What’s going on in South Africa?
Riots. Will this die down, or is it the beginning of a civil war and the further disintegration of an already-disintegrating country?
It really depends on how much the government is willing to crack down. At the moment, the violence has been confined to one province, and 25,000 troops have been called up:
South Africa’s army began deploying 25,000 troops Thursday to assist police in quelling the weeklong riots and violence sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.
In the largest deployment of soldiers since the end of White minority rule in 1994, the South African National Defence Force has also called up all of its reserve force of 12,000 troops.
In a show of force, a convoy of more than a dozen armored personnel carriers brought soldiers Thursday into Gauteng province, South Africa’s most populous, which includes the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria.
The violence erupted last week after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court for refusing to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.
The protests in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal escalated into a spree of theft in township areas, although it has not spread to South Africa’s seven other provinces, where police are on alert…
Security forces increased their presence in the Durban suburb of Phoenix, where the riots caused racial tensions to flare. The predominantly Indian residents of Phoenix had been patrolling their area against the unrest and are accused of shooting Black people suspected of being rioters.
[NOTE: Gandhi became an activist during his time in South Africa.]
There have recently been troubling reports of attacks by black looters and rioters on South Africans of South Asian ancestry, while brazen and extremely brutal violence against white farmers (whose industry is indispensable for the feeding of the nation) has been a terrible problem for many, many years (Trump was widely criticized by the mendacious MSM three years ago for drawing attention, albeit very briefly, to a fact of South African life barely covered by any foreign journalists). That this violent uprising (likelier than not to grow worse) was inspired by the lawful treatment of a corrupt and worthless demagogue simply adds to the horror of yet another destructive rending of the fabric of law and order.
I had a white South African classmate in law school. He is a real African American. Smart to get out when he did.
It is tribalism, pure and simple, compounded by limited law enforcement. “I’m with Zuma, and you’re not”, the difference between the Zulu and Xhosa tribes, for example. These tribes regularly maim and kill one another, in public. A favorite technique has been to insert a sharpened bicycle spoke into an “enemy’s” posterior cervical spine (who stood in front of the assailant on a crowded bus). At the next stop, passengers, some of whom had surely witnessed the event, disembarked, and the quadriplegic victim fell to the floor. Baragwanath, the world’s largest hospital, has a huge ward full of quad. men.
South Africa, a large, resource-rich country, has crumbled ever since the Apartheid! yell went up, thanks to Americans, not Africans. Two years ago its constitution was amended to allow the seizure of white-owned farmland without any compensation whatsoever.
And crop yields are predictably falling, so people will starve. Ah, well, all in the name of racial justice.
China will soon be moving in. Biden cannot find SA on a globe.
Biden can’t find his ass without his wife’s help.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, they’ve broken into and burned a crematorium.
https://twitter.com/FaeceSocietatis/status/1415757172001099782
South Africa, a large, resource-rich country, has crumbled ever since the Apartheid!
The homicide rate in 2017, while higher than the previous year, was lower than at any time during the period running from 1993 to 2004. It’s a grossly disorderly country, but it used to be worse than it is now. It’s been economically stagnant of late (growth in per capita product over the period running from 2013 to 2018 was 0%). In the estimate of the Maddison Project, the decline in the country’s relative prosperity (vis a vis the United States) has been roughly continuous since the colonial period. It was at its nadir during the period running from 1988 to 2002 and has improved some since then. In the postwar period, the highest ratio (of South Africa’s per capita product to ours) recorded was in 1963 (0.272), the lowest in 1993 (0.157) and the most recent in 2018 (0.22).
One distressing thing is the non-development of the political spectrum. There’s some rearranging among the decent opposition parties, but the only changes in the African National Congress’ share has been (by all appearances) due the leakage to Julius Malema’s odious crew. It’s like the Mexican PRI regime without the vote fraud. Other black majority countries can sustain competitive party systems, but not South Africa to date.
Tribes detest “the other”. Any whites that still intend to remain in South Africa are “dead men walking”. So too with any nonwhites, who are not black. They will be driven out or killed.
Among the black tribes, it’s a case of survival of the fittest.
My money is on the communists prevailing.
Social progress in the diversity, inequity, exclusion, and lynching tradition. Baby Lives Matter
They will be driven out or killed.
There has been horrific inter-communal violence in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Sudanese province of Darfur, but that’s not been the norm in Africa since 1960. Other than that, the closest resemblance to what you’re talking about concerned small and recently established middle-men populations in East Africa. Settler populations in the former Portuguese and Belgian dependencies did depart; I don’t think they were driven out; rather, the decline in the quality of life after the territories were cut loose made it prudent to cut your losses and go home.
Kaffirs gonna Kaffir… It’s been this way forever and it will stay that way forever.
When I was a kid, ignoring the whole Apartheid thing (which we’ll get to in a minute) there were constant reports of what were quaintly called “Faction Fights” in train stations, bus terminals and other places where people are forcibly mingled in their daily lives. What this meant was that two or more tribes were going at each other. No Queensberry Rules, as you might imagine. Illegal to carry spears and knives, but it’s kind of hard to outlaw things which can be used as clubs and the Bantu specialise in use of the Knobkerrie when Assegais are not available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knobkerrie
So, at the slightest provocation they tend to be off to the races with braining each other. No half-measures.
Of course post-Apartheid they’ve taken over and ruined the police and now they all carry bladed weapons as well. But in a melee, clubs are huge with them. They know how to fight. Zulus gave the British a huge fright in the 1870s and meeting them earlier changed the Boers for ever.
Then when they weren’t doing that, they were taking it out on the Indians. Nobody likes Indians. Anywhere. Not PC, but you get around in this world and you’ll soon glom on to why.
Oh right… Apartheid and Pass Laws. Well if you’re White and you like staying alive after dark, kind of makes sense to mandate that they can’t come anywhere near your suburbs at night time — and still everyone had guns, barred windows, and dogs. And no… let’s get the arrow of causality sorted here. These things did not make the Blacks into what they are …. These things were a realistic sane bunch of risk mitigation strategies to cope with what Blacks have always been en masse.
So this kind of behaviour nothing new. The Invictus movie nonsense feel good stuff is just usual suspects’ propaganda. Zero relation to how things are on the ground.
For the rest… Zuma (Zulu) was a corrupt clown who teamed up with an Indian clan (Guptas) to loot the country even more than the ANC (until then and still largely Xhosa-dominated) had managed to achieve. Eventually people got sick of this. Ramaphosa is also immensely corrupt and wealthy but better educated and is more of a Davos Darkie than the rough-about-the-edges Zuma. Ramaphosa is not a bad choice if you’re picking a captain to beach a ship — about the best can be hoped for as far as South Africa as a functioning state goes.
All kinds of other issues involved and one can nuance it up the wazoo until it’s all a huge puzzlement and a source of NGO graft for the Best People for generations.. but really it’s just Blacks.
Any questions?
Eerily and tragically similar to the downfall and collapse of Rhodesia.
Rhodesia, yes.
And the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. And the Congo. Endless litany.
If allowed by default to rule the world, you can be sure that the Chinese will go all Chinky Kurtz and “Exterminate the Brutes” with all that genetic research they’re not doing into all those racial differences which don’t exist.
In a way it’s good they’re doing this in Natal as it’s a good test case for what happens when infrastructure and modern logistics gets *really* messed up by rioting and looting. This is an order of magnitude or so more widespread than the BLM troubles.
Pay attention to what happens over the next weeks. See if it can be got under control before people starve or run out of potable water. See how quickly and how adaptively these systems can re-route and recover. If they can. File for future reference.
I strongly recommend this post from a former white South African: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/07/south-africa-make-country-ungovernable.html. As part of the fight against Apartheid, the ANC deliberately sought to make South Africa “ungovernable.” They succeeded.
And note well, the author believes that apartheid was both immoral and unsustainable. But that didn’t stop him from seeing what was in front of his nose.
Can Do! fawns over some internet canine who declares that GWB was the worst president in US history. Everyone knows Orange Man Bad is, was. and always will be the worst. Wilson, Johnson, Calhoun, Roosevelt (FDR), they are saints compared to GWB. Otay, buckwheat, and Can Do!
From another Can Do! comment on a different thread.
For the rest… Zuma (Zulu) was a corrupt clown who teamed up with an Indian clan (Guptas) to loot the country even more than the ANC
Thanks for recycling Sailer. The rest of us might remember that he sometimes substitutes a pose of self-confidence for actual knowledge.
Peter Grant (Bayou Renaissance Man) is one of the good guys.
He is some kind of Uber-committed Christian though and therefore his belief system *compels* him to believe certain things about All God’s Chillun which ain’t necessarily so. Also he’s Anglo, not Afrikaner.. and IIRC his parents emigrated to SA when he was a kid. There’s often a big difference in outlook/politics between post-war arrivals from the depressed rationed bankrupt @#$%hole that was the UK and long-timers with roots in the country.
For a more blunt take, blogger Kim du Toit (good Afrikaner Huguenot surname) is worth reading to weigh against Grant. Both are right. But I’m less down on the Boers than Grant is.
Also, as with all racial and political cluster%^*&s, there’s a difference between the Personal and the Mass. Grant likes to talk about this or that inspirational Black guy he knew back in the townships. All true. But the problem was the other X million taken one at a time probably tolerable Blacks but all together awful Blacks who resulted in Grant and du Toit both now being residents of the Great State of Texas.
Blame Game is fun. But take all that away and the Blacks are still Blacks and in their millions they will do what Blacks always do in their Millions. Therefore stay clear of them.
Can Do!’s squeeze is Zman who he loves to cite. An internet canine.
Art+Deco:
I have studied the country of my birth for 40 years. I have read far more of its literature than you ever will. I have hung out with emigres of all sorts from both South Africa and Rhodesia since forever. I have blood relatives living in different parts of the country still.
I can compare street scenes in family photo albums then and the absolute excrement-smeared slums they are now. I can see the street I grew up in in Google Earth with its white picket fences then and now massive walls and razor wire property defences.
I’d be interested to hear your hot nuanced take.
@om:
OK Boomer.
Eerily and tragically similar to the downfall and collapse of Rhodesia.
Isn’t similar at all.
Again, social conditions in South Africa are not suffering long term deterioration. The economic performance of the country is disappointing, not disastrous. The white population hasn’t collapsed. The country is running a balance-of-payments surplus. The central government budget deficit has been excessive in recent years, but not extreme, Inflation’s running at 5% per year, not 500% per year. Labor markets are dysfunctional, but they’ve always been. And, of course, there’s no analogue to the Mugabe regime’s bloody rampage in Matabeleland in the 1980s.
I’d be interested to hear your hot nuanced take.
https://alchetron.com/cdn/pugsley-addams-c3bce0b2-5a1d-4fc0-9965-651ccac23d3-resize-750.jpg
I was reading about Cyril Ramaphosa in the airmail edition (“what the ^%#$ is that?” asks Generation Z) of the Johannesburg Star back in the 80s when Ramaphosa was boss of the black miners’ union on the Rand.
Didn’t occur to me back then that one day he’d be worth $500M+ (That’s what we know about) *and* President. Thing to be said for him is that he’s more competent than the other ones. And he’s from a minority tribe. That slows things down.
Good to know you’re reading Steve Sailer, Art+Deco… You might learn something.
And the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. And the Congo. Endless litany.
Doesn’t resemble any of these places. The Mau Mau was a discrete terror campaign which was suppressed over a period of seven years. The death toll among British settlers was fewer than 50 and that among British soldiers fewer than 200. The Congo is a failed state of which there are just four in Africa.
Have your Nanny check your nappies Can Do!
Whenever the Human Condition looms near, Art+Deco reaches for the Almanac. Worry Beads would be quicker.
Whenever you are in want of bovine excrement Can Do! appears?
Just saw a hilarious comment on Gab beneath a picture of Blacks Looting in ZAF:
“Which one is this — Guns, Germs, or Steel?”
Zaphod:
I recall the heady 80s/90s activist days campaigning against apartheid. The “Sun City” video with everyone from Miles Davis to Bruce Springsteen to Lou Reed to Bob Dylan. Bishop Tutu’s appearance at UC Berkeley. Nelson Mandela looking like a homegrown Morgan Freeman but with a full legend behind him. Even Doonesbury cartoons chronicling the campus demos.
It was a joyous time when apartheid fell — like the Berlin Wall. It appealed to my Whiggist instincts. I assumed that SA was on its way to an even brighter future.
Then the news drifted south. The ANC was out of control. Winnie Mandela was a monster. Then the continuing violence and economic problems. Progressives stopped talking about SA other than a desire to launch a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission ” in the US.
I knew a gay couple who had vacationed in South Africa and were planning to retire there. They shelved that idea and moved to New Orleans.
I admit I do start asking myself the Bad Question that maybe Africa’s problem is in no small part Native Africans.
@Huxley:
All these fond reminiscences have ended up solving the eternal existential question of ‘What should I eat for lunch today?’ Instead of going out to partake of steamed chicken feet, I’m going to stay home and feast upon my cache of Biltong. The real deal sun-dried beef strips you have to slice very thinly yourself — not some softened up sugar-infused beef jerky sold next to the chewing baccy in gas stations.
Sun City.. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long while. Lot of interesting things happened there back in the day.
I spent a goodly chunk of my diplomatic career in Africa, 11 years all totaled, 3 of them right in Durban. As beautiful a locale as I’ve seen, wonderful people, and up until recently a place that was very high on my list of retirement locations. When you’re sitting under that magical South African sun at an oceanside café sipping an organic coffee or a red wine from the Cape, you could be excused in thinking that South Africa is the future, or should be. But when you rejoin the rest of world on Monday morning you experience a different place, one where you watch over your shoulder and roll through stop signs and lights … because if don’t your chances of being the next statistic (that doesn’t make it into the books) is gruesomely high. And if you’re the wrong color you’re being watched and targeted at those stop signs and lights. Even if that makes you sad to hear it.
SA is coming apart at the seams, regardless of whatever economic happy news one is reading. My reports are straight from friends living there – massive unemployment, street and house crime (almost always violent) that is only 10% officially recorded, rolling brownouts to the grid just to keep the power on a few hours a day, fear gripping you when a car driven by the “wrong” person pulls up behind you. Broad daylight carjackings and rapes. In one of the years I was posted in Durban, 57 police were shot in the line duty in just a single province, Kwa-ZuluNatal. The criminal’s there fight back, and when the (black) National Police Chief ordered his officers to shoot first (to kill) when in mortal danger there was a national uproar and he was replaced. The uproar was led by white and Indian-hating blacks and guilty self-hating white liberals. Sound familiar?
I overheard three of my staff (Indian, Zulu, and Coloured) one day reminiscing about the old times during Apartheid. Considering that all were on the outside of the system during that period, I was shocked to hear them reminiscing so fondly . All three told me that they didn’t miss Apartheid, but they missed their country that was safe and that functioned like a modern country. All three.
Ask almost any South African who has emigrated if they miss their country. Ask almost South African still there if they miss their country. The answer will usually be the same.
@Telemachus:
No more milkshakes at the Tropicale or the Mitchell Park Cafe (used to visit the zoo there), that’s fo sho.
@Readers:
If anyone wants to donate to an organisation set up with the goal of saving White Lives when the shit really hits the fan in South Africa, these guys have a plan:
https://suidlanders.org/
Give Neo her due, she’s much, much better than your Average Conservative Blogger 😛
“Took a tour of Conservative sites. No mention of South Africa, but plenty of onanistic ecstasy over Cuba”
https://gab.com/TheZBlog/posts/106585622159696911
SA is coming apart at the seams, regardless of whatever economic happy news one is reading. My reports are straight from friends living there – massive unemployment, street and house crime (almost always violent) that is only 10% officially recorded, rolling brownouts to the grid just to keep the power on a few hours a day, fear gripping you when a car driven by the “wrong” person pulls up behind you. Broad daylight carjackings and rapes. In one of the years I was posted in Durban, 57 police were shot in the line duty in just a single province, Kwa-ZuluNatal. The criminal’s there fight back, and when the (black) National Police Chief ordered his officers to shoot first (to kill) when in mortal danger there was a national uproar and he was replaced. The uproar was led by white and Indian-hating blacks and guilty self-hating white liberals. Sound familiar?
South Africa has had extraordinary rates of violent crime for a long time. The country isn’t ‘coming apart’. The ruin of which you’re speaking is its normal condition and was demonstrably its condition a generation ago. Anxiety over street crime was part of the setting of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, published in 1948.
In 1948, the government may not have been able to assemble a corps of trained and trustworthy manpower sufficient to do more than protect the privileged part of the population from the remainder. Now it simply doesn’t care to do so.
The dysfunctional labor market is also nothing new and is seen in many other countries.
No mention of South Africa, but plenty of onanistic ecstasy over Cuba”
You’re pretty sick-o.
I admit I do start asking myself the Bad Question that maybe Africa’s problem is in no small part Native Africans.
Why would you assume anything else? Fifty years ago, people like André Gunder Frank generated elaborate conceptions like ‘dependency theory’ to stick the blame with occidental powers. It’s a research programme which died out 35 years ago, likely because its contentions could not be verified by empirical observation.
With the assistance of expertise and manpower from abroad, African countries in general have had three accomplishments since 1960: improvements in public health which have sufficed to push life expectancy at birth to about 60, improvements in schooling which have imparted basic literacy to the majority of the adult population, and the establishment of machine politics presided over by bosses drawn from the country’s business and professional classes as the modal political form.
The downside has been that general living standards (such as indicated by per capita product) have improved quite slowly and the standard of living relative to that of every other part of the world has actually declined as these other parts improved economic conditions more rapidly. You can also find countries which are materially worse off now than was the case 60 years ago (the Congo, the Central African Republic, and Zimbabwe are examples).
Art+Deco:
“Why would you assume anything else?”
So… after all that statistical sound and fury it turns out that you’re a Race Realist?
There’s video out there taken in a looted mall where the only untouched shop was… a second-hand bookstore.
Gotta admire the respect and reverence for the written word… It’s just like the Cairo Geniza!
Err… Perhaps not.
Heh… the thing about the unlooted bookstore reminds me of a cartoon I saw once about what a chess-club gang rumble would look like.
I can imagine some white nerds heading for that bookstore with intent…
“Non-fiction, non-fiction, non-fiction!”
“The Britannica’s mine!!”
“You and you, clear out those cookbooks!”
“Hey, trade you Fontane for that Milton.” “Nah, man.” “But look, this is first-edition!”
@Philip Sells:
Quick way to quell the insurrection would be to make a terrible example of any looter caught with a volume of the Britannica 1911 Ed. Dangerous Homeschooler Underground types guaranteed. Probably have Jerry Pournelle’s stuff backed up on a thumb drive in the basement.
American lefties often say that the reason communism hasn’t worked is because bad leaders were in charge. I think South Africa shows this is true and false at the same time.
When the ANC came to power after apartheid it was led by Nelson Mandela. I expected SA to immediately fail but Mandela didn’t pursue retribution on the people who had opposed and imprisoned him.
However, he has now been out of direct leadership for 22 years and dead for 8. The destruction I expected was delayed due to the leader. So the leader makes all the difference.
Unfortunately, even if you start with a leader that controls the worst impulses of a totalitarian state sooner or later you will get the standard I’m going to imprison or kill any who oppose me.
So lefties, you can’t keep the good leader forever and if you give all the power to the government eventually you will get the despot.
Wes Anderson’s first film, _Bottle Rocket_ , featured clueless prep-school types knocking over a bookstore as part of their ill-conceived plan. Amusing.
The destruction I expected was delayed due to the leader. So the leader makes all the difference.
South Africa isn’t any more ruined than it was 25 years ago, and that’s readily demonstrable. You people need to quit limiting your conversation to the voices in your head.
So… after all that statistical sound and fury it turns out that you’re a Race Realist?
A sensible person generally assumes a country is the way it is due to the properties of the people who live there. Not sensible persons will buy into a farrago of ill-digested academic literature and call themselves ‘race realists’.
“South Africa isn’t any more ruined than it was 25 years ago, and that’s readily demonstrable.”
You sound like pensioned off Molotov’s table talk I’ve just finished reading. All those statistics about agricultural production…
Tell that to all the people and businesses who relocated to safer areas like Sandton and Umhlanga. You really are talking out your posterior here. Save it.
Say Neo !
I’ve come to realize that Chrissy Teigen has joined your commenting community under assumed names !
Check your nappies Can Do!
“I’ve come to realize that Chrissy Teigen has joined your commenting community under assumed names !”
Come now… Don’t be insulting the daughter of a pole-dancing hooker from Nakhon Nowhere in Isaan. I’m sure she’s not sunk that low.
And even if she has, Let he who is innocent cast the first ping pong ball.
Besides we’re having an intellectual discussion about the Blank Slate. Let’s not get sidetracked. Much.
Gee Zaphod – I see you as the Courtney Stodden in this psychodrama !
Never heard of her. Xir? Had to look up the Teigen reference too. Must I really research *more* Popular ‘Culture’? Can’t we just have a pie fight or something? 🙂
As long as they’re vegan pies.
I’ve been too busy to comment on this post and have little of use to say anyway, but I’m glad Neo has been watching this development in SA. I think it will contain a number of lessons for the U. S., however it ends up shaking out over the next weeks to months. Whatever the outcome, I don’t think an exact equivalent situation will or even can be enacted in North America, but there will still be some kind of lessons to be learned.