Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...know them as giant enterprises making billion-dollar profits, by turns accused of holding the world economy hostage, precipitating a global food crisis and endangering the planet. Now imagine the public relations nightmare facing an oil company that uses technology responsible for powering Nazi Germany, that propped up apartheid for decades and that operates a plant with the dubious distinction of being the world's biggest single-point source of carbon dioxide. Only a die-hard optimist could talk up such a company, right? Meet Pat Davies, head of South African energy giant Sasol, and listen to him speak about...
White supremacists using Nazi technology is a Venn diagram of bad p.r. Yet Sasol survived the end of apartheid. Why? Because it's an energy company. Precisely those qualities--size, profits, energy security--that made it a target of the ANC as a rebel group made it vital for the ANC as a government. Today Sasol has a market cap of $32 billion and is South Africa's biggest private-sector employer, with a workforce of 33,000, earnings that account for 4.4% of GDP and a production output that satisfies 38% of South Africa's fuel needs...
...transformation has been so complete, reckons Davies, that Sasol's past connections to apartheid are now irrelevant. "We feel pretty good about the contribution we are making to South Africa and this continent," he says. "We're offering a partial solution to the energy situation on a global basis, and we're doing it in a way that provides jobs, alleviates poverty and improves quality of life. Don't dwell on the past. Let's get on with the future...
During South Africa's long night of apartheid, white playwright and social commentator Pieter-Dirk Uys felt unable to speak out. So he invented a character who could: Evita Bezuidenhout, the wife of a fictional Afrikaner nationalist figure. In the late 1970s and early '80s, "Evita" lampooned the establishment in a series of satirical diaries. Later, with the help of a wig, heels and a handbag, she became real. Black and white alike loved the subversion. Then, in 1996, Uys took over a derelict railway station in Darling, a semidesert town an hour's drive north of Cape Town...
...from colonial bungalows to corrugated shacks. The performers include Belgian pop singer Eva de Roovere, Zimbabwean poet Outspoken and the French-Swiss-Indian dance combo of Isabelle Chaffaud, Jérôme Meyer and Surajit Das. That's white, black and brown, having fun together in the old apartheid heartland. Viva Evita! www.voorkamerfest-darling.co.za