The Police Slaughter of Protesting Mining Workers in Post-Apartheid South Africa.

[amateur51]

Good Morning, French Frank ...

I cannot agree that Michael White's main point was that the 'llberal-left' ( or 'world community', if you prefer :smiley:) did not know how to react to the situation because apparently it was so incapacitated with shock. Now a veteran and seasoned journalist like himself would be more than aware that to make such a claim would be perilously close to stretching even a Guardian reader's credulity to sheer breaking point!

This was the headline to his admirably honest and perceptive article:

<South Africa's Lonmin miner shootings: do we choose to look away?>

That certainly does not suggest that Mr White was referring to anything other than a deliberate choice of reaction, not one of any unusual and wholly uncharacteristic incapacity to comment. I see no similarity between the police confrontation with striking mining workers in South African with the raving, murderous, racist lunacy of a lone gunman in Norway. The situations are quite different. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the South African situation one can easily understand how any mass confrontation can ultimately descend into chaos and mass casualties, whilst the Norwegian event was quite inexplicable to most of us, I suspect.

If we cannot even agree on the point that Michael White was quite clearly making we haven't much chance of agreeing on anything else regarding the matter?

Oh good!

[french frank]

Well, the headline, of course, would not have been written by Michael White. It would have been added by a lowly sub-editor (I know, I've been one!).

If we cannot even agree on the point that Michael White was quite clearly making we haven't much chance of agreeing on anything else regarding the matter?

True. The Breivik massacre is, of course, quite different. But every such incident is different - which is why you can't make any equation: the left protests about THIS, why doesn't it protest about THAT?

I think that the main point of both Guardian articles and the Gordimer article is that people (the Liberal west, if you like, but in fact most outside the country) are not confronting what looks like a dangerously distintegrating situation in South Africa, of which the Marikana shootings were merely a symptom - and one which does resemble the Breivik massacre in being an act of lunacy (though arguably less purely 'evil' in being - as far as we know - less calculated and planned).

It doesn't (to me) make any sense at all to protest about a single act of violence like that, however horrifying; it does make perfect sense to watch and comment on South Africa's apparently perilous situation. The 'liberal left' (White is suggesting) is looking away because it doesn't want to believe that it's happening, but it should believe it: in doing so it doesn't repudiate the historic struggle to destroy apartheid.

[Serial_Apologist]

Good Morning, French Frank ...

I cannot agree that Michael White's main point was that the 'llberal-left' ( or 'world community', if you prefer :smiley:) did not know how to react to the situation because apparently it was so incapacitated with shock. Now a veteran and seasoned journalist like himself would be more than aware that to make such a claim would be perilously close to stretching even a Guardian reader's credulity to sheer breaking point!

I don't see why. Unless one is so riddled with skepticism as not to be surprised/shocked/horrified by a situation in post-apartheid in which black soldiers/police acted in this way.

This was the headline to his admirably honest and perceptive article:

<South Africa's Lonmin miner shootings: do we choose to look away?>

That certainly does not suggest that Mr White was referring to anything other than a deliberate choice of reaction, not one of any unusual and wholly uncharacteristic incapacity to comment.

Another interpretation could just as easily be that a deliberate choice of reaction for one surprised/shocked/horrified would be to to fear to tread where fools rush in.

[amateur51]

South African police lied about the Marikana shootings last year, in which 34 striking miners were killed, a commission of inquiry has said. Police falsified or withheld documents, and gave false accounts of events, it said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24164411

The government was criticised for its handling of the crisis, and some of the Marikana miners remain angry that not a single policeman has yet been arrested over the shootings.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

South African police lied about the Marikana shootings last year, in which 34 striking miners were killed, a commission of inquiry has said. Police falsified or withheld documents, and gave false accounts of events, it said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24164411

The government was criticised for its handling of the crisis, and some of the Marikana miners remain angry that not a single policeman has yet been arrested over the shootings.

What exactly would Mike White know about the "liberal left" (whatever) when he left that community years ago? For someone who regards Blair's rectum as a moral certainty, its a bit of a stretch.