10/11/00 10:55 a.m.
South African Stupidity
Disarming the citizenry is not the answer.

By Dave Kopel, Dr. Paul Gallant & Dr. Joanne Eisen of the Independence Institute

On September 28, former South African President Nelson Mandela pleaded for help in fighting AIDS in his country. He made the plea during a guest appearance at the Labour Party conference in Great Britain, where he was conferred with honorary membership. Mandela declared the spread of AIDS as "a crisis of a dimension which I cannot support in words."

An August 31 editorial in South Africa's Daily Dispatch put it more bluntly: South Africa and its government "will stand or fall on its ability to successfully address two of our biggest problems: HIV/Aids and poverty. But it is exactly these two areas on which the government has no clear policy."

When the Mandela government came into power it promised the people more jobs, but its socialist policies came up empty-handed. Promises of better housing befell the same fate. Better health care delivery? That failed, too.

Instead, with one of the world's highest mortality rates from AIDS, South Africa and its people have reaped a bitter harvest.

More, the Daily Dispatch editorial left out the third most pressing problem now facing South Africans: violent crime. It's just one more thing that the government would rather not have to deal with.

Crime has gotten so bad there, that according to an August 12 report from the Independent Online News, South Africans now face a blackout on crime statistics for a year or more.

The blackout has reportedly "angered crime analysts, researchers and opposition politicians who say the moratorium comes at a time when the number of reported crimes is 'at an all-time high'." The Clinton administration, incidentally, has violated its agreement with Syracuse University, and is withholding data about federal gun crime prosecutions from the University's TRAC research center.

Today, South Africa suffers one of the highest murder rates in the world, with 20,000 killings a year in a country whose population is 42 million. (The U.S., with about six times more population, has about half that number of killings.) Not helping matters is the fact that approximately 25% of the country's estimated police force of 120,000 is considered functionally illiterate.

The connection between violent crime and AIDS in South Africa was underscored by "rape insurance" policies launched in November 1999. The "Rape Care" package offered by LifeSense, a medical benefits organization, is underwritten by Lloyds of London, and "provides a top-up policy should the rape survivor become HIV-positive as a result of rape." Dr. Angus Rowe, a spokesperson from LifeSense, stated that "in an environment where rape is so pervasive we need to extend protections to rape survivors in the families."

Rape Care policy holders will have access to counseling and medical treatment, "an anti-retroviral starter pack, the home delivery of the full 28-day anti-retroviral treatment, and HIV testing for one year."

Today, rape in South Africa has been described by women's groups as occurring at a "shockingly high rate," and many cases are now routinely recorded simply as "robberies."

So other than to hide the facts from its citizens and the rest of the world, how has the South African government chosen to deal with the problem of skyrocketing violent crime? Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, has decided to play the age-old smoke-and-mirrors game — false promises of lower crime through harsher gun laws — thereby diverting attention away from the real social and economic problems.

And why not? The ploy has worked well in the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia.

Mbeki's Firearms Control Bill would drastically overhaul the country's firearm laws and outlaw 90% of all lawfully owned firearms currently in civilian hands. The new regulations would let police decide who can own a gun, and who cannot. This is also Sarah Brady's stated long-term goal: "needs-based" licensing, with the police deciding who really "needs" a gun. (Erik Eckhom, "A Little Gun Control, a Lot of Guns," New York Times, Aug. 15, 1993, p. B1.)

Under the proposed changes, South African police would be given expanded powers of search and seizure.

As originally proposed, the bill required people accused of firearms possession crimes to prove their innocence, although this provision has been subsequently modified.

In addition to limiting firearm possession to a total of 5 firearms (including only one handgun and one shotgun), limiting magazine capacity, and limiting possession of ammunition to 200 rounds at any one time, the new restrictions would require applicants to prove the need for a gun for self-defense. Under pressure from the South African Gunowners Assocation, the government raised the maximum number of self-defense guns to two: one shotgun and one handgun.

The new South African policy is actually less extreme than Mrs. Brady's stance that nobody should be allowed to have defensive guns: "To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes." (Tom Jackson, "Keeping the Battle Alive," Tampa Tribune, Oct. 21, 1993)

The South African demand of proof of "need" for a defense gun comes despite protests from the New National Party, whose spokesperson, Piet Matthee, declared that "being a resident in South Africa is just the reason why any law-abiding citizen would require a gun."

Asked Matthee, "How can you prove that you need a firearm until you have been hijacked or your wife has been raped in front of you in your own house. Does anybody who has never been robbed look like they will be robbed in the next hour?" He continued: "should the bill be allowed to go through in its present form, all criminals would rejoice because then they would know that the danger to them is much smaller than ever."

If all goes according to plan, firearms in excess of the new limit of 5 would be confiscated by the South African government within 5 years.

But compliance with South Africa's new law is bound to be met with stiff defiance. The poor would be effectively barred from the right to self-defense with a gun by the requirement to obtain a "competency certificate" — and a 10-times increase in the cost of a firearm license (unless, of course, they're inclined to gamble on a 15-year jail term). In the U.S., poor people are sometimes disarmed through expensive licensing systems (as in New York City), or a ban on affordable defensive guns (as in California, which bans these guns with the racist epithet "Saturday Night Special.")

Constand Viljoen, former South African Defence Force chief (who was praised by Mandela for playing a leading role in the peaceful transition to majority rule), said that to Afrikaners, surrendering their guns to authorities was an "emotional issue" which would be reminiscent of the 1902 Treaty of Veereniging. That treaty officially ended the Boer War, and required Afrikaners to surrender their guns to the British. "A century later we have to hand in our weapons to a black government."

Afrikaners comprise about 56% of South Africa's white population. Their fears of disarmament are well founded, and can only be heightened by events transpiring just to the north of them, where mob rule now prevails in Zimbabwe. On April 18, Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe, branded his country's white farmers enemies of the state. Three weeks later, he vowed to seize half their land, and issued an ultimatum of "changing their ways," or leaving the country.

Murder and terror against white farmers by Mugabe's thugs has become a daily occurrence.

While Louis Kok, chief legal adviser to National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, declared that South Africa's new firearm proposals would help police reduce violent crime, the result of such policies has been just the opposite in other countries. Disarming a society's law-abiding citizens only empowers the criminals. The South African Gun Owners Association will be fighting hard against the new controls, but South Africa's parliamentary system of government has few of the checks and balances that are found in the American system.

Should the South African government proceed with its plans to disarm its citizenry, we can predict with confidence that more women will avail themselves of rape insurance policies, the economy will continue to suffer, social problems will find no solution, and the litany of broken promises will continue to grow.

Every 26 Seconds

In 1999, 52,000 Rapes In South Africa
A Reporter Becomes An Anti-Rape Activist

JOHANNESBURG

CBS
After being raped, Charlene Smith became an anti-rape activist.






(CBS) Every 26 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa. According to Interpol statistics the country is the rape capital of the world. Correspondent Bob Simon reports from Johannesburg.

In the seven years since the end of apartheid, law and order has broken down and violent crime is raging out of control. Fifty-two thousand cases of rape were reported to the police last year. But the vast majority of South African rape victims don't report the crime.

Lately there is at least a little more awareness of the problem. This is largely due to journalist Charlene Smith, who did something no woman in South Africa had ever done before.
Getting Help
Get more information on rape and sexual abuse, and on getting help if you are a victim.


She wrote and published a detailed account of a rape - her own.

"It wasn't a particularly dramatic rape," Smith says of her experience. "He didn't use abusive language toward me. He didn't beat me up badly. He didn't stab me. It was a very ordinary rape. And what it meant was, it could happen to anyone."

When the ordeal was over, Smith wasted no time: She started writing. She left nothing out.

"In the story that I wrote I brought (readers) onto the bed with me," she says. "I brought them into the bathroom where I was bound and where I was battling to escape. I wanted them to know - I didn't want to skip over the thing and say and then I was raped. I asked my children for permission before I wrote. They gave me permission."

The story turned into a series of harrowing reports on rape. Smith became South Africa's top anti-rape activist.

Unlike many South African women, Smith says she feels no shame at all. "The rapist should feel shame," she says. "A society that does nothing to stop rape should feel shame, but why should I feel shame?"

Society's failure to stop rape was only part of the shame. South Africa has the fastest growing HIV rate in the world, which means that women who survive the rape often die of AIDS. On the night she was raped, Smith raced right over to a hospital to get the drugs which can fight the virus.

At the hospital, the receptionist told Smith that because she didn't have an appointment, she could not receive the drugs. Smith got angry: "I leaned across the desk at her, and I said, 'Listen darling, I've just been raped, I have two children, this is my life, I want these drugs, and I want them now. Otherwise I am going to cause more trouble than you can begin to imagine.'"

Smith's account prompted a chorus of shocking stories. Jean Saul was in her home outside of Johannesburg when four men broke in, robbed her at gunpoint, tied her up in her bed and raped her. Her husband was tied up next to her during the whole thing.

"They told my husband 'We've got AIDS and we're going to rape your wife,'" Jean Saul remembers.

When she said something they didn't like, they kicked her or her husband. They called her a "white bitch," she remembers. "They'd been drinking heavily and everything smelled of booze. He stood on the bed and he actually peed on us. Just urinated over both of us."

Jean Saul is struggling to build barriers against the fear which has entered her life. Her house has new fences. She has bought guard dogs. She has tried to turn her home into a fortress, but admits it feels more like a prison. When she drives at night, she carries a gun.

"I can carry it in my hand when I am driving," she says. "I don't feel that if I am hijacked or anything I've have to fiddle around for a gun. I've got it in my hand and there's no surprise."

Eight months later, no one has been arrested in the Saul case. That's not unusual. In South Africa only about four percent of reported rapes end with a conviction.

"In South Africa, women won't report because they have no belief that the rapist or rapists will land up behind bars," Smith says.

In Smith's case, a suspect was arrested. But Smith had more to do with that than the police did. She says that the police lost the entire case file and all the evidence, within five days of the rape. "It's inefficiency, it's a lack of training, it's a lack of investigation," says Smith. "And they actually don't care."

Recently, anti-rape public service ads began running on South African TV. It featured South African actress Charlize Theron. The ads were briefly pulled off the air after protests by some South African men who found them insulting.

Psychologist Namfundo Walaza was one of the women who helped create the ad. A few years ago, she counseled apartheid-era torture victims in her Capetown clinic. Now she sees women who've been raped and tries to make sense of South Africa's culture of violence.

The vast majority of the women raped in South Africa are black. They live in poor townships, where law and order has broken down. In Alexandra, even the police say they won't go out with their girlfriends after dark.

On election day last June, Busiswe Shezi was walking home after voting in Alexandra, when she was attacked by three men who had a gun. "I tried to scream but they said just shut up we are going to shoot you and we are going to shoot to kill," she says.

When she went to the police station, she had to tell her story in front of a crowd of men, who didn't seem to take it seriously at all. They were joking about the rape, she says, and asked her if she had enjoyed the experience.

People are beginning to protest the crisis, and the government's failure to deal with it.

A growing number of rapists never make it to the police station. Vigilantes get them first and justice of sorts is done.

Simon had a difficult time finding a South African official to talk to him about rape.

Uninvited, Simon and a crew went to a Cabinet cocktail party, and found the ministers in charge of law and order busy honoring the national football team. Steve Tshwete, the minister in charge of police, attacked those who raise the issue of rape.

"We want to dismiss with contempt this whole notion that South Africa is a rape case," he said. "The rape capital of the world is a very silly notion that is intended to tarnish the image of our country."

Children are being raped too. Nine-year-old Emily Sithole recently had her second AIDS test just weeks after being raped by a 40-year-old man on her way home from school.

Emily's mother Clementia has good reason to worry the rapist had AIDS. There's a popular belief here that a man can get rid of AIDS by having sex with a virgin. That myth is increasingly becoming a death sentence for girls like Emily who are now targeted by rapists.

Smith arranged for Emily to be tested for free at a clinic that opened after muckraking revealed how badly rape survivors are treated by the health system. Emily and Smith will not find out for months if they have been infected.

In the meantime, Smith has had to go through the trial of her alleged rapist. "You can't sleep properly," she says. "You can't concentrate. You get depressed. You get terrible flashbacks. You are just consumed by fear."

Smith has shown up every day of the trial. But even if the legal system delivers some sort of justice, Smith will have lost something forever.

"I've really loved this country so much," she says. "We went through tremendous struggles in the past. We've seen awful things. I had such hopes for my children here. Such hopes for all of us - that we would stay, that we would build this country, that we would make this a better country, that the people that died here didn't die for nothing. And it really upsets me that I don't see a future for my children here."

Shezi has much the same feeling. "People are pointing finger at me right now," she says. "I'm scared of the AIDS test. I (have) a little daughter and people are poisoning my daughter and saying 'Your mother has been raped.' I'm futureless."

How can you NOT prove you need a gun? Crap, they need to MANDATE owning one. Sheesh . . .

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Go ahead and call Cosmo "Chief" and Bill is "Fearless Leader" . . . I'm HAPPILY "Minister of Spanking"!!

Famous Last Words:
Socrates - "I drank WHAT?"

i think these white people are being very intolerant. This is multiculturalism, we need to learn to respect this beautiful diversity, where averyone does not look alike or have the same point of view.

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The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Originally posted by Cosmo:
i think these white people are being very intolerant. This is multiculturalism, we need to learn to respect this beautiful diversity, where averyone does not look alike or have the same point of view.



I hope you said that in sarcasm????

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"No longer will weaklings rule the White Man by lies and deceit, but, the warrior will make his comeback, and rule by strength, honesty and love for his race."


IAN STUART

CONTINUED FOR THOSE IN DENIAL...

From Economic Powerhouse to Rape Capital John Morse chronicles South Africa's slide to agony

The horrors of the 'New South Africa' are perhaps best encapsulated in the grudgingly disclosed facts concerning both the scale and the pattern of rape in the country. Whilst South Africa's ANC rulers bask in the insane adulation of the world's dominant 'liberal' establishment and its contrived 'international opinion', South Africa's women, of all races, endure a reign of criminal terror, violence and cruelty unequalled anywhere else - incidentally exposing yet again the self-contradictory nonsense of liberalism, which simultaneously demands the dethronement of the white race and its values and the protection of women's rights (something which in fact only Whites have properly understood and guaranteed).

South Africa is now being styled, not without good reason, the "rape capital of the world'. It is so designated in an article by David Jones in the Daily Mail of Saturday, November 13th 1999. This article backs up the observations of Jones' colleague Ross Benson on the current state of that unhappy land two weeks before in the same paper, which I looked at in last month's Spearhead. It is here, if anywhere, in the matter of rape, that key issues of censorship, racial motivation in the incidence of crime, and what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of the country's white population are most dramatically crystallised and exposed.

Brutal assault
Jones sets forth the raw facts of South Africa's now endemic problem of rape with uncompromising directness. He describes the brutal assault of a white woman, Mrs. Ame Brown, in her Johannesburg home, in the absence of her husband, who was working a night shift. Mrs. Brown's two young sons were bound at the wrists and forced at gunpoint to watch by the four-strong black gang which had broken into their flat as their mother was violated in turn by each of the gang members. Says Jones: "As the first man made way for the second, he spat out the hate-filled words Ame, an Afrikaner, will never forget: "For years you Boers always took from us. Now we're taking from you."

In fact, Ame Brown worked as a care assistant looking after mainly black children at a Johannesburg home for youngsters. But her work on behalf of such an underprivileged, have-not section of the population obviously cut no ice with her assailants. Her race was all that mattered as far as they were concerned. "Afterwards," continues Jones...

"... the attackers remained in the family's home, a second-floor apartment, for almost two hours before brazenly carrying away everything they could find - from furniture right down to the boys' favourite Dinky toys - through the front door and into a waiting car."

The attack had what Jones describes as "its desired effect." The Browns left the city, with its "gratuitously violent gangs and simmering undercurrent of residual racial resentment." But their move to a rural location did not help them escape their nightmares. Their having been, in effect, thus 'ethnically cleansed' from Johannesburg, the family's wounds, both psychological and physical, persisted and festered.

The youngest son, nine-year-old Justin, gave vent to what must have been suppressed rage of staggering ferocity and bitterness in one so young. In an attack on what was apparently the closest friend he had in his new home, a black boy of his own age, he tied the latter to a tree with his shoelaces, in the same way as he had been bound by his mother's rapists back in Johannesburg and using exactly the same type of knots. He then beat the boy to pulp with a length of plastic hose.

Questioned by his parents, Justin, whom Jones describes as a "usually affable and impeccably mannered" little lad, replied, according to his mother, that "black people had come into our home and done horrible things to us, so why shouldn't he do the same to them?"

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of her own savage attack, Ame Brown herself has been diagnosed as HIV-positive.

So much for the peace, equality and harmony that the abdication of South Africa's Whites was supposed to inaugurate, and the 'reconciliation' (a weasel word that we shall be looking at later in its South African context) which we are endlessly assured Nelson Mandela was bringing about. The end of apartheid and European rule - as was widely predicted by any observer with half an ounce of sense decades before - seems only to have brought on a new, indeed an unparalleled - era of intensifying racial vendettas. This incident, which is far from isolated, perhaps best epitomises the country's reality.

Effort to hide the truth
Completing the picture, Jones refers to the censorship which seems to constitute the principal response of the new rulers to the situation:-

"In the new South Africa, where the very mention of the words colour and race is now deeply taboo, I will no doubt be pilloried for relating this story, just as my colleague Ross Benson was vilified by sections of the press here two weeks ago for his painfully accurate article about the demise of post-apartheid South Africa.

"Instead of rounding on 'racist' outsiders and attempting to draw a veil over the underlying causes of the rape epidemic sweeping through this country with the speed and devastation of a veldt fire, the media and the ANC government would be better advised to address the facts."

Rape in South Africa has now attained such proportions, says Jones, that...

"... thousands of women are expected to sign up for the first rape insurance policy. For £1.10 a month, it entitles victims to free anti-AIDS drugs, the morning-after pill, trauma counselling, alternative therapies and a full range of medical tests."

In discussing the inadequacy of official measures to counter the rape onslaught, Jones focuses not just on the scale of what is happening but on the sheer vicious sadism of the attacks to which South Africa's female population is being subjected. With grim drama, he comments:-

"In South Africa today, we are rarely just talking about 'straightforward' rape, if that is not too trite and unfeeling a phrase, but increasingly brutal and despicable rape.

"Rape by bottles and sticks and knives; rape by gangs who behave like packs of wild animals, biting and gouging their victims, with the intention of disfiguring them physically as well as mentally."

He details a few instances:-

"Among the many harrowing cases I uncovered here, one black woman had her lips scorched off with a red-hot iron after her attack; another (black) woman had been deeply bitten all over her face and body.

"A young (white) bank clerk was pushed into a clay-filled building-site pit and raped just as she arrived for work in busy Central Johannesburg. Both her legs were broken, and afterwards her demented attacker abused her horribly with fistfuls of clay.

"Noeleen Naude, a 23-year-old Afrikaner, was caddying for her boyfriend and his father on a suburban golf course one warm Sunday afternoon when two black men, one with a gun, sprang out from behind a small hillock halfway round the course.

"After robbing the golfing party of their clubs and jewellery, the men took Noeleen away and raped her in turn, telling her: 'We are black men and you are a white woman. We can do exactly as we want.'"

In the latter case, the culprits were caught and jailed for 30 years each. But this is unlikely to act as much of a deterrent. Despite such attacks as those on Miss Naude being "so commonplace they rarely rate more than a few lines in local newspapers," only about one rapist in 20 risks going to prison, given present conviction rates, in contrast to three out of four in Britain, where we have long considered the security of our own womenfolk to be far from satisfactory.

A part of this, says Jones, is "thanks to appallingly shoddy detective work by male-chauvinist (sic), ill-trained, insensitive and under-manned police forces (some of whom have raped the victims they were interviewing)." Jones does not venture any comment on how far this state of affairs is due to the ravages of 'affirmative-action' recruiting in order to achieve the racial make-over of South Africa's police which is ANC policy, nor how far the "inefficiency of the prosecution service," which he also blames for the five per cent conviction rate, may be due to the same factor. Perhaps this may be assumed. But Jones does paint an appalling picture of official indifference - and worse.

Records ignore race factor
Speaking of rape and other crimes, Jones, rather absurdly, describes it as "in some ways laudable" that official police report forms no longer detail the race of criminals and their victims, as they used to under apartheid, "given that reconciliation is the name of the game in modern South Africa." Apart from the fact that, in elementary common sense, there is, and can be, no 'reconciliation' as most people would understand it, where members of one group are deliberately committing violent crimes against members of another on an escalating scale, how can any such outbreak even be understood, let alone controlled, without an accurate 'epidemiology' of such crime? In the circumstances of South Africa, how can there be such a scientific criminology without accurate recording and analysis of the race factor?

In the mouths of the ANC régime and its supporters, the term 'reconciliation' would appear to have a special meaning. It seems to indicate yet another one-way street in which Whites give and non-Whites take, the former accepting whatever the latter dish out without protest or resistance. 'Reconciliation' appears to mean simply that South Africa's Whites are expected passively to 'reconcile' themselves to whatever conditions non-Whites choose to impose on them.

This nonsense aside, Jones does manage to get something of substance out of the government's 'Secretariat for Safety and Security'. Whilst the majority of rape victims are black women - as is to be expected in a population in which a mere 14 per cent are white - white women are over-represented. An official of the Secretariat commented: "There is a higher percentage of white women raped than their share of the population."

Adds Jones: "This might, or might not, explain why the Mbeki government no longer requires the race section of the crime report forms to be completed."

This is of a piece with the observation, made in some sections of the media, that South Africa's Whites in general have been disproportionately on the receiving end of the tidal wave of violent crime. For instance, of all occupational groups, it is reckoned that white farmers are most at risk of being murdered. Their casualties have been put in the hundreds since the demise of white rule. Murder in the countryside has gone hand in hand with large-scale encroachment of squatters on the country's farms, and an evident disposition to drive white folk from the land which they and their ancestors first brought under the plough and, over many generations, made fertile and productive.

Ethnic cleansing
Rape and murder are the crimes normally associated with ethnic cleansing, and most quintessentially representative of it in most people's minds. Judging by their combination with racial motivation in South Africa, there are few other places on earth suffering such a plague of this evil.

In the Balkans, the occurrence of ethnic cleansing was held to justify prodigiously expensive international military intervention - at least where Serbs and non-Moslems were held to be guilty of it. But in South Africa it is alive, well and internationally ignored. But here, of course, the victims are of culturally European, Christian background - a no-no in the New World Order to which South Africa has now been annexed.

Whites are being driven from pillar to post, and finally, in many cases, out of their land of birth altogether, by a combination of criminal, not to say terrorist, violence and 'affirmative action designed to strip them of jobs, incomes and status - only the racial criterion applying for purposes of recruitment and promotion, regardless of character or competence.

So why the lack of international indignation, let alone action, that we have seen against the Serbs? The truth is that our ruling liberal establishment, dominant now throughout the West and hubristically inclined to impose its imperium on the entire globe, has made a huge emotional and political investment in the new multiracial South Africa. This has lasted two generations, almost since the end of the Second World War. The promoters of the process cannot allow it to be thought that, now they have got their way, there can be anything wrong with the outcome.

Facts must not be allowed to interfere with ideology. No matter what actually happens, the typically lunatic liberal delusion of 'multiracial democracy' in South Africa must at all costs be preserved inviolate, and maintained in its status as one of the self-justifying dogmas of our time.

Challenge to globalists
Notwithstanding occasional exposures like those of Messrs. Benson and Jones, there is today a virtual conspiracy of silence in protection of the new order in South Africa. This is consistent with the hysterical past attacks on the old order there. South Africa always represented a special challenge to the protagonists of liberal globalism, which envisaged as its cornerstone the merging of all racial and ethnic groups - with Whites as the main sacrificial victims - into a homogenised ethnic stew.

Especially after the victory of the Afrikaner Nationalists, with their policy of white exclusiveness and dominance, in South Africa's 1948 general election, that country became, in liberal eyes, an unseemly warp in the pattern that international liberaldom had by now marked out for the future. More than that, Nationalist South Africa was a danger.

Partly this was because it was ruled by some of the most vigorous of the white peoples - Boer, Briton, German and other, people well able, other things being equal, to hold their own in a battle for their independence from the new liberal imperium. Partly it was due to South Africa's immense mineral wealth, which made it difficult for economic pressure to be put upon her. Last but not least, the country's new government was developing a racial programme which hinted at an alternative vision of world order, and one that could catch on elsewhere.

It was certainly the hope of South Africa's greatest post-war leader, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, that this would be so. He frequently commented on the need for the countries of the West to climb out of their liberal 'sick-bed', in which he made it plain that, if he had anything to do with it, South Africa would never join them.

Verwoerd argued for apartheid - or 'separate development' - with great moral fervour. Whilst his priority was his own Afrikaner people, whom he saw as the standard-bearers of his country's European identity, at the root of his outlook was the perception that South Africa's multifarious peoples could only live in harmony if they lived apart. In view of what is happening now, who can say that he was wrong?

Far from wishing to oppress the non-white peoples - whose plurality apartheid, in his understanding of it, fully recognised - Verwoerd aimed to set up arrangements whereby each of them could be provided with a separate territory (a homeland or 'Bantustan') within which it could live as it saw fit and develop at the pace it preferred. The project foresaw ethnic self-determination, leading eventually to independent statehood, in a way that would liberate South Africa's Blacks as far as possible from direct political domination by the country's Whites, albeit within an overall framework of white leadership - bearing in mind that Whites were the strongest group and most of South Africa's land surface would remain theirs - where internal peace would be facilitated by the fact that the possibility for the different racial groups to tread on each other's toes would be minimised. At the end of it, whatever limitations the scheme might have laboured under, South African Blacks could have looked forward to ethnic sovereignty at least as substantial as that of most of 'independent' sub-Saharan Black Africa, and states probably more viable economically, whilst possibly avoiding the kind of tribal domination that prevailed elsewhere.

The word never became flesh. Verwoerd was assassinated, and his successors (some of whom may have been implicated in his murder) revamped the National Party, abandoned much of its vision, and ended up appeasing and seeking accommodation with world liberalism. The rest is history.

Was the old SA so bad?
So was the old South Africa really the unjust, tyrannical, hate-ridden monstrosity it has been portrayed as by its enemies?

When I first arrived there nearly 27 years ago, the country certainly presented a very different aspect to that of today, as described by Messrs. Benson and Jones. Despite the big numerical majority of non-Whites on the streets of Johannesburg, it was the ethos of the Whites that prevailed. The 'feel' of the country was European. Nobody arriving from any western land of origin had the sense of moving out of his own culture and civilisation. The atmosphere was one in which the work ethic, as understood in Europe and the West, prevailed. Economic life and public administration were expected to be efficient and honest in the European sense, and generally were.

Above all, law, order and public safety were enforced and preserved throughout most of the country. In areas designated 'white' under the provisions of the Group Areas Act - a key piece of apartheid legislation - peace and quiet, sometimes to the point of paralysing boredom, were the norm. Police officers were neither frequently seen nor frequently needed.

Amongst the black population, largely residentially contained within its own rural reserves and urban townships, it was only in the latter that crime attained serious proportions. It consisted almost entirely of black criminals preying on their black neighbours; in other words, it was a phenomenon mainly internal to black communities. It appears from what Benson and Jones say that this is one feature of the old South Africa that has been carried over into the new.

In most of the countryside, law and order very rarely, if ever, appeared a major problem. I never experienced any sense of danger when hitch-hiking, as I frequently did, entirely on my own in the furthest reaches of remote Zululand, the Transkei or other native 'homelands', or in the wilds of East or West Griqualand, mainly coloured districts within Cape Province.

None of this is to say that the old South Africa was a paradise. It was no such thing. Inter-group tensions and animosities were widespread, often being sharper between different non-white groups than between any of them and their white rulers. Of course, Blacks often complained against white rule, especially any aspects of it that might have borne down personally on the complainant. But there was enough realism amongst the majority to appreciate, not only that the Whites could not forcibly be overthrown, but also that if they ever were non-Whites would be immeasurably worse off.

Natural respect for power
Although never loved, the White Man was by and large respected - at least while he showed a determination to maintain his power. On the African Continent, whether between White and Black or among Blacks themselves, that is the sole criterion by which the legitimacy of government is judged. Africans are not interested in the finer points of their rulers' character; they want to know only whether those who govern them are strong or weak. As South Africa's Whites are now discovering, having voluntarily yielded up power against all the wisdom of their ancestors, woe betide the weak!

A part of the former strength of the Whites was expressed in the economic stability of the country. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was clear to most people of all races that it was overwhelmingly the productivity and enterprise of the European that was creating a growing national income, in which all population groups shared, however unequally. The whole man-made structure of the country - farms, mines, cities, factories, advanced communications, etc. - was the product of the genius and hard work of Boers, Britons and other Europeans.

European imperialism, whether of Briton or Boer, inevitably produced some brutalities towards the natives. But such is imperialism and such, above all, is Africa, where things have always been thus from long before any European was seen or heard of there. That is the true background against which the alleged 'tyranny' of the old South Africa must be judged.

Two things must be said for the European settlers: firstly, they were great practical problem-solvers, as revealed in their physical development of South Africa; secondly, they, and they alone, successfully imposed peace and order on the situation that they found.

Now the Europeans have resigned their position of supremacy. Is anyone the better for it? In a country where unemployment now stands at 40 per cent, and the new masters' public actions are dominated by an agenda of racial revenge, rather than anything of the least practical use to their own people, what is likely to happen to the once-impressive economic infrastructure that guaranteed to most inhabitants at least a chance of work and wealth. When 'affirmative action', crime and ethnic cleansing have made an end of the people who built practically everything, what then?

One thing is for sure. With the arrival in power of the ANC, the problem-solvers have been replaced by problem-creators. The ANC government, however much Tony Blair and Robin Cook may fawn upon it, is a corrupt gravy train made up of incompetents, crooks and parasites on the take. So what does this say about the whole 50-year anti-apartheid project, and about our own politicians who promoted it all this time?

The future
Whither then South Africa? Back to apartheid?

At the moment this is just not practicable. The ANC's grip is too tight. Its leading lights and hangers-on, living the life of Reilly on the proceeds of theft from the Whites, are too tightly bound into their comradeship of corruption. For the foreseeable future, the ANC is likely to prevail in the misgovernment of South Africa, much as the communist parties of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia prevailed over their own respective ethnic hotch-potches - the lure of the gravy train and the fear of counter-revolution causing their apparatchiks to hang together for dear life.

Nevertheless, apartheid remains the only specific for South Africa's historical predicament to show any track record of success. If it were ever to be restored, this might happen by violence or consent. The ideal, of course, would be the latter, whereby the substance of apartheid's original constructive intent was re-established through concurrence among South Africa's separate peoples, once it was agreed that the continued reign of the ANC was intolerable for all.

Historically, salvation for South Africa has always originated from among the country's creators, the Whites, and particularly the Boers. Today the latter appear broken and demoralised. If they were ever to revive their fortunes, and thereby those of South Africa as a whole, they would not be starting, as in 1948, from a position of strength, but from one of considerable weakness. To pull it off, they would have to discover in their midst some leader not only of inspirational courage, self-discipline and judgement, but of unprecedented political genius.

Will such a figure emerge? South Africa had better hope so.

it's depressing the situation there.

I met a white south african female on one of the tours i took in Ireland when i went there recently....she said her good friend has been raped....

she fears for her life..and wants to move..

------------------
"The only thing i know is that i don't know"
-Socrates
http://216.105.37.221/images/gif006.gif

Originally posted by Scott:
it's depressing the situation there.

I met a white south african female on one of the tours i took in Ireland when i went there recently....she said her good friend has been raped....

she fears for her life..and wants to move..



That is what happens when blacks are left to self-rule. The situation esculates when there is a white minority, the future of America.

------------------
"No longer will weaklings rule the White Man by lies and deceit, but, the warrior will make his comeback, and rule by strength, honesty and love for his race."


IAN STUART

i think you may be looking at America in 50 years or less. And it won't be because of race, it will be because of CULTURE.

------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

Originally posted by Cosmo:
i think these white people are being very intolerant. This is multiculturalism, we need to learn to respect this beautiful diversity, where averyone does not look alike or have the same point of view.


I can never tell whether you're serious or not...

Either way, that was very well put.

Cristina-

Offtopic: It's not just white people that are intolerant of this.

------------------
"Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength."

"Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it."

"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark."

"The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?"

"Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it."

-- Michael Shermer

Originally posted by buggy:
I can never tell whether you're serious or not...

Either way, that was very well put.

Cristina-

Offtopic: It's not just white people that are intolerant of this.



He was being sarcastic buggy.



------------------
Hmmmm, Im thinking

Originally posted by Powerboss:
He was being sarcastic buggy.


Sorry, I did not envelope the statement with the context of the article.

maniac88: Throughout history, it doesn't seem as if anyone of any skin color is fit to really lead anyone at all.

------------------
"Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength."

"Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it."

"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark."

"The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?"

"Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it."

-- Michael Shermer

Buggy, I don't know if tht is true. In the context of how many poeople are products of there environment,(most people of color belonged to very backward cultures) then the numbers of colored leaders would understandably be small. But once a colored decides to adopt an advanced culture, they do as well as anybody else. Colin Powell comes to mind, Clarence Thomas is another. You may not always agree with their politics, I don't either, you must admit that Powell at least is a natural born leader. But if he spoke only ebonics, eschewed education, had been a bastard,chances are he would be or have been in prison studying to be a Muslim.

From a scietific standpoint, I find tath culture can explain differences more readiy than race. I believe there are some cultures far superior to others, I see no corollary with with race.

------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

Well put Cosmo. RACE has nothing to do with capability (no physical evidence to prove a "master race" even exists . . . unless you want to count a Southerner of ANY color . . . that's about as close as you can get http://discussanything.com/Ubb/wink.gif).

Culture IS the thing. The problem is that we're in the midst of a cultural struggle in which BOTH sides wish to hang onto their beliefs and practices . . . both good and bad.

------------------
Go ahead and call Cosmo "Chief" and Bill is "Fearless Leader" . . . I'm HAPPILY "Minister of Spanking"!!

Famous Last Words:
Socrates - "I drank WHAT?"

Exactly. Until we recognize that fact we wil be locked in a timeless struggle where neither side will win.

------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

Originally posted by Cosmo:
Buggy, I don't know if tht is true. In the context of how many poeople are products of there environment,(most people of color belonged to very backward cultures) then the numbers of colored leaders would understandably be small. But once a colored decides to adopt an advanced culture, they do as well as anybody else. Colin Powell comes to mind, Clarence Thomas is another. You may not always agree with their politics, I don't either, you must admit that Powell at least is a natural born leader. But if he spoke only ebonics, eschewed education, had been a bastard,chances are he would be or have been in prison studying to be a Muslim.

From a scietific standpoint, I find tath culture can explain differences more readiy than race. I believe there are some cultures far superior to others, I see no corollary with with race.



I agree. As was stated in my post, your skin color (call it race if you will) has *nothing* to do with leadership qualities. My comment was pertaining to maniac's assumption that the white race is superior.

See:
maniac88: Throughout history, it doesn't seem as if anyone of any skin color is fit to really lead anyone at all.

Humans in general destroy each other.

Cristina-



------------------
"Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength."

"Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it."

"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark."

"The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?"

"Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it."

-- Michael Shermer

My apology Buggy, I read that as your comment addressed to Manic. I should have known better.

------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

Originally posted by Cosmo:
Buggy, I don't know if tht is true. In the context of how many poeople are products of there environment,(most people of color belonged to very backward cultures) then the numbers of colored leaders would understandably be small. But once a colored decides to adopt an advanced culture, they do as well as anybody else. Colin Powell comes to mind, Clarence Thomas is another. You may not always agree with their politics, I don't either, you must admit that Powell at least is a natural born leader. But if he spoke only ebonics, eschewed education, had been a bastard,chances are he would be or have been in prison studying to be a Muslim.

From a scietific standpoint, I find tath culture can explain differences more readiy than race. I believe there are some cultures far superior to others, I see no corollary with with race.



If that is so , please name one succesful African nation. Maybe it's just me, but these superior cultures always seem to be European and East Asian???

------------------
"No longer will weaklings rule the White Man by lies and deceit, but, the warrior will make his comeback, and rule by strength, honesty and love for his race."


IAN STUART

Originally posted by D Durden:
Well put Cosmo. RACE has nothing to do with capability (no physical evidence to prove a "master race" even exists . . . unless you want to count a Southerner of ANY color . . . that's about as close as you can get http://discussanything.com/Ubb/wink.gif).

Culture IS the thing. The problem is that we're in the midst of a cultural struggle in which BOTH sides wish to hang onto their beliefs and practices . . . both good and bad.



What cultural struggle? The only cultural struggle i can discern is the culture of ingnorance vs. the culture of enlightenment.



------------------
"He could not plead want of employment, nor incapacity of getting his bread in an honest way, but frankly own'd it was to get rid of the disagreeable superiority of some masters he was acquainted with and the love of novelty and change."

William Defoe on Bartholomew Roberts career of piracy

Well Cody tht is the struggle we are referring to. American Culture,The culture of enlightenment, is being attacked from every side, by dysfunctional multi cultures.

------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

Originally posted by Cosmo:
Well Cody tht is the struggle we are referring to. American Culture,The culture of enlightenment, is being attacked from every side, by dysfunctional multi cultures.



I really fail to see how it is being attacked by other cultures. America is the most powerfull, most objective nation on earth. I think perhaps certain racist tenants of american culture are under attack, and with all luck they will die out in the near future.


------------------
"He could not plead want of employment, nor incapacity of getting his bread in an honest way, but frankly own'd it was to get rid of the disagreeable superiority of some masters he was acquainted with and the love of novelty and change."

William Defoe on Bartholomew Roberts career of piracy

Originally posted by CodyChaos:
I really fail to see how it is being attacked by other cultures. America is the most powerfull, most objective nation on earth. I think perhaps certain racist tenants of american culture are under attack, and with all luck they will die out in the near future.



I agree. God forbid that American culture would be shaped at all by the subcultures within it (uh, this is the way culture works, by the way). We're a nation made up of different people who have come from all over the world. Obviously that's going to affect our nation's culture. And, uh, cultures do change over time. It's natural - that's the way these things work. If you remain stagnant, you die out.


------------------
"I have no regrets. Regret only makes wrinkles." - Sophia Loren

I think we need to send Sarah Brady, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, & Hillary on a tour of South Africa. I'm sure many of you will join me in making a generous donation towards airfare. They'll be sure to straighten things out over there. Don't those backwoods Africans know that all you need is 911 & pepper spray?

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Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.
Malachi 2:3

Originally posted by Dest98:
I think we need to send Sarah Brady, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, & Hillary on a tour of South Africa. I'm sure many of you will join me in making a generous donation towards airfare. They'll be sure to straighten things out over there. Don't those backwoods Africans know that all you need is 911 & pepper spray?



Thats the funniest post I've read in a while!haha Thanks for the laugh. haha

------------------
"No longer will weaklings rule the White Man by lies and deceit, but, the warrior will make his comeback, and rule by strength, honesty and love for his race."


IAN STUART

Originally posted by Aphasia:
I agree. God forbid that American culture would be shaped at all by the subcultures within it (uh, this is the way culture works, by the way). We're a nation made up of different people who have come from all over the world. Obviously that's going to affect our nation's culture. And, uh, cultures do change over time. It's natural - that's the way these things work. If you remain stagnant, you die out.


I disagree. The very things tht made American culture, its institutions are under attack. The family unit, marriage, religion, values like honor and integrity, honesty, are all falling out of favor. Yes, it is true culture evolves, but it can evolve or devolve, and we are experienceing some breakdowns that are not good.

I think there is very little racist culture left (I didn't say none)and what is left is likely to stay. You would think that it would die out as a generation dies out, but it hasn't.(some might argue, with some justification, that it has grown in fact)Skin heads replace the rednecks, and Louis Farakhan's group grows by leaps and bounds. For the rest, race and culture are used synonomously, incorrectly. The reason I say (with many others more learned than me)our culture is under attack, is that wee have made multicultural society a goal in itself. But that assumes all cultures are on an equal footing, something I dispute. Is a culture that treats women as chattel to be emulated? Is a culture tht condones the sale of its children or the murder of its children to be revered? I think not. Is a culture that sets aside whole pieces of its population in to a lower caste, less human that the rest, a goal for Americans? It never was before. We have spent generations, since our founding, to secure the equality of opportunity for all. Why go back? It is offensive to some, especially those who think America was an accident of birth, to say America has the best culture in the world, or to say America is the best country in the world BECAUSE OF ITS CULTURE, but it is true.

That is not to say other cultures don't have good points or that some are not better or worse than others. One of our strengths is that we have always adopted the best of other cultures to make our own unique recipe. That is our strength, or one of them. Our other is to periodically say, wait a minute, we got off track some how, we have a problem, let's fix it! The emancipation, sufferage, civil rights movement are just three major examples of these. Remember, these ideas came from Americans for America. There are many other examples throughout our history. That is one of the things that makes America, well, great.



------------------
The truth is the hellhound that gnaws at the heels of those that lie and accuse you of oppressing them!

future Emperor in need of a cabinet(except Minister of Spanking)until then you can call me Chief!

Willie and Al smoke shrub but never inhaled!

Conservatives are RACIST-the world according to IAN.

hmm, what else is new

Reviving ancient posts now? Nice...

Haha... I was trying to figure out at first how I didnt know who these people were...

wtf?

I'd be intersted to see how the situation in South Africa is fanning out now, 4 years later.....