed with race?
Actually, I'm not "obsessed by race". Keep in mind that I have dismissed the very notion of "race" as an unscientific catchall(*). Yet, it doesn't prevent me from noticing that, however fanciful and irrational, the notion of race is an important, even crucial, criterion to correctly appraise (geo)politics. Your disingenuous remark is similar to that of an evangelical freak who would accuse me of religious bigotry because of my claim that most of the US culture war stems from the Bible belt and the growing influence of the RRR (radical religious right). Just because I point my finger at the religious right doesn't make me a Jesus freak!
Gus
(*) Message 21751075 |
