Posted on 01/09/2002 5:57:06 AM PST by SJackson
MORAL crusaders have the habit of heading off to their next crusade without bothering to see whether anything went wrong on their last one. During the '80s, TransAfrica, NAACP, Black Congressional Caucus, Hollywood glitterati, college students, and other groups held massive protests on college campuses and at the South African Embassy, built shanty towns, and called for disinvestment and sanctions against South Africa for its racist apartheid system.
There's no longer apartheid and there's black rule in South Africa, but what's the story there now? Andrew Kenny writes about it in his article, "Black People Aren't Animals." The article appears in the December 15 issue of the British magazine The Spectator, the world's oldest continuously published English language magazine (est. 1838).
Each South African day sees an average of 59 murders, 145 rapes and 752 serious assaults out of its 42 million population. The new crime is the rape of babies; some AIDS-infected African men believe that having sex with a virgin is a cure. Twelve percent of South Africa's population is HIV-positive, but President Mbeki says that HIV cannot cause AIDS.
In response to growing violence, South Africa's minister of safety and security, Steve Tshwete, says: "We can't police this; there's nothing more we can do. South Africa's currency, the rand, has fallen about 70 percent since the African National Congress (ANC) came to power in 1994. Emigration from South Africa (mainly of skilled people) is now at its highest level ever."
....snip....
Kenny says that whites treat blacks like animals. When a dog misbehaves, we don't blame the dog -- we blame the owner for improper training. In Africa, when blacks behave badly, Kenny says colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, globalization or multi-nationalism is blamed for not bringing up blacks properly. Liberals saw South Africa's apartheid and other human-rights abuses as unjust because blacks were suffering at the hands of whites. They hold whites accountable to civilized standards of behavior. Blacks are not held to civilized standards of behavior. From the liberal's point of view, it might even be racist to expect blacks to adhere to civilized standards of behavior.
During South Africa's apartheid era, I visited several times and lectured at just about every university. In a 1987 syndicated column, I wrote: "Africa's past experience should give Western anti-apartheid activists some pause for thought. Wouldn't it be the supreme tragedy if South African blacks might ponder at some future date, like the animals of Jones' Manor (George Orwell's Animal Farm), whether they were better off under apartheid? That's why blacks must answer what's to come after apartheid? Black rule alone is no guarantee for black freedom."
Worth a read.
It is the apologists for black criminal behavior who are the racists, here & abroad.
On the other hand, I am not sure anyone wants to live under a benign dictatorship or oligarchy.
Agreed, I don't think they can be said to have been better off under apartheid, without freedom. But it every measureable way they were.
Well, it probably would have helped if they had not embraced totalitarians, communism, and socialism after the colonial governments left. The ANC ideology of socialism/communims has wrecked every single economy it has toyed with. Countries like the United States and India have faired far better because of capitalistic systems after colonialism.
Does it NOT register with you that EVERY african nation has descended into barbarism AFTER mean ole' Whitey left? Do you think it is a coincidence?
You're trying to jump on a moral high horse, however to quote someone else, "but it is easy for him to say it since he didn't have to live under it. "
So, do you think that subjugation is any better when done by members of your own race?
At least the prior white rulers were able to maintain prosperity. They understood that, in order to have a working economy, you need to keep your workers happier than they would be moving somewhere else.
Blacks were moving INTO South Africa, even under apartheid, because they were able to get work that provided a good standard of living (by African standards) and were relatively safe from the random violence that characterised the rest of Africa. The current rulers have no clue as to how to keep things running, so they are looting what they can, until the point when things fall completely apart
The sad thing is that a couple of years ago I took a South African class to fill one of my requirements at school (I'm still a little young). All of the mayhem and murder going on there was not even mentioned once the entire semester (that is not an exaggeration). It was purely a propganda class and I got the feeling that the teacher was avoiding the truth because it would hurt the myths about Mbeki and Mandela. The professor's jaw dropped when I brought this up in the very last session and got tongued tied trying to explain it away.
As was said often against the push to end apartheid, "one man, one vote -- one time".
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