This letter will be meaningless to many, especially those with blinkered eyes; blinded by ignorance, greed and sheer hate. It is written by an emanent historian of South Africa Military, placing himself in danger because he still lives in a violent land.
I think one has to accept
the basic premise that Mandela was a politician. He was a politician his entire
life. After being sentenced, I believe he was lucky in that the Prosecutor
Percy Yutar, as I remember the name, made a fundamental mistake and the Judge
sentenced them to life not death, given all the weapons, mines and explosives
etc that were found for which he was in part responsible.
He went to jail as a simple
member of the party along with others. Subsequently, as part of the ongoing war
against the RSA decision was made by the ANC with advice from the Russians, to
reflect Mandela as a hero and part of the propaganda onslaught against the RSA
govt as part of the much maligned Total Onslaught. To this end an enormous
effort was put into the denigration of the RSA Govt etc although as you know up
to 1985 the ANC MK etc did not amount to much of a threat. The real threat was
encapsulated within the UDF. They were the org that held themselves to be
fighting an unjust govt by non violent means which clearly the research
disagrees with. Disproving that angle will take another discussion. Mandela
was in jail and a fair amount of pressure was put on him by the Govt to forswear
violence which he refused.
Now we come to the
interesting part where the ANC as you are aware went to VN to learn from the
Vietnamese how they were able to stand up to the USA. What they learnt is in
essence very simple. Assume you are in power - who is your major enemy in a
democratic one man one vote scenario? The clear answer to that was Inkatha. At
that point middle 70's they were the largest legitimate black party in RSA(Republic of South Africa) and
they were a almost cats hair distant from the ANC in beliefs bar the violence
and Marxist diatribes etc. Destroy them and you are the major political force
in SA! Back to Mandela. When DeKlerk took over he decided that as a matter of
Real Politiek to get rid of SWA(South West Africa/Namibia). Free up the millions spent there and
concentrate on the internal sit. He was definitely not a securocrat! By ridding himself of SWA by fair
means and foul, he moved to reducing the SADF and then to negoitiations with the
ANC. Read Marc Burger's book Not the Whole Truth. While I will agree that the
SADF Gens often did make mistakes, their biggest was to avoid politics in the
middle of a political war. As military men it was their duty to understand
politics in the broad and narrow context of RSA and the international
implications of all they did. They often failed to understand this. The effort
to reconcile Mandela with peace in our time, bore fruit in my opinion when he
was briefed on the success of the VN visit and its implications. Consequently
he could as a strat move accept the conditional rejection of armed struggle
based on meaningful negotiations to majority rule, knowing that the real war was
about to start ie the destruction of Inkatha as a political force in SA. The
whites had become irrelevant and they did not even know this. The ham handed
efforts of the SAPS and SB to assist the IFP without the assistance of the SADF
who tried nobly to maintain the peace between all warring factions.
Why do you think the SADF
was able as a rule to ride around the townships with few incidents and yet the
SAP could go into the same area and seemingly attract stones like a magnet?
Often the SADF patrols were so far removed from controlling the areas they
patrolled, because the SAP refused us permission to dominate in all the sense of
the word and our clever Gens felt this was not a real war. We should not really
be there, but beware if you attack us our Strongmans image will force us to
shoot you, because we will never carry non lethal weapons, they are not military
traditional weapons!!
Look at the stats of
killings before and after 1994. Did the Armed struggle really end when Mandela
came out of jail having said he would abandon the path of violence? The data
speaks for itself and with the clever use of the NEC and the limp handed
approach of De Klerk ably supported by the Goldstone Commissions work it was
almost inevitable that the IFP should start collapsing. Take the Shell House
attack. Mandela refused to allow the police to search the building!! and said
if all the other hostels meaning IFP ones were searched as well he would allow?
the building to be searched. That by the way only happened 3 years later. He
threatened the negotiations would stall if the search went ahead. (By the way I
had a senior SAP colleague who was inside Shell house at the time who saw what
went on and was very worried he might be called to testify, as he would have to
call the ANC seniors who became his bosses later, liars.) Mandela was in charge
of the ANC before and after 94. He failed ? did not stop the violence and now
we have a black pop who cannot even remember who was killing them in such great
numbers. Talk of a Stockholm syndrome! Do not forget the immense value of
having all the liberal press and academia turned by clever stratcom by the
Russians et al. Who ran the ILO? etc.
You may well argue he
showed great magnanimity towards the whites afterwards. Yes but why do you
think there is a thing called a 2 Phase revolution, and the Firearms Act was a
direct attempt to disarm the whites, I knew the Chairman who wrote the Act, as
the ANC were and to some extend still are scared of a right wing revolt.
Politics, and any way, if you add the Affirmative action laws, they have
what they want, positions and a hand on all the power levers even in sport,
while the whites gratefully work in the middle ranking positions. Note that
the SANDF (SA National Defence Force) is now about 8% white with last count 5 white Lts. The other govt
depts are not much better off. Business is the final power lever that is
outstanding.
Much can be written and
argued about, but only time will maybe tell if the truth will slide to the
surface.
What I have written above
is without deep research and references so small errors can creep in. The SWA(South West Africa/Namibia) elections is a minefield waiting to be walked into.
Regards
I know too many Whites; former British, Portugese, Dutch and worse, the Boers who are historic White African farmers, into abandoning the country they built for enforced exile in other countries outside of Africa. Many in Britain cheer this development at the same time demand that Britain has no say in it ancient rights of self government.
