@H – We will agree to not agree. I don’t think they promised more than the Democrats did over here even though they knew they were going to win big. Promises of the war ending etc. And the caved in since then. They all make promises even when they know they will win.

@Traps – Thanks! And ditto.

@Jen – You offered much in your comments. Insightful and taking it from your experience. Like you say, we much turn the “we can” into a target.

You have a lovely blog – Hope you go from strength to strength.

Regards

Traps

How to re-equitize those disenfranchised by previous systems.

There are differences, no doubt, but the job is the same. In America, we have been wrestling with our post civil-rights conundrum in the same manner as SA has been wrestling with it’s post-Apartheid problem.

With SA, though, the problems would seem to me to be much deeper and much more difficult because of the relative sizes of the vested vs. disenfranchised populaces. In the US, the vested population was about ten times the size of those who suffered, and in SA, that number is totally reversed: The vested population was only one quarter the size of those who were denied.

Essentially, the horse was able to easily pull the wagon here in the US. There was far and away enough wealth and jobs to migrate some of that into the disenfranchised Black population and things are much improved. Thus, we avoided deterioration of the standard of living of those who benefitted under the old system.

With SA, however, you have a teeny, tiny horse pulling a very large wagon. The White minority’s resources are not enough, by themselves, to lift all of SA’s citizens out from the dregs imposed by Apartheid. There just isn’t.

I think that this is why there may be so much more connectedness between SA citizens that we see here in the US.

Here, many think we don’t ‘need’ our Black population to do this or that, and can take them for granted, plunking them in this category or that. This may be part of the reason for our protracted progression from racial ignorance to racial maturity.

In SA, however, you NEED your Black population, because without them, the work won’t get done. The White population has only so much resources and so many jobs. SA Black AND White citizens have no choice but to work together to make your country work.

In my country, the US, the winds of politics could change, and indeed they have, but standards of living will not be affected significantly by race itself.

It will be affected by the attitude toward race.

In the US, there is no compelling force pushing the average American to accept our Black population as true American citizens. In our country, it has more to do with the perception of equity and fairness that has brought us down this long road to where a Black man finally has a shot at the presidency.

We have matured, but slowly, and over 140 years. Attitude first and results second.

In SA, however, despite the fact that Apartheid is relatively closer in time than our own Civil Rights era, SA has gone much farther, and necessarily so. Results first and attitudes second.

Eventually, like the US, SA citzens will figure out a way to get this done. I’m thinking that SA will have it’s ups and downs, but in the end, because there IS such a compelling force within, SA will probably only take a fraction of the time we did in coming to the end of the healing process.

You’ve only been at it 14 years…