Wall Street and South Africa and it's Liberation Betrayed

[Paul Rigby]

South Africa: The Liberation's Betrayal

Oct 05, 2008 By John Pilger

John Pilger's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
[FONT=Verdana][size=12]The political rupture in South Africa is being presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and humiliation of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of the beatification of Nelson Mandela at the death of apartheid. This is not to diminish the power of personalities, but their importance is often as a distraction from the historical forces they serve and manage...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jun...anreview11

“Letters: Stating the Obvious,” The Guardian, Saturday, 10 June 2006, p.15

One reads from Mark Curtis ("Voice of the unpeople", June 3) that John Pilger has come to the conclusion that there is a certain "ambiguity" about the heritage of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and that the government of the African National Congress has presided over the empowerment of a small black elite alongside the continued impoverishment of the majority.

In making these unremarkable observations in his new book, Freedom Next Time, Pilger is merely marching in step with the South African communist party or the veteran South African journalists Stanley Uys and James Myburgh.

My late colleague, Dr Baruch Hirson (Pretoria Prison, 1964-73) and I (Pretoria Prison and the Fort, Johannesburg, 1964-67), anticipated Pilger's observations more than 16 years ago in our journal, Searchlight South Africa (banned there), in article after article. At that time and for a decade-and-a-half afterwards, Pilger's global tribuning of the people had its attention elsewhere.

More honest, less ideological, and with no bandwagon to give it attention, is Carol Lee's new book, A Child Called Freedom (Century 2006) published to commemorate the 30th anniversary this month of the Soweto school students' uprising. Anyone interested in conditions of poverty in the "new" South Africa, and the unpleasant fate of those who sought democracy in Soweto and in the ANC in exile, would do better to read this unpretentious book.

Paul Trewhela
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday, 17 June 2006

In editing the letter below, Stating the obvious, we made the writer, Paul Trewhela, appear to be saying that in making certain observations in his new book, John Pilger was "merely marching in step with the South African Communist party or the veteran South African journalists Stanley Uys and James Myburgh". In fact, Trewhela wanted to say that his contention that Pilger was in step with the South African Communist party in making certain observations could be seen from the party's own website or documents available on http://www.ever-fasternews.com a website run by Uys and Myburgh.