December 5, 2013

A Mandela mystery

Back in 2004 I recounted a story about Nelson Mandela's 1994 election that I could have sworn I'd read in The Economist in the mid-to-late 1990s. But I've never been able to track down the article (perhaps I read it in the Financial Times instead of The Economist?), nor seen any confirmation of the events since then. So, this may be completely apocryphal. Or not.
You may vaguely recall that the first open election in South Africa in 1994 was accompanied by huge lines at the polling booths and scenes of chaos at vote-counting centers. The media predicted it might take weeks to tabulate all the ballots. Then, almost instantly, the final, official results were announced, with no one objecting that that was logistically impossible.

Several years later, The Economist explained what happened: The vote counting was indeed chaotic and looked to go on indefinitely, but early returns conclusively showed Mandela's African National Congress winning a crushing victory that would give it the 2/3rd's majority needed to write the new constitution all by itself. So, Mandela called together the leaders of opposition parties and told them he was rigging the results to restrict his own party to about 5/8ths of the seats so that the new constitution would require some support from other parties to pass. He also gave local control of the Cape province to the white-led party and the KwaZulu province to the Zulu party. Not surprisingly, the opposition was deeply grateful and while many within the ANC were angry, they could hardly overrule Mandela.

Did this act of statesmanship really happen? 

I don't know. The article I read back in the day seemed very confident, and the story fit my recollection from watching the TV news (Election Day: Vote counting will take weeks. Day after Election Day: With 99.99% of precincts reporting ...). But I've never been able to track down what I read (and/or hallucinated).

80 comments:

691 said...

I googled "mandela vote rigging" and the first result is a UK Telegraph article "Election won by Mandela 'rigged by opposition'", which mentions a book by Peter Harris.

Anonymous said...

More here on Harris' book which talks about the "deal" and the appearance of ballot boxes which gave the IFP the critical votes

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-01-17-an-imperfect-delivery

Thomas said...

I got the sense that Mandela, under both the liberal internationalist halo and the '60s Communist and terrorist flirtations, was cut from the same cloth as a lot of other native elites educated and cultured under the British Empire (e.g., Gandhi, Nehru, Lee Kwan Yew, all educated ) who wound up inheriting rulership over Britain's former colonies (in Mandela's case, delayed 30 years by apartheid). Like you said, just another set of elites joining the top ranks, so best not to upset the apple cart too far.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Mandela. He even granted amnesty to this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barend_Strydom

An Afrikaner spree shooter who murdered 7 blacks.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact.

Reg Cæsar said...

Did Mandela rig the time of his death to take our minds off PISA envy?

etype said...

could someone please tell me why anyone cares about Paul Walker? Who is this guy - some type of ricemobile careening Waldo?
If there is any significance beyond vapid celebrity worship... you would be doing us a great favour in helping solve this mystery.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact.

lol

(that was a joke, right?)

Anonymous said...

OT

"I have some related thoughts on social liberalism’s impact on black America that I won’t go into here, because they’re a controversial sidetrack."

yeah, look what happened to steve.

I wish I knew how to replicate Douthat's signature Red Tory style. He's the most effective person i know at making the republican party seem (to liberals) reasonable and reasonably compassionate.

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/conservatives-and-structural-racism/#more-19311

Anonymous said...

"Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact."

If this is a joke it went over my head. One is a statesman who played the defining roll in a major event of the late 20th century, the other was a 3rd rate actor in a shitty franchase.

Harold said...

“Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact.”

This actually made me laugh out loud. Well, chuckle quietly.

Augustine the Black said...

"Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact"

Ahahaha. Why not just say what you want to say? Of course, we all know that Mandela and Paul Walker are equally historically important ...

Anonymous said...

"Paul Walker crash could 'romanticize' growing street racing culture"

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/1204/Paul-Walker-crash-could-romanticize-growing-street-racing-culture-video

"Four days after the crash that killed “Fast & Furious” movie icon Paul Walker, there are still the sounds of sobbing amid the considerable crowds gathered at the photos-and-candles memorial that has built up at the site of his crash in front of a mall here."

"Sheriff’s investigators say they’ve ruled out drag racing, but the $500,000 Porsche Carrera GT was going at least 90 m.p.h. on a street with a speed limit of 45 m.p.h., according to a Los Angeles County sheriff's detective quoted in People magazine. The car is capable of reaching 60 m.p.h. in less than four seconds and 100 m.p.h. in less than seven.

The spot is well-known as a place where young drivers test their chutzpah, in a region that as a storied history of street racing. Skid marks are ubiquitous and teens tell you about the stunt called, “drifting” – which is a way to get the car’s back end to shimmy and slide.

“This is Hercules curve, man. It is so chill for drifting,” says 18-year-old Lorraine Touvo, who grew up in nearby Sunland, Calif. “It’s got just the perfect curve.”

The comment raises the question of what effect the accident might have on the street-racing phenomenon that exploded in the early 2000s and was glorified by the original “Fast & Furious.”

Interviews with teens at the crash site, as well as in nearby Sunland – where there is a very strong subculture of street racing – seem to indicate “not much.”

“We’re shattered by this death,” says a teenage boy who asked not to be identified. “But will it mean we’re all gonna start driving differently? Probably not.”

Some say the reverse could even be true. Jack Nerad, former editor of Motor Trend, now executive director at Kelly Blue Book, has been following the street racing subculture for decades. He says the Walker crash won’t dampen enthusiasm at all and “sadly, might even romanticize it.”

He watched as street racing moved from dry lakes to the streets, rising with the increased popularity of small imports, tapering off slightly, but then rising steadily for the past decade.

Law-enforcement officials seem to agree with Mr. Nerad's observations. Another street-racing wave is coming, and police are preparing for it.

San Diego police officer Mark McCullough, who has been on street-racing detail since before 2000, says street racing got out of control just as the first “Fast and Furious” movie was released in 2001.

“We were seeing thousands of kids in these racing areas doing illegal racing, getting in fights, gambling, and worse,” he says."

Steve Sailer said...

So this 2010 story is the opposite of the Economists story from about 15 years earlier.

Curious.

Anonymous said...

I didn't even know who Paul Walker was. In fact, I was surprised to find out there were movies called "Fast and Furious."

Did the gun running take its name from the movies?

Anonymous said...

"Nelson Mandela & Paul Walker: Fans Honor Them In Joint Twitter Tributes"

http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/12/05/paul-walker-nelson-mandela-death-tribute-fans-twitter/

"The world has lost two great souls this week: former South African president Nelson Mandela, who died on Dec. 5 at the age of 95, and actor Paul Walker, who tragically died in a fiery car crash at age 40. They will both be missed.

Fans are taking to Twitter to remember the late Nelson Mandela and the late Paul Walker in joint tributes."

jgress said...

Even in Zimbabwe, Mugabe didn't start out by dispossessing white farmers, but let them keep their land and get on with being economically productive for almost 20 years after end of white rule. His betrayal of their acquiescence starting in the late 90s seems to be correlated with a more general descent into insanity.

Conceivably in South Africa there would have been more of a real political danger from upsetting whites too much (Eugene Terre'Blanche anyone?), but Mandela may also have been just smart enough to realize that implementing the full ANC agenda would have quickly brought the country to its knees.

And he also may have been a nice guy, or at least softened after his lengthy imprisonment. However much we may rightly criticize the treatment of whites after end of apartheid, it could have been so much worse without Mandela's influence.

Harold said...

“If this is a joke it went over my head. One is a statesman who played the defining roll in a major event of the late 20th century, the other was a 3rd rate actor in a shitty franchase.”

I don’t get it either. Usually those jokes go: One worked to alleviate the plight of the suffering, the other was an African leader.

Anonymous said...

It's actually incredible how small the tree that Paul Walker crashed into was:

http://thelaughbible.com/upload_images/new1386246212.jpg

You always hear about fatal car crashes involving trees, and you kind of picture them to be big oak trees or something with wide trunks. But apparently even small trees can be deadly.

Anonymous said...

South Africa is not perfect, but it's run reasonably well considering the alternatives. South Africa could have easily been another Zimbabwe, were it not for Mandela's leadership.

Unknown said...

This story is apparently true but has never been officially admitted. people close to the elections have said that the final results were pegged so as to satisfy basically everyone. Paul Harris said that the election results had been hacked so they really didnt know what the numbers were and this was the best solution to an intractable problem. It was a fudge.
South Africa is now on the very slippery slopes and falling quickly. It is no no longer well run and from top to bottom the ANC is corrupt and incompetent. Sad fare well to a lovely country

Unknown said...

To be a bit weird, there was a bible style prophet who died in the 1920's called siener van rensburg. He was surprisingly accurate in many of his forecasts. He forecast the black takeover of south africa and considering the 1920's that was exceptional. What he also forecast that after the great king dies and after all the foreign dignitaries have visited for the funeral that the blacks will rise and start the genocide of whites. Some ANC officilas have openly stated that after mandela goes the whites will die like flies. Lets see what happens

Anonymous said...

I don't know about the US, but in the UK BBC Radio News this morning is 90% Mandela - in an hour of news, a short item about the surge tides in East Anglia, five minutes of sports news, and the rest all Mandela.



I'm sure we didn't get this when Thatcher died.

Anonymous said...

"South Africa could have easily been another Zimbabwe, were it not for Mandela's leadership."

Zimbabwe didn't become Zimbabwe overnight. For a long time, Mugabe played the role of Mandelalike leader, working with white farmers. Then, he turned on them.

Mandela let whites put down their guard. But as black masses get angrier, black elites in south africa will eventually have to scapegoat whites(just like Jews were scapegoated in hard times), and SA will sink.

White suckers' faith in Mandela is like believing in yoda. It's a fairytale.

Anonymous said...

" South Africa could have easily been another Zimbabwe, were it not for Mandela's leadership."

Or the higher proportion of Whites might have something to do with it.

GC

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/_Da3EgZUA0Y

My head hurts.

Anonymous said...

http://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2013/11/15/why-have-no-high-level-executives-been-prosecuted-in-connection-with-the-financial-crisis/

New Boys' Network.

Marlowe said...

I would simply like to know whether he returned to the Methodist church & Christianity after his communist, atheist period.

Anonymous said...

Some ANC officilas have openly stated that after mandela goes the whites will die like flies. Lets see what happens

If Paul Walker were still with us he would put an end to that nonsense.

Cail Corishev said...

"Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact"

And he completely ignored the anniversary of Chris Farley's death this year. I'm sure we can all see the sinister pattern emerging now.

691 said...

I found an election report from Oct 1994 by the International Republican Institute. At the bottom of page 119, it cites an article from the Sunday Times (South Africa) on May 8 1994 that seems to jive with your recollection. Although the motive seems to be to cover up large voting irregularities and administrative incompetence that might have completely jeopardized the legitimacy of the election.

Bert said...

I love how everybody is talking about Paul Walker in a Nelson Mandela thread.

I wish Steve didn't get so many lousy commenters.

Unknown said...

This is almost entirely off topic but it does have a South African connection:
Moment divers find man alive in sunken ship off Nigerian coast

It's a remarkable story on its own merits but I couldn't help noticing the South African accents of the dive team. White South Africans seem to be the go-to guys for a lot of these search and rescue tasks. Take a look at the South African helicopter crews sent to rescue flood victims in Mozambique, for example.. White guys getting it done.

sunbeam said...

Well, I'm not really sure what to say.

Another guy here who had no idea who Paul Walker was, and I'm not sure I even know anyone who has seen a Fast and Furious movie.

But as regards South Africa, my take is why would anyone white, asian, or perhaps even mixed stay there?

I know how sentimental people get about history, it's hard to leave everything you know, and economics traps some people.

But it just seems to me that the smart thing to do is to do everything you can to leave, and not look back.

The handwriting on the wall has been there for a decade at least. Why stay? You know how this story ends.

And if somehow you do escape being killed in either a genocide or series of pogroms, what you get if you stick it out?

South Africa seems like it is an utterly miserable place to live. Economic, cultural, and educational prospects seem like they would be poor.

How well off would your children be if you lived in Canada or the UK, as opposed to South Africa?

Just don't get why anyone stays if they have any kind of option.

You know, I wonder if it would be possible to set up some kind of "Operation Rescue" thing, to try and get donations to lobby various governments, and pay for the mechanics of evacuating these people.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact.

Right on! Apparently Steve thinks Nelson Mandela is twice as interesting as Paul Walker. That's just crazy talk!

vandelay said...

This is the first time I've ever heard that story, which makes me doubt it. It`d be very easy to believe (Who doesn't want to hear great things about Mandela?) and would deserve a spot in the pantheon of all time statesmanship moves.

It might still be true, but I`d have expected to hear about it in at least one of the dozen biography broadcasts I listened to yesterday.

Mr. Anon said...

"jgress said...

And he also may have been a nice guy, or at least softened after his lengthy imprisonment. However much we may rightly criticize the treatment of whites after end of apartheid, it could have been so much worse without Mandela's influence."

And it did get worse, after he left office, and it will get still worse now that he is dead.

It was actually kinda nice of the old guy to finally die, and give white western liberals the closure they need. They can now finally forget about South Africa, secure in the knowledge that it is on its' way to a bright future of propspertity and racial harmony. It'll be one great big Coca-Cola commercial, with everyone holding hands and signing......except with more necklacing.

They won't have to notice as SA descends into the kind of insane, lawless anarchy that is characteristic of so much of sub-saharan Africa.

Anonymous said...

I don't know about the US, but in the UK BBC Radio News this morning is 90% Mandela

Sorry dude, but it's 90% Paul Walker over here.

DPG said...

I bet Paul Walker would remember the article. Shame that he died. Now we may never know.

Dahinda said...

Hopefully this joke will not go over anybody's head: http://www.theonion.com/video/today-now-interviews-the-5yearold-screenwriter-of,20188/

Anonymous said...

I have not heard this story, but it fits his character. Given the chaos of organizing the elections, I also wouldn't be surprised at the hacker claims being true.

Though I'm sure many posters here disagree, I think Mandela truly was a great man. Majority rule in SA was inevitable, and Mandela handled the transition in a way that was as friendly to South African whites (and, ultimately, everyone else) as realistically possible -- he kept on many officials from the former administration, and worked hard to keep white South Africans invested in the country. As a person he seemed to truly harbor no resentment towards whites and I have no doubt that his leadership and attitude helped promote racial reconciliation in post-apartheid SA.

It is true, as several have pointed out, that Mandela was head of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, before his imprisonment. But it's clear from his autobiography that Mandela was not a violent man, and even had sympathies with Gandhian nonviolence; but he saw armed struggle as regrettably the only way to achieve the ANC's goals. And if I am not mistaken (it's been several years since I read Long Walk to Freedom) Mandela never organized terrorist actions aimed at killing -- all that Umkhonto we Sizwe did under his leadership was target buildings, infrastructure, and the like.

Sadly, South African government leaders today have nowhere near the moral character of Mandela, and it may well be that in several years the country will go the way of Zimbabwe. But I'm still hopeful.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of what happens to SA in the future, Mandela was undoubtedly a Great Man and it's entirely appropriate for his death to receive this kind of attention.

My own, very poorly-informed view of Mandela is positive due in part to the fact that all of today's white South African golfers seem to regard him as a tremendous hero. Pro golfers tend to be fairly conservative guys as a group, so their endorsement of Mandela counts for something in my book.

Portlander said...

Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact.

For those confused: Poe's Law.

Anonymous said...

I remember shortly after De Klerk had left the government of national unity, him making a claim to an audience in Nigeria that they had found numerous ballot boxes stuffed with ANC votes in some of the rural districts. It doesn't seem implausible that Mandela realized that the ANC may have been too vigorous in their box stuffing, with a too great margin of victory making the whole process vulnerable to legal challenges by the losing parties. Don't underestimate Mandela's cynicism. Even as he was dressing De Klerk down at the opening of constitutional talks for his supposedly cynical remarks about the "struggle", the ANC was busy smuggling arms into the country as part of a conspiracy to once again attempt a violent overthrow.

d..... said...

Mandela was 72 when he was released from jail. Old guy. Not a young hot head. After a certain age you really do learn to take the long view, and he saw that SA would fall apart quickly if the hotheads got what they wanted.

But that doesn't mean he wasn't every bit as radical as they were. It just meant that he knew that disaster would strike if he unleashed the forces of black revolution all at once. So he used his authority to damp it down.

It's a fascinating object lesson in the power of male authority. (Read your Shakespeare.)

And also what happens when that man dies.

d..... said...

@lilburne,

Thank you for the Van Rensburg tip. I looked him up and it made me think: the Boers never wanted to become part of the RSA. RSA was a creation of the British. Now look at what is happening.

You have "black leadership" (whatever that means) of a synthetic creation of the British Empire.

Take the long view.

What is going to happen now that the Big Man Holding It All Together has died?

I for one do not count the Boers out. They are down, but not out.

Ed said...

In the next few elections, the ANC topped two thirds of the vote in the national results (I think it slipped under two thirds in the last election), so its plausible that they really got two thirds in the first election but it was decided by everyone that it would be better if the results were otherwise.

In subsequent elections, the ANC usually wound up winning KwaZulu Natal and all the other regions but has struggled in the Western Cape, the one region that does not have an African majority (it has a Colored, or mixed race, majority).

Modern Abraham said...

"Interesting that you've devoted two posts to Mandela already, when you only posted about Paul Walker once several days after the fact."

If this is a joke it went over my head. One is a statesman who played the defining roll in a major event of the late 20th century, the other was a 3rd rate actor in a shitty franchase.


I laughed. Anyone heard of deadpan? Or is that now as outmoded a comedic style as the prat-fall?

If Howard Stern were less of a libertaridan, I'd love to see him send one of his interview goons into some vibrant neighborhoods with headhshot photos of both Mandela and Paul Walker:

"These two men, world-famous, beloved by millions, died this week just days apart. Can you tell us a little what they meant to your life?"

I would bet almost no one under 30 recognizes Mandela. Among "youths"-

60% talk profusely about Paul Walker
25% think Mandela was the President character [sic] in Olympus Has Fallen

But, hey, this is a virtuous circle! They know not Camus in Algeria? They know not Rosa Parks in Detroit! The right kind of White people stage these amazingly tedious, pious rituals in honor of some civil rights milestone (Ken Burn's documentary on segregation in baseball, or segregation in the national parks), bore minorities to tears, feel even worse now that their venerated pets express no interest whatsoever in their own history ("a legacy of slavery, you know"), stage even more elaborate, boringly pious rituals to compensate, etc.

If only we could hook a generator up to all this churn we could forget about fracking.

FredR said...

I non-ironically want more Paul Walker posts.

Anonymous said...

It's a fascinating object lesson in the power of male authority.

Yes, a lesson that we don't see much of any more in public. That's why, even though I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with Mandela, I respect him. He was a man in a world of girly-men.

Cail Corishev said...

"all of today's white South African golfers seem to regard him as a tremendous hero."

They may truly think that. On the other hand, how many endorsement deals do you suppose you'd get if you were a white golfer from South Africa who spoke out against Mandela?

Just Another Guy With a 1911 said...

Hey, Steve, news on the Paul Walker front. I know his death hit you real hard and thought you might find this interesting. Perhaps, just perhaps, it could help assuage the pain that you, and let's face it, most of us feel, over his untimely and fiery passing.

Now, I don't have a link for this, but it has been reported somewhere that in a concert held at the Nation Concert Hall, Dublin, IRL, U2 front man Bono announced to a crowd of 10,000, (including a bunch of Irish celebrities like the Taoiseach, Edna Kelly, and RTE 1990's Zag and Zag Host, Ray D'arcy), that the band was dedicating it's classic song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" to Paul Walker.

Apparently, Bono, his voice on the verge of breaking, as single tear ran down his wrinkled face, introduced the song by saying it was for, "a man, a saint really, who did more for Africa and race relations than me or George Bush. This song is now a rebel song, because Jesus was a rebel and so was Paul Walker. This song is NOW - Wednesday, Fiery Wednesday"

"I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long
How long must we sing this song
How long, How long
cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight

Burned out Porsche on a Valencia Street
Tears running down the face of Tyrese
But Steve Sailer didn't care all
When Paul Walker hit
Paul Walker hit the wall

Wednesday, fiery Wednesday
Wednesday, fiery Wednesday

And the filming on F&F 7 has just begun
They got some hours in the can, but can't finish without the one
who lives within our hearts
black, whites, Scots-Irish
now a country falls apart

Wednesday, fiery Wednesday
Wednesday, fiery Wednesday

And it is true we are immune
to necklacing and polar bear hunting in the afternoon
but the day Paul Walker died
the millions cried
things are quiet now
but tomorrow Boers die

(Wednesday, Fiery Wednesday)

The real Battle has just begun
to claim the victory the Paul Walker won on

(Wednesday, Fiery Wednesday)"

Anonymous said...

"Mandela was 72 when he was released from jail. Old guy. Not a young hot head. After a certain age you really do learn to take the long view, and he saw that SA would fall apart quickly if the hotheads got what they wanted."

No, even if Mandela had been a young hothead, he would have taken the deal offered by DeKlerk. I mean whites just surrendered the power.

And it was different from UK handing HK to China. Chinese sort of can run things. Blacks will ruin SA and it's just a matter of time.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe the way the western media has been falling over itself worshipping Mandela. He actually accomplished little. It was the white elite itself that actually ended white minority rule in South Africa. Cultural Marxism seems to have won the day. Here in Vancouver we have a "memorial" to the Kogatu Maru, a ship full of Sikh illegal aliens who were deported in 1914. Unreal.....

Trackrecord said...

I love, admire and respect Mandella with all my heart. Full stop. I wonder how intelligent he was. Must be fairly bright to have changed the world so profoundly and to have achieved the deepest respect of billions.

However he appears to have a lot of bushmen type genes. According to Richard Lynn, bushmen have an average IQ of 54, compared to other African blacks who average IQ 67.

Of course as Steve sailer brilliantly noted, much of this is malnutrition. Blacks in the U.S. average IQ's of 80-90 depending on the amount of white admixture

Anonymous said...

Was there ever a Fast and Furious in South Africa? Paul Walker could race that Bladerunner guy who shot his girlfriend.

Paul Walker vs. the Capetown Cripple or Paul Walker vs. the Johannesburg Jogger.

Harry Baldwin said...

Some ANC officilas have openly stated that after mandela goes the whites will die like flies. Lets see what happens

Why would the fact that Mandela was alive keep blacks from attacking whites? The fact that Obama is president doesn't seem to have prevented blacks from attacking whites. If anything it's emboldened them. If Obama were to tell blacks to stop the Knockout King and Polar Bear Hunting, would they obey?

But as regards South Africa, my take is why would anyone white, asian, or perhaps even mixed stay there?

Do South African whites have great options as far as emigration? Does the US welcome them as it does Mexicans and Central Americans? I don't believe so.

Dutch Boy said...

Thus proving once again Stalin's observatin that it is not who votes but who counts the votes that determines the results.

Petey said...

"...almost instantly, the final, official results were announced."

According to "Loosing the Bonds," a fine book on SA history by Robert Nicholas Massie, it took "a full week" for the votes to be counted and the final tally released. I don't know if that counts as "almost instantly" to you, but it's certainly back-breakingly slow by American standards.

Steve Sailer said...

But the outcomes weren't in doubt for a full week while vote counting went on. The disposition of power -- ANC dominant but not quite omnipotent, Zulus run Natal, whites run the Cape -- was announced more quickly than the votes could be counted.

Pat Boyle said...

Paul Walker was only 40. Nelson Mandela was 95. Humans have about 70 good years in them. Walker had many, many good years left in him under normal circumstances. So it's sad.

Mandela however was well past it. Maybe had he been let out of prison sooner he would have has a better life, but at 95 it hardly matters if he died this year or not. His significant life was over years go.

Everyone should say only nice things about the dead for at least six months. But no one should grieve for a nonagenarian.

Albertosaurus


Anonymous said...

Yeah, the Mandela vs Walker joke has run its course here, but it is present elsewhere on the 'Net.

We get it, already.

Anonymous said...

The success of the fast and furious films are an indictment of America's educational system. It is hard to imagine anybody with a modicum of intelligence, education and literacy sitting through a second of fast and furious.

David said...

>Do South African whites have great options as far as emigration? Does the US welcome them as it does Mexicans and Central Americans? I don't believe so.<

I met one SA couple who became USA citizens in 2002. It took them 6 years to do it. I got the (false?) impression there was/is official resistance on both sides to SA whites' becoming Americans. (The couple was remarkably tight-lipped.)

Anonymous said...

However [Mandela] appears to have a lot of bushmen type genes.

Never heard this, and I've read Mandela's autobiography twice and am fairly familiar with South Africa otherwise. It seems unlikely at any rate because the Bushmen were fairly isolated until recently.

Unless this commentator considers Xhosa genes to be "like" Bushmen genes, in which case the rest of his post makes no sense.

Felix said...

Paul Walker died earlier this week in a tragic and untimely fashion. Mandela also died. But what about Keanu Reeves? What did HE do?

Track record said...

The Xhosa have khoisan genes, and according to cavalli-sforza, mandella's face shows clear Khoisan influence.

What doesn't make sense?

Mr. Anon said...

"d..... said...

But that doesn't mean he wasn't every bit as radical as they were. It just meant that he knew that disaster would strike if he unleashed the forces of black revolution all at once. So he used his authority to damp it down."

Perhaps he didn't want disaster to strike until after he was safely dead an deified.

Anonymous said...

"Paul Walker died earlier this week in a tragic and untimely fashion. Mandela also died. But what about Keanu Reeves? What did HE do? "

Like Ringo Starr - another laid-back mediocre talent - Keanu will coast on his early luck and die in his sleep at age 96.

Whoa.

OT: Is Ringo Starr the luckiest man in the 200,000 years of H. sapiens existence?

Anonymous said...

"Why stay? You know how this story ends"

For the ordinary family, maybe.

The mining companies will stay come what may. They're in the Congo, so they can survive anywhere. Big fences, dogs, electricity, armed guards.

There's just too much money in the ground.

In Namibia huge areas of coast are fenced off where the diamonds are. It's a state within a state.

Anonymous said...

A Sth African (ex SA Army ) told me that certain jobs are still pretty much white such as senior security personnel for senior politicians

In the 1950s many countries in Africa had significant white minorities who considered Africa home . Now SA is the last domino

Carmine said...

I've said this on blogs before, but I really, really hope that all whites currently living in South Africa do anything they possibly can to get themselves and their families to another non-African country. Anywhere in the West would be better, hell, even moving to a South American country like Argentina or Chile would be preferable to what will surely await them on the dark continent. I also think that this message should go out to any whites living anywhere in Africa, or what I call Hell On Earth. There is nothing left for you there but suffering. Stop propping up their economies with your hard work. We have our problems here, but they are nowhere near as dire as in SA. If the liberals want to stay and die, let them, but all sane people should get out. It might be hard, but really, it is the only choice. Good luck from a friend!

Anonymous said...

To Carmine said...

I agree with your post 100%. There is no future for any white people in South Africa, or anywhere else in Africa. I would love to see them come to my country, Canada. We could use productive hard-working whites instead of the third world riff-raff Ottawa is so obsessed with bringing in. My advice to South African whites is to just come here and claim refugee status. It will take years to remove you and by then you may be able to create enough facts on the ground to get to stay.

Anonymous said...

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-gandhi-nobody-knows/

Someone should do a piece on Mandela like the above article on Gandhi.

I remember watching GANDHI movie and thinking Gandhi a great saint. Then I read the above article and it made think about 'great men'.

All this MLK and Mandela cult worship isn't any different from similar cults around Stalin and Mao. Sickening.

Anonymous said...

"To be a bit weird, there was a bible style prophet who died in the 1920's called siener van rensburg. He was surprisingly accurate in many of his forecasts. He forecast the black takeover of south africa and considering the 1920's that was exceptional. What he also forecast that after the great king dies and after all the foreign dignitaries have visited for the funeral that the blacks will rise and start the genocide of whites. Some ANC officilas have openly stated that after mandela goes the whites will die like flies. Lets see what happens"

He also predicted whites would eventually rule again after the black takeover, whatever that means nowadays. Certainly not what it meant in the past.

Anonymous said...

About the 1994 South African vote being concluded before the counting could have been done, a quick qoogle scholar search finds this:


"‘Negotiated elections’ in South Africa, 1994", Review of African Political Economy, Volume 21, Issue 61, 1994, Morris Szeftel, pages 457-470:

"...the miracle was only possible because the protagonists ultimately compromised. In particular, the ANC-Cosatu-SACP alliance (generally called the ANC, below) made fundamental policy concessions in order to reassure opponents, end deadlock..."


This seems objective ("The Election of Nelson Mandela"), it sounds like the election observers had something to do with it:

"For days after the elections, tensions remained high, and some accusations of election fraud surfaced--especially in Natal. As the counting proceeded, the IEC prompted party leaders to negotiate agreements over disputed results that would allow the IEC to certify the elections as "substantially free and fair." The official results, released on May 6, 1994, gave the ANC 62.6 percent of the vote; the NP, 20.4 percent; and the IFP, 10.5 percent."

Mandela apparently wasn't directly elected, but was elected by the national assembly. Maybe he had sufficient votes before the counting was finished (like what happens to California in a national US election, you often vote after the winner has already been declared and sometimes after your guy has conceded.):

"Mandela was unanimously elected president by the National Assembly on May 9, 1994, in Cape Town."

Here's a paper that reports a shock, voting along ethnic and tribal lines, "Regional patterns in South Africa's postapartheid election in 1994", Christopher A J, 1996, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 14(1) 55 – 69:

"The African National Congress won a substantial victory but failed to secure control of two key provinces: the Western Cape and KwaZulu - Natal. Ethnic voting patterns among the spatially concentrated Coloured and Zulu populations were at variance with the otherwise national-liberationary nature of the election. The South African experience of the significance of ethnic voting parallels that discerned in other emergent democracies, contributing to the widening field of electoral geography."

Contributing to the widening field of electoral geography... Hum... No surprise I guess:

"Dissecting the South African miracle: African parallels", Adrian Guelke:

"It is argued that the 1994 elections revealed an electorate polarized on racial lines and that the notion of the transfer of power in South Africa as unique is overdrawn. It points out that there are striking parallels between the transformation of South Africa and other cases in Africa where there was a transfer of power from a white minority to the African majority, most notably those of Kenya, Zimbabwe and Namibia."

How does universal democracy address complex political issues when it's just a nose count along tribal lines? Can universal democracy even work in a substantially multi-ethnic society? Maybe some people like it that way.

Anonymous said...

Not all the Indian South Africans must have got the message to get aboard the Mandela train:

"Minorities in the rainbow nation: the Indian vote in 1994", South African Journal of Sociology, Volume 27, Issue 4, 1996, Ashwin Desaia & Brij Maharaja, pages 118-125:

"...Indian South Africans voted in significant numbers for the Minority Front at the provincial level, and the National Party at the central government level. ...

... white minority rule and the virulent anti-Indianism of the NP... It was thus surprising that there was significant support for the Nationalist Party (NP), compared to that of the ANC in the April elections in 1994."

Anonymous said...

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-01-17-an-imperfect-delivery

"When the counting stopped after the termination of the election, only to be resumed some days later, the nation learned that the ANC had garnered 62,5% of the vote and the IFP 10,5%. ...

...Harris informs us that boxes of votes had come from areas that were Inkatha-controlled. ...

...It was clear that the votes were fraudulent. Inkatha threatened to pull out if these votes were excluded... Pravin Gordhan, then a senior leader of the ANC... instructed that the disputed boxes could be included... allowed the count to continue in circumstances where many would have been happy to see it stall..."

Anonymous said...

I predict a most unhappy future for South Africa, Saint Mandela notwithstanding. The white community will be gone in 30 years and South Africa will be just like any other black African country, backward, poverty-stricken and dysfunctional.

Anonymous said...

SA. The queue was some 2 km when I voted and an extra public holiday was declared. I had just been granted permanent residence – though not a SA citizen.

I voted for the National party, not because I supported apartheid, but to do my tiny bit to counter what I knew would be an ANC majority.

My recollection is that there was considerable vote rigging, ballot stuffing and some intimidation as well as logistical/ counting incompetence, so the result was declared after a discussion between the National Party and the ANC. Remember there was much fear of violence.

Nick Pretoria