Pisces' Biography

2011-01-21T23:02:00.001Z


"The facts are always less than what really happened" Nadine Gordimer
Just for the record: the most I will try and sell you is one of my books; I have no other agenda; I’m not a teacher, a preacher or a double glazing salesman. Neither do I aspire to be any of those.
Which is not to say that I have nothing to give; I believe that the events that shaped (and continue to shape) my life have resonance beyond the (meta)physical presence of Pisces Iscariot. We are all involved in history.
With this in mind, anyone expecting guidance, enlightenment, epiphanies or healing might as well leave now.
Some basic facts:
• I was born in Durban in 1962.	According to the rules of the game this makes me a South African.
• I am a pacifist	I don't want to get killed in anybody's territorial/resource war
• I am an athiest	I owe my soul to no god

Fingerpainting by Vanessa

Appendix V

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Appendix V

Appendix IV

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Appendix IV
US Involvement in Angola

U.S. Lied About Cuban 
Role in Angola - Historian
Reuters 
April 1, 2002 
By Anthony Boadle 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Africa intervened in Angola months before Cuban troops arrived in 1975, and not afterward as Washington claimed, according to a historian who recently wrote a book on the subject. 
Piero Gleijeses, a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of International Studies, said that President Gerald Ford's administration lied about Cuban military presence to justify its covert operations against Marxist guerrillas. Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1975. 
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied then and in his memoirs later that the U.S. government knew that South African troops invaded Angola posing as mercenaries in 1975, he said. 
He also required the Central Intelligence Agency to rewrite a document on Angola to show an earlier Cuban presence than was accurate, Gleijeses said in an interview. 
"Kissinger had the CIA rewrite its report to serve the political aim of the administration, and so the poor CIA ended up lying," he said, speaking tongue-in-cheek. 
Declassified CIA papers for August through October of 1975 talk of the presence of only a few Cubans in Angola trying to pass themselves off as tourists, the historian said. 
The first academic to gain access to archives in Havana, Gleijeses has put together a almost day-to-day account of the arrival of Cuban troops in Angola. 
With the departure of the Portuguese in 1975, Angola had a power vacuum that the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, and conservative UNITA sought to take advantage of. The fighting that marked the struggle for independence became a civil war. 
A CIA-funded covert operation was launched from Zaire in July, at the same time as a South African operation from the south backed the UNITA rebel group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by led by Jonas Savimbi, who died this year. 
But by October 1975, the groups with U.S. and South African support were losing the war and white-ruled South Africa sent in regular troops. 
Cuban President Fidel Castro decided on Nov. 4, 1975, to send soldiers to Angola but did so without informing Moscow, which two months later halfheartedly provided Aeroflot IL-62 planes for an airlift. 
The arrival of 30,000 Cubans tilted the civil war in favor of the MPLA which had controlled the capital of Luanda, Gleijeses said, and the South Africans withdrew in March 1976. The war stretched on for another 25 years, with the latest cease-fire deal signed just last weekend. 
South African link denied
"The key element of the covert operation was cooperation with South Africa, and that was totally denied," Gleijeses said. "Kissinger went to the extreme of saying he only learned a couple of weeks later that South Africa had invaded." 
In his book "Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959-1976," based on U.S. documents and archival research in Cuba and Angola, Gleijeses maintains that Cuba dispatched troops as a result of the South African invasion. 
He argues that Kissinger's account of the U.S. role in Angola was misleading, both in testimony to Congress in 1976 and more recently in the third volume of his memoirs "Years of Renewal." 
The historian interviewed the then CIA station chief in Luanda, Robert Hultslander who, speaking on the record for the first time, criticized U.S. policy in Angola as "shortsighted and flawed." 
The former CIA agent told Gleijeses that he was unaware at the time that "the U.S. would eventually beg South Africa to directly intervene to pull its chestnuts out of the fire." 
China's Deng held off
Gleijeses also argues that Kissinger misled Americans by saying that an attempt to gain China's help in Angola was thwarted by the refusal of the U.S. Congress to approve funding for the covert operation. 
In his memoirs, Kissinger recounts a meeting he and Ford had on Dec. 2, 1975, in Beijing with Chairman Mao Tse-tung in which Angola was discussed and Mao suggested China was willing to cooperate. 
Gleijeses said Kissinger failed to mention a meeting held the following day with Deng Xiaoping in which, according to a White House memorandum, the Chinese president refused to help in Angola while South Africa was involved. 
"The reason why China held back was not Congress' refusal to vote additional aid. It was because the South Africans were there," he said, adding that Mao was very ill by then and Deng was in charge of decisions of state. 
"Kissinger ignores the other document which contradicts what he wants to say, and that is very dishonest," Gleijeses said. 
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cuba/US-Cuba/reuters040102.html
Documents can be obtained  from The National Security Archive on:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/

CIA Angola Lies Exposed 25 Years Later
From: The Independent/UK (5 Apr 2001)
Date: 07 Apr 2002
Article
The Independent (London), April 5, 2002 
CIA 'RAN COVERT MISSIONS' TO STOP COMMUNIST COUP By Andrew Buncombe In Washington 
AMERICAN FORCES were involved in a pre-emptive covert attempt to prevent the Communist takeover of Angola, according to newly released documents that reveal the US lied about events that led to years of chaos and war in southern Africa. The revelation has also led to further criticism of the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. 
America has always claimed that it sponsored the CIA-run operation in 1975 in response to the arrival of up to 50,000 Cuban troops who came to support the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The group held the capital, Luanda, in the months before independence from Portugal, declared in August 1975. But the documents show the American-sponsored forces arrived in Angola several weeks before the Cubans - invading via neighbouring Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the same time South African troops, posing as Western mercenaries, attacked Luanda. 
Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the documents, said: "When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the US government and the CIA were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola. 
"If you look at the CIA reports which were done at the time, the Cubans were totally out of the picture. (But in reports presented to the Senate in December 1975) what you find is really nothing less than the rewriting of history." 
The American effort failed to keep Marxists from taking power but ushered in a long civil war, involving US, Chinese and Soviet interests and Cuban and South African soldiers. Washington eventually backed the rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, who was killed in Angola this year on 22 February. 
Dr Gleijeses' research - for his recently published history of the conflict - documents co-ordination between America and South Africa on training missions and airlifts, and bluntly contradicts congressional testimony of the era and Dr Kissinger's memoirs. 
The research has led to fresh criticism of Dr Kissinger. Nathaniel Davis, who resigned as his assistant secretary of state for African affairs in July 1975 over the Angola intervention, said: "Considering that things came to a head over covert action in the US government in mid-July, there is no reason to believe we were responding to Cuban involvement in Angola." 
Robert Hultslander, who served as CIA station chief in Angola from August to November 1975, said: "It was our policies which caused the destabilisation. Kissinger was determined to challenge the Soviet Union, although no vital US interests were at stake." 

Appendix III

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Appendix III
The Dutch Reformed Church Of South Africa

Doctrines: The doctrines of the Dutch Reformed Churches of South Africa are encapsulated in the following three articles of faith: the Heidelberg Catechism, the Dutch Confession of Faith (Confessio Belgica), and the Canons of Dordt. 

The Heidelberg Catechism, which was completed in January 1563, consists of a confession in 129 questions on all the essential aspects of Christian doctrine. 
The Dutch Confession of Faith, which was mainly composed by Guy de Bray in 1561, consists of 37 articles which deal with the fundamental aspects of the Christian faith such as the nature of God, the Bible, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, original sin, election, the incarnation, and the sacraments.

The Canons of Dordt are a statement of faith produced by the Synod of Dordt held in 1618-19 in the Netherlands. These affirmed the following five points; 
• the complete depravity of humanity; 
• unconditional election; 
• limited atonement; 
• irresistible grace; 
• perseverance of the saints.

This is essentially a restating of the Calvinist position: that God has predestined who will and who will not be saved and, therefore, people cannot contribute to their salvation. 
History: When South Africa was settled by the Dutch in the 16th and 17th centuries they transplanted their Dutch Reformed theology into the African continent. The Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa was formally established by Jan Van Riebeeck in 1652. The history of the church has been very much bound up with the politics of the Afrikaner community of South Africa.

The most controversial aspect of the Dutch Reformed Church's theology has been its support of the apartheid system: that is, the institutionalised separation of the people of South Africa according to their race. South African Prime Minister Daniel Francois Malan, who led the campaign for complete segregation of the races in South Africa, was himself a Dutch Reformed minister. The social segregation of blacks, coloureds and whites was reflected in the establishment of churches for each of these three groups. In the early 1980s the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared apartheid to be a heresy and expelled the Dutch Reformed Church from its organisation.

Following the expulsion the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa has moved away from supporting apartheid. In 1986 all congregations in the church were desegregated. More recently the church has expressed repentance for the sin of supporting apartheid. It is to be hoped that following the establishment of voting for all adult South Africans regardless of race there will be closer integration within the church.

Symbols: Like other reformed traditions the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa uses the symbols of bread and wine to commemorate the death of Christ. Baptismal water symbolises the death of the old sinful self and the rebirth into new life. 

Adherents: In spite of the abolition of apartheid the distinctive racially based groupings within the Dutch Reformed Church continues to exist in practice. In 1996 the Dutch Reformed Church (mainly white) had 1,288,837 members, the Uniting Reformed Church (mainly coloured) had 1,216,252 members, and the Reformed Church in Africa (mainly Indian) had 2,386 members (Europa Publications Ltd. 1997, Vol 2: 2989). 

Appendix II

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Appendix II
Apartheid Timeline

- 1651: Dutch settlers arrive in South Africa. In 1756, they import slaves from West Africa, Malaysia, and India, establishing the dominance of whites over non-whites in the region. 

- 1700s: Riding on horseback and covered wagons, Dutch farmers (called Boers) migrate across land inhabited by Bantu and Khoi peoples. Armed with shotguns, the Boers seize land used by the tribes for cattle and sheep grazing -- the basis of their economy. Without land, the tribes must work on Boer farms to support themselves. 

- 1810s: British missionaries arrive and criticize the racist practises of the Boers. They urge the Boers to treat the Africans more fairly. Boers justify their practises in the belief that they are superior to Africans. 

- 1867: Diamond mining begins in South Africa. Africans are given the most dangerous jobs, are paid far less than white workers, and are housed in fenced, patrolled barracks. Oppressive conditions and constant surveillance keep Africans from organizing for better wages and working conditions. 

- 1908: A constitutional convention is held to establish South African independence from Britain. The all-white government decides that non-whites can vote but cannot hold office. A few people in the new government object, believing that South Africa would be more stable if Africans were treated better. 

- 1910: The South Africa Act takes away all political rights of Africans in three of the country's four states. 

- 1912: The African National Congress is formed. This political party aims to organize Africans in the struggle for civil rights. The early leaders are pictured on the right. 

- 1913: The Native Lands Act gives 7.3% of the country's land to Africans, who make up 80% of the population. Africans are prohibited from owning land outside their region. Africans are allowed to be on white land only if they are working for whites.

- 1920s: Blacks are fired from jobs which are given to whites. 

- 1910s-1930s: Africans educated at missionary schools attempt to organize to resist white rule and gain political power. Their efforts are weakened because few Africans are literate, communication is poor, and access to money or other resources is limited.

- By 1939, fewer than 30% of Africans are receiving any formal education, and whites are earning over five times as much as Africans. 

- 1936: Representation of Voters Act: This law weakens the political rights for Africans in some regions and allows them to vote only for white representatives.

- 1946: African mine workers are paid twelve times less than their white counterparts and are forced to do the most dangerous jobs. Over 75,000 Africans go on strike in support of higher wages. Police use violence to force the unarmed workers back to their jobs. Over 1000 workers are injured or killed. 

- 1950: The Population Registration Act. This law classifies people into three racial groups: white, colored (mixed race or Asian), and native (African/black). Marriages between races are outlawed in order to maintain racial purity.

- 1953: The Preservation of Separate Amenities Act establishes "separate but not necessarily equal" parks, beaches, post offices, and other public places for whites and non-whites. At right are signs for segregated toilets in English and Afrikaans. 

- 1951: The Group Areas Act sets aside specific communities for each of the races (white, colored (mixed race or Indian), and native (African/black) ). The best areas and the majority of the land are reserved for whites. Non-whites are relocated into "reserves." Mixed-race families are forced to live separately.

- 1951: The Bantu Homelands Act. Through this law, the white government declares that the lands reserved for black Africans are independent nations. In this way, the government strips millions of blacks of their South African citizenship and forces them to become residents of their new "homelands." Blacks are now considered foreigners in white-controlled South Africa, and need passports to enter. Blacks only enter to serve whites in menial jobs. 

The homelands are too small to support the many people in them. In Soweto, for example, seventeen to twenty people live in a four-room house. Typical living conditions are shown in the picture above. 

The African National Congress (ANC), a political organization for Africans, encourages peaceful resistance to the discriminatory laws of apartheid. The ANC issues a Freedom Charter that states, "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people." The government reacts by arresting people and passing more repressive laws. 

- 1952: Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents Act. This misleadingly-named law requires all Africans to carry identification booklets with their names, addresses, fingerprints, and other information. (See picture at right.) Africans are frequently stopped and harassed for their passes. Between 1948-1973, over ten million Africans were arrested because their passes were "not in order." Burning pass books becomes a common form of protest.

- 1953: Preservation of Separate Amenities Act. This law created "separate but not necessarily equal" beaches, parks, post office, and other public places for Africans (blacks), coloreds (the term used for Asian and mixed-raced people) and whites. 

- 1953: Bantu Education Act: Through this law, the white government supervises the education of all blacks. Schools condition blacks to accept white domination. Non-whites cannot attend white universities. 

- 1960: A large group of blacks in the town of Sharpeville refused to carry their passes. The government declares a state of emergency and responds with fines, imprisonment, and whippings. In all, 69 people die and 187 people are wounded. The African political organizations, the African National Congress and the Pan-African Congress, are banned. 

- 1962: The United Nations establishes the Special Committee Against Apartheid to support a political process of peaceful change. The Special Committee observes the International Day Against Racism to mark the anniversary of the people who died in the Sharpeville protest. 

- 1963: Nelson Mandela, head of the African National Congress, is jailed. 

- 1970s: Resistance to apartheid increases. Organizing by churches and workers increases. Whites join blacks in the demonstrations. 

- 1970s: The all-black South African Students Organization, under the leadership of Steven Biko, helps unify students through the Black Consciousness movement. A typical protest poster is shown below.

- 1976: The Soweto uprising: People in Soweto riot and demonstrate against discrimination and instruction in Afrikaans, the language of whites descended from the Dutch. The police react with gunfire. 575 people are killed and thousands are injured and arrested. Steven Biko is beaten and left in jail to die from his injuries. Protesters against apartheid link arms in a show of resistance. 

- 1980s: People and governments around the world launch an international campaign to boycott (not do business with) South Africa. Some countries ban the import of South African products, and citizens of many countries pressure major companies to pull out of South Africa. 

These actions have a crippling effect on the South African economy and weaken the government. The picture on the right shows a demonstration against the company Chase Manhattan. 

- 1980s: Hundreds of thousands of Africans who are banned from white-controlled areas ignore the laws and pour into forbidden regions in search of work. Civil disobedience, demonstrations, and other acts of protest increase. 

- late 1980s: Countries around the world increasingly pressure South Africa to end its system of apartheid. As a result, some of the segregationist laws are repealed (reversed). For example, the laws separating whites and non-whites in public places are relaxed or repealed. 

- 1991: South Africa President F.W. de Klerk repeals the rest of the apartheid laws and calls for the drafting of a new constitution. 

- 1993: A multiracial, multiparty transitional government is approved. 

- 1994: Elections are held. The United Nations sends 2,120 international observers to ensure the fairness of the elections. The African National Congress, representing South Africa's majority black population. Nelson Mandela, the African resistance leader who had been jailed for 27 years, is elected President.

Appendix I

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Appendix I
Apartheid Legislation

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949
Prohibited marriages between white people and people of other races. Between 1946 and the enactment of this law, only 75 mixed marriages had been recorded, compared with some 28,000 white marriages.

Immorality Amendment Act, Act No 21 of 1950; amended in 1957 (Act 23)
Prohibited adultery, attempted adultery or related immoral acts (extra-marital sex) between white and black people. 

Population Registration Act, Act No 30 of 1950
Led to the creation of a national register in which every person's race was recorded. A Race Classification Board took the final decision on what a person's race was in disputed cases.

Group Areas Act, Act No 41 of 1950
Forced physical separation between races by creating different residential areas for different races. Led to forced removals of people living in "wrong" areas, for example Coloureds living in District Six in Cape Town.

Suppression of Communism Act, Act No 44 of 1950
Outlawed communism and the Community Party in South Africa. Communism was defined so broadly that it covered any call for radical change. Communists could be banned from participating in a political organisation and restricted to a particular area.

Bantu Building Workers Act, Act No 27 of 1951
Allowed black people to be trained as artisans in the building trade, something previously reserved for whites only, but they had to work within an area designated for blacks. Made it a criminal offence for a black person to perform any skilled work in urban areas except in those sections designated for black occupation.

Separate Representation of Voters Act, Act No 46 of 1951
Together with the 1956 amendment, this act led to the removal of Coloureds from the common voters' roll.

Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, Act No 52 of 1951
Gave the Minister of Native Affairs the power to remove blacks from public or privately owned land and to establishment resettlement camps to house these displaced people.

Bantu Authorities Act, Act No 68 of 1951
Provided for the establishment of black homelands and regional authorities and, with the aim of creating greater self-government in the homelands, abolished the Native Representative Council.

Natives Laws Amendment Act of 1952
Narrowed the definition of the category of blacks who had the right of permanent residence in towns. Section 10 limited this to those who'd been born in a town and had lived there continuously for not less than 15 years, or who had been employed there continuously for at least 15 years, or who had worked continuously for the same employer for at least 10 years.

Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, Act No 67 of 1952
Commonly known as the Pass Laws, this ironically named act forced black people to carry identification with them at all times. A pass included a photograph, details of place of origin, employment record, tax payments, and encounters with the police. It was a criminal offence to be unable to produce a pass when required to do so by the police. No black person could leave a rural area for an urban one without a permit from the local authorities. On arrival in an urban area a permit to seek work had to be obtained within 72 hours.

Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953
Prohibited strike action by blacks.

Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953
Established a Black Education Department in the Department of Native Affairs which would compile a curriculum that suited the "nature and requirements of the black people". The author of the legislation, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister), stated that its aim was to prevent Africans receiving an education that would lead them to aspire to positions they wouldn't be allowed to hold in society. Instead Africans were to receive an education designed to provide them with skills to serve their own people in the homelands or to work in labouring jobs under whites.

Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, Act No 49 of 1953
Forced segregation in all public amenities, public buildings, and public transport with the aim of eliminating contact between whites and other races. "Europeans Only" and "Non-Europeans Only" signs were put up. The act stated that facilities provided for different races need not be equal.

Natives Resettlement Act, Act No 19 of 1954
Group Areas Development Act, Act No 69 of 1955
Natives (Prohibition of Interdicts) Act, Act No 64 of 1956
Denied black people the option of appealing to the courts against forced removals.

Bantu Investment Corporation Act, Act No 34 of 1959
Provided for the creation of financial, commercial, and industrial schemes in areas designated for black people.

Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959
Put an end to black students attending white universities (mainly the universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand). Created separate tertiary institutions for whites, Coloured, blacks, and Asians.

Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, Act No 46 of 1959
Classified black people into eight ethnic groups. Each group had a Commissioner-General who was tasked to develop a homeland for each, which would be allowed to govern itself independently without white intervention.

Coloured Persons Communal Reserves Act, Act No 3 of 1961
Preservation of Coloured Areas Act, Act No 31 of 1961
Urban Bantu Councils Act, Act No 79 of 1961
Created black councils in urban areas that were suppoed to be tied to the authorities running the related ethnic homeland.

Terrorism Act of 1967
Allowed for indefinite detention without trial and established BOSS, the Bureau of State Security, which was responsible for the internal security of South Africa.

Bantu Homelands Citizens Act of 1970
Compelled all black people to become a citizen of the homeland that responded to their ethnic group, regardless of whether they'd ever lived there or not, and removed their South African citizenship.


Various segregation laws were passes before the Nationalist Party took complete power in 1948. Probably the most significant were The Natives Land Act, No 27 of 1913 and The Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923. The former made it illegal for blacks to purchase or lease land from whites except in reserves; this restricted black occupancy to less than eight per cent of South Africa's land. The latter laid the foundations for residential segregation in urban areas. 