Reviews for "They cannot kill us all"

The average rating for "They cannot kill us all" based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-01-11 00:00:00 Blala Dada Stay Out of Politics is a collection of lectures given in 1980s South Africa along side reflections on the decision of one professor to travel and work in South Africa and his thoughts and impressions of the country during his somewhat brief stay. My interest in reading it was not particularly to get Aronson's take on the deep issues surrounding apartheid, nor does the book serve as a great primer on the apartheid era. However, the book is fascinating insomuch as it offers a glimpse of the contemporaneous assessment of outsiders of the durability of apartheid and the prospects for its dismantlement. Published in 1990, Stay Out was to some extent obsolete when it was released - which was likely after February 1990's release of Mandela and unbanning of the ANC. Aronson did not predict those imminent events, though he writes of how everyone - the black masses, white liberals, apartheid's soldiers - knew even in the late 1980s of the inevitability of Mandela's ascension to president of the nation. Since it was written at the height of South Africa's domestic unrest and international isolation but before apartheid began its terminal decline, there is discussion of the responsibilities of activists and individuals abroad to avoid complicity with the system, background on the tactics of those working against the racist state, and the path forward after apartheid finally collapses. Looking back from 2011 at 1990, it appears that many of the hopes of the activists have not been realized. Here is a paragraph where Aronson outlines the future many of the dominant whites of the 1980s wished for: "It may well be that group areas will be scrapped outright. And, reflecting expanding educational opportunities and the needs of a dynamic economy, it may well be that individual blacks will be allowed to rise, each according to his or her abilities. As black buying-power and skill-levels increase, a few blacks will move into high administrative positions, even commanding whites, and will live next door to whites . . . an end to employment discrimination, renewed economic expansion, unhindered free enterprise, and expanded black education will together create a South Africa which meets the aspirations of everyone . . . This vision reveals how the liberal hopes of many whites who are willing to work and live alongside blacks of the same social class dovetail with the determination of enlightened Afrikaners to 'adapt or die,' as well as with the self-interest of South African capital . . . It is a scheme for a sort of deracialized apartheid. If it were workable it would lead to an economic, social, and educational situation for blacks reminiscent of that in the United States, with allowances for the far greater inequality of today's South Africa. The 'natural' workings of the economy, rather than the force of law, would ensure that the vast majority of blacks would remain in their group areas, attend woefully inferior schools, work at substantially lower wages and live on the margin, while a handful of them would be absorbed into the privileges of white society. The overt humiliations of apartheid would be largely scrapped, but its social, economic, and political substance would continue. Blacks reject the offer." (pg. 110-11) The above passage is reasonably descriptive of the South Africa of 2011, where tens of millions still live in shacks and villages and members of the largely (but not entirely) white elite lives lives just as privileged as those they enjoyed during the heights of apartheid. Not only does South Africa have the highest Gini Coefficient (a statistical measurement of inequality) in the world by some measures, it's actually risen since the end of the apartheid era. Documenting the thoughts and impressions of the well meaning outsider in the 1980s, Stay Out of Politics offers an interesting glimpse at the recent history of South Africa.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-25 00:00:00 Kelly S Hinds Love the work of ER Braithwaite. Very candid perception of Apartheid South Africa. Just goes on to show the frailty of man to end up coming with the most ludicrous concept of separation by virtue of the color of the skin. How more stupid can we get?