... and yet, today in South Africa

F.W. de Klerk & Nelson Mandela  - May 1990 (courtesy U.K. Guardian)

Not only is the country of South Africa important in the scheme of the human rights issues in mind with everyone today, but turning the recent history of that country over and over brings to mind some certainly unresolved items of which the following:  a.  The South African transition to majority rule has gone quite smoothly compared, for example, to what is happening in Zimbabwe or even Mozambique; b.  In what ways does the new regime there continue to defeat the argument of the Afrikaans assuming for so long the "white man's burden," and then relinquishing it to the blacks.  Due to these two items and more, and their international political and cultural influences, is South Africa a safe place today where one might travel and even stay for a while or emigrate?  People like me have a hard time posing this question as the only ideas we have about Africa are from literary dogma and the press.

It is also interesting to note that the Afrikaans continue to have a role in South African society, even though many of the native peoples just wanted them out.  There are and have been things wrong with colonialism for a long time, and this is why it is not any longer practised by anyone.  Some western powers still have control of island nations and so forth, but the actual colonial period entered into its sunset when water transport became motorized and when some other things happened (like WWI.)  One might note here the Afrikaans, again, were not colonial really in that they believed in the eventuality of the blacks ruling their own territories without the kind of oriental chaos they had experienced when settling that land.  It becomes clear upon any study of Africa the blacks knew of other lands, not mystical to them, but as those of subjugators; and they only really had an interest in maintaining the status quo of a very organic society that dated back many years.  The institutional introduction of Occidental institutions and polity at the time of the colonial empires was a huge shock to the native South African population and they staged a long - standing revolt.  That westerners were the first to really settle in Africa engendered future contemptibility and when the communists began propagandizing the native peoples there during the period after WWII, the political climate was rife with vulnerabilities that were exacerbated and exist to this day.  Part of the credence of the ANC and its merits was the future promise to make the country productive and to preserve its institutions that were not overwhelmingly racist.  This led to the beginning of better prospects for African nations as far as foreign aid and international legitimacy were concerned among other things.  All this due to the relationships between personalities like F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela; see your Cambridge history.