South Africa decides to provide financial aid to Cuba after receiving medical aid from Cuba. Apartheid redditors lose their minds

www.reddit.com r/southafrica - Another notch in the Cuba-SA debacle

168 votes and 72 comments so far on Reddit

The brainworms in the comments it's just incredible. There's one actual good detailed explanation in the comments, waiting to see what :galaxy-brain: takes show up

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Castro literally ended Apartheit with his Angola intervention ... this is a level of disrespect i can not comprehend...
- USA of course provided "material support"to the South African-backed anti-communists. The war started in 1975 and coincidentally, South Africa got their first nukes in 1979.
  
  Nukes were actually provided by Israel, and the flying of a US spyplane (SR-71 Blackbird) prevented a nuclear test. Basically a Soviet spy leaked the date and details of the proposed nuclear test, and forced the USA, in front of the international community, into a position where they had to find out what was happening with regards to the situation. Otherwise US support of apartheid would become too blatant, if they refused to gather intelligence on a nuclear test by South Africa.
  South Africa tested the nuclear weapons at a different location, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
- You're expecting your average redditor to know basic history? Optimistic.
  All most white people in SA would know about the border wars was that their fathers or grandfathers were conscripted into the military to fight some people somewhere. And that was bad, because their relative got hurt or has PTSD. Nothing about the history of why it was happening, what exactly they were fighting for. (Spoiler, they were fighting for apartheid and colonial rule).
- A white South African would probably consider that a mark against Castro tbh
  
  Especially when you consider military conscription at the time. Most older white people would have probably actually fought against the Cubans in some manner if they were deployed to Angola or Namibia. Even if they weren't deployed, they probably joined the army instead of going to prison, or fleeing the country, or joining the ANC.
  It's why the border wars are a very sore spot. It reveals how easily people will fall in line in exchange for material benefits and escaping punishment. Reveals the true mindset of fascism, and just how many older people you know joined the fash military.
  It still is hard to comprehend for me as a born free South African.
  
  This leads to a weird situation where white South Africans in other countries are either there because they didn’t want to fight for apartheid, or because they were unhappy it ended, depending on when they left.
  
  This is very true. A Labour MP in the UK for example, fled South Africa to avoid military conscription. And did some cool work calling out Israel for being an apartheid state.
  In general, the more reactionary people left to Australia, New Zealand and sometimes the USA, while the less reactionary people fled to Europe, with the UK being an exception. And the Netherlands not really fitting in either category, as Dutch and Afrikaans are very similar languages, which makes assimilation easier if you speak Afrikaans. This is just a general trend, I'm sure there are plenty of reactionary SA immigrants in Europe unfortunately.
  I can actually understand a lot of Dutch lol, thanks to being taught Afrikaans in school.

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