South Africa, Mandela, Indochina (1 Viewer)

[punkbabe89]

Did anybody else do these topics?
What questions did you choose and what did you discuss?
I'm personally not feeling great about it...

I chose Part B for Section Two, and discussed how the South African government oppressed its citizens, what international repsonses there were and the effects they had, including how its economic situation helped it out and how it encouraged civil war among the black ruled countries surrounding it and stuff.. Ended up with something like seven pages at 8-10 words per line.

Part A of the personality question was ok, but Part B i could only come up with a line of arguement that went something like 'Mandela allowed events to shape him, learnt lessons, stood by his beliefs, remained forgiving, etc and thats why he is respected and held in such a high regard etc' which i think might be ok but it was short, only 4 pages.

Section Four... I chose Part A as I mentally blanked on Cambodia completely, although i prefer to write on it. I discussed the outcomes of the Geneva Conference, Diem Regime, America's fears of communism, lack of elections, early Viet Cong, Diem's assassination, the military junta and the other two idiots that followed it, and finished with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and subsequent Resolution, saying that this allowed the US to make war in Indochina and resulted in the Second Indochina War, which wasn't a consequence that was hoped for... Extremely weak and rather short.

Reassure me?

 

[samosbo]

Hi. I didn't do South Africa and Mandela, but I did the same question for Indochina.

I basically talked about the same concepts for Indochina, with the Geneva Accords after the Vietminh victory in 1954 leading to the introduction of the US to the war because of their containment policy and Eisenhower's fears for the Domino Theory. Then talked about their increasing involvement with Diem, then also how North Vietnam's land reforms program changed after 1954, etc, etc, and how these consequences were a direct result of the Vietnamese victory. I ended with Gulf of Tonkin too and kept linking the increasing involvement back to the Geneva Accords.

Overall not that certain about the test. The personalities questions for me ended up being very similar responses, but I left in-depth detail out of the first one as it was worth less, etc. I had the Soviet Union questions for the national studies, and considering foreign policy was a rather unusual and new topic for the HSC, I focussed on Communism. WW1 was alright, but I know that I made the mistake of calling the Operations in the Spring offensive Michael, George and Bucher rather than Blucher - dear o me… lol.

Good luck with your remaining exams.

 

[navelj]

Hi, i did South Africa and Mandela. South Africa i did the same question as you - i just did not know enough to write on the first one. Anyways, SA was ok, but i hope you made the distinction between state "repression" and "oppression" (repression is reactionary while oppression is over a period of time) - i talked about economic response - what about sport???? I did alot on that and non-governmental contributions. Mandela question i'm worried about - the questions were a bit weird - where did you start for (a) and for (b) did you look at how mandela was shaped by events, which made him a revolutionary and conservative nationalist??

 

[punkbabe89]

samosbo - thats a bit of a relief, thanks =]

navelj - im pretty sure i would have made that distinction, i never considered there to be any confusion.

sport, i never gave it a thought. we discussed it in class but it was never mentioned in my notes.

for a i started at 16, after his traditional initiation, when his tribal elder or whatever told him about how white rule had impacted negatively on xhosa culture, before moving on to his fleeing to johannesburg and meeting sisulu and joining the anc and went on from there.

for b, im not sure what you mean... i never considered mandela to be a revolutionary or a conservative nationalist. was i supposed to?

 

[redjelly]

I did South Africa too, not Mandela or Indo-China though. We studied it in term four last year so if anything it was the section most of my calss was rusty on, took a bit of revising!

I did the question on internation reactions too. Basically argued the line that yes the policy of repression had a crucial impact as the violation of human rights and blatent enforcement of racism under Both provoked international condemnation.

I said that the condemnation was happening anyway due to outside factors such as an ideolgical shift towards anti-racism and politically the fall of USSR meant fear of communism was no longer an issue (and that always seemed o be the accusation... Oh you're an ANC member...you COMMIE!) Also stated that the main form of pressure was economic (disinvestment, embargoes, tariffs-tho yeah there was sport and other polit pressure) and while this was heavilly influenced by the reaction to the repression, the SA economy was actually already falling into crisis due to global recession and failure of apartheid system to account for rapid growth of black population.

SO basically repression caused individuals world wide to lobby govt's and form org's to pressure SA in polit and economic manner, though this was as result of a number of factors.

Hope SA gets marked easier as with smaller cohort there will be less super-good essays (perhaps!)

 

[redjelly]

Oh yeah was gonna ask ...

did you guys tackle this question specifically looking at Botha's time? Or throughout the entire 1960 onwards? I went for Botha basically as he was the harshest.

 

[navelj]

Hey i went from 1960 onwards - what about Sharpeville and the economic response after that - and did you distinguish between oppression and repression - because that is what the question seems to have been referring to - but i wish i thought of the fall of the USSR - good thinking - plus i should have mentioned the Bantustans - stupid me! Well i think i did ok with 12 pages - how much did you write?

 

[williamc]

SA: did international question

Talked about tactics of repression. Then i said that these tactics caused civil unrest in SA (gave examples), and therefore sparked international attention which resulted in the international responses.

NM: part a was pretty much my generic plan thing just linking to question. Part b fit heaps well with mandela. The events or occurances that were placed upon him forced him into these actions which led him to be percieved as one of the greatest 20th century personalities. Without apartheid being implemented mandela would be nothing. He was only taking advantage of the situation, not shaping the situation or whatever the question was. cant remember exactly.

Confident in my answers for these section, except for the fact i didn't use enough histeography.

 

[MartaJ]

Oh yeah, absolute mental blank on Cambodia!
I ended up doing Vietnam and writing some absolute tripe about Communism being the ultimate effect on Indochina because without the Viet Minh victory there'd be no Geneva Conference and no Diem and without Diem the peasants wouldn't have accepted the Communists so easily... absolute bullocks!

 

[mufti]

Section Four... I chose Part A as I mentally blanked on Cambodia completely, although i prefer to write on it. I discussed the outcomes of the Geneva Conference, Diem Regime, America's fears of communism, lack of elections, early Viet Cong, Diem's assassination, the military junta and the other two idiots that followed it, and finished with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and subsequent Resolution, saying that this allowed the US to make war in Indochina and resulted in the Second Indochina War, which wasn't a consequence that was hoped for... Extremely weak and rather short.

Reassure me?

I did that question too and wrote similar things, although yours sounds more comprehensive than mine!

 

[MotoMan106]

Yeh i done the first Indochina question and not feeling confident at all
i talkked about the geneva accords and dominio theory and yeh
not confident but not much u can do now

 

[navelj]

Did we need to include historiography? supposedly you shouldn't lose marks for not quoting historians in any part of modern history - IT IS NOT IN THE SYLLABUS - Ancient History/Ext History are the ones where you need historians - i should know because i do all three - but if you did quote historians it will probably get you marks - anyways - i think i answered the SA question like you and NM, but with SA did you talk about sport? nobody else seems to have done so - did i go wrong?????

 

[punkbabe89]

I don't believe historiography is important - for two reasons:
1. It isn't expressly stated in the syllabus, as you pointed out
2. My class were never taught it, simply told we should include quotes to boost our marks, that we should find ourselves, and this was only just before our trial. The only time i heard the word historiography in the modern history classroom was when i was considering taking history ext and asked what it involved.

As for sport, i didn't discuss it but i see no reason why you would have went wrong by using it, it's certainly an example of international responses to the situation.