[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:14070] Reagan's heart of darkness

[Alfred Kagan]

>From: "Kathleen de la Pena McCook" <kmccook at tampabay.rr.com>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2004 21:23:32 -0400
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:14070] Reagan's heart of darkness
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>-Reagan's heart of darkness
>
>By Derrick Z. Jackson
>
>Boston Globe June 9, 2004
>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/
>06/09/reagans_heart_of_darkness/
>
>President Bush proclaimed: "Ronald Reagan believed that
>God takes the side of justice and that America has a
>special calling to oppose tyranny and defend freedom."
>In the first three days of news reports on the death of
>the former president, not a single major American
>newspaper, television station, or politician has dared
>to exhume this counterpoint to the Reagan's legacy:
>"Immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian."
>
>These were the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, spoken on
>Capitol Hill at a House hearing in late 1984. It was
>just after Reagan's easy reelection. Tutu had just been
>awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent
>struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Throughout
>the United States a rising number of Americans were
>calling for American companies to stop doing business
>there.
>
>Reagan ignored them. The president of so-called sunny
>optimism attempted to blind Americans with his policy
>of "constructive engagement" with the white minority
>regime in Pretoria. All constructive engagment did was
>give the white minority more time to mow down the black
>majority in the streets and keep dreamers of democracy,
>such as Nelson Mandela, behind bars.
>
>In the weeks leading up to his appearance on Capitol
>Hill, Tutu said in speeches that it seemed that the
>Reagan White House saw "blacks as expendable" in South
>Africa. The white government forced black people from
>prized lands and into horrid townships. Migratory labor
>laws split familes for 11 months at a time. Education
>was gutted for black children. There was virtually no
>due process for black defendants. Tutu said it was
>"reminiscent of Hitler's Aryan madness." Tutu declared
>that "constructive engagement is an abomination, an
>unmitigated disaster."
>
>On Capitol Hill, Tutu became a public relations
>disaster for Reagan. Tutu started off the hearing by
>saying apartheid itself "is evil, is immoral, is un-
>Christian, without remainder." I was there, and all
>breathing stopped, without remainder. Tutu continued:
>
>"In my view, the Reagan administration's support and
>collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and
>totally un-Christian. . . . You are either for or
>against apartheid and not by rhetoric. You are either
>in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are
>either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of
>the oppressor. You can't be neutral."
>
>Tutu received an unprecedented standing ovation by the
>committee. Even Reagan's Republican allies told the
>South African Embassy they would reluctantly support
>sanctions if Pretoria did not move to end apartheid.
>
>Reagan was not moved. Over the remainder of his
>presidency, at least 3,000 people would die, mostly at
>the hands of the South African police and military.
>Another 20,000, including 6,000 children, according to
>one estimate by a human rights group, would be arrested
>under "state of emergency" decrees.
>
>Yet Reagan had the gall to say in 1985 that the
>"reformist administration" of South Africa had
>"eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own
>country." In 1986, Reagan gave a speech where he said
>Mandela should be released but denounced sanctions with
>crocodile tears, claiming that they would hurt black
>workers, who were already ridiculously impoverished.
>Reagan's go-slow speech was denounced by Tutu, who
>said: "I found it quite nauseating. I think the West,
>for my part, can go to hell. . . . Your president is
>the pits as far as blacks are concerned. He sits there
>like the great, big white chief of old."
>
>Later in 1986, Reagan made his greatest demonstration
>yet that black bodies were "expendable." Congress had
>finally had enough of the carnage to vote for limited
>sanctions. Reagan vetoed them. Congress overrode the
>veto. Reagan proceded to put no muscle behind the
>sanctions. Mandela remained in jail and at least 2,000
>political prisoners remained detained without trial.
>
>In 1987 Reagan published a report that said additional
>sanctions "would not be helpful." The gleeful South
>African foreign minister, Roelof Botha, said that
>Reagan "and his administration have an understanding of
>the reality of South Africa."
>
>Reagan's and Botha's "reality" was rendered a fantasy
>by the force of world opinion and a more enlightened
>leadership inside South Africa. Only a year after
>Reagan left office, Mandela was released. One can only
>wonder how much sooner he would have been released and
>how many lives would have been saved had Reagan not
>behaved like the white chief of old.
>
>President Bush said Reagan believed God was on the side
>of justice. On South Africa, Reagan was on the side of
>one of the most demonic governments on the face of the
>earth. He chose to assist tyranny and ignore brutality.
>Ronald Reagan's death has been followed by relentless
>descriptions of him as a president of sunny optimism.
>On South Africa he was no sunshine. He was the cloud
>who dimmed the skies as apartheid rained death upon
>black people.
>
>(c) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
>
>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/
>06/09/reagans_heart_of_darkness/
>_______________________________________________________


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu