South Africa 125


My last, flippant post on the death of Eugene Terre Blanche brought an interesting comment thread, in which not only did we attract some new South African commentators, we started up interesting disagreements along unusual fault lines between regular commentators. So I thought I might probe further with something less flippant.

I am not actually in favour of hacking people to death as a form of political action. But I am unrepentant at failing to be moved by the death of an out and out Nazi, who thrived in apartheid times in a system in which he was able to put his ideas of racial dominance into practice over his staff and black neighbours.

The apartheid regime killed many thousands, and dispossessed, disenfranchised and enslaved millions. Almost all white South Africans were implicated in it and enjoyed its benefits. Never forget that.

Through colonialism, apartheid and neo-colonialism, white people took control of Africa’s best farming land – in areas where white men could survive the climate – and its amazing mineral resources. Throughout Africa white people still reap the great majority of the economic benefit from African oil, gold, diamonds, rutile, bauxite, uranium etc. The backbreaking labour falls to black people and so does the pollution. That benefit that does come to Africans largely falls to tiny corrupt white-educated post-colonial elites.

In South Africa it is still the case that the large majority of the wealth of the nation. the controlling interest in the gold and other mineral resources and much of the best farmland still lies with white people.

There are some white South Africans who had a genuine moral abhorrence of apartheid and yet become unfortunate victims of violence whose root cause lies in massive disparity of wealth. There are however not many white South Africans lining up to shed their wealth meaningfully to black South Africans.

White dominance over African resources has been maintained brutally and often with the use of mercenaries – officered by the British upper classes and with South Africans doing the actual killing.

That is not to excuse corrupt African elites and misgovernment by the Mugabes of this world. But Mugabe being a dreadful old tyrant does not justify the continued white ownership of land stolen by force from the indigenous peoples. Indeed some of the worst white farmers are close to Mugabe, like Prince Harry’s appalling girlfriend’s family.

Even in a country like Kenya, the recent ethnic conflicts can be traced back to colonial land grabs by white farmers dispossessing one tribe into another tribes’ lands.

I cover all of this with vastly more depth and subtlety in The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. I do hope those commenting will read it.


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125 thoughts on “South Africa

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  • Larry from St. Louis

    “Muslim slave traders. I was thinking about this last night. How do you tell if someone is an Arab in Africa? They are light-skinned and speak Arabic. I have seen black Jews, but by and large whey are light skinned. So can anyone prove to me that the Arabs who black Africans detest so much today and who they previously accused of masterminding the slave trade, were in fact Arabs and not Jews?”

    Once again you people don’t seem to mind a bit of Jew hatred. It works even better for you morons if it’s completely fabricated.

  • Stephen

    Larry

    All too sadly we don’t gave to go back to Muslim slave traders to demonstrate that Muslems are capable of appalling treatment of Black Africans (although they have no monopoly) in this regard – we only have to look at Darfur.

    When will these people accept that no one has a monopoly of either good or evil?

  • Alfred

    Stephen,

    “Far better to focus your fire on the noxious and odious views of the living such as Alfred. and even better if you go out and dilute your British genes with a little bit of interracial breeding as both Craig and I have done.”

    You say nothing about my “noxious and odious views” so I take it that you think “diluting your British genes” constitutes a sufficient argument. Perhaps, for those of us who deal in mere facts and logic, you will be kind enough to put that argument into words?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Angrysoba (or could that be, ‘Angrydoba’?!), good one!

    Btw, if we’re exploring female pseudonymns, please know that I reply only to ‘Melanie’.

  • Alfred

    Richard,

    “That’s the bit that baffles me; the assumption that a minority of immigrants automatically has “full political equality” in its gift, to give or withold for the people who live there, according to how they feel.”

    My point was that when a settler minority rules they have everything in their power by virtue of their monopoly of legally imposed force. However, if they voluntarily relinquish their monopoly over the power of the state, it will likely be used against them by a resentful and long-exploited majority. In South Africa, a handover was forced on the whites, with the result that many have since fled, although some will surely survive there and integrate successfully, and I wish them success.

    My larger point was that Britain’s twentieth century attempts to colonize Kenya and other African colonies were doomed to failure by the pathetically small numbers of colonists. In Kenya, for example, a mere several tens of thousands of “gentlemen farmers” from Britain expected to lord it over millions of indigenous Africans and exploit their dirt-cheap labour.

    It was a project of lunatic impracticability. The resort to concentration camps, torture by castration and mass murder to defeat the resistance was not only evil but, worse, it was a monstrous error in judgment.

    It was in this context that I spoke of reproductive failure. If Britain had maintained a high birth rate during the early decades of the twentieth century and poured millions of people into African colonies, people willing to work for a living not merely to live off the backs of the natives, they would most likely still be there and prospering, and any hope that with a little encouragement the natives could hack them all to pieces would be an absurd liberal pipe dream.

  • Alfred

    “In South Africa, a handover was forced on the whites, ”

    I mean, obviously, forced on them by forces outside the the country, not by the oppressed majority…

  • Stephen

    Alfred

    Since you don’t appreciate that it is the nature and duty of humanity to rise above and progress beyond the level of animal instincts and behaviours – and that most of mankind’s magnificent achievements can be be attributed to doing so – I somehow doubt that you would appreciate a logical discussion.

    But Britain did not lose its Empire because we diluted our gene pool – it did so because those in the colonies wanted their freedom and right to self determination – and it was the right thing for us to give it up.

  • anno

    Laz Taz

    I asked a question about Arab slave traders. We know that Jewish dealers operated the auctions and transportation of the African slaves in the US and Caribbean. They also owned slaves and farms. George Bush’s ancestry were Jewish. I don’t have evidence about the African side of the slave trade, but it is fair to conclude that if they were running the Caribbean end, and the transportation, they may have been running the show in Africa as well.

    Unfortunately for them, they did not have the technology at that time to usefully extract body parts, so they only exported the whole machines, in good condition, which they sold like we now sell industrial plant at auction.

    The only fabrication about this was the industrial fabrication of food by slave power. The triangle of shame. Slaves to West, produce to East, sail south and repeat again.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Alfred, Britain – and not just the Irish, mind – did maintain a high birth-rate during the early years of the twentieth century. Most of those who did emigrate went to the ‘New World’, rather than to Africa or India. If they went to the lands that later would be called, the ‘New Commonwealth’ and even if they were actually born in Africa or India, they usually retired to a small cottage in the South Downs.

    Most people in Scotland, for example, have multiple relatives in Canada, Australia, the USA and/ or New Zealand and those people have had children and grandchildren there.

    On the other hand, while indigenous populations in ‘The New World’ were wiped-out and/or displaced and marginalised, the countries of Asia and Africa, as you correctly suggest, were conquered simply in order to provide raw materials and raw human beings to build-up and maintain imperialism. And in altered fashion but not substance, so the relationship continues.

  • Richard Robinson

    Alfred – I can’t see why it isn’t yours that is the absurd pipe dream.

    Hypothesise that you’ve been right so far, that a vastly larger population of white settlers with huge families is still dominant in Kenya. Presumably this has resulted in the locals having lost even more land than they had then, and are therefore hungrier and even more stressed and pissed off than they were then ? And this goes on, more and more, until … what ? for ever ? How is this huge population of settlers dealing with that anger, now, or whenever it boils up ? because, don’t you think that it will, sooner or later ? Or are they all supposed to just quietly die out from sheer discouragement ? (In a faintly more realistic version of this, what about the cold war, wouldn’t somebody have been in there supplying AK47s for the sheer mischief of it ? Are they part of the “muslim terror”, now ?)

    Or do you really imagine some sort of sweetness-and-light ? The more the settlers take over the land, the nicer they are to the people who had it before, and the more those people love them for it ? Why ?

    I think it becomes a “project of lunatic impracticability” somewhere along the line, anyway, and in a more ideal world would not have been tried.

    But then, the idea of having “whites” outbreed everyone else is demented, whatever you hope to achieve with it. Ain’t going to happen. What proportion of the world’s population is ‘white’ ? Have you got any numbers ? Any projections for the population of this world you look for ?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    I can’t seem to post this on the other S. Africa thread, so I’m posting it here. Apologies if it appears twice! It refers to a discourse there.

    Thanks, Mark. Much appreciated.

    Very interesting – and, I guess, maddening – about the CIA-flight, cigar lounge, etc. Yeah, these type of people of the Washington Consensus and IMF, etc. have no shame because they just don’t give a damn. They all possess, to quote my pal, novelist and thinker, Allan Cameron, a ‘Berlusconi Bonus’, a pass – and I use that word very deliberately in the S. African context though it applies everywhere – a pass to amorality.

  • Alfred

    Stephen,

    You say, “Since you don’t appreciate that it is the nature and duty of humanity to rise above and progress beyond the level of animal instincts and behaviours”

    Who says what our duty is? That is the question on which it will be difficult to obtain universal assent.

    You say, I don’t appreciate that “most of mankind’s magnificent achievements can be be attributed to [rising above our animal instincts]”

    Well i agree its doubtful if Pythagoras would have figured out his theorem while “diluting his genes.” So, absolutely, I appreciate the role of human intellect in creating the wonderful elaborations of our civilization.

    You say “I somehow doubt that you would appreciate a logical discussion.”

    Well try me.

    You say, “But Britain did not lose its Empire because we diluted our gene pool”

    I didn’t say that. I said that Britain’s empire was much grander in appearance than reality because they adopted the wrong population policy and failed to populate many of the more or less empty lands they conquered.

    You say “[the Empire failed] because those in the colonies wanted their freedom and right to self determination – and it was the right thing for us to give it up.”

    I agree about what the people of the colonies wanted. That is obviously true. But the point is that it was not what the people of the colonies got where the Brits, and other settlers, occupied the space.

    Look, I am not talking about morality. I am talking about the mechanics of empire. When I say Britain adopted the wrong population policy, I mean wrong in the context of creating an African empire.

    The African empire generated no real benefit for the British but caused much harm. Part of the fallout is the post-imperial guilt of many in Britain of Liberal persuasion who feel somehow that Britons have no right to a homeland or to any self-respect, even the right to be acknowledged as a distinct ethnicity.

  • Alfred

    Richard,

    What I postulate is that if Britain had populated some of the African colonies they would be developing more or less in line with Canada. And with enough settlers, it would have been possible to treat the indigenous people with humanity without fear of expulsion of the immigrant community.

    The British empire is now long dead. I am not arguing for its resurrection. What I said at the outset was to indicate that social policy, e.g., immigration and population policies, have real political consequences.

    I also tried to invite comment on how in a world of nations armed with nukes we resolve the issue of the double moral standard: rules that apply to our tribe and rules that apply to the rest of the world. Is the New World Ordure the only option?

    As for population, I accept correction by Saadi re British demographics.

    Saadi makes very well the point that exploitation of the weak continues not through colonization but through corporate exploitation mediated by corrupt local elites. There are important differences in the consequences, however, between imperial settlement and corporate exploitation. The first served the interests of the mass of people of the dominating powers. The second serves only the elites.

  • Stephen

    Alfred

    One of the logical problems to your theory of Empire is that it is just not physically possible for a relatively small country and population to populate large areas of the globe, often with much larger population, so that they can dominate those countries. This problem would be even more difficult if you wanted to guard against diluting the gene pool.

    As for the desirability of such a policy there are also very strong arguments against – perhaps some of us believe that one of the strengths, and delights, of the human race is it many diiferences. Your policy even if could be implemented would probably result in a monculture of bigots – and underlying it all there is probably some rather illogical (and scientifically unsupported) views about racial superiority.

    In my experience people who profess not to talk about morality usually do so since they don’t believe their own morality should be subject to challenge. You are also confusing the concepts of nationalism and patriotism – read some Orwell, esp the Lion and the Unicorn if you want to understand how British “liberals” can be quite comfortable with the distinction.

  • Stephen

    ” Yeah, these type of people of the Washington Consensus and IMF, etc. have no shame because they just don’t give a damn.”

    There are many criticisms of instritutions such as the IMF and World Bank – and your accusations may have some validity in relation to the structures and their political masters – but is just not the case for the majority of the people who work for such organisations. I have met a lot of such people in my work and most certainly do give a damn and are often very frustrated by the ineffectiveness of their organisations. Do you seriously know a large number of such people or are you just making an assumption based on the end results?

  • Alfred

    Stephen,

    You say “it is just not physically possible for a relatively small country and population to populate large areas of the globe, often with much larger population, so that they can dominate those countries.”

    What I did say was correct; namely, that Britain’s twentieth century population policy was inconsistent with its projects for the colonization of Africa.

    Thus, for example, in the 50 years from 1821 and 1871 British population doubled, whereas in the 50 years from 1901 and 1951 it increased by only one third. True, during the latter period, in particular, there was out-migration which reduced growth at home. However, the fact remains that whereas families of ten or so were normal in the nineteenth century, they were extremely rare in the twentieth century.

    You say “This problem would be even more difficult if you wanted to guard against diluting the gene pool”

    But I said nothing about guarding against diluting the gene pool.

    You seem to have it fixed in your mind that I am a racist and therefore you can smear me by alleging that I believe all the racist nonsense.

    You say “In my experience people who profess not to talk about morality usually do so since they don’t believe their own morality should be subject to challenge.”

    So you feel free to call me a racist? Your argument lacks substance or logic.

  • Richard Robinson

    “And with enough settlers, it would have been possible to treat the indigenous people with humanity”

    I really cannot see it.

    Taken to a reductio-ad-absurdum, if a whole load more immigrants had arrived, they wouldn’t have had the same ‘need’ to squeeze other people off the land they were feeding themselves from ? They wouldn’t have imposed taxes on people who then had to go out & work for rubbish wages to pay ?

    This is just going round and round in circles.

    As a matter of “practical mechanics”, I’d have thought it would make a lot more sense to not go picking fights with the majority by acting obnoxious.

    But you remind me how little I know about the history of settlement in Ccanada.

  • Alfred

    Richard,

    It seems simple enough to me!

    Do you think there would be such a high frequency of black on white murder in South Africa or such massive white flight if the majority there were white?

    And do you not agree that apartheid and all other odious repressive measures of the white regime were introduced because the white minority believed it would lose control of the country if it granted the African population greater freedom?

    In that case, my point is made: the ruling elite can only afford to treat an occupied population decently if it has a substantial superiority in numbers.

    It is true that there are exceptions. The Normans were never numerous in Britain yet they established a permanent hold on the country. But that was before democracy came to be understood as the only legitimate form of government. It was then possible for one ruling elite to replace another without making much difference to the population — as in the case of the British takeover of India, which may have improved the lot of many Indians.

  • Richard Robinson

    “It seems simple enough to me!”

    I just don’t get the basic premises. It gives me the same impression as, say, a Star Trek nerd telling me all about an episode I never wanted to watch. An elaborate set of rules for a fantasy. A set of assumptions for a made-up world.

  • anno

    The South African Asian Muslims benefited from apartheid, because it toned down their normal, aggressive brand of racist colonialism, as seen in Burma, a little.

    Not sure if they have maintained that level of moderation in Birmingham though. It’s like a rugby scrum, two populations, each full of their own sense of pride, each confident in their own destiny of victory, pushing together against eachother.

    The Asian community is spreading block by block into the white housing areas. It’s perfectly obvious who’s winning and who’s got their backs to the wall. But what will they have gained at the end of the day? A very bad reputation and suburbia. Raise the Pakistani flag, and drag the Muslim flag through the soil.

    When I came into Islam I joined a group that proselytises Islam. But when I found that they spend all their time outside the mosque, enfuriating people about Islam, I left them. Birmingham has the highest level of anti-racist policy in the world, and it is an unequalled model of equal opportunities, but the council’s priority is the removal of bigotry, not the promotion of religious enlightenment.

    We are hoping that the next generation of Muslims will settle down, but the signs are that they are turning into their parents enemies, with vicious dogs, and gang mentality. Where I live, the English people who were brought up here of my age tell me that they went to church three times on Sunday when they were young. How come such a receptive religious audience has been so completely turned off by the greed and selfishness of the Asians? Call a spade a spade, sometimes I’m very glad that the police know how to kettle demonstrators, as we saw in Dudley with the latest anti/pro mosque march last weekend. EDL against UAF, Birmingham Mail April 5 2010.

  • mary

    Alan Campbell and Angrysoba can sneer as much as they like. I was expresing my total disillusionment with what is laughingly called a ‘democracy’.”

    Very kind of you Mary, I think I will. But wasn’t it you who posted a link to some website saying, “Give your vote to someone in another country”?

    Not much of a gift if you think voting is a sham in the first place and completely worthless. It’s like giving someone a Woolworths voucher.

    Posted by: angrysoba at April 6, 2010 1:10 PM

    ______________________________________

    NO that wasn’t me.

    NO that wasn’t me.

    Got it?

  • Alfred

    You are the one using the R word not me – but perhaps rather than commenting on everybody else’s morality perhaps we could know a little about your own. We know so little apart from your dislike of liberals, that you see nothing wrong with empire’s using minorities to rule over majorities and that you don’t like Nazi’s being butchered (true liberals don’t believe in butchering anyone whatever their sins/crimes)

  • Alfred

    Richard,

    You may find the idea of colonizing a almost empty land by outnumbering the native people a Star Trek fantasy, but that is what the British did in North America. In Africa, for whatever reason, they failed to follow conquest with population.

    It might be argued that there were not enough Brits to go round but I don’t think this is the case. In Kenya, for example, in 1900, there were less than four million native people. It would not have been impossible to direct something like four million European immigrants plus, perhaps another four million from India and then ensure that the birthrate of the immigrants matched that of the native population. The end result could have been interesting: a mixed race population of over 100 million with a democratic constitution and a first-world economy. With such colonies, Africa today would itself be fulcrum of world power, not simply a resource area for exploitation by foreign-based corporations.

    The real problem, however, was that the British failed to formulate a viable model of colonial government. At the beginning of the twentieth century Britain was nominally democratic. In reality it was a plutocracy in which the deferential common people chose to elect either very rich and mostly aristocratic Tories, or very rich and mostly aristocratic Liberals. It was this model of government that the Imperial government sought to transplant in slightly modified form to Africa: the chief modifications being that white gentleman farmers would form the ruling elite and, to ensure their perpetual deference, the indigenous people would have no vote.

    With this model of government, there was no need to think about the relative numbers of settlers and native people. Hence, its failure.

    What is interesting, today, is to see the continued stupidity of the British ruling elite, as represented by Stalinist-trained cunts like Jack Straw and all the other lib-left, vegetarian do-gooding, feminists, and anti-racist, pro-abortion, and sex education fanatics who largely control the organs of state propaganda, i.e., the schools and universities.

    Kipling said the problem with India was that the Indians were the children of children. The problem with Britain today is that the British are the infantilized progeny of the infantilized, insofar as the British, as opposed to the less brainwashed and no doubt more intelligent immigrant community, have an progeny at all.

    So while they continue to obsess about political correctness and the sins of their ancestors, the British will gradually disappear in their own homeland as the three main political parties offer the same meaningless rationale for continued mass immigration “based on a points system like they have in Canada and Australia” as the Liberal party spokesperson was saying the other day on the tel, as if Britain were some wide open continental space, not a small island with, in England, no more than about two thousand square meters per person, of which perhaps 25% is arable land. So if England ever has to be entirely self-sufficient, they’ll be cultivating that patch, about 25 paces square, quite intensively.

    And before anyone bothers to call me a racist, Nazi, etc, please note that I have absolutely nothing whatever against immigrants. In fact, I am one myself and I strongly suspect that immigrants tend to raise both the IQ and energy level of the host society. Further, I believe absolutely in the rights of citizenship which must be respected whether one is a native or an immigrant. What I question is whether the British really wish, within a generation, to replace most of themselves with people from elsewhere.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    “There are many criticisms of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank – and your accusations may have some validity in relation to the structures and their political masters – but is just not the case for the majority of the people who work for such organisations. I have met a lot of such people in my work and most certainly do give a damn and are often very frustrated by the ineffectiveness of their organisations. Do you seriously know a large number of such people or are you just making an assumption based on the end results?”

    Stephen

    Stephen, thank you for the nuance which you contribute to many discussions.

    My post was in response to a comment by ‘Mark’ (A difference Mark from ‘Mark Golding’, I think) on the ‘other’ S. African thread; I couldn’t seem to post it there, though I see now it’s there too!

    So I was directing my ire at those leaders, the native elites who sip champagne with the big billionaires’ club while their people starve, etc.

    I entirely agree with you that there are many people working in lots of global organisations who are motivated by altruism and who try to do the best they possibly can.

    My uncle was one of the senior guys in the World Bank in Pakistan during the 1960s and 1970s. He was an honourable man, who, extremely unusually, never took bribes and was incorruptible. He tried to do his level best for his country. And what thanks did he get from his fellow-countrymen? You guessed it. After he retired, he and his family ended-up living in a very modest house in a very modest area and with little disposable income. No-one official even gave him the time of day. Meanwhile, his ex-colleagues (allegedly) lived in palaces and had offshore fortunes and chalets in the Alps…

    Anyway, I’m not saying I’m hugely well-connected but I do indeed know people who’ve worked in the Armed Forces, the FCO, DFID, the British Council, etc., etc. and nearly all of them – the ones I’ve met – are honourable and good people. Most of them try to do a very good job, given the macroscopic constraints.

    The issue – from my point-of-view at any rate – is not that individuals are evil, malevolent or psychopathic, though clearly those exist, but that the machine into which we all are straight-jacketed and which uses ‘the economic South’ as fuel for ‘the economic North’ (I know there have been huge shifts recently in relation to China and India) and which everywhere cartelises human endeavour, has run its course, is irremediable, is destroying the earth and the human species and requires a global overhaul.

    It’s like the engineers on board the Titanic did what they could, they did their best, right, but the vessel itself, the hubris and class system with which it was associated and the numbers of lifeboats were inherently and fatally flawed.

    So, yeah, you hit the nail right on the head, Stephen: “structures and political masters”. Absolutely.

  • stephen

    What Alfred of course does not appreciate is that a nation’s strenghts and characteristics are not dependent upon its host population breeding sufficiently quickly to maintain its own bloodlines. A nation is a lot more than its genetic make-up. In fact history shows that those which are isolated but maintain their ethnic purity usually end up as basket cases.

    One of the better features of both the UK and Us has been our ability to absorb and assimilate people and ideas from outside – and long may it continue – e.g. has Alfred any idea of how much the English language has been influenced by external influences – if languages have bloodlines it is probably the greatest mongrel around. Long may it continue.

    As for failing to formulate a viable model of colonial government – could it perhaps be that there isn’t a long term viable model of colonial government – since most reasonable people prefer to be citizens rather than subjects of a colonial power??

    While not wanting to resort to name calling – it is very interesting how your theories in respect of both the homeland and for colonial development do have a certain degree of similarity to those a certain A Hitler wished to apply to Germany – although you haven’t gone quite as far with the degree of force required to support those policies.

    As for “Stalinist-trained cunts etc.etc.” can I suppose that this is your attempt at logical argument??

  • stephen

    Suhayl

    Gald to see that I was sticking up for your uncle.

    To be honest the type of people who go for jobs at International organisations such as the World Bank often do so out of good intentions – if they were purely interested in money they would just go to the private sector.

    What saddens me at the moment is that there is very little thought going on as to how international organisations from the UN downwards may be reformed – when actually the appetite and opportuntities for doing so are probably at the greatest for many years given the realisation that financial deregulation doesn’t work, a US administration that is open to ideas, the general mess that is much of the Middle East, the failure of the international community to deal with dictators and genocide in many other parts of the World.

    We could of course say none of this possible due to US imperialism, Zionism etc. – but I’m afraid we are in the world we live in and have to start from here.

  • Richard Robinson

    “The problem with Britain today is that the British are the infantilized progeny of the infantilized, insofar as the British, as opposed to the less brainwashed and no doubt more intelligent immigrant community, have an progeny at all.”

    I am British and have no children. I am therefore clearly in no position to have any chance of being able to discuss anything with you, and shall cease trying. Life’s too short.

    Where are you from, by the way ?

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