[Nowhere Man]

As I understand it, SA when colonized by the Dutch we pretty much unpopulated. As the Dutch created a modern civilization there they brought in blacks to work their farms etc.

The mistake was not working their own farms.

We’re making the same mistake.

Correct with our immigration policies with the illegals and the H1-B visas. If I may, this may not be PC to say but we made that same mistake before as well. As much of a pro-Confederacy sympathizer I am, I think we made the same mistake with slavery and it has come to bite us in the butt many times from the Civil War to what we see today. Sure they saved money at the beginning, maybe, even slaves use resources, but it was postponing the huge payments of money and blood later on along with huge interest. I often wonder if the Dutch worked their own farms or the Southerner here did, how would history have been different, sometimes I think we'd be better off.

[Honorary Serb]

Actually, most Southern farmers DID work their own land, in order to produce food! If they happened to have a larger farm and owned a few slaves, they worked side by side with them.

It was just those big plantations that produced cash crops—cotton, tobacco, etc. that used all that slave labor.

When it came time to fight the Yankees, it was the small farmers and others who owned no slaves who did most of the fighting.

As for South Africa, the REAL history is that the whites (Dutch and British) and Bantu were both expanding into the country at the same time. The original inhabitants were the Khoisan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa

It was mining—not farming—that led to exploitation and additional migration of the Bantu.

Given what happened to the once-lovely Rhodesia, it was inevitable what would happen to South Africa. It’s too bad—South Africa, now a rising BRICS power, will degenerate into another Zimbabwe (NOT Baltimore or Detroit) in a few years.