Posted on 03/10/2002 2:21:18 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveals trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America's structures are of "Western Culture". Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly your "Western Culture", not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman -- that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability,with freedom and justice for all.
But woe to you if -- or more likely, when -- the rules change. Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game -- violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves -- Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
Faced with revolution in the streets, strikes, civil unrest and the sheer terror and murder practiced by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC), the white government simply capitulated in order to achieve "peace."Westerners need peace. They need order and stability. They are builders and planners. But what we got was peace of the grave for our society.
The Third World is different -- different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe -- once thriving, stable Rhodesia -- is looting the very people who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.
Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.
It is already too late for South Africa, but not for America if enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race terrorists, the armies of the "politically correct" and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe "compassionate conservatism" will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.
South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their own suicide. We are not so very different from you.
We lost our country through skillful propaganda, pressure from abroad ,Great Britan the UN (not least from the U.S.A.), with unrelenting charges of "oppression" and "racism," and the shrewd assessment by African tyrants that the white man has many Achilles' heels, the most significant of which are his compassion, his belief in the "equality of man," and his "love your neighbor" philosophy -- none of which are part of the Third World's history.
The mainline churches played a big role in the demise of Western influence throughout Africa, too; especially in South Africa. Today's tyrants were yesterday's mission-school proteges. Many dictators in Africa were men of the cloth. They knew their clerical collars would deflect criticism and obsfucate their real aims, which had nothing whatever to do with the "brotherhood of man."
Other tyrants, like the infamous Idi Amin, were trained and schooled by the whites themselves, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. After receiving the best from the West, they unleashed a resentful bloodlust against their benefactors.
From what I have seen and read thus far, I fear Americans will capitulate just as we did. Americans are, generally, a "compassionate" lot. They don't want to quarrel or obstruct the claims of those who believe they were wronged. They like peace and quiet, and they want to compromise and be nice.
A television program aired in South Africa showed a town meeting in Southern California where people met to complain about falling standards in the schools. Many who politely spoke at the meeting clearly resented the influx of Mexican immigrants into their community. When a handful of Chicanos at the back of the hall shouted and waved their hands at them, the "compassionate" simply shrunk back into their seats rather than tell the noisemakers to shut up. They didn't want to quarrel.
In America, the courts are still the final arbiters of society's laws. But what will happen when your future majority refuses to abide by court rulings -- as in Zimbabwe? What will happen when the courts are filled with their people, or their sympathizers? In California, Proposition 187 has already been overturned.
What will you do when the future nonwhite majority decides to change the names of streets and cities? What will you do when they no longer want to use money that carries the portraits of old, dead white "racists" and slave owners? Will you cave in, like you did on flying the Confederate flag? What about the national anthem? Your official language?
Don't laugh. When the "majority" took over in South Africa, the first targets were our national symbols.
In another generation, America may well face what Africa is now experiencing -- invasions of private land by the "have-nots;" the decline in health care quality; roads and buildings in disrepair; the banishment of your history from the education of the young; the revolutionization of your justice system.
In South Africa today, only 9 percent of murders end up in jail. Court dockets are regularly purchased and simply disappear. Magistrates can be bribed as can the prison authorities, making escapes commonplace. Vehicle and airplane licenses are regularly purchased, and forged school and university certificates are routine.
What would you think of the ritual slaughter of animals in your neighbor's backyard? How do you clean up the blood and entrails that litter your suburban streets? How do you feel about the practice of witchcraft, in which the parts of young girls and boys are needed for "medicinal" purposes? How do you react to the burning of witches?
Don't laugh. All that is quite common in South Africa today.
Don't imagine that government officials caught with their fingers in the till will be punished. Excuses -- like the need to overcome generations of white racism -- will be found to exonerate the guilty.
In fact, known criminals will be voted into office because of a racial solidarity among the majority that doesn't exist among the whites. When Ian Smith of the old Rhodesia tried to stand up to the world, white South African politicians were among the Westerners pressuring him to surrender.
When Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe murders his political opponents, ignores unfavorable court decisions, terrorizes the population and siphons off millions from the state treasury for himself and his friend, South Africa's new President Thabo Mbeki holds his hand and declares his support. That just happened a few weeks ago.
Your tax dollars will go to those who don't earn and don't pay. In South Africa, organizations that used to have access to state funds such as old age homes, the arts, and veterans' services, are simply abandoned.
What will happen is that Western structures in America will be either destroyed from without, or transformed from within, used to suit the goals of the new rulers. And they will reign either through terror, as in Zimbabwe today, or exert other corrupt pressures to obtain, or buy votes. Once power is in the hands of aliens, don't expect loyalty or devotion to principle from those whose jobs are at stake. One of the most surprising and tragic components of the disaster in South Africa is how many previously anti-ANC whites simply moved to the other side.
Once you lose social, cultural, and political dominance, there is no getting it back again.
Unfortunately, your habits and values work against you. You cannot fight terror and street mobs with letters to your Congressmen. You cannot fight accusations of racism with prayer meetings. You cannot appeal to the goodness of your fellow man when the fellow man despises you for your weakness and hacks off the arms and legs of his political opponents.To survive, Americans must never lose the power they now enjoy to people from alien cultures. Above all, don't put yourselves to the test of fighting only when your backs are against the wall. You will probably fail.
Millions around the world want your good life. But make no mistake: They care not for the high-minded ideals of Jefferson and Washington, and your Constitution or Bill of Rights. What they want are your possessions, your power, and your status.
And they already know that their allies among you, the "human rights activists," the skillful lawyers and the left-wing politicians will fight for them, and not for you. They will exploit your compassion and your Christian charity, and your good will.
They have studied you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and they know your weaknesses well.
They know what to do.
Do you?
By insisting the workers were "visitors" the young men left their wives and children home, and lived in slums. Young men without family ties led to crime, rape, murder, and of course, HIV epidemic. But since you had to leave the cities when you retired or got sick (you were a visitor, remember?) you went home and gave the HIV to your wives and children before you died.
They could do a heart transplant in JoBurg, but in tribal areas, kids died of diarrhea and kwashiorkor. The tribal farms deteriorated, since the women were farmers, and used traditional methods based on slash and burn, but now there was no place to move and slash and burn to get new fields when the land was exhausted, so the result was ruined land.
Finally, if you were white, even if you were stupid, you could get a well paying job. A "kaffir" would be displaced by a white man wanting his job, and of course, a "kaffir" got one fifth the wages of a white man.
The good news is that whites could live in luxury in their enclaves and ignore the nearby slums.
No, I don't like South Africa today. But don't make it out as a perfect land back then. Like "Gone with the Wind" the perfect land is a myth.
Evolution continues?
They'd have to give up their kaffir servents. You think the women would be able to cook and clean? They might get their hands dirty.
The farmers (who are hard headed but hard working) would lose their cheap labor (you think they run family farms like here, with help from their kids? No. They have dozens of farm workers to do the hard work).
Except for the farmers, who are racist but work hard, I have little patience with the spoiled South Africans. FYI: There are two white "tribes" in South Africa. The Boers are racist, but usually hard workers. They could indeed get their own land: carve up and keep it. They have done so in the past (remember the Boer wars?). And unlike the farmers in Zimbabwe, most have 300 year roots in Africa, and no home country. If they get pushed too far, South Africa could blow up.
The Brits are liberal city dwellers, who merely wanted to be lords of the manor, be overpaid in cushy jobs and have cheap houseboys to do the housework.
Yeah, after all those African tribes invented heart transplants and built some of the best hospitals in the world. Oh wait a minute, they didn't do any of that.
I guess your philosophy is that if someone anywhere works hard and provides something better for his family and friends that he's obligated to give it away for free to everyone. There's a name for people who think like you, "communist".
It never ceases to amaze me that people living in third world countries whose ancestors never built anything worth noticing feel they're entitled to everything ever produced anywhere in the world by anyone.
I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with you but there is a certain level of hypocrisy in your last several posts that I find a little hard to accept.
I guess the question I have is, why is it a problem when done in SA but its not a problem when done elsewhere.
Things occured in Sierra Leone, Burundi and not to mention Rwanda That were so incredibly inhumane and horrific it begs the question of why werent they ever reported to the extent that the internal politics of SA were? Maybe the difference is because it wasnt whites that were responsible for the ethnic violence. The underlying message seems to be, if it happens somewhere in Africa no matter how horrid, oppressive or inhumane, if it doesnt involve whites being responsible it needs to be either A) ignored or B) quietly swept under the carpet.
How many people of whatever political background do you know that can honestly raise their hands and name the factions involved in that unfortunate episode? Not many Im sure. Yet Human Rights Watch a non profit group estimates that up to 1.5 million people may have been killed in that conflict, with thousands of acres of land stolen from their owners, and millions more forced into becoming second class citizens (with literally no rights whatsoever) of the regime that took power.
Its also interesting to note that many areas in SA werent even occupied by blacks at the time of the Voortrek. Many land purchases and agreements coincided.
Immediately after the close of the apartheid system which was not only a black/white issue, but was also intended to ensure the relative peace and cooperation of the rival tribal factions. The tribal areas immediately resumed their decades old rivalrys and fighting. For better or worse, despite all its flaws the seperation actually may have stopped the violence. With no borders between the groups, they ravaged each other ceaselessly.
I think what happened is similar to other circumstances. For whatever reason the whites prospered and the blacks did not. Was this the result of "oppression"? thats a difficult question. The only answer I have is-maybe. But if thats the case, then the question needs to be asked, why did the surrounding black ruled african countries not prosper either? Why were countries like Zimbabwe and SA consistently productive, relatively safe from strife, and industrialized whereas virtually every single country in sub-saharan africa outside of those two remained un-industrialized, uneducated and plagued with massive social upheaval and the endless bloody slaughter of its own citizens.
I think your view may be overly simplistic and in fact, borders on the naive. And some further insight into the history of the country and the entire area may be warranted.
And, uh, don't forget the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. White supremacists are not the saviours of South Africa/Zimbabwe, they're partially TO BLAME for its current condition. If they had given blacks equal rights, maybe they could have lived peacefully together. Instead, their repression gave communists a chance to take over (and the people of South Africa are incredibly LUCKY to have a leader like Mbeki, who's not a communist, even though he has plenty of faults)
What are you suggesting?
And there's a name for people like you: "capitalist pig, oppressor of the proletariat/people of color"
SA's racist policies did everything they could to subvert the free market, by taking wealth from blacks and transferring it to whites. Defending that dictatorship as a bulwark of free-market economics is a load of hooey. (I never thought I'd actually call someone a capitalist pig, and actually mean it...)
We are the current and future majority. America assimilates, not separates. Whites never were a majority in SA. It always had a foundation of sand.
Yes, the whites brought great prosperity to the region. But they kept it all to themselves, even though they earned a lot of it by putting the blacks to work for them. And they refused to allow blacks to join them in their society, and have an equal shot at attaining that wealth. If they had, SA and Rhodesia (it would still be Rhodesia) would be the bulwark of sanity in Africa, feeding much of the continent, propping up good rulers, removing bad ones... things would be very different if the Boers and English hadn't been so racist.
Very true, although it may be semantics I think the word Oligarchy is probably more appropriate than Dictatorship.
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