Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (141911)	2/11/2014 9:29:24 AM
From: bruwin	1 Recommendation Recommended By chartseer Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

There are several items in your post that I would comment on, but for the moment I'm curious about your following statement .... "I have a closeness to S. Africa because that is where a brown-skinned man, very educated but also very proud, started his freedom movement that brought down the empire that boasted that the sun did not set on that empire." I would be interested to know the following :- 1) Who is the brown-skinned man whose freedom movement brought down the empire on which the sun never set ? 2) Which event(s) caused the demise of that empire on which the sun never set ? As far as I'm aware the Empire that stated that the sun never set on it was the British Empire. That empire did spend many years in what is now South Africa. They sent an army here in the late 1800's to fight the Boers who had migrated northwards from Cape Town to set up their own homelands. "Unfortunately" gold and diamonds were discovered in the north of the country and that gave impetus to a larger power believing it should have control of wherever ... so it wasn't long before the British were fighting the Boers. Initially the British had a hard time because exposed troops on the field with scarlet uniforms on can become sitting targets for guerrilla warfare, especially when your opponents know the territory and receive support from local communities. The Boers won several early battles against the British. The British also came up against the Zulu nation in what is now Kwazulu Natal, and lost to the Zulus at Isandlwana. However, spears and skin shields were ultimately no match for rifles so the Zulus finally lost out. The British finally brought in Kitchener, a professional soldier down to his bootstraps. He realized that the only way to win that guerrilla warfare was to eliminate the support the Boers received from their own communities and from the land itself. He had his army burn everything agricultural in sight and he created the first "concentration camps" in which he herded Boer women and children. In so doing he starved the Boers into final surrender. So the British finally left South Africa, but the sun still set on a fair proportion of their Empire. And no brown-skinned man or his movement in S.Africa, to the best of my knowledge, brought down that empire. In fact it was a white-skinned man, Hendrik Verwoerd, who was mainly responsible for pulling South Africa out of the Commonwealth such that it became an independent Republic.