I'm not a respecter or hater of Mandel. I did find this open letter interesting and almost prophetic. This was written in 2004 on the 10th anniversary of the ending of apartheid. Since 1994 the violent crime rate is SA has increased to 10x what it is in the US. Unemployment is 40% and the farming production has about collapsed. I do not support apartheid policies but this is the result of making changes from what order had been in place for decades to rule by people that had absolutely no education or experience only tribal allegiances. There are more blacks in prison now in SA than there were under white rule. The change should have been more gradual to allow for the system and the economy to make natural adjustments. Just my opinion of course.
An Apology to Blacks from a white South African
We apologize for giving you doctors and free medical care, as a result of which you have been able to survive plagues and catastrophes and grow in numbers;
We apologize for teaching you to read and write, and for building you thousands of schools which we have repaired after you vandalized them and burned them down, After all, if you could not read how could you have learned the words of Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung, and others who taught you how evil we are and how oppressed you are?
We apologize for building factories and highways and buildings that gave you employment;
We apologize for developing farms that to this day feed the bulk of Africa;
We apologize for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric instead of leaving you wearing the animal skins that you wore before our arrival;
We apologize for taking minerals from the earth, which you neither used, nor wanted, nor even knew, were there;
We apologize for those among us who have established welfare organizations and have devoted their entire life towards making life richer and better for your people;
We apologize that we have built roads and railroad tracks between towns and cities which you now use every day without thinking;
We apologize for paying the lion's share of taxation while spending less on ourselves than on you;
We apologize for giving you law and order and a strong central government that prevented your own warrior nations like the Zulu and the Matabele from slaughtering black people by the hundreds of thousands as they did year in and year out before we came;
We apologize for teaching you the English language which has opened to you the entire world of European thought, culture, and commerce;
For all these sins we humbly beg forgiveness, and if you will only accept our apology we will be happy to take back all of the above evil and horrible things we have done to you and return to our European homeland.
A Warning for Americans: A Message from a South African
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveals trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America's structures are of "Western Culture". Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly your "Western Culture", not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman -- that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability,with freedom and justice for all.
But woe to you if -- or more likely, when -- the rules change. Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game -- violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves -- Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
