Comments on: A Walk Down Memory lane……. that I don’t recall

By: lily

lily — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:03:51 +0000

Lynda, thank you so much for posting this. On reading it, I immediately decided to go. As it is not exactly a “fun” thing to do, I had been avoiding it. (Isn’t ironic that it is across the road from Gold Reef City?)

I went this last Saturday and was impressed with the whole setup, but found the experience incredibly draining emotionally. I moved to SA from Zimbabwe in ’82 and assumed that the worst was over by then. I vaguely remember the ’86 state of emergency and news reports of necklacing, but was completely isolated from it.

It is something that will remain with me forever and I recommend to people that they go whenever I can.

Thank you.

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:48:33 +0000

I too was so shieled when it came to the reality of SA in the 60′s and 70′s (well too about mid-70′s at least). TV arrived in 1976 (I was in the army at the time) and the grip on what the public saw and didn’t see would never be the same again – even although the news was so heavily controled. I have to believe that the info revovlution that we have lived through has forever changed the ability of govts anywhere to ‘hide the truth’. Could apartheid have survived as long as it did in today’s connected conditions? I very much doubt it. Puts a big responsibility on those who ‘cover’ the news and of course opens the debate as too whether or not the media cover the news or make the news.

By: Nuf Sed

Nuf Sed — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:23:14 +0000

Great blog Lynda. Thanks for sharing some of your experience. As a young snot who did not live for long in the world you describe, it’s always a treat to get to listen and learn.

Certainly the role of TV played an important role. In fact South Africa took so long to get TV because the National Government was not sure of it’s influence. As we’ve seen, they were right to have been afraid (from their perspective).

I was thinking about the internet v mobile phones this morning, and apreciating how powerful the internet is v mobile phones. Why? Because the internet is free, uncontrolled, un-edited – an open system. Mobile phone networks are owned and controlled, and therefore not open systems. Well not as open.

I found myself hoping that there were mobile phone network ‘pirates’ out there finding ways to free up the networks that control our use of them. Because imagine an open mobile phone network. Free, uncontrolled and un-edited. Now there’s power.