South Africa Helping us is a non runner
Posted on July 7th, 2014
By Garvin Karunaratne”
On the occasion of South African Deputy President Ramphosa’s visit to help us reconcile with our enemies our leaders have to know how the South African Leaders like Mandela sacrificed their own people for personal gain.
Nelson Mandela was a black leader who was incarcerated by the Apartheid White Government of South Africa for 27 years. South Africa was a colony of the UK where a small number of whites had wrested 87% of the arable land by force without paying any compensation to the black communities. The Blacks lived in slums and took up arms against the Whites. Nelson Mandela had to agree to the terms laid down by de Clerk the South African President to gain his release from prison. He had to agree that the new Government of the Blacks cannot acquire any of the land held by the Whites. It was a master stroke by President de Clerk to continue to enjoy all the prerogatives enjoyed by the Whites this time under a Black Government led by Nelson Mandela. This Black rule has now lasted two decades and let us see what happened to the Black population.
While Nelson Mandela and the Black leaders enjoyed power they were powerless to help their own black population.
In the words of Grasian Mkodzongi, a Researcher,
South Africa remains a very strange place, a divided society. The transition from Apartheid majority rule involved what Patrick Bond calls elite transition for the beneficiaries of the New South Africa are mostly White.- two countries one a small mediterreanean archipelago with beautiful bungalows perched on hill tops, Whites Only beaches, where blacks are there to serve the rich; the other stereotyped African country with overcrowded slums, high unemployment, extreme poverty, extreme wealth live side by side”
(From ‘The Next Frontier for Land Occupation” :http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/63718
Mkodzongi adds: The ANC Government was more interested in calming nervous White land owners and foreign investors than addressing the root causes of landlessness and social injustice.”
As Nelson Mandela’s former wife an active member of the ANC(African National Congress states:
Nelson Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically we are still on the outside. The Economy is very much White.”(‘Winnie Mandela accuses Nelson Mandela of betraying the blacks of South Africa” in Mail On Line, Aug.6,2010)
The British conquered South Africa in 1795 and by the Native Land Act of 1913 the ownership of land for the blacks was severely restricted.. 80% of the land went to the Whites. That meant 96% of the arable land.
In the words of Andile Mngxitama, founding member of South Africa’s landless Peoples Movement,
Government programmes have delivered only 5% of land to the people since 1994…. Actually government land reform processes reproduce apartheid and racism… the programme does not recognize that land held by whites is stolen property. It is a part of the 1994 deal to surrender the economy to the Whites in exchange for political office. Basically Blacks are buying back their land with assistance and loans from the Government and even then landowners sell only if they want to…. With laws that proclaim to protect farm workers we have allowed White farmers to evict more than a million black farm workers. (From The Africa Report,23/11/2009)
As a consequence , unemployment among the Blacks is very high. almost 50%. The country is riddled with violence, crime, murder and pillage.
I would like the South African delegation led by its Vice President to refute these charges
In my own words to Nelson Mandela,
”Instead of trying to advise Sri Lanka, please look after your own people, not the South African Whites, but the Blacks, They are the real people of South Africa whom you have forgotten. You and the ANC had sacrificed their right to have land and become successful farmers. It is a fact that while the foreign debt of South Africa which at independence was around $ 24 billion under ANC rule this has increased to as much as $80.5 billion by 3011. The ANC spent this foreign exchange for the luxury life of the rich minority and not for the majority that yet live in slums, landless and unemployed”(From, A Letter to Nelson Mandela, his Elders Mary Roboinson and Navi Pillai,”in Lanka Web 9/4/2012)
This comment of mine is for all the current leaders of South Africa, including the delegation that is now in Sri lanka.
To our leaders my message is to take care. There is a Solheim everywhere and we will be sold lock stock and barrel, if we are not careful. It could be a Red Barna type solution- where the Norwegians implemented a land settlement scheme to settle Tamil youths from the Hill Country into the Padaviya Dry Zone without the knowledge of the Jayawardena Government. to help the LTTE.
Let us not get fooled again
Garvin Karunaratne
Former Government Agent, Matara District
6 th July 2014
July 6th, 2014 at 4:23 pm
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/margaret-evans-has-nelson-mandela-s-south-africa-lost-its-way-1.1226465
Read above. Everybody knows, that Jacob Zuma is a poodle licking his British masters.
I think, they can easily handle Mahinda rajapakse. Now, they play around. They have used such tactics with USSR presidents when USSR was alive. that is how they made it kneel in front of them.
So, people around have to be conscious and awake.
July 6th, 2014 at 9:50 pm
Current leaders never learn from the past and admitting a another trojan horse to the country..
I wonder what kind of morons we have for leaders today?
July 6th, 2014 at 9:58 pm
We never ever learn.
Pee-Illey, Channel 9 clowns, “good” Tamil diaspora representatives, Norwegians, etc., etc. all came to SL and DISCREDITED it.
Our fools keep falling into the same trap.
Just forget reconciliation. It will NEVER happen. Use a HOME GROWN model to bring peace as we did in 2009.
July 6th, 2014 at 10:00 pm
JAYAWEWA! Sri Lanka’s progress towards girdling the nation with a First Class High Speed Road Network continues!
This expressway will ultimately connect the inland areas and inland cities in Sabaragamuwa having export industry potential to Hambantota and Colombo Ports. This will enable a more direct connection, without having to go out of the way to access the more coastal high speed route along the Southern Expressway.
It seems as if this Ruwanpura Expressway will now follow the route:
Kahathuduwa interchange (at Polgasowita) of the Southern Expressway (E01)
parallel to A8 to Horana
parallel to A8 to Ratnapura
parallel to A4 to Pelmadulla,
and in the future continue from Pelmadulla:
parallel to A18 to Nonagama Junction and
parallel to A2 to Hambantota.
Excellent! Jayawewa!
……………….
Sri Lanka to construct another expressway linked to Southern Expressway
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
July 06, Colombo: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also the Minister of Ports and Highways, has approved the construction of a new expressway linked to the Southern Expressway.
The proposed expressway will be constructed to Pelmadulla via Ratnapura from the Kahathuduwa Interchange of the Southern Expressway. The new expressway will be named as the Ruwanpura Expressway.
Public Administration & Home Affairs Minister W D J Seneviratna has said that President has given approval for the construction of the 71 kilometer expressway to Pelmadulla.
This expressway is constructed to replace the Panadura-Ratnapura main road which has several bends and takes a long time to travel.
A feasibility report on the construction of this expressway is now being carried out, according to the Minister.
July 7th, 2014 at 12:27 am
Yes our buggers never learn. Their Bayagulla policies will create the latest expressway to Nasaristan and Ealaam.
July 7th, 2014 at 2:57 am
We are side tracking the major issue that is highlighted here. However, what will be the cost per KM here. May be it will not be less than $30m. (probably 2.5 times the actual cost at the beginning. Only god knows the final cost subjected to doubling and trebling along the way as it will be the politicians relatives who will be the subcons)
July 7th, 2014 at 3:45 am
I hope these are WB or ADB funded highways in which case some sanity will prevail.
Commenting on the issue Garvin highlighted I suppose this is the time NFF and JHU insist that we should not deviate from GOSL’s firm position already endorsed by the parliament
July 7th, 2014 at 7:27 am
Dear Ananda: the highway system built by the US in the 1950’s and during the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union was primarily for the military. The massive construction of interstate freeways did not justify the limited number of cars at that time but it did justify the rapid deployment of heavy military hardware to any part of the US at break neck speed, without the encumbrances of a regular street and its cross ways.
This was amply demonstrated after the natural devastation brought by the twin hurricanes of Katrina and Rita on the city of New Orleans and the entire Gulf region. The highways going to that region were blocked off and were exclusively used by the government to deploy the National Guard and the essential items needed for a devastated area. Now after the successful end of the Eelam war Sri Lanka must develop the infrastructure for the rapid deployment of her military to any part of the nation at any given time. This was not the case during the war and was a major impediment to the Sri Lankan military and a great advantage to the Guerrilla tactics of the Tamil Tigers.
July 7th, 2014 at 8:15 pm
Dear BW,
I agree with you that Sri Lanka … like the People’s Republic of China … must emphasize the building of our national highway system not only as an ESSENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE for ECONOMIC GROWTH and civilian use, but for military purposes as well.
However, I am afraid that you are off base on the motivation behind the construction of the US Highway network.
The idea of a National Highway system crystallized slowly in the US during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency at the height of the Great Depression when he put the unemployed to work building a road infrastructure for automobiles … which were still a novelty … rather than just give handouts to the needy without a permanent benefit to the nation.
The funding of a High Speed Expressway system per se was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, with initial designations in 1947 and completed in 1955 under the 40,000-mile limitation imposed by the 1944 Act.
Although President Eisenhower recognized the military potential of the Highway system, particularly in view of the example set by Nazi Germany’s Autobahn expressway system, the primary justifications for the Interstate System was ALWAYS civilian in nature; no military justifications were ever given or authorized through a Congressional bill.
I urge you to do a Google search on “Interstate Myths” and go to the webpage at the US Dept of Transportation to verify these FACTS.
July 7th, 2014 at 8:38 pm
You two are comparing SL with USA & China , is not that too much imagination???
July 8th, 2014 at 10:23 am
Ananda: you are right if you quote these Acts but in practice the military use of it took center stage during the cold war. One other example is China’s construction of a complex highway system along the Indian border and in former Tibet. Like the US that area of construction has minimum commercial use but is seen in New Delhi that it is a military action to set up an infrastructure of highways that would serve China’s military.
Just in the last few days the Modi government has allocated funds for the development of highways primarily in the north east states of India where commercial car traffic is not as high as the other main cities of India. It could be India’s answer to China’s highway construction along the disputed border.
Like the US/USSR cold war there has been a pseudo cold war between India and China and India and Pakistan for quite a while. Now China is doing what the US did in the 1950’s. I do not know if the legislative language of either China or India state it is for military purposes.
July 8th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
BW,
True … China’s road network in Tibet and its far west provinces is primarily, but not exclusively, driven by military considerations. India is moving to counter China’s moves … as they must … in India’s interest.
China wants to settle these sparsely populated areas in the West and the Southwest with ethnic Chinese to make them permanent parts of China. Ethnic Chinese can be motivated to settle there only if the necessary infrastructure, comparable to what is now available and growing in the East and the North is made available for economic growth, and comfortable prosperous lives for the settlers.