Identify the Entities, Find the Funding, Talk Sense!
I am sorry I cannot do justice to this topic, only acknowledge it, and continue to speak in its light, to the things I will continue speaking about until I see changes, changed systems and a different and BETTER day.
I am already in constant grief and mourning (or, at least daily) of a different sort, and have very mixed feelings on the theme of “reconciliation” as you may see by this blog. I do not value “reconciliation for survival” at all times, and hope that this warning, may speak without dishonour to this man, who earned his position, who I respect more than many of the leaders you can see he has been posing and meeting with (including several from my own country) while stating where mine differs.
It may not be apartheid here, but policies have been enacted that are indeed coming from the same source.
Normally, I might not even pause to acknowledge major holidays, major events, world-shaking events, or the passing of a major leader. Sometimes, it’s so ordinary to be “marginalized” and dealing with it, that I don’t notice how I no longer respond to major national, or even global events.
Obviously, this is not one of those times. So I’m going to ask this question twice more– here, below and on a follow-up post.
I am talking about changes we need to United States of America, so proud of its (eventual) welcoming of Mandela on his release from 27 years in prison, of its protest of apartheid ON ANOTHER CONTINENT, to recognize what’s going on at home, and how the colonialism is set up, and works. For one, it doesn’t ever give up, or get dumber and clumsier with time. Nor must we, unless that’s simply acceptable.
Suggested Citation:
African Union Panel of the Wise, “Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges in the Fight Against Impunity,” The African Union Series, New York: International Peace Institute, February 2013. ISBN: 0-93722-86-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-93772286-2 © by The International Peace Institute, 2013
(interesting document, sponsored by governments of Germany and Finland, copyrighted by the International Peace Institute, dates Feb. 2013. The document represents the efforts of TWO experts!!! I learned (just now) that the AU “Panel of the Wise” is only 5 people from regions of Africa, launched 2007 and that the African Union itself (consisting of 54 states, all countries participating but Morocco) was launched in 2001, 2001. I find purpose 3, interesting: “To accelerate the political and socio-economic integration of the continent. ” Sounds like what our over-entitled federal government has been pushing, and doing, in the United States, through ITS entities also, as in when you see “National Models.” While Purpose 2 is “to defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of its Member States,o I think a more honest look at history (whether of Africa, or America) will show, that’s not going to happen and is probably not on the map. See my page on how this began in America at the latest, in 1939: “Abolishing the Rule of Law through Presidential Executive Orders: How 50 States became 10 Federal Regions
The “African Union” (AU) predecessor was the OAU (Organisation of African Unity), of 1963. Here’s a Nov. 14, 2013 speech on Africa: Dynamics of Conflict, Promises of Renaissance by H.E. Thabo Mbeki (that’s Wiki), Mandela’s Successor, second post-apartheid President of South Africa from 1999-2008 (the Wiki contains a neutrality warning. There is one single sentence about his marriage and family, stating who he married when (and in the UK, where he was exiled). H.E. Thabo Mbeki was born to activist communist parents, and his youth was affected by this, he seems a creature of the ANC, taking orders from them. University training (Masters in Economics) in Great Britain and military training in the Soviet Union (1970) at the direction of the ANC. Was Mandela’s pick for second president. He resigned under some controversy in 2008.
(I see I will have to discuss this separately…I am not the expert, but still, it relates to the core issues here).
Encyclopedia Brittanica (short) summary, by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa (TRC),courtlike body established by the newSouth African government in 1995 to help heal the country and bring about a reconciliation of its people by uncovering the truth about human rights violations that had occurred during the period of apartheid. Its emphasis was on gathering evidence and uncovering information—from both victims and perpetrators—and not on prosecuting individuals for past crimes, which is how the commission mainly differed from the Nürnberg trials that prosecuted Nazis after World War II. The commission released the first five volumes of its final report on Oct. 29, 1998, and the remaining two volumes of the report on March 21, 2003.
. . . (Challenges/Assessments, problems with this):
The TRC was confronted by a number of challenges, as it was not accepted by all parties to the conflict. The top echelons of the military did not cooperate with the commission. It was mainly the foot soldiers in the security forces and those who were already imprisoned or were facing charges who applied for amnesty. Senior politicians in the former government and senior leaders in the security forces did not apply. In the case of the liberation movements, the members argued that as they had conducted a “just war,” they were not required to apply for amnesty because their actions did not constitute gross violations of human rights. It took considerable effort to persuade them to participate in the amnesty process.
Listen, still more, please:
A key weakness of the commission was that it did not focus sufficiently on the policies or political economy of apartheid. The failure to examine the effect and impact of apartheid’s policies resulted in the need for the perpetrators, or the “trigger-pullers,” to bear the collective shame of the nation and let those who benefitted from apartheid to escape responsibility. The link between racialized power and racialized privilege became obscured.The legacy of the commission was also compromised as the post-Mandela government was slow to implement the TRC’s recommendations, including the reparations program. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, few of the commission’s recommendations had been implemented, and there had been few prosecutions of individuals who failed to apply for amnesty or who were refused amnesty by the TRC. Furthermore, a number of high-ranking officials from the security forces, including former minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok, were given suspended sentences through a plea-bargain process under new prosecutorial guidelines ostensibly meant to facilitate prosecutions. The failure to prosecute disillusioned many victims and encouraged the view that the government had strengthened impunity and that the beneficiaries of apartheid had escaped accountability for their actions.
Assessment
Despite these challenges and limitations, the TRC was internationally regarded as successful and showed the importance of public participation in such processes, including the initial decision-making process leading up to the establishment of a truth commission. The hearings of the TRC attracted global attention, as it was the first commission to hold public hearings in which both victims and perpetrators were heard. While amnesties are generally considered inconsistent with international law, the South African TRC provided some basis for considering conditional amnesties as a useful compromise, particularly if they help to secure perpetrator confessions.
“INTERNATIONALLY” doesn’t mean “UNIVERSALLY” and isn’t a determination of Truth. It’s a statement of subjective opinion. There are plenty who protest the process of pretending to “reconcile” because a meeting has taken place, followed by continued injustice, lack of accountability — particularly economic — in situations of extreme harm, and trauma.
Hardly simple topics, the promoter of Peace and Reconciliation of South Africa speaks DEEPLY to my resistance to the forced, universal decriminalization of severe violence against women and children (and society, human rights violations, civil rights violations) we are seeing in the subject matter I blog,
This system, these instituions and practices, these POLICIES, have harmed, permanently altered, and retarded my exit, with children, from a marriage which almost cost us our lives, for no legitimate reason other than that the father (my husband) had developed an over-entitled, and religiously-rationalized, AND socially-accepted method of maintaining control, including physical assaults, property damage, terroristic threats, symbolic destruction of personal belongings, interference with my ability to freely GO places (restriction of access to transportation), . . . .
. . . . .WORK (sabotage of employment opportunities, which represented contact with social spheres the father could not control), MAIL (I had mail intercepted) and FORCED WITNESS TO ANIMAL CRUELTY (we had animal abuse, domestic pets — several of them — died through beatings, neglect, and in at least two cases regarding my cats, murder), and THEFT OF MY CREDIT, in other words, first I was forced to shut mine down (early in the marriage) and year later when it probably became clear I was going to leave (because of this abuse), I was forced into working a night job (which became the mainstay of the family) long enough for him to obtain MY credit under duress (I had no access to it) after which that job was eventually shut down through harassment, obstruction, at times neglect of our children (i.e., refusal to provide child care while I worked), and so on. This was a decent and sustainable job, I left without unemployment because I had to quit. Then it was back to begging and doing without basics, plus living with this man who was very angry as I’d just had recently significant income. It took almost two more years (during which welfare time got up and running, learned in hindsight) to get out, in the end, no “plan” was going to work, I just had to act….
This was not the end of the gauntlet by a long (very long) shot, measured in challenges, or in years. IF there had been a space of peace, or a place of safety, it would be different, but there has not been. The entire message is, exonerate us, pretend with us, take the blame for (someone else’s violence), and above all, shut the door on your own past. Accept revisionist history, which is to say, accept a lie.
So the question comes up: WHY SO HOSTILE towards this species of post-divorce, or post-restraining order mothers? While the marriage was experienced as a POW situation (and was one), there was hope of escape. But now, I do not see that hope. While isolated in abuse, and aware of the compliance of others, once out, one realizes the institutions which set it up, and the sad passivity remains. We have become a society which wants someone else to do its dirty, dangerous work — and those people, whose proper job titles are actually police and, above them, district attorneys and their prosecutors — are not particularly inclined to do it. In fact, in my area, we are now seeing more and more police are actually shooting and killing on sight, including recently a teenager with a play (not even real) gun; he was 13 — and it SEEMS like, several times, older women. Of color. They didn’t taser — they shot, and killed.
Thanks to the family courts, which I am coming to understand as the outpost (bastions) of religion in our time, they can case-dump, and go back to the main business at hand: raising funds and starting Family Justice Centers which can draw grants and positive PR.
I am NOT alone in this. In my area, state, and across the country, still, women who seek to protect themselves or their children and retain SEPARATE and INDEPENDENT status at the human rights level, have been murdered, or had their children kidnapped and/or murdered, and sometimes get thrown in jail for their dissent (more, in another post under this title). Judicial deafness, and law enforcement deafness (to court orders) have cost such people their lives, or their children’s lives, causing them to exist in a state of defense, alarm, and trauma year after year. This is NOT conducive to a peaceful or prosperous life, or engagement in society. The population of the marginalized/traumatized seems to be on the rise. I am among them. So the topic of forcible “RECONCILIATION” being internationally promoted, through conciliation courts, conciliation process, and “mediation” when the sociopathic, out of control greed of one party laughs at the process, knowing where the balance of power remains.
In urban AND suburban prosperous America, some of these murders have been multiple-homicides, involving bystanders and with property destruction as well (i.e., father blows up the house during a “supervised visitation” with his two sons inside. He is a suspect in the missing wife whose body, I do not think, has been found yet (Josh Powell, Washington State, 2009). Or, someone has joint custody already, but somehow shows up at a beauty salon where his wife works, and blows away her — and seven others (mostly female), including a man sitting in a truck outside (Scott DeKrai, California, fall 2011). Or, as I continue to reference; it made a deep impression on me, this past August, a father who’d threatened to kill himself and his son, resulting in an order for supervised visitation, apparently does so — the agency which knew this mysteriously having forgotten to scan him for weapons on the way in. Or so we are told (Muni Savyon). Others simply appear to kill their wives during a court-ordered supervised visitation, some prefer to target their children, leaving her to suffer — and these are typically but not always, middle-aged white men, often with reasonably middle-class incomes.
My case:
My children were kidnapped (the word applies) on a court-ordered exchange for visitation purposes many years ago.
Several years later, without any of the involved parties telling me, I discovered — initially through the website “NAFCJ.net” by Liz Richards, especially (Step 2 link, which finally exposed me to some USEFUL basic vocabulary and concepts) — the federal incentives to the states and the state payments to groups contracting with the family courts, and as you can see on this blog, how millions of dollars collected child support end up mysteriously missing, or ‘Undistributable” and how an attorney who reported on merely $14 million of this ended up being handcuffed, disbarred, tossed in solitary coercive confinement for one and a half YEARS in Los Angeles Men’s jail in an attempt to break his spirit. His name is Richard Fine. A state law was quickly passed granting retroactive immunity to judges who may have previously taken (another issue he was addressing) county-paid bribes affecting their rulings on lawsuits against the county.
(In my case, and others). Jealousy of other women competing to be “the mother” and control of family finances were an issue. I know women who have been kidnapped, women who have been stalked, women who have been put temporarily — or in one case, long-time, working HOMELESS through arbitrary court orders and fiscal federal policy towards women. In America. The climate is increasingly hostile.
So yes, I have very deep feelings about the topic and principles of FORCED RECONCILIATION, even as I do mourn the passing of this person who has earned more respect that most United States Presidents have ever earned mine. I respect the office, and apparently the Constitution, which has been essentially sidelined in favor of the economic administrative policies.
Family of Nelson Mandela tells of grief and pain
The Los Angeles TimesBy Robyn DixonDecember 7, 2013, 10:15 a.m.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Members of Nelson Mandela‘s family spoke for the first time Saturday of their grief at losing a “great man, a pillar of the family,” who was always humble, despite his global fame.
Mandela’s family, deeply sensitive about the intense global media interest in his upcoming funeral, is walking a difficult line between a need for privacy to grieve, and the sense that Mandela belonged to to the world.
The family is deeply concerned about the possibility of photographs circulating of Mandela lying in state, according to a spokeswoman for the Government Communication and Information System. Cellphones and cameras will be banned for those who wish to view him lying in state.
There are 55 (wonderful) photos in this LA Times article (Published yesterday morning) by Scott Kraft, a correspondent who moved to South Africa, from 1988-1992, to record “The end of Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.” He’d said, “I stand before you here not as a prophet, but a humble servant of you the people…I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.”
PLEASE SEE PHOTO #5, posing with President George H.W. Bush, meaning, in 1990, on his release from prison. The timing of dismantling apartheid in one country appears to correspond to setting up another one in THIS country, I am referring to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and legislative changes here, where blacks and whites CAN both vote, but some seem to continue to need a marginalized, disenfranchised population to meet their needs and greeds. The TIMING is significant.
Here are yet more from another source.
“The pillar of the family is gone, just as he was away during that 27 painful years of imprisonment,” said family spokesman Gen. Templeton Matanzima on Saturday. He read a statement to journalists but took no questions.
“His presence was like a baobab tree that provided a comforting shade that served as protection and security for us,” he said. He said the two days since Mandela’s death had been difficult, “and it won’t be pleasant in the days to come.”
FULL COVERAGE: Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela dies
“We have lost a great man, a son of the soil, whose greatness in our family was in the simplicity of his nature,” he said on behalf of the family.
Mantanzima thanked South Africans and the world for their messages of support.
the BBC announcement
“Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss.”Mr Zuma said Mr Mandela – who is known affectionately by his clan name, Madiba – had died shortly before 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT). He said he would receive a full state funeral, and flags would be flown at half-mast.
Crowds have gathered outside the house where Mr Mandela died, some flying South African flags and wearing the shirts of the governing African National Congress, which Mr Mandela once led.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was one of the world’s most revered statesmen after preaching reconciliation despite being imprisoned for 27 years.
Mr Zuma said in his statement that “what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.
Tributes have come in from around the world. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was “a giant for justice and a down-to-earth human inspiration”.
US President Barack Obama said Mr Mandela achieved more than could be expected of any man.
“He no longer belongs to us – he belongs to the ages,” he said, adding that Mr Mandela “took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice”.
Mr Obama, the first black president of the United States, said he was one of the millions who drew inspiration from Mr Mandela’s life. He has ordered that the White House flag be flown at half-mast.
FW de Klerk, who as South Africa’s last white president ordered Mr Mandela’s release, called him a “unifier” and said he had “a remarkable lack of bitterness”.
The Elders – a group of global leaders set up by Mr Mandela to pursue peace and human rights – said they “join millions of people around the world who were inspired by his courage and touched by his compassion”. The group’s chair, Kofi Annan, said the world had lost “a clear moral compass”.
(photo obtained from a search of the Richard Branson & Peter Gabriel (left), the site is advertising a product), SIR Richard Branson( right), the “4th richest person in the UK” (see Virgin Mobile, Virgin Airlines, “Screw it Just Do it!” Aug. 2013 interview, hover cursor) and Peter Gabriel (ditto hover cursor for Wiki intro), formerly of Genesis and obviously a successful talented musician, both also (coincidentally) middle-aged white British males who approached Mandela with the concept, and not vice versa.
. . .It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.
I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from man
y faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.***
***Yes, well, some people — some of us — don’t wait until we have won the votes, or where challenging injustice wherever we see it might compromise say, an election — or a career, or cost us a position of respect, responsibility and leadership in a Christian (etc.) community, which at least in America is to say, corporation (tax-exempt, special privileges, major real estate owners and landlords, etc. ….). Some of us do that because we’ve already lost that position, wealth perhaps, respect, and social status through challenging INJUSTICE wherever we see it, in as many ways as we can imagine and do, and others because of the population sector, have never had much to lose BUT their lives… and so both understand LOSS, suffering, and lack. It is from that sector, those who have suffered and those that understand through personal acquaintance (not hearsay from the stratosphere or even outer space– Sir Richard Brantham’s plan, as I recall, entails “Virgin Galactic” (yes, commercial spaceflight, run by a former NASA Chief; to be run from Spaceport America in New Mexico) that the better leadership, examples, AND plans are likely to come. IF we who are on the ground can fully understand not just how to get along and forgive others, but what top-down and “us/them” apartheid style leadership has done, why they did it, but I think most importantly in this technologically advanced age, HOW they did it.
Reminds me of Amandhla! (Something Burning Inside 2001 Time article on Crossroads and Apartheid, and “AMANDLA! A revolution in four-part harmony; 2003 Australian documentary. A Review):
(“Incredibly moving film” review from a H. Schulman in Canada) For almost fifty years from 1948 to 1994, black citizens in South Africa were stripped of every basic human right while governments of the world pretended not to 
see. Systematically uprooted from their homes and moved into “townships”, they were made to carry passbooks, arrested without provocation, tortured and randomly murdered. But while successive governments took away their freedom, they couldn’t take away their songs or their desire for freedom. Today, while there are still problems, Blacks and Whites live together in a free South Africa. Amandla: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, an incredibly moving documentary by Lee Hirsch, pays tribute to the role played by protest songs in the non-violent revolution that brought an end to apartheid nine years ago. Amandla means power, and it’s the power of the songs that helped to free the people. Hirsch, a young filmmaker from New York, spent nine years in South Africa gathering newsreel footage, video clips, old photos, and interviews with musicians and political activists to show how protest songs expressed the fight against oppression.
Winner of the Audience Award and the Freedom of Expression Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, Amandla shows fifty years of South African history beginning with Prime Minister Verwoerd’s announcing his racial segregation policy in 1948 describing it as “a policy of good-neighborliness.”
The film also shows footage of the Sharpeville massacre and the Soweto uprising, and the triumphant election of Nelson Mandela to the Presidency in 1994. Amandla begins with the exhumation from a pauper’s grave of composer Vuyisile Mini whose protest anthems led to his hanging in 1964 and ends with his proper reburial fifty years later. It moves forward to depict how the songs communicated to the people in a way that political speeches could not, showing how different phases of the struggle brought forth different types of songs. For decades, songs such as Mini’s “Beware Verwoerd“, Vilakazi’s “Meadowlands“, the “Toyi-Toyi” chant and the uplifting “Mandela” by Hugh Masekela expressed the energy and purpose of the South African people and rallied followers to their cause.
In addition to the music, there are interviews with those that describe their experience of being imprisoned or were forced into exile. There are even interviews with White riot policeman and executioners, but the power of the film belongs to the music and powerful is an understatement…
When wealth accumulates, so does political clout; some policies are unfrozen, changed, and refreezed, then duplicated, with better strategic knowledge of pitfalls of “system change,” and understanding of human social nature’s HOW-TO’s, to do it again for the endgoal — profits. This is the art of government and statesmanship, too.
Do We Know OUR Times, how well do we know OUR Fathers and Leaders? Who are the “We” of these times? While We were protesting apartheid, in some ways and sectors, in the 1980s, what else was develping — in the 1980s — along the same, racists, apartheid lines (but under different labels)?
I have been reflecting on this, and am weaving the remembrance into the ongoing issue, I believe, of our times, in the United States of America, including what — more specifically, WHO– is to be sacrificed in the name of unity, peace, and reconciliation with oppressors?
As apartheid was GOING in South Africa, it was being re-instated, or encroaching (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and yes, 2000s) over here, our government was being restructured to suppress and restrain both people of color AND women, in direct retaliation to recent increases. This was expressed through developing multiple ways through the welfare system to DISenfranchise the already disenfranchised (conquer and divide, particularly on gender lines) while calling it help, in the process a public campaign was consistently run — at the policy level, where not all average Americans would see it, although many did for sure feel it, after it was up and running). The larger and more broadly-based these programs — the the courts to push them through (I am speaking of the family and conciliation courtrooms), the more money was invested. Expenditures for diversionary programs are HUGE, and throughout this time, it was hammered in by religious conservatives, BUT ALSO others — and sponsored by major foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller (see: Helped the Hitler Buildup, etc.). The public was being constantly lectured on the merits of marriage and the dangers of divorce (regardless of how Congressional leaders themselves were behaving, or even Presidents. Which is to say — badly, towards their wives). They were led to believe that child support was needed to reimburse welfare expenditures, when in fact, the entire wealth of the nation (held in various government accounts) was radically concealed from the same public (but visible on those CAFRs I keep talking about). There were S&L bailouts, MOrtgage Bailouts, and in the 1980s, in Nebraska, a major child prostitution, MURDER, and drug-running ring was discovered, and covered up (in part through murdering witnesses and investigators– eight of them, specifically). It is called, by the Legislator investigating it (John DeCamp) The Franklin Coverup. In the late 1980s and 1990s, further “Mortgage-based Securities” (essentially “HUD”) financial fraud, apparently in the billions, was uncovered through a software tracking the money developed by a former FHA/HUD employee, C.A. Fitts. So HUD and HHS are involved in robbing and lying to Americans, as are the family court systems themselves, while the propaganda about singlemothers being bad for children,and contact with fathers who have committed crimes against them, others, or their children, are alleged to be “good” for them, if supervised, coached, trained, and (etc.). This Supervised Visitation Industry” is what I was blogging and still researching when the news about the great leader of Reconciliation and Apartheid Deconstructor Nelson Mandela, died. It will be posted, too.
When great people die, including when they die peacefully and at a full age, it is time to reflect. Typically the media, the global leaders, and coverage of the masses mourning, and celebrating, the leader’s life ……
I am a woman and a mother, I am a certain kind of Christian, if this word still applies, and as that woman and that mother, I have an alternate interpretation of what might’ve prevented, earlier, both the apartheid investment in South Africa from the State of California AND the United States trafficking in children through the welfare and foster care systems, and possibly the greed-based, religion-endorsed, colonial economic system which has not yet divested itself from the concept of a slave-based labor force.
Isn’t it up to the slaves, or the oppressed, and not “the masters” to teach another way, and then find the force to make sure it happens? And how can this be done without understanding those tools of oppression and control, regardless of what they are labeled, and where they show up promising a better world, and a safer place?
What better platform from which to understand the United States of America (and its justice system, its educational systems, its behavioral health systems — all related to the primary, its economic system, including do we really need ‘WELFARE” if our states have enough to invest billions in apartheid to start with. Where did those profits come from to start with? Taxes only?) than to consider South Africa, compare the words and actions of the assassinated architect of apartheid, who I have been discussing alongside (a) US Welfare system, which was initially targeted towards blacks, and against women, and the poor, as I read in shock speeches given during my lifetime (childhood):
Bad people die. But their bad ideas don’t always; they simply change form and continue, carried forward (or is it “Verwoerd“? see South African (as opposed to German SouthWestAfrican) apartheid..Verwoerd studied under Fischer, then rose to power (Prime Minister 1958 til assassinated in 1966) in “Republic of South Africa.”
Here’s from a May 31, 1966 patriotic speech, given 5 yrs into this republic and at Praetoria:
“This is a White republic, ruled by the white man, part of the white domain of the world, but with full understanding for the ambitions and objectives of the Black man of Africa within our own midst and those farther afield . . . . . The White man and all that he has created for humanity through the past ages, is of incalculable importance for civilization and for history, and not only for history that has passed. He, and the spirit with which he is endowed, the characteristics which led him to this day and will in the future provide his inspiration, will always be needed where order and peace and progress are desired.”
with this man whose legacy was to unify the dismantling of apartheid and preside as President over the the Republic of South Africa, and leaves us with a different life, and legacy of words — and who lived to the full age of 95, despite attempts to shut him up, shut him down, have him executed, and 27 years unjustly in prison — and died peacefully at home. Neither his words, nor his legacy, as Verwoerd’s above, were an utter disgrace to humanity, a support of fascism and Hitler, and a denial of basic truths on whose lands were, originally, whose. I note that Verwoerd was the son of an evangelical Dutch Reformed minister, and he was a bright scholar imbued with psychological theories from Berlin in a time of colonialism and AFTER a time of genocides. Such words, such a legacy….
The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela
What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” — Nelson Mandela
We know all South Africans and indeed the world join us in this profound sense of loss and sadness on the death of our beloved Founder, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
Our deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences are with the Mandela Family and friends at this time.
Let us stand together now and in the days ahead, and do what needs to be done to honour with dignity Tata Madiba. We know you share with many of us the same passionate wish to see Nelson Mandela’s legacy being kept alive and made available to the world.
His legacy lives on in all of us – it is in our hands now.
Hamba kahle Madiba.
Can we tell truth from lies? Genuine leaders from hypocrites and murderers driven by the love of gold? Do we really know who “our fathers,” our our leaders, are? Or how to tell who they are? It takes followers to make leaders. Following is a conscious choice. There may not be always good choices, and rarely easier choices, and at times, there may be seemingly only one choice which preserves physical life. On the other hand, as he said, there are things worth dying, or giving one’s life for.
“The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela” also illuminates current USA domestic policy towards its own citizens, which of course concerns me, as I and my children live here:
Left: Nelson Mandela waved to the capacity crowd that greeted him at the Oakland Coliseum shortly after his release from a South African prison in 1990. Photo: Sarah Fawcett, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Right: Nelson Mandela, deputy president of the African National Congress, gestures to a capacity crowd at the Oakland Coliseum Saturday, June 30, 1990, during the last stop of his eight city U.S. tour.
Photo: Peter Southwick [there are 58 photos attached to the article, below]:
“What Nelson Mandela Meant to the Bay Area: (by Joe Garafoli, SF Chronicle writer, 7:52am Fri. December 6th)
Long before Nelson Mandela filled the Oakland Coliseum in a triumphant visit shortly after being released from a South African prison in 1990, the Bay Area had been a hub of the antiapartheid movement – and shared a special connection with the civil rights leader.
Opposing South Africa’s racist apartheid system unified factions in the Bay Area and state like few other issues. Longshore workers and college students joined in the effort with celebrities such as Whoopi Goldberg and politicians including a Republican governor, George Deukmejian.
Longtime Rep. Ron Dellums led an often-lonely fight in Congress to win federal sanctions against South Africa. When he was lieutenant governor, Leo McCarthy was arrested at an antiapartheid protest. So was the poet Maya Angelou. [distracting links removed by LGH]
In 1986, California became the largest government in the U.S. to require divestment of South Africa-related investments – $11 billion at the time. Deukmejian endorsed the move.
“In apartheid, we saw the epitome of evil,” said Pedro Noguera, who was UC Berkeley’s student body president in 1985, leading protests and being arrested at antiapartheid demonstrations on campus … Antiapartheid protests were staged at hundreds of campuses nationwide in the 1980s, and the ones at UC Berkeley were among the most powerful. In April 1985, 10,000 students boycotted classes a day after police arrested 159 people during a Sproul Plaza protest.
When the university announced in 1986 that it would divest $3.1 billion from companies doing business in South Africa, “you felt that you were part of something that made the world different,” said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who helped organize the UC Berkeley protests.
Dockworker protest
Mandela was impressed when members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco refused to unload the South African cargo ship Nedlloyd Kimberley in 1984. Mandela praised the union workers during his 1990 speech at the Coliseum, saying, “They established themselves as the front line of the antiapartheid movement in the Bay Area.”
“It was electric when he said that,” said Lawrence Thibeaux, who sat in the fifth row as Mandela spoke. He recalled being on the dock as the union’s business agent when workers refused to unload the cargo.
“Fifty percent of our membership was black,” Thibeaux said. “To keep unloading cargo meant we were helping their government continue their program of apartheid.”
Seeing Mandela in person years later “showed that we had helped change things,” Thibeaux said.
Movement grew
The horror of apartheid had long resonated in the black community, particularly among those who had lived through the civil rights era. But Alex Bagwell, an African American who participated in the longshore worker protests, said the movement boomed among people of all colors during the recession of the early 1980s, “when there were a lot of people out of work or on picket lines.”
Hearing, now, of this, I reflect on how it is NOT NECESSARY to waste human lives. It takes a certain spirit — probably the one Verwoerd above, claims the White man was “imbued with” (possessed with might be a better description) — to do such a thing. Sometimes we now call this a sociopath. Perhaps it’s a cultural creation. Whatever that hater and destroyer of “those who are the chosen “OTHER” for our kind” is, whether spirit, or culture created from the same mindset or spirituality — it is lesser, and love is greater. Love is not absent justice, in fact it is imbued with a deep sense of justice — but sees and executes it differently. As in Psalm 85, in prayer of thankfulness, a statement as current what was also a vision of such time,
“Shew us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. 9 Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and Truth are met together, Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other, Truth shall spring out of the earth, and Righteousness shall look down from Heaven. Yea, the Lord will give that which is good, and our land shall yield her increase.”
How in the world can there be peace when without justice?
“The weightier matters of the law” which some had omitted, Jesus called “judgment, mercy and faith,” (Matthew 28, see v. 23), talking in the same passage about the humility that goes with leadership, about hypocrisy and prioritizing “the gold of the temple” over the temple itself. [Consider: our times. Consider, the halls and courts of justice — justice in those days, as a nation under Roman occupation, as they could, from the religious arena, to the extent permitted by which sector? The political/military sector….)About leaders who were, in fact, murderers, as were their fathers:
29Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela
To Be Continued…..
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Ten Most Recent Posts, ‘Display Content’ added 27 April, 2022. (For some, that only shows my typically long post title + shortlink, but in the future I’ll move that part further down in post body for better results on this widget).
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This Absolutely Uncommon Analysis shouldn't be!
What I do here: I expose the Systems Design, and the Designers, so Y.O.U. can Show Others, and to notify those playing certain games, "you've been flagged." Heard of "disruptive technologies?" Disruptive innovations? Despite the blog's appearance, I know what I'm doing! You're looking at long-term leverage, in the hands of the "non-experts," in the public interest, not public funded propaganda to drive business to private pockets. Hence, I'm not afraid to ask: The formula for this public/private business model isn't really that complex, but the concept itself was just so devious, insidious, parasitic, grandiose, and by now, so baked into the economic, institutional infrastructure, people either don't notice, or, in a common, cowardly, but all too human response they see, and just start denying, or looking for nicer explanations of an ugly truth -- where it's heading. For lack of nicer, but still honest terms, it's heading towards yet more slavery (and tolerating it) and genocide (and tolerating it). [[2019 comments: and the ability to drive the U.S., in particular, into even more, bigger, and more costly/dangerous wars, discrediting us (further) internationally. But I wrote this sidebar many years ago..]] As a woman, mother, a family court and domestic violence survivor [yes, he was a hitter, and more], who has already 'faced the music' in more ways than I can count, to the best of my ability, I do not do "denial." I also ask the public, what's left of it, to just not go down that Denial Road, and with it lose more of their innate humanity, perception, and ethics. There is another way out, one with a conscience: Really want system change? Make up your mind to understand government financing -- change yourself first. Find and read your local "CAFR" (government's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports), a wonderful source of information, with flow chart, descriptions of component or blended government units it's reporting on, and reporting the balances in each fund -- ever heard of a "Balance Sheet"? Looking for this also reveals just how many governmental business entities ARE there? Find them. Read. Think about what you see. What does it mean? Governments tend to pool their investments, for example, "CALPERS" (essentially created ca. 1931) is the largest "public pension" investing platform around, or at least in the country. Getting started earlier sure helped, then adding players (subscribers) over time ALSO did. In 1985, add "CII" Council on Institutional Investors (members: in 31states and D.C.) (LA Times 1985 article on Calif. Politician (state treasurer, assembly speaker) Unruh whose idea it was for the Council so institutional funds could "flex their muscle"; and push for corporate governance reform. CII members now control $3 trillion of assets)-- my point being, government holdings are invested and when pooled like this, are major clout, but the average person never reads even a single government entity's annual financial reports to take a look. (I wasn't aware of them til 2012!) Governments not only invest their funds in business, they also by legislation, patenting, and protections, set them up to win, or lose. So, "know thy government" is a great place to start. (See blog/see links in the blog). 2019 updates: This widget's (text box) full contents, along with others', now can be viewed (better -- full-page-width) at: Many of My Sidebar Widgets Now Live Here...[Published July 9, 2019]Published short (url short-link ends "-abt") (and may eventually replace current sidebar contents, or most of them). I also published a second, similar post with other sidebar widget contents(url short-link ends '-ahh') on July 19, 2019. Thanks for your patience (and any NOT-tax-exempt donations) meanwhile.//LGH |
ColdHardFact$ PostsDoorways to Key Parts of This Blog (I split the long Dec. 2019 Widgets. Added 27 Apr. 2022).
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
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