South Africa is moving rapidly toward “expropriation without compensation”: the confiscation of white-owned farms and transfer of them to black owners.
Displacement of white farmers in Africa has happened before, in places like Kenya and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Agricultural productivity plummeted. It will do so here as well.
In his book Suicide of the West — which I recommend to you all — James Burnham, writing in 1964, described what had happened in Kenya:
[T]ake the famous White Highlands of Kenya that liberal publicists are fond of citing as an example of colonial and racist exploitation. The Highlands are the part of Kenya that, by its temperature, rainfall and soil, makes successful farming possible. They comprise in all about 45,000 square miles. Of these, 37,000 square miles are, as they have been in the past, farmed by African Negroes. The Europeans have been farming about 4,500 square miles, one-tenth of the lot: virtually all developed from scratch in the course of the past sixty years. From these 4,500 square miles the Europeans have been raising sufficient commercial crops to make up 80 percent in value of Kenya’s export total of all goods and products””the factor on which Kenya’s long-run economic development inevitably depends.
But this is because the Europeans have the best land, the capital and so on, ideology at once protests. The facts teach otherwise. Much of the Highlands land””considerably more than the 4,500 square miles that were the European maximum””is at least as good; all of it is of the same basic character. Comparative studies have been made of African and European farming operations that are closely comparable in all respects, including available capital. They show that the European-farmed land produces approximately four times as much per square mile as the African-farmed land: approximately £4,300 in annual value as against £1,100. It is certain that the economic condition of the Highlands, and thus of Kenya as a whole, will continue in the next period the worsening that began several years ago, and that there will be less food for Kenya’s inhabitants. As the Europeans continue to leave, their highly productive, technically advanced and efficiently managed farms are being broken up into subsistence plots or small uneconomic units, both types largely in the hands of incompetent Negroes. Very probably thousands of acres of the Highlands will revert rather soon to the sterility in which the Europeans found them sixty years ago, cropped down to sour bare soil, perhaps, by cattle and horses kept to expand a tribe’s prestige and status rather than its food supply. It may not be long before the rising young nation of Kenya is added to the list of those living by the surplus food of the citadel of world imperialism. There is no mystery here. It is simply that the native leaders of Kenya’s African inhabitants want other things more than they want food.
South Africa’s white farmers have been under brutal assault for many years now, but things are quickly going to become even more dangerous for them. I imagine many of them are already making arrangements to leave. (I expect they would be welcome in Eastern Europe.)
Meanwhile, the world will watch as South Africa becomes, not Wakanda, but another Zimbabwe.
19 Comments
I have read where numerous whites have moved to New Zealand. The SA descent into anarchy continues with the ghost of Nelson Mandela looking away.
Heck, given the “Success!” those mentioned liberal pundits appear to’ve been touting I can only wonder they’ve not stumbled “Onward!” to the realization that, geographically speaking, the liberal pundits could tout louder were the expropriations handed over to Kenya’s neighboring Somalis.
I mean, “the two birds with one stone” success the multi-cults seem always on about. An African adoption of, California’s for instance (whatever the scientific name of that minnow occasionally runs afoul of water-wheels actually is) “snail darter”?
Environmental Extremism enjoined to Open Borders.
Win-Win.
To refer to a bee in your bonnet, this is reflective of the universal franchise at its worst. I’m not expert on the continent, but my sense is that oligarchy is the only form of governance that can really work decently in sub-Saharan Africa. Give different tribes, including the white one, a role individually, and perhaps a kind oh balance of power can be conducive to an admittedly flawed justice and peace.
Not to worry: they’ll have oligarchy no matter what.
A good reminder that there is no difference between demographic replacement, and a violent foreign invasion.
There is no distinction between Mexicans crossing the southern border, and ANC terrorists crossing Die Kaplyn.
If the Europeans won’t return to Africa and save them, then it seems many Africans want to go to Europe and destroy it.
Disclosure: I was born in SA and spent the first half (35yrs) of my life there and (mostly) in four neighbouring countries. So, not an impartial observer.
At that time the progressive/liberal West convinced themselves that if the white oligarchies governing these modern and technologically advanced countries were forced to cede power to black majorities the outcome would be ‘true’ democracies and the region would continue to thrive and achieve its manifestly unlimited potential.
Thirty five years down the track and the reality has proved to be a slow-moving train wreck. It gives me no satisfaction to observe from here in Oz that this is what we anticipated and took flight from back then.
It seems to me from the above examples (and others in the rest of Africa) that it should by now be obvious that the black populations themselves and their tribal cultures must be held responsible for their failed states. What depresses me is that the progressive west continues to blame itself for the shortcomings of all black peoples.
Colin, blame and guilt are powerful forces among too many in the progressive West. To make it worse, there are many in the “victim” camp who have ready to go remedies for the guilt afflicted.
Yes, and greed, too, is a powerful force. Hard to reject an offer of victim status when it comes with benefits.
Colin I have a question for you:
When I’ve talked with whites from SA they NEVER seem to have realistic views about race. I’ve only met one (who was very old) who said simply that the blacks are not capable of creating or maintaining a European level of civilization. Even the ones who’ve been personally brutalized by black criminals–a lot of people there, it seems–express these basically liberal egalitarian ideas. (It’s because of ‘the culture’, or the history of racism, etc.)
Am I right to think this is how whites in SA tend to think? (None of the people I met were Boers if that matters.) And if so, why is that? Why do people with such long first-hand experience of black criminality and chaos and incompetence still have these unrealistic ideas?
“Why do people with such long first-hand experience of black criminality and chaos and incompetence still have these unrealistic ideas?”
Is this the “Noble Savage” syndrome?
“Is this the “Noble Savage” syndrome?”
It seems that way. But why is there such a thing as the Noble Savage syndrome? Is there something about Europeans that disposes them to this particular kind of delusion? Not so long ago Europeans were pretty realistic about blacks (for example) given the evidence they had. And really no new evidence has ever come up. Why then was it so easy to convince them, on the basis of nothing at all, that these other people were just like whites? As soon as white rule ended, SA descended into (ignoble) savagery, just as ‘racists’ had always predicted… just like pretty much every other African country. But this was not evidence. Nothing could ever be evidence, it seems. Why are Europeans so invested in these fantasies? Weirder still, it seems that whites in SA won’t even have any negative feelings toward blacks–not even when they themselves or their parents or children have been killed or tortured or raped by blacks; not even when they know this is happening to their people all the time. They still seem to _like_ blacks as a group. It seems so inhuman. There must be something very wrong with us but I can’t figure out what it is. (Lots of other groups are Christian–lots of blacks, for example–but they don’t have this sickness…)
Jacques,
European universalist denialism about human biodiversity has many sources.
(I shoudn’t have to keep stressing this, by the way, but in the current cultural climate it’s necessary: when I refer to “human biodiversity”, I am talking about the differences between the statistical distribution of various heritable traits in different groups, which tells us nothing in advance about any individual person. In terms of large-scale social and historical trends, however, aggregate differences necessarily become influential.)
Perhaps foremost, this denialist universalism is a radical counter-reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. Because that darkest of evils manifested itself as an expression of tribalism, any whiff of tribalism by Europeans now has to be snuffed out.
It is also a counter-reaction to American slavery, for the same reason.
Another root is the essential universalism of Christianity itself, and the Christian injunction to “turn the other cheek”.
The evils of slavery and the Holocaust are such dark stains on the pages of history that it isn’t enough for people of European descent simply to abjure tribalism: tribalism of non-whites must also be permitted, and even encouraged, as a gesture of atonement. Indeed, in our new cryptoreligion such gestures of atonement and abasement toward sacred objects (designated victim groups, the “planet”, etc.) while making public displays of enmity toward agents of Satan (identitarian whites being at the top of the list) are what nowadays stand as evidence of God’s grace, and allow the penitent to imagine that he is moving toward salvation. The need to maintain this posture in the face of all empirical evidence is what gives us Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society.
There’s much more to the story, of course, but that’s a start.
Hi Jacques. The discussion of the noble savage question has helped make my reply to you more manageable. However, answering your specific question remains challenging. I will try – by making a few somewhat disconnected points which might help you to contextualise the experience you describe. Assuming that those you spoke to were whites still living in SA I can think of a number of reasons why they may not have been entirely frank (to say the least) in conversation with you.
SA whites (and this is true for both those of us who are emigres and those still living there) are very cautious about speaking openly to outsiders who have not shared the experience of actually living there for an extended period. It is hard for outsiders, even for those who will listen charitably, to see past those words ‘apartheid’ and ‘racist’ which have been used to demonise us. Apartheid (an afrikaans word meaning, effectively, segregation) has been raised in the pantheon of evils to the status almost of genocide and racist to the equivalent of fascist. Easier to avoid complex and frank discussion which will too often be seen as attempting to “excuse the inexcusable”.
Only a minority of whites (or blacks) are (or ever were) truly racist (indiscriminate despising or hatred based on race aligned with skin colour). If that were the norm coexistence over the past 350 yrs would not have been possible. I suspect, however, that a significant number of whites have always been, or have become, what I would call race realists. The insight is not helpful, however, when your tribe now accounts for less than 10% of the population. If not helpful, perhaps best not acknowledged – perhaps not even to yourself.
Of course there always have been and must still be those in SA who genuinely hold and express the liberal egalitarian ideals you mention. Malcolm’s comment addresses this issue far better than I could. Whether this strain of thought is particularly prevalent among the whites in SA is an interesting question. To which I don’t know the answer. However, I find Malcolm’s proposition, that in Europe and US it is a guilt reaction to the holocaust and slavery, persuasive. In SA the parallel would be a guilt reaction to the injustices of apartheid. Frankly, my somewhat impatient response in all instances is along the lines of ”if you value our western enlightenment civilisation and hope to see it survive this century, then get over this guilt trip and move on”.
Thank you for these comments, Colin.
Here’s a 1985 “period piece” by Disney artist Vic Lockman, defending the South African status quo.
The piece was republished at Medium in October of last year, by a “PhD student & activist in Ottawa”. Despite acknowledging that the arguments presented in the document were persuasive enough to enjoy support from “even liberal commentators sympathetic to South Africa”, and were defended in major newspapers, he presents the document as self-evidently evil.
I’ll mention again that this is a young man working toward a doctorate — yet he shows not the least glimmer of critical thinking, even when rebutting the assertions made in the Lockman piece should have been, by his lights, trivially simple.
What we see is not a young and promising academic weighing ideas in the balance of reason, but a crypto-religious zealot recoiling from the hand of Satan.
This is where things stand in the West as we totter toward the third decade of the 21st century.
That’s a very interesting and plausible answer. Thanks Colin. What a depressing situation.
HI Malcolm
Thanks a lot for that link. I follow Medium, but somehow missed that article. Heartening to see that it earned a paltry 191 “claps”. I followed up by glancing at a couple of his recent equally pathetic attempts: one with no claps another with an even more derisory single clap. He doesn’t even have any friends! Disheartening, however, is that in due course he will probably be awarded a doctorate purely on the strength of exemplary PC views.
I found the embedded period piece “cartoon” fascinating. It dates from 2 years after we came to Oz. Buried in the midst of all the ‘self-evidently evil’ facts (all true as far as I can tell) is “Mugabe is about to abolish other political parties in Zimbabwe”. Which he did. He had to. After around 15 years of his plundering rule it was quite evident to the overwhelmingly black electorate that they were now far worse off than they had been under white minority rule. The forthcoming election would almost certainly have been won by the opposition party which, as I recall, planned to field a significant number of white candidates. It took a further 20 years of his plunder to reduce what had been fairly described as “the jewel of Africa” to a basket case. (I lived in what was then Rhodesia during my 4 years of high school). I was recently saddened to see the naive jubilation and hope of the people as power was transferred from Mugabe to one of his henchmen. Very few of them today would be old enough to remember the meaning of ‘good times’. The likelihood that they will ever experience good times is small.
Enough already. Between you and Jacques you have plunged me into several days of nostalgia and reminiscence. Nostalgia is an emotion I abjure. It is not helpful. It wastes your time and annoys the kids.
“Nostalgia is an emotion I abjure. It is not helpful. It wastes your time and annoys the kids.”
Don’t be so sure! It also keeps fresh in the mind some things that are good and need to be passed on to some of those kids.