Apartheid was not that bad: a case of peculiar nostalgia

grok

grok

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Not trolling but I'm pretty interested in your opinion on this.

There is an interesting narrative emerging in South Africa’s general societal discourse, and it’s connected to the phenomenon of corruption. The narrative makes a comparison between the corruption and service-delivery failures of post-apartheid governance and the “efficiency” of the apartheid state.

..

Perhaps most critical to our discussion is the question: “as bad as apartheid was, was it really as bad as the breakdown in the integrity of governance and the subsequent and continuing erosion of service delivery as we currently witness?” This is the emerging narrative I believe requires scrutiny.

...

Increasingly, one is hearing this conversation in one form or another from South Africans of all colours, but notably black erudite citizens with solid struggle credentials. “Perhaps the apartheid system of governance was not as bad as all that,” they say.
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I especially like how he quotes Zuma, the poster child of corruption, as saying 'South Africa is a land of thugs'. Oh the irony.

Full article here

http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinioni...was-not-that-bad-a-case-of-peculiar-nostalgia
 
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From what I've trawled through I've discovered the majority of white South Africans were completely clueless thanks to the spoonfeeding by the media and preferential treatment by the government.
 
To a large extent, they were wilfully clueless - they preferred not to know about it. My aunt, who's lived here all her life is still clueless, and she refuses to learn.

My mother lives in Zim, she has the same kind of attitude.. deny/ignore what is happening around you.
 
Then the majority must have been wearing blindfolds.

Anyone who lived through apartheid was well aware of what was going on.

The next question then is well what did the whites who objected to the system do about it, and the answer is they shut up or were shut up.
 
daveza said:
The next question then is well what did the whites who objected to the system do about it, and the answer is they shut up or were shut up.
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I wonder how the ones who didn't shut-up feel about SA now?
 
Now the MyBB crowd will learn about The Daily Maverick, bringing down the level of discourse. Bah

But on topic, it was just purely willful ignorance.
 
It's ironic that people should look back with a sense of nostalgia at the apartheid days while complaining about corruption in our current government because any corruption in the old government was covered up. The media was gagged as were the citizens. Speaking out against the old government got you labeled as either a communist or a sympathiser. Open discourse of the kind we enjoy today simply wasn't allowed. Yet here we all are, looking back with longing or not.
 
I was reading a mail from a black co worker about the good old days( bare with me not saying it was)
I'll try and find it and post it tomorrow. It has photos of couples dancing and funky fros in it.

Which made we wonder.. We all recall things differently and were affected differently. A family living on a farm in rural KZN that was treated as fellow humans ( and all the nice things ) would have experienced discrimination on a very low level compared to a mine worker in a city.

So it depends from who's view point things are written? Apartheid was bad. Not saying it wasnt. But say you were raised on that farm you were sent to school in 1996 in a mixed normal school your views of apartheid would surely be diffrent from the miners child?
 
Don't think I could have lived with a government that didn't allow porn.
 
There was plenty good and a teensy bit of bad here and there.
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Lul what? You're white right?

As a non-white child born at the tail end of Apartheid my parents did their best to shelter me from what was going on. I can thankfully say that I bear no mental scars from Apartheid thanks to my parents. I was sent to a private school which was open to all races. I was pretty much at home most of the time unless visiting relatives, so I didn't experience any racial violence.

Another friend of mine who is a couple of years younger than me and had a black father and white mother... holy ****, does he have some horror stories.
 
zolly said:
Lul what? You're white right?

As a non-white child born at the tail end of Apartheid my parents did their best to shelter me from what was going on. I can thankfully say that I bear no mental scars from Apartheid thanks to my parents. I was sent to a private school which was open to all races. I was pretty much at home most of the time unless visiting relatives, so I didn't experience any racial violence.

Another friend of mine who is a couple of years younger than me and had a black father and white mother... holy ****, does he have some horror stories.
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:D thanx.
 
Don't think I could have lived with a government that didn't allow porn.
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They only allowed TV with a heavy heart as a medium for further propaganda.

And sex was forbidden on a Sunday in case it lead to dancing.
 
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