By “Truth and Reconciliation”, I guess it’s not Tutu & Co.’s initiative being referred to there ...

Desmond Tutu’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” has been judged a Big Trick and a Lousy Failure, by and large. Though it’s been perhaps necessary that the TRC was created, most negatively affected -- i.e. BLACK -- South Afrikans do not see anything usefully positive it has brought, when you still have places like Oranje where whites are in the process of stubbornly forming a separate, whites-only “state” within a State; or when blood-thirsty, still-racist murders have escaped scot-free by being let off the hook by the same TRC … Indeed, a 15-year-old niece of mine just came back -- (i.e. to Germany) -- from a visit to South Afrika, visited Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town etc and had many -- too many -- negative things to say about so-called “Reconciliation” in South Africa, from her own point of view (as a little teen-ager!). She was surprised to find out that there is actually more racism in S/A than there appears to be in Germany, and it looks like it'll be like that for a long time to come!

I also know South Afrika to be so, and it looks like it'll keep being so if people pretend that all is well when it's not well.

I hardly watch TV, let alone the right-wing CNN, but, like Iyah has stated, this story is more or less “…CNN perpetrating this same thing, a big story about a white American woman being killed, while not a peep when millions of Africans are killed …”. No (unnecessary) taking of a fellow human life should ever be condoned, anyplace, anywhere, anytime, in whatever circumstance, but what boggles my mind is why double standards are apparently applied whenever such an incident occurs. And even we blacks usually fall in for this game of colo(u)rs … For the record, it is important to mention that there have also been blacks mercilessly beaten (by their “masters”) or gunned down in South Afrika, especially in rural S/A, for such silly reasons as: reporting late for work, “interloping” or squatting on some “white-owned” piece of land, petty domestic theft, being “rude” to “Massah” etc, and the perpetrators of such sadistic crimes have more often than not been hailed as heroes by their fellow sadistic whites; which may just show how sick the whole thing is … and how deep the cleft is …

South Afrika is STILL divided and there’s no denying that. No soothing words -- whether quoted from CNN or lifted from the Bible -- would make me believe otherwise. In fact, to show just how useless the TRC has been and become, many killers who formerly worked for the Death Machinery called Apartheid, such as (the man dubbed) “Doctor Death”, General Coetzee, Pik Botha, the four to six shady men implicated in the deliberate murder of Bantu Steve Biko and even Apartheid S/A’s ex-chief P.W. Botha, have REFUSED to openly apologise before the TRC. The second Botha even refused to appear to testify before the Commission about 2 years ago and contemptuously called the Commision “A Circus” … For calling the TRC a “circus” and his arrogant show of contempt of justice through his refusal to appear before the Commission, millionaire P.W. Botha was fined a laughably meagre amount of money …

I went somewhat off-course, digressed a little, but I’d like to believe that, in reality, there’s no Truth and Reconciliation inside South Afrika. Though Archbishop Desmond Tutu has done his best, being the man of God that he is, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is now both a paper tiger and a white elephant, perhaps even worse.