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 THE FOLLOWING is a speech made by former South African President P.W. Botha to his Cabinet in 1985.We at Cameroondaily decided to republish it on our blog and are very keen to reading your comments.Some Call the Speech racist,others say there is some truth in what he says.Lets know what you think about the speech

“Pretoria has been made by the White mind for the White man. We are not obliged even the least to try to prove to anybody and to the Blacks that we are superior people. We have demonstrated that to the Blacks in a thousand and one ways. The Republic of South Africa that we know of today has not been created by wishful thinking. We have created it at the expense of intelligence, sweat and blood. Were they Afrikaners who tried to eliminate the Australian Aborigines? Are they Afrikaners who discriminate against Blacks and call them Nigge*rs in the States? Were they Afrikaners who started the slave trade? Where is the Black man appreciated? England discriminates against its Black and their “Sus” law is out to discipline the Blacks. Canada, France, Russia, and Japan all play their discrimination too. Why in the hell then is so much noise made about us? Why are they biased against us? I am simply trying to prove to you all that there is nothing unusual we are doing that the so called civilized worlds are not doing. We are simply an honest people who have come out aloud with a clear philosophy of how we want to live our own White life.

We do not pretend like other Whites that we like Blacks. The fact that, Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings do not necessarily make them sensible human beings. Hedgehogs are not porcupines and lizards are not crocodiles simply because they look alike. If God wanted us to be equal to the Blacks, he would have created us all of a uniform colour and intellect. But he created us differently: Whites, Blacks, Yellow, Rulers and the ruled. Intellectually, we are superior to the Blacks; that has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt over the years. I believe that the Afrikaner is an honest, God fearing person, who has demonstrated practically the right way of being. Nevertheless, it is comforting to know that behind the scenes, Europe, America, Canada, Australia-and all others are behind us in spite of what they say. For diplomatic relations, we all know what language should be used and where. To prove my point, Comrades, does anyone of you know a White country without an investment or interest in South Africa? Who buys our gold? Who buys our diamonds? Who trades with us? Who is helping us develop other nuclear weapon? The very truth is that we are their people and they are our people. It’s a big secret. The strength of our economy is backed by America, Britain, Germany. It is our strong conviction, therefore, that the Black is the raw material for the White man. So Brothers and Sisters, let us join hands together to fight against this Black devil. I appeal to all Afrikaners to come out with any creative means of fighting this war. Surely God cannot forsake his own people whom we are. By now every one of us has seen it practically that the Blacks cannot rule themselves. Give them guns and they will kill each other. They are good in nothing else but making noise, dancing, marrying many wives and indulging in sex. Let us all accept that the Black man is the symbol of poverty, mental inferiority, laziness and emotional incompetence. Isn’t it plausible? therefore that the White man is created to rule the Black man? Come to think of what would happen one day if you woke up and on the throne sat a Kaff*ir! Can you imagine what would happen to our women? Does anyone of you believe that the Blacks can rule this country?

If you were a decent sort of person, the last thing you would do is forward to anyone an email from a distant country offering a fortune in return for a small administration fee. However, the millions of Britons who receive scam letters and emails every year are now being encouraged to forward them -- to the National Fraud Authority -- the BBC reported recently.

At least 3000 people are scammed in the UK yearly and most of these letters come from certain African countries where confidence tricks and business frauds are rife. From the Feymen, a Cameroun group of international swindlers, to the fraudster schemes in Nigeria called “419s”, which became prominent in the early 1990’s, these scams have common features.

I suspect it should be the most natural thing to follow the profession or career of your parents.

You would probably inherit some of your musician or jeweller father's talents.

However I would say that as a rule - do not follow famous fathers.

If you are Pele's son, don't go into football; if you are Bob Marley's son, don't try to make a career out of singing - and had Michelangelo had a son, believe me he would have not ended up as a great painter.

Now I have said it, just think of the number of sons of famous footballers, cricketers, lawyers, athletes who tried but never quite got there.

When we get into the world of politics, it seems it is the fathers - or sometimes mothers - who want their sons to inherit their positions.

It is a condition that tends to afflict all those who believe they are so special and so good at being leaders, only they can govern their countries properly.
Turning in his grave

According to former President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, the only reason he stood for elections in 1992 after having toiled for 11 years to set Ghana to rights, was to make sure his opponents, who he said were "thieves and rogues", did not win the election.

But then sometimes even the best of them entertain the idea of their own mortality and therefore try to get a son to succeed them to ensure that the beloved nation does not fall into the hands of opponents who just might be thieves and rogues.

Unfortunately these sons that are born to rule often tend, like the royal princes of old, to have a difficult time growing up and get themselves into all sorts of scrapes.

And what is more, sons of famous fathers and mothers seem to only dilute the brand.

Poor Hosni Mubarak, if after having given 30 years of devoted service to Egypt, by his own accounting and taken only take a few months vacation throughout the period, he needed to have his son to protect his good works, I would have said: "You deserve whatever you get after me."

And there is Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo lying in his grave watching his son Faure in coalition with his lifetime foe Gilchrist Olympio.

The late Omar Bongo must be smiling since his son Ali is making sure Gabon remains true to his legacy.
Too many sons?

Paul Biya of Cameroon - only one year junior to Mr Mubarak in longevity - is, according to rumours, losing the appetite to promote his son Frank to succeed him and protect Cameroon from falling into the hands of his opponents.

I wonder if it has anything to do with all that footage from Egypt he has been watching on television.

I have not heard of a junior Yoweri Museveni who can step into his father's shoes and so the Ugandans simply have to accept that the man himself has to stay on to protect his achievements. After all, the constitution has been changed to scrap the two-term limit for presidents.

But what on earth would a junior Museveni's claim to fame be? He could not claim to have fought a bush war against Idi Amin or Milton Obote.

Spare a thought for Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's deposed president.

He has all these daughters and one son who was not old enough. Somehow daughters do not seem to fit the bill.

The problem with Muammar Gaddafi is that we have not just a son, but many sons and I do not think he knows which of them could step into his non-existent position and protect his 42-year Libyan legacy.

But really, can any one of them possibly out-Gaddafi the leader?

And just how do you top cockroaches and rats for compatriots?



Author: Elizabeth Ohene/BBC

Whenever most of us think of oil-rich, Arab-speaking countries, our imagination performs a trick with our sense of geography, placing us by default in the Middle East.

Of the three North African countries at the heart of the popular uprisings that have riveted the world over the last several weeks, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi has always done the most to assert his country's African identity, staking its prestige, its riches and his own personal influence above all on its place in the continent.

As a deep-pocketed and sparsely populated state ever in need of labor, it has always made sense for Qaddafi to look south. Libya is far too small and peripheral for it to ever aspire to real influence in the Arab world. By comparison, the almost equally small but far poorer countries of nearby West Africa, wracked as they are with chronic misrule and instability, loom temptingly on the horizon as fruit ripe for picking.

The development of Cameroon largely depends on the effectiveness and efficiency of its public procurement and contract award procedures. The system involves several actors in the public and private sectors, controlled by the Public Contracts Regulatory Board, ARMP under the supervision of the Presidency of the Republic and the Prime Minister's Office. The gap between amounts disbursed for development and the actual implementation of projects is widening due to widespread corruption that costs FCFA billions each year to the state.

Such was the context of the round table conference that closed the week-long celebrations marking ARMP's tenth anniversary last Friday, February 25 in Yaounde under the theme "Together, let us fight corruption in public contracts". Presenting the reports of the three workshops that earlier held on the 22, 23 and 24 of February involving more than 472 participants drawn from all levels of the public procurement system and split in three groups, Ondoa Atanga Roger, Inspector General at ARMP, disclosed the results of a study carried out by ARMP in 2006 on the phenomenon of corruption in public contracts in Cameroon.

My comments to ALL Nigerians living in the US is to be very careful wherever they live. In this country, it would appear that the system has some beef with Nigerians. Many innocent Nigerians are afraid to go to court to checkmate police violence and abuses of Nigerians in this country. No matter how innocent and straighforward your case might be, the mere fact that you are a Nigerian automatically would cause the courts to find you guilty. More importantly, the last thing an American jury seated to make judgement of a Nigerian is to simply hear your Nigerian accent----just your accent is enough to convict you. I've seen a situation where a lawyer forced a Nigerian to plead guilty to something the lawyer knew the Nigerian did not do, rather than have a jury of his peers decide his fate----because the jury, merely knowing that the person whose fate they are deciding were a Nigerian, they would automatically find him guilty.

Most Sub Saharan African Dictators are not at ease following popular uprisings that swept long-time rulers out of power in Tunisia and Egypt. But will the domino effect of these popular uprisings also sweep dictators out of power further south?

Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho and other Sub-Saharan African countries are also ruled by long-time autocrats and their people are suffering as hard – if not harder – than those in Tunisia and Egypt.

In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has been in power since 1980. In Cameroon Paul Biya has been in the saddle for 29 years. Yoweri Museveni has presided Uganda since 1986. Jose dos Santos has been in power since 1979, and is preparing to stand for another term – while, incredibly, grooming one of his children to take over. The list goes on.

There are some parallels, but also some clear differences, between societies in the north, and those South of the Sahara. The first parallel is that both the Maghreb countries and those South of the Sahara have allowed – in the words of South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, ‘inequality to grow, allow(ed) joblessness to accelerate (and is) about state(s) that doesn’t actually perform (and is) about a minority that accumulates things for itself’.

ECONOMIC CRISIS
All African countries are about to feel the delayed effect of the global financial crisis, just as Tunisia and Egypt had. Typically in countries, like Swaziland, Lesotho or Cameroon, leaders pride themselves on the fact that they have supposedly not been so harshly affected by the recent global financial crisis. However, they are mistaken – the true effects are yet to be felt.

But many of those countries depend heavily on Western aid. With the austerity in most of the major donor countries, this aid may either dry up, or trickle into a drip. Even the budgets of international organisations and NGOs heavily active in development projects in these countries have been cut or will be reduced. In some African countries more than 50 per cent of the national budget comes from foreign aid.

Combined with a perceptible rise in the prices of basic food and living costs in most African countries, ordinary African people are having it tough. Desperation is easily turned into the political outrage. There is a deep gulf between the relatively small ruling elite, living a ‘bling’ and elite lifestyle, and a majority of the poor – a potent grievance, a festering sore if one happens to be the unfortunate poor individual.

YOUTH & UNEMPLOYMENT
The demography of all African countries has changed dramatically since independence. Young people now make up most of their populations, and the youth were at the vanguard of the uprisings. Globalisation and new technological advances, such as the internet, social media, such as twitter, have meant that the youth can see how better-off their peers in Western countries live, compared to them.

In most African countries most of the media is in state hands, so ruling parties can ensure news about official corruption, mismanagement or wrongdoing is kept out of the public domain.

The news blackout means that leaders and political movements can stay in power for longer without many of their supporters in the far-flung rural areas knowing the extent to which these leaders abuse their powers. This is why the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe can get away with blaming his government’s own bad governance on the work of Western ‘imperialists’, former colonial powers, minorities or opposition groups supposedly linked to them.

Not surprisingly, ‘people power’, the phenomenon where African citizens finally kick out bad governments that have ruled for far too long, often always coincides with the growth of private independent media– that can provide citizens (especially ordinary members of these parties) with the real story – and a growing civil and opposition movement, that can offer an alternative.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Although the internet is not as widespread in many African countries south of the Sahara compared to Egypt or Tunisia, the power of the worldwide web is still potent. In Zimbabwe’s last elections, people used mobile phones to text witnessed attempts at vote rigging by Zanu (PF) strongmen at voting stations in remote areas. This meant that opposition groups, international observers and independent media could be informed more quickly than during previous elections.

One big difference between Egypt and Tunisia compared to other African countries south of the Sahara, is that there are more incidents of staged elections in the latter which on regular occasions give the masses an outlet for their frustrations. The recent presidential and parliamentary elections held in Uganda springs to mind.

Furthermore, the opposition parties in these countries are so irrelevant – little alternative policies, and generally clones of the ruling parties and each other (the opposition political parties in Nigeria are a good example); they are more of a stumbling bloc to genuine democracy than anything else.