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Enough hate speech, it's time to hear the other side. Rob talks about his experience of South Africa during the apartheid era from a white perspective. PRIMARASHNI GOWER DESCRIBES HER EXPERIENCE: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=321940&area=/insight/insight__national/ He reminds our kinsfolk from the West that white South Africans have the same roots and values as they have. However, our situation was very different from that of American and Australian settlers, because unlike them we formed a small minority in a hostile continent. We had to find a way to retain control of our western culture, values and to secure a future for our children. We could have resorted to genocide in order to maintain a majority. Instead we provided improved health care, roads, schools and vastly increased food production, which allowed the black population to grow from 3.5 million in 1900, to 35 million in 1995. As the world changed (improved human rights, end of the Cold War after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union) and black aspirations for political power grew, we were willing to end Apartheid and share power with the black peoples of South Africa. Apartheid laws were repealed one after the other from the late 1970's to the early 1990's. Instead of a reduction of political violence however, this must have been seen as weakness, because the military wings of the ANC (Umkhonto we sizwe) and the PAC (Apla) redoubled their efforts during this time, and stooped to an all time low with the St. James Church massacre. Many people do not know that the ANC had military training camps in Botswana, Mozambique and Angola, of which Quatro was the most notorius. "Prisoners in the African National Congress' Quatro camp in Angola were subjected to daily torture, an Umkhonto we Sizwe cadre imprisoned in the camp in the 1980s told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Tuesday." It would be fair to say that the apartheid era was a period of low-grade civil war, with both sides committing atrocities. Security forces were trying to prevent the death and maiming of thousands (black and white) by AK47, bombs and the particularly brutal necklace murders. Those of us who did not actually live under the same circumstances, should be careful to judge those on both sides responsible for violent acts. This was a power struggle for the future of a country that hung in the balance between 2 civilizations: 1) the white Africans who brought industrial development and improved health care, and 2) a communist-backed black majority rule with an African track record of anarchy, poverty and decline. What we see happening in South Africa today, proves that the reluctance and fear of those white Afrikaners to relinquish political power, was not unfounded.

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