From Rainbow to Rambo in 12 short years

ower in 1994 he declared South Africa would be a “rainbow nation” free from the hatred brought by years of apartheid. Today, millions of South Africans are at rainbow’s end as lawless gangs terrorise Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and small towns which lie close to the most lawless state of them all -Zimbabwe.
“We think crime has become too big an issue for any one issue,” says Coenie Burger of the Dutch Reformed Church which called a meeting of Christian and civic societies on October 13.
“Government must take the lead but we are calling for an alliance of different institutions, including government, civil society, the churches, business leaders and teachers. The situation in many parts of South Africa is out of control.”
Rev Burger said that Christian churches were aiming for something similar to the National Peace Accord, which churches, business leaders and civic society launched in the early 1990s to stem the tide of political violence following the release of Mandela and the unbanning of the South African Communist Party, the ANC and the PAC in February 1990.
The increasingly high profile Anglican leader, SA’s Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said recently that the time for government/church action is now. Church leaders want to meet President Thabo Mbeki to discuss a plan to involve the churches and civic society into a national effort to fight the country’s rampant crime.
“Violence and crime erodes communal security and trust. Crime reduction has to be a personal choice and commitment of every person in South Africa,” says the Catholic Archbishop Buti Tihanale.
Since 1994 well over 1,600 white farmers have been killed. Sources inside SA tell The Zimbabwean that while the government blames criminal elements for their deaths it is doing next to nothing to implement badly needed land reforms that meet black aspirations without destroying the agricultural sector.
Last year, a leading South African businessman said: “In Zimbabwe, it was government policy that created the conditions in which 10 farmers were killed. In South Africa lack of government policy has led to the conditions in which 1,600 white farmers have been killed. It is part of the same movement.”
But in Zimbabwe, the infinitely smaller number of white farmer deaths created uproar all over the world. About South Africa there has been no such outcry.
Black anger is growing and armed gangs carry the message to the stoeps of European owned farms.
Twelve years after Nelson Mandela was made SA President, some 40,000 whites dominate all aspects of food production. They still own the best land.
Thabo Mbeki, who sometimes remembers the days of his Marxist youth at Sussex University, now and again speaks of the danger of allowing “two societies” to live alongside each other. While the police and white farmers call for law and order, landless blacks call for the immediate “nationalisation” of European owned land.
Recently the Andre Brink told his shocked countrymen that he is no longer able to tell outsiders that SA is moving in the direction of democracy, truth and justice. “I can no longer do that.”
White farmers I spoke to on the telephone last week told me that their great fear is that a “Mugabe-style” land revolution will “just happen.”
“We have watched events in Zimbabwe unfold since 2000, ” said one worried farmer’s wife whose children -all in their 20s and 30s – live in Commonwealth countries. “Over a million whites have left South Africa since 1994. We stayed on because we said -This is our home. But now? We’re being treated like shit.”
More and more whites are packing their bags for Europe, North America and Australasia thanks to Justice Minister Charles Nqakula who described whites who criticize President Mbeki’s policies, or lack of them, as “unpatriotic moaners.”
He said:” They can continue to whinge until they’re blue in the face or they can simply leave the country.”