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South Africa followup, 14 years later
There are a few times when my predictions for the
future have been wrong. In the case of South Africa, am I
ever glad I was wrong!
In the Reactor of April 24, 1985, 14 years ago, I
thought of it as a Mission Impossible situation. I wrote
"Your problem, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept
it, is to bring about justice and racial equality in South
Africa while avoiding a blood bath. Your mission will
succeed if 25 years from today the whites and blacks of
South Africa are living together in peace and harmony and
mutual respect."
In 1985 I thought the chances of accomplishing the
"mission" I outlined were equal to a July snowstorm in
Death Valley.
The key to a peaceful transition in South Africa turned
out to be a man who spent over a third of his life as a
political prisoner. Nelson Mandela has saved the nation
from chaos, genocide, and worse. South Africa has not
survived unscathed, but compared to what might have
been, it is now a paradise of racial harmony.
Mandela is not perfect. Neither is Frederik de Klerk,
the last Afrikaaner Prime Minister, but compare either of
them with Slobodan Milosevec, and they look like plaster
saints. They deserve the Nobel Peace Prize each received.
Southeastern Europe is filled with people who hate
each other, yet they're all cousins, and not very distant
cousins at that. That some are Moslem and some Christian
is an accident of history.
The Boers and Bantus of South Africa have been on a
collision course for hundreds of years. Both groups are
late-arriving immigrants, (Both arrived about 400 years
ago) and neither group can claim the other is an interloper.
The true aboriginals, the Bushmen, the only folk who have
a really ancient claim on the land, have been shoved aside
by both Afrikaaners and Bantus.
I objected to American college students (including my
own son) marching against apartheid in the '80s. They
were on the right side, but I could see no end of the
situation except South Africa's whites and blacks
destroying each other in a bloody confrontation that would
end in a nation in as bad a shape as Zaire and other
despotic successors to colonial rule. I thought an American
college student should not encourage a blood bath, and
ultimately despotism, then safely watch from a distance. I
would have had no objection to college students going to
South Africa and putting their lives on the line, but that
seemed an unlikely scenario. Thanks to the rationality and
good judgment of both Mandela and de Klerk, the blood
bath did not happen. There was no ethnic cleansing. Three
cheers for Nelson Mandela. He is a fine example of what
one decent person can do.
Paul Azevedo is a firm believer in the First
Amendment, even when his wife and family disagrees
with his point of view. He especially encourages those
who agree with him to e-mail him at Paul@thereactor.net.
If you disagree, that's ok too.
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