FEW SOUTH AFRICAN TEARS FOR DEPARTED IRON LADY
Apr.
9 (GIN) While the public service record of Baroness Margaret Thatcher
is praised to the skies in most western news accounts, the former U.K.
Prime Minister was recalled more critically among many South Africans.
For
starters, the British Prime Minister, known as the Iron Lady, was a
warm friend of South African dictator PW Botha who was welcomed at No.10
Downing Street in 1984. With this, Botha became the first leader of the
Apartheid regime accorded the privilege of a state visit to UK since
1961the year South Africa left the Commonwealth over their refusal to
end white minority rule.
That same Margaret Thatcher labeled Nelson Mandela and those opposed to white minority rule terrorists.
Thatchers
rule began in 1979 and encompassed critical years before Nelson
Mandelas release and the collapse of the racist apartheid regime. While
she claimed to oppose apartheid, many faulted her governments efforts
as not enough.
Years
later, David Cameron, the current British prime minister, apologized
for Thatchers policies on apartheid when he visited South Africa in
2006. Cameron said his Conservative party had made mistakes by failing
to introduce sanctions against South Africa, and that Thatcher was
wrong to have called the ANC terrorists.
Ms. Thatcher, the Conservative Party leader, died on Monday, following a stroke. She was 87.
Lesiba
Seshoka, spokesperson for the National Union of Mineworkers, described
her reign in Britain as the most difficult time for labor and for trade
unions in Britain.
She
will be remembered as one of the harshest leaders the trade unions in
Britain had to face, and many more in the formal colonial countries
faced the wrath of her reign of terror, he said.
Political commentator Susan Booysen, said Thatcher was one of the people who helped prop up the National Party at the time.
The
apartheid government thrived in her presence, she said. That type of
international support really gave the National Party government a few
extra years of life
I think she also felt a type of brotherhood with
very conservative elements in international politics.
We
are aware that she had not been well for a long time so on that
personal empathy level one can empathize with that, Booysen said. Its
the end of an era. Her type of politics has long ended. Its an exit
for a person whose time has long passed.
According
to journalist Alistair Sparks, Ms. Thatcher had allowed a series of
underground meetings that led to secret meetings between the South
African intelligence service and Mandela in prison.
I wouldn't want to exaggerate the role [of the group], but it did start a process, he said.
All
of that, I must add, was never in Margaret Thatchers mind. I think it
was an unintended byproduct of what she had intended avoiding a
campaign of sanctions in South Africa.
Former
minister Pallo Jordan was less forgiving. I say good riddance.. She
was part of the rightwing alliance with Ronald Reagan that led to a lot
of avoidable deaths. In the end, she knew she had no choice. Although
she called us a terrorist organization, she had to shake hands with a
terrorist and sit down with a terrorist. So who won?
Among
those with kinder words was former South African President FW de Klerk,
the countrys last white leader and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the
Inkatha Freedom Party, a rival of the ANC, who posthumously praised his
dear friend Thatcher as a voice of reason during apartheid.
But
Dali Tambo (son of late ANC leader, Oliver) disagreed. I dont think
she ever got it that every day she opposed sanctions, more people were
dying, and that the best thing for the assets she wanted to protect was
democracy. w/pix of M. Thatcher
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