Agreeing on affirmative action difficult: Mbeki

[kilo39]

Agreed. However - one would have thought that an attempt would be made post Apartheid to actually increase infrastructure - not make do with what is available. In Kempton Park there is an empty hospital costing millions each year in maintenance. It's completely empty, often subjected to vandals and vagrants. It is a state owned building with several good facilities - including operating theaters, yet it is standing empty. The Health Department refuses to use it as a hospital, and also refuses to sell it or transfer it to a different department. It's a travesty - but even worse: it's not an exception. Similar hospitals are standing vacant in Kwazulu Natal, the Eastern Cape and The Free State. The incompetency of this government is all its own fault, and no amount of blame apportioned to Apartheid is going to change that.
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I disagree - things could have moved along a lot more swiftly. Germany went from an split regime to a definitive World Power in under 15 years. Germans have a never say die attitude - same as South Africans - the difference between Germans and South Africans is simply South Africans don't want to work together.

BobbyMac: as an english person you were given a very particular education; you were given a system.

When people are not given this system and have less clue that such a system exists we have the result we see today, ie, gross negligence and incompetence, an attitude of uncaring. Mbeki suffers this; he has been given the system and understands it intellectually but is incapable of 'instilling this system' on the rest of the gross incompetents, worse that he is so lost in his intellectual forays he is incapable of 'control on the ground,' ie, he has little interest and is never here.

What we see in SA today is a perversion: a perversion of basic human dignity instilled, fostered, perpetrated by the apartheid system (and yes, if you want to extend it, colonial rule.) Yes WE can blame the basic gross negligence of our government but fact is government is made up of people, those same people who suffered the inequities of our previous governments not least 50 years of apartheid.

Essentially we are looking at apartheid in reverse. Those exact same jobs held by apartheid goons are now held by (this) government. Those exact same words, policies, atrocities (empty hospitals, deaths in prison, etc,) are now perpetrated by this government. In fact the numbers are probably exactly the same, ie, people who have directly benefited from AA and BEE exactly equal the previous proportions (the betterment of the afrikaans verse all others, the betterment of a small section of black society at the cost of all others.)

So now we have the battle all over again: one section of society against another. Except this time: poor education, poor services, poor everything are the people in power verse the rest, and the rest are largely 'their' people.

So yes, Mbeki may spread the butter too thin or Zuma may spread it too fat, or Vavi complains no butter at all; but at the end of the day it is THEM in power, them non-delivery, them gross human rights violations.

WE await the outcome.

 

[Skeptik]

Plain fact: WE (the collective people of South Africa) are paying for the errors of YOUR ways NOW. If all had been included from the beginning we wouldn't be trying to include ALL now.

The colonialists encountered an entire coloured (and later black) generation who could not read & write. They had a completely different concept of ownership, customs and religious beliefs. THEY WERE NOT INCLUDED IN THE BEGINNING BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE> hence the reason for and the start of apartheid.