South Africa : Dr. Frank Wilderson on Nelson Mandela, South Africa and Afro-Pessimism

[Kadijah]

Then there's this:

100 Years of Silence: The Germans in Namibia



A film by Halfdan Muurholm & Casper Erichsen
40 minutes
-
Released 2007
by
Filmakers Library
One hundred years ago, the Herero people of Namibia were nearly exterminated by German colonial soldiers in what has become known as the first genocide of the 20th century. Herero men, women and children were rounded up like cattle and put into Germany's first ever concentration camps. Four years later, three-quarters of the entire Herero nation had perished at the hands of German colonialists.
The Nazis used the experiences from the German concentration camps in Namibia as well as their experiments in "racial science" when they formulated the Final Solution during World War II a few decades later. Today the Hereros claim billions of euros from the German government in repatriation for the genocide.

The experience of one family is described by a descendant, a 23-year-old Herero woman named Georgina. She has a fair complexion and a green tinge to her eyes. Georgina is aware of the fact that her great-grandmother was raped by a German soldier and now wants to confront the demons of her own genetic past.

 

[Kadijah]

And this (see why I can hardly bear to "think" about this.... ugliness, those filthy animals masquerading as people?):

The first Holocaust: Horrifying secrets of Germany's earliest genocide inside Africa's 'Forbidden Zone'

By SEAN THOMAS
UPDATED: 06:13 EST, 7 February 2009
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This must be the most God-forsaken place on Earth. I'm standing on a dusty desert road in a desolate country on the south-west coast of Africa.
In front of me is an unspoken border. Summoning the courage, I prepare to step across.
For the past 100 years, this simple act would have got me arrested, beaten or shot.

Emaciated and close to death: Some of the few Herero who escaped the 1907 genocide


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ide-Africas-Forbidden-Zone.html#ixzz2aI6UPaN5
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But dig a little deeper and the charm dwindles. At the far end of Luderitz harbour is a small promontory called Shark Island. It was once a real island, but was recently attached to Luderitz by a causeway.
In 1905, Shark Island became the world's first extermination camp when the German colonial forces, enraged by tribal rebellions, turned on the local Witbooi people. Many Witbooi were killed in the colonial war. Those that remained were herded on to tiny, inhospitable Shark Island.

The Germans sent them there to die. The tactic worked: countless hundreds perished, and the Witbooi were wiped from the face of the Earth.


That was bad enough. But this was merely a precursor to a second, much larger German-Namibian holocaust.
In the mid-1900s the Herero people of northern Namibia rebelled, massacring dozens of German settlers.
The Germans saw this revolt as a serious threat to the potential of their diamond-rich colony, so they despatched a ruthless Prussian imperialist, Lothar von Trotha, to deal with the uprising.

The Kaiser's explicit instructions to his upper-class viceroy were to 'emulate the Huns' in savagery.
Von Trotha didn't need encouraging. His intentions were quite plain. 'I know enough tribes in Africa,' he boasted. 'They are all alike insofar as they only yield to violence. My policy was, and is, to exercise this violence with blatant terrorism and cruelty.'

He was as good as his word. After several battles, where the Herero were slain in their multitudes, von Trotha decided to finish the job once and for all by destroying the entire Herero people. In 1907 he issued his notorious extermination order, or ernichtungsbefehl.

'I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Herero . . . the Herero are no longer German subjects. . . they must leave the country. If they do not leave I will force them out with the big gun.
'All Herero, armed or unarmed, will be shot dead. I will no longer accept women or children, they will be forced out or they will also be shot.

These are my words to the Herero.' The Herero were driven west, into the Kalahari desert, to expire.
Guards were stationed at waterholes so the people couldn't drink; many wells were deliberately poisoned.
In the searing heat of the desert, denied water and food, the Herero didn't last long. Some women and children tried to return, but they were immediately shot.

Accounts of the holocaust are unbearably harrowing. Witnesses reported hundreds of people just lying in the desert, dying of thirst.

Children went mad among the corpses of their parents; the buzzing of the flies was deafening. Paralysed people were eaten alive by leopards and jackals.

The end was swift; the 'thirstland' of the Kalahari had taken its toll. The official German Imperial report into this colonial 'war' concluded with sickening eloquence: 'The death rattle of the dying and the furious screams of madness . . . faded away in the sublime silence of infinitude.'

Reliable historians estimate that 60,000 died in this appalling crime, constituting 70 to 80 per cent of the entire Herero people. The genocide affects Namibia's demography and politics to this day.

Was this hideous crime a 'rehearsal' for the Nazi Holocaust?

We can never know. What we do know is the name of the German official in charge of Namibian government during this time. It was Heinrich Goering - the father of Hitler's most loyal Reichsmarshall.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ide-Africas-Forbidden-Zone.html#ixzz2aI5rxMr5
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[Queenie]

Sis. Kadijah . . . I can't find the words . . .

 

[Kadijah]

Discussion with Dr. Frank B. Wilderson, author, scholar, and former member of the African National Congress and Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Listen here: http://imixwhatilike.org/2013/07/05...lson-mandela-south-africa-and-afro-pessimism/

Back to the mix:

The most pertinent thing I got out of the audio (45 minutes worth) was his comparison of Mandela with Ronald Reagan in that that they both represent "personas" moreso than ideas. Kind of like the cult of personality wherein one rules based on people liking you (Reagan was everybody white's "grandfather") rather than on ideology or cutting edge ideas. I was kinda happy when he backed down a little on saying they both were "empty vessels" into which others poured their own ideas.... backing down to say Mandela was super-smart and not quite the empty vessel during his turn in office!

 

[sekou kasimu]

That is unfortunate you seemed to be unable to filter out the "laughing and joking".

Dr. wilderson yields a lot of good information.

Are you Familiar chris hani?

I remember Hani being murdered in Azania (South Afrika) by whites!