The times, they are a-changin’

I am currently putting in 11 and 12 hour days as we continue to make progress slowly but surely at my high school.  Unfortunately, this leaves me with little energy to do detailed blog posts at night.  I will work to rectify this situation in the future, if by no other means than by consuming massive amounts of the Starbucks instant coffee that was sent to me by my Dad (By the way, thanks, Dad).  For tonight, though, I just wanted to post an excerpt from a book I have recently been reading called “The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid” by Allister Sparks.  It is a fascinating tale of just how the battle played out in South Africa. 

The book was published in 1990 before Nelson Mandela had been released and before the transition when Blacks first received the vote.  This makes some of the comments a bit dated, but also fantastically interesting as one can compare Spark’s thoughts and predictions against what actually happened in the succeeding years.  The most poignant example of this was a passage describing Robert Mugabe, the prime minister and then president of neighboring Zimbabwe.  For those not familiar, Mugabe is now an oppressive dictator that has brutalized his people, destroyed his nation’s once prosperous economy, brought about the second-highest inflation in history, caused famine, intimidated his political opponents with merciless violence, and declared what basically amounts to open war against all Whites, just to mention a few of his accolades.

It was not always so, however.  Mugabe was actually originally the leader of the liberation movement in Zimbabwe and immediately afterwards served as prime minister, speaking in Mandela-esque fashion of the need for reconciliation with Whites and the need to come together as one nation.  He was widely lauded both at home and abroad for his job in sensibly governing the new Zimbabwe.  All of this is reflected in Sparks’ description of Mugabe and Zimbabwe:

Zimbabwe, of course, has been the most remarkable of all.  A terrible war was fought, great suffering endured, to stave off this fate worse than death in what was Rhodesia.  And when finally in 1980 it was over and the unthinkable happened and that extremist Robert Mugabe, the worst of them all, took over, he offered – reconciliation!  Thirty-five thousand people died in the Zimbabwean war, black Africa’s ugliest, with fearful atrocities committed on both sides, yet today, a handful of years later, black and white live together harmoniously and with no sign of vengeance or retribution.  The tables have not been turned.  The former prime minister, Ian Smith, who imprisoned Mugabe for ten years and refused even to let him attend his only child’s funeral when the boy died tragically during that time, who inflamed the white resistance with his horror stories of what black rule would mean, lives unmolested in retirement on his farm and until recently had a seat in Parliament.  Other white farmers, who were Smith’s most ardent supporters, who financed his party, supported his repressive policies, and fought in his war are prospering today and thanking God that that good chap Mugabe is there to stabilize the country and keep the extremists in check.

Fast forward to today, where the Whites, if they have not been murdered, have all but been chased out of the country and the Zimbabwean people are flocking to South Africa by the thousands (we have a Zimbabwean teacher in my school) as they try to escape suffering that far exceeds anything experienced under White rule.  Many times, I think there is a complacency that sets in in which it is believed that progress is inevitable and that the natural course of things is towards improvement.  The example of Zimbabwe proves this notion to be hopelessly in error.  It is for this reason that in Zimbabwe, South Africa, or any other country, we must be constantly aware that the creation of a better life is not a magical process that occurs inexorably but rather something borne of good management and the continual labor of men and women focused on a better tomorrow.  Let us hope that the early promise of reconciliation preached in South Africa by Mandela and the ANC never turns into a similar nightmare as the one Mugabe is currently wreaking on his country.