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criscimagnael

Desmond Tutu, Whose Voice Helped Slay Apartheid, Dies at 90 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...desmond-tutu-dead.html

shared by criscimagnael on 27 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • Desmond M. Tutu, the cleric who used his pulpit and spirited oratory to help bring down apartheid in South Africa and then became the leading advocate of peaceful reconciliation under Black majority rule, died on Sunday in Cape Town. He was 90.
  • “a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”
  • the archbishop remained unhappy about the state of affairs in his country under its next president, Jacob G. Zuma, who had denied Mr. Mbeki another term despite being embroiled in scandal.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • His voice was a powerful force for nonviolence in the anti-apartheid movement, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
  • “You are overwhelmed by the extent of evil,” he said. But, he added, it was necessary to open the wound to cleanse it. In return for an honest accounting of past crimes, the committee offered amnesty, establishing what Archbishop Tutu called the principle of restorative — rather than retributive — justice.
  • Archbishop Tutu preached that the policy of apartheid was as dehumanizing to the oppressors as it was to the oppressed. At home, he stood against looming violence and sought to bridge the chasm between Black and white; abroad, he urged economic sanctions against the South African government to force a change of policy.
  • But as much as he had inveighed against the apartheid-era leadership, he displayed equal disapproval of leading figures in the dominant African National Congress, which came to power under Nelson Mandela in the first fully democratic elections in 1994.
  • “many, too many, of our people live in grueling, demeaning, dehumanizing poverty.”
  • “We are sitting on a powder keg,” he said.
  • The cause of death was cancer, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said, adding that Archbishop Tutu had died in a care facility.
  • “I think we are at a bad place in South Africa,” Archbishop Tutu told The New York Times Magazine in 2010, “and especially when you contrast it with the Mandela era. Many of the things that we dreamed were possible seem to be getting more and more out of reach. We have the most unequal society in the world.”
  • This government, our government, is worse than the apartheid government,” he said, “because at least you were expecting it with the apartheid government.”
  • In elections in 2016, while still under the leadership of Mr. Zuma, the party’s share of the vote slipped to its lowest level since the end of apartheid. Mr. Ramaphosa struggled to reverse that trend, but earned some praise later for his robust handling of the coronavirus crisis.
  • Politics were inherent in his religious teachings. “We had the land, and they had the Bible,” he said in one of his parables. “Then they said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we closed our eyes. When we opened them again, they had the land and we had the Bible. Maybe we got the better end of the deal.”
  • Although Archbishop Tutu, like other Black South Africans of his era, had suffered through the horrors and indignities of apartheid, he did not allow himself to hate his enemies.
  • He coined the phrase “rainbow nation” to describe the new South Africa emerging into democracy, and called for vigorous debate among all races.
  • Archbishop Tutu had always said that he was a priest, not a politician, and that when the real leaders of the movement against apartheid returned from jail or exile he would serve as its chaplain.
  • While he never forgot his father’s shame when a white policeman called him “boy” in front of his son, he was even more deeply affected when a white man in a priest’s robe tipped his hat to his mother, he said.
  • But Archbishop Tutu did not stay entirely out of the nation’s business.
  • When Desmond was hospitalized with tuberculosis, Father Huddleston visited him almost every day. “This little boy very well could have died,” Father Huddleston told an interviewer many years later, “but he didn’t give up, and he never lost his glorious sense of humor.”
  • After his recovery, Desmond wanted to become a doctor, but his family could not afford the school fees. Instead he became a teacher, studying at the Pretoria Bantu Normal College and earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Africa. He taught high school for three years but resigned to protest the Bantu Education Act, which lowered education standards for Black students.
  • By then he was married to Nomalizo Leah Shenxane, a major influence in his life
  • He was named Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975 and consecrated bishop of Lesotho the next year. In 1978 he became the first Black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and began to establish the organization as a major force in the movement against apartheid.
  • Under Bishop Tutu’s leadership, the council established scholarships for Black youths and organized self-help programs in Black townships. There were also more controversial programs: Lawyers were hired to represent Black defendants on trial under the security laws, and support was provided for the families of those detained without trial.
  • A month after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, Desmond Tutu became the first Anglican bishop of Johannesburg when the national church hierarchy intervened to break a deadlock between Black and white electors. He was named archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, becoming spiritual head of the country’s 1.5 million Anglicans, 80 percent of whom were Black.
  • “I am a man of peace, but not a pacifist.”
  • In 2021, as he approached his 90th birthday, he pitched into a fraught debate as disinformation about coronavirus vaccines swirled.
  • He remained equally outspoken even in later years. In 2003 he criticized his own government for backing Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who had a long record of human rights abuses.
  • On his frequent trips abroad during the apartheid era, Archbishop Tutu never stopped pressing the case for sanctions against South Africa. The government struck back and twice revoked his passport, forcing him to travel with a document that described his citizenship as “undetermined.”
  • Still, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final findings in 2003, Archbishop Tutu’s imprint was plain. It warned the government against issuing a blanket amnesty to perpetrators of the crimes of apartheid and urged businesses to join with the government in delivering reparations to the millions of Black people victimized by the former white minority government.
  • Archbishop Tutu officially retired from public duties in 2010. One of his last major appearances came that year, when South Africa hosted the World Cup
  • But he did not retreat from the public eye entirely. In June 2011, he joined Michelle Obama at the new Cape Town Stadium, built for the tournament, where she was promoting physical fitness during a tour of southern Africa.
  • In an interview in the early 1980s, he said: “Blacks don’t believe that they are introducing violence into the situation. They believe that the situation is already violent.”
  • “There is nothing to fear,” he said. “Don’t let Covid-19 continue to ravage our country, or our world. Vaccinate.”
Grace Gannon

Ernest Cole: Brave photographer who exposed horrors of apartheid from within - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

apartheid South Africa photography prison

shared by Grace Gannon on 24 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 24 Oct 14
     
    Photographer Ernest Cole has taken images that capture the misery of African Americans during the time of the apartheid in South Africa. One of the images appears as though it could have been taken in a wretched prison, while it was actually taken in a communal shower room for mineworkers in SA under apartheid. Few images have been captured of the horrors of the apartheid, but Cole effectively exposes the injustice.
Javier E

'Climate apartheid': UN expert says human rights may not survive | Environment | The Gu... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-rights-may-not-survive-crisis

climate environment human rights apartheid

shared by Javier E on 25 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.
  • the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law.
  • Alston is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”
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  • The report also condemns Donald Trump for “actively silencing” climate science, and criticises the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for promising to open up the Amazon rainforest to mining
  • Alston said there were also some positive developments, including legal cases against states and fossil fuel companies, the activism of Greta Thunberg and the worldwide school strikes, and Extinction Rebellion.
  • “The risk of community discontent, of growing inequality, and of even greater levels of deprivation among some groups, will likely stimulate nationalist, xenophobic, racist and other responses.
  • Developing countries will bear an estimated 75% of the costs of the climate crisis, the report said, despite the poorest half of the world’s population causing just 10% of carbon dioxide emissions.
  • t said the greatest impact of the climate crisis would be on those living in poverty, with many losing access to adequate food and water.
  • aintaining a balanced approach to civil and political rights will be extremely complex.”
  • The impacts of the climate crisis could increase divisions, Alston said. “We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer,
  • He said the most recent HRC resolution on the climate crisis did not recognise “that the enjoyment of all human rights by vast numbers of people is gravely threatened” or “the need for the deep social and economic transformation, which almost all observers agree is urgent if climate catastrophe is to be averted”.
  • nternational climate treaties have been ineffective, the report said, with even the 2015 Paris accord still leaving the world on course for a catastrophic 3C (equivalent to an increase of 5.4F) of heating without further action
  • “States have marched past every scientific warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic warming now seems like a best-case scenario,” the report said.
  • he US president is one of the few individuals named in the report. “He has placed former lobbyists in oversight roles, adopted industry talking points, presided over an aggressive rollback of environmental regulations, and is actively silencing and obfuscating climate science.”
  • A state that fails to take any feasible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is violating their human rights obligations.”
Javier E

The Deplorable Parallels Between Apartheid and Caste - The Globalist - 0 views

www.theglobalist.com/ls-between-apartheid-and-caste

caste apartheid south africa india history culture

shared by Javier E on 17 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • the caste system in India was nothing but an unspoken apartheid. In India we may not have had apartheid-era type of laws. Caste discrimination is illegal.
  • But social practice ensures the same kind of systemic discrimination against lower castes. It also polices the non-integration of castes. In essence, caste practice echoes the rules that used to govern relations between races in South Africa.
  • I heard about “non-Brahmins” constantly and how they were unclean due to their non-vegetarian dietary habits. Upper caste Indians take pride in their vegetarian diet and look down on those who consume meat, a practice that they consider to be impure.
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  • The privilege of being upper caste, I realize now, is that ability to be ignorant. It is the ability to casually say, “Oh, I don’t care about caste.” I could afford not to care, because I was upper caste. But when you belong to a group that has been stripped of not only its rights, but its very humanity, you quickly learn the cold reality of that categorization.
Javier E

The Repentance of Eugene de Kock - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-kock-apartheid-assassin.html

truth reconciliation apartheid repentance

shared by Javier E on 14 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • As a reporter covering the often heart-rending hearings in the 1990s, I watched Mr. de Kock calmly correct facts, expose lies and name superiors who then quickly had to apply for amnesty themselves. He became the polygraph machine of the commission. Without him the “truth” part of the T.R.C. would have been sorely lacking.
  • With his intimate knowledge of apartheid-era security agencies, he began to assist victims in finding the remains of loved ones. He provided answers and pointed to places where bodies could be found. Mr. de Kock openly confessed his regret directly to victims and admitted that nothing could redeem him. This contrasted sharply with many of his commanders, who openly refused to apply for amnesty, or the politicians who denied that he had carried out their orders.
  • For me it is irrelevant whether this change is genuine; the fact of his assistance to the victims is what counts. Unlike many other white people — perpetrators and bystanders — who have benefited since 1994 from the reconciliatory attitude of black South Africans, Mr. de Kock actually began to engage with fellow South Africans in restorative ways. Slowly, over the years, he transformed himself from a highly effective killer to somebody who genuinely engaged with those looking for answers.
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  • This shift underlines the unspoken foundation on which the T.R.C. was initially built: that apartheid destroyed people’s humanity and turned some into murderers. Perpetrators could admit that they had done wrong and be forgiven, allowing them to rebuild their lives. The underlying goal of the T.R.C. was to build a new ethical society through change: The truth about our past should transform all of us from a people apart into a people who care for one another.
aqconces

A Brutal Genocide in Colonial Africa Finally Gets its Deserved Recognition | History | ... - 0 views

www.smithsonianmag.com/...deserved-recognition-180957073

colonial africa genocide

shared by aqconces on 19 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Activist Israel Kaunatjike journeyed from Namibia to Germany, only to discover a forgotten past that has connections to his own family tree
  • Black and white people shared a country, yet they weren't allowed to live in the same neighborhoods or patronize the same businesses. That, says Kaunatjike, was verboten.
  • A few decades after German immigrants staked their claim over South-West Africa in the late 19th century, the region came under the administration of the South African government, thanks to a provision of the League of Nations charter.
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  • This meant that Kaunatjike's homeland was controlled by descendants of Dutch and British colonists—white rulers who, in 1948, made apartheid the law of the land. Its shadow stretched from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, covering an area larger than Britain, France, and Germany combined.
  • “Our fight was against the regime of South Africa,” says Kaunatjike, now a 68-year-old resident of Berlin. “We were labeled terrorists.”
  • During the 1960s, hundreds of anti-apartheid protesters were killed, and thousands more were thrown in jail. As the South African government tightened its fist, many activists decided to flee. “I left Namibia illegally in 1964,” says Kaunatjike. “I couldn't go back.”
  • Germans first reached the arid shores of southwestern Africa in the mid-1800s. Travelers had been stopping along the coast for centuries, but this was the start of an unprecedented wave of European intervention in Africa. Today we know it as the Scramble for Africa.
  • The German flag soon became a beacon for thousands of colonists in southern Africa—and a symbol of fear for local tribes, who had lived there for millennia. Missionaries were followed by merchants, who were followed by soldiers.
  • Indigenous people didn't accept all this willingly. Some German merchants did trade peacefully with locals. But like Belgians in the Congo and the British in Australia, the official German policy was to seize territory that Europeans considered empty, when it most definitely was not.
  • During apartheid, he explains, blacks were forcibly displaced to poorer neighborhoods, and friendships with whites were impossible. Apartheid translates to “apartness” in Afrikaans. But many African women worked in German households. “Germans of course had relationships in secret with African women,” says Kaunatjike. “Some were raped.” He isn't sure what happened to his own grandmothers.
jongardner04

'Anti-apartheid like move can end Israel-Palestine conflict' - The Economic Times - 0 views

economictimes.indiatimes.com/...47498799.cms

shared by jongardner04 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Palestinians can play a crucial role in ending the decades-long conflict with Israel by keeping up the pressure and using their collective power like the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, says Palestine's leading writer Raja Shehadeh.
yehbru

Opinion: Palestinians deserve the same security, equality and right to a homeland as th... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US Politics Israel Palestine Equality Peace

shared by yehbru on 31 May 21 - No Cached
  • As of Sunday evening, 197 Palestinians had been killed, including eight children who died Saturday when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their home in a Gaza refugee camp. At least 10 Israelis, including a 5-year-old boy, have been killed by Hamas rockets.
  • If history serves as a guide, however, after a ceasefire is reached, the conflict will slowly fade from the headlines, the world will go back to its business and the Palestinians will largely be forgotten -- yet again
  • She is correct. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are more than 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2.1 million in Gaza. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel says there are about 358,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem.
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  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted that while President Biden stated Israel has a right to defend itself, she asked, "But do Palestinians have a right to survive?" adding, "If so, we have a responsibility to that."
  • For the decades that followed, few American elected officials on either side of the aisle prioritized Palestinian human rights. Thankfully, Sen. Bernie Sanders changed that during the 2016 presidential campaign when he declared, "We are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity." Sanders, while defending Israel's right to exist, called for the United States to stop being "one-sided" in the conflict.
  • in Gaza, 95% of the residents don't have access to clean water and 80% of the population relies on international aid to survive. And Human Rights Watch recently released a 213-page report in which it accused the Israeli government of engaging in an "apartheid" system of polices that favor Israeli Jews over Palestinians in both Israel and the territories.
  • Not forgetting about the Palestinians is more than pushing for peace -- it's the United States taking a stand for Palestinian human rights.
  • Biden should declare he's willing to leverage the $3.8 billion in annual aid the United States provides to the Israeli government -- along with America's leadership role in the world -- to achieve that. This even-handed approach is step one in hopefully laying the foundation for a lasting, just peace deal.
saberal

Dem congressman chides progressives for provoking anti-Semitism by calling Israel 'apar... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...ssives-provoking-anti-semitism

US politics Trump

shared by saberal on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • A Democratic congressman called out his progressive colleagues for provoking anti-Semitism by referring to Israel as "a terrorist or apartheid state."
  • "And just as the former president called COVID the ‘China flu’ — which wrote the tax on Asian-Americans — calling Israel a terrorist state or an apartheid state, to me, is doing the same thing to the Jewish community, which has been persecuted for so many generations," Phillips said.
  • Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Rep. David Kustoff introduced a bill with the mission to prevent anti-Semitic hate crimes amid a violent wave of attacks against Jewish Americans in the United States. 
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  • "Jews are the targets of the majority of hate crimes committed in the United States against any religious group, including attacks on houses of worship and Jewish community centers," the bill states.
lilyrashkind

6 Times the Olympics Were Boycotted - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...olympic-boycotts

olympics history

shared by lilyrashkind on 16 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)
  • The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.
  • ‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.
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  • The Details: China, North Korea and Indonesia chose to boycott the first Games held in an Asian country after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared it would disqualify athletes who competed in the 1963 Jakarta-held Games of the New Emerging Forces, created as an alternative multinational amateur competition. The boycotting countries sent many of their top athletes to the Jakarta games.
  • The Details: When New Zealand’s national rugby team defied an international sports embargo against South Africa and toured the apartheid nation earlier in the year, 28 African nations—comprising most of the continent—declared a boycott of the Olympics, which was allowing New Zealand to participate. Led by Tanzania, the boycott involved more than 400 athletes. In a separate action, Taiwan withdrew from the Games when Canada refused to let its team compete as the Republic of China. Of Note: The boycott led to hotel and ticket refunds totaling $1 million Canadian dollars. It especially affected several track and field events, where nations such as Kenya and Tanzania were frequent medal winners.
  • Afghani athletes, notably, competed in the Games. Some countries did not forbid athletes from competing as individuals under the Olympic flag, but American athletes attempting to compete faced losing their passports. A group of American athletes sued the U.S. Olympic Committee to participate but lost the case. The boycott resulted in just 80 countries competing in the Olympics, the fewest since 1956.
  • In retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier, 14 nations, led by the Soviet Union and including East Germany, boycotted the Los Angeles-held Olympics. Joined by most of the Eastern Bloc nations, the Soviets said they feared physical attacks and protests on American soil. "Chauvinistic sentiments and anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in this country,” a government statement read.
  • and Joan Benoit, along with Mary Lou Retton, the first American gymnast to win the gold for all-around, became instant stars. And the Games were considered a huge financial success, with almost double the ticket sales of Montreal and earning the title as the most-seen event in TV history.
  • Angered over not being allowed to co-host the Games with South Korea, North Korea refused to attend the 1988 event in neighboring Seoul. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, accepted the IOC's invitation to compete, along with China and Eastern Bloc nations, leaving just Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua joining North Korea in the boycott. “To have the Olympics in Seoul would be like having them at the Guantanamo naval base occupied by the United States," Cuba President Fidel Castro told NBC News at the time. "I wonder that, if Socialist countries refused to go to (the 1984 Olympics in) Los Angeles for security reasons, if really there is more security in Seoul than in Los Angeles.”
  • candals tarnished the Seoul Games, including reports of residents being forced from their homes and homeless people being detained at facilities in preparation for the Games. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson made global headlines when he was stripped of his world-record-setting 100-meter victory after testing positive for steroids, and controversial boxing calls that went against South Korean athletes caused outrage.
  • North and South Korean leaders met following the events, and agreed to send a combined team to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games. However, North Korea announced in April 2021 that it would not participate because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
Javier E

Al Gore explains why he's optimistic about stopping global warming - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-about-stopping-global-warming

climate change global warming discourse

shared by Javier E on 22 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • we are now seeing the approach of a global political tipping point.
  • The appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world
  • A second factor is the sharp and unexpectedly steep decrease in prices for electricity produced from wind and solar and the demand destruction for fossil fuel energy from new efficiency improvements.
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  • the projections made 5-10 years ago for the installation of solar and wind technologies were, similarly, not just wrong but way wrong. We’ve seen a dramatic increase that’s far more rapid than anybody projected and it’s accelerating — not just in the United States but even more rapidly in developing countries.
  • Once questions are resolved into a choice between right and wrong, then the laws change. It happened with civil rights. It’s happening now with gay rights. It happened with apartheid and, in an earlier era, with abolition. And this is now being resolved into a question of right and wrong.
  • the odds have shifted and those events are becoming more common and extreme. They’ve now changed their description of that connection. The temperature has increased globally and there’s now 4 percent more water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere than 30 years ago. As a result, every extreme weather event now has a component of global warming in it.
  • people are connecting the dots. The cumulative amount of energy trapped by manmade global warming pollution each day in the earth’s atmosphere is now equal to the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima bombs going off every 24 hours.
  • The leading scientists have in the last two years changed the way they discuss that particular connection. It’s true that it used to be common for them to say you can’t blame any single extreme weather event on global warming.
  • remember the impact of policy direction on business calculations is forward-looking. When business begins to understand the direction of policy, they have to start adjusting to where the policy is going. When you look at the EPA process, it’s undeniably clear that there will be a price on carbon one way or the other. Then when you look at the movement in other countries and the states and local measures being enacted, the direction is now quite clear and businesses are making plans to adjust to it.
  • I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.
  • the political climate is changing. Something like Chris Hayes’s excellent documentary on climate change wouldn’t have made it on TV a few years ago. And as I said, many Republicans who’re still timid on the issue are now openly embarrassed about the extreme deniers. The deniers are being hit politically. They’re being subjected to ridicule, which stings. The polling is going back up in favor of doing something on this issue. The ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.
grayton downing

Nelson Mandela - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nelson-mandela.html

nelson

shared by grayton downing on 06 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • He was one of the most extraordinary liberation leaders Africa, or any other continent, ever produced. Not only did he lead his people to triumph over the deeply entrenched system of apartheid that enforced racial segregation in every area of South African life; he achieved this victory without the blood bath so many had predicted and feared.
  • And as South Africa’s first president elected by the full democratic franchise of all its people, he presided over a landmark Truth and Reconciliation
  • strength of character steeled him for his long struggle and ultimate victory over apartheid.
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  • His successors, even those he personally supported, have, sadly, not been his equals. South Africa today faces many challenging problems. Scandalous mismanagement of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic by Thabo Mbeki brought widespread, unnecessary suffering.
  • It will be up to a new generation of South African leaders to resolve these problems. All of them will owe a historic debt to Nelson Mandela.
Javier E

Ghosts and Shadows of the South - Talking Points Memo - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...hosts-and-shadows-of-the-south

south history racism

shared by Javier E on 07 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • At some level it should not remotely surprise us that ten or fifteen after the formal dismantlement of the southern system of apartheid that unreconstructed racist beliefs were still totally pervasive.
  • the mainstream political dialog in the US has always taken a kind of done and done attitude toward the end of formal apartheid in the United States was or should be basically the end of the story, when that was never going to be the case. African-Americans have much less sense of surprise than white Americans for obvious reasons.
  • My point here is that to the extent that anyone is surprised that young men or teens in the early 80s were dressing up in blackface or taking a jocular attitude to KKK, that’s a product of at least white America’s collective amnesia and denial about how the Jim Crow system in the South ended and the incompleteness of the process that brought it to an end.
Javier E

America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...istory-american-democracy.html

democracy america American dream black African-American history

shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.
  • So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism.
  • I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been
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  • Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us
  • Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire
  • Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom
  • It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.
  • The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst
  • Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.
  • Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.
  • In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.
  • the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.
  • Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such.
  • Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.
  • Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.
  • With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir, or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.
  • we may never have revolted against Britain if the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.
  • when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it
  • The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge
  • The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal.
  • By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.”
  • The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy
  • This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie.
  • now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
  • As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite.
  • The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress
  • These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school.
  • Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see.
  • The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South, including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments.
  • Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle
  • White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”
  • black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.
  • Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity.
  • This caste system was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence
  • As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”
  • Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched
  • During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way
  • If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse
  • Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.
  • As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment.
  • In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.
  • For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle.
  • This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability
  • It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white
  • to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment
  • Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees
  • as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did
  • “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.
  • Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them.
  • Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity
  • The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention.
  • Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination
  • We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.
  • It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.
  • Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans
  • Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own.
  • seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa
carolinehayter

Rising seas are turning Miami's high ground into hot property | CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

policy crisis politics Economics

shared by carolinehayter on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In a city where “sunny day floods” increased 400% in a decade, rising seas are changing the old real estate mantra of “location, location, location.” In Miami these days, it’s all about elevation, elevation, elevation.
  • While some scientific models predict enough polar ice melt to bring at least 10 feet of sea level rise to South Florida by 2100, just a modest 12 inches would make 15% of Miami uninhabitable, and much of that beachside property is among America’s most valuable.
  • The fickle undulations between city blocks could mean the difference between survival and retreat, and the rising cost of altitude is sparking a noticeable shift in community activism and municipal budgets.
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  • Miami Beach is spending millions elevating roads, upgrading pumps and changing building codes to allow residents to raise their mansions by five feet. But in working-class, immigrant neighborhoods like Little Haiti, year-to-year sea level rise gets lost in the day-to-day struggle, and most had no idea that they live a lofty three feet higher than the wealthy folks on Miami Beach.
  • They found out when developers started calling, from everywhere.
  • “We used to think that the allure of Little Haiti was the fact that it’s close to downtown, close to both airports and close to the beach. Unbeknownst to us, it’s because we are positioned at a higher altitude.”
  • After her community center and day school were priced out of three different buildings, she caught wind of plans to build the sprawling $1 billion Magic City development on the edge of Little Haiti, featuring a promenade, high-end retail stores, high rise apartments and imagined by a consortium of local investors, including the founder of Cirque du Soleil.
  • They promised to preserve the soul of Little Haiti and give $31 million to the community for affordable housing and other programs, but it wasn’t enough for Bastien. “This is a plan to actually erase Little Haiti,” she says. “Because this is the one place where immigration and climate gentrification collide.”
  • What’s happening in Little Haiti could be just one example of a “climate apartheid” that the United Nations warns is ahead, where there will be a gulf between the rich who can protect themselves from the impact of climate change and the poor who are left behind.
mattrenz16

How South Africa is viewing Trump vs. Biden (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by mattrenz16 on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • South Africans are painfully aware that their country generally does not loom large, if at all, in the awareness of most Americans, nor in the policies of their government.
  • But that doesn't mean they're not waiting with keen interest to see the outcome of Tuesday's race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
  • US involvement in South Africa peaked during the Cold War.
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  • During the apartheid years, the White minority governments aligned themselves with the Western nations and leveraged SA's militarily strategic position to maximize British and US support.
  • The government's views tend to be at odds with those of President Donald Trump's administration over Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iran, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the seemingly intractable issue of Palestinian statehood, of which Ramaphosa's government is a vocal supporter.
  • There was anger when he tagged all of Africa, along with Haiti, as "shithole" countries, causing an affronted South African administration to summon the US chargé d'affaires for a dressing down.
  • This support, articulated by President Ronald Reagan as "constructive engagement," alienated the oppressed Black majority and left a lingering bad taste with many in Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, which has been the ruling party since South Africa's first democratic election in 1994.
  • President Cyril Ramaphosa's government seized on the #BlackLivesMatter protests to lament George Floyd's "regrettable death" and condescendingly observed that the incident "[presented] the USA with an opportunity to address fundamental issues of human rights."
  • Privately, it has a preference for Biden, with a government analyst telling me that South Africa believes the Democratic candidate would return to the multilateralism that Trump has scorned and is expected to be less protectionist and isolationist when it comes to China.
  • South Africa is dependent on a strong economic relationship with the US. There are around 600 US firms here, with many making SA their springboard to the rest of Africa.
  • The US is South Africa's third-biggest export destination and the country benefits from the Generalized System of Preferences trade program and the country hopes to continue to benefit from the US African Growth and Opportunity Act, currently under review.
  • Trump's stance on Israel has also drawn strong but quiet support from some sectors of South Africa's shrinking Jewish community, which numbers barely more than 50,000, equivalent to only 0.1% of the country's population of 58 million.
tsainten

'Coloured Lives Matter': A South African Police Shooting Like No Other - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...h-africa-police-brutality.html

South Africa

shared by tsainten on 21 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • 6-year-old Nathaniel Julies, was of mixed heritage, or, as it is still known, colored, a vestige of apartheid-era South Africa’s racial classification.
  • Death at the hands of the police in South Africa is hardly uncommon — by one estimate, each day a South African dies in a police action.
  • The authorities initially tried to suggest that Nathaniel had been shot during an exchange of gunfire between police officers and gang members. But within days of the killing, they charged the three officers.
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  • They are also accused of attempting to discard evidence, said a spokeswoman for the prosecution, Phindi Mjonondwane. The third officer, Detective Sgt. Foster Netshiongolo, faces charges of accessory to murder and obstruction of justice.
  • In South Africa, too, citizens have long denounced police brutality. Under cover of the pandemic lockdowns, critics say, some officers are acting with still more impunity.
  • Apartheid excelled at pitting one group against another, and the legacy of that is still playing out today in communities like the predominantly colored one Nathaniel lived in.
  • But critics say, this has not changed the culture of the police force. The new generation of officers are regarded with suspicion amid allegations of rampant corruption.
  • “While communities have a right to express dissent, anger should not spill over into action that could worsen the trauma already experienced by citizens,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. “Justice can only prevail if community workers work with our criminal justice system to address alleged injustice or abuse.”
criscimagnael

Suspect in South Africa's Parliament Fire Is Sent for Psychiatric Check - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-parliament-fire-suspect.html

shared by criscimagnael on 12 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The man suspected of setting fire to South Africa’s Parliament buildings in Cape Town was committed to a psychiatric hospital on Tuesday to determine whether he is fit to stand trial on terrorism and other charges.
  • But prosecutors said he might not be “compos mentis,” or fully sane.
  • If Mr. Mafe is found mentally fit to stand trial, he will face charges that include terrorism, illegal possession of explosives, arson, theft and housebreaking. His legal team has previously indicated that he intends to plead not guilty
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  • He is the only suspect in the destruction of the historic buildings that housed the National Assembly and the offices of lawmakers, the governing African National Congress and several opposition parties.
  • On Tuesday, as the judge, Zamekile Mbalo, ordered Mr. Mafe committed to a psychiatric hospital in Cape Town for 30 days, the suspect appeared visibly distressed. He shook his head from side to side, breathing heavily as he clutched his belongings in a shopping bag. His lawyers said he would go on hunger strike to protest his continued detention.
  • Mr. Mafe’s lawyer, Mr. Mpofu, a former anti-apartheid activist and now a prominent member of an opposition party, has a reputation for taking on politicized cases. He defended a group of veterans accused of briefly holding the defense minister hostage during a meeting over unpaid benefits. Mr. Mpofu is also a lawyer for Jacob Zuma, the former president, appearing on his behalf to appeal his arrest on contempt of court charges last year.
Javier E

Yes, Germany supports Israel - but not uncritically, and not for the reasons you think ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...israel-right-left-turkey-truth

germany foreign policy israel palestine reasons crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 28 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • When the hard right, the left and an autocrat (who denies Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians) combine forces, you know there is something wrong. Let’s be clear: German politicians do not need to wrestle free of history to navigate the debate on the Gaza war. It is a myth that Germany is uncritical in its support of the Israeli government.
  • Germans had been told they were “surrounded by friends”, as Helmut Kohl put it. They woke up ill-equipped to face a world of sworn enemies. Russia pulverised decades of German Ostpolitik when it attacked Ukraine, and with it the European postwar order.
  • There was never any love lost between either the Merkel or Scholz governments and Benjamin Netanyahu. Angela Merkel knew he was working with Donald Trump to kill off the nuclear deal with Iran behind her back. And that he was lying about his acceptance of two states. Nobody involved with the Middle East dossier in Berlin trusts Netanyahu
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  • So what accounts for the dogged support Berlin extends to Israel in its war against Hamas? You must look beyond immediate crisis. Germany’s foreign policy establishment has suffered a deep shock, indeed the second one, after last year’s realisation that Russia could not be appeased by diplomatic overtures, pipeline deals and “change through trade”
  • When Israel used excessive violence in earlier Gaza wars, Germany raised public concerns. Berlin has constantly criticised the expansion of settlements. More than a decade ago, the then foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, called the situation in Hebron (in the occupied West Bank) “apartheid”. Berlin has supported the Palestinian Authority with over €1bn, and is among the top donors to Unwra, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees.
  • Similarly, Germany had pushed for diplomacy to deal with Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions.
  • Then the Gazan member of Iran’s axis of resistance attacked Israel on 7 October. The Jewish state is trapped in a pincer movement between Hamas and Hezbollah – and the possibility of a wider war. This is an existential crisis for Israel.
  • The cornerstones of Germany’s foreign policy have crumbled. Engagement with Russia and Iran has failed. This is the view from Berlin: these two powers must be stopped, and that includes the destruction of Hamas. This is the reason for Germany’s staunch support of Israel’s war against Hamas, notwithstanding the deep distrust of Netanyahu – and the wish to see him gone as soon as hostilities end.
Javier E

To Fight Climate Change, College Students Take Aim at the Endowment Portfolio - NYTimes... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...t-the-endowment-portfolio.html

climate change activism

shared by Javier E on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Mr. McKibben said he recognized that a rapid transition away from fossil fuels would be exceedingly difficult. But he said strong government policies to limit emissions were long overdue, and were being blocked in part by the political power of the incumbent industry.
  • Mr. McKibben’s goal is to make owning the stocks of these companies disreputable, in the way that owning tobacco stocks has become disreputable in many quarters.
  • Mr. McKibben has laid out a series of demands that would get the fuel companies off 350.org’s blacklist. He wants them to stop exploring for new fossil fuels, given that they have already booked reserves about five times as large as scientists say society can afford to burn. He wants them to stop lobbying against emission policies in Washington. And he wants them to help devise a transition plan that will leave most of their reserves in the ground while encouraging lower-carbon energy sources.
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  • the South African divestment campaign caused bitter arguments across the nation. The issue then was whether divestment, potentially costly, would have much real effect on companies doing business in South Africa. Even today, historians differ on whether it did. But the campaign required prominent people to grapple with the morality of apartheid, altering the politics of the issue. Economic pressure from many countries ultimately helped to force the whites-only South African government to the bargaining table.
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