South Africa is a Lost Cause

Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan has written a counterpoint to our earlier guest-essay from a white South African native.

South Africa is a lost cause
by H. Numan

Sorry, but I very much disagree with Afrikaner. With pain in my heart, as I have always seen them as strongly related to the Dutch. It began when South Africa dumped Rhodesia to curry favor with black African states: ‘We’re really one of you!’ That’s nonsense. No African will ever see a white man as one of them (unless there’s money in it). Least of all a white state on their continent.

Before I continue, let me say that I do not in any way approve of Apartheid. This system is wrong, no matter what arguments one might have to defend it. Defending South Africa effectively became very similar to defending slavery: impossible. No matter what arguments you present, defending slavery is impossible. Defending apartheid is exactly as impossible.

South Africa’s apartheid came in two flavors: Grote Apartheid (Major Apartheid) en Kleine Apartheid (Minor Apartheid). Grote Apartheid made black South Africans foreigners in their own country. All black citizens were relegated to small quasi independent states and allowed them to work as before but now with work permits and passports. As guest laborers. Kleine Apartheid is the one that most people — outside South Africa — protested against. These contained the racial laws, and ‘slegs vir blankes’ signs everywhere.

When South Africa began with this policy this was not uncommon elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. Or the United States, for that matter. However, where other nations gradually abolished it, South Africa began to enforce it more strongly. Very much swimming against the stream.

Rhodesia didn’t practice apartheid like South Africa on a religious base. In fact, it was a meritocracy where color came very much second place. There was of course apartheid, but that was money-based, not color-based. If you wanted to play golf on the Salisbury Club, you were welcome if you could pay the greens fee. The South African political leadership didn’t like that one little bit. Don’t forget that the leadership was strongly Nederduits Hervormd, a very strict offspring of the Calvinist church.

That was one of the reasons why South Africa always kept Rhodesia at a distance. Yes, they would work together sometimes to a very limited extent. Religion — or rather the lack of it on the Rhodesian side — kept the two apart.

South African Boers didn’t stop there. They alienated everyone. A lot of people were, under South Africa’s Apartheid laws, considered colored. Many Indians (Gandhi was one of them) live in South Africa, and were treated little better than black Africans. By making absolutely certain everybody not 100% pure white (whatever that might be) was treated as black, they stood with their backs firmly to the wall.

There was also envy involved. South Africa produced very good military hardware, science and technology, but Rhodesia had much better soldiers. Nothing wrong with the Boers, but the Rhodesian SAS, RLI and other units were much better than the average South African soldiers. The South African leadership didn’t look at what they were good at, but envied what they lacked.

Something Boers are not very strong in is strategy. They never were; that’s why they lost both Boer wars. Together, and more important: working very closely together, South Africa and Rhodesia could not have been defeated. Neither on the battlefield nor the ballot box. They would have been the regional super power of Africa. Something all African nations knew all too well. The only countries (questionably) capable of attacking South Africa and Rhodesia were Nigeria and Egypt. Questionably, as the logistics were simply impossible.

Outside the region only two nations were technically capable of attack: the USA and the UK. It’s highly doubtful if either would have launched an invasion ‘in the name of democracy’ or whatever. The cost in logistics, material and manpower would have been horrendous, if possible at all. Remember, this was during the ’70-’80s when Rhodesia still existed. When South Africa withdrew from Rhodesia they were alone. Still powerful, but alone.

Next we got the independence of Angola and Mozambique from Portugal. That made (now alone) South Africa vulnerable on both flanks. Angola became a Soviet satellite state and got mixed up in a civil war. The civil war extended to the Bush War between South Africa against Angola together with Cuba.

This war developed into a costly stalemate. The superpowers brokered a deal that broke South Africa’s back and will to fight. South Africa was led to believe that Apartheid was a dead end. (It was, as I explain in this article.) They themselves expected to be able to keep it going for 80-100 years (!), but eventually they would lose. They expected, with good reason, that it would end in a bloodbath. So they gave in, and handed over power. All power, including economic power. South Africa duly did.

That was the end. South Africa is now well on its way of becoming a truly black African nation with all the trimmings. The Rand is a forgotten currency. Industry is dead or dying. Education used to be excellent, also for poor black South Africans (something always forgotten), together with health care. Today it’s slightly better than other African nations, but they are catching up fast. South Africa’s doctor Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant in the world. Today it’s doubtful South African hospitals could do one, which is sort of a standard operation elsewhere.

Crime and corruption are through the roof. It used to be an oasis of civilization; today it’s highly dangerous, even for tourists. I’ve been there several times, also to Zimbabwe. Before and after (not to Rhodesia, I’m too young for that). We won’t go there ever again, as it is far too dangerous for tourists. That’s the reason I went there: we had tour groups. From a highly expensive market it fell to nothing. As far as I know, no Thai operators go there. Too dangerous. South African Airways used to have direct flights BKK-JHB. No longer; there’s no demand for it.

Boers are very brave men, but don’t look much further than tomorrow or next harvest at best. They are reaping now what they have sown. Something they could have foreseen easily.

Again, I don’t defend Apartheid. That was South Africa’s biggest mistake ever. No sane person can defend it. It doesn’t matter that most poor black South Africans had better standards of living, education and health care than any other nation in Africa and even much of the communist block. It doesn’t matter that South Africa had to keep out willing foreign volunteer workers eager to work there. It was a vile system justified on selective reading of the Bible. Even back in the ’70s, defending South Africa was next to impossible due to … yep. Apartheid.

It’s a bit like the US Confederacy: they assumed that the world ran on cotton. Therefore, the world needed the South. They discovered it didn’t. South Africa relied for a major part on their strategic position and on gold. They made the same discovery.

— H. Numan

82 thoughts on “South Africa is a Lost Cause

  1. I strongly suspect that the EU are going to have to come up with some kind of a para-apartheid in order to survive the shock of 1.5 to 4 million muslim migrants; it is probably a matter of survival.

    There had always been an informal and flexible apartheid in South Africa when it was under the ‘Union’ this was beefed up by the ‘Nats’ in 1948. The shame of post-1948 Apartheid was that it stopped all progress towards a meritocracy dead in its tracks; it was a socialist welfare system strictly for inbred (village idiot type) Afrikaaners and also pushed highly educated, qualified and previously enfranchised ‘blacks’ like Mandela into terrorism.

    The UK also has a form of apartheid, a three-way legal and preferment system where Mandelsohn commits real mortgage fraud and gets away with it because he is a scion of elitism, but Tommy Robinson goes to Gaol because he is a ‘football hooligan’ who witnessed a mortgage document alleged to be fraudulent, and in the middle, the Muslims get special protection and their own Shariah legal system (in which rape of kuffar minors is permitted), what is this if not apartheid by another name?

    • It always amazes me when I meet leftist idiots who, in the name of “tolerance,” think it’s OK for Muslims to have their Sharia courts in European countries. “Sure, if that’s the way they want to live, we should let them.” I point out: “You just tagged Muslims as ‘they’ and ‘them.’ When right-wingers do that, you fly into a tizzy.”

      But more importantly, I hit them with the question “What happens when you are dragged into a Sharia court because you crossed a Muslim and that’s where he wants to hold the trial?”

      In perfect leftist fashion, they don’t miss a beat to come back with their favorite answer to everything: “Oh, that’ll never happen!”

      • Sharia courts in the UK are instituted as arbitration panels and require the consent of all parties to a dispute to enter them for the resolution of a dispute.

        Unfortunately, this does not make them just because it is very difficult to control for the fact that women will not be giving real consent, and will in fact be forced/intimidated into them, where they will be less than equal to a man in the eyes of Sharia law.

        • Quebec bans arbitration for family disputes, but allows it for other civil matters.

          Meaning that if you agree to settle your contractual dispute over the sale of a load of bricks in a sharia tribunal, they’re cool with it, but NOT your dispute with your ex-wife over who should get the house.

          Funny thing is, the sharia tribunals don’t seem to get used very much for contractual disputes… I wonder why there’s such a lack of interest in an area where they probably *could* come up with reasonably fair rulings?

          Oh wait, I know. It’s because they would probably come up with reasonably fair rulings in those cases, and the whole point of dragging the ex-wife to a Sharia board is NOT to get a fair ruling!

        • This is ABC. Why are so called elected eletes getting away with this? Why would any country even tolerate a Muslim? Let alone import them en masses to build a network of barracks throughout the country for jehadi indoctrination? In America at least the Christians and Jews are armed.

    • You’re largely correct.

      Analysing it without considering right and wrong, I’d say that the Afrikaners overplayed their hand.

  2. Mr. Numan, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate for Apartheid here. Without taking a position on whether it is right or wrong — I observe that you attacked it strongly but offered no good moral arguments against it.

    You almost seem to be admitting that apartheid was better for everyone in SA(whites and blacks) — and yet it is bad. You did not explain why, but used words that represented emotional arguments — it is ‘vile’, ‘wrong’ — and you even said it is wrong regardless of the arguments for it. You used an ad hominem argument against it — those who defend it are ‘insane’. While Rhodesia did not have apartheid and went down the tubes in a similar way to which South Africa is on its way down the tubes, you seem to blame South Africa’s going down the tubes on apartheid — this while arguably, if SA had maintained apartheid (if it could) it would not be going down the tubes at all.

    You implied that it is no more defensible than slavery. This is not true — no-one can claim that black slavery was better for BOTH blacks and whites, But the claim that apartheid–or at least white minority rule–is better for BOTH blacks and whites in sub-saharan Africa is actually quite defensible. The position — often admitted by some blacks in Africa — that life was better for blacks under white minority rule — is that very defense. How many black slaves in the US took the position that blacks were better under slavery, and if a tiny minority did, were they right?

    I found your expression of your position very disappointing. It reminded me of dealing with a leftist–lots of emotion and aggression in the arguments but a shortage of logic and moral argument.

    • Why not defend the Rhodesian system instead, which linked the franchise to education, rather than colour? That’s a lot more defensible, even if in practice, it largely amounted to the same thing at the time (but the future would have been different).

      There *were* blacks who could vote in Rhodesia, and it also didn’t have Kleine Apartheid on a formal basis. Looking at videos of the time is highly instructive, I find, because some things come out in the pictures that don’t come out otherwise.

      You could be black and join the elite. Maybe it would have been a bit socially difficult, but legally, it was possible. SOME DID.

      The Rhodesian whites DID invest money in the condition of black people. Over time, the franchise would have likely expanded to include an increasing number and even a majority of blacks, but WITHOUT upsetting the social order.

      The “Internal Settlement”, sharing power, is another thing that should have been left to be, rather than the British forcing it out. That would have probably worked reasonably well also, essentially being an accelerated version of what would have otherwise happened, but not to the point of collapse.

      Continuing with their (official, not always the same as real) policies (or even the “Internal Settlement”, most likely) would have eventually led to a “Oreo-cookie” society of mostly black people with Western/white culture/values. MUCH worse things could have happened than that!

      Had the Portuguese Estado Novo regime held on another 10-15 years, all would have been different. Granted, they were authoritarians and not democrats, but they did some surprisingly good things on the foreign policy side. That, I think, is really what did them in.

      (Quick: Which was the only European country to allow U.S. resupply flights to Israel to refuel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War? Yes, the Portuguese “fascist” Estado Novo regime.)

      • Both Harold Wilson (British Prime Minister) and Mugabe (Leader of ZANU PF) were devout Communist wolves in sheep’s clothing. Thus the murderous ‘solution’, the results of which we see before us, was inevitable. Nkomo, Bishop Muzawera and Sitole were essentially ignored in favour of the dictator.

      • It didn’t matter either way. The Africans are obdurate and will stick to their inferior ancestral ways all the while dressed in Western clothes and jewelry. Only strength and numbers can keep the white light from being extinguished.

    • He said it was because it was based on a selective reading of the Bible, i.e. it denies that in Christ we are one. This does, of course, require both sides to hold Christ genuinely in their hearts.

  3. Following Rhodesia’s UDI (unilateral declaration of independence), the UK Liberal Party called for Britain to invade. The satirical magazine “Punch” imagined the consequences thus, if I recall correctly:

    UK military command to RAF: “Bomb Salisbury”.
    RAF: “Salisbury obliterated”.
    UK military command: “Bomb Salisbury, Rhodesia”.

    • Given that Rhodesia was the country which gave Arthur Harris, bombing Salisbury would have been poetic justice.

  4. The end state of SA will be attributed to apartheid and whites. And there will be no news reports of the last Boer’s death.

  5. H.Numan, please go and read up a bit more about the two Anglo- Boer wars. Personally I think the Boers showed excellent ‘strategy’ by annihilating the Brits at the battle of Majuba and thereby winning the First Anglo- Boer war. The only war the British empire lost during the 19th century.

    Now the Second war was even more interesting, the 4:1 outnumbered Boers nearly brought down an Empire. Read about Gen.De Wet, and Gen. De La Rey- they were absolute heros on mainland Europe at the time. I will leave it there for your own further research.

    One comment about apartheid. It is NOT the fault of apartheid, which lasted only 50 years, that sub-Saharan Africans are centuries behind in civilisation development; to the contrary.

    Lastly, as MC pointed out, already in Europe there are bars and spas and swimming pools etc. with ‘klein apartheid’ signs on: “no immigrants”? Like the National Party in 1948, the European governments in 2016 may find that there is just no other choice but to keep the different civilisations apart, i.e., apartheid.

      • To which I agree. A fascinating subject, which can be argued endlessly, for and against.
        I had two uncles living in Rhodesia, one saw the light and went to S.A. Both dead now, but neither had any time for their black countrymen, and the way I see it their opinions were spot on.
        Two wonderful countries; one completely down the drain, and the other following. All Africans seem to be capable of is dancing, (Zuma) rape, murder and fornicating.

        • I predict that long-term, Zimbabwe will do better than South Africa.

          Long-term may begin not that long after the death of Mugabe.

          I think that the Rhodesians did a lot more to “upgrade” their country to Western standards while they were in power than the Afrikaners did and that black Zimbabweans on average are culturally a lot closer to white people, as a result.

          Likewise in Zambia, where the few remaining white people seem to be doing just fine.

          • The failure of the black population there to stand up for the commercial farmers suggests otherwise. The lack of farming in that country suggests otherwise. Why have black farmers not been graduating from agricultural colleges to pick up the slack after the white farmers and their families were removed? It’s been 15 years since the farm seizures, more than enough time to have produced a generation of farmers from the black population.
            If these people are culturally similar to us they would have got those farms back to the production they are capable of, they haven’t because they are not culturally similar to us.

          • Remember that Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland used to bé a successful Federation upto the early 1960’s. Whites were “invited”to leave, often leaving both possessions and savings behind. All three nations have not exactly prospered since but interestingly are the subject of much Chinese influence. The Chinese are not going to simply leave when invited to do so. More trouble ahead I fear.

    • The other alternative is VERY harsh punishments for unacceptable behaviour, which is what the United States has replaced Kleine Apartheid with, essentially.

    • I’m pretty good in history, and know quite a bit about the Boer wars. The first one, I grant you. The second one definitely not. With 20/20 hindsight every war can be won, of course. Do keep that in mind.

      The leadership at the beginning of the war was very old. They attacked (good!) but not strongly enough. Also, they allowed themselves to besiege useless cities (Mafeking, for example) tying up troops that were needed badly elsewhere. Only when the younger generation of Boer commanders (Botha, De La Rey, etc.) replaced the first generation, they acted as was necessary. By that time it was too late already. All they could do was fight a desperate guerrilla war to delay the inevitable.

      Something they could have foreseen (just as the failure of apartheid). +70 year old generals aren’t a good choice for leadership. Especially for an army perfectly equipped and trained to fight a guerrilla war.

  6. Basically, “Everybody was way, way better off under apartheid but apartheid is impossible to defend” — he’s kidding, right?
    I didn’t understand the essay he’s responding to, either — it seemed to amount to, “Everything’s horrible now, but it’s kind of intense to live in Road-Warrior-world if you’re awesome like me.”

    • It can equally be argued that black slaves on well-run Southern plantations were better off by every metric than oppressed share croppers elsewhere or later.
      You still can’t defend chattel slavery….or apartheid, as practiced in the old SA.

        • Your essay is excellent and thought-provoking, actually.

          I personally think that the situation in South Africa should have been sorted with an area left aside as a white “homeland”, as a guarantee against what is happening now. Not the massively large part that the Afrikaners originally tried to keep for themselves, but 20,000 sq km or so. That’s what I would have held out for if I were the whites.

          Not because it’s the way things should be done in general (read above: I think that the “formal” Rhodesian model had more going for it), but because in the circumstances, it would have been the best of many bad solutions.

          The “white homeland” wouldn’t have been meant to be used very much, but to be there IN CASE things went wrong. The backup plan would have probably helped avoid the problems now happening.

          • “I personally think that the situation in South Africa should have been sorted with an area left aside as a white “homeland””

            I doubt that a white homeland of the area you describe would be militarily defensible. Granted, that’s about the size of Israel, but Israel has been organized as a strongly-defended country from the first.

            Any country or territory purposely excluding blacks would be subject to sanctions and possibly attack by Europe or the US, if it is vulnerable.

            I agree that apartheid is not very defensible, as what it does is discriminate against educated, skilled, prosperous people whose skin color was not white. Even if there are not many of them, it runs counter to European Reformation values of justice.

            But, if I read Numan correctly, he is saying that had South Africa not been blinded by religious fanaticism, it could have pulled off even apartheid, by maintaining its alliance with Rhodesia. More than likely, in a few decades, the rigidities of apartheid in SA would have worn down, and South Africa would look the same as Rhodesia.

            I’ll speculate that the South Africans were aware of this probability, and that’s probably why they separated from Rhodesia.

      • The argument can be made, but is it correct? Why do you falsely limit your analysis to “slaves on well-run plantations” and “oppressed sharecroppers”? How many American Blacks today are “oppressed sharecroppers”?

        It doesn’t pass the giggle test. No-one’s going to willingly submit to slavery but there is certainly a possibility to willingly submit to white minority rule.

  7. The way i would interpret apartheid being indefensible would be in context of political zeitgeist in the western world. It would be impossible to defend it without antagonizing the rest of the western world, and South Africa had no way to continue a spat like that long term. In this political climate, the only way to deal with this issue is to prevent it from popping up. Once a western country has a troublesome, unassimilable, non western population section, there is just no politically acceptable solution to that. There is dodging, there is weaving, there is covering up the problem, but all the possible ways to get rid of the problem are going to be locked out. Israel is currently experiencing this trap in a very burdensome way, and many western European countries are in the process of getting caught into it too.

    Though if the scale of the phenomenon is big enough, and most of the western world has the same issue, then perhaps there will be no left who could antagonized by the other solutions and block that majority from implementing them.

    • You are correct in that Israel is the closest to having this issue in the Western world right now that we hear about often, but there are other similar situations, such as Macedonia.

      In a pinch, Israel could probably use a civil war in the West Bank, or a collapse of governmental order in Jordan to “rebalance” the population distribution under cover of war, which is the only semi-acceptable way for it to happen nowadays.

      I don’t think that the South Africans or Rhodesians had any such possibilities on the same scale.

      Nowadays, I expect that Sweden, Germany, Belgium and France will hit this wall sooner than Israel will however (the current population balance is worse in Israel, but Israeli Jewish birthrates are much higher than European ones), and they’ll hit it harder, because of the difficulty of doing a war-time “rebalancing” in their circumstances (they’re in the wrong neighbourhood for things to “sort out” by short-distance migration). The “immigrant” populations in these European countries are also MUCH worse integrated than the Arab ones in Israel, I’d say.

      I also suspect that these European countries will end up with a sort of Apartheid, unless they pack in entirely or end up splitting up (de facto) geographically.

      The Rhodesian and South African experiences are somewhat educational as to what is to come. So is the Lebanese one.

      On the bright side, Rhodesian whites were holding on with only about 5% of the population, giving the impression that an Apartheid system of sorts *can* keep control even as a small minority.

      While I’d never advocate Kleine Apartheid, restricting the franchise is something I think much preferable to societal collapse. It could be done in a rather crude way, even: no votes for those on public benefits for more than 1 year in total since the previous election.

      • Israel has the advantage of having both its population and political elites far more aware of the problem, its nature and dangers than the European countries which have it, but it also has the Palestinian Arabs in addition to the Israeli ones with neither one nor two state solution in sight, and its the former that is bringing Israel vast majority of pressure intenationally.

        In case of Europe some degree of geographical separation with the no go zones informally ruled by sharia is already happening, in long term this “solution” might grow in scale.
        For some countries, at least to some degree, there is a perfectly acceptable way of restricting franchise for large numbers of “guests” by just simply never granting them citizenship, but for some that opportunity is gone, and with time it applies to less and less of them.
        And the ugly scenario option is the situation becoming true to the very source of the term “Balkanization”, with events very similar to what was happening in the Balkans a couple decades ago, except on the scale of half the continent.

        “Holding on” can be done with surprisingly little means but the problem is that in long term it is bound to fail. The side that is “holding on” has to win every conflict, and those will happen often. One moment of weakness, and they are done for.
        The other side needs to win just once.
        This reminds me of the long term problem ancient Sparta had with its slave population winning the numbers game.
        “Holding on” works, it can even work for very long, which is good enough for buying time, but if the bought time is not used to solve the original problem, then the doom is only a matter of when.

  8. If you don’t believe in Apartheid you do not believe in the survival of the European Race. When Apartheid ended the extinction of White Europeans began. Stop being [redacted] insulting ad hominem.

    • I don’t believe apartheid is inevitable, not in the sense you mean it. But such murderous impulses – on both sides, depending on who is in power – requires projection onto the Other of all the shadow sides of the human psyche. It is much harder, but well worth it, to attempt to live with the ambiguity and tension of a balanced approach to the Other. It has been done, it can be done and enlarged to a certain extent. But human hard-wiring is only capable of embracing about 200 souls or so. Maybe a bit more. After that, you bump up against Strangers…

      An example of why cities need neighborhoods and neighborhoods need skilled emissaries. Bigger is not better.

      • I believe that the large-scale destruction of SA was inevitable with the end of Apartheid there. This, BTW, was not true of the end of slavery. A people with the average mental age of 11 do not make a viable polity for a democratic civilization. This problem will plague all of Africa. This can be seen from merely facing reality and science, and a clear and uninterrupted pattern that engulfs Haiti as well as Africa. The modern establishment tries to bully this reality away by branding those who face it, but it does not get rid of the reality. A Nobel prize-winning scientist can face it, but he’s effectively out of society for expressing that. The taste for civilizational suicide for the sake of maintaining fantasy will however wane in the coming years in the West. The moral question of the appropriateness of Apartheid cannot be separated from the question of whether it saves a civilization from destruction or not. The full ramifications of a moral choice must be considered in a moral evaluation.

        • Why is Namibia a reasonably nice society, then?

          The history is somewhat similar.

          My guess is that it has something to do with the underlying culture of the pre-existing tribes.

          • The Hereros and Ovambos of my youth were congenial people. There are several other smaller tribes as well so I think everyone has an incentive to work things out, though the Ovambos do have the largest proportion.

            Too, there was kleine apartheid but there was no seething resentment. There was only one white SA policeman in town.

            SWAPO is Marxist but seemingly not doctrinaire.

            Recollections from childhood and thoughts from keeping up over the years from afar.

      • What if we stopped using the word ‘apartheid’ and instead used the word ‘national borders’ ? would it then be evil?

        Treating people based on ethnicity is bad, but what about on nationality? in that case, is George Soros not right?

        I personally consider George Soros’ open borders to be bad and he is wrong. The right to defend national borders is no different than the right to defend oneself from invaders – especially those who seek to invade your neighborhood for loot and rape and cause mayhem.

        So this is not an easily thing. I don’t agree with apartheid, but I can *understand* why Afrikaaners might think it could be a possible solution (because, contrary to the essay, they very clearly foresaw what would happen and is now happening – just as we foresee what will happen to Europe is it continues to dissolve its borders). It would have been much better if South Africa had dissolved into mini-states and then people defend their national borders. Then people would have choice to live in one state or another.

        It is a failure of imagination as well as a hefty dose of anti-Afrikaaner racism to see the South African situation as significantly different from Europe today, or Israel. In all these cases an imported fast-breeding minority became the majority and have an extremely aggressive culture. What can the minority do in that case except try and erect partitions, whether legal or physical ?

        Note: the modern black tribes of South Africa are like the Arab ‘Palestinians’ – mostly imported. Only the Hottentots predate the whites, or that used to be the understanding, but perhaps recent scholarship has changed this view, but it used to be thought that few tribes were down south end of Africa.

        • I see your point, but I disagree with immutable racial/group based boundaries.

          Just like it is possible to immigrate from one society to another, an Apartheid-type system, to have a minimum of fairness, has to have a way to “transition” into the “ruling class”.

          Rhodesia had this at least in theory, which is why I think that their system had redeeming qualities and overall was better than what followed.

          South African Apartheid didn’t, which is why I agree with the original writer that it was wrong.

          As an aside, there are black people that don’t agree with my take on Apartheid:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoMl_G6rL9k @ 3:40 and 19:19, black (probably formally “coloured” guy saying Apartheid was better. Weird, eh?

          • “I see your point, but I disagree with immutable racial/group based boundaries.”

            Putting aside the South Africa/apartheid issue for a moment, but in general, what is your objection to any group wishing to hold on to their racial/ethnic ancestry? If the Navajo were to choose to remain Navajo and not mix blood lines with the Hopi would you be opposed to this?

            Certainly many groups have blended and merged with each other throughout history and will continue to do so. This occurs in the natural course of things. But if a racial/ethnic group decided they were happy with the way things were and weren’t interested in blending with another group what is the moral argument against that?

          • @anon61 I don’t object to endogamy, if that’s what you mean.

            I do object to an uncrossable boundary into the elite/power/important group. Endogamy doesn’t mean that one isn’t willing to share power.

            I don’t expect the Navajo to welcome outsiders into their tribe, because it’s not a controlling government-type entity (it is, but not over a big area or an outsider population). I suppose I’m okay with it when it’s on a very small scale, but NOT when there are a significant number of outsiders already living in the area. I suppose I’m less against it also when there is a clear migration path into nearby places where people can have an equal chance.

            But in general, blocking people from “joining” based on immutable characteristics seems wrong to me. I *want* people to like my culture enough that they want to join it, and I certainly want to let them do that.

    • Richard, don’t let the insults and ad hominem arguments bother you because they come from a place of weakness. Those who use them are losing the argument. H. Numan is letting himself down by resorting to ad hominem arguments in what is supposed to be an essay of some intellectual level.

  9. Is apartheid, in itself, indefensible? Apartheid as most people would imagine is separation by race. But can’t apartheid be based on something other than race? Don’t we have people in this world today that maintain communities of some predetermined and fixed category? I am thinking of religious affiliations. Somehow I think that when it comes to race, things get a little testy.

    • I see Apartheid as definitely wrong if it’s based on unchangeable characteristics, such as race. The old South Africa is an example of this.

      It’s slightly less wrong, but still very wrong if based on a changeable but (should be) irrelevant characteristic such as religion. Many Muslim countries today are an example of this.

      It’s not wrong if it’s based on culture/education with the real possibility of “passing”. Rhodesia was an example of this.

      Most Western countries today have a form of “economic apartheid”. This isn’t considered wrong. I don’t see it as any more “right” than cultural/educational based Apartheid, Rhodesian-style.

      The big different is that the percentages in Rhodesia made it obvious what was happening. If the percentages had been reversed, the uneducated/black vote could have just been ignored to a good extent. This is to some extent what happens in Israel. If the Muslim-Arab population were 2-3x as large, they wouldn’t have the luxury of doing it this way. (As an aside, not all Israeli Muslim-Arabs vote for “insane” parties: a sizeable minority, probably 1/3 overall, but much higher in some sub-groups) vote for “Jewish” parties, sometimes even for right-wing ones. If these percentages increased significantly, which may happen, then there wouldn’t be a problem even if the Muslim-Arab population was much larger.

      I suspect that the next “step” in Europe will be the formation of Islamic political parties, which in some Proportional Representation situations, may hold the balance of power. That will lead to much weirdness. Wait and see…

      • I would like to play the devil’s advocate here, though I really want to understand why we believe apartheid is wrong. If racial apartheid is wrong because it is based on a physical trait of a person, and therefore is outside of his will to act, and so racial apartheid being fundamentally unfree, is race any less outside of one’s power than any other trait one may possess, whether physical or psychological? Is race therefore more wrong than others as eligibility for inclusion or exclusion to a community?

        Are we free to think and believe those things we do? The more I see of us humans, I feel we are more determined by our physical makeup and are less free to exercise our will. Or maybe some are more able to exercise their free will than others, on account of their being determined to be so.

        Would apartheid be wrong if it were based on some particular non-physical characteristic of a person, for example, educational achievement, or work habits, criminality, and so on? Those characteristics do not appear on the surface to be determined, unchangeable traits. But are they?

        • Nailed it. Of course psychological traits are a function of physical characteristics, and since those aren’t chosen, free will is in effect just an illusion. Play your part, but relax in the knowledge that it is what has to be.

      • Israeli Arabs have the same rights as every other Israeli, and they know it and do not cause much disruption. Those under PA/Hamas domination are brainwashed from a tender age to kill Israelis (occasionally Muslim ones as well) at the cost of their own lives.

        But Israel is the also ‘Holyland’ to 3 religions, but only under the current administration has there been unlimited access to the holy sites for all, that is except for Jews whose access to Temple Mount is limited by the Jordanian Waqf. Here, there is a religious apartheid as Jews (and Christians) are not allowed to nod or move their lips as if ‘praying’….

      • I’m not clear how an apartheid system is morally wrong if it is based on an unchangeable property like race. It seems like you would need to add the premise that on principle a tribe or nation ought to be inclusive to any outsiders provided they meet conditions x, y, z. I can see many nations adopting that inclusiveness policy as a preference but I don’t see it as a moral imperative.

        If an ethnically homogeneous nation like Japan is not aggressive with its neighbors, engages in trade and humanitarian activities etc. but wishes to remain ethnically Japanese and not import outsiders I don’t see the moral argument against that.

        One nation may create a good society that’s ethnically mixed and another nation may create a good society that’s ethnically homogeneous. Live and let live.

        • I think your characterization of apartheid as racial “live and let live” breaks down at several points.

          Apartheid is not the exclusion of people from immigration based on racial characteristics. Since non-citizens do not have the rights of citizens in any (sane) country, this type of discrimination is not apartheid, immoral, or hopefully illegal.

          What apartheid does is to systematically and legally exclude people based on racial characteristics, who are already citizens. This means that a wealthy, cultured black suffers the same exclusions as black thugs. It also means that the black may find himself a citizen of a homeland he never knew, regardless of his contributions to the apartheid state.

          Our European philosophy of justice almost universally condemns removing rights from people who clearly are deserving of those rights.

          Apartheid has a clearly beneficial effect when practiced against people like the European immigrant invaders who defecate in the parks and attack the natives. It is less beneficial or positively dysfunctional when practiced against lawyers, entrepreneurs, or school teachers.

          The Rhodesian model, from Numan’s description, was merit-based. The teachers and entrepreneurs, likely to contribute to any society, were not discriminated against. The others were limited in their ability to go where they wanted, but as compensation enjoyed the benefits of the overflow of wealth produced by having a stable and safe environment for the producers of wealth.

          • I should have been more clear in separating out the apartheid issue from the more general claim that Mike made that it is wrong to exclude others from a group based upon immutable properties such as race. I took Mike to mean, and I may have been mistaken, that he applied this non-exclusionary principle not just to apartheid systems but beyond as well. That’s the issue I wanted to address.

            My point is that whether it’s a Hopi tribe or a Japanese nation exclusion of others based upon ethnicity or race is not immoral.

    • Race changes all the time. What we call race is not biology, but the social understanding of that biology, which evolves in time and is subject to all the vagaries of ideology. A few examples:
      – the creation of Hispanics as a separate race which grew into an identity to bludgeon US Whites with by South American Whites.
      – the switch of American Subcon Indians from White to Asian in the census, to get ahead of the burgeoning “racial spoils” system
      – the switch that is being lobbied for by Arabs and North Africans in the US to be their own group rather than Non-Hispanic Whites, for the same reasons
      – Pakistanis and others being Asians in Britain
      – Eric Holder, Rihanna, Colin Powell coming from or having families come from place where they were considered White on the local spectrum, to places where they identify with the Black community against other Whites
      – trends in self-reporting or understanding race and the areas in between(passing for White, Rachel Dolezal turning Blacks), a statuesque German blonde and a black man having black babies

      • By South American Whites, I mean elites, not that the vast majority of South Americans are not racially distinct from Europeans.

      • There is a scientifically sound biological theory of race, see eg A Troubled Inheritance by Nicholas Wade. But more important than just race is the combination of race (or ethnicity) and culture, which is where the real need for prudent distinctions arises.

  10. I read the arguments above with interest but all correspondents have missed an important point. Both South Africa and Zimbabwe are now totalitarian communist states and it for this reason, more than any other, that both states are mired in corruption and failure.

    The African National Congress was always a communist organisation and much of its early leadership was processed in Moscow. Mugabe is, was and always will be (for as long as he lasts) a dyed in the wool marxist.

    The damage done to both countries was perpetrated by socialism. Apartheid and/or slavery are, by comparison, little more than an emotive sideshow.

    • Mugabe is 92. I’m hoping that Zimbabweans will have had enough of him and his style by the time he dies, hopefully soon.

      I note how it took him about 20 years to fully squash freedom in Zimbabwe, and even then, it has kept on flaring up in the form of the MDC (for example).

      I have hope for Zimbabwe, and I think that it’s partially due to the whites there having run a better regime than was the case in South Africa. I have less long-term hope for South Africa, which seems to be quickly progressing to disaster. Zimbabwe, I think, has hit bottom and is rebounding.

      • I agree with you about South Africa, although I am unsure whether it will be leftism or black majority rule that brings it down.

        I recall a time in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s when the Saudis exerted their right to front up various companies with Saudi bosses rather than Saudi non-executive figureheads.

        This situation lasted for about a month before being rapidly reversed to avoid Saudi stupidity and lack of expertise driving their companies into the ground

      • Unfortunately it seems that the plan is for Grace Mugabe to take over when Uncle Bob dies. I met a Zimbabwean lady a few weeks ago who said Zimbabwe used to be a nice country, and that she longed to return back home. She also said life will be even worse under Grace’s rule…

        • Your comment reminds me of Winnie Mandela and her ‘necklacing’…women can be even more brutal than men sometimes.

  11. The USA has had a de facto system of apartheid operating for many decades. It is described most commonly, usually with a leftist sniff of disapproval, as: “white flight”, from once thriving urban areas. The theory most favoured by progressives being that the whites who are fleeing urban dystopias are bigots who simply don’t like people with a dark skin.

    Yet what is the most plausible cause of so called “white flight”? (not to mention Americans of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian descent who have displayed an equally strong eagerness to become part of the fleeing group and settle in safer areas with decent schools).

    People have never been known to flee from niceness.

    People have always been impelled to flee from nastiness, particularly the deadly dangerous kind.

    “White Flight” should be seen for what it actually is. To use a more modern euphemism “ethnic cleansing” or, even more accurately, “forced population displacement” should be the terms used.

    • You should read my essay “Why I left England’s Mean and Unpleasant Land.” This “White” “Flew” halfway around the world to get away.

  12. There was a perfectly acceptable solution to the end of apartheid: partition. South Africa is a big country, 1.75 the size of Texas. The Boers could have declared that Apartheid is ending but we shall carve a new nation out of South Africa: a Boer Republic, comprising 20% of the South African land mass. This Boer Republic would have be reserved for whites, strictly. No importation of cheap servile labor to do the dirty work. Whites would do the dirty work, proudly and with dignity. Yes, the Brits, Americans, Russians and their flunkies would have objected, threatened war (never happen) and sanction but with time the world would have had no choice but to accept the decision. And of course, fortunes would have been lost. Afrikaners would have had to abandon farms, factories, entire cities, but by now they would have built new farms, factories and cities, additionally they would have been entitled to the infrastructure of the lands of the new Boer Republic. And yes, there would have been forced deportations but there would have been just compensation to the deported in the form of abandoned farms and residences of the formerly white areas. What boundaries would have comprised this new Boer Republic. Those were details that could have been worked out justly. The white leadership sold out the Boers, no question, but it is still not too late to partition South Africa. In fact, partition is ultimately inevitable.

    • Partly right, see my post below. In fact it’s not possible to have an all-white ‘Boer Republic’, the ethnicities are too mixed, even the whites (many of whom are of British background and do not feel much solidarity with the Afrikaners), the most that could have been hoped for was a smaller Republic with a white majority, the balance being so-called ‘coloreds’ and some blacks. It could have been done up to the 90’s but now is too late, unless there is a real revolution in the Western world in favor of their own core identity, which could then possibly support a sort of democratic partition along historical lines, with the Republic devolving into the various provinces that made it up (or something like it), eg an independent Cape, and maybe ‘Boer’ Republic (old Traansvaal and Orange free State), along with others, but very difficult with the current demographics and resource distribution. Right now the question is, will even Europe survive?

  13. BTW, has anyone ever seen white flight happen because the neighbourhood is becoming “too Vietnamese/Chinese/Korean”?

    • Yes. My north Texas suburb, which the local leftist newspaper used to term “hideously White,” is now just a bit over 50% White. While Negroes have been moving in since Katrina (and more rapidly via Section 8 and all the apartments being built), it still had a healthy White majority and mixed Asian (Chinese, Vietnamese, Pakistani, and Indian) minorities (plus varied Mexicans and Arabs).

      Over the course of 20 years, in addition to the natural maturing/build out of the area, Whites stopped moving in and all the growth has moved north and west of us. Latin is no longer offered in the local high school, but was dropped in favor of Chinese (which almost no one but Chinese students study). The 2 years my younger child attended public school, he was part of a very small White minority in class. The varied Asian parents neither had parties for their children nor attended those the White children invited them to (music lessons, Chinese language school, etc. interfered). The volunteer parents (class mothers, PTA, etc.) were all White. The Asian students self-segregated at lunch and on the playground.

      All business growth now is mixed Asian. Local Italian, French, or American restaurants have shut and been replaced with Indian and Pakistani ones. Entire strip malls have been “reborn” catering purely to ethnic interests (local shoe repairs, dry cleaners, or curio shops all vanished). There is minimal community life or involvement. There are specific and separate ethnic churches – and that is not because the White churches or churchgoers failed in any way to welcome Christian immigrants of any race.

      Race is a reality of DNA, and culture is a natural product of race – an environment built of the cumulative habits and preferences of a group of genetically-related people. There is a reason, throughout thousands of years of history, that separate and distinct nations and cultures formed. While many Whites enjoy sampling other cultures and are open to new experiences, those interests are rarely reciprocal (I’m not speaking of tourism here), and living as a minority amongst cultural strangers is stressful (and before the standard rebuttals of “xenophobe/redneck/trailer trash,” let me state I have lived in and visited numerous countries and counted as friends people of numerous races). Many liberals or multiculturalists, who feel any and all can blend and/or assimilate, are quick to understand when native Koreans prefer to establish their own church or mingle amongst their own countrymen, but immediately brand any similar community of Whites as immoral, hostile, and racially-exclusionary.

      Humans are tribal by habit (and I would argue, by design). All the good will and hopes in the world will not alter that, other than forced miscegenation. Such efforts at forced political, social, and sexual mixing are always aimed exclusively at those of White European heritage.

  14. Apartheid is alive and well in every muslim country that has minorities. Only the ruling muslims have better jobs, education and business opportunities. If the minorities want to built a church you are out of luck.

  15. Europeans spread over the globe due to their social, political and technological advantages. In Africa we brought the European enlightenment to hunter gatherer societies who were thousands of years away from us. We showed how to make places that had not been utilised into bountiful worthwhile places.

    We gave a helping hand up to the people of these places and when they became more aware they decided they wanted what we had created and that they should be in authority. In Africa we did this and since then they have destroyed the structures we left and the most obvious remaining legacy is our supposedly colonial European ties to backwards nations that require constant hand outs to maintain their otherwise unsustainable exploding populations.

    European “Colonial” nations are more impoverished through our historic and continued contact with Africa than the other way around.

  16. Most of the ink – black on white – devoted to the topic of apartheid came from nominally “white” societies. They view the South African case through the prism of American politics, which has become – or has for a long time been – extremely race-obsessed. One may gain a better understanding of African politics when you exchange your race-based prejudices and insights for a tribe-based understanding.

    The Eurocentrists imagine that the ethnic divisions on their continent can be called “nations”; but that similar divisions in Africa are “tribal”. While Europe’s national borders follow tribal divisions quite well, Africa has not been so fortunate. African state borders are a diabolical colonial legacy that – with UN “guarantees” – has dumped multi-tribal “nations” into uneasy, unstable states. Africans have been suffering from the scourge of multi-culturalism/tribalism ever since European colonial surveyors and geographers drew lines on maps that only made sense in the delusions of European politicians.

    South Africa’s colonial history is a bit more prolonged and complicated than that of the other sub-Saharan states. The Boers/Afrikaners were an accidental tribe – and not nearly as “white” as many would make you believe. [Do not forget the coloured tribes like the Griquas, Namas, Basters, Malays, etc. who shared the Afrikaans language with the “white” Boers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oorlam_people%5D They were not colonial invaders after a century or two, and a solid theme throughout their history has been the struggle to rid themselves of European colonial rule. What do you think the two Boer Wars and many other lesser incidents were all about? For the sake of brevity I’ll describe their history as complex and troubled/ambivalent with regard to their European ties, and declare that Boers/Afrikaners are AFRICANS. They are an African tribe, just like the Ndebele and the Shona in Zimbabwe; just like the Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and those late-comers, the Zulus . . . who only found their tribal identity around 1817, when the terms “Boer” and “Afrikander” had been in use for over a century. Even the Anglo-South Africans deserve a tribal identity.

    It’s not only the Boers who need an ethnic state with sensible borders, but almost all of post-colonial Africa. Statist obstinacy and ignorance has killed millions. Can you recall the horrors of Rwanda? . . . Congo? . . . Sudan? . . . the lakes of blood and the mountains of bodies?

    This is what you can expect to reap from the multi-cult state. Skin colour and religion are merely uniforms that emphasize differences.

    Let birds of feather flock together. That is the good apartheid.

      • Yep, a lot of what you say makes sense until you mention “good apartheid”.
        No one has mentioned the fact that when the ANC started out, the intention was to unite people of South Africa, of all racial hues, and to share the wealth of the country amongst the inhabitants rather than be a British colony.
        Apartheid was born out of a fascist ideology allied to the nazi idea of Arian superiority. and embraced by the Boer for his gain. Britain continued to benefit economically from structures in place, so could afford to step back and play it safe….. not needing to spend money on the ensuing mess that was imminent. Perhaps not so imminent, because the evil that was apartheid lasted for 45 years and put paid to any sort of compromise, amounting to little more than reverse apartheid.
        Better the damn thing had not been invented in the first place, by which I mean it would never have been given a name.

        • *** born out of a fascist ideology allied to the nazi idea of Arian superiority. ***

          I thought it was because the labor unions wanted to keep black job competition to a minimum.

        • “…, the intention was to unite people of South Africa, of all racial hues, and to share the wealth of the country amongst the inhabitants rather than be a British colony…”

          No better example then of the aphorism ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions..’ – than South Africa.

          The dream turns into a nightmare with racist blacks trying to exterminate whites and vying with other blacks not of the same tribe.

  17. My great-great grandfather was a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War.
    He had ZERO slaves, like most of the Southern men who fought beside him at
    Shiloh. They fought because YA’LL were down here. Lincoln’s armies invaded their
    land; and they defended it – NO MATTER HOW HISTORY IS REWRITTEN BY
    THE “VICTORS”. – Now, the “victors” have decided that they like the warmer
    weather down here and move down and never cease to bitch & moan about how
    “stupid” we drive in the snow, or how they don’t intend to abide our “Rebel”
    memorials, and that cursed CONFEDERATE FLAG – that has to go! They
    *could* just stay up there in Obama country where it’s perfect and there are
    honey ponds and fritter trees galore!

  18. Actually the Boers won the first ‘Boer War’, soon after the Zulu War, it’s how they reclaimed their independence from Britain for a couple of decades. The big mistake South Africa made was to retain the borders imposed by the British after the Second Boer War (a big demographic hit to the Boers), including Zululand and the Xhosa territory etc, which was a demographic death-trap for the whites in the long run without much greater white immigration which never materialized. There was only a half-hearted attempt to create so-called ‘Bantustans’ which were not really independent and not territorially viable, when instead they should have been reestablished as fully independent and contiguous states with their own traditional structures etc, thus leaving the Republic of South Africa with a far more viable and balanced ethnic mix (whites, coloreds, blacks) and without the most militant and populous Bantu tribes that formed the mainstay of the ANC. Whites there would either have had to live under the new rulers or leave for the Republic. Apartheid was an attempt to maintain white rule over a much larger black population that did not have to be part of the Republic at all, and could instead have been independent but ethnically and historically legitimate statelets like Swaziland and Lesotho. But even so, the final blunder was to hand power to the communist ANC from a position of at least overwhelming military and state power without any guarantees at all, instead of at least imposing some real safeguards like special status for Cape province and so on. It was really the worst capitulation to a weaker foe in modern history, and at a time when Soviet communism, the main external backer of the ANC was collapsing. De Klerk and his ‘liberal’ faction really committed a monumental blunder which has sealed the fate of the whites at least in South Africa, to get much worse when economic collapse comes, and also handing a major victory to the ‘anti-racist’/anti-white internationalist left which has since gone from strength to strength as a result and now leads the charge for mass-immigration into Europe and the US/Canada, in the face of what amounts to a similar moral collapse on the part of Western leaders generally, but in far more critical and defensible conditions, ie the long standing white homelands, as opposed to faraway colonies. The final death of the West can quite possibly be said to have started with the sheer surrender in South Africa to the forces of (supposedly) ‘anti-racist’ hard leftism, instead of a much more pragmatic and sensible approach. As I see it, the US and Israel will go the same way when things have gone far enough, Australia has already largely gone, and Europe is going fast.

    • Those are gruesome murders. Is there no way for farmers to hire guards or are the marauders in such large numbers that it wouldn’t be practicable? How about other methods of self-defense: mined property, drones, etc. Or are those conveniently against the law?

      What is the ratio of races in S.A.? Are there any groups supporting white farmers?

      • Genocide Watch used to give some coverage. Most white farmers are pretty isolated, and vulnerable. Whites are massively outnumbered, especially outside their main areas, and also divided (especially liberal Anglos from Afrikaners, who are more rural).

  19. In SA the rate of murder of farmers is approx 132/100000 compared to the rate of murder of policemen which is 54/100000 and 32/100000 for the population as a whole! The farmers’ plight is largely being ignored by government, so the farmers are having to defend themselves. The vast majority of farm attacks are against White farmers (weekly) as they own most of the farms, with a very small percentage (maybe 2 per year) of those attacked being Black or Indian. farmers. Non-White farm workers also get attacked if they are in the way. I think in many of the White farming families, the women and children learn self defense and how to handle firearms. I’m not sure about drones etc. The farmers rely on each others’ help but often it is too late. The problem is that the farm attacks are a type of asymmetrical guerilla warfare (or terrorism) and therefore unpredictable. The government refers to the farm murders as part of ordinary crime and the police often documents them as “robberies”. Most times the perpetrators wait for the victims to return home or they attack at night when the family is asleep in order to torture and murder them (including children and the elderly). Torture can include anything from being burnt with a clothes iron, hacked with machetes, having boiling water poured down one’s throat, being drowned in the bath, suffocation by having a plastic bag tied over one’s head, and raped with objects or by the terrorists themselves. In contrast “normal’ robbers would usually break in when nobody is at home…!

    Approximate ratio of races in SA: Black 80% (45million), White 9% (4.5million), Coloured 9% (4.5million), Indian 2% (2million). Plus several million illegal immigrants from other African countries. There are some groups supporting the farmers, such as Afriforum, Freedom Front Plus, and the TAU (Transvaal Agricultural Union) which are usually demonized as right wing.

    Afriforum at UN in 2015 regarding farm murders:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhAa5tckcYw

    Freedom Front Plus at UN 2015 (notice the ANC government official trying to derail the speech): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shb8V8CiQ1Y

    Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch on farm murders in SA:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKgntJcP4s

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