TONY LEON: Why there is hope for South Africa
Argentina's opposition achieved the unimaginable. So too can South Africa's
LAST Sunday, as I stood atop Mount Kent in the Falkland Islands, the icy wind knifed through my heavy-duty jacket with the proverbial ease of the hottest knife through melting butter. And this was still summer in the rocky, desolate island chain over which Great Britain and Argentina went to war for 74 days in May 1982. That conflict occurred at the height of winter and cost both sides nearly 1000 lives. Now heavily garrisoned by over 2000 members of the British armed forces, it is improbable that Argentina will ever attempt to retake this UK overseas territory over 12 000 km away from Britain. Standing there, it was hard to imagine the freezing, inclement conditions under which that war was fought, but easier to recall Argentina's most distinguished writer's description of the conflict. Jorge Luis Borges called the place and the contestants over its sovereignty a case of “two bald men fighting over a comb”.Our visiting group to the Falklands — or Islas Malvinas as Argentina calls i...
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