Guilt of Nations

[Grinker]

It should be patently obvious by now that the whole South African Truth &
Reconciliation Commission / reparations circus was part of a conscious
strategy designed to wind down and demobilise the mass movement and replace
it with a plethora of quangos and other machinery to permanently
institutionalise and neutralise resistance. Ironically the poor sods who
accepted the winding up of the struggle in favour of 'reconciliation' and
the TRC, mostly never even saw a cent of reparations. For those who
benefitted materially from apartheid oppression (and still do), the
televised TRC circus was however worth every cent that it cost to put on. We
heard their largely untruthful mea culpas and off they went.

Why bother putting your faith in a continuation of this useless tradition?
The reparations campaign is not an alternative option. It's part of the
problem.

Russell

Patrick Bond wrote:
> A great many marxists in this part of the world are championing
reparations
> from corporations/banks for their apartheid-era profits because a) the
> concept, as articulated for instance by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane,
is
> concretely aimed at building an independent reconstruction fund precisely
to
> meet the basic needs of people (e.g. antiretroviral drugs, water systems)
> that the SA government is denying; and b) any disincentive -- i.e., the
> prospect of paying reparations -- to future profiteers/lenders who cozy up
> to the likes of PW Botha can only help those who struggle for economic and
> other forms of justice in future.