I know it's the pantomime season, but that sort of nonsense wouldn't last a week at the Alhambra. Perhaps you could be a bit more specific? Africa has a long history of gratuitous violence being visited on its citizens by whoever is the current dictator. Take your pick sweetheart, from the current ANC Police Unit which gunned down 44 unarmed black strikers in August 2012....kinda embarrassing from your point of view, eh? Revolutionary Black folks sending in their black police force to kill unarmed black miners simply trying to get a better wage and conditions....something Mandella and his buddies had promised them years ago, which is probably why it slipped your mind? And it was all of 16 months ago!

Howzabout Charles Taylor of Liberia?...Paul Biya of Cameroon?....Mugabe of Zimbabwea?.....Idi Amin of Uganda? Can you maybe work out the common denominator?

In the meantime, Good Luck on opening night. I hope you and Coddy have agreed who is the front and who is the rear this season.....

Oh great, another dipstick reincarnates themselves.

This should be fun, however brief

It'd help if he discarded his pointy hat mind.

Not too sure that a person who flogs tat out of the back of a van is really in any position to call someone a dipstick, so why not surprise us and maybe address some of the points raised?

Or will you be adopting your traditional response of waitng for La Mint to respond, before swinging in on her coat tails with the predictable and outmoded Socialist one liner.

If I was a betting man, I think a cheeky pound on the later would be a good investment!

If I was a betting woman, I'd suspect that someone who is so obviously not a new poster is a previously-banned poster who isn't going to last long in this new incarnation.

Why is that what the mods do to those who challenge their viewpoint?

He raises an interesting point - the inhumanity of tribal conflict in Africa - Rwanda being possibly the most graphic. Nothing meated out by the whites in SA compared to the genocide inflicted on the Tutsis by the Hutus - then I suppose it was all the fault of colonial forefathers!!

Perhaps raising this means I must be a member of the KKK!!

Perhaps a better comparison would be to compare the behaviour of Martin Luther King and Mandela faced with a similar situation.

It isn't. As you would know if you bothered to exercise your own brain.



Other genocides and examples of general, all-round nastiness do not excuse the Afrikaaners, although they look like an attempt to deflect.

Why not compare with China under Mao, the insanity of North Korea, dictatorships in Burma and so forth?

If one wants to brand a continent (and thereby, the peoples of a continent) what about South America, with all the dictatorships it has seen over the decades, and all the murders and the 'disappearances'? Do those suggest that those swarthy Latins are somehow inherently predisposed toward undemocratic, violent regimes?

One could ask the same about Europe – hardly a continent with a peaceful history or one with wars that have always been conducted as though by some sort of gentleman's agreement.



Only if you're paranoid.



I have made no comparisons: I have merely asked what those condemning Mandela as a terrorist would have done when faced with a regime that shot unarmed children who were demanding only a proper education. Nobody has answered yet – you're most welcome to try.

I am quite capable of exercising my brain - thankfully it doesn't need to be fully extended to debate with you.

You were the one who suggested that Mandela's actions were justified considering the conditions the blacks in South Africa were subjected too.

Reaction to isolated incidents can be dealt with in a number of ways. Can shooting innocent children be justified - never - it is how you react that confers status. Luther King's methods were less violent and far more effective than anything Mandela and the ANC extracted for random murder. Conditions/provocation in the deep southern states such as Alabama were equally as bad as in SA. People like Gov. Wallace were every bit as evil Vorster et al.

Mandela was a terrorist and that should not be ignored in all the hero worship. He eventually effected great change - the question remains is the country a better place for the struggle?

If you had, you'd realise that since you and I rarely agree on much, you would – by your own 'definition' – be banned.

You haven't been. So I suggest that your paranoid comment was simply that and didn't involve you thinking and using facts.



Actually, what I did was to ask what should have been done to deal with a regime that behaved in such a manner – that was not an isolated incident.

Nobody has yet made any suggestion based on the situation in South Africa at the time, although some have made efforts to obscure these issues by raising others, elsewhere.

Of course, to attempt to make any suggestion might require some thought.



Apartheid didn't produce just one 'isolated incident' of murderous behaviour by the regime. Brutality, police murder and so forth were rather more regular than that.

If Mandela was a terrorist, what was the regime? It certainly wasn't a legitimate, democratic one – unless you believe that legitimacy does not require democracy, and democracy doesn't require the involvement of all the people, but the exclusion of the majority from politics and from vast swathes of life, simply on the basis of race.

This was a regime that had came up with something as obscene as the 'pencil test' to judge your race if it was not immediately obvious. If a pencil could be held in your hair, you were black; if not, you weren't.

You've made a vague attempt to approach the question (which itself is considerably better than anyone else has made) but it doesn't answer it except to say, in effect: 'well, there must have been another way because there was another way that worked somewhere else'.



Yes: he and others brought about great change. And the armed struggle and the boycott were both important elements in achieving that.

If you have to ask that question of apartheid, then quite apart from anything else, it would suggest that you think that apartheid wasn't really [ithat[/i bad, which itself excuses oppression and much, much more, and suggests that you don't actually know what you're talking about.

Terrorism is terrorism.

We can have tyres in SA.


White phosphoros used on the civilians of Fallujah.


Some mustard gas for the Kurds.


A sample of Agent Orange for the Vietnamese.


Or hows about a plane smacking a skyscraper in NY.


Anybody got any favourites?
And seeing as we are on terrorism i've just been looking at some info on the history of lynching in the US.
That will be whites on colored men and children.

Some official documented reasons given, and I you not -:

[idemanding respect[/i
[iarguing with white man[/i
[iunruly remarks[/i
[ibeing unpopular[/i
[ivoodooism[/i
[ivoting for the wrong party[/i

If you didn't laugh you'd cry.

The little girl in Vietnam ?
It was napalm.

Yup.


They just decimated the rest of the country/side with AO.
Doesn't taste very nice with egg fried rice, apparently.

And here are the cüntz who support this sort of approach?

You have got me thinking [iKurtz[/i on the Vietnamese/Cambodian border.

Selma wasn't an isolated incident - the blacks in the southern states were treated equally as badly as the blacks in SA, police brutality was quite normal in states like Alabama. Luther King extracted great change without the need to shoot people - that is the mark of the man and defers far greater status in my view than Mandela.

Great change can be effected without the need for violence, the breakdown of communism in eastern Europe is an example. You are suggesting Mandela and the ANC had no options other than violence, that is not the case, there are always options. Regime change through peaceful protest has happened in numerous countries.

I have asked the question about SA not because I think apartheid wasn't really bad but more - is today's society in SA better or will it descend into tribal genocide like virtually every other country in Africa. You last comment shows your true colours - an individual that needs to resort to insults when her clouded thought processes are challenged, sad very sad indeed.

There are always alternative options but forgive me for assuming that you have never had the levels of violence visited upon you as had the ones that Mintball exampled.
You can sit pontificating in your detached high chair as much as you desire but you would perhaps think a whole lot differently were it your family or loved ones involved.

And in many others it has required violence.

And I asked you a specific question, which you have still not answered.

[iHow[/i would you propose that regime should have been dealt with?



I didn't say anything rude, so cut the faux outrage.

As I said, if you want to play that game, and you decide to concentrate on Africa alone, it looks damned well like an excuse to be a racist barsteward, given the records in other continents. I provided – albeit briefly – examples of how the same arguments could be apllied in Latin America and in Europe. Perhaps you'd care to suggest that feudalism wasn't really much worse than European democracy given what has come with it? No. Didn't think so.

So if you want to prove me wrong, come up with something better than a standard racist apology for apartheid on the grounds of pretending that the current situation is in any way comparable with apartheid.

Are you suggesting I am a racist? if so come out have the courage of your convictions and say so - if not I suggest you clarify exactly what you are inferring.

On SA I have suggested what could have been done by showing examples of how peaceful protest has exacted regime change in countries - outside of Africa - where the populous was treated every bit as bad if not worse than the blacks in SA, so I have answered your question - the fact it doesn't suit your argument isn't my issue - it seems your difficulty with reading/comprehension continues.

Where did I ever suggest living conditions were similar to apartheid? What I asked was have things improved - the same could be argued of Eastern Europe since the dismantling of communism. You need to read what things actually say not what you want it to say.

It is a pity your constant asking for questions to be answered isn't mirrored by your own behaviour - you seldom ever answer questions. Your pronouncements from a perceived on high illustrate your weakness in debate - it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. For one of the management of the site you set very poor standards of protocol of how debates should be chaired and monitored.

I'm not sure: I suspect not.

But your posts on this suggest that you are falling into an old trap played by racists.

The trap is to talk of Africa as a whole in terms of violence and genocide – the 'argument' doesn't mention any other continents, as though no other continent has seen such things; as though genocide and civil war and corruption etc are unique to Africa and are the whole and only picture. And the 'argument' cites the current situation in South Africa itself as making it questionable as to whether things were not actually better under apartheid: ie when those blacks were all kept in their place and before they had democracy.

Now you might not think that's what you're meaning, and it's most certainly not a sort of comment that's unique to you, but that's most certainly what is implied by it.



No. You haven't. You have – as you say – given other historic examples. But what makes you believe that those can be applied to South Africa? Peaceful protest had been tried. It made not a jot of difference. It was schoolchildren protesting peacefully that were murdered by the South African regime. So why do you persist in claiming that it would have worked? When would it have worked?



Where did anyone mention "living conditions". I mentioned "the current situation". That is not a synonym for "living conditions".



See above. And the point is spurious, since whatever else one says about communism, it was not a system that aimed to keep the majority of the population oppressed, economically, legally and politically, while the minority could enjoy the results and all the rights.

However, it seems that you're questioning whether getting rid of an undemocratic, brutal, murderous regime was a good thing? The situation now in South Africa is far from perfect, but what do you imagine is so, [iso[/i awful, by comparison with the past, that the question can even be asked with a straight face as to whether things are better than under apartheid, a system that disbarred the majority of the population from full participation in the economic and political life of the nation?

Are you suggesting that democracy itself is a bad thing? It might be useful for you to define democracy in that case and explain why it's not really a good thing for everyone.



Get over yourself. I answer questions all the time. It's not my fault if you cannot understand that.

Unlike you I don't need to get over myself, I don't feel rush from being a keyboard despot!!

Now just answer the original question I posed!!

You fall into the trap that many do especially the chattering classes on here - anyone who dares to question the behaviour of non whites must be a racist - making certain topics off limits, cleaning discussion that you find unpalatable. It comes back to my point about your inability to chair a thread to any sensible degree.

You seem to have a problem understanding the difference between dictatorship and how dissenters are controlled e.g. South America/Russia/Cambodia and out and out wanton violence/genocide for the smell of the blood such as Rwanda. If you did understand the difference you would not be comparing them as they are chalk and cheese.

The power of the majority will usually win out - sheer weight of numbers is a difficult force to restrain. Did violence actually force change? No it didn't, apartheid remained in place 30 years after Mandela was arrested. International political will, boycotts and isolation did in the end so my point was proved - change can be effected without violence.

Under communism that is exactly what happened a very few enjoyed the riches - the political leaders - whilst most really struggled to survive on virtually subsistence rations. Why - outside of Cuba and N Korea - has communism virtually disappeared?

I ask the question about SA because I was there two years ago - beautiful country, great wine - but it is difficult to imagine the streets in the cities being more dangerous under apartheid than they are now. This situation can only get worse as tribal tensions continue to heat up.

Yes it does because you are taking a racial group and making an assumption about the whole racial group.

That doesn't just suggest you are a racist, it suggests you are stupid as well

If you're ruling out the first point "that doesn't suggest", how can there be a second point, or an "as well"?


Why do you constantly feel the need to belittle, name call or refer to people as stupid? Thing is, you mirror the behaviour of the very type of people you despise. Consider that Cod'ead.

The only things I'd criticise Mandela for were allowing the ANC-non-ANC split amongst black south africans to become so damaging, and perhaps doing more to reign in the power of the Presidents and governments that succeeded him. But given that the actions of Zuma et al are actually thier repsonsibility not Mandela's I can't see those as his failings as much as theirs. After all, it should be remembered that he was an old man with no actual experience of governing when he became President.

I don't blame him for taking up arms at all. TBH were I in the same position as he was, I'd hope to have had the bottle to do the same, but suspect not.

In any event, the truly important thing Mandela did was after he left prison. His own personal forgiveness (at least publicly) basically neutered any attempts from either side to create a civil war scale conflict. Its easy to forget that haters from both sides of the race divide would quite happily have seen a bloodbath occur. That Mandela prevented it, and gave an example to the world of how a democratic transfer of power can occur under such circumstances is easily the greatest act of leadership I've seen in my lifetime.

Did you deliberately fail to read the word "just"?

I caled him stupid because his comment was simply errrrrmmmmmmm stupid

I rest my case m'lud