This entry seems to attract quite a few nostalgic of the good old days when Black Man knew his place and South Africa was white and happy. As well as a couple even less articulate racist morons. Neither of which was the original intent.

Consequently, the comments for this entry are hereby closed, sorry for those who posted thoughtful comments about this issue. Feel free to continue the discussion by posting to your own blog and sending a trackback to this page.

South Africa is one of the few countries with a large white population. That population can unfortunately not quickly move (although a substantial amount has already immigrated). Being a minority is unfortunately not a viable option in African countries.

You also ignore the fact that Africa was a battle ground for the cold war (fought via proxy). Marxist ideology was spread throughout Africa, and more importantly, Soviet arms were spread throughout Africa.

All of the newly liberated states were taken over by a Marxist government – these Marxist governments are most to blame for Africa’s current sorry state (not colonialism).

As countries go, South Africa is probably the most stable sub-Sahara African country. Maybe it can just avoid Marxism/Socialism phase, maybe [not](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma).

None taken: I was only talking about comment form usage and inclusion of URL, and I’m sure there were no intents to do wrong…

As for the rest (Africa), I do agree that transitions rarely work the way you’d expect, and the whole “Let’s drop freedom/democracy/[whatever great concept we've come up with in our enlightened era] onto these people and things will be fine” has been proven times and again to be somewhat of a delusion. But my point remains: there’s little way you could justify even taking the time, from the 1950′s on, to deal with a “smooth” transition from apartheid to non-apartheid. In order to avoid comparing the incomparable and grab a Godwin point at it, I will refrain from citing examples, but will let you think of other countries or governments, at other times in history, that you would probably not consider “giving transition time” to…

Overall, the transition in South Africa could have gone much worse (for example: to a full reverse of what the situation was before, which it hasn’t). Not to say that it’s great, or even good, but it’s definitely better than what was before, so at least there’s some hope.

Now, *other* countries in Africa are yet another problem… The problem of their “freedom” usually being that it’s not freedom as one would usually conceive it, but mostly freedom to go and vote for whatever fashionable despot has gathered the most militia or foreign money to buy the votes… Which is only a very tenuous, literal and pointless definition of freedom. Obviously real freedom comes with a certain guarantee that your needs do not directly control your power of free-will.

Now. and to contradict myself immediately, let me argue with some of the above comments:

If someone has no idealistic view of Africa and [black] Africans, trust me, that’d be me. I have witnessed a sufficient sample of the fucked-upness of it all to last me a few lifetimes. I don’t think you’ll ever hear me wax lyrical about the Eternal Continent of the Ancient Wisdom of the Ageless Golden Traditions of the Respect for Mother Earth and You Love that Rug I Bought It For Twenty Shillings On My Last Trip to Kenya…

Africa’s fucked up today, and a lot of it has to do with black Africans chopping to bits their black brethren when they get a chance. There’s little discussing that.

NOW, that shouldn’t mean by any way, that you cannot hang the responsibility on whitie for the most of it. Sure, perhaps Africans would still be killing each other or starving, even without what happened over the past few centuries… The fact of the matter remains, the reasons they are doing it now are all intimately related to the meddling of Westerners into the business of Africa. Then and still now.

In the case of South Africa, and it may be why I bothered to single out this one piece of commemorative news out of the literally hundreds that probably deserve attention every day, there isn’t even the start of a debate: whites were oppressing blacks. They weren’t doing it morally, culturally or unofficially: they had laws. Laws that officially proclaimed you weren’t quite a full-ranking citizen, let alone human, if your color didn’t fall on the right side of the color charts helpfully provided by the authorities. Not just the law, but the unbelievable level of meticulousness going into their elaboration and application should just be enough to justify of the unambiguous labelling of the people condoning such a thing as “BAD”. mmkay?

Shawn: Thanks for commenting, but I fear you may need a slight brush up on your knowledge of African histories. I suggest you start here (hint: they lose at the end). As an ironic aside, the British may not have managed to claim full paternity for one of the most evil government of the 20th century, but they still did inaugurate with a concept that was to gain much popularity in subsequent history: The concentration camp. So no, the Brits are to blame for a lot in the state of Africa (as are the French, the Belgian and about every other Western nation), but not so much about South Africa. I believe the people you might be thinking of is “Dutch”. Which would be historically more accurate, but still irrelevant. As I don’t quite care to know what country the Afrikaners’ grandparents were born in, or what language they spoke, but rather that they condoned in block an unambiguous and institutionalized form of racism.

Mick: If there’s ever such a thing as a “black/white” situation, I do believe this is it. Yes, “the whites” were a tad more to blame for the system than “the blacks” were. And I’m not sure you’re quite aware of what you are writing when suggesting things could have been “taken more slowly”… Are you suggesting we may have started by perhaps allowing Coloured people within one mile of non-Coloured areas without threat of being shot on sight and gradually move toward where they would eventually be granted full-on citizenship again, by the end of the 22nd century?

We aren’t talking about a shift in political systems or a mere repartition of riches, we are talking about the conception of what makes a human and what rights they have. Something a bit more easy to agree on, hopefully.

I am not trying to play “What I would have done if…” either. First, because I don’t particularly believe in carrying over guilts and responsibilities from one generation to the next endlessly. Second, because lots of people did do something and that’s what mattered in the end.

However, whatever little I may recall of being there as a kid on the 10th anniversary of these events made me think it bore reminding to all that this is not, by a stretch, “old” history, and also that many contemporary figures that enjoy near sainthood in some media, were all but complicit of this situation.

PS: Mick, I do not think you are aware of it, but adding both name and URL at the end of your comments is both redundant and, in some circles, outright rude (for the URL) as it may be interpreted as a not-so-subtle attempt to hawk your own blog, more than common netiquette allows. Something we do not kindly look upon around here. But I believe this is more ignorance than malice and will just make this an advice for future reference.

Shawn: That doesn’t quite work. I think if you look at the big picture, you may be able to “blame” parts of that situation on the British, however the US’s further support (or lack of opposition) for the things that came are far from ideal.

Australia has ONLY JUST (ie in the last 2-3 years) lifted its originally offical, and then later unofficial ban on black immigrants, accepting a very visible number of refugees from Africa nations. Our fucked up world indeed…