South Africa on The Huffington Post

Charity Challenges Thanksgiving Overeaters To Burn Calories By Giving

2009-11-25T14:51:31Z

Already feeling guilty about those second (okay, third) helpings you plan to load up on during Thanksgiving dinner? Ubuntu Education Fund is encouraging you to give your way out of those calories and guilt, Tonic reports.

Rather than using shock and bawl, The Ubuntu Holiday Fitness Challenge is both a perfect parody of a true American art form (the infomercial) and a holiday "ask" that will not end up in the garbage. The video (see it, below) absurdly suggests that donating money is an effective way to shed unwanted holiday pounds.

The ad jokingly claims that donators can burn 8 calories per $5 text donation this holiday season. The money goes to the Ubuntu Education Fund is dedicated to working with the people of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa to develop quality education and healthy communities.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

To join the Holiday Fitness Challenge, text "UBUNTU" to 20222.

Get HuffPost Impact On Facebook and Twitter!

Baboons Rob South African Tourists, Steal Food

2009-11-24T15:53:31Z

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Visitors to South Africa's premier holiday destination who are worried about becoming victims of the country's high crime rate could find themselves instead robbed by a more furry kind of felon: baboons.

The cheeky primates have learned how to open car doors and jump through windows in pursuit of tasty sandwiches and snacks.

Yvonne Malan: Reconciliation Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

2009-11-20T11:36:21Z

There is a telling fable on reconciliation:

Once there were two boys, Tom and Bernard. One day Tom stole Bernard's bicycle and every day Bernard saw Tom cycling to school on it. After a year, Tom went up to Bernard, stretched out his hand and said, 'Let us reconcile and put the past behind us.' Bernard looked at Tom's hand. 'And what about the bicycle?'

'No,' said Tom, 'I'm not talking about the bicycle -- I'm talking about reconciliation.'

In January 2008 a video found its way onto YouTube showing four white students from the Reitz student residence at the University of the Free State (South Africa) protesting against racial integration. On the video five black workers, four women and a man, were seen on their knees, being humiliated by the students. One of those women, Laukaziemma Koko, who had worked at the Reitz residence for more than 20 years, said 'they treated us like dogs'. It was not the first time members of the Reitz residence had been involved in acts of racism, but this time the scandal spread far beyond the campus and even made international headlines. The images of the four students feeding the workers dog food and making them take part in drinking contests shocked the world and confronted it with a South Africa that had yet to embrace non-racialism.

The general reaction was outrage against racism that smacked of the heyday of apartheid. Some sectors of the Afrikaner community defended the actions of the "Reitz Four" -- as they became known -- as misguided student fun. Others tried to excuse them as being the products of a racist upbringing. Overwhelming though, their 'student fun' was condemned for what it was: racism of the worst kind. Encouragingly, most whites seemed to be ashamed of the students. The University -- which has a troubled history regarding integration - took firm action. Two of the students were banned from the campus (the other two had finished their studies) and charges were laid against all four, by the university and the state.

In October 2009, however, the new vice-chancellor of the University announced that the charges against the four students would be dropped and that they would be welcomed back to the campus, all in the name of reconciliation. What Lauaziemma Koko, David Molete, Noom Phoro, Mitta Mlseng and Rebecca Adams thought of this was not mentioned. They were not consulted.

The reaction to Jansen's decision has been mixed. The four's defenders and the usual supporters of the rhetoric of reconciliation have welcomed the decision. Yet, judging by the comments on newspaper websites, a number of South Africans are less than impressed and understandably so -- since the beneficiaries of reconciliation are, once again, white South Africans, while the black victims are quietly shoved to the background.

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, reconciliation has come to stand for more than 'Mandela magic' and the 'Rainbow Nation.' During the TRC process it became a useful way to defend the controversial amnesty given to those who committed human rights violations. Amnesty, coated in the language of reconciliation, was hugely beneficial to perpetrators of human rights violations. There were fewer than 2000 actual applications (most perpetrators did not bother to apply) and the vast majority received amnesty, even though it is debatable that they made a full disclosure, as required by the amnesty law. There has been no concerted effort to prosecute perpetrators who either failed to obtain amnesty or who did not apply. Reparations to victims of human rights violations have largely failed, mostly, it seems, due to a lack of interest on the part of the national government.

Reconciliation was invoked by former president FW de Klerk when he tried to wash his hands of responsibility for apartheid crimes. It has become an escape clause for politicians of all persuasions when trying to dodge difficult questions or when asked to take responsibility. Since the end of the TRC process, victims have become increasingly outspoken against the lack of reparations and the failure to prosecute perpetrators who failed to receive amnesty. In December 2008, in a case that challenged the national government's guidelines for prosecuting of apartheid-era perpetrators, a high court judge found that 'national reconciliation' was no excuse not to prosecute perpetrators and hold them accountable. In April this year a judge granted an interdict against presidential pardons for political crimes, in large part because victims were not consulted.

And yet Jansen and his supporters prefer a morality play over justice and responsibility. The world loved the Rainbow Nation success story and chose, along with many South Africans, to ignore that reconciliation can easily be used to justify impunity. Jansen's description of the Reitz Four, that they too are his children and that he cannot disown them, echoes the mythology of the TRC that perpetrators were sinners who strayed and need to be forgiven (and granted amnesty), not as individuals who broke the law and need to be held accountable. Any serious discussion about rights and responsibility is quickly marginalised, with dangerous implications for any attempts to foster a respect for human rights and a respect for the rule of law. The state's case again the four students may still continue but it does not absolve Jansen and his institution from responsibility, including respecting the rights of victims. Jansen's gesture is not magnanimous, but merely perpetuating impunity in the name of reconciliation.

Saul Garlick: Gen Y: The Social Innovation Generation

2009-11-20T09:53:17Z

Cross Posted from Social Edge

Hosted by Saul Garlick (November 2009)

My generation doesn’t want to “paint a wall” or “pile bricks” in the developing world. Generation Y wants to do more.

Generation Y’s thirst is to create something lasting that works -- sustainable projects that will continue to affect the lives of those in rural communities for years to come. My generation is creating a daycare center in South Africa that will attract students by providing lunch that it grows in its own garden.

My generation wants to create something from conception to completion -- from design to implementation. My generation is creating a demonstration farm
complete with a solar drip irrigation system that connects rural Kenyan
farmers with modern farming technologies to replicate on their own land.

My generation wants to
incorporate what it learns from its experience abroad about leveraging
community resources to create sustainable development into its careers
-- as policymakers, as entrepreneurs, as eventual philanthropists.

The Associated Press
this month reported: “Parents in some of Africa's poorest countries
are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give
their children a meal once a day.”

To address these issues,
funds abound, but social change does not. Young people provide an
untapped resource to redirect this ineffectual course. Their idealism
and open-mindedness to new solutions create opportunities to empower
communities to develop and own solutions to poverty. Generation Y is the generation of social innovation.

When I started ThinkImpact,
an organization that has connected American college students and recent
graduates from dozens of campuses nationwide with rural villages abroad
to help reduce poverty through designing and implementing innovative
projects, everyone had doubts that we’d be able to attract the best and
the brightest to leave home for a year, to live in what are sometimes
literal mud huts and to succeed in creating something sustainable. But there’s no shortage of young people -- members of Generation Y -- who want to alleviate poverty as a career.

How can the next generation of funders better meet the demand for funding long-term projects, instead of short-term experiences?

How can we provide real opportunities for career development for these recent graduates when
they are living in some of the most remote locations to help them go
from their experience abroad to a career in development and social
innovation?

How can we improve the “paint a wall programs” that currently exist and
integrate them into new programs that allow more ingenuity and a longer
term commitment, and thereby better suit Generation Y?

Join Saul Garlick, Founder and Executive Director of ThinkImpact, in the conversation.

Mendel Kaplan, 'giant in the Jewish world,' dead at 73

2009-11-19T17:16:08Z

Leading South African-Israeli philanthropist Mendel Kaplan died Thursday in Cape Town after suffering a stroke on Tuesday. He was 73.
...

Ashley Rindsberg: UN's Goldstone Sent 13-Year-Old Boy to Prison for Protesting Apartheid

2009-11-19T14:16:47Z

Richard Goldstone is one of today's most renowned names in human rights jurisprudence and international law concerning war crime. Already well known in human rights circles by the time he served as chief prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, Goldstone's esteem only increased as he carried out his role as a UN prosecutor.

But prior to his work for the international court, Goldstone cut his judicial teeth on the bench of South Africa's Supreme Court under the apartheid regime. During this period between 1980 and 1989 -- some of apartheid South Africa's most violent years -- Goldstone ruled on cases which pitted human rights against South African statutory law, legal precedence, and judicial convention.

In the most poignant case, Goldstone ruled against the 1986 appeal of a 13-year-old boy who had been sentenced to jail for disrupting school as a protest against apartheid and increasingly draconian "emergency laws" used to preserve order and squelch opposition to the government. Goldstone, according to The New York Times, provided no comment to his decision to uphold the sentence of the lower court.

In a similar case that year, Judge Goldstone ruled against two appellants who had been convicted for possession of a cassette tape that had a recording of an interview with Oliver Tambo. Tambo, along with Nelson Mandela, was a founding member of the ANC Youth League and later served Secretary General of the ANC itself.

The case, brought before the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court, on which Goldstone sat, centered on whether the two young men had attempted to disseminate the tape on behalf of the ANC, thereby violating the Internal Security Act No. 74 of 1982 -- a piece of legislation that some human rights scholars have called a crucial weapon in the regime's "arsenal of terrorism legislation."

Goldstone commented in that case that Mr. Tambo's opening words on the recording indicated "beyond a reasonable doubt that the cassette in question was published or disseminated under the direction or guidance or on behalf of the African National Congress," -- a fact that, in Golstone's opinion, was sufficient basis to uphold the convictions of the two young men.

According to the Supreme Court ruling on the case, other key subversive phrases made by the ANC leader on the recording included an encouragement to the people of South Africa to resist the apartheid regime, and Mr. Tambo's call to "let us change our own country into the kind of society we want it to be."

Goldstone's comment that the two young men had acted as agents of the ANC was later cited by the higher appellate court as reason to once again uphold the convictions.

The case of the 13-year-old boy Goldstone ruled against came in the context of a wave of national protests and school disruptions by South Africa's black youth against apartheid and the brutal emergency laws. Authorities responded with mass detention of children who participated in the protests, or were suspected of doing so. By the fall of 1985, at least 800 students had been detained. By December of 1986, South African security officials admitted to having detained more than 1,800 teenagers, while reports surfaced that policemen routinely whipped children at their school desks if they were suspected of supporting the anti-apartheid protests.

Goldstone was slammed by South African human rights organizations for his 1986 ruling against the boy. In a later interview with The New York Times' Bill Keller (who called Goldstone a "cross between King Solomon and Ghostbusters"), the South African judge said about his ruling against the boy that the emergency laws left him "no way out."

But criticism of Goldstone has not been limited to decisions made during his tenure on the bench of apartheid South Africa's Supreme Court. South African journalist and historian R.W. Johnson wrote in an October, 2009 piece that Goldstone had made serious ethical breaches in his capacity as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY).

During preparation for the trial against former Yugoslavian military commanders, according to Johnson, Goldstone was informed by higher-ups that if he did not secure an indictment by November, 1994, he would not receive budgetary funding for the following year. Goldstone quickly moved to indict the only person there was evidence against, even though Goldstone admitted that the defendant "wasn't an inappropriate first person to indict."

Johnson, in his piece, "Who Is Richard Goldstone," noted that the indictment "was so inappropriate that the judges in The Hague passed a motion severely censuring Goldstone."

Goldstone has become the center of controversy in recent months regarding his report to the UN Human Rights Council following a fact-finding mission he led into Israel's 2008 Operation Cast lead, later known as the Gaza War. The report, which has been praised by some but heavily criticized by others, is being considered by the UN Security Council.

Emma Ruby-Sachs: Semenya's Struggle Teaches Us About Understanding Gender Identity

2009-11-19T11:04:50Z

The International Association of Athletics Federation has decided that Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose gender identity stirred up huge controversy after her decisive win in the 800m race at the world championships, will be permitted to keep her title and prize money.

It is, without a doubt, the right decision.

But that does not mean that this is a moment to celebrate.

The debate surrounding Semenya's gender illustrates the real lack of understanding - around the world - for gender identity and the many permutations that exist within the spectrum of male to female.

Semenya was subjected to gender testing because of her muscular build, deep voice and quick improvement in running times. In short, she just seemed too boyish to be a girl.

She was tested for not being female enough even though the kind of conditions required to disqualify a self-identified girl from competing in boys sports are quite extreme. In fact, according to the IAAF's own policy document on gender verification (2006), women can compete even if they are genetically male:

Conditions that should be allowed:

(a) Those conditions that accord no advantage over other females:
- Androgen insensitivity syndrome (Complete or almost complete - previously called testicular feminization);
- Gonadal dysgenesis (gonads should be removed surgically to avoid
malignancy);
- Turner's syndrome.

As well, athletes who choose to have sex changes are permitted to continue to compete in sport as long as they have completed a mandatory number of months in hormone therapy.

If we know that women presenting some male characteristics are still likely to permissibly compete with women, then why are we singling those individuals out for genetic testing? More importantly, how do we really define what is too male to compete in women's sport? And how do we distinguish being too male from being too tall, too efficient at using oxygen or too small? How do sex characteristics take on a level of importance above and beyond any other genetic advantage?

Well, I can answer that question: While we as a society are trained to celebrate strength, efficiency, natural talent and intelligence, we are not trained to celebrate those who stray from understood gender norms. Being too male is a serious transgression of social protocol, one to be punished and rectified.

But being born intesexed or identifying as a gender other than male or female might be no more of an advantage than Michael Phelps' arm span. They are simply aspects of an individual's make-up that assist their pursuit of athletic greatness. Nothing is stopping us from celebrating these athletes and their counterparts in everyday society as the unique and talented individuals they are.

I am happy that Semenya, after her long journey, will be recognized as an international athletic superstar. I hope that her struggle illustrates just how much work there is left to be done to promote understanding of and support for the variety of human gender expression all around us.

SLIDESHOW: Art For A Better World: Five Exhibits That Inspire Change

2009-11-17T21:05:07Z

Have trouble understanding modern art? Impact sought out some special exhibits that seek to make a change in the world, be it through raising awareness or physically building art out of trash. Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

John Morton: Gathering Of Peacemakers: Parliament Of The World's Religions 2009

2009-11-17T10:22:21Z

Emmy Award-winning actress, Leigh Taylor-Young, and I will present "Gathering of the Spirit of Peace in All" at the Parliament of the World's Religions 2009 in Melbourne, Australia. The Parliament was first held in Chicago in 1893 and brings together the world's religious and spiritual communities, their leaders and their followers. Leigh and I will be attending and presenting at this gathering to explore peace within the context of interreligious understanding and cooperation.

On Saturday, December 5, 2009 from 8:00 - 9:00 am, Leigh and I will share key messages from our many years of experience promoting peace around the planet. Based on the meditations CD, "Gathering of Peacemakers and Spirit of Peace," which we made jointly in 1989, our presentation will focus on how we as individuals can awaken to the peace that already exists within us, with the result then being peace in the world.

During our presentation, Leigh will conduct a live guided meditation entitled "Spirit of Peace." This meditation, adapted from the CD version, will provide anyone who chooses to participate with a beautiful inner journey for experiencing the peace within ourselves. The meditation will then serve as a catalyst for creating a healthy, balanced and peaceful planet.

In my meditation on the CD, "Gathering of Peacemakers", the focus is upon the innate spiritual calling to come to peace with others. In Leigh's meditation, the phrase "It is good" is repeated throughout, recalling those words from the Bible and gently asking us to consider a new beginning for our planet. The meditation I present on the CD, "Gathering of Peacemakers," starts with an inner baptism as a way to release ourselves from restrictions of the past. It also includes an uplifting adaptation of the famous peace prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. Listening to these meditations can produce a profound inner alignment with active peaceful awareness and a healthy vision for our planet.

As the CD insert notes, each of us has the power to create peace in our lives. As we align our personal strengths with peace, we create peaceful results in the world. So we encourage everyone to place ourselves in peace first, as the way to bring forward peace for our planet.

In an interview posted on her website, www.lty.com, Leigh reflects on how we are being called upon at this time to "sit down and find a way to move our differences into the spirit of one accord; to come to a place where we are committed to peace." Leigh continues, "My desire to reach out more to world peace comes from my own process of working for my own inner peace and a desire to touch other people with the concept that peace is possible. It's not something that's far away from us; it already exists within each one of us."

Leigh has served as Special Advisor in Arts and Media for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In addition to her keynote address for UNEP's 20th Anniversary, Leigh was the Goodwill Ambassador from the United Nations for ICEBRIDGE: First Arctic Environmental Forum 1995. Leigh is currently a spokesperson and representative for the Institute for Individual and World Peace (www.iiwp.org), a non-profit organization founded by John-Roger, D.S.S. and where I serve as Spiritual Director. IIWP is dedicated to studying, identifying and presenting the processes that lead to peace.

A fundamental teaching of IIWP is that peace is the cessation of againstness. If acceptance of someone different occurs, peace is being expressed. If sharing with others occurs, peace is being expressed. If moving past emotions and judgments to understanding and empathy occurs, peace is being expressed. If love and caring are experienced, peace is.

Through IIWP, we promote the awareness that as a group we can bring forward the consciousness of peace. First, we bring peace in ourselves. We make an effort to find the peace that's present inside, regardless of where we are and what the circumstances are. We can always be aware of that peace and do our best to express the peace that's present--to see it in any situation, to see it in others, to look for ways to allow peace to have dominion, and to let peace reign in what we're doing and experiencing together.

In 1999, I participated in the Parliament of World's Religions by assisting in the planting of a Peace Pole on Robbins Island, South Africa. I look forward to returning to the Parliament this year along with Leigh, as we gather together with peacemakers from around the world, promoting peace, love and harmony for our planet.

To learn more about the Parliament of the World's Religions 2009 and to register so you can join us, click here or visit http://www.parliamentofreligions.org

To purchase the "Gathering of Peacemakers and Spirit of Peace", either on CD or downloadable MP3, click here.
*********************************************************************************************
John Morton, D.S.S. is the author of two inspiring books, The Blessings Already Are and You Are the Blessings: Meditations and Reflections on Life, God and Us. Learn more about John at www.TheBlessings.org. Contact John at johnmorton@TheBlessings.org.

Kavisha Seevnarain, South African Woman, Survives Being Thrown From Bridge By Carjackers

2009-11-16T12:44:45Z

JOHANNESBURG — Police say a South African woman has survived after carjackers threw her off a nearly 200-foot (60-meter)-tall bridge.

Police Superintendent Vincent Mdunge said Monday that no arrests have been made although four suspects were questioned and released.

Kumi Naidoo, New Greenpeace President, "Disappointed" In Obama

2009-11-16T11:47:39Z

The new head of Greenpeace, South African Kumi Naidoo, has told the BBC he will make human life more of a priority for the environmental group.

Mr Naidoo also criticised US President Barack Obama for failing to make the fate of the earth a priority.

Ras Dumisani, Reggae Singer, Angers South Africans After Butchering National Anthem (VIDEO)

2009-11-16T11:24:08Z

It's excruciating. And, to tens of thousands of YouTube viewers who have sent around the video, it's pretty hilarious. But to South African sports fans, it's sacrilege.

The footage is of reggae singer Ras Dumisani tunelessly singing "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," the South African national anthem, at the start of an international rugby game against France at Toulouse's Stade Municipal. South Africa went on to lose the game, but the anthem hurt more.

Now, The Times of London has reported that the South African Rugby Union has lodged a complaint with the French authorities over the anthem. Union President Oregan Hoskins is quoted as saying:

"The performance of the anthem is a treasured part of any rugby international and we take great pains in this country in the selection and rehearsal of artists to ensure that we appropriately honour all anthems.

However French officials hit back, saying they had not made the choice of Dumisani to sing the anthem, instead blaming the South African embassy. According to Reuters, the embassy is too denying responsibility, and also accusing the French of hanging the South African flag the wrong way.

Naas Botha, a legendary South African player, even told South African paper Business Day that the anthem might have been behind the team's loss:

"It was sad that we lost the game," said Botha. "But after that absolute disaster of a national anthem, everything went wrong. It was shocking and definitely didn't assist in creating a calm atmosphere for the team, as it should have. Someone has to be taken to task for this disaster.

And what does Dumisani have to say for himself? The BBC reports Dumisani blamed the match organizers, who wanted to "sabotage" his performance with a "too old" microphone and a "too fast" orchestra. The plot thickens...

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!

Fikile Mbalula, SA Minister, Tells Police To "Shoot The Bastards", Days After 3-Year-Old Shot

2009-11-12T15:44:23Z

South Africa's deputy police minister has stood by his force's tough, shoot-to-kill policy, days after a three-year-old boy was shot dead by officers.

Saul Garlick: The Meaning of Mandela

2009-11-12T12:11:08Z

Mandela is in the air. Though he is 91 years old, aged and
fragile, his inspiring vision of a society that can be mended is as strong as
ever. I read the New York Times piece on Mr. Mandela ("Mandela Endures as South
Africa’s Ideal," 11/8/2009) and his continued relevance in South Africa and the
world. Described as “perhaps the world’s most beloved statesman and a natural
showman,” Mandela is a hero in his own league. A must-see holiday movie is even
coming out – “Invictus,” meaning unconquerable – to honor his leadership and
legacy.

As we begin to contemplate a South Africa – or world –
without Nelson Mandela, we should also appreciate what we have right now. Every
time I visit South Africa, I am amazed by the progress that the country has made
in the short period that it has enjoyed a democratic government. Roads are
being built in the rural reaches of the nation, the financial system remains
the most advanced and functional in Africa, and education is moving in the
right direction with new approaches and curricula.

A South Africa that is inspired by Mandela will be no
different from a South Africa with a living Mandela. This is a point of
contention, as Mondli Makhanya of the Sunday Times wondered, “Who will bind
[South Africans]?” The answer is the rule of law, the democratic system, and
the people who have worked tirelessly over the last 15 years to bring a country
up from a system of apartheid to becoming the first African nation to host the
world cup in 2010.

I love Mr. Mandela. He inspired me as a college student to
commit my life to social issues. In 2003 I hosted a brief speech over satellite
during which he offered an audience at Johns Hopkins University the impetus to
work hard to reduce global poverty. He kindly stated that his “faith in the people
of the United States to act in the interest of all the people of the world was
vindicated by people like yourself in [ThinkImpact*].”

Just like his work for the nation of South Africa laid the
foundation for individuals and a country to succeed, Mandela’s words inspired
this young social entrepreneur to find opportunities to heal the world. I know
that Mandela is aging and I respect the many onlookers who wonder if South
Africa has any hope of success when the father of the nation is no longer with
us. But I believe they have underestimated his legacy if they think South
Africa is so weak. The place is vibrant and dynamic, if flawed and complicated.
But it has already seen two successors (and one interim successor) to the
presidency and civil war was averted without the nation making compromises that
undermined its peaceful longevity.

The main barriers to the country’s greatness – to match its
beloved founder’s magnanimity – rest in the HIV/AIDS crisis and whether the
tide can be stemmed soon. Leaders there are now following in Mandela’s giant
footsteps. Expect more great things from South Africa.

*At the time of the speech, the organization was called the
Student Movement for International Relief, which was the exact wording he
offered during the lecture.

David Kaufman: Marriage Equality and the Myth of "Gay Apartheid"

2009-11-11T14:43:10Z

Last week's successful repeal of Maine's same-sex marriage laws was a painful reminder that the United States remains far from a "perfect union". Yet as disappointing as the Maine defeat was, the real disappointment actually resulted from the reactionary tactics employed by many in the Marriage Equality movement. Tinged with racial overtones and dolled up with dubious numerical data, self-appointed same-sex leaders reached new highs in their low-down blame game.

Among the lowest was David Mixner, the longtime civil rights activist and author for whom an "expanding system of Gay Apartheid in America" must now be resisted by any means necessary. Positing the need for civil disobedience and fearful of "surviving more of the same", Mixner dramatically implored his blog's readers to rise up, fight back and remember that "Freedom, Liberty, Justice are not mere words".

Mixner's clever use of identity politics would certainly be admirable if it weren't so deplorable. The accusation of Apartheid and appropriation of its liberation struggle demonstrate Mixner's obvious indifference to both historical sensitivities and the power of his own prose.

Smugly confident as he preaches to the converted, Mixner is all metaphor and analogy -- with little meat to back him up. Gay Apartheid, he laments, is becoming an established "way of life and everyone is beginning to adjust to it". Yet while LGBTs certainly contend with inequitable political protections, there is (thankfully) no Gay Apartheid in these United States of America.

A quick history lesson: Apartheid refers to a South African political system brutally enforced from 1948 to 1994 and anchored around government engineered racial and ethnic segregation. At its best, Apartheid rendered its victims vote-less, citizenship-less, land-less entities within their own nation. At its worst, arrest, torture, imprisonment, exile and death awaited South Africans (of all colors) who rallied against the Apartheid regime. South Africa's majority Black, Indian and Colored populations were forced to carry identity cards, barred from city-center living and required permits to move within society. There were virtually no legal mechanisms to resist the Apartheid leadership, let alone elections to challenge it.

Yet here is Mixner crying Apartheid -- along with fellow LGBT talking head Herb Hamsher in a post on this site from the same day. Cloaking their language in anger and outrage, Mixner and Hamsher conveniently confuse political defeat with wholesale political disenfranchisement. They invoke the legacy of Apartheid as a shock tactic, a wake-up call, a rallying to arms; all the while dishonoring the brave thousands who literally took to arms -- beaten, imprisoned and killed as part of the anti-Apartheid movement.

The most worrisome element of this historical neglect isn't its lack of tact -- but rather its lack of fact. Voters have struck down same-sex marriage laws in all 31 states where it has been put on the ballot and this is indeed disheartening. But the resulting legislation has not caused gay people to lose their jobs, their homes, their passports -- their very freedom of movement. There are no gay identity cards or impoverished townships, segregated public services or forced relocation. Gay ghettos may exist in many urban centers, but Chelsea, West Hollywood and Boystown could hardly be classified as Gay District 9s let alone Gay Sowetos.

Laced with historical inaccuracies and steeped in elitism and entitlement, the term Gay Apartheid is deeply offensive and unnecessarily divisive. "It insults not just every person who lived under Apartheid, but the future generations that will have to deal with its consequences," observes South African AIDS activist and Nobel Prize Nominee Zackie Achmat, who notes that 20 million South Africans were imprisoned during the Aparhteid period. "This language reflects a self-obsessed commodificaton of identity politics by American LGBT leaders," adds Achmat, who founded the Treatment Action Campaign in 1998. "They fail to recognize connections to broader social justice issues both in the US and abroad."

Along with Gay Apartheid, phrases such as "Gay Jim Crow", "Gay is the New Black" and "back of the bus" are additional examples of the race-baiting rhetoric clearly aimed at the Oval Office. Sure, these homo-hysterics may make for good headlines. But their true intent is clear, their prejudice no longer deniable and their use totally unacceptable in any civil Civil Rights movement.

As it hogs the media spotlight in tandem with the Marriage Equality debate, homo-hysteria also denies important pro-LGBT advances the oxygen they deserve. The signing of the Matthew Shepard Act, ending the travel ban on HIV-positive foreigners and the recent election of openly gay mayors in cities like Chapel Hill, NC are hardly footnotes -- particularly to the grassroots activists who championed them. They may lack Mixner's heft or Hamsher's Hollywood connections -- but their causes are no less valid (or vital) to the LGBT masses. Nor are other battles still in play, including an end to workplace discrimination, Don't Ask/Don't Tell and the scourge of HIV.

Barely a week after the Maine defeat, LGBT leaders are calling for an economic boycott -- or "time out" -- of the White House and Obama. Unsurprisingly, Mixner is right behind them, exercising his myopic might and demonizing the very Democratic White House that could actually advance his agenda. Obama certainly has yet to fulfill the campaign commitments made to LGBT voters, but there remains every reason to believe he will make those promises whole.

There will be no promises, however, from Obama's Republican replacement -- elected in 2012 as a result of Left Wing reactionary recklessness. Far Righter than Reagan, more backward than Bush, this is the regime Mixner should actually be attacking -- a regime that could truly usher in the era of Gay Apartheid in America.

I asked Mr. Mixner to comment for this story, to explain his claim of Gay Apartheid and justify its continued (ab)use in his battle for Marriage Equally. He politely declined in favor of "agreeing to disagree", an unusually passive ploy for a man with such a commendable track record of public activism.

Mixner's diss was as surprising as it was disappointing. After all, as rioters raged and prisoners rotted, even Mandela managed to meet Botha during the height of Apartheid's tyranny. But Gay Apartheid or no Gay Apartheid, I'm hardly some P.W. Botha. And as for David Mixner -- well, he's certainly no Nelson Mandela.

Race Row Threatens Power For South African World Cup

2009-11-11T12:09:45Z

By Daniel Howden, The Independent

An ugly race row has left South Africa's national power company leaderless and is threatening to turn the lights out in the country only nine months before it is due to host the World Cup.

Bobby Godsell, the chairman of Eskom, which generates 95 per cent of electricity in sub-Saharan Africa's biggest economy, resigned this week after being accused of trying to force out his black chief executive.

The power struggle comes as experts warn that South Africa faces another season of blackouts that have prompted national emergencies in the past two years. It also highlights the crisis of leadership in Jacob Zuma's new government, which is being accused of appeasing "racial populists" as it seeks to contain strongly divergent voices within the ruling ANC party.

Read more at The Independent

Alicia Keys Works With Keep A Child Alive, Featured on "Making A Difference"

2009-11-10T17:02:52Z

Alicia Keys was featured on "NBC Nightly News" tonight as part of their "Making A Difference" series. Though the series typically focuses on ordinary people doing extraordinary things, this week's segments feature celebrities and how they're giving back.

Lester Holt talked with Alicia Keys about her work with Keep A Child Alive, providing drugs and aid to people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. Holt also traveled to South Africa with Keys to meet some of the children she's helped in an orphanage.

WATCH:

Get HuffPost Impact On Facebook and Twitter!

Police Shoot Dead Three-Year-Old In South Africa For Allegedly Holding Pipes

2009-11-10T16:09:34Z

Police in South Africa have allegedly shot dead a three-year-old boy because they mistook a metal pipe he was holding for a gun.

Michael Henry Adams: The Pride of Precious Jones

2009-11-09T13:20:02Z

Warning: Spoiler alert!!! Do not read further if you haven't already seen the movie "Precious"!

Few have responded to Lee Daniels' newest offering with indifference. In the New York Times A. O. Scott gushed,

"Push achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does "Precious" avoid the traps of well-meaning preachy lower-depths realism. It howls and stammers, but it also sings...Inarticulate and emotionally shut down...Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look..."

In no uncertain terms, writing in the New York Press, outraged critic Armand White counters, "Not since"The Birth of a Nation" has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as "Precious". Full of brazenly racist clichés... it is a sociological horror show. Offering racist hysteria masquerading as social sensitivity..."Precious" permits a cultural version of that 1960s political controversy "benign neglect"--its agreed-upon selection of the most pathetic racial images and social catastrophes helps to normalize the circumstances of poverty and abandon that will never change or be resolved. You can think: Precious is just how those people are (although Cops and the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich shows offer enough evidence that white folks live low, too)."

In contrast Oprah Winfrey is supposed to have been so taken by Brooklyn-based poet Sapphire's novel Push that, notwithstanding a perpetually crowded schedule she read it all the way through, and then she read it again. Admiration of this dark but forceful tale made the media-titan delighted to learn that producer and director Lee Daniels had adapted the unlikely book into his far less likely movie, "Precious". Featuring an all-star cast, including comedy star Mo'Nique, singing diva Mariah Carey, rocker Lenny Kravitz and Hollywood beauty Paula Patton, the already acclaimed film opened commercially, nationwide, on Friday, November 6th. Ms. Winfrey and hit filmmaker Tyler Perry had underscored their endorsement, as co-executive producers.

Yet "Precious" is not the sort of movie that immediately springs to mind when one imagines a 'post-racial America'. Daring to have the audacity of hope a year ago, indeed I mused about the possibility of a different kind of world, where different kinds of stories could emerge to illuminate us all. In it, familiar ones, like "Precious", would be ridiculed as totally implausible, as frightful tales so fantastic, so over-the-top, that in our newly enlightened epoch they had become unbelievable.

In New York, half of all black men have no job. So I thought, 'What if, looking at the problem of creating work for the unemployed, a new type of solution was tried? What if giving tax bailouts, tax-breaks and multi-million dollar bonuses to unscrupulous millionaires and billionaires, weren't automatically deemed to be the surest way, the only way, of creating new jobs for the poor?'

Similarly, considering both Push the novel, and "Precious" the movie, afraid of the way blacks have long been caricatured as primarily the down-and-out demons who inhabit this drama, in the era of Barack Obama, I wondered, why can't black people at last tell stories that we haven't got to tell before.

"Precious" stars formerly-unknown actress Gabourey Sidibe as Claireece Precious Jones. Against a backdrop of unrelenting poverty, in a squalid, graffiti-bombed tenement, this dark-skinned girl, who's morbidly overweight, endures a life of living hell.

In most ways, this 'hell' she inhabits, 1980's Harlem, is as utterly segregated as a South African homeland township. In those far-off days so many landlords had defaulted on paying taxes on the unmaintained apartment buildings they owned, that the City of New York held title to two-thirds of the district's residential real estate. Whites in Harlem, back then, were few and far between, with mostly light-skinned people of color acting as their surrogates at the Welfare Office, schools and other institutions of authority. Notwithstanding overwhelming bleakness, plenty of entrepreneurial 'merchants' appreciated the profitability of selling a little for a lot in such an environment.

This period coincided with the time I moved to Harlem. With Rodney King's attackers exonerated, like lots of other people, I wondered if a chronically neglected Harlem might erupt. When a South-Central L. A. mob of blacks viciously attacked a truck driver absolutely uninvolved with that other act of brutality, I was appalled. I thought, and said, 'how can we, who have suffered so, inflict such an unjust injury on someone else?'

But there I was, living in a place that's unaffordable for me, and tens of thousands of others, but relatively cheap for prosperous newcomers. Black or white, their presence brings ever more improvements, which are not signs of hope for us, but harbingers of certain disaster to come. So, more frequently than I'd like to admit, for all my fine feelings, or endless talk of equality, here am I, also guilty of contempt and loathing of those who manipulate public policy and every other means, not to improve the lot of the poor, but to fulfill the 'highest use' of property that suddenly seems desirable. I'm ashamed, and yet I'm torn. I better understand the privileged preserving inequality as an often unconscious effort to maintain power, with black expressions of bias as the blustering fury of people who are utterly devoid of the ability to control anything.

Precious experiences all this, from the perspective of someone who is far poorer and who has fewer options than even I do.

Her abusive mother only pauses from denouncing whites and queers long enough to attack her daughter with savage blows and denigrating curses. A good part of the mother's routine also consists of playing the numbers, eating down-home Southern favorites, that Precious cooks, and watching TV. Sometimes, however, to relive the tedium, it includes compelling Precious to get off of her 'fat, stupid, ass and come make mommy feel good', which is this 'doting mother's' way of demanding a session of oral sex.

Precious' mother justifies these services of her daughter, as only just. Precious' father, her mother's long term boyfriend, has lavished incestuous attentions on their daughter since she was three. In a warped imagination then, to her mother, Precious was a 'scheming temptress and rival' from the time she was a toddler. Precious her mother postulates, has alienated her lover's affections for her. That he impregnates Precious, twice, before infecting her with AIDs, and then dying, to Precious' mother, Mary Johnson, only strengthens her deluded stance.

'This is too, too much,' I said, as though making some eloquent pronouncement. My friend Michael McCollom actually was intelligent, observing how Precious' woe was relieved by her unfailing dignity, "True, just like the 'doll test', when black children prefer and choose white dolls, it's sad to see her combing her hair and imagining there's a slim, white, blonde that's reflected in the mirror. But no matter what happens, wherever she goes, her hair is always combed, her clothes are clean and her ensemble is color-coordinated. Even before she could read, Precious exhibited pride, and that's what motivated her to learn to read and to improve her life..."

"For as many stories as there are hues and colors and variations of colors in the African American race, this is just one," Oprah Winfrey recently said about "Precious", adding, "I feel about this story the same way I felt about "The Color Purple"...This feels like a modern-day "Color Purple"...The story of abuse in our community and in many communities is still a taboo subject. The story and the arc of hope and possibility and empowerment is an evergreen, timeless story..."

True enough, wicked iniquitous individuals, who could sell out their people for thirty pieces of silver, whose children, are valued little beyond their ability to increase Welfare payments exist and flourish among us everywhere. They watch dispassionately as their children are abused by others without intervening, scam 'the man' and his 'system', lie, to the world and themselves. Yet even the most odious villains often started out as innocent victims, links in a chain of revulsion that extends all the way to slavery times and back. I was prepared to hate and reject the predictable pain of Push, and "Precious". But ultimately I was convinced that both are as true a portrayal of one segment of black life as the Cosby Show and as visceral a reflection of universal suffering as King Lear is, if not as satisfyingly artful. And, this caused me to wonder anew.

Almost every African American knows, is related to, or is acquainted with a Precious Jones or her mother, Mary. In New York, even when they inhabit evolving ghettos as gentrfyers, most whites pass such people by, learning to not really notice them en passant, even as they 'politely' smile "hi," or wave in greeting. As blacks, even as rich blacks, however refined or educated we might become, these folks are not as easily evaded or ignored. Because they are our neighbors, childhood chums, close relatives or a boyfriend's cousins, from time to time our lives collide, and like it, or not, the experience makes for a true empathy that might otherwise be impossible. That's partly because knowing that to many people, irrespective of accomplishment, we are all mere Niggers, even when advantaged, one appreciates how easily one could become a grim statistic, too.

What, then, might it be like in America if whites turned black and blacks turned white? If, miraculously, whites could experience the collective dread of oppression that blacks endure, and if blacks could enjoy the almost universal privilege that whites know but usually deny; what would happen? Recalling their former benefit would the former whites respond to prejudice with the same forbearance and complacency they often counsel now? Subject to disproportionate poverty, arrest, indebtedness, incarceration, drop-out rates and crime, would the one-time whites doggedly, placidly work toward self-improvement? Abroad, in want, in the land of plenty, would they observe the ease and affluence of the formerly black, once reviled whites, docilely dreaming of emulating this success, or might they rob them instead and burn down their houses?

As an historian, it's instructive to recall a revolution triggered by citizens who felt inadequately represented and consulted, in exchange for their burden of taxes. The grandsons of our white forefathers saw a beckoning Texas and took it. Their sons, in turn, finding their profitable easy lifestyle as slave-holders threatened, rebelled. One hardly imagines that people with such a heritage, merely on account of turning black, would accept their lowly lot without complaint.

"Worse than "Precious" itself was the ordeal of watching it with an audience full of patronizing white folk at the New York Film Festival," insisted Armand White! " A scene such as the hippopotamus-like teenager climbing a K-2 incline of tenement stairs to present her newborn, incest-bred baby to her unhinged virago matriarch, might have been met by howls of skeptical laughter at Harlem's Magic Johnson theater. Black audiences would surely have seen the comedy in this ludicrous, overloaded situation..."

Reading such a harsh critique made it seem worthwhile to walk the couple blocks to Harlem's sole movie house. Because all the shows were sold out on Saturday, we bought tickets for Sunday night. True enough, if the audience at last weeks preview screening Downtown had been mostly white, Sunday's show was predominately, but by no means exclusively, black. Only, on each occasion, irrespective of race, those I spoke to who witnessed "Precious", responded in the same way, with a kind of reverence!

"It was deep," said one young black girl Uptown, petite when compared to Ms. Jones, but wearing gold hoop earrings and a prominently emblazoned Polo ensemble that Precious would approve of. "It was real," echoed her no less stylish friend! 'Isn't it demeaning to blacks, haven't we other stories to tell,' I asked? "No way," answered a group of several hipsters, black, white, Asian and Latino. The key point of their response was best expressed by a biracial looking young woman who said, "Sure it's not all we are, but as long as such misery affects some, it's a story we have to tell and retell, until the suffering stops..."

At movie's end, despised, abused, willfully ignorant Precious finds love and confidence in her own capability. Yet, an unwed AIDS patient, with two small children, one with Down's syndrome: what are the 'realistic' chances of this 'big girl 'from the ghetto being 'really happy', I wondered?

This question was framed against my own lifetime of lofty expectations and grandiose dreams, some of which have become, with greater maturity, little more than laughable, the trivial fantasy of misguided youth. Having been without a job for a long time, struggling with mixed success to write about and do what still seems important, the quickening loss of loved ones makes it clear that even some of one's most admirable aims, will elude one before the end.

Fortunately then, my improving security is helping to make me understand something that Precious Jones, even on her worst day, always knew. Evidently, many of those I saw the move with know it too. Even without acquiring or obtaining all one desires, to know love, and to make it, from one day to the next, is a lot to be happy about.

Saul Garlick: Engaging Ambassadors in Social Entrepreneurship

2009-11-06T13:53:35Z

Three years ago, I spent a summer working on the Angola Desk at the Department of State. The experience was invigorating, but the aftermath has been even more interesting. Ever since I was part of a team inside State, I have been able to reach ambassadors across the globe. I used to joke that I never visit an African country without meeting with the U.S. Ambassador or the Deput, but I am realizing it's not really a joke at all.

Every now and then, after meeting with an Ambassador, I have to ask myself: Why am I doing this? I enjoy the conversations every time, but the meetings themselves should yield more concrete benefits to the work I am doing in communities than just having an Ambassador know that we are there. Sure, it's nice for the Ambassador to know we exist, but it doesn't improve lives, create new social businesses or empower the local community members to alleviate the daily scourge of poverty and marginalization. Those are the points I use to gauge success.

The connectedness that our communities in Kenya and South Africa have with the U.S. Ambassadors is not necessarily marginal, and they are always supportive of our work. Indeed, over the last 3 years, every Ambassador and Charges d’Affair in Kenya and South Africa has visited our sites. Just last week, Ambassador Donald Gips, the newly appointed Ambassador to South Africa, visited a rural village at our invitation to learn more about the work we do there. He was interested, engaged, and impressed by what we have done and what we are working to do.

That it is all well and good for the organization and our egos, but what should we be doing with the Ambassadors beyond this? Or better yet, what is the ideal role of the U.S. Government in connecting with rural, poor African communities? Does the U.S. Foreign Service have a responsibility to American citizens to know what is going on “in the field”?

This year, Think Impact launched a program dubbed the “Global Development Ambassadors,” featuring a trip that takes investors, supporters and young adults to visit the rural communities where we work. When we visit, we are supposedly representing America's way of life for the villagers. Are we better Ambassadors than the actual Ambassador in that affair? Or just the opposite?

Today: Abbas vows to step aside, Saudis on the offensive

2009-11-06T12:30:04Z

Stories compiled by Gizem Yarbil, Connie Kargbo, Channtal Fleischfresser, Christine Kiernan, Ivette Feliciano, and Mohammad al-Kassim, and edited by Rebecca Haggerty.

CAMBODIA/THAILAND: Cambodia recalled its ambassador from Thailand hours after Thailand recalled its ambassador from Phnom Penh. Diplomatic relations between the two countries took a blow after Cambodia offered an advisory position to the controversial former Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

INDIA: A crowded bus plunged down a steep mountain gorge in northern India, killing 32 people and injuring at least 30 others.

SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa is moving to enlist men in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through a series of recent ads catering to men, local organizations are hoping that men will play a greater role in addressing South Africa’s most pressing medical battle.

ZIMBABWE: Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, has once again agreed to work with President Robert Mugabe, ending the three-week boycott of the unity government.

KENYA: 750,000 Kenyans could be affected by flooding as heavy rains hit the East African nation, according to the United Nations. Six people have already been killed in floods and landlsides.

GERMANY: The European head of General Motors has quit his job “in disgust” after GM decided to abandon plans to sell its European unit, Opel.

UK: British Airways will be cutting 1,200 additional jobs, after posting a six-month loss of $361 million.

RUSSIA AND CIS: Russia’s health minister has warned the media not to spread panic over swine flu, claiming that the situation is under control and that H1N1 mortality rates do not exceed that of seasonal flu.

Neighboring Ukraine is taking extraordinary measures to combat the H1N1 outbreak there. The mayor of Kiev wants to impose a quarantine on the capital city, and authorities there are organizing the free distribution of gauze masks to prevent the virus’ spread. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has confirmed its official first case of swine flu.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned against a new wall of hostility and mutual distrust in Europe, adding that old stereotypes and mistrust had yet to be banished. He made the comments in an interview published today in the newspaper Rossisskaya Gazeta.

In the latest development in the PR war between Russia and Georgia, Georgia is launching a Russian-language television station to reach ethnic minorities across the Caucasus.

Human rights worker Arbi Khachukayev has been abducted from Moscow and flown to Chechnya. Khachukayev, who works for the human rights group Memorial, had recently fled Chechnya, fearing for his personal safety.

Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has decided to stop ranking popular blog posts–a move that critics have derided as pandering to Kremlin censorship.

BRAZIL: Israeli President Shimon Peres and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both set to visit Brazil next week — part of Brazil’s strategy as it hopes to cement its larger global role is to mediate the conflict in the Middle East.

HONDURAS: Honduras’ ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, says a U.S.-brokered pact has failed to end the country’s political crisis.

VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez has ordered 15,000 troops along the country’s border with Colombia after months of political tensions.

SAUDI ARABIA: The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan is reporting that scores of Yemeni Houthis fighters have been killed in new Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in the remote mountainous regions along the the borders between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

ISRAEL: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said that Israel is not bluffing in its threats to take military action against Iran’s contentious nuclear program. In the news regarding the UN General Assembly endorsing the Goldstone report, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the vote shows Israel has the moral majority.

PALESTINE: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a televised speech yesterday that he would not seek reelection. The announcement dealt a huge blow to the Obama administration efforts to revive Middle East peace negotiations. In another story, the United Nations General Assembly voted to endorse the Goldstone report which accused Israel of war crimes during its military offensive on the Gaza Strip last winter.

IRAN: Press TV reporting that the US has called on Iran to accept an IAEA-backed proposal for nuclear cooperation as proposed, reiterating that the draft deal would remain unchanged.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a televised speech yesterday that he would not seek reelection. And the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan is reporting that scores of Yemeni Houthis fighters have been killed in new Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in a remote mountainous region.
http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_palestine_abbas.jpg

Traditional African Kings, Queens, Chiefs To Honor Nelson Mandela

2009-11-03T12:35:39Z

JOHANNESBURG — Dancers clad in animal skins opened a royal ceremony Tuesday, a nod to tradition for the forward-thinking kings, queens and chiefs who jetted in to Johannesburg from across Africa to launch an institute they hope will expand their roles on the continent

The two dozen leaders from Morocco to Swaziland describe their new Institute of African Royalty as part think-tank on democracy and development, part lobby group to polish their image. They say their model is anti-apartheid icon and former President Nelson Mandela, and plan to honor the man referred to during Tuesday's proceedings as "Prince Mandela" at a gala ceremony in Pretoria, the capital, later this week.

Rep. Keith Ellison: Read Goldstone's Report on Gaza

2009-11-03T09:25:37Z

Who is afraid of Richard Goldstone? No one should be. Not even the U.S. Congress — yet it is poised on Tuesday to condemn the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Goldstone report on violations of international law related to the Gaza war of late 2008.

Why the fear? Judge Goldstone is no Israel basher. He is famous for apprehending Nazi criminals in Argentina, for serving as chief prosecutor for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals and for chairing the Independent International Commission on Kosovo. He is motivated by his struggle against apartheid in South Africa. A self-described Zionist, he serves as a trustee of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has said that “bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust.”

At the outset, note that four sections of the Goldstone report deal with abuses by Hamas, including the launching of rockets into civilian towns in Israel. The report explicitly states that these rocket attacks are war crimes.

Yet despite Goldstone’s stellar reputation, the veracity of the report — and his motives — has been challenged. The detailed Goldstone report concludes that “the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population.”

I agree with my congressional colleagues — and with Goldstone — that the initial U.N. resolution of Jan. 12, 2009, calling for an investigation of abuses committed during the Gaza crisis was one-sided, focusing exclusively on Israel. That resolution was used by some countries to criticize Israel without acknowledging the abuses by Hamas. Goldstone initially refused to lead the investigation because of the original flawed mandate.

But Goldstone pushed back. He succeeded in expanding the scope of the mission to include an examination of the actions of both Hamas and Israel.

Israel, however, refused to cooperate with the investigation because of the original “one-sided mandate.” What if Israel had participated from the beginning? It could have pointed out that the U.N. Human Rights Council has a history of unfairly singling out Israel for criticism. It could have described Hamas’s abuses, and it could have elaborated on the context of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which includes a long history of attacks on civilians. Israel could have observed the difficulties of combat in urban areas. But instead, Israel condemned the effort and then attacked the final product.

I visited Sderot in southern Israel and saw the havoc and trauma created by Hamas rocket fire. Israelis there live with fear. I have condemned these attacks as war crimes and will continue to do so.

I also visited Gaza and witnessed the devastation wreaked by the recent war. I toured an American school and medical clinics devastated by Operation Cast Lead. A blockade keeps out items such as paper for textbooks and nutritious food. Gazans live in poverty, and most cannot drink their own water. These are cruel violations against the people of Gaza, 56 percent of whom are children.

The Goldstone report does not assign blame. It lays out the facts, as best as Goldstone could ascertain them, and offers recommendations for the future. Congress should use this report as a resource to understand a critical part of the world and to grasp fully the devastating human costs of the status quo.

Instead, Congress is poised to oppose the Goldstone report without holding a single hearing on a document that few members of Congress, if any, have read.

This is a mistake. The stance of this Congress will erode U.S. credibility in the post-Obama world, and it will tarnish our commitment to the principle that all nations must be held to the same standards. Rather than undermine the report or Goldstone, we are at risk of undermining Congress’s and President Barack Obama’s reputation as honest brokers.

Israel can still pursue its own investigation, and critics of the Goldstone report should recognize that Israel is strong enough to withstand inquiry. Self-reflection is one of the hallmarks of a strong democracy. In fact, Israel has investigated itself in the past in connection with the Sabra and Shatila incidents. When nations like the United States, Israel, South Africa and others have pursued the truth through investigations — however uncomfortable — their people and politics have emerged stronger.

We stand for the values of democracy, truth and justice. There is no reason for Congress, Israel or any other party to fear an honest judge. Richard Goldstone is such a judge, and his report should be studied, not dismissed.

Jesse Kornbluth: If You Watch The Preview for Invictus , You'll Read The Book

2009-10-29T08:53:31Z

If you read nothing else this month, please read pages 201 to 253 of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.

It won't take long.

By the time Nelson Mandela walks into that stadium, your heart will be pounding. When he enters the Springboks locker, you'll be in tears. And you'll cry pretty much straight through to the end.

All because, in 1995, the South African Rugby team beat New Zealand to win the World Cup.

If you're like most Americans, you know that Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison --- 18 of them in a tiny cell on Robben Island --- and emerged without hatred to spearhead a peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. But you probably know nothing about the 1995 Rugby World Cup match. John Carlin's brilliant book corrects that, and, along the way, presents a concise biography of a remarkable man.

It is a measure of the quality of this man and his country's World Cup team that Morgan Freeman has produced a film based on the book --- and is playing Nelson Mandela. Matt Damon is François Pienaar, the South African rugby captain. And Clint Eastwood directs. The film opens in mid-December.

Would you take just two minutes to watch the preview?

Why am I urging you to read a book I pushed on you in 2008 --- when, in a matter of weeks, you can get most of its story and message, plus snacks, in two hours?

You know why. It's the news. The headlines change, but the subject is always the same --- divisiveness. Us vs. Us. It's stupid and counter-productive, and if we don't find a better way of talking to one another and living with one another, a very small group of very rich, very cynical people will watch from armored fortresses while the rest of us tear each other limb from limb.

I'd like to avoid that. And one way to start to change the conversation is to poke around in history and see how others --- out of smarts or desperation or just the luck of great leadership --- found their way out of that maze.

Like South Africa, however briefly.

In these pages, Nelson Mandela is a brilliant politician with a genius for disarming his enemies. To Mandela, everyone is human, everyone can be reached. The only question is how. In prison, he would introduce his lawyer to his "guard of honor" --- and his jailers would find themselves shaking hands with an attorney they loathed. And he used his dead time in prison to teach himself Afrikaans, read the Afrikaans newspapers and familiarize himself with Afrikaner history.

Rugby is the favorite sport of Afrikaners, the dominant white tribe in South Africa --- "apartheid's master race." All but one of the 15 players on the Springbok team were white. In a stadium that held 62,000, 95% of the crowd would be white. No wonder that blacks saw the Boks as a symbol of oppression.

"Don't address their brains," Mandela believed. "Address their hearts." One direct way to do that was through sports. People love their teams; the connection is purely emotional. If the Springboks could come to engage both blacks and whites, that might end the sense among blacks that sports in South Africa was "apartheid in tracksuits" --- and might make whites more accepting of blacks as equals.

Mandela did not just lay out a goal. He met and charmed the white lords of rugby, then lobbied for the World Cup to be played in South Africa. He invited François Pienaar, the Springboks captain, to visit him and encouraged him to see his sport as "nation building". Soon the team was learning how to sing "Nkosi Sikele", the black national anthem. And, because a storybook fantasy was becoming reality, the Springboks advanced steadily to the World Cup finals.

The pages that are your homework begin on the morning of the championship game. One of Mandela's bodyguards got an idea: Mandela should enter the stadium wearing a green-and-gold Springbok jersey. Mandela improved on the idea --- his jersey, he said, should have Pienaar's number on it.

Across town, the players had been staying at a hotel. To calm their nerves, they went out for an early morning jog. As they left, Pienaar recalled, "Four little black kids selling newspapers recognized us and chased after us and started calling out our names --- they knew almost everyone on that team --- and the hairs on my neck stood on end... It was the moment when I saw, more clearly than ever before, that this was far bigger than anything we could ever have imagined."

Five minutes before kickoff, Nelson Mandela walked onto the field to greet the players. To the Springbok jersey, he had added a Springbok hat. "When they caught sight of him," Carlin writes, "the crowd seemed to go dead still." And then the chant --- from the almost all-white crowd --- began: "Nel-son! Nel-son! Nel-son!"

I'm going to leave it there, so as not to spoil the magic of the next pages for you. Just know that what happened in that stadium that afternoon was a crazy quilt of glory: atonement, forgiveness, liberation and celebration. It's the kind of event that happens when people who have known only hatred and fear drop the burden of history and move past their differences. Winning a game? That day South Africa climbed a mountain.

If the film is as good as the preview, I like to think that American audiences will cheer. Because --- for once --- a national leader had perfect pitch, and all of his countrymen knew it, and they all got it right.

In our country, hate sells. Even the idealists among us must be wondering if the idea of brotherhood can compete against it. Well, it can. It did.

[Cross-posted from HeadButler.com]

South African Students Accused Of Making Racist Video Should Be Reinstated, Says Academic

2009-10-26T17:03:33Z

A two-year-old video widely seen as racist is sparking debate in Africa again after an academic called for the students involved to be allowed to resume their studies.

Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Free State Jonathan D Jansen, himself a black South African, made the speech two weeks ago. In the speech, Jansen brought up the infamous Reitz case, in which four white students were kicked out of school and faced criminal charges after making a video that apparently showed them urinating on food and then forcing black members of staff to eat the food.

The speech was widely reported, including in the South African paper The Star which ran the transcript of the speech. One part read:

...to dismiss the video as a product of four bad apples is too easy an explanation. This video-recording was preceded by a long series of racial incidents protesting racial integration especially in the residences of the university. Not all of these racially-charged incidents made the press; in fact, were it not for the public release of the video-recording, no-one outside the university would have known about it. And few outside the campus realise that what is now regarded as an offensive video-production in fact won an institutional award for its content.

After the speech, many outlets reported that the students were formally allowed to resume their studies. CNN reported that it was not known if the students had decided to return.

On Monday Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande demanded that Jansen make clear if he was reinstating the students or not, according to The Star.

Whilst the students may be allowed back to study, they are still facing potential criminal charges. However, the AFP reported Monday that the case will be delayed and will now not reach the courts until February 2010.

Christian Science Monitor wrote on the implications of Jansen's speech and highlighted how the incident has revealed divisions that many thought were past:

Many white South Africans welcomed Mr. Jansen's speech as a sign of reconciliation, in the mold of Nobel peace prize laureates President Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Many blacks - and much of the leadership of the ruling African National Congress party - attacked the speech as naive and not tough enough on the racism that persists even 15 years after the fall of the white-dominated apartheid government. All of this raises troubling questions about how much has actually changed in racial attitudes in South Africa, and what it will take to bring both reconciliation and social change to segments of society that, seemingly, are not quite ready to change.

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!