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South Africa: The Ultimate Solution
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13111 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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11 / 1987 |
6,453 Words |
| Author
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George B.N. Ayittey
George B.N. Ayittey, a native of Ghana, is Distinguished
Economist at American University and president of the Free
Africa Foundation in Washington, D.C. He is the author of a
forthcoming book, The African Predicament (St. Martin's
Press). |
AFTER APARTHEID: THE SOLUTION
Frances Kendall and Leon Louw
San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1987
253 p.p., $17.95
The issue of apartheid evokes emotive reactions that all too often emerge triumphant over common sense. Since 1985, a tumultuous barrage of invective, pontification, and disquisition on the subject has been fired at the public conscience. Largely, apartheid is an issue on which everyone considers himself an expert by virtue of his skin color or personal interracial experience. Inevitably, confusion and high-octane rhetoric abound, making it difficult to find the truth.
The black cause for freedom in South Africa is noble and just, worthy of support. But it is in danger of being debauched and discredited. It fashionable and politically astute to be seen as antiapartheid, but beyond that loom questions of sincerity, credibility, and commitment. Take a step back and examine those on the freedom bandwagon.
Atrocities in Independent Africa
There are those who preach high-sounding words about freedom and the virtues of a color-blind society. Yet, international condemnation of oppression is not color-blind. When Idi Amin was killing of Lango and Acholi tribesmen like flies, at the rate of 100 to 150 a day, the world, and even the Organization of African Unity (OAU) did nothing, shamefully nothing. Had that many African zebras been slaughtered, it would have been a different story. They would have been placed on an endangered species list and all sorts of measures would have been instituted to protect them.
One Ugandan Anglican bishop, Festo Kivengere, was irate:
The OAU's silence (and indeed the world's) encouraged and indirectly contributed to the bloodshed in Africa. I mean, the OAU even went so far as to go to Kampala [Uganda] for its 1975 Summit and make Amin its chairman. (The delegates even carried Amin on their shoulders!) And at the very moment the heads of state were meeting in the conference hall, talking about the lack of human rights in southern Africa, three blocks away in Amin's torture chambers, my countrymen's heads were being smashed with sledge hammers and their legs wee being chopped off with axes. (The Africans, David Lamb, Vintage Books,
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