Every time I hear about South africa I want to puke! If Eastwood wants to do a film he should do one about how the people there are being betrayed by what is supposed to be their own government now.

The guys who committed all those atrocities and killed so many people during the Dutch occupiers regime have never been brought to justice. No arrests, no trials -nothing. The blacks leaders have accepted the huge bribes the Dutch paid them and are now telling the people, forget about the death and suffering you endured, forget that the thieves still own all the land (which they took from the African landowners by military conquest and didn’t pay a dime for, mind you) and you have nothing and the now black govenrment won’t lift a finger to stop this, instead let’s focus on “reconciliation.” A cute phrase which seems to mean, “keep things the way they were.” When the Economist magazine called Africa The Hopeless Continent, it was behavior like this they were talking about.
A movie about Nelson Mandela makes me want to vomit, because the sad truth is he threw in his lot with the Dutch and became an accomplice with the apartheid regieme. He was broken while in prison, then, once he agreed to be their stooge, he was released and is now being paid off to protect the interests of the late 20th century’s nazi’s. If these were the Germans in 1945 we were talking about no one would be saying, “Let them keep the lands they stole and let’s forget about the killing and murders they committed. We need reconciliation now.” People said, “Let them hang,” and they were right. The people of South Africa are still being denied justice by the very black men who were supposed to have finally brought it. This is the story some filmmaker needs to have the balls to tell.
Oh, did I forget to mention that the Dutch occupying government acquired nuclear weapons, not for use against any foreign enemies, but for the expressed purpose of using them agaisnt the people of South Africa. How sick is that? Wonder if Eastwood’s movie will touch on any of that? I think not.

It was about reconciliation not about punishment. It would have been an easy thing to do to line them up against a wall and shoot them all, but to get these people to come togethor and talk throgh their differences that showed a South Africa which had moved away from its differences. Look a similar thing happened in Northern Ireland in the UK and while not perfect its better then people dying. A Mandela biopic shouldn’t show him as a saint because he wasn’t, but like or not he is legend whose life I would like to see. Not sure where your “facts” about nuclear weapons came I know the S African government had them, but to use them against their own people got any sources for these?

“to get these people to come togethor and talk throgh their differences”

There was only one “differnce at issue,” The Dutch/British had taken the entire region of South Africa in a ruthless and unbelieveably bloody war of aggression. “Talk through their differnces?” The main point of contention was/is whether the Dutch/British should be allowed to keep what they’ve stolen and remain a white ruling class in a country they’ve stolen from it’s people. It would be like debating gravity –what is is and requires no deabte.

Perhaps you’re not acquainted with the history of S Africa. If you were you’d be aware that the reason the killings happened was because the white ruling class was using the most violent means to subjugate the African people. It’s as simple as that. This was not some misunderstanding that got out of hand. And that there were so many millions who died (including children, in case you were unaware of that as well) this is a human rights violation on par with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Show me that blacks killing whites in the streets, show me the blacks herding whites into prison for demanding humane treatment. Show me the black policemen shooting white children in the streets of Soweto in order to intimidate the public. Can you?
The FIRST thing they should have done is line those guys up agaisnt the wall Romanian-style and have them pose for the firing squad. The Dutch/British still live in the same palatial estates they always had –hundred of acres mind you, on the best farm land, that they never paid a penny for, while the people they took the land from live in squalor, while the people who did all these things to them brag about how “hard-working” they are. How do you “reconcile” that?
The only “reconciliation” neccessarry is for the Dutch/British to leave the lands they stole and let the Africans be. Stop bribing the government and meddling in the affairs of the people. Oh, and for S Africa’s black leaders to ensure that the war-criminals are held to account and punished and if these men flee, hunt them across the globe and bring them back to face trial. Israel had every right to go Nazi-hunting after WW2 and so do the Africans.
And as for a diplomatic talk-a-thon being “better than people dying,” I think you don’t know who was doing the killing –the whites- and who was doing the dying –the blacks. This was not like a couple of street gangs, this an occupying regime brutalizing the people whose lands they were occupying.
Oh, and as for my “sources” about nuclear weapons, try reading Critical Mass by William E Burrows, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid if you can’t be bothered to read a book.
Now perhaps you’ll show me some “facts” on how the Africans invited the Dutch/British to Africa and asked them stay. Or some “facts” on how the Africans are somehow responsible for the “differences” that led to so many Africans being killed? No one asked the Dutch or the British to come to Africa, indeed they entered with their respective militaries and killed anyone who got in the way. I know the history of S Africa, but given your comments I have to wonder how much you know.
The atrocities that occured in Africa are a disgrace to humanity, that they have yet to be answered is even worse, and anyone saying “reconciliation and not retribution” only seems to say that about this event and no other. Under your reasoning the Nuremberg trials were wrong –Europe should have focused on forgiving the Nazi’s not prolonging the bitterness by –gasp!- executing them! The final chapter on the Dutch/British human rights violations in Africa has yet to be written and won’t be until trials are held. The people who died had value, and their murders must be punished, not swept under the rug. A film documenting how the occupiers got the land and how they’re still ruling it should be made-and the part the Brits and Dutch home governments play in it, benefitting from the minerals their ex-patriates bring “home” should be included.

One last note. If the whites want to be “Africans” so badly, then why don’t they learn the language? From Zimbabwe to S africa they all speak English/Dutch, but not the language of the nations they tell people are their homes -they don’t speak Bantu, Swahili etc. They love to brag how their families have been in Africa for over a hundred and fifty years, four generations in some cases, yet they STILL can’t speak the language, and refuse to. They also describe themselves as “British” of “Dutch,” never as Zimbabwean (Brits get irritated when they hear that name and predictably scream, “Call it Rhodesia!) or South Africans. It’s onyl when around blacks or foreigners they acknowledge where they live, but the rest of the time they deny it. In America we tell Hispanics and immigrants, “Assimilate, learn the language! Stop being loyal to your home country, or go back there, but don’t hold loyalties to two ocuntries.” Nobody seems to want to hold the British/Dutch in Africa to that standard. Funny how that works.
If we’re going to do a movie about S africa, let’s do one that has at least a grain or two of the bitter truth, not something that’s been watered down so it’s politically correct to the oh-so-delicate sensitivities of the British and Dutch in africa who feel a little self-conscious when theissue is raised. What’s next, are we going to have people calling the apartheid regieme the good guys here? When we give them sympathy, as your post did, and try to shift the blame onto the victims, that’s only step away.

An intresting post, I can assure you I’m not an supporter of the former S African regieme nor am I somebody who calls Zimbabwe Rhodesia and hey you know what I’m British!! History is a funny thing, there are facts yes but mostly there are opinions your last post sir was full of opinions. Your right of course that the Aparthied regieme used torture, jailed and discriminted because of the colour of ones skin, so did the southern states in the US (no show trials or summary executions there either). But you know something I’m proud of what the Black S African government did after the ANC won the election It was an example to all of mankind of the power of forgiveness and the realisation that to build a new S Africa they needed all S Africans. If they had gone your way they would have been up shit creek like Zimbabwe, the whites having to leave and a likely a civil war between the ANC and the Zulus. I know that you won’t agree with this post at all which is fine, however my conculsions are differient from yours about what happened. Punishment and revenge are an understandable human reaction but I’m glad there are some that have evolved beyond that. All the best.

Allowing war crimes to go unpinished isn’t “evolution,” it’s “devolution.” Society going backwards. We have laws to punish the lawbreakers. It’s called justice.

Aynone who took part in the atrocities of Apartheid, or has land that was the result of British/Dutch imperialism should be punished, and/or forced to divest their stolen wealth and then booted out of the country. Ethiopia did that with the Indians and things worked out just fine.

And since when did letting war criminals go free become the mark of an enlightened society? That’s call anarchy.