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| Former President Thabo Mbeki |
I started exploring the marvels of the Internet and e-mails roughly at the same time when Thabo Mbeki became the 2nd Black African President of South Africa in June 1999. Although I wasn’t paying too much attention to all the intricate details of politics at the time, I do recall that I once subscribed to Mbeki’s weekly column in the ANC newsletter called, “ANC Today”, with the sole purpose of figuring out what was going on in the mind of the man who was going to be running the country I so dearly loved.
I was, of course, also trying to determine whether it was worthwhile, or not, that I acquire the latest copy of Frommer’s Comprehensive Travel Guide to the U.S.A., because by then I already had a number of good reasons to believe that South Africa was not going to become the land of sunshine, hope, and opportunity for all its peoples.
I was, of course, also trying to determine whether it was worthwhile, or not, that I acquire the latest copy of Frommer’s Comprehensive Travel Guide to the U.S.A., because by then I already had a number of good reasons to believe that South Africa was not going to become the land of sunshine, hope, and opportunity for all its peoples.
To be truly honest… I never anticipated that the country was going to retreat into the satanic hellhole it has now become… If I only had the foresight to see what was coming, but I suppose it's too late now to cry over spilt milk!
Nevertheless, if one removes certain political blunders out of the equation, bearing in mind that some of them were formulated by the “Masters of Darkness” and that many politicians are mere puppets in the game; and start categorizing the African leaders into columns of “good”, “average” or “bad”, based on their intellect (academic wise) and belief-systems that are more-or-less comparable with conventional Christian views, Thabo Mbeki would most probably end up in the middle column – neither “good” nor “bad”.
It was only later, sometime in the year 2002, when I managed to read a copy of Mbeki’s famous speech, "I am an African", that the reality of the fact struck me that I was indeed also, “an African”, and that the colour of my skin did not change that fact. Since then, I’ve often wondered how many other ‘White Africans’ abandoned thoughts of leaving South Africa - not only due to Mbeki’s speech, but also due to ‘false knowledge’ that was imprinted into our heads.
A PDF version of Mbeki’s "I am an African" speech can be downloaded here – (34.7 Kb).
Political blunders and controversies aside – the Marxist-Communists never considered Thabo Mbeki a big fan of theirs. In fact, Mbeki drew heavy criticism from these bunch of vipers for his perceived abandonment of state-interventionist social democratic economic policies – such as nationalization, land reform, and democratic capital controls – actions that were in total contradiction to the ANC’s prescribed Freedom Charter.
During a recent speech, delivered at the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Knowledge Management Conference in Bellville, Mbeki made a number of intelligent comments related to the role of “knowledge” in the betterment of society. He also raised a few sensitive questions concerning what exactly constitutes “knowledge”, what knowledge are we talking about when we embrace the term, and most important of all… Who ‘manages’ it?
In the light of the fact that several articles on this blog have focused on ‘informing’ readers that there is a cunning and mischievous hand at work behind world affairs, and that the main stream media (msm) is used as one of their most powerful propaganda tools, I thought it would be most appropriate to draw attention to the fact that there are also knowledgeable people, like Thabo Mbeki for example, who are aware of this fact. Sadly, it is for this same reason why people, who expose this sort of treachery, are often shunned and/or scorned.
Although Mbeki, evidently due to his alliance with the ANC, has not done much to expose by name-and-rank the evil brood responsible for propagating the world’s ‘false knowledge’, he did not play around with words when he suggested that ‘false knowledge’ is at variance with ‘the objective truth’, and even provided a few examples to prove his point.
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| Thabo Mbeki: Extract from speech made on 16 January, 2012. |
The following are extracts from his recent speech delivered on 16 January 2012:
Start of extract…
Accordingly, I would suggest that in the context of the challenging themes of this important Conference, you take some time to inquire into such specific matters which relate to ‘the betterment of global human society’ as:
(i) the obligations of the developed world towards Africa, in the context of what the influential British magazine, ‘The Economist’, in an ‘illustrative’ cover page in May 2000, characterised as ‘The hopeless continent’;
[The false ‘knowledge’ about Africa arising from such prejudiced reporting has, inter alia, discouraged investors from making their capital available for the development of Africa, thus serving as a self-fulfilling prediction.]
(ii) the 2003 war against Iraq;
[The false ‘knowledge’ was propagated that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’, which was not true, but was used to launch a war which has generated immense problems both for Iraq and, at least, the wider Middle East region.]
(iii) the 2011 activation of the concept of the “responsibility to protect” relating to the enforcement of the so-called “no-flight zone” concerning Libya;
[The false ‘knowledge’ was advanced that the Khaddafi regime was about to slaughter millions of civilians. This was used to justify the imposition of a ‘no-flight-zone’ over Libya, which served as a cover to overthrow the Libyan Government and impose a regime approved by the Western Powers, in their interest.]
(iv) the behaviour of global financial capital, which led to the 2008 financial and economic crisis, from which the world economy has not yet recovered, and which resulted in the impoverishment of millions throughout the world;
[Financial capital communicated false ‘knowledge’ especially about US mortgage loans, the so-called sub-prime lending, which nearly resulted in an more punishing global economic depression.]
(v) the role of the international Firms of Accountants in the context of Corporate governance;
[Major global Accounting Firms communicated false ‘knowledge’ about then major firms, such as Enron, which resulted in the loss of billions of dollars by honest investors, including workers’ pension funds.]
(vi) successive scares about world health;
[The Council of Europe has asserted that false ‘knowledge’ was propagated during 2009, which resulted in billions of tax-payer dollars being spent in many countries to respond to a fictional ‘swine flu epidemic’, which benefited the globally dominant and highly profitable pharmaceutical companies.]
(vii) the year 2000 Y2K scare.
[The false ‘knowledge’ that the world would seize-up because of an end-of-century computer mal-function proved to be unfounded, having no scientific basis.]
I mention these particular instances only as examples, and most certainly not as a comprehensive catalogue of instances which illustrate the grave challenge all humanity faces to confront the critical issues that are the subject of this important Conference, of the management of knowledge in the interests of genuine human advancement.
In my view, all these instances confirm the timeliness of precisely the two important themes of this Conference, certainly in their macro-social implications, that “knowledge” should be ‘democratised’ and should be used to ‘better’ the human condition.
At the same time, they illustrate the destructive potential of the abuse of “knowledge” by those who exercise preponderant power, to propagate their version of “knowledge” for selfish ends, as exposed in the example we cited earlier, relating to the contest between The (US) Weekly Standard and The Washington Post.
Thus the question arises organically – does it not stand to reason that the ‘knowledge’ generally available to society to effect its own ‘betterment’ is in fact such ‘knowledge’ as the preponderant powers would permit to be ‘available’, in their own interest!
I say this because of the frightening reality contemporary society faces, of the capacity of a small but powerful minority of humanity, to determine what society should ‘know’, which passes as ‘knowledge’.
End of extract.
Mbeki’s full speech can be viewed here.
Start of extract…
Accordingly, I would suggest that in the context of the challenging themes of this important Conference, you take some time to inquire into such specific matters which relate to ‘the betterment of global human society’ as:
(i) the obligations of the developed world towards Africa, in the context of what the influential British magazine, ‘The Economist’, in an ‘illustrative’ cover page in May 2000, characterised as ‘The hopeless continent’;
[The false ‘knowledge’ about Africa arising from such prejudiced reporting has, inter alia, discouraged investors from making their capital available for the development of Africa, thus serving as a self-fulfilling prediction.]
(ii) the 2003 war against Iraq;
[The false ‘knowledge’ was propagated that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’, which was not true, but was used to launch a war which has generated immense problems both for Iraq and, at least, the wider Middle East region.]
(iii) the 2011 activation of the concept of the “responsibility to protect” relating to the enforcement of the so-called “no-flight zone” concerning Libya;
[The false ‘knowledge’ was advanced that the Khaddafi regime was about to slaughter millions of civilians. This was used to justify the imposition of a ‘no-flight-zone’ over Libya, which served as a cover to overthrow the Libyan Government and impose a regime approved by the Western Powers, in their interest.]
(iv) the behaviour of global financial capital, which led to the 2008 financial and economic crisis, from which the world economy has not yet recovered, and which resulted in the impoverishment of millions throughout the world;
[Financial capital communicated false ‘knowledge’ especially about US mortgage loans, the so-called sub-prime lending, which nearly resulted in an more punishing global economic depression.]
(v) the role of the international Firms of Accountants in the context of Corporate governance;
[Major global Accounting Firms communicated false ‘knowledge’ about then major firms, such as Enron, which resulted in the loss of billions of dollars by honest investors, including workers’ pension funds.]
(vi) successive scares about world health;
[The Council of Europe has asserted that false ‘knowledge’ was propagated during 2009, which resulted in billions of tax-payer dollars being spent in many countries to respond to a fictional ‘swine flu epidemic’, which benefited the globally dominant and highly profitable pharmaceutical companies.]
(vii) the year 2000 Y2K scare.
[The false ‘knowledge’ that the world would seize-up because of an end-of-century computer mal-function proved to be unfounded, having no scientific basis.]
I mention these particular instances only as examples, and most certainly not as a comprehensive catalogue of instances which illustrate the grave challenge all humanity faces to confront the critical issues that are the subject of this important Conference, of the management of knowledge in the interests of genuine human advancement.
In my view, all these instances confirm the timeliness of precisely the two important themes of this Conference, certainly in their macro-social implications, that “knowledge” should be ‘democratised’ and should be used to ‘better’ the human condition.
At the same time, they illustrate the destructive potential of the abuse of “knowledge” by those who exercise preponderant power, to propagate their version of “knowledge” for selfish ends, as exposed in the example we cited earlier, relating to the contest between The (US) Weekly Standard and The Washington Post.
Thus the question arises organically – does it not stand to reason that the ‘knowledge’ generally available to society to effect its own ‘betterment’ is in fact such ‘knowledge’ as the preponderant powers would permit to be ‘available’, in their own interest!
I say this because of the frightening reality contemporary society faces, of the capacity of a small but powerful minority of humanity, to determine what society should ‘know’, which passes as ‘knowledge’.
End of extract.
Mbeki’s full speech can be viewed here.
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