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I was reading entries in Wikipedia in preparation for a documentary relating to the parallels of South Africa to other countries in how they deal with race issues. After World War I there was widespread discrimination of Jewish people in Germany.
The 1930s saw the growth of anti-Semitism with measures taken by a rising Adolf Hitler to legalise the persecution of Jewish people. The persecutions started with boycotts of Jewish businesses.
Then discriminatory laws were passed. For example, there was a Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which was passed to restrict employment in the civil service to non-Jewish Germans. Jews were barred from claiming any rights as war veterans (35 000 German Jews died in World War I). And Jewish peoples who had German citizenship had their citizenship stripped from them.
Laws, defining who was or was not Jewish, were passed. These laws were formally called the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
After the Invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis forced Jewish people into ghettos, completely banning them from public life. They eventually turned to genocide.
After World War II, which ended in 1945, Germany was in ruins and needed to be rebuilt. This rebuilding of Germany was more positive in its approach because it focused not on retribution as the Treaty of Versailles did but on equal partnership.
The US realised through the Marshall Plan that their success depended on a strong Europe, which could be an equal trade partner in buying US goods. So they invested with their hearts and minds in the rebuilding of Germany. This left an indelible mark on the Germans. This is brilliantly captured in Reinhold Mohn’s book whose title says it all: A Global Lesson: Success through co-operation and compassionate leadership.
Reinhold Mohn was a German soldier in a US prisoner of war camp during World War II. After his release he went on an entrepreneurial journey to build a global media empire, the Bertelsman Group. He was successful in building a profitable media conglomerate with great social impact. The Marshall Plan worked.
Reading this history showed that DF Malan and Hendrick Verwoerd took a leaf from the Nazi book. The impact of apartheid has been written about. But what are the lessons that we can learn from what happened in Germany and how the country was economically revived.
In South Africa, companies have an opportunity to implement an equivalent of the Marshall Plan, through the current black economic empowerment (BEE) dispensation. Companies have the tools and the resources to do so in an efficient manner. They need to have a spirit that says we need to build all businesses equal.
Paying lip service and implementing half measures is doing more damage. Meeting the technical targets that are set by the BEE codes is great in the short term but is the contribution sustainable and achieving the intended impact? These are the questions executives around the country should be worried about.
There is cosmetic commitment to transformation by some business executives, both black and white, who talk the talk but deep down there is no real buy-in to contribute. This is betrayed by the kind of biting comments made by executives in private gatherings, by the lack of power, authority and budget that is given to those that are appointed to implement change in their organisations.
The government is also shoddy in the implementation of the laws it has put in place. Where is the political will to boost the implementation of the transformation laws within the government. The history lessons show us that there are gaps created for the economic Hitler’s in South Africa to emerge. These can be prevented by companies and the government by ensuring there is an equivalent of a Marshall Plan in letter and in spirit. - Vuyo Jack
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Rolf Ball, wrote
Germany only had to be rebuilt by industrious people. RSA has still to be built up further by mostly unskilled people. That is a big difference.
Conrad, wrote
The beginning of your article looked so promising. When you mentioned : 'Then discriminatory laws were passed. For example, there was a Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which was passed to restrict employment in the civil service to non-Jewish Germans. Jews were barred from claiming any rights as war veterans..' - I thought you were referring to the present plight of the white minority.
kwerewkere.blogspot.com, wrote
wow, sorry about that people, it would seem this site has bugs. [plus, it doesn't seem to accept formatting from comments posted in opera.]
J, wrote
Reading this article shows that the ANCE (Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma) took a leaf from the Nazi book. At the moment whites in SA are more likened to the Jews in Germany. Because of BEE, many whites lost there jobs and are denied work because of racial discrimination. Jews were barred from claiming any rights as war veterans. Whites who fought in the Borderwar... Looking for lessons in history is a double edged sword. The moment you have won the struggle, you become the oppressor. Currently, the ANC is the oppressor
kwerewkere.blogspot.com, wrote
there's no "zero" rating, but let it be said that before i started writing this, i gave it zero stars. your history is flawed on many levels, but i will start with one point that you egregiously missed in your comparisons. a major reason of european-stoked anti-semitism is that jews were literate during large parts of european history where the christians were not. being literate, they got to enter professions from which christians were banned, and various rulers, both royal and papal, used them as convenient scapegoats to the illiterate masses. so when education became more widely available to the christian masses, many jews were a step ahead. that's the big hole in the first part of your piece, which has almost nothing to do with the second. however, i will tie them together in this response. by the time world war 2 had come around and had ended, almost everyone was literate in germany in particular, the nazis needed full literacy in order to completely indoctrinate the masses. so the beaten masses could read, write, and much of them had a trade, considering they'd been put to work building things for the war effort. this is a point from which south africa differs from postwar europe. the marshall plan used a skilled and literate but unemployed and shell-shocked workforce and got europe running again. south africa, on the other hand, has dreadful public education, from which only half of the people who even start R year even make it to grade 12. the difference in this case is not apples and oranges; it's apples and grapefruits. there is no real use of having "transformation laws" as you put it if the potential workforce is so ridiculously unprepared. i myself have tried to start businesses here, but the things i am trained to do involve a) the ability to write well in more than one language and b) the ability to do so with minimal spelling and grammatical errors. after four years of trying, i decided to just be a sole proprietor as a result of dealing with even recent graduates of south african high schools. it's not just the "executives" who making biting comments; it's anyone, at any level, who wants to try to make a difference, but who is confronted with the quality [or general lack thereof] provided by most south african schools. think about that. overall score of your article: 18100, with a further 2 points deducted for using 's to make a plural. overall score 16100 [for more political opinions, read kwerekwere.blogspot.com] there's no "zero" rating, but let it be said that before i started writing this, i gave it zero stars. your history is flawed on many levels, but i will start with one point that you egregiously missed in your comparisons. a major reason of european-stoked anti-semitism is that jews were literate during large parts of european history where the christians were not. being literate, they got to enter professions from which christians were banned, and various rulers, both royal and papal, used them as convenient scapegoats to the illiterate masses. so when education became more widely available to the christian masses, many jews were a step ahead. that's the big hole in the first part of your piece, which has almost nothing to do with the second. however, i will tie them together in this response. by the time world war 2 had come around and had ended, almost everyone was literate in germany in particular, the nazis needed full literacy in order to completely indoctrinate the masses. so the beaten masses could read, write, and much of them had a trade, considering they'd been put to work building things for the war effort. this is a point from which south africa differs from postwar europe. the marshall plan used a skilled and literate but unemployed and shell-shocked workforce and got europe running again. south africa, on the other hand, has dreadful public education, from which only half of the people who even start R year even make it to grade 12. the difference in this case is not apples and oranges; it's apples and grapefruits. there is no real use of having "transformation laws" as you put it if the potential workforce is so ridiculously unprepared. i myself have tried to start businesses here, but the things i am trained to do involve a) the ability to write well in more than one language and b) the ability to do so with minimal spelling and grammatical errors. after four years of trying, i decided to just be a sole proprietor as a result of dealing with even recent graduates of south african high schools. it's not just the "executives" who making biting comments; it's anyone, at any level, who wants to try to make a difference, but who is confronted with the quality [or general lack thereof] provided by most south african schools. think about that. overall score of your article: 18100, with a further 2 points deducted for using 's to make a plural. overall score 16100 [for more political opinions, read kwerekwere.blogspot.com] there's no "zero" rating, but let it be said that before i started writing this, i gave it zero stars. your history is flawed on many levels, but i will start with one point that you egregiously missed in your comparisons. a major reason of european-stoked anti-semitism is that jews were literate during large parts of european history where the christians were not. being literate, they got to enter professions from which christians were banned, and various rulers, both royal and papal, used them as convenient scapegoats to the illiterate masses. so when education became more widely available to the christian masses, many jews were a step ahead. that's the big hole in the first part of your piece, which has almost nothing to do with the second. however, i will tie them together in this response. by the time world war 2 had come around and had ended, almost everyone was literate in germany in particular, the nazis needed full literacy in order to completely indoctrinate the masses. so the beaten masses could read, write, and much of them had a trade, considering they'd been put to work building things for the war effort. this is a point from which south africa differs from postwar europe. the marshall plan used a skilled and literate but unemployed and shell-shocked workforce and got europe running again. south africa, on the other hand, has dreadful public education, from which only half of the people who even start R year even make it to grade 12. the difference in this case is not apples and oranges; it's apples and grapefruits. there is no real use of having "transformation laws" as you put it if the potential workforce is so ridiculously unprepared. i myself have tried to start businesses here, but the things i am trained to do involve a) the ability to write well in more than one language and b) the ability to do so with minimal spelling and grammatical errors. after four years of trying, i decided to just be a sole proprietor as a result of dealing with even recent graduates of south african high schools. it's not just the "executives" who making biting comments; it's anyone, at any level, who wants to try to make a difference, but who is confronted with the quality [or general lack thereof] provided by most south african schools. think about that. overall score of your article: 18100, with a further 2 points deducted for using 's to make a plural. overall score 16100 [for more political opinions, read kwerekwere.blogspot.com] there's no "zero" rating, but let it be said that before i started writing this, i gave it zero stars. your history is flawed on many levels, but i will start with one point that you egregiously missed in your comparisons. a major reason of european-stoked anti-semitism is that jews were literate during large parts of european history where the christians were not. being literate, they got to enter professions from which christians were banned, and various rulers, both royal and papal, used them as convenient scapegoats to the illiterate masses. so when education became more widely available to the christian masses, many jews were a step ahead. that's the big hole in the first part of your piece, which has almost nothing to do with the second. however, i will tie them together in this response. by the time world war 2 had come around and had ended, almost everyone was literate in germany in particular, the nazis needed full literacy in order to completely indoctrinate the masses. so the beaten masses could read, write, and much of them had a trade, considering they'd been put to work building things for the war effort. this is a point from which south africa differs from postwar europe. the marshall plan used a skilled and literate but unemployed and shell-shocked workforce and got europe running again. south africa, on the other hand, has dreadful public education, from which only half of the people who even start R year even make it to grade 12. the difference in this case is not apples and oranges; it's apples and grapefruits. there is no real use of having "transformation laws" as you put it if the potential workforce is so ridiculously unprepared. i myself have tried to start businesses here, but the things i am trained to do involve a) the ability to write well in more than one language and b) the ability to do so with minimal spelling and grammatical errors. after four years of trying, i decided to just be a sole proprietor as a result of dealing with even recent graduates of south african high schools. it's not just the "executives" who making biting comments; it's anyone, at any level, who wants to try to make a difference, but who is confronted with the quality [or general lack thereof] provided by most south african schools. think about that. overall score of your article: 18100, with a further 2 points deducted for using 's to make a plural. overall score 16100
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