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Young, rich, black... and driving an African boom
South Africa's upwardly mobile professionals are flaunting their new wealth. But while they thrive in a resurgent country, impoverished millions are still struggling to survive in the townships
Rory Carroll in Johannersburg
Sunday February 5, 2006
The Observer
They drive sleek cars, dress to kill and spend like there's no tomorrow.
Twelve years after the demise of apartheid, the children of South Africa's revolution have found a way to celebrate freedom: shopping.
In ways unimaginable to their grandparents, a generation of black upwardly mobile professionals, dubbed 'buppies', is splashing out in a display of power and wealth that is driving a consumer boom.
From Cape Town to Johannesburg, retailers report record sales in property, fashion, jewellery and luxury vehicles, a giddy exuberance amid the economy's sixth successive year of growth.
More success, more money, more everything
Business confidence is at its highest in more than two decades, the rand has surged, consumers are borrowing at historically low interest rates and growth this year may exceed 6 per cent.
It is a world away from the images of starving Africans that routinely fill western television screens.
If South Africa's new middle class is hungry it is for more success, more money, more everything.
Beneficiaries of improved education, they are forming their own businesses and snapping up jobs in state and private sectors that are encouraged to hire from 'previously disadvantaged' groups.
'When I bought my last BMW it was a 318ti model and I was 23,' said KB Motsilanyane, a musician and businesswoman who is also South Africa's Face of Charlie, one of Revlon's line of cosmetics.
'But now I am 25 and my car must grow with me.'
Last week Ms Motsilanyane upgraded to a £30,000 black 320d BMW.
'It says that I am independent, a coming businesswoman, very ambitious, very determined.'
She bought the car at Joburg City Auto, the city's first wholly black-owned BMW dealership and a mecca for those who grew up in townships which said BMW stood for Black Man's Wish.
'Ninety-nine per cent of our clients are black,' said salesman Kennedy Mbiko.
'There is a huge amount of pride and aspiration among the guys coming here.   Brand personality has taken hold and people want to be seen driving these cars.'
Up 26 per cent from 2004
Thanks to a leap in black demand, more than 565,000 cars were sold last year, up 26 per cent from 2004, according to the National Automobile Association of South Africa.
President Thabo Mbeki caught the mood in his annual state of the nation address on Friday, declaring that South Africa had 'entered its age of hope'.
A survey published last week, based on interviews with 3,500 people, found that two-thirds of the population was upbeat, with 70 per cent of blacks saying the country was going in the right direction, followed by 50 per cent of coloureds (those of mixed race), 45 per cent of whites and 43 per cent of Indians.
South Africa's successful bid to the host the 2010 football World Cup unleashed euphoria and a sense that this was indeed a serious country.   Companies routinely declare themselves to be 'proudly South African'.
It is a remarkable turnaround.
When Nelson Mandela was inaugurated President in 1994, South Africa was insolvent and teetering on the brink of civil war.
If young blacks appeared on television they were usually chanting and wielding weapons.
Zulu and Xhosa-speaking soap operas
Now screens are filled with Zulu and Xhosa-speaking soap operas, talent contests and adverts for luxury commodities.
Readers of the consumer magazine What, Where & When in the Zulu Kingdom are directed to art galleries, grand prix rallies and jewellery shops.
Headlines from the most recent issue of Good Taste, an in-flight magazine with Nationwide Airlines, include: 'How to be a sushi master', 'Best wine tales', 'Your January brandy selection'.
Black customers are spending noticeably more on grooming and accessories, said Annette Longwani, 33, a hairdresser.
'You see the jewellery getting heavier.'
Ethel Molale, 40, a businesswoman lunching on lamb shank at Moyo, a trendy restaurant at Johannesburg's Zoo Lake, was only half in jest when asked about conspicuous consumption.
The mall: It's a religious experience
'The mall is where we pay our tithes and make our offerings.   It's a religious experience.   When we go inside we say don't disturb me, I'm meditating, just give me a credit card.'
But many — far too many, everyone agrees — pray for real because they have no job, no decent home, no electricity, no clean water and little or no hope.
They are the poorest of the poor, an army of millions struggling to survive in dusty townships and villages.
In the past decade the government has built 1.8 million low-cost houses and provided basic services to millions who were neglected under apartheid.  
But the ranks of the poorest have continued to swell and unemployment has stubbornly stayed at 38 per cent, trapping an underclass in what is referred to as the 'second economy', a ghost in official statistics, based on subsistence agriculture, hawking, begging and crime.
Apartheid's architects and urban planners concealed the poor
By restricting building permits and the movement of people, apartheid's architects and urban planners concealed the poor.
You could drive the Garden Route and barely notice the misery that was tucked into valleys beyond the well-paved motorway.
No longer.
Thousands of pitiful tin and wooden shacks have sprouted like weeds, sometimes into the heart of plush suburbs, a juxtaposition of inequality as brutal as anything in Brazil or India.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu's warning that poverty was a 'powder keg' seemed borne out in the past 12 months when riots flared across the country in protest at lack of basic services.
In scenes reminiscent of the apartheid era, township dwellers fought pitched battles with police and demanded that the African National Congress do better.
A plan?   Twelve years in power
In an effort to defuse the rage, the rattled ruling party has purged most of its councillors in the run-up to next month's municipal elections and in its manifesto promised a 'plan to make local government work better'.
That prompted scorn from Tony Leon, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance.   'A plan?   Twelve years in power, and all you can offer us is a plan.'
In Friday's address to parliament — which glossed over the HIV/Aids pandemic — President Mbeki said the government, in partnership with the private sector, would invest £34bn in public infrastructure projects and creating jobs over the next three years .
In an email interview with The Observer on the eve of the state of the nation speech, Tutu said that not enough had been done to tackle poverty.  
'Everybody should be concerned.   Our stability depends on the reasonable needs of most citizens being met or we have [had] it.'
Crucial that needs of poor be met
The Nobel laureate said that almost everyone had been amazed at the extraordinary resilience of the impoverished.
'Their patience is heroic.   President Mbeki has himself said it is quite crucial that their needs be met and has made service delivery a key issue for these elections.'
For buppies, the question is whether their spending spree can continue.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has blamed the consumer boom for distorting the economy and pricing the poor out of the property market.  
Some others complain that it is immoral, or at least bad taste, to flaunt wealth.
'Black people are more careless than whites with their spending.   They don't know how to do it well,' said Regina Kazhila, 41, a black boutique owner at Johannesburg's Rosebank mall.
Specifying that her own clients were discerning and mature, Ms Kazhila said many young, affluent blacks were obsessed with brand names and oneupmanship.
'They are very competitive with each other.   Advertisers have noticed.   That's why they're targeting them.'
Thapelo Moloi, 29, a pastor, said it was understandable that blacks, having been oppressed for so long, would want to enjoy and exhibit their success.
'But there is a lack of wisdom in the way some are spending their money.'
Credit cards
Banks are reluctant to disclose figures but there is anecdotal evidence that many buppies are living beyond their means, racking up debts and failing to pay off credit cards.
'Lately I can't even bring myself to open the credit card bills,' said one executive, who declined to be named.
But Loyiso 'Chippa' Mangena, 23, a TV actor and businessman, said being flash could also be a form of investment.
'Money is power.   When you walk into a room to make a business proposal for 150m rand you must look like you can handle 150m rand.   People can judge you on what car you drive before you even open your mouth.'   Hence Mr Mangena's pilgrimage to Joburg City Auto to trade in his BMW M3 series for a Z Coupe.   'I'm going to be one of the first people in the country to get it.'
He made no apology for his plan to buy a yacht.   'The world is an unfair place.   It would be great if we could redistribute all resources but we can't.
'I want to inspire young black people that it is possible to leave the township and be anything in the world that they want to be.'
The new South Africa
  • There are more than four million cars on the roads, 11 million radios, eight million televisions and about 17 million mobile phones.
  • The population is 44.3 million.   Just over 75 per cent of the people are black; around 13.5 per cent white; 13.5 per cent mixed race and 2.6 per cent Indian.
  • Nearly half of South African homes have telephones.
  • Less than 10 percent of people are internet users.
  • Most homes have electricity (71 per cent, according to official 2001 figures) and the government has pledged to wire up every household by 2012.
  • 'Adequate' sanitation has been extended to almost all urban areas (86 per cent, according to the latestofficial figures in 2002), but to less than half of rural homes.
  • The average life expectancy is 49 for men and 48 for women.
  • One in 10 of South Africans over the age of two is HIV-positive, according to the World Health Organisation.
    • Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
        And we did it!
    South Africa Freedom
    At bottom, what apartheid really was was the consequence of a conflict between two ethno-nationalisms competing with rival claims to the same piece of territory, the same country.
    Whose country was it?
    Did it belong to the Afrikaner nationalists who had been there for three-and-a-half centuries, as long as white folk had been in the U.S.?
    Was it theirs?
    They claimed it was.
    And the theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church used a particular brand of Calvinist theology to give you that notion, to give that notion theological underpinning, that it was their God-given right to have a country of their own, in order to be a people.
    It was divine, it was part of the ordinances of creation that a people had a right to be a volk in a Herder sense, you know, of the volksgeist, and to have their own land to give expression to that.
    That, on the one hand, and, of course, Afrikan nationalism, denying that and saying this was a country that belonged to all who lived in it, and the majority had the right to rule.
    Now, where else do you get — you didn't have that kind of competition of rival claims to whose country the U.S. was, for even the Southern states.
    This is a much bigger thing than park benches or schools or lunch counters.
    This is a contest over ownership of a country.
    And that is what you find between the Israelis and the Palestinians and between the Catholics and the Protestants of Northern Ireland.
    Those are the true analogies of the South African struggle.
    And I look at them and say, “How are they doing?”
    You know, we've resolved our own.
    We've resolved our crisis.
    And the solution, if were you to apply it to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, would be one secular country shared by all and ruled over by the majority.
    And if people find that unthinkable, then perhaps they have some appreciation of what we've done, because that is what we did, without any foreign negotiator, no handshakes on the White House lawn, no conferences at Lancaster House in London.
    It was done in a shed-like building near the Johannesburg Airport by South Africans themselves, by themselves.
    And it was a remarkable thing.
    Black and white voters queue at a polling station On 26 April 1994 millions of black South Africans turned out to vote in the country's first multiracial elections. The world was captivated by images of South Africans peacefully lining up to vote for the first time. Photo BBC AP
    Black and white voters queue at a polling station
    On 26 April 1994 millions of black South Africans turned out to vote in the country's first multiracial elections.
    The world was captivated by images of South Africans peacefully lining up to vote for the first time.
    To read descriptions place cursor at side of picture.


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    Tuesday, 6 July, 2004
    The return of South Africa's Black Christ
    By Richard Hamilton
    BBC, Cape Town
    Black Christ The painting was discovered in a London basement. One of South Africa's most controversial paintings has gone on display more than 40 years after it was banned by the apartheid government.
    The painting was discovered in a London basement
    One of South Africa's most controversial paintings has gone on display more than 40 years after it was banned by the apartheid government.
    The Black Christ depicts former African National Congress leader Chief Albert Luthuli being crucified by former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd and his Justice Minister John Vorster.
    The oil painting, which was the creation of Cape Town artist Ronnie Harrison back in 1961, now hangs in the National Gallery in Cape Town.
    It forms the centrepiece of an exhibition on 10 years of democracy.
    The picture has an extraordinary history.
    It was considered blasphemous and subversive by the South African government, which tried to have it destroyed.
    In 1962, it was smuggled out of South Africa by anti-apartheid activists who passed it to the Canon of St Paul's Cathedral in London, John Collins.
    It hung in the cathedral but later toured the UK and Europe where it raised millions for the victims of apartheid.
    But when the South African authorities realised the Black Christ had left the country, they arrested Ronnie Harrison and repeatedly interrogated and tortured him.
    I really believe divine providence saved the painting
    Ronnie Harrison
    "I suffered the most severe humiliation and interrogation over a period of seven days," says Mr Harrison.
    "Everything that they say about those horrendous Nazi-style tactics are true. It's just too humiliating to talk about."
    'Prodigal son'
    The Black Christ disappeared for 30 years, until Julius Baker, a South African ex-communist who was in exile in London, saw an appeal for the painting in a newspaper, and realised it was the same picture that was gathering dust in his basement.
    One of the most remarkable twists of fate was that although every other house in the street where Mr Baker lived was flooded by heavy rain, the Black Christ remained undamaged.

    Ronnie Harrison, with The Black Christ Ronnie Harrison was tortured for painting the Black Christ
    Ronnie Harrison (r) was tortured for painting the Black Christ
    "I really believe divine providence saved the painting, someone was looking after it," Mr Harrison says.
    He was stunned when he heard the painting had been found again:
    "I felt like the father when he saw the prodigal son again. It was so emotional to be reunited with this painting."
    The painting returned to South Africa in 1997 but had been kept in storage in the National Gallery.
    Chief Luthuli's daughter, Albertina Luthuli, has been instrumental in getting the painting out on display again, and it is now taking pride of place at the entrance to the gallery.
    South Africa - A decade of democracy
    ELECTION STORIES

    Helicopter fly-past In Pictures: Celebrations on Freedom Day



    TEN YEARS ON

    Race issue
    South Africans describe the changes since 1994.
    BACKGROUND



    RELATED INTERNET :
    South African actor Andile Kosi hangs from a cross during the filming of 'Son of Man' in Khayelitsha township, in this March 7, 2005 photo.
    Billed as the world's first black Jesus movie, 'Son of Man' portrays Christ as a modern African revolutionary and aims to shatter the Western image of a placid saviour with blonde hair and blue eyes.
    The film, directed by British director Mark Dornford-May, which premieres at the Sundance festival, transports the life and death of Christ from first century Palestine to a contemporary African state racked by war and poverty.
    The film's working title was 'Jezile'.
    Photo: REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
     
    “It was my policy that there should come an end to National Party rule and that we should have on a power sharing basis a government of national unity.
    That is what we advocated.
    I feel a sense of achievement.
    My plan has been accepted and my plan is now being put into operation.”
    Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1993 together with Nelson Mandela F W de Klerk — 1994
    Former President F. W. de Klerk casts his vote in Paarl, about 70 km (43.5 miles) north of Cape Town, April 14, 2004.
    South Africa's third general election got off to a smooth start, almost exactly ten years after the country's historic first democratic election swept the African National Congress into power.
    Picture: REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
    Frederik Willem de Klerk was born in Johannesburg on March 18, 1936.
    The young Mr. de Klerk graduated with a law degree from Potchefstroom University in 1958 and then practiced law in Vereeniging in the Transvaal.
    A professorship of administrative law at Potchefstroom was offered to him in 1972 but he declined the post. He had been elected to Parliament and was serving as National Party member for Vereeniging at the time.
    In 1978, F.W. de Klerk was appointed Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and Social Welfare and Pensions by Prime Minister Vorster.Under Prime Minister P.W. Botha, he held a succession of ministerial posts
    As Minister of National Education, F.W. de Klerk was a supporter of segregated universities. As a leader of the National Party in Transvaal, he was not known to advocate reform. In February 1989, de Klerk was elected leader of the National Party and in September 1989 he was elected State President.
    In his first speech after assuming the party leadership he called for a nonracist South Africa and for negotiations about the country's future.
    On 2 February 1990 he lifted the ban on the ANC and all other political organisations and announced the release of Nelson Mandela.
    His actions saw that the concept and attempted practice of apartheid came to an end.A way was made clear for the drafting of a new constitution for the country based on the principle of one person, one vote and the entrenchment of basic human rights.
    After South Africa's first universal democratic elections on 27 April 1994, Mr de Klerk was appointed as Executive Deputy President in South Africa's Government of National Unity.
    He held this post until June, 1996 when his party withdrew from the Government of National Unity.
    From then until his retirement from active politics in 1997, Mr De Klerk was the leader of the official opposition.
    Mr De Klerk published his autobiography 'The Last Trek - a New Beginning' in January 1999 and has now established the F W de Klerk Foundation to work for peace in societies that are divided on cultural, ethnic, religious or linguistic lines.
    BBC Audio:FW de Clerk
    Click here F W de Klerk Foundation — latest news releases.
     
    27 April 1994: Long wait in Soweto.
    Day two of the election sees more lengthy queues at the polls.
    One woman queuing to vote in Soweto told the BBC: "This is so great. I didn't sleep, I woke up at five o'clock this morning to be the first person in the queue.
    Today's the day to come and break the shackles which have been keeping us down for all these years."
    Picture: BBC AP
     
    Published on Saturday, December 24, 2005 by the Inter Press Service
    Emblem of Apartheid Resurfaces in Iraq
    by John Lasker
    COLUMBUS — Black South Africans gave them a slang term, recalls Les Switzer, naming them the "Saracens".
    And when they were called in to break up a protest, he also remembers the terror they brought.
    "The mere presence of a Saracen struck fear in the people," said Switzer, a long-time journalism professor at the University of Houston in the U.S. state of Texas.   "(They) were like an evil presence wandering through the township."
    Over a span of 30 years, Switzer was a U.S. expatriate, working as a journalist and teacher during South Africa's apartheid regime.
    Implemented by the white-dominated Afrikaner government, the apartheid policy strove for segregation and domination over blacks, who constituted 70 percent of the population.
    After writing stints with some of South Africa's underground papers, Switzer took a teaching position at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.   Following the funeral of an anti-apartheid martyr in 1980, he says the Eastern Cape township had a short fuse, and an uprising would soon engulf it.
    "The South African government, not trusting the local police, had sent in armed troops and Saracens to monitor the proceedings, and the result was a foregone conclusion," he said.
    The Saracens, says Switzer, author of "South Africa's Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s-1960s", are the huge and unmistakable armoured trucks the South African government used to quell uprisings.   Their official name was the "Buffel", which is Afrikaans for Buffalo.
    When he recently heard the U.S. military was implementing a heavily-armoured truck very familiar to the Saracen, he wasn't surprised.
    At this moment, the Pentagon is rushing these U.S.-made trucks into battle.   There are two types.   One is called the "Buffalo", which is mostly used for bomb clearance.   Then there's the "Cougar", which is smaller yet more versatile.
    Switzer says their size "is unforgettable".   Both tower over the flat, low-to-ground Humvees.   Their narrow, V-shaped hulls direct blasts detonated underneath vehicles out and away from passengers.
    Same engineers that designed the original Buffel for the South African military
    The company that manufactures them — Force Protection Inc. of Charleston, SC — admits the V-shaped design is indeed taken from past South African designs.   They also say some of the same engineers that designed the original Buffel for the South African military are now employed by Force Protection.
    "At the end of Apartheid (in the early '90s), many of South Africa's best engineers and scholars, and scientists left the county," said Switzer.   (Emphasis of best added by TheWE.cc to bring attention to the use of the word as an attribution of a commonly held notion.   Best is what sense?)
    Others in the U.S. are also scrutinising the military's decision to adopt such a controversial symbol of oppression.
    Stationed in Africa during the 1980s, a U.S. Special Forces veteran from the Midwest does not say when or how he first became familiar with the heavily armoured trucks.   But he is well aware of the emotions they evoke.
    Fire into their countrymen
    "To the ANC (African National Congress, and its supporters), the Buffalo is a hated symbol.   It is like how Jews view the swastika.   South African blacks despise them," he told IPS.   He refused to give his name because he now runs a high-level state government office.
    During uprisings, he says, the vehicles would be driven directly into rioting crowds.   Armed soldiers would then pop out of a top hatch and fire into their countrymen, he says.   ANC supporters returned fire with rocks that clanged harmlessly off the thick armour.
    While their legacy seems set in stone, perhaps the vehicles can redeem themselves.   By all accounts that is what the U.S. military is betting on.
    Since Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told one concerned U.S. soldier, "You have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Force Protection has won several Pentagon contracts totaling well over a hundred million dollars.
    An estimated 75 Buffalos and Cougars now roam both theatres in Iraq and Afghanistan.   More are on the way.   So far their records are perfect, claims Force Protection.   Not a single coalition soldier has died in a Buffalo or Cougar when struck with an improvised explosive.
    "The response from the field has been overwhelmingly positive," said Jeff Child, a spokesman for Force Protection.   He adds that the vehicles uncovered roughly 200 improvised explosives in and around central Iraq last winter alone.
    "Two of my men in Ramadi survived an IED (improvised explosive device) attack while in the Cougar," said Lt. Cameron Chen, part of a U.S. military ordinance removal team.   "So I am a believer.   All agree that it's the safest vehicle."
    Can trucks defeat the Iraq resistance fighters
    The rising popularity of the Buffalo and Cougar raises a significant question.   Can two trucks turn the tide in Iraq?
    One military analyst believes the Buffalo and Cougar won't single-handedly defeat the Iraqi insurgency in the near term.
    "You have to keep in mind there are 10,000 vehicles in Iraq that are subject to ambush," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which focuses on worldwide military news.   "I wouldn't count on the (Buffalo and Cougar) having an immediate impact because the military doesn't have the sufficient numbers to make a difference."
    Even if the U.S. military could deliver to Iraq large numbers of both vehicles, it may not matter how thick their armour is, he says.   The insurgency will fabricate improvised explosives large enough to obliterate whatever the U.S. military throws into the fray.
    "Several hundred pounds of explosives will level a small office building," said Pike.   "A thousand-pound bomb is like a hot knife through butter.   IEDs of this size have blown away Abrams [tanks].   Keep in mind there's no shortage of ammo in Iraq."
    Jets — shooting at people?
    Yet because of their prowess at destroying buried bombs in Iraqi soil — for instance, the Buffalo can be fitted with a robotic arm — these battleships on wheels could be the answer to one of the globe's biggest problems: the forgotten landmine.
    Force Protection bristled at the South African connection.   In a letter responding to questions by IPS, the company wrote that any "attempt to tie the technology" to the apartheid regime of South Africa "is as outrageous as attempting to tie Boeing commercial aircraft to the German invention of the jet engine during WWII".
    © 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service

    Interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the time of the 1994 election: 
    “I’m exhilerated and yet it is like a dream.   I am scared someone is going to wake me up and say, ‘Hey, Apartheid is around.’   It’s unbelievable, unbelievable.”
    Commentator: An awfully long fight went into this.    A lot of people put a lot of effort into that fight
    “It was the prayers of so many people in the world.    I hope that we will not suffer from amnesia.   Very, very many people contributed to this.”
    Commentator: What was contributed by those people?
    “It is the contribution that came from so called ordinary people.    In Britain you had those people who said they would boycott South African goods.   They made a contribution.”
    “The old lady who goes to holy communion and prays for South Africa.   She’s made a contribution.    It has been an incredible team effort and what is more wonderful, the team has won.”
    Commentator:  What would you wish now if you could have it?
    “I’d be wanting so much for so many people who died to have been around.    Those children who were mowed down.    The people who were killed in the massacres.   The people who died in exile.   I wish they would be around.    And as an African and also a Christian I know that they are actually around.    They are looking on, and approving, and maybe cheering.”
    A Harmony Gold miner appears on the surface after being trapped underground for more than 10 hours at a mine in Carltonville, west of Johannesburg, October 4, 2007.
    Rescue teams brought the first 450 miners out of 3,200 trapped underground in a South African gold mine to the surface early on Thursday.
    Photo: REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
     
    South Africa Rugby Union player Bryan Habana takes a rest after training session in Marseille, south of France, Friday, Oct. 5, 2007.
    Picture: AP/Francois Mori
     
    Maria Van Nell, 60, wife of Petrus Van Nell who is affected by Mesothelioma, looks at her husband at their house in the Northern Cape town of Prieska, South Africa in August 2007.
    Tens of thousands of South Africans, most of them in small Northern Cape towns, contracted asbestos-related diseases.
    South Africa was one of the world's top producers of the substance.
    Picture: AFP/Gianluigi Guercia
     
    March 23, 2005
    A New War?
    On Wolfowitz's World Bank
    By PATRICK BOND
    T he 1200 anti-war/profit demonstrators who wound their way through central Johannesburg last Saturday heard fiery speeches, music and poetry.
    At the start and finish, protesters were inspired by 80-year old Dennis Brutus, the great anti-apartheid poet who has worked within the global justice movement since Seattle and indeed long before.
    He calls now for a "war" on the World Bank, in the wake of George Bush's appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as its president last week.
    The activists marched down from the city hall past banks and corporations to the Workers' Library in a semi-liberated zone of the Newtown arts district.
    They presented memoranda of protest along the way to the government's Department of Home Affairs, attacking South Africa's notorious xenophobia policies, and the US Trade Mission.
    Local demand for human rights
    The demonstrators were of all ages, colours and left ideologies.  They combined the global call for an end to occupations of Iraq and Palestine with local demands for human rights.
    Monday, March 21 was a South African holiday — Human Rights Day — commemorating the 1960 protest against pass books in Sharpeville township 60 km south of Johannesburg, where 69 people were killed by apartheid cops, most shot in the back as they ran.

    Biaser Road
    Children collect water http://southafrica.indymedia.org/
    Children collect water
    For Brutus, the timing is memorable.  Because of Sharpeville, the African National Congress declared a guerrilla war on apartheid.
    Will now become a 'War Bank'
    "Times are different now," says Brutus.  "But the urgency is just as great.  It is crucial for us to up the ante against the system we might term global apartheid.  The World Bank is at the nerve center of that system, and will now become a 'War Bank'."
    Brutus' new book, Leafdrift, was published a few weeks ago by Whirlwind Press of Camden, New Jersey.  After three decades in exile, he now spends most of his time in South Africa with the Jubilee debt cancellation and reparations movement.
    Brutus has long warned against the divide-and-conquer tactics of outgoing World Bank president James Wolfensohn ("Wolfy 1"), who was perfectly willing to fund Bush's illegitimate neocolonial rule in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti.
    But the man now labeled "Wolfy2" has none of his predecessor's talents in softening up NGOs in meaningless "multistakeholder forums" on issues ranging from dams to mining/petroleum to structural adjustment.
    George Bush phoned South African president Thabo Mbeki early last week to alert him to Wolfowitz's promotion.  According to Brutus, "It is revealing that there is this link between Bush and Mbeki on the nomination of Wolfy2.
    We do not know at this stage what Mbeki's response was.  We know that the people of South Africa in our millions would yell No! to a warmonger running the most powerful financial institution in the world."
    The crowd in Johannesburg needed little reminder.  Explains Brutus, "The neoliberal policies of the South African government are a direct consequence of the World Bank's advice, ranging from macroeconomic structural adjustment to even privatisation of water and air.
    Our finance minister, Trevor Manuel, used to chair the board of the Bank and IMF, and is in charge of the Development Committee, the institutions' second most powerful policy committee.
    And there is another South African who is a managing director, Mamphela Ramphele.
    She was Steve Biko's partner in the 1970s but her job today is ameliorating the Bank's bad public image."
    Refused to lend to municipality of Nelspruit to supply water to poor people
    Ramphele's vice president for public relations is Ian Goldin, another South African hated by trade unionists and communities here for promoting privatisation when he ran the Development Bank of Southern Africa — refusing to lend to the municipality of Nelspruit to supply water to poor people, and instead advancing a large loan to the British privatiser Biwater for the same purpose.
    Brutus continues: "So when we march, we also protest the local manifestations of global apartheid, especially the failure of government to deliver services.
    Photo: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/
    Ongoing disconnection of water and electricity
    We oppose privatisation and the ongoing disconnection of water and electricity to more than a million people a year.
    Jobs are still not being created.  Our government is deceiving us when it claims it is delivering."
    This is an especially poignant critique, given that 40% of South Africans still cannot read or write.
    Indeed, the depths of Pretoria's strategy were unveiled last week when the Mail and Guardian newspaper reported that two University of KwaZulu-Natal education academics accused the state of "deliberate misinformation.  Misleading claims about adult education provision have indeed become endemic."
    As the newspaper editorialized on Friday, "No one with first-hand knowledge has believed for one moment the ridiculous figures the department has flourished to back its claim."
    Did not count vast numbers of taps and water systems in rural areas that broke down
    Photot: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/
    A year ago, the then education minister, Kader Asmal, claimed that "literacy projects have reached nearly two million learners".  Similar claims about millions receiving water were made five years earlier by Asmal when he was water minister, because he did not count vast numbers of taps and water systems delivered in rural areas that subsequently broke down.
    Last week another state agency — Statistics South Africa — claimed that the government is now supplying more than 70% of residents with free water and electricity: "The best-performing municipalities on average were in the Free State [province], where 91.5% of households had free water and 90.3% had free electricity."
    In reality, the Free State has seen ongoing violent protest by township residents over the past year, precisely because vast areas of the province have no water and power.
    Even the 19th century "bucket system" (where excrement is picked up by municipal workers from outhouses each morning) has broken down in many townships.
    Chillingly similar to 1960
    Last September, 17-year old Teboho Mkhonza was killed when police opened fire on fleeing demonstrators, chillingly similar to 1960, but now Mkhonzo's neighbours brandish not passbooks but empty wallets.
    Stats SA has an awful reputation in business circles for a spate of serious errors, and so these new claims by its director, Pali Lehohla, were greeted with disbelief.
    Lehohla justified why he could not provide details to verify which riot-torn towns are actually delivering water: "Municipalities do need to be protected by the Act because they may want to apply to certain organisations for grants, and poor performance figures could harm them, or there may arise situations where they face punitive measures from the ruling party in their areas."
    Photo: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/
    Class apartheid, and the World Bank
    What is the link between these statistical horror stories about class apartheid, and the World Bank?
    At the macroeconomic level, the Bank designed the fiscal/financial model behind South Africa's 1996 structural adjustment program.  That program pushed state spending lower, and also pushed the proportion of the budget devoted to education down 2% over the subsequent six years.
    1.5 million people disconnected because of inability to pay
    At the microeconomic level, the Bank authored South Africa's 1995 Municipal Infrastructure Investment Framework which severely limited supply of services.
    And in 1995 a staffperson convinced Asmal that Pretoria should limit cross-subsidies from hedonistic to low-income consumers, and should establish "a credible threat of cutting service"
    In 2003, approximately 1.5 million people were disconnected because of inability to pay.
    Pretoria is left to fib about the record, ranging from adult education to water to AIDS to crime to job creation.
    Patrick Bond teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and has authored two recent books: Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance, Zed Books, 2003 and Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2004).
    Biaser Road
    Children collect water
    slide cursor here
    BBC Audio:The first Soweto election held ten years ago.          
    John Humphreys and Fergal Keane report from Soweto.         
    BBC Audio of the first all people election held ten years ago:Ixonia Nyesulu: "The mood was good"          
    Tuesday, 23 November, 2004
    Tutu warns of poverty 'powder keg'
    Archbishop Desmond Tutu
    Tutu says poverty is the biggest threat to South African security
    Archbishop Desmond Tutu has warned that South Africa is sitting on a "powder keg" because millions are living in "dehumanising poverty".
    The Nobel Peace laureate said attempts to boost black economic ownership were only benefiting an elite minority.
    And he cautioned that political "kowtowing" within the ruling ANC was hampering democracy.
    The archbishop was speaking at the Nelson Mandela annual lecture in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
    He attacked the black economic empowerment programme for further enriching already wealthy blacks.
    "What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?" he asked.
    He warned the system could be "building up much resentment which we may rue later."
    "Gruelling, demeaning, dehumanising poverty" experienced by millions of South Africans was the biggest threat to the country's security, he said.
    "We are sitting on a powder keg."
    We cannot glibly on full stomachs speak about handouts to those who often go to bed hungry
    Archbishop Desmond Tutu

    Security
    The archbishop criticised politicians for debating whether to give the poor an income grant of $16 (£12) a month and said the idea should be seriously considered.
    "We cannot glibly on full stomachs speak about handouts to those who often go to bed hungry," he said.
    "It is cynical in the extreme to speak about handouts when people can become very rich at the stroke of a pen."
    He called on ordinary citizens to "adopt" a poor family by giving them $16 to $32 a month or to pay their school fees.
    While listing South Africa's successes since the end of apartheid, he warned against a tendency towards stifling political debate.
    "Truth cannot suffer by being examined or challenged," he said.
    "Unthinking, uncritical, kowtowing party line-toeing is fatal to a vibrant democracy," the archbishop added.
    Tuesday, 6 September 2005
    People evicted from a farm
    New laws have failed to protect farm workers
    Call to end S African evictions
    A South African land expert has said a recent study of evictions should be a "wake-up call" for the government to do more to protect black farm workers.
    Marc Wegerif told the BBC the study, which found one million people had been evicted since the end of apartheid, showed the authorities were "too soft".
    He said there had been little change in land ownership or access since white minority rule ended in 1994.
    Some 80% of farm land is owned by whites, who are 10% of South Africans.
    Mr Wegerif, whose Nkuzi Development Association helped carry out the three-year study, told the BBC's Network Africa that although new laws have been passed to help farm workers, these have not always been enforced.
    The survey was carried out across South Africa and he said he was confident that the figures were "if anything, on the conservative side".
    International competition
    The rate of evictions has speeded up since the African National Congress came to power - with one million evictions in the decade from 1994, compared to 700,000 in the previous 10 years.
    Despite the new laws designed to make it harder for people to be unfairly evicted, the study found that just 1% of those affected had lodged legal appeals.
    The National Evictions Survey, which was also carried out by Social Surveys, was presented to parliament last week.
    Mr Wegerif said international competition put pressure on South Africa's mostly white commercial farmers to cut costs and this often led to their workers being evicted.
    "Property rights for white owners of land are protected in the constitution, so the government has trod softly but the findings of the study suggests far too softly," he said.
    "We hope this is a wake-up call."
    The government has recently said it will speed up the process of land reform, with more blacks being allocated land.
    Under apartheid, blacks were not allowed to own land in much of South Africa.
    South Africa - A decade of democracy
    TEN YEARS ON


    PEOPLE'S VIEWS

    Jobs and money
    Economic issues facing ordinary South Africans

    BACKGROUND




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    Men who have become Giants


     
     
    Politicians of disgust
    Politicians of disgust. Dalai Lama, left, and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi look on during a public reception at the Namgayal complex in Dharamsala, India, Friday, March 21, 2008. Pelosi speaking at a news conference on Capitol Hill November 8, 2006: 'In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.' The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever.' A Palestine loved one lowers the body of 21-month-old Salasabeel Abu Jalhoum into a grave. The young girl was killed early on Sunday when a US Israel missile landed on her house in the northern Gaza Strip March 2, 2008. More killing by US Taxpayers. Children injured and killed in Gaza by Israel using US made and paid for missiles. Palestinians were forced from their homes 60 years ago from what is now called Israel into refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon. The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years. More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers each day for this military use, which presently involves the imprisonment of the remaining segregated ' Bantustan - Apartheid ' parcels of land occupied by millions of Palestinian. Total funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people is more than 4 billion US dollars per year. Photo: AP/Gurinder Osan

    Politicians of disgust
    Dalai Lama, left, and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi look on during a public reception at the Namgayal complex in Dharamsala, India, Friday, March 21, 2008.
    Pelosi speaking at a news conference on Capitol Hill November 8, 2006:
    'In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
    The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
    Now and forever.'
    A Palestine loved one lowers the body of 21-month-old Salasabeel Abu Jalhoum into a grave.
    The young girl was killed early on Sunday when a US Israel missile landed on her house in the northern Gaza Strip March 2, 2008.
    More killing by US Taxpayers.
    Children injured and killed in Gaza by Israel using US made and paid for missiles.
    Palestinians were forced from their homes 60 years ago from what is now called Israel into refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon.
    The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years.
    More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers each day for this military use, which presently involves the imprisonment of the remaining segregated ' Bantustan - Apartheid ' parcels of land occupied by millions of Palestinian.
    Total funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people is more than 4 billion US dollars per year.
    Photo: AP/Gurinder Osan
           The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
           Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
           The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path      
    Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District
    Speaking at the AIPAC agenda   May 26, 2005
    Mother her two babies killed by US
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.   This is absolute nonsense.
    In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been:  it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
    The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.
    For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....
    In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
    The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
    Now and forever.
    If you find the images in this article revolting, like me, think of the following: people everywhere in Palestine see such images on a daily basis not as pictures but live and anywhere they go, and that this genocide is supported equally by ALL western countries, the EU and the UN.
    If you live in any "western" country, your taxes are very probably financing what you see here.
    Speak with your politicians if you do not like what you see.
    When the psychopaths and moral degenerates who commit these acts with the help of your governments stop commiting them, I (and others) will stop publishing these images.
    Israel had to defend themselves from her,
    so they did this.
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Since the criminal State of Israel denied me the right to work as a journalist in my homeland Palestine and forced me to flee to Europe, I often ask myself why the U.S.A does not stop donating to Israel the bombs which they use against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
    What, ever, have we done to the USA?
    Why did the U.S.A send military detachments to Israel after the Israeli lost the war in the south of Lebanon?
    The Israeli military radio, 'Tsahal Radio' announced these news.
    They said that the American detachment of officers had arrived in Israel to take part in the 'Autumn Clouds' operation in Gaza.
    That they helped the Israeli military to perform their 'killing duties' without any loss.
    American officers were involved in the last Beit Hanoun massacre, in which in one incident 20 Palestinians were killed, at least 60 innocent children, old men and women were injured.
    Leg injuries inflicted by new Israeli weapons
    The flesh is apparently burnt and disintegrates into crumbles and liquids
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    The question poses itself, why is the political discourse of the European countries still fixated on the crimes against the Jews over 60 years ago?
    All the while allowing and even supporting the perpetration of the big disaster which befalls my homeland Palestine?
    Why do all European politicians keep silence about all the crimes which the Israeli perpetrates in Palestine?
    Are they scared that the Jews will return to Europe, or are they themselves involved in these crimes?
    Is it logical that the European countries signed the convention against Genocide, and then they impose a siege against the Palestinian.
    Create conditions for real starvation for another nation in another land?
    Why does the international media impose a veil of silence over what is happening in Palestine?
    The concentration camps which are Gaza and the West Bank?
    Never anything comes out in the media, the TV, the newspapers.
    The media only relates minor incidents, or, in a hugely inflated manner, when something small happens against the Israeli occupation terrorists.
    As far as I am concerned, all the western media is complicit in this genocide.
    There used to be a house here.
    Now only a pool of blood remains.
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    The Beit Hanoun massacre, a day of bloody clouds.
    On November 1, 2006, the number of the Palestinians who were killed in Gaza during the 'Autumn Clouds' Israeli military terror operation reached 86, and at least 265 were injured.
    This happened before the criminals of the Israeli State perpetrated the now generally known massacre in Beit Hanoun.
    The morning of November 8, 2006, Israeli tanks shelled Palestinians in their homes in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.
    They fired eleven shells into six homes, killing at least 20 Palestinians, wounding some 60 more.
    The Irony is that this attack comes a day after Israeli troops pulled out of the town after a week-long offensive in which dozens of Palestinian died, and hundreds were injured.
    A person from Gaza, who also sent me most of the pictures of this article, posted this on that day:
    It has been the 7th day of the israeli aggression against citizens in gaza strip town of Bieth Hanoon, till this moment they have killed more than 90 citizen withen those 7 days.
    What is most important about this, is the kind of strange weapons used in the attack.
    These bombs explode in a strange way to make fatal damage of human body.
    Cuts and burns more than any bomb we have ever experienced ... so this is why the number of kills is very high till now.
    And for the most important even the wonded, thay almost have no hope to cure, as the damage that happens to their bodys .. the Palestinian Health ministray believes that some nuclear radiations might be contented in these weapons, as they can not really understand what is going on till now.
    As i said more than 90 were killed and more than 500 wonded, tens in danger ... and more than 100 handdicapped as the type of weapons they use ..
    The israelis destroyed many houses, and they killed many trees in simple words a New Jenin Camp.
    If you remember what happened in Jenen, they destroyed roads, electricity and water nets.. in simple words what happened was an earth quack.
    During searching some houses they stole what they found, some cellphones and PCs and gold.
    What is happpening now that they Israelis partially withdrawn from Beith Hanoon, but not completely as some media say.
    For that more than 9 were killed yesterday morning by Israeli snipers, or air raids and the army still ocuupying and having terrorist militant activities against civils.
    Tonight some thing that happened which might be good to consider here, is an Israeli airstrike against the house of Jamila AL-Shanty, the member of the Palestinian Legaslative Council.
    This caused the death of her sister and her sister's husband and an other passerby.
    About the school bus that happened the day before, they shot the female teacher inside the bus in front of little kids about 4 and 5 years old.
    Imagine how would they grow up?
    Today there has been aggression using arsenal.
    The Israeli arsenal killed more than 20 civilians as they bombed houses over the heads of the inhabitants.
    So many kids and women were killed or injured this morning..."
    Zionists protesting against 'fascism' and 'anti-semitism' in Vienna.
    What do these deluded people think that zionism is, if not fascism and anti-semitism?
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Each time I read about the criminal Israeli operation in Gaza, seeing the increase in the number of the civilian victims, I swallowed my pain and closed the computer.
    Until that evening, a day after the Beit Hanoun massacre, when I saw a group of Jews lead a demonstration against an Austrian rightist group which has its office near my house.
    Suddenly the questions started coming:
    How can it be that such a criminal nation has the gut to complain about the deplorable things which befell them in the past?
    While they are perpetrating massacres and crimes on a daily basis.
    Often worse than the most extreme crimes attributed to the Nazis.
    Against the civilians of another nation.
    The Palestinian population jailed in Gaza and the West Bank?
    The face and head of this person was melted away
    by the new American weapons which Israel is using
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    The Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank is indescribable.
    The daily crimes of Israel in Palestine are uncountable.
    Their hateful and shameless incitements against the Arab world increase day after day....
    In Beit Hanoun, some of the shells landed on a home, killing 11 members of one family called Al-'Athamneh, including a 9-year-old child and a 73-year-old woman.
    The other shells landed on other five homes at Hamad Street in Beit Hanoun.
    Other victims were from the Al-Kafarneh family.
    Muhammad Athamneh described the massacre to Palestinian newspaper Hayat Al-Jadidah.
    He said that the killed were children, women, and old men, that they had killed his mother, sister, uncle and his six sons, and four sons of his second uncle.
    This boy was sleeping,
    so they killed him like this
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Athamneh said that it was 5:30 at the morning, everybody were sleeping, when they heared the very strong blast of the first explosion which landed at his cousins house, followed by screaming and crying.
    He ran out, found his relatives, old and young men running in the streets, escaping from the shelling and looking for protection in other places, but that this did not help them to escape from the Israeli shelling.
    The "Autumn Clouds" rained missiles on their heads.
    They all were killed on the roads.
    The whole place was converted into a collective grave.
    Athamneh was shocked, he did not know how to save the life of his family and relatives, everybody was bleeding and the floor was covered by a big pool of blood!
    He saw the horrible death in front of his eyes.
    His cousin’s wife died with her two children while he was screaming and seeking the Ambulance.
    Nobody was able to come near under the heavy, blind shelling killing everybody moving in the area.
    The sky rained blood that day.
    He was probably running away,
    so they shot him thru the head
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Today Saturday, the US, who said in advance that Israel has the right to defend itself and gave the Palestinian resistance the responsibility for the massacre, vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip that killed 20 Palestinian civilians and injured more 60.
    The disgusting American Psychopath Bolton described the text as 'unbalanced' and 'biased against Israel and politically motivated'.
    Does anyone wonder why the Palestinian resistance is shooting missiles toward Israel, which by the way never really reach anything?
    The reason is simple: the big concentration camp which is Gaza, where a million and a half people are caged, impoverished and hungry, and where almost all civilian infrastructure has been left in ruins caused by Israel.
    The increased poverty and real hunger which the Palestinians suffer in their reclusion:
    The shortage of food for the children,
    The damaged infrastructure which the occupation left behind,
    The closed entrances of the city,
    The daily killings and destruction — including the bombing of the power station — in Gaza,
    These reasons are enough for anyone to fight against the Genocide and look for a better life to live.
    Does anyone wonder how much the face of the Israeli occupation is bloody, ugly and inhuman?
    Does anybody wonder how much the American leaders are criminals in their support to Israel?
    When will the world give Israel a firm ultimatum to stop the occupation, the genocide which has been going on for about 60 years now?
    Carrying babies to their graves in Beit Hanoun
    They died because Western politicians are cowards and racists under the heel of the Zionists
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Seeking International Military Forces in Palestine
    Why did the European politicians not adopt the request of the Palestinians, who asked for European military forces to be sent to Palestine to protect them and the infrastructure from the Israeli crimes?
    We are really seeking International military forces to stop the bloody crimes against Palestine, to make a halfways normal life possible.
    The Palestinians Authority does not really exist any more.
    Abbas and the people around him don’t have even the power to protect their underpants.
    The Palestinian civilians lost their trust to the P.A. long time ago, when it became evident that they are a bunch of corrupt, sold-out traitors.
    The Palestinian civilians are seeking protection against the Jewish criminals, and they will be thankful for anybody who will stop the crimes commited against them.
    Please, send military forces to stop the Israeli rampage in Gaza and the West Bank.
    Part of the images here come from the Al-Ittihad newspaper, part of them were submitted by somebody from Beit Hanoun who lost seven friends and relatives during this last Israeli rampage.
    His only comment was "that's life", because he knows, as all those who live in Gaza, that his life is worth nothing.
    This child was not yet born when it was shot by an anonymous Jew
    soldiering for Zionism
    More than Fifteen million US dollars
    given by US taxpayers to Israel
    each day for their military use
    4 billion US dollars per year
    Pelosi
    The United States will stand with Israel
    now and forever.
    Now and forever.
    29 July 2007
    Israel hails US military aid rise
    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed that the United States is planning a significant increase in military and government aid to Israel.
           The Politics of Anti-Semitism      
           99 US Senators, 350 US House members      
           attend AIPAC meeting     
                  Sands of Sorrow (1950) — click here — documentary placed on www.archive.org        
           Documentary film of the Palestinian refugees
    two years after they were forced from the present state of Israel.          
    US Democrats and Republicans Have Enough Votes To End The Palestine Israel conflict
    [If They Choose To Do So]
    US Democrats and Republicans simply have to block passage of any bill that would continue to fund the Israel government.
    This requires not 67 or 60 US Senate votes, or even 51, but just 41 — the number of US senators needed to maintain a filibuster and prevent a bill from coming up for a vote.
    In other words, the US Democrats and Republicans have more than enough votes to end the Palestine conflict — if they choose to do so.
    The US Democratic and Republican leadership may believe — rightly or wrongly — that such a strategy would entail unacceptable political costs, especially with the high level funding from AIPAC and other Israel backed monetary support.
    But that's very different from being unable to affect policy.
    To insist that the US Congress cannot stop the Palestine conflict obscures the actual choices facing the US people — by confusing "can't" with "won't.
           The Dark Side Initiates — Click here      
           Dark path initiates depend on the denial      
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           Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying      
           — Lest we forget      
           Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures      
           What CNN never shows you      
           Murder on Rucarb Street      
           What CNN never tells you      
           Atrocities —        
           US and Israel atrocities        
    Monday, 12 November 2007
    Zimbabwean dies queuing for visa
    Loaf of bread in empty trolley Many Zimbabweans head to South Africa to escape economic misery
    Many Zimbabweans head to South Africa to escape economic misery
    A Zimbabwean job-seeker who collapsed and died in Cape Town last week, is said to have succumbed to starvation.
    Adonis Musati, 23, was a police officer in Chimanimani in eastern Zimbabwe, but the economic crisis led him to South Africa to try to support his family.
    He had spent a month at the Home Affairs Refugee Centre, trying to get a work permit, reportedly with nothing to eat, sleeping in a cardboard box.
    His family said they had learned of Adonis's death on the internet.
    The BBC's Southern Africa correspondent Adam Mynott says Adonis Musati left Zimbabwe and crossed into South Africa more than a month ago.
    Like tens of thousands of his countrymen he had hoped to find work, but was unable to get a permit.
    On Friday 2 November, he collapsed on a traffic island near the offices of South Africa's home affairs refugee centre in Cape Town and was found dead.
    Braam Hanekom of Passop, a refugee rights organisation, told our reporter that Adonis appeared to have died of hunger, having not eaten for four days.
    It is a disgrace that someone should die of hunger in one of South Africa's richest cities
    Refugee rights spokesman Braam Hanekom
    But fellow Zimbabweans who met him outside the refugee centre told the South African news website IOL that he had not eaten for two weeks.
    "It is a disgrace that someone should die of hunger in one of South Africa's richest cities," said Mr Hanekom.
    He said there are 25,000 Zimbabweans like Adonis Musati in Cape Town looking for work and food.
    Up to 3m Zimbabweans have arrived in South Africa to escape the economic crisis in their own country.
    Family members living in Sasolburg in the Free State, are now in Cape Town to identify his body and to make funeral arrangements.
    His cousin Ivy Dhliwayo said the family had not heard of Mr Musati's death from the Zimbabwean consulate, nor from the South African government.
    "(His twin brother) Adbell read a story on the internet, and that is how the whole family found out," she said.
    Passop says it is funding the relatives' expenses and will try to get Musati's body back home for burial.
    MMVII
         Zimbabwe Homeless — Demolition, clearance of homes     
          Porta Farm images       
              Listen and watch Allister Sparks
    Editor and journalist of the Rand Daily Mail during the Apartheid years
    Wiretapping and Torture, Under Apartheid and Bush  
        Darling Walter... longing for you    
           Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela and Ronald Reagan — Racism         
        South Africa weapons maker Armscor responsible for brutality in Zimbabwe  
         Then they came for the blacks who spoke out     
          Archbishop Desmond Tutu   The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota      
        Drum — Sophiatown and Apartheid   
        Nelson Mandela's tribute to Walter Sisulu     
        Happy Sindane — child of mixed color skin   
        My defining moment    
        Darfur    
        Pictures and arial views of destruction — 2003 - 2005    
        Nelson Mandela     
        May 2004 at joint session of the two houses of parliament     
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