[Leifur]

"The ANC is a dangerous government built on the foundations of a former terrorist organization. Now I never took a course on South African history/politics so you could say my knowledge is not exactly rich on the matter..."

These words could be out of my own mouth.

This is my first post on this great forum, but I have been interested in the history of Southern Africa for now quite some time, although that interest has increased a lot recently. I recall how all these events were portrayed in the media in those days, even though I was just a kid (a bit of a nerd). If there ever was evil upon this earth it was the old Apartheid government it seemed. From Leathal Weapon where all the bad guys were blond and south africans to Alfred J. Kwak, who fought an apartheid system, it seemed we had the perfect villain. You got the sense that just like few years before the world had got rid of communism the last vestiges of nazism (supporters of Apartheid were often portrayed with the swastica like emblem of the AWB who seemed to be the official emblem of Apartheid by how the pictures were displayed) were being eradicated. Mandela got hero´s (or more like sain´ts like) status for deciding not to have revenge upon the white folks.

Recently this perfect image of liberalism creating a perfect harmony from a war like zone has been shattered in my mind, and the wet dream of the new south africa has become something more of a reality. The funny thing is that the government of ANC keeps this image live and well, f.e. with advertisement campaigns and such, depicting their own political figures in favorable ligh(something not acceptable in the West I believe).

I have realised that the world isn´t black and white, one of those governments wasn´t all bad and the other isn´t all good, but who is? I mean not to absolute the apartheid government, after all they eventually got the country into its current situation by giving a terrorist organization legitimacy by dealing with them, and surely the apartheid government was responsible for a lot of bad things.

But what surprises me the most is how bad bargain they seem to have made with the black community. Today it seems to me from afar that the white and colored community have been completely marginalised and don´t even have control over their own communities and towns. It seems to me, although notably from afar, that they did not do anything to prepare the country for the transition to majority rule.

I mean, after seeing all the bad governments of the rest of Africa, and specially how utterly marginalised all right winged movements had become in countries like Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, Namibia and Mosambique, where leftwinged liberation movements seemed as the victors and thus obviously subsequently won the elections to, I honestly don´t understand what drove them to bargain with the ANC instead of trying to create a right winged movement among the blacks that could be more favorible in the long run, like we see f.e. in Africa´s best run country, Botswana.

But then again in real terms the Nationals weren´t practically right winged at least not economically. So can anyone explain to me what happened, and why they were in such a rush to bargain with the ANC, so soon after they had lost their principal backers, the Soviet union and the Nationals victory seemed at hand against that old foe? Why didn´t they just wait a few more years and try to create a more favoreable situation in post-apartheid South Africa? And what if any preparation did they do while they still had power for their eventual powerlessness?

And what should they have done?