Posted on 03/10/2002 2:21:18 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
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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