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1. 5 Louis says:
   October 20th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   I agree, Apartheid was vile, but also any slaughtering of innocent people. The ones who sufferred most were the ones who needed help the most (even today). No unjust action can be condoned by another unjust action, like killing people. I have no grudge against Harris or Hain, because their day of reckoning will come as sure as the day of reckoning of the fathers of apartheid, who placed all us Africans in the spot of killing and being killed. Justice will always prevail, without the bloodshed it would have taken a bit longer, but so many lives would have been saved. I was only a teenager when I witnessed a bomb blowing several people to pieces in a Wimpy. I did not want it, I did not do it and I could not prevent it, but I cried for those people (and still do). It was all so in vain.
   A true African, with a white skin!

2. 4 g.Burleigh says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

   Peter Hain cared so much for Apartheid, so now that he has time on his hands, he can go back to South Africa..seeing as he is no longer an ‘undesirable resident’ there. There are plenty of improvements required in the new Rainbow Nation.
   Regarding his hero John Harris and the so called warning he made before the bomb went off, a warning made a few minutes before the incident.- Johannesburg Station is a vast building, and unless one knew exactly where the bomb was..evacuating the building might have caused more injuries and chaos.
   Incidently, I was the grandchild of the woman he killed, 12 years old at the time, and l saw him look at us as he placed his suitcase alongside us. I did not die from the 75% third degree burns l suffered as a result. Peter Hain refused to meet me some years later. I am not bitter towards John Harris the man who blew innocent people up, but l cant condone people calling him a hero or saying that he did not know what he was doing. If you have a bomb in a suitcase filled with dynamite and petrol, and you put that bomb alongside an elderly lady and a child…you KNOW that it is going to hurt somebody. So Mr Hain can carry on saying that John Harris didn’t mean to hurt anyone…but can he himself really believe it.

3. 3 PeterMac says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

   Working against apartheid was a noble cause.
   Lauding a man who murdered an old age pensioner and seriously injured more than 20 others in a bombing of a railway station was not.

   Or do you support the perpetrators of 11th September and 7th July. They too believe(d) passionately in their cause and also believe(d) that the ends justify the means.

   I think they were wrong. You may disagree.

   Incidentally he was actually convicted and sentenced for Criminal Conspiracy, and his appeal was rejected.

4. 2 Jackie says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

   So you reckon that the man who has been an anti apartheid activist and who, together with his family has worked tirelessly for the anit-apartheid cause, is a knave. Well you are entitled to your opinion, and you can join the number of people who have tried to pin various charges on him, unsuccessfully until now.

   People like Peter have been instrumental in bringing down the vile culture of racial division in South Africa, and his protests took courage and passion. Not that I expect that to impress you. Lately he has been a diligent and hard working servant of his constituency and Parliament. Granted, he seems to have fouled up pretty badly now, or not noticed when others fouled up on his behalf. However, he has not acted for selfish gain, nor has he gained money by false means. After all the slander and hate campaigns he has withstood, to go down now because of this is sad indeed. I guess he is calling himself a fool, but I hope he comes through OK. We need more people like him.

5. 1 PeterMac says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 8:55 am

   From Wikipedia
   “Peter became chairman of the Stop The Tour campaign which disrupted tours by the South African rugby union and cricket teams in 1969 and 1970. A 1972 private prosecution brought by Francis Bennion in regard to his leadership of the illegal direct-action interference with the tours resulted in a ten-day Old Bailey Trial with the jury failing to agree on three charges and hence he was acquitted on those charges, but Peter Hain was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and fined £200. He appealed against the conviction in 1973.
   The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal with costs. As reported in the Daily Telegraph of 23 October 1973, the court said his conviction was “fully justified”. Lord Justice Roskill said Hain had not elected to give evidence, adding that “He gave no explanation of his part over the incidents with which he was charged.”

   http://www.francisbennion.com/doc/fb/2002/008/peterhain.htm
   “On 24 July 1964 the African Resistance Movement told the Johannesburg Railway Police that a bomb had been planted in Johannesburg Railway Station. This bomb later exploded, injuring 23 people. John Frederick Harris, a school teacher, was charged with the offence, convicted and hanged. At his cremation the young Peter Hain, whose family had been friendly with Harris, stood up and recited a passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 3: ‘A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up . . .’
   Hain obviously sympathised with Harris. He thought terrorism could be justified by the motives of the terrorist. In other words, he held the flawed philosophy that the end justifies the means. This philosophy he put into practice in stopping South African sporting tours. His conviction of criminal conspiracy shows the law disagreed.”
   A knave I reckon.
   Why anyone like that is allowed to govern the rest of us I do not understand.

   But then Jack Straw was one of the leaders of the assault on the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square 1968 and went onto become Foreign Secretry, so nothing should surprise us under New Labour.

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