Malaysia's unity try, Part II

1. When SA won the world cup for rugby, they only had 1 black player on the team, who in fact, didn't even play. Subs bench all the way. The blacks hated the SA rugby team, and even wanted to rename it from the "Springboks" to some native african name. Mandela cut that attempt out, because he knew that if the whites lost the Springboks, SA would lose the whites. What Mandela did do though, very smartly, was to get the white Springbok team to adopt the black African song of freedom as their team anthem. A stroke of genius -- he managed to have his cake and eat it too.

The fact that the team didn't have the "racial composition" of SA, in the end, didn't make a difference to what the team did for the nation. I'm not sure what the magic formula was, but it worked. If i had to guess, i think it was because Mandela was smart enough to use the team as a fulcrum to get people to see what was wrong with themselves first, only then they would be able to start building the bridges between the races.

The problem with Malaysia is that none of the races think there is anything wrong with themselves, and everything wrong with the others. The Malaysia think the Chinese are money hogging pork-eating scumbuckets and the Chinese think the Malays are stupid resource monopolizing dullards. God only knows what they both think about the Indians and vice versa.

2. The newspapers and political leaders of SA were no different, it's naive to think that things were hunky dory in that respect. But somehow, it didn't make a difference, and reforms were pushed through nonetheless. I think its because Mandela was not only the leader of the nation, but he had the moral authority to do the things that needed to be done. Who do we have today in Malaysia who we can say mirrors Mandela. That's where the real problem may ultimately lie -- none of our leaders have real, REAL, moral authority (and don't make me laugh by saying Anwar Ibrahim, pls.)

courtesy of volume of interactions