From: poam@giraffe.ru.ac.za (AK MARQUARD)
Subject: Re: Separate Development
Summary: similarities
Keywords: racists culture
Organization: Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Distribution: WORLD
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 14:58:06 GMT

In article <BxEyGE.9tH@ns1.nodak.edu> varvel@plains.NoDak.edu (Andrew Varvel) writes:
>From: varvel@plains.NoDak.edu (Andrew Varvel)
>Subject: Re: Separate Development
>Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 20:05:02 GMT
>
>In 1971, the Minister of Justice of the Transkei, Mr. George Matanzima said:
>
>"... the diabilities suffered by our people in the Republic must be suffered
>in the Transkei by the white people ... We have long pleaded with the white
>people that we want to be on the same level and enjoy the same privileges as
>they enjoy in the Republic...they do not want to hear of it and they tell us
>straightforwardly that we shall never get that...It is my wish...that, as
>envisaged in our policy, when we get our independence inthe Transkei all the
>hotels in the urban areas will be owned by Africans and when a white person
>wants to stay at a hotel he will occupy a back room.  A tooth for a tooth."
>
>[From South Africa's Transkei, by Roger Southall (1983)]
>
>Does anyone see a resemblance between the commentary of that "independent"
>"homeland" "leader" and some of the characters posting?
>
>Andrew Varvel
>
>The North Dakota Institute for the Study of Petty Name-Calling
>

Yes, in fact just what I had been thinking.. it seems that there are four 
people who post to this group who have remarkably similar understandings of 
"ethnicity" and "culture" - two from the UCT maths dep't (who are 
apparently "white") and two from the USA (who we must assume are "African" - 
whatever that means) - they sem to have much in common both with the dishon. 
Matanzima and also with the dishon. Buthelezi, and indeed with the very 
dishon. Verwoerd - that is the reification of "culture" to something quite 
rarified and mystical, the glorification of a bloody and violently 
patriarchal past and present, and the hint of neo-fascist bases for 
political mobilisation which ineviatbly spells violence. While it is 
fortunate that the rlevant parties are confined to universities in the USA, 
those who follow any of the numerous hapennings in South African of the past 
weeks cannot but notice the role of similar attitudes in such organisations 
as INKATHA and the Wit Wolwe..

Perhaps if these persons spent more time critically understanding their own 
pathologies and the ways in which they had been unconscously scarred by 
colonialism and going to foreign universities on large grants (assuming this 
is the case), they would arrive at a more progressive position on culture 
and African politics and ecoomics in general. 

One more question: was Barre of the now disaster-struck Somalia a foreigner?


======================================================================
Andrew Marquard, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

  "So long as there is still a single beggar, there is still myth.
  Only with the last beggar's dissappearance, would myth be appeased."
                                            Walter Benjamin
======================================================================

From: megana@hpcuhe.cup.hp.com (Megan Adams)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 03:11:33 GMT
Subject: Genital Mutilation (girls)
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino