Sjjvdberg

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The Wikipedia tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~ (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome! Dougweller (talk) 16:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The Wikipedia entry for the Liberal Party of South Africa is entitled 'The South African Liberal Party'. I suggest that the correct name be used.

The definitive (and only) source for the Liberal Party's policies is the booklet issued circa 1959, entitled Nonracial democracy - the policies of the Liberal Party of South Africa. To the best of my knowledge, until the dissolution of the Party in 1966, no changes were made to these policies by a national congress (the only body empowered to change the policy), but I may be mistaken.

Because the Party has been defunct since 1966, and has no known successor in law, and the policies were intended to be freely available to the public, I believe that it is fully in the public domain.

I have an electronic copy, scanned from my own booklet and proofread by me. I believe that the Alan Paton Centre & Struggle Archives have a copy of the booklet, but it's not known whether they have an electronic copy.

I will supply an electronic copy to anyone who wishes to make it available to Wikipedia users.

THE LIBERAL PARTY'S POLICIES ARE OF CONSIDERABLE RELEVANCE TO THE STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA

The Liberal Party manifesto is probably the only pre-1990 document in which the main features of South Africa's current (2009) constitution are prefigured in some detail about implementation. The only other document of importance is the Freedom Charter. However, the latter consists mainly of general principles and is lacking in detail about implementation. It also contains several apparently Marxist elements that are not present in the constitution.

The Alan Paton Centre & Struggle Archives: http://paton.ukzn.ac.za/HomePage776.aspx

The Freedom Charter: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/charter.html

Holism and Jan Smuts

Thanks for doing that on the Holism article. I have been quietly beavering away at the same problem that you point out in your edit summary. People tend to look back with today's point(s) of view and forget that when Jan Smuts and others first started mooting the "separate but equal" idea, it was considered liberal and radical -- which it was, compared to the common policies of the day, which amounted to straightforward oppression.

On another subject, I can publish your "Liberal Party" manifesto up on the internet for you. Just forward it to piet@pieto.com. Regarding the name change, you can do that yourself, I forget exactly how, I did it once before on my article on Paul Ngobeni. I will dig back and let you know or even do it myself if I have a moment.

pietopper (talk) 09:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I've posted about this at the holism talk page. There have evidently always been people who saw Smuts's 'holism' as racist. This is relevant also:

"He was sometimes seen as a figure soaked in blood. When the Native Labour Union demanded political power and freedom of speech, Smuts crushed it with violence, killing 68 people in Port Elizabeth alone. When black Jews refused to work on Passover, Smuts sent in the police, and 200 were killed on his orders. When certain black tribal populations in Bondelwaart refused to pay their dog tax, Smuts sent in planes and bombed them into submission. Not surprisingly, Smuts's ecological holism was also a form of ecological racism, since it was a holism that contained natural-ecological divisions along racial lines.

"The legendary opponent of Smuts's holistic philosophy, in the great "Nature of Life' debate that took place at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meet- ings in South Africa in 1929, was the British Marxist biologist Lancelot Ilogben (who had a position at the University of Cape Town at that time). Hogben not only debated Smuts opposing his materialism to Smuts's holism, and attacking Smuts for his racist eugenics - but also reportedly hid black rebels fleeing the racist state in a secret com- partment in his basement."

What isn't oppressive about killing Jews for not working on Passover or bombing black tribes? Dougweller (talk) 17:39, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if you actually have any references at all to back your assertion that Smuts' Holism was "a form of ecological racism" as you put it. Preferably some quotes from "Evolution and Holism" would be great. As for the state of affairs in 1929, and Hogben's "reportedly" hiding "black rebels"; that may be a fact - or not. However, black rebels and Holism are not connected. If you want to taint the product of a man's work with his beliefs, or even his actions, why don't you go after Ghandi, who was openly racist, or attack TS Eliot's "the Waste Land" because he was an anti-Semite? pietopper (talk) 18:15, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My apologies, I left out the link. I thought it was pretty clear it was a quote. Link is [1]. The bit about hiding black ebels is indeed not related, I probably should have left it out. And there are sadly so many racists and bigots it would be hard to watch all their articles. The articles on Gandhi and Eliot discuss these issues and I've just deleted one statement because the source didn't discuss Gandhi. I imagine you'd agree with my deletion. Dougweller (talk) 20:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Sjjvdberg (talk) 09:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

July 2011

Your addition to Sharpeville Massacre has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other websites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of article content such as sentences or images. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Also note that when we attribute something to an author we should not add editorial content about the author, eg 'highly respected'. Dougweller (talk) 16:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

October 2014

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, talk pages are meant to be a record of a discussion; deleting or editing legitimate comments, as you did at List of South African slang words, is considered bad practice, even if you meant well. Even making spelling and grammatical corrections in others' comments is generally frowned upon, as it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. HelenOnline 09:20, 21 October 2014 (UTC)