Netters:
Drivivng home last night, I heard on the radio that Winnie and Stompie's mother embraced. The interviewer asked someone talking from South Africa how such an embrace was possible. The gentleman replied: "This is Africa," and explained that even emenies embrace each other. Well, he may be right. We had an "embrace" in Cote D'Ivoire. See what is happening in our motherland! But let's move to the embrace in South Africa.
I followed the debate on the hearings of the Tand R Commission in Cape Town regarding Winnie. What the embrace seems to tell us all is that debating the "rightness" or "wrongness" of putting Winnie to task for her past activities during the struggle misses the point. The embrace seems to say to us that the two women understood what the struggle against apartheid was all about: it was a struggle against a system that one can not even begin to imagine that there would have been something today like a T and R Commission that deals with so-called "atrocities" commited against apartheid by its victims and not focussing just on the those who devised and implemented such a system.
The embrace seems to tell us that investigating the "atrocities" perpetrated by victims of apartheid against the system and its collaborators - -real and highly suspicious -- is a mockery of justice, since any means necessary were justified in seeking to eliminate such a system and its perpetrators. Perhaps the embrace also tells us that in the history of vicious systems such as apartheid and slavery, it seems the African victims seem to always seek "truth" and "reconciliation" and the end ------yes, EMBRACE the enemy. I am not a historian. Perhaps this explains why I have failed in my search for precedents of such T and R Commisions after the days of slavery, brutal colonial occupations in those lands in which such systems were cooked up and which dealt heavy and devastating blows that are still being felt by their victims. Oh! I found and read about the Nuremburg Trials. But the victims were not Africans. I also read about the tribunals -- the Hague (Bosnia); Cambodia, and yes, Rwanda (Africans disgracefully and shamefully slaughtering Africans). The embrace indeed seems larger, much much larger than Winnie and her accusers. With regard to Stompie's mother, well no need for shocks! After all, "This is Africa." Just some thoughts on a cold and dreary day outside. If there are typos, blame them on the mood.
Fraternally,
Cecil Blake