Call for calm after South Africa murder

[BolivarianHero]

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/04/201044125732809976.html

South Africa's president has called for calm following the killing of Eugene Terreblanche, the white supremecist leader, in a reported pay dispute with black workers.

Jacob Zuma on Sunday described Terreblanche's killing as a "terrible deed" but called on South Africans to avoid letting the killing incite racial tensions.

"The president appeals for calm following this terrible deed and asks South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fueling racial hatred," his office said in a statement.

Read more: Al Jazeera

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I can't believe an African head of state would condemn the murder of a White supremacist leader. Such deeds deserve to be celebrate by people of all races.

[carpe diem]

1. MURDER should never be CELEBRATED...

esp. not by a head of state. I hope you are being facetious because the last thing a responsible political leader should do is encourage people to take legal matters into their own hands. That leads to societal breakdown and chaos.

[Recursion]

2. Eh. Zuma's trying to distance himself from the "Kill the Boers" part of the ANC

They don't want to go the way Zimbabwe is.

[hardtravelin]

3. Do not want the Afrikaaners to feel like it's Zimbabwe redux,

Although they are a minority, the majority of weapons owners, advanced military and police trained, and special operations folks come from their ranks. The Boers are not the folks you want to get into a armed struggle with-ask the Brits.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. The Brits won.

[hardtravelin]

7. British combat casualties were significantly higher

Not including the 27,000-ish civilians who died in British concentration camps.

To be clear, I'm not defending Apartheid (or its proponents), but the Afrikaans rural folk would be a dangerous segment if they felt that it were open season on them.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. The Boer War took a heavy toll on the British

and required the expenditure of enormous resources. But in the end, they won.

Empires and governments win in the end if they can continue to pour in the necessary resources. Any uprising by a small segment of Afrikaners would end the same way; in that case, the South African government would get all the help it needed from elsewhere.

In the case of the Boer War, the majority of Boers lived in the Cape, where they actually outnumbered the English. However, they stayed loyal and refused to join the war, despite attempts by the Boer republics to recruit them. The AWB and their ilk would face a very similar situation, I suspect.

[hardtravelin]

9. Excellent points

And all the more reason for Zuma and the ANC to try and diffuse the situation.

I always enjoy my visits to SA. I find the people there (of all races) to be some of the most kind and generous folk I've ever encountered.

[Rapier09]

14. South Africa isn't the British empire

The Boers can just make sure that HIV stays rampant,the farms go fallow and the government loses its a sizeable part of its best and brightest.

As for Terre Blanche,I read up on his background,guy had it coming.

[14thColony]

4. Well then clearly Pres Zuma shows far more wisdom than you do

While individuals may sympathize, celebrate, or condone, the State (any state) can never do so, for to condone murder is to undermine the very rule of law the state seeks to uphold. President Zuma is saying exactly what any sane head of head of state or head of government would say in the same circumstances.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

15. and Zuma isn't even sane to begin with,

Zuma has a bit of a teabagger and minutemen problem on his hands with the radical elements of the ANC and Zulu xenophobes, he pandered to the hardliners to win control of the ANC and now he can't control them as ANC hardliners run off the ideological cliff and Zulu gangs lash out violently at other African populations.

Now he has to moderate the lunatics he unleashed in the first place, "put your machine gun away and leave the Boer alone."

[14thColony]

16. Yes he is riding a tiger bareback isn't he?

Perhaps 'rational' would have been a better choice of words. Even unbalanced people can make rational decisions, particularly when their own self-interests are at stake.

[ingac70]

5. For shorting people on wages, he deserved it. n/t

[alphafemale]

10. Murder should ALWAYS be condemned.

Seriously. :wtf:

[Mosaic]

11. I agree.

Whites are not supreme to anybody, and I'm white. This scumbag got what was coming to him.

[teknomanzer]

12. Violence begets more violence...

I would say that this miserable scum-bag's death was an inevitable conclusion for this man's life, however it is totally irresponsible for any leadership to even appear to condone such violence. We cannot hold republican's to the fire for their lack of complete condemnation of their crazed constituency of tea-baggers and allow for others impunity simply because the victim of their actions is among those we find loathsome. That would be the height of hypocrisy.

[Odin2005]

13. Stupid, they just gave the racist fucks a martyr.

[David__77]

17. Everyone has condemned this, and the white right in South Africa isn't a real danger.

They would just as soon emigrate rather than vainly try to regain any power. They hold no levers of state power and are smaller in numbers now. If they couldn't do it in 1993-1994, they certainly cannot do it now. Terreblanche will be no martyr of any use to anyone's cause.

[struggle4progress]

18. Well, this is the difference between today and yesterday: under ANC rule,

those suspected of Terreblanche's murder are under arrest and will be tried for murder; under the Afrikaaner Nationalist government in the apartheid era, murder was sanctioned by the state and there was impunity. Terreblanche's views were repugnant, of course, and he seems to have been an unpleasant fellow, too. But civilized attitudes won decisively in South Africa several decades ago, after many years of intelligent struggle, and as a general rule the civilized do not murder those who disagree with them. Terreblanche, in fact, seems to have met his unpleasant fate for attempting to cheat impoverished workers, but I expect that most South Africans really have some devotion to tolerance and political accommodation. Meanwhile, the high court has, perhaps appropriately, told Julius Malema to STFU