EVEN THE BLACKS START TO REALISE THE ANC IS A LOT OF WHACOS!

'Whites should speak out more'
Jun 2 2008 4:55PM
Michael Hamlyn

Cape Town - Mamphela Ramphele, companion of the black consciousness leader the late Steve Biko, and mother of two of his children, said on Monday that white people have a bigger responsibility to speak out against mismanagement and bad governance that has marred the past 14 years of South Africa's history.

Ramphele, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and a managing director of the World Bank told the Cape Town Press Club: "You have the benefits of education, and you benefited from both apartheid and the new South Africa."

She complained that the country "simply underestimated the challenges of good governance". She said that those who came back from exile to take power after the arrival of democracy left the country in the 1960s and 1970s and thought they would come back to the same sort of society.

"Government remained authoritarian, despite the rhetoric," she said. "They undermined parliament, demonised the opposition and made the president into a king."

She protested that South Africa had suffered a failure of citizenship, a failure of governance and a failure of government.

Publicising her new book, "Laying Ghosts to Rest", Ramphele spoke of the "furious ghosts" of racism and sexism, which are still abroad in this country, and urged her audience to use the forthcoming general election to exchange their votes only for increased accountability from the politicians.